For the most part, Destiny 2’s newly revamped Faction Rallies have proven to be quite a hit with the game’s community, mainly thanks to the unique new cosmetic rewards and Exotic masterwork catalysts each faction offers. However, the new Faction Rallies still have a few growing pains, and those pains are only exacerbated by the event’s limited-time duration.
Like many other events, each Destiny 2 Faction Rally lasts for a single week, giving players a limited amount of time to earn tokens and turn them in for rewards from their chosen faction (there is technically a second “bonus week,” but that’s only so players can purchase the winning faction’s unique reward weapon, tokens cannot be earned during the second week). As part of the Faction Rallies overhaul, Bungie also added in a dedicated reputation rewards track for each faction wherein players can progress their reputation rank and unlock guaranteed rewards by turning in tokens, with the ultimate rewards being a unique Exotic masterwork catalyst and Exotic armor ornament.
However, since players can now only pledge to a single faction for their entire account, that means they only have a single week to grind all the way up to reputation rank 50 (the maximum rank) if they want to earn the unique Exotic catalyst and armor ornament for each of the three factions (Bungie previously confirmed it will host a total of three Faction Rallies during Destiny 2’s third content season). Even worse, some of the unique Legendary armor ornaments offered by each faction require completing specific milestones to unlock, and those milestones require that a player is wearing a full set of armor which, for now, can only be obtained via randomized reward package drops.
Each faction’s associated vendor is supposed to offer the required armor for purchase, but a bug is currently preventing them from doing so, which means that players who don’t get the requires armor pieces are just plum out of luck. Granted, reputation rank progress will be retained throughout all three rallies, so it is possible to get at least one faction’s Exotic rewards as long as you’re semi-diligent in your token collecting, but more casual players who can’t spend a lot of time playing aren’t happy about being forced to excessively grind if they want the Exotic rewards from all three factions, and more dedicated players aren’t thrilled about being locked out of armor ornaments due to plain old bad luck.
As of this writing, Bungie hasn’t said much on the issue other than confirming that it is indeed a bug which is preventing faction vendors from selling the armor needed to unlock faction-specific armor ornaments (a bug which also affected the Crucible and Iron Banner vendors). There’s likely not much to be done about the excessive grinding needed for the Exotic rewards, but at the very least here’s hoping Bungie can get the vendor bug sorted out sooner rather than later. In the meantime, it’s at least good to know that all Destiny 2 players have much more free content to look forward to.