Destiny is known to be a bit of grind. One of the many things guardians “grind” for is good or perfect rolls on vendor weapons or armor. Maybe you’ve been praying for a Longbow from Lord Shaxx, or perhaps The Devil You Know from the Vanguard. It looks like Bungie is going to ease the amount of randomness you’ll face when you’re awarded a vendor package.
Yesterday, August 12th, Christopher Barrett, Game Director at Bungie, tweeted “wouldn’t it be cool if you could pick whether you wanted weapons or armor from faction packages?”
The way the system currently works is that when you gain enough reputation with a given faction you will rank up with them. Ranking up allows you to purchase that vendors weapons and armor, but you also get a package containing some items: 1 random weapon or piece of armor and potentially a shader or emblem you don’t already have.
As you can see in the picture the player has a faction package waiting at the New Monarchy faction vendor. The obvious change here is that they may choose from 3 different packages, the one highlighted is a New Monarchy weapons package. We can assume one of the others would be for armor, but the third was up for speculation. Senior Investment Designer at Bungie, Victoria Dollbaum, responded to the question surrounding the third option on Twitter and stated that it’s chroma armor.
I feel that this a great feature for Destiny, even though it’s a relatively small thing. Currently, chasing a vendor weapon starts with hoping you actually get a weapon, instead of armor, from your rank up package. Now, all you’ll have to hope for is that you actually get the weapon you’re hoping for, and that it comes with good perks. The fact that they’re easing the RNG hoops you need to jump through is a welcome change.
