I'm definitely picking up all those chests from Variks this week. It's all anti-Fallen (the only stuff worth getting), and non-strength to boot!
Yeah, pretty much must haves.
Shotgun is pointless though, so aside from running a 34 to use up the spare armor core I have from last week in a Judgment's chance, I've got no real desire to run the 34s.
Then again, I might run them just to remove the need to run Qodron as much next week.
I'm definitely picking up all those chests from Variks this week. It's all anti-Fallen (the only stuff worth getting), and non-strength to boot!
Yeah, pretty much must haves.
Shotgun is pointless though, so aside from running a 34 to use up the spare armor core I have from last week in a Judgment's chance, I've got no real desire to run the 34s.
Then again, I might run them just to remove the need to run Qodron as much next week.
With Small Arms on Skolas, atleast the 35 might be a quick / easy run. Lightswitch doesn't seem like a big deal on Skolas.
Lightswitch is terrifying, so many ninjas on that fucking fight.
Small arms might help a lot though, so...
Yeah but you spend 99% of the fight either on the high platform on the left or the right. With essentially very small points of entry. With small arms, it's likely a single headshot with Fatebringer to kill one of them coming up!
The content exclusivity for playstation is garbage, doubly so that it lasts a full year.
I'm on PlayStation, and I agree, it's shitty. At least the exclusive armor is blues I think, if it's like the exclusive armor from the base game. But yea, the gating of content in a game already starving for content is crap.
Shotgun and non-Strength armor? Looks like this is the week I want to finally try Trials.
Oh wait, no. My bad, totally misunderstood the rewards being discussed. I'm down with the armor, but fuck that Shotgun. I've already sharded it like three times.
All the weapons manufacturers will now have unique styles, so you can tell how made it just buy looking at it.
Those new Suros are something!
Unique designs per manufacturer sounds like a page right out of Borderlands 2's playbook. The Suros stuff gives me a Maliwan vibe!
Would be neat if we get grimoire cards as well for the various manufacturers with their design philosophies! I already loved how you could recognize guns by their sounds. Like you know when someone is using a Suros or an Icebreaker. It'll be nice to recognize brands now.
I have to get more into the Grimoire. Part of me is glad that I didn't dive into it because so much of it is extraneous or because I know I would be disappointed that it's hidden away and not reflected in the game, but another huge part of me wants to understand the lore that isn't featured and get a better understanding of the world. I keep thinking that one of these days I'll sit down and just pore over volumes of cards - maybe that's why I haven't done it, because it seems intimidating. I should just pick a card here and there and enhance my experience.
I have to get more into the Grimoire. Part of me is glad that I didn't dive into it because so much of it is extraneous or because I know I would be disappointed that it's hidden away and not reflected in the game, but another huge part of me wants to understand the lore that isn't featured and get a better understanding of the world. I keep thinking that one of these days I'll sit down and just pore over volumes of cards - maybe that's why I haven't done it, because it seems intimidating. I should just pick a card here and there and enhance my experience.
It's really worthwhile. The ghost fragment ones are often the best. I enjoyed reading them. You can also find them out a bit better on a wiki because sometimes they tweak the order.
There's a card I still remember about a ghost that went to Mars to find its guardian, but he didn't find it so he was going to die on Mars, so he spent all his time on Mars recording every bit of intel it could for when his corpse gets found.
Y'all are wildly overstating how arrogant this Smith guy comes off as, imo
I genuinely can't even believe it. There isn't some other interview with Luke Smith out there? He's a little blunt here and dodges the fuck out of that European cost question in the most obvious way, but is otherwise tonally fine.
If anything I was more annoyed by how the eurogamer guy wouldn't stop talking about the shaders. He came off as petulant.
Yeah continously saying "value" as the interviewer stated quite clearly why there was NO value to be had wasn't arrogant or annoying. Ditto the "throw money at the screen" comment. He (Luke Smith) then proceeds to "poke at" the interviewer when he (Tom Phillips) has already prepared to move on. So I find it ridiculous how you say the Eurogamer guy "won't stop" when the Bungie guy deliberately steers the conversation back to the shaders, in order to make a smug comment.
Of course it was all worth it for the most devastating burn I've seen in a game journalist interview since the one with Molyneux: "Eurogamer: I feel like you should put some of these things that you are empathising with into practice." What a SATISFYING throw back in the face of all this "we hear you" bullshit. They design some shit that would NEVER have been popular if they had done even a little bit of thinking from the player perspective (redoing all the Exotics, no guaranteed keys for PoE, etc etc) and then, after collecting our money and watching us suffer for a while, go "oh we hear you" and fix it whenever they feel like it. Or basically never in the case of Vault space.
The whole thing with value in that interview is that you're getting something for your money. The interviewer wanted to fixate on how you're paying for content you already have, but that's silly, because it would cost the same amount even if they didn't include the old content. If you buy the CE, you are paying for new content and exclusive content. It has a value. If this interview had been about how the physical and digital CEs are the same price, maybe it would be different. But it wasn't. It was about the interviewer asking the same questions over and over and getting the same answer.
I'm confused why you believe the CE would be the same price without the old content. And you are paying for iit the old content. You pay for the Season Pass, The Taken King, and the extras. Its all in the same package.
So, it rubs players the wrong way to talk about the "value" of the CE when half of it is stuff you already own.
but heres the thing: The effective value of Vanilla Destiny, House of Wolves and Dark Below as soon as Taken King is released is zero.
Those new faction armor sets are sexy as fuck. Even FWC looks cool. I hope some of those are Warlock-friendly. I've felt since I started playing that Warlocks kind of get the shaft fashion-wise. They have some cool looking stuff (Voidfang Vestments, for example) but Titans and Hunters almost always look badass, even in shitty gear, whereas Warlocks end up in stuff that looks like a bathrobe.
I wonder if they'll add faction ships and sparrows at some point (unless those already exist and I don't know about them?). A FWC ship covered in graffiti or a red and white New Monarchy sparrow would be pretty cool.
The Suros designs have such a huge Mass Effect vibe to them.
Also, I want that new sidearm! That thing looks awesome, like it's a throwback in the same way the Khvostov is.
+1
awsimoa perfectly cromulent human; definitely not a robotRegistered Userregular
edited June 2015
My best friend picked up a shiny new Xbox One and, no doubt due to my constant nagging, Destiny. Last night I jumped in and joined his fireteam literally as soon as possible, as he was wandering around the Tower after the first mission. We managed to make it all the way through the Earth missions and into the first Moon mission.
I was trying not to murderize everything in sight, so I equipped all green armor and weapons and de-leveled myself to 20. I was still way overpowered for those first missions, but at least I wasn't the unstoppable death machine I would have been with all my Exotics and Raid gear.
As a grizzled endgamer, it was really interesting to re-experience Destiny through his fresh eyes. I had forgotten just how bad Destiny is at explaining itself. When I joined him, apparently he had been wandering around the Tower for five minutes trying to figure out what to do.
Him: I'm supposed to go to my ship, where the hell is that? Me: Hit Select, they Y. Him: THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE.
There were a lot of moments like that, like explaining how to unlock subclass abilities or use the Ghost to show waypoints and Patrol missions. It's all second nature to me now, but it really is a counter-intuitive system if you've never seen it before.
Also, story level vs. character progression is really weird. We finished the Earth missions and he was a level 5, but then the first Strike is a level 8, and the first Moon mission is a level 6. It seems weird that you would be expected to go to the Moon for a while and then come back to Earth, rather than capping the Earth campaign with an exciting Strike. It also seemed pretty brutal to start the next story mission a level above where you're at. Maybe that was an intentional design choice to get players to try out Patrols and whatnot, but last night it felt more like a roadblock killing the game's momentum. (I suppose I might have been taking XP away from him with my kills, although I thought glimmer/XP was shared across the fireteam...)
Anyways, despite those annoyances, it was awesome going back and doing old missions with my bud, and I'm looking forward to doing more. It's nice to have a reason to revisit the story (thin as it is). I want to get him to the high-20s as soon as possible, so he can see the Vault of Glass. (And Crota's End. And Nightfalls. And PoE.)
Basically, this game really is super fun with other people, and it's great to share it with an old friend.
I'll leave you with a few choice quotes from last night:
Him: So-- and I don't mean this in a bad way-- but it seems like Destiny is basically Halo with an incentive system.
Him: Whoa what are these guys? Me: The Hive. Think of them as 'not the Flood.' Him: Oh, just like how the Fallen are 'not Elites.'
Him: Haven't you done everything in the game by now? Me: Well, I've done all the stuff, but I don't have all the things. Him: .....That just spoke volumes.
Him: Dinklage sounds like he recorded these lines immediately after the trial scene in Game of Thrones. "Sorry, all my award-winning acting is used up; this is all that's left. Where's my scotch?"
Final thought: Just an idea, but I think it would be cool if there were some small bonus for helping low-level players. Maybe a "mentor" XP boost, or even just a "Sherpa" emblem as a reward for doing a certain amount of missions with someone 10+ levels below you.
I gotta say, ever since this news broke, I haven't felt like logging in. This incident has really tainted how I view the game currently. I hate thinking that the powers that be at BNG actively don't care about the players, which I realize is a bit of hyperbole, but it's not exaggerating how disheartening the whole scenario is.
I don't even know what can be said by DeeJ to address this. The only thing that would show sincerity for a lot of people at this point is for dude's head to roll. Which is ridiculous, but it is what it is now. Bungie has never been good about communication and messaging, and this is pretty much worst case scenario.
I'm hoping the feeling goes away, but it's always gonna be in the back of my mind, and that sucks. A lot.
Sev: Your gameplay is the most heavily yomi based around. Usually you look for characters that allow you to force guessing situations for big dmg. Even if the guess is mathematically nowhere near in your favor lol. You're happiest when you have either a 50/50, 33/33/33 or even a 75/25 situation to go crazy with. And you will take big risks to force those situations to come up.
The funniest thing about this is that it's entirely possible the rewards for Y1 guardians were always going to be 10x better than the CE. But no matter what happens now, the only way Bungie will be viewed is incompetent and internally uncaring. DeeJ can do as much crowd-fluffing as they want--it probably won't change that view.
I understand why people are angry but acting like it's some kind of personal betrayal or Bungie being money-grubbing dick-bags just seems excessive and illogical (except about the exchange rate stuff which is just bullshit but is bullshit that everyone does).
It was always going to be cheaper to buy the game later. Even games that don't have expansions are (except Nintendo games) a lot cheaper a year on than they were at release. It sucks that the expansion that drops year 1 content to $15 comes so soon after the last piece of year 1 DLC, but it's not really surprising.
The fact that you can't get the CE content without buying the CE isn't surprising either. I had the pre-order code for the Vanguard Armory stuff which, as far as I know, is still locked to people who had the code. I don't imagine anyone much cares because it's all green equipment, but it's still a thing you had to buy a certain copy of the game to get and haven't been able to buy otherwise since. Companies have to offer shit in special SKUs that you can't get otherwise, at least initially, because that's how pricing models work. If you could buy the CE exclusive stuff separately you'd be introducing two competing products: the CE SKU and a combination of the base-game SKU and the content-only SKU. Maybe you make more money because people who wouldn't have bought the CE because they already own the base-game buy the content-only pack. Maybe you lose money because people who would have bought the CE despite already owning the base game now only buy the content pack. Either way, creating competition for your own newly-released product is simply something that companies do not do. Especially when they have no existing pricing model for small content packs.
I might buy the CE because I have a friend who doesn't own the game at all and it's a cheap way to get him the year 1 content. I don't give a shit about emotes. I think the existing dance emote looks stupid. I wouldn't mind a golf-clap and I'd love to have a high-five or a fist-bump or something, but unless it lets me communicate with people without having to use a mic it's just some bit of character animation that's going to be cool for a day and then boring because I've already seen it a hundred times. I don't care about the +xp class items because 1) I assume there are going to be other class items that aren't exclusive and which I'd rather wear, if class items are going to have perks, and 2) I'm probably going to want to wear a faction item anyway 90% of the time anyway if there aren't any perks involved. Hell, if the only perk is +xp I'd rather have faction rep anyway. Assuming it's not ugly, I'd much rather have the shader they're promising for year 1 players. Outside of Iron Banner weeks I can wear a shader without impacting my gear and, if it's neat looking, I can get way more visual value out of it than I would an emote.
So let's say you're not like me and you really want some emotes and class items. How much do you want them? If you could buy TTK in the not-CE edition and then buy a stand-alone pack with the emotes and items, what would you pay for it? Right now, the price is $15. As a year 1 player, buying the CE is equivalent to buying TTK + a $15 content pack with emotes and class items. That's what the interview guy was getting at in an astoundingly ham-fisted and poorly-stated way. If the exclusive content is important enough to you to be worth $15 then you will want to buy the CE despite it involving re-buying content you already own. If it's not worth $15 to you then it's not important enough to you to justify the price. It's exactly like offering TTK stand-alone plus a high-priced small bundle of the same content. I know I wouldn't pay $15 for a DLC pack with emotes and class items. Some people would. Those people will buy the CE despite owning year 1.
tl;dr:
They have to have some sort of special content in the DCE because you can't call something a special edition without bundling something special in it. They can't offer the content by itself because creating competition between your own SKUs is bad business. To make up for this they are offering something to year 1 players that at least some people (me) find more appealing than what they aren't getting. The interviewee was making a valid point in possibly the most poorly-stated way I've ever witnessed.
I just picked up Destiny about a month ago, and despite being busy, I manage to crank myself up to 23.
I haven't bought any of the expansions yet, but then I got the news about the new expansion and uh, I'm confused and disheartened as fuck.
So it's going to be the full price of the base game *again*, and the collector's edition means you have to buy the game and expansions again somehow? I've read this from like three sites and I still don't get it.
I was thinking of working my way through the expansions and gradually catching up to everyone, but it looks like I'm going to have to spend triple-digit dollars to do that, and that the previous expansions are going to be pointless anyway, so why even bother?
I just picked up Destiny about a month ago, and despite being busy, I manage to crank myself up to 23.
I haven't bought any of the expansions yet, but then I got the news about the new expansion and uh, I'm confused and disheartened as fuck.
So it's going to be the full price of the base game *again*, and the collector's edition means you have to buy the game and expansions again somehow? I've read this from like three sites and I still don't get it.
I was thinking of working my way through the expansions and gradually catching up to everyone, but it looks like I'm going to have to spend triple-digit dollars to do that, and that the previous expansions are going to be pointless anyway, so why even bother?
The pricing scheme was essentially made for you. If you get the Legendary Edition or Collector's Edition now (pre-order), you get both DLC wrapped up into it and can play them RIGHT NOW. Not in September. So you essentially get a discount on the DLCs by pre-ordering The Taken King and you get to own them now.
I just picked up Destiny about a month ago, and despite being busy, I manage to crank myself up to 23.
I haven't bought any of the expansions yet, but then I got the news about the new expansion and uh, I'm confused and disheartened as fuck.
So it's going to be the full price of the base game *again*, and the collector's edition means you have to buy the game and expansions again somehow? I've read this from like three sites and I still don't get it.
I was thinking of working my way through the expansions and gradually catching up to everyone, but it looks like I'm going to have to spend triple-digit dollars to do that, and that the previous expansions are going to be pointless anyway, so why even bother?
You don't need to spend triple digit dollars.
Right now if you want to buy the expansions to go with your base game and don't want to buy Taken King, it's going to run you $35 (I think) for a year 1 season pass that gets you both of them.
Whether you buy that or not, when Taken King comes out it will, by itself, cost you some amount of money. I think $40?
OR, right now, you can pre-order the Taken King bundle for, I think $60? $70? It will get you a copy of the Taken King expansion when it comes out plus codes to immediately get both of the year 1 DLCs that would otherwise cost you $35 to buy.
It's vastly cheaper to pre-order Taken King and get base destiny plus both DLCs than it is to buy base + DLCs + expansion. You are in a position right now where it is cheaper for you to pre-order and get the DLCs plus the expansion. It's less cost savings than if you had pre-ordered in the first place, but it's still cheaper.
Edit: And RE: expansions being pointless... what does pointless mean to you? If you want to experience the story missions, strikes, raid, or PvP maps, they aren't pointless. If all you care about is having top-tier gear then yes, when Taken King comes out the current top-tier gear will no longer be top-tier. That doesn't mean it won't be useful or fun to play with until Taken King drops, or even after it drops until you've acquired whatever the new top-tier gear is.
Er...where are you getting $15? If it were $15 it would be far more reasonable (if silly) than than $40 dollar actual price difference.
The Legendary Edition is 59.99$ USD, The Taken King is 39.99$. So by extrapolation, the Year 1 content is worth 20$. The 3 emotes and 3 shaders are thus 40$.
Honestly, I think the reason why all the Year 1 stuff is bundled into the product is to avoid new buyers from getting something that lacks the Year 1 stuff that is mandatory to play "Year 2". It's not to artificially inflate the price. I just think the emotes and shaders are overpriced, not the actual game stuff.
We were talking about this during the early morning nightfalls and I think a big part of this is the presentation. We are all used to the typical format by now:
X: Plebeian Edition
X + $10-$20 : Collectors Edition
X + Y where Y < ∞ but at least = X : Stupid Cat Helmet Edition
That price change of 10 or 20 just feels like less of an issue, especially when you have the stupid expensive version up there at like double the price. What we got was the base upgrade edition being twice the base price, looking stupid expensive and making it real obvious that you are paying $6.67 per an emote/class item.
I think the complaints would have found much less traction if there were a $60 dollar collectors upgrade option.
Er...where are you getting $15? If it were $15 it would be far more reasonable (if silly) than than $40 dollar actual price difference.
The Legendary Edition is 59.99$ USD, The Taken King is 39.99$. So by extrapolation, the Year 1 content is worth 20$. The 3 emotes and 3 shaders are thus 40$.
Honestly, I think the reason why all the Year 1 stuff is bundled into the product is to avoid new buyers from getting something that lacks the Year 1 stuff that is mandatory to play "Year 2". It's not to artificially inflate the price. I just think the emotes and shaders are overpriced, not the actual game stuff.
Ah, alright. I know I don't have any issue with the year 1 expansions being reduced in price. I frankly expected that. There is no way in hell they're gonna have the start up cost for a game be in the hundred dollar range. Look at any expansion based MMO.
For me the stupid is entirely in the lack of a "Collectors Upgrade". That they're even selling the "Digital Collectors Edition" for the same price is also... not great optics. Let's go with that.
Edit: You aren't who I was asking of, d'oh. But you're read is basically the one I agree with. His $15 number is not one I can see where it comes from.
Er...where are you getting $15? If it were $15 it would be far more reasonable (if silly) than than $40 dollar actual price difference.
The Legendary Edition is 59.99$ USD, The Taken King is 39.99$. So by extrapolation, the Year 1 content is worth 20$. The 3 emotes and 3 shaders are thus 40$.
Honestly, I think the reason why all the Year 1 stuff is bundled into the product is to avoid new buyers from getting something that lacks the Year 1 stuff that is mandatory to play "Year 2". It's not to artificially inflate the price. I just think the emotes and shaders are overpriced, not the actual game stuff.
Ah, I thought it was a $15 difference not $20 and that the LE came with the emotes. My bad.
It's still the same thing, though. If you want to sell a special edition you have to bundle something into it. For some people that stuff is worth the price, for some people it's not. $40 is too much for emotes for me, but when I thought it was $15 that was still too much for emotes for me. For some people it evidently is not.
Ah, yeah. Like I said I think it's more a presentation thing. Not really sure why they wouldn't have been happy with a digital upgrade version at $60 but that $40 dollar price tag, i.e. 100% increase just makes them look horrible.
TTK is $40. The CE of TTK is $80. If you want exclusive items and emotes -which most fans of Destiny do, you end up buying the game and expansion again for no real reason. They should have offered three versions: standalone TTK for $40, CE without base game/expansion for $50-60, CE with everything for $80. As it stands now, anyone who wants the collector's edition (likely people who bought the $100 limited edition or $150 Ghost edition of the base game already) have to pay a premium for adopting the game from day one. It is a shitty tactic designed to wring more money from the Destiny fanbase. I love Destiny and Bungie, and will still buy the TTK. Probably gonna skip the CE because of how they handled all this bullshit, though.
Pricing stupidity aside, for me and maybe for others here, the issue isn't the pricing. Bottom line it's probably not going to change, and we all know it, barring unforeseen upheavals. For me, it's about that interview and how a member of Bungie's elite team treats the playerbase with undisguised contempt and disingenuousness. It's the messaging. The tone and delivery of that message is what rankles, not the message itself. I'm fortunate to not really have to worry about the dollar amount for TK, but I'm concerned mainly about the attitude displayed towards the players.
Sev: Your gameplay is the most heavily yomi based around. Usually you look for characters that allow you to force guessing situations for big dmg. Even if the guess is mathematically nowhere near in your favor lol. You're happiest when you have either a 50/50, 33/33/33 or even a 75/25 situation to go crazy with. And you will take big risks to force those situations to come up.
We were talking about this during the early morning nightfalls and I think a big part of this is the presentation. We are all used to the typical format by now:
X: Plebeian Edition
X + $10-$20 : Collectors Edition
X + Y where Y < ∞ but at least = X : Stupid Cat Helmet Edition
That price change of 10 or 20 just feels like less of an issue, especially when you have the stupid expensive version up there at like double the price. What we got was the base upgrade edition being twice the base price, looking stupid expensive and making it real obvious that you are paying $6.67 per an emote/class item.
I think the complaints would have found much less traction if there were a $60 dollar collectors upgrade option.
Yep, we're in agreement pretty much. 20$ for the emotes / shaders would've been a decent enough value. 40$ isn't and so, not going to bother with it. Specially now that we know that there will be many class items with perks and stats anyways.
Y'all are wildly overstating how arrogant this Smith guy comes off as, imo
I genuinely can't even believe it. There isn't some other interview with Luke Smith out there? He's a little blunt here and dodges the fuck out of that European cost question in the most obvious way, but is otherwise tonally fine.
If anything I was more annoyed by how the eurogamer guy wouldn't stop talking about the shaders. He came off as petulant.
Yeah continously saying "value" as the interviewer stated quite clearly why there was NO value to be had wasn't arrogant or annoying. Ditto the "throw money at the screen" comment. He (Luke Smith) then proceeds to "poke at" the interviewer when he (Tom Phillips) has already prepared to move on. So I find it ridiculous how you say the Eurogamer guy "won't stop" when the Bungie guy deliberately steers the conversation back to the shaders, in order to make a smug comment.
Of course it was all worth it for the most devastating burn I've seen in a game journalist interview since the one with Molyneux: "Eurogamer: I feel like you should put some of these things that you are empathising with into practice." What a SATISFYING throw back in the face of all this "we hear you" bullshit. They design some shit that would NEVER have been popular if they had done even a little bit of thinking from the player perspective (redoing all the Exotics, no guaranteed keys for PoE, etc etc) and then, after collecting our money and watching us suffer for a while, go "oh we hear you" and fix it whenever they feel like it. Or basically never in the case of Vault space.
The whole thing with value in that interview is that you're getting something for your money. The interviewer wanted to fixate on how you're paying for content you already have, but that's silly, because it would cost the same amount even if they didn't include the old content. If you buy the CE, you are paying for new content and exclusive content. It has a value. If this interview had been about how the physical and digital CEs are the same price, maybe it would be different. But it wasn't. It was about the interviewer asking the same questions over and over and getting the same answer.
I'm confused why you believe the CE would be the same price without the old content. And you are paying for iit the old content. You pay for the Season Pass, The Taken King, and the extras. Its all in the same package.
So, it rubs players the wrong way to talk about the "value" of the CE when half of it is stuff you already own.
but heres the thing: The effective value of Vanilla Destiny, House of Wolves and Dark Below as soon as Taken King is released is zero.
Uh, what?
What I'm saying is that I'm guessing they are going to basically stop selling the year 1 stuff separately once taken king is out. Taken King will be destiny.
Pricing stupidity aside, for me and maybe for others here, the issue isn't the pricing. Bottom line it's probably not going to change, and we all know it, barring unforeseen upheavals. For me, it's about that interview and how a member of Bungie's elite team treats the playerbase with undisguised contempt and disingenuousness. It's the messaging. The tone and delivery of that message is what rankles, not the message itself. I'm fortunate to not really have to worry about the dollar amount for TK, but I'm concerned mainly about the attitude displayed towards the players.
Luke Smith really shouldn't be answering questions the way he did, the interviewer was gunning for it. The whole thing likely went off script and the eurogamer guy just wanted to get the views. It's plastered all over multiple sub-reddits and they likely got a nice spike in views. I think interviews should always be handled by people like DeeJ, who are trained / practiced at these kinds of questions and know what to do. The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of him and it's quite obviously an easy thing to do. Honestly, reading the questions the tone of the interviewer is quite easy to see.
It's the reason why PR guys exists. It doesn't excuse the shitty way he responded, but it was quite clearly what the interviewer wanted out of him.
Pricing stupidity aside, for me and maybe for others here, the issue isn't the pricing. Bottom line it's probably not going to change, and we all know it, barring unforeseen upheavals. For me, it's about that interview and how a member of Bungie's elite team treats the playerbase with undisguised contempt and disingenuousness. It's the messaging. The tone and delivery of that message is what rankles, not the message itself. I'm fortunate to not really have to worry about the dollar amount for TK, but I'm concerned mainly about the attitude displayed towards the players.
Luke Smith really shouldn't be answering questions the way he did, the interviewer was gunning for it. The whole thing likely went off script and the eurogamer guy just wanted to get the views. It's plastered all over multiple sub-reddits and they likely got a nice spike in views. I think interviews should always be handled by people like DeeJ, who are trained / practiced at these kinds of questions and know what to do. The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of him and it's quite obviously an easy thing to do. Honestly, reading the questions the tone of the interviewer is quite easy to see.
It's the reason why PR guys exists. It doesn't excuse the shitty way he responded, but it was quite clearly what the interviewer wanted out of him.
Which begs the question, is Luke so naive that he answered pointed questions with more pointed/flippant responses? If he is seriously that naive, that's a whole issue in and of itself. And yes, that's why you have community managers. On the other hand, if he is savvy and recognized that the interviewer is leading him on, why in the heck would you answer the way that he did? Are we seriously considering that he knew he was being "led", and took that opportunity to shit on the players?
Sev: Your gameplay is the most heavily yomi based around. Usually you look for characters that allow you to force guessing situations for big dmg. Even if the guess is mathematically nowhere near in your favor lol. You're happiest when you have either a 50/50, 33/33/33 or even a 75/25 situation to go crazy with. And you will take big risks to force those situations to come up.
I don't think he's naive, he just doesn't have a good grasp of tone. He thought his comments would come off as co-conspiratorial and letting you see behind the curtain as to how the sausage was made. He was going for a Giant Bomb Nights at E3 sort of vibe.but given the context and subject matter and his not great sense of humor, it didn't work.
Pricing stupidity aside, for me and maybe for others here, the issue isn't the pricing. Bottom line it's probably not going to change, and we all know it, barring unforeseen upheavals. For me, it's about that interview and how a member of Bungie's elite team treats the playerbase with undisguised contempt and disingenuousness. It's the messaging. The tone and delivery of that message is what rankles, not the message itself. I'm fortunate to not really have to worry about the dollar amount for TK, but I'm concerned mainly about the attitude displayed towards the players.
Luke Smith really shouldn't be answering questions the way he did, the interviewer was gunning for it. The whole thing likely went off script and the eurogamer guy just wanted to get the views. It's plastered all over multiple sub-reddits and they likely got a nice spike in views. I think interviews should always be handled by people like DeeJ, who are trained / practiced at these kinds of questions and know what to do. The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of him and it's quite obviously an easy thing to do. Honestly, reading the questions the tone of the interviewer is quite easy to see.
It's the reason why PR guys exists. It doesn't excuse the shitty way he responded, but it was quite clearly what the interviewer wanted out of him.
Which begs the question, is Luke so naive that he answered pointed questions with more pointed/flippant responses? If he is seriously that naive, that's a whole issue in and of itself. And yes, that's why you have community managers. On the other hand, if he is savvy and recognized that the interviewer is leading him on, why in the heck would you answer the way that he did? Are we seriously considering that he knew he was being "led", and took that opportunity to shit on the players?
He comes across as less naive and more annoyed. The interview was probably longer than what's in the article and, based on the interviewer's tone, he was probably getting pissed off with the guy. That isn't something someone giving an interview as the face of a major product launch should do and it isn't excusable, but that's how it comes across. He knew what the answers were ('we included stuff for the special edition, if that stuff is valuable enough to you then yeah, you have to buy that edition, we're giving stuff to our existing customers that's different but we think they'll like just as much or more') but was in a bad mood so gave his answers flippantly and angrily.
Pricing stupidity aside, for me and maybe for others here, the issue isn't the pricing. Bottom line it's probably not going to change, and we all know it, barring unforeseen upheavals. For me, it's about that interview and how a member of Bungie's elite team treats the playerbase with undisguised contempt and disingenuousness. It's the messaging. The tone and delivery of that message is what rankles, not the message itself. I'm fortunate to not really have to worry about the dollar amount for TK, but I'm concerned mainly about the attitude displayed towards the players.
Luke Smith really shouldn't be answering questions the way he did, the interviewer was gunning for it. The whole thing likely went off script and the eurogamer guy just wanted to get the views. It's plastered all over multiple sub-reddits and they likely got a nice spike in views. I think interviews should always be handled by people like DeeJ, who are trained / practiced at these kinds of questions and know what to do. The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of him and it's quite obviously an easy thing to do. Honestly, reading the questions the tone of the interviewer is quite easy to see.
It's the reason why PR guys exists. It doesn't excuse the shitty way he responded, but it was quite clearly what the interviewer wanted out of him.
Which begs the question, is Luke so naive that he answered pointed questions with more pointed/flippant responses? If he is seriously that naive, that's a whole issue in and of itself. And yes, that's why you have community managers. On the other hand, if he is savvy and recognized that the interviewer is leading him on, why in the heck would you answer the way that he did? Are we seriously considering that he knew he was being "led", and took that opportunity to shit on the players?
He comes across as less naive and more annoyed. The interview was probably longer than what's in the article and, based on the interviewer's tone, he was probably getting pissed off with the guy. That isn't something someone giving an interview as the face of a major product launch should do and it isn't excusable, but that's how it comes across. He knew what the answers were ('we included stuff for the special edition, if that stuff is valuable enough to you then yeah, you have to buy that edition, we're giving stuff to our existing customers that's different but we think they'll like just as much or more') but was in a bad mood so gave his answers flippantly and angrily.
He also went into an interview with Eurogamer unprepared/unwilling to discuss the European prices.
Posts
Yeah, pretty much must haves.
Shotgun is pointless though, so aside from running a 34 to use up the spare armor core I have from last week in a Judgment's chance, I've got no real desire to run the 34s.
Then again, I might run them just to remove the need to run Qodron as much next week.
With Small Arms on Skolas, atleast the 35 might be a quick / easy run. Lightswitch doesn't seem like a big deal on Skolas.
Small arms might help a lot though, so...
Don't forget the armour bonus from having your new anti-fallen chest pieces
Yeah but you spend 99% of the fight either on the high platform on the left or the right. With essentially very small points of entry. With small arms, it's likely a single headshot with Fatebringer to kill one of them coming up!
I'm on PlayStation, and I agree, it's shitty. At least the exclusive armor is blues I think, if it's like the exclusive armor from the base game. But yea, the gating of content in a game already starving for content is crap.
Oh wait, no. My bad, totally misunderstood the rewards being discussed. I'm down with the armor, but fuck that Shotgun. I've already sharded it like three times.
Would be neat if we get grimoire cards as well for the various manufacturers with their design philosophies! I already loved how you could recognize guns by their sounds. Like you know when someone is using a Suros or an Icebreaker. It'll be nice to recognize brands now.
It's really worthwhile. The ghost fragment ones are often the best. I enjoyed reading them. You can also find them out a bit better on a wiki because sometimes they tweak the order.
There's a card I still remember about a ghost that went to Mars to find its guardian, but he didn't find it so he was going to die on Mars, so he spent all his time on Mars recording every bit of intel it could for when his corpse gets found.
Uh, what?
I wonder if they'll add faction ships and sparrows at some point (unless those already exist and I don't know about them?). A FWC ship covered in graffiti or a red and white New Monarchy sparrow would be pretty cool.
Also, I want that new sidearm! That thing looks awesome, like it's a throwback in the same way the Khvostov is.
I was trying not to murderize everything in sight, so I equipped all green armor and weapons and de-leveled myself to 20. I was still way overpowered for those first missions, but at least I wasn't the unstoppable death machine I would have been with all my Exotics and Raid gear.
As a grizzled endgamer, it was really interesting to re-experience Destiny through his fresh eyes. I had forgotten just how bad Destiny is at explaining itself. When I joined him, apparently he had been wandering around the Tower for five minutes trying to figure out what to do.
There were a lot of moments like that, like explaining how to unlock subclass abilities or use the Ghost to show waypoints and Patrol missions. It's all second nature to me now, but it really is a counter-intuitive system if you've never seen it before.
Also, story level vs. character progression is really weird. We finished the Earth missions and he was a level 5, but then the first Strike is a level 8, and the first Moon mission is a level 6. It seems weird that you would be expected to go to the Moon for a while and then come back to Earth, rather than capping the Earth campaign with an exciting Strike. It also seemed pretty brutal to start the next story mission a level above where you're at. Maybe that was an intentional design choice to get players to try out Patrols and whatnot, but last night it felt more like a roadblock killing the game's momentum. (I suppose I might have been taking XP away from him with my kills, although I thought glimmer/XP was shared across the fireteam...)
Anyways, despite those annoyances, it was awesome going back and doing old missions with my bud, and I'm looking forward to doing more. It's nice to have a reason to revisit the story (thin as it is). I want to get him to the high-20s as soon as possible, so he can see the Vault of Glass. (And Crota's End. And Nightfalls. And PoE.)
Basically, this game really is super fun with other people, and it's great to share it with an old friend.
I'll leave you with a few choice quotes from last night:
Final thought: Just an idea, but I think it would be cool if there were some small bonus for helping low-level players. Maybe a "mentor" XP boost, or even just a "Sherpa" emblem as a reward for doing a certain amount of missions with someone 10+ levels below you.
I don't even know what can be said by DeeJ to address this. The only thing that would show sincerity for a lot of people at this point is for dude's head to roll. Which is ridiculous, but it is what it is now. Bungie has never been good about communication and messaging, and this is pretty much worst case scenario.
I'm hoping the feeling goes away, but it's always gonna be in the back of my mind, and that sucks. A lot.
Jeebus.
It was always going to be cheaper to buy the game later. Even games that don't have expansions are (except Nintendo games) a lot cheaper a year on than they were at release. It sucks that the expansion that drops year 1 content to $15 comes so soon after the last piece of year 1 DLC, but it's not really surprising.
The fact that you can't get the CE content without buying the CE isn't surprising either. I had the pre-order code for the Vanguard Armory stuff which, as far as I know, is still locked to people who had the code. I don't imagine anyone much cares because it's all green equipment, but it's still a thing you had to buy a certain copy of the game to get and haven't been able to buy otherwise since. Companies have to offer shit in special SKUs that you can't get otherwise, at least initially, because that's how pricing models work. If you could buy the CE exclusive stuff separately you'd be introducing two competing products: the CE SKU and a combination of the base-game SKU and the content-only SKU. Maybe you make more money because people who wouldn't have bought the CE because they already own the base-game buy the content-only pack. Maybe you lose money because people who would have bought the CE despite already owning the base game now only buy the content pack. Either way, creating competition for your own newly-released product is simply something that companies do not do. Especially when they have no existing pricing model for small content packs.
I might buy the CE because I have a friend who doesn't own the game at all and it's a cheap way to get him the year 1 content. I don't give a shit about emotes. I think the existing dance emote looks stupid. I wouldn't mind a golf-clap and I'd love to have a high-five or a fist-bump or something, but unless it lets me communicate with people without having to use a mic it's just some bit of character animation that's going to be cool for a day and then boring because I've already seen it a hundred times. I don't care about the +xp class items because 1) I assume there are going to be other class items that aren't exclusive and which I'd rather wear, if class items are going to have perks, and 2) I'm probably going to want to wear a faction item anyway 90% of the time anyway if there aren't any perks involved. Hell, if the only perk is +xp I'd rather have faction rep anyway. Assuming it's not ugly, I'd much rather have the shader they're promising for year 1 players. Outside of Iron Banner weeks I can wear a shader without impacting my gear and, if it's neat looking, I can get way more visual value out of it than I would an emote.
So let's say you're not like me and you really want some emotes and class items. How much do you want them? If you could buy TTK in the not-CE edition and then buy a stand-alone pack with the emotes and items, what would you pay for it? Right now, the price is $15. As a year 1 player, buying the CE is equivalent to buying TTK + a $15 content pack with emotes and class items. That's what the interview guy was getting at in an astoundingly ham-fisted and poorly-stated way. If the exclusive content is important enough to you to be worth $15 then you will want to buy the CE despite it involving re-buying content you already own. If it's not worth $15 to you then it's not important enough to you to justify the price. It's exactly like offering TTK stand-alone plus a high-priced small bundle of the same content. I know I wouldn't pay $15 for a DLC pack with emotes and class items. Some people would. Those people will buy the CE despite owning year 1.
tl;dr:
They have to have some sort of special content in the DCE because you can't call something a special edition without bundling something special in it. They can't offer the content by itself because creating competition between your own SKUs is bad business. To make up for this they are offering something to year 1 players that at least some people (me) find more appealing than what they aren't getting. The interviewee was making a valid point in possibly the most poorly-stated way I've ever witnessed.
I haven't bought any of the expansions yet, but then I got the news about the new expansion and uh, I'm confused and disheartened as fuck.
So it's going to be the full price of the base game *again*, and the collector's edition means you have to buy the game and expansions again somehow? I've read this from like three sites and I still don't get it.
I was thinking of working my way through the expansions and gradually catching up to everyone, but it looks like I'm going to have to spend triple-digit dollars to do that, and that the previous expansions are going to be pointless anyway, so why even bother?
The pricing scheme was essentially made for you. If you get the Legendary Edition or Collector's Edition now (pre-order), you get both DLC wrapped up into it and can play them RIGHT NOW. Not in September. So you essentially get a discount on the DLCs by pre-ordering The Taken King and you get to own them now.
You don't need to spend triple digit dollars.
Right now if you want to buy the expansions to go with your base game and don't want to buy Taken King, it's going to run you $35 (I think) for a year 1 season pass that gets you both of them.
Whether you buy that or not, when Taken King comes out it will, by itself, cost you some amount of money. I think $40?
OR, right now, you can pre-order the Taken King bundle for, I think $60? $70? It will get you a copy of the Taken King expansion when it comes out plus codes to immediately get both of the year 1 DLCs that would otherwise cost you $35 to buy.
It's vastly cheaper to pre-order Taken King and get base destiny plus both DLCs than it is to buy base + DLCs + expansion. You are in a position right now where it is cheaper for you to pre-order and get the DLCs plus the expansion. It's less cost savings than if you had pre-ordered in the first place, but it's still cheaper.
Edit: And RE: expansions being pointless... what does pointless mean to you? If you want to experience the story missions, strikes, raid, or PvP maps, they aren't pointless. If all you care about is having top-tier gear then yes, when Taken King comes out the current top-tier gear will no longer be top-tier. That doesn't mean it won't be useful or fun to play with until Taken King drops, or even after it drops until you've acquired whatever the new top-tier gear is.
The Legendary Edition is 59.99$ USD, The Taken King is 39.99$. So by extrapolation, the Year 1 content is worth 20$. The 3 emotes and 3 shaders are thus 40$.
Honestly, I think the reason why all the Year 1 stuff is bundled into the product is to avoid new buyers from getting something that lacks the Year 1 stuff that is mandatory to play "Year 2". It's not to artificially inflate the price. I just think the emotes and shaders are overpriced, not the actual game stuff.
X: Plebeian Edition
X + $10-$20 : Collectors Edition
X + Y where Y < ∞ but at least = X : Stupid Cat Helmet Edition
That price change of 10 or 20 just feels like less of an issue, especially when you have the stupid expensive version up there at like double the price. What we got was the base upgrade edition being twice the base price, looking stupid expensive and making it real obvious that you are paying $6.67 per an emote/class item.
I think the complaints would have found much less traction if there were a $60 dollar collectors upgrade option.
Ah, alright. I know I don't have any issue with the year 1 expansions being reduced in price. I frankly expected that. There is no way in hell they're gonna have the start up cost for a game be in the hundred dollar range. Look at any expansion based MMO.
For me the stupid is entirely in the lack of a "Collectors Upgrade". That they're even selling the "Digital Collectors Edition" for the same price is also... not great optics. Let's go with that.
Edit: You aren't who I was asking of, d'oh. But you're read is basically the one I agree with. His $15 number is not one I can see where it comes from.
Ah, I thought it was a $15 difference not $20 and that the LE came with the emotes. My bad.
It's still the same thing, though. If you want to sell a special edition you have to bundle something into it. For some people that stuff is worth the price, for some people it's not. $40 is too much for emotes for me, but when I thought it was $15 that was still too much for emotes for me. For some people it evidently is not.
PS - Local_H_Jay
Sub me on Youtube
And Twitch
Yep, we're in agreement pretty much. 20$ for the emotes / shaders would've been a decent enough value. 40$ isn't and so, not going to bother with it. Specially now that we know that there will be many class items with perks and stats anyways.
What I'm saying is that I'm guessing they are going to basically stop selling the year 1 stuff separately once taken king is out. Taken King will be destiny.
https://medium.com/@alascii
Luke Smith really shouldn't be answering questions the way he did, the interviewer was gunning for it. The whole thing likely went off script and the eurogamer guy just wanted to get the views. It's plastered all over multiple sub-reddits and they likely got a nice spike in views. I think interviews should always be handled by people like DeeJ, who are trained / practiced at these kinds of questions and know what to do. The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of him and it's quite obviously an easy thing to do. Honestly, reading the questions the tone of the interviewer is quite easy to see.
It's the reason why PR guys exists. It doesn't excuse the shitty way he responded, but it was quite clearly what the interviewer wanted out of him.
I guess armamentarium will have to wait. I'll be home Sunday, may get to play Monday.
Which begs the question, is Luke so naive that he answered pointed questions with more pointed/flippant responses? If he is seriously that naive, that's a whole issue in and of itself. And yes, that's why you have community managers. On the other hand, if he is savvy and recognized that the interviewer is leading him on, why in the heck would you answer the way that he did? Are we seriously considering that he knew he was being "led", and took that opportunity to shit on the players?
https://medium.com/@alascii
He comes across as less naive and more annoyed. The interview was probably longer than what's in the article and, based on the interviewer's tone, he was probably getting pissed off with the guy. That isn't something someone giving an interview as the face of a major product launch should do and it isn't excusable, but that's how it comes across. He knew what the answers were ('we included stuff for the special edition, if that stuff is valuable enough to you then yeah, you have to buy that edition, we're giving stuff to our existing customers that's different but we think they'll like just as much or more') but was in a bad mood so gave his answers flippantly and angrily.