Yesterday's Destiny 2 update made some major additions to the Dreaming City, the endgame zone in the Forsaken DLC - including an easy way to get your third Seed of Light, plus a new 590-power mini-raid called the Shattered Throne. Players quickly deduced that the Shattered Throne was home to the exotic quest for the bow Wish Ender, and many obtained the bow within just a few hours. Not long after, players discovered a new boss in Forsaken's new Gambit mode which awards the exotic quest for the hand cannon Malfeasance. But while players are still eager to try the Shattered Throne and unlock Wish Ender, the general opinion on Malfeasance has already soured.
As countless players have pointed out via the Destiny subreddit, the Malfeasance quest line is locked behind several RNG barriers. Firstly, the boss that drops the quest appears randomly and infrequently, so your only option is to play a bunch of Gambit and pray. Secondly, once you get the boss to spawn, you still have to kill it and win that round of Gambit in order to start the quest. Gambit is a competitive mode, so your opponents aren't going to let you win the round just because you found a rare boss. One player can only do so much, so your chances of actually killing the boss will depend on your teammates and opponents. If your teammates are slacking while the enemy is crushing it, your hopes of killing the boss (if it spawns at all) are slim. Horror stories like this are flooding in, and players are understandably frustrated.
Compare that to Wish Ender, whose exotic quest is much more deterministic and, for my money, flavorful: you need to beat the Shattered Throne, finish a quest in the Tangled Shore, then run the Throne again to kill some secret bosses. That's the short version, anyway - we'll have detailed guides on obtaining both weapons for you soon. The point is, Wish Ender's quest is clear and consistent. It's locked behind a 590-power activity, sure - but with a little practice, most players will be able to knock out the Shattered Throne around level 560. Besides, leveling your character to unlock Wish Ender is much more satisfying than spinning the wheel on Malfeasance, if only because you can actually track your steady progress.
Many players have compared Malfeasance to Whisper of the Worm, a coveted exotic sniper rifle obtained via a bonus mission attached to a public event on the planet Io. When the Whisper mission was discovered, some players spent hours chasing the correct public event to no avail, so Bungie intervened and added something of a mercy system to prevent excessive dry streaks. I reckon players would welcome a similar tweak to Malfeasance that makes the path to its quest less frustrating.
Outside of their quests, both of these new, hard-to-obtain exotics suffer from another problem: they're kind of weak. As Destiny Youtuber Ehroar noted in his review, Malfeasance looks nice, but in practice it's painfully comparable to normal hand cannons and not worth the exotic slot. Wish Ender isn't much better: as YouTuber Aztecross explained, it's just another kinetic bow with a surprisingly unhelpful x-ray ability tacked on. Wish Ender can be used to destroy the Taken 'eggs' dotted around the Dreaming City, which reward Dreaming City gear and may well connect to another quest, but it doesn't feel as exotic as some players had hoped, especially given the effort and power level necessary to obtain it. Exotic quests are fun and it's always an exciting moment when new quests are discovered, but it'd be nice if the rewards were exciting too.
