All good things must come to an end. Especially in Destiny.
Last Tuesday, Bungie accidentally put a hilariously powerful laser gun into Destiny 2. Called Prometheus Lens, it was capable of deleting other players in the competitive Crucible in around a second, comically faster than any other standard weapon in the game.
Bungie quickly acknowledged the gun was bugged, but said the fix would take a few days to implement.
In the meantime, it had the exotic vendor Xur sell the gun over the weekend so that everyone could have one. What followed were three days of glorious, laser-powered mayhem.
That’s all over now. Today’s game update gave Prometheus Lens a substantial nerf, overcorrecting and lowering its weapon damage well below where it probably should be. “Given the short window we had to make an emergency fix,” Bungie said yesterday on Twitter, “[Prometheus Lens] will be adjusted to be way too weak. In January, this new Exotic will receive a proper, play-tested design pass.”
Having played around with the gun post-patch, I can confirm that the Prometheus Lens as we briefly knew it is dead. In Crucible in particular, it is no longer the death-ray it once was. That’s doubtless for the best in terms of the overall game balance, but it’s hard not to feel a small pang that its brief reign has concluded.
Nope.
The Prometheus Lens debacle was a rare passage of levity in an otherwise grim chapter for Destiny 2. Likewise, it was a rare bit of goofiness in a competitive meta-game that’s become much more grounded and balanced than in the first Destiny.
In both respects, it was a reminder that Destiny can be ridiculous, unbalanced, and also fun, all at the same time. It made me long for the days of Destiny 1‘s mayhem playlists, as well as the sorts of absurd custom matches my friends and I used to make in Halo and GoldenEye.
It was also, as adroitly observed by Eurogamer‘s Wesley Yin-Poole, a reminder that Destiny tends to be at its best – or certainly its most interesting – when players are breaking it.
Many of the first game’s most iconic moments involved bugs, glitches, or exploits: The brief but terrible reign of the Vex Mythoclast; the Crota LAN cheese; the hidden regions of Mercury; and of course, the Loot cave. Prometheus Lens is just another in a line of memorable Destiny fuckups, and Bungie was wise to embrace the moment and lean in.
Perhaps Prometheus Lens will go down as another isolated event, fondly remembered but over for good. Or perhaps it will serve as a gentle reminder to the people who make Destiny that, above all else, the people who play it want to have fun. Sometimes fun means a balanced, carefully tuned competitive game. But sometimes it means setting the rules aside, embracing absurdity, and seeing what happens. Nowhere is it written that Destiny 2 can’t make room for both.
Comments
10 responses to “Prometheus Lens Is Dead, Long Live Prometheus Lens”
the funny thing, I never really wanted it nerfed (as a player who doesnt use it) but for it merely stay the same but be moved to the power slot, likewise for Coldheart, that way the ammo and the amounts of kills you can get with it are capped.
Dang I forgot to do one round of PvP for the lols. Then again that would involve playing the PvP :p
As bad as the Lens was, it did make the Crucible hilarious. I never succumbed to equipping the Lens and as you would get slaughtered so quickly, the style of play changed from running flat stick, to a more cautious approach and peeking around corners to make sure it was lens free. Also did encourage more team play as 2 players can take down the Lens gunner. On you own = fried eggs.
Shrug. I only ever used it for PVE (because my life motto is basically fuck PVP), and in the one day that I used it on the weekend, it was pretty much on par with the non-exotic energy weapon MIDA mini-tool. Post-patch, their warning that it will be adjusted to be ‘way too weak’ seems to have been an understatement. Whatever. MIDA multi-tool 4 lyfe.
For some reason, I enjoyed the Sweet Business build on my titan way too much to change from it. Warlock and Hunter got the MIDA, but that small +10% ammo/sec benefit from the war rig made the Sweet Business just so much fun to use on bosses.
Wasn’t overpowering either, you still ran out of ammo annoyingly fast, but for melting mobs it was a hoot. For some reason I just couldn’t feel the same about the Coldheart.
Bit sad that the goto gun for D2 is a D1 weapon…
I’d like to think that Bungie and the community learned something this weekend – no-one wants this to be the norm, but holy crap do people miss the mayhem game modes. Quickplay is seen as too competitive – we kinda need a game mode that isn’t meant to be taken so seriously.
if anything they just need to make a mayhem mode for crucible. and not make Nightfall – Savathuns song for the gazillionth time with momentum as a modifier
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it…
I sorta hate it.. I mean i’ve done it soo many freaking times I have memorized where all the damn anomalies are… but its damn boring.
the first few times.. I hated it more.