Under the previous system, anti-champ counters were:
- Up to five specific weapon archetypes as chosen by Bungie per season
- Occasionally one of these mods would count for multiple weapon archetypes, but this was rare
- More likely you'd only take three at most because any more would take away from better artifact mods
- This did, of course, hinge on actually taking the proper mods for the activity and weapons you were using
- Elemental keywords, with every element able to deal with two champ types in various ways (except stasis, rip)
- Able to be applied with weapons or abilities in various ways, too many to go into
- Exotic weapons, with about 25 different options with intrinsic anti-champ properties
- Limited by only being able to take one exotic, but you had options
- Exotic armor, six options spread across three classes with two champion counters each
- Adds some kind of counter to an ability
So already you had a pretty sizable amount of options to where champions would generally not be an issue if you took a bit of time to prepare, but a lot of players would not (as evidenced by the many,
many times I was the only person who could counter champs in activities). How about the new system?
- Every single weaponhas some kind of anti-champ intrinsic
- Every weapon category has multiple different options for champion counters based on frame, and many (especially primaries) can counter all three
- The six primary frame categories are split into three groups of two for different champs
- Minor frame categories are split based on what they're most similar to
- No special behavior like aiming down sights or sustained fire to activate the counter, just shoot and instantly counter
- No additional effort on the player's part, just equip the gun and go
- Elemental keywords are still available (please revert the stasis slow overload nerf bungo)
- Every single exotic weaponhas its own anti-champ intrinsic built in
- 138 options available, not including any exotics being added with this update
- Exotic armor, no info yet but obviously a bare minimum of six options already
So let's do the math. We go from a maximum of five weapon archetypes to literally every weapon in the game, and 25 to nearly 140 exotic weapons, on top of using elemental keywords for counters, and you're trying to tell me that Bungie is
against player choice? Just because you might not be able to use a particular weapon that you like against any champion type forever, when that was never the case before anyway?
Look, don't get me wrong, I hear what you're saying with regards to "why didn't they just put another mod slot in?" I'm sure they thought of that too. While I once again don't have any sort of insight into gamedev because I'm just an internet tard, my guess why they didn't go that route is twofold.
First, that's extra data that needs to be added to every single gun in the game. Besides just the UI work to add another slot for the extra mod, adding an extra variable to every gun is going to add up over the entire game. Extra storage is now needed for every gun a player has equipped in every slot, plus all the guns in their inventory,
plus all the guns across their characters,
plus all the guns in their vault and mailbox, and then
multiplied across every player in the game (even those that don't play anymore),
plus every single gun that drops in the future. Even a small change can add up when scaled into the billions. Easier to just make a modification to how the already-existing intrinsic frames work that modifies the behavior of the weapons accordingly.
And second, it's just easier for the players. Like I mentioned earlier, the average player is
notoriously bad at handling champions by default. They'll load into an activity with the wrong guns or the wrong mods and not even bother to change them because they just like using their guns. Requiring them to slot an extra mod into their weapons when many probably aren't even aware that mods are a thing they can use in the first place is, in my opinion, simply too much to ask. This way, even through sheer accident, anyone can actually contribute to dealing with champs with considerably less effort.
(And this is without even getting into the fact that many times champions can be beaten even without hard countering them if people are focused, but this is long enough as it is.)