I had previously written about how this "free to play" game has certain things hidden behind a paywall and for the most part I still feel like a lot of this is true. This is all fine and dandy when it is an optional dungeon or advanced feature but I don't think it is ok when it comes down to core gameplay. I had encountered a problem when attempting to advance to a higher rank in the game because one of the requirements was that you had to chance the look of a weapon or armor and in order to do this you had to acquire "shades" to change the look of anything.
The problem was that the shades appeared to be hidden, for the most part, behind a paywall that of course is best accomplished by spending real world money. Well, one night when I was getting frustrated by attempting to find shades by camping a spot over and over again to no avail I went and dug a bit deeper and found out that you can buy the shades in the in-game store for very little of the in-game currency that is really easy to find.
This is accessible from the "store" section that you can access in your menu at any point in the game. Unlike most other features in the game, you do not need to go to a particular NPC to make this happen because of course they want you to be able to purchase things with real world money at any time you choose.
I had presumed that these shader packs or "bundles" with real world money because most of the shader bundles are exactly that. However, this one, perhaps because of the requirement to advance to level or rank 4 requires that you do this. One bundle called "year one bundle" is available in the shop for 1000 shards, which is the in-game currency and this is a very low amount of shards considering that I have over a quarter million shards while just casually playing the game for a few days.
you can see it there on my screen but I had already purchased it so the price is not shown.
So I feel a little silly for complaining about this previously but it leads me to another gripe about this game in that they really do NOT do a good job of telling you what the hell you are supposed to do or how it is that you actually acquire things that you need in game. They really do not do much hand-holding in this game and while this might appeal to some people I find it quite annoying that in order to accomplish certain core things in the game you are going to have to do "research." Many people have said that it simply isn't possible to excel at Destiny 2 without having a laptop sitting nearby your controller while playing.
I am happy that I was wrong about needing real-world money to advance beyond this part of the game but honestly, they don't make it easy.
So if you are stuck on rank 3 like I was just know that getting past this is available to you at any time. Just hit select (on PS4) and go to the store icon at the top left of your screen at any time and boom! You are rank 4. Turns out that these ranks are rather meaningless as far as progression or power is concerned so I suppose you don't really even need to do it.