I just ran a Destiny 2 Strike, no different than the thousands I’ve run before it, and at the end I was asked if I’d like to commend my teammates for their contributions. I can give one of them the Thoughtful award, meaning they were “Considerate, Kind, and Helpful,” and I can give the other one the Joy Bringer award, meaning they were &l🀅dquo;Enriched the game𓆏 with their presence.” Since they were both just random players I’ll never think about again, I selected each award arbitrarily. In return, one of them gave me Thoughtful and the other one gave me Joy Bringer. I don’t think I earned either of those superlatives, but neither did they, so I guess none of it actually matters.
The new Commendation system is billed as a way to recognize other players for their contributions, but in practice it feels like little more than a ritualistic empty gesture. Bungie wants to inject a greater sense of community into Destiny 2 and the Commendation is supposed to be a first step towards that goal, but the implementation and incentives surrounding these Commendations doesn’t actually create opportunities to connect with other players, nor does it effectively create a biography of your reputation as a Destiny player. More than anything, it’s just another reflection🅘 of how much you play - another seasonal grind to pursue.
The system is overly complicated and oddly restrictive. There are four categories of Commendations: Ally, Fun, Mastery, and Leadership, but only certain awards can be given in each activity. The aforementioned Thoughtful and Joybringer awards can be given out in most low-difficulty PvE activities, but there are separate awards for Trials, Crucible, Gambit, high-difficulty activities, and raids and dungeons. The commendations themselves are sometimes confusing. One of the Trials awards, Saint’s Favor, is in the Fun category and reads “Put the needs of others above self and left no one behind.” Over in the Ally category, you’ll find the Selfless commendation, which applies toജ raids and dungeons and has an identical description.
In either case, I struggle to conceptualize what it could even mean to be selfless in Destiny 2. You can’t hoard resources, as everyone gets their own ammo and gear drops. You can’t sacrifice yourself for others by jumping in front of a bullet, since dying in Trials, raids, and dungeons is bad no matter who goes down. I don’t see how the🍒 concept of selflessness can even be applied to Destiny’s gameplay, and I have similar feelings about several of the Commendations.
Raid commendations like Knowledgeable or Patient and Considerate are the only ones I can see the value in. These are awards I’d like to give to a sherpa; someone teaching me the raid for the first time. If we’re struggling to beat a boss, I could se🐻e myself wanting to recognize someone on the team who stays calm and encourages everyone to keep trying. Raids take a lot of teamwork and coordination, so I 🌞get wanting to recognize certain player’s contributions at the end of a raid. But for almost every other activity, I don’t see how someone even has the opportunity to be a Joy Bringer.
It would be one thing if Commendations were just there for special occasions, but they’re baked into multiple progression loops. At the Tower, Hawthorne offers a ✤Tier 2 Powerful Engram every week once you’ve handed out 20 Commendations. No one is goiꦗng to wait until the award is actually meaningful to give it out when we’re all trying to collect as much power as possible. I’ve given out every Commendation I can, and I’ve collected just as many.
You also need to earn Commendations to increase your Guardian Rank, Destiny’s new seasonal progression system that replace💮d the XP-based Season Rank. Just to get from Rank 6 to 7, which is where every long-time Destiny 2 players starts, you need a Commendation Score of 750. Commendations from harder activities raise your score more, but for simple playlist Commendations, you earn just four points per Commendation. You need a lot of Commendations to raise your rank, and the best way to encourage other people to commend you is to commend them first. Everyone is handing out awards willy nilly right now without any consideration of what they mean and regardless of what their teammates actually d❀o because we all just want to raise our Guardian Rank level quickly.
Commendations are supposed to be the foundation of Destiny’s upcoming group finder tool, with the idea being that your Commendation score and Snapshot will give others an idea of what kind of player you are. But in reality all it shows is how much you play the game and what activities you play the most, which is information that was already communicated by Season Rank and stat trackers. It would be nice if I could seek out thoughtful, knowledgeable, or level-headed players to join my fireteam, but I can’t trust that anyone is actually all of the things their Commendations say they are. I have dozens of Thoughtful awards already and I haven’t done a single thoughtful thing for anyone. If my own awards are meaningless, I know everyone else’s are too. If the goal of Commendatiಞons was to help foster a sense of community, the current system is a falling short by a distance.