Even when it was announced, players could identify that Destiny 2’s proposed transmog system was a convoluted, grindy mess. Simply put, Armor Synthesis (as it’s formally known) is limited, obtuse, requires lots of grinding, and involves the Eververse in-game premium store in a significant way. Not ideal then. What’s worse is that dedicated Guardians have deciphered that the Synthstrand – the base tier of three transmog currencies – is apparently time-gated. The fact that there’s nothing you can do in-game to speed up the rate at which you earn Synthstrand was initially spotted by r/RaidSecrets poster Alonie-homie and verified by Eurogamer and other reddit users. Further research from the community suggests that reaching the transmog cap will take you nearly seven days of in-game playtime. “This puts the total time to reach transmog cap on one character at 53 hours and 20 minutes or 6 days and 16 hours for three characters,” said I3igB on reddit. They show their work, too, breaking down that number in detail over at the link – and that time is based on if you’re only hunting out tokens via being in combat, and ignoring all other in-game activities. Polygon reckons that means 25 hours of playtime per outfit you want to synthesize. That’s not a good look (no pun intended), and it’s not gone down well with the community at large. What stings, in the eyes of the community, is that you can pay to speed the whole process up and bypass the grind: a single Synthweave Template will cost you 300 Silver, and the bundle will run you 1,000 ($10). Players are arguing that Bungie has intentionally made the grind long and tedious to push players towards spending premium currency if they want to transmog. A cursory look at any Destiny community will show you there are calls for the developer to acknowledge this issue, and provide information on what it plans to do to address players’ chagrin going forward.
