WoW has been selling Collectors Editions of expansions that cost the same as the original Collectors Edition for the entire duration of its life, that did not include the base game. Premium priced collector boxes are not a new idea and not an evil scheme by Bungie to prey on their devoted fanbase.
Luke Smith is right even if he is obviously annoyed and flippant, it is about the perceived value of the content. If you don't think it's worth $80 or whatever don't buy it. I'm sure they've heard the latest Destiny playerbase hissy fit loud and clear by now. They may choose to change the price or offer another bundle but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
So how was last week's 34 (this week's 32)? Didn't get a chance to play it. Looks like I'm going to have to run it a few times to get those chests.
If you coordinate with your fireteam it isn't bad at all. Basically make sure to kill all the adds before ever shooting the boss. Then when you bring the boss's shields down make sure you pile on as much damage as you can as quickly as you can. If you bring down the bosses shield without doing much health damage all you're doing is summoning up a bunch more adds for your team to fight.
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.
You/me/the interviewer all know that bungie have little to no say on how Destiny is priced in different markets.
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.
You/me/the interviewer all know that bungie have little to no say on how Destiny is priced in different markets.
Yeah. It's a fact that the pricing is going to be like that. There's not much he can say/do when pressed about it. Though he could have done better, and trying to take the offensive on the subject ("let me poke you a bit...") was also a bad idea.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
Are you Luke Smith in disguise?
In all seriousness though, this is the latest installment in Bungie not giving fair dues to their existing playerbase.
Without us, there would be no game, there would be no opportunity for the taken king because Activision would've cut it's losses and run.
Now, go back to the release of The Dark Below, where Bungie more or less reset the progression on Exotic weapons and gave people the ability to hit a higher level than VoG raid gear with little effort. That was a big fuck you to all the existing players at that time that had spent months (literally months) trying to hit max level with VoG gear.
That brings us back to this old chestnut from DeeJ (since deleted from his twitter):
Deej_BNG Game informer got it straight. Player reactions to some of the information is what is wrong.
We now have this issue with the collector's edition. It costs $79.99, to buy it's contents minus the 'vanity' items (I don't agree that class items that provide permanent exp boosts are vanity items, hence the inverted commas) is $59.99, so we can say that those vanity items cost $20 for people new to the game. The Taken King on it's own costs $39.99, so to get those 'vanity' items a current player has to spend $40.00.
Now to go with that, we have Luke Smith's rather flippant and arrogant interview on the subject with Eurogamer.
There seems to be a culture at Bungie of only caring about new players and not about retaining the ones they already have. That's fine when you're talking about games like Halo where the community isn't necessarily part of why you buy the game, but for Destiny it's everything. None of us would be playing this game to this point if it weren't for the other people in Pax Arcadia. We've already lost a lot of people who used to be at least semi-regular players. You keep screwing over existing players like this, that's going to get worse and it's a self-perpetuating cycle.
The weekly update better knock people's socks off.
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.
You/me/the interviewer all know that bungie have little to no say on how Destiny is priced in different markets.
But I know enough to read up on what a pound is before going into a European interview.
EDIT: Or avoid any pricing discussions at all, of course.
but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
Are you Luke Smith in disguise?
In all seriousness though, this is the latest installment in Bungie not giving fair dues to their existing playerbase.
Without us, there would be no game, there would be no opportunity for the taken king because Activision would've cut it's losses and run.
Now, go back to the release of The Dark Below, where Bungie more or less reset the progression on Exotic weapons and gave people the ability to hit a higher level than VoG raid gear with little effort. That was a big fuck you to all the existing players at that time that had spent months (literally months) trying to hit max level with VoG gear.
That brings us back to this old chestnut from DeeJ (since deleted from his twitter):
Deej_BNG Game informer got it straight. Player reactions to some of the information is what is wrong.
We now have this issue with the collector's edition. It costs $79.99, to buy it's contents minus the 'vanity' items (I don't agree that class items that provide permanent exp boosts are vanity items, hence the inverted commas) is $59.99, so we can say that those vanity items cost $20 for people new to the game. The Taken King on it's own costs $39.99, so to get those 'vanity' items a current player has to spend $40.00.
Now to go with that, we have Luke Smith's rather flippant and arrogant interview on the subject with Eurogamer.
There seems to be a culture at Bungie of only caring about new players and not about retaining the ones they already have. That's fine when you're talking about games like Halo where the community isn't necessarily part of why you buy the game, but for Destiny it's everything. None of us would be playing this game to this point if it weren't for the other people in Pax Arcadia. We've already lost a lot of people who used to be at least semi-regular players. You keep screwing over existing players like this, that's going to get worse and it's a self-perpetuating cycle.
The weekly update better knock people's socks off.
Exactly. I get why they need to lure in new players, but for me, missing out on exotics because I'm not a new player is a deal breaker. I actually went out and bought GTA V today, to get something else to play for the next foreseeable future.
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.
so, apparently, did the interviewer as it was only brought up once in a real offhand kind of way and dropped immediately
0
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
It's been at least eight or ten years that games with expansions have been including older content with the current expansion for free.
At least, MMOs have done this for ages. I don't play non-MMO games that have expansions, so I dunno how it's done for those.
I think the problem may be in looking at it as paying for the game again with the expansion instead of just looking at it as paying for a $40 expansion (which is also not unusual).
That the physical collector's edition and digital collector's edition are the same price is really dumb, though.
but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
That brings us back to this old chestnut from DeeJ (since deleted from his twitter):
Deej_BNG Game informer got it straight. Player reactions to some of the information is what is wrong.
It softens your argument to bring up that tweet; DeeJ recanted/clarified the statement.
Let’s talk about why this is the worst Tweet I have ever sent in my life:
• I am Tweeting at myself, like a crazy person
• The issue is not linked for maximum confusion
• The genuine article “is” should be “are”
• It looks like I’m telling the player they are wrong
Let me get this straight. The player is never “wrong.” I believe that down to my bones. At Bungie, I represent to the developers what you say without prejudice. Lesson learned: Never Tweet when you’re in a hurry.
(Destiny) Doot Doot, Shoot Brutes for New Boots, Woot Woot for Rad Suits and Phat Loots
So how was last week's 34 (this week's 32)? Didn't get a chance to play it. Looks like I'm going to have to run it a few times to get those chests.
If you coordinate with your fireteam it isn't bad at all. Basically make sure to kill all the adds before ever shooting the boss. Then when you bring the boss's shields down make sure you pile on as much damage as you can as quickly as you can. If you bring down the bosses shield without doing much health damage all you're doing is summoning up a bunch more adds for your team to fight.
I played the boss the first time around. I was more thinking the rounds leading up to him. Anything "terrible". 2? weeks ago the Arc burn hive was the worst. Anything like that again? or is it pretty doable? Juggler Cabal doesn't look like fun for the final round.
but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
That brings us back to this old chestnut from DeeJ (since deleted from his twitter):
Deej_BNG Game informer got it straight. Player reactions to some of the information is what is wrong.
It softens your argument to bring up that tweet; DeeJ recanted/clarified the statement.
Let’s talk about why this is the worst Tweet I have ever sent in my life:
• I am Tweeting at myself, like a crazy person
• The issue is not linked for maximum confusion
• The genuine article “is” should be “are”
• It looks like I’m telling the player they are wrong
Let me get this straight. The player is never “wrong.” I believe that down to my bones. At Bungie, I represent to the developers what you say without prejudice. Lesson learned: Never Tweet when you’re in a hurry.
Oh I know he recanted it, it's just interesting how they have a habit of putting their foot in it before they had a chance to apply PR polish, on more or less the same subject.
With regards to the release of The Dark Below, I absolutely don't think allowing new players the ability to get past level 30 fairly "easily" was a problem.
The problem was how awful it was to hit level 30 in the first place, something they've been working on since.
Screwing over new or returning players is almost always a worse idea than pissing off old players, if you have to choose between two design wise. If they'd released level 30 content and made every people run through VoG for months to get there, that would have been super fucked.
Resetting progress on exotics was stupid, and I hate that you have to reset progress when rerolling legendaries now too. It doesn't take forever to level them up or anything, but it's just busywork that I've already done once.
With regards to the release of The Dark Below, I absolutely don't think allowing new players the ability to get past level 30 fairly "easily" was a problem..
It was. The problem they made for themselves was that they made it easy to surpass the previous max level. People were just as pissed off then about it as they are now about this.
It would've been a non-issue if the vendor gear just matched it (as is the case in House of Wolves now).
Muffinatron on
PSN: Holy-Promethium
0
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
That brings us back to this old chestnut from DeeJ (since deleted from his twitter):
Deej_BNG Game informer got it straight. Player reactions to some of the information is what is wrong.
It softens your argument to bring up that tweet; DeeJ recanted/clarified the statement.
Let’s talk about why this is the worst Tweet I have ever sent in my life:
• I am Tweeting at myself, like a crazy person
• The issue is not linked for maximum confusion
• The genuine article “is” should be “are”
• It looks like I’m telling the player they are wrong
Let me get this straight. The player is never “wrong.” I believe that down to my bones. At Bungie, I represent to the developers what you say without prejudice. Lesson learned: Never Tweet when you’re in a hurry.
Oh I know he recanted it, it's just interesting how they have a habit of putting their foot in it before they had a chance to apply PR polish, on more or less the same subject.
Fair point.
(Destiny) Doot Doot, Shoot Brutes for New Boots, Woot Woot for Rad Suits and Phat Loots
So how was last week's 34 (this week's 32)? Didn't get a chance to play it. Looks like I'm going to have to run it a few times to get those chests.
If you coordinate with your fireteam it isn't bad at all. Basically make sure to kill all the adds before ever shooting the boss. Then when you bring the boss's shields down make sure you pile on as much damage as you can as quickly as you can. If you bring down the bosses shield without doing much health damage all you're doing is summoning up a bunch more adds for your team to fight.
I played the boss the first time around. I was more thinking the rounds leading up to him. Anything "terrible". 2? weeks ago the Arc burn hive was the worst. Anything like that again? or is it pretty doable? Juggler Cabal doesn't look like fun for the final round.
Last week the 34 was really pretty easy. The only things we wiped on in my one run through were (I think) the Hive Brawler round where we had 'kill the VIP' and, as per usual, there were like a half dozen yellow wizards floating around (it seemed, anyway) when we were trying to hunt down and kill the VIP knight, and then maybe once or twice on the boss before we figured out that diversifying your elements between people isn't the winning strategy. Just get everyone on the right element and burn him down fast instead of letting one person hit his shield and then the other two picking up. The recharge is (I think, from limited observation) on a timer that starts when you first hit him rather than from when his shield drops, so if you burn his shield fast you have longer to pound him. There are so many adds after a couple of rounds of shield recharge that you can generally refill your ammo after swapping weapons to the new type. And since it's juggler if you kill adds with your not-shoot-the-boss weapon you'll be mostly swimming in shoot-the-boss ammo.
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
0
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
With regards to the release of The Dark Below, I absolutely don't think allowing new players the ability to get past level 30 fairly "easily" was a problem.
The problem was how awful it was to hit level 30 in the first place, something they've been working on since.
Screwing over new or returning players is almost always a worse idea than pissing off old players, if you have to choose between two design wise. If they'd released level 30 content and made every people run through VoG for months to get there, that would have been super fucked.
Resetting progress on exotics was stupid, and I hate that you have to reset progress when rerolling legendaries now too. It doesn't take forever to level them up or anything, but it's just busywork that I've already done once.
This is why WoW subs go through boom/bust cycles. It's a lot of fun to play at the start of an expansion, then people drop off, and getting into the middle of an expansion sucks (especially with how grindy the Legendary quests have been in MoP and WoD).
WoW has been selling Collectors Editions of expansions that cost the same as the original Collectors Edition for the entire duration of its life, that did not include the base game. Premium priced collector boxes are not a new idea and not an evil scheme by Bungie to prey on their devoted fanbase.
Luke Smith is right even if he is obviously annoyed and flippant, it is about the perceived value of the content. If you don't think it's worth $80 or whatever don't buy it. I'm sure they've heard the latest Destiny playerbase hissy fit loud and clear by now. They may choose to change the price or offer another bundle but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
There are three paths this conversation goes. Usually, 2 are shitty and 1 is good.
"I'm not sure why we priced it that way. Don't like it? Don't buy it". a.k.a "Our pricing and PR teams are incompetent."
"There's a really good reason why it's priced that way, but I can't articulate it despite being a lead on the creative side. Don't like it? Don't buy it." a.k.a. "Our marketing and PR teams are incompetent"
"It's priced that way because it includes [content], and [content] is worth it. For those who do not feel it is worth it, we have the X package." Which is the right answer. Except when the price is $40 and the [content] is 3 fucking emotes.
But because the 3rd path is such a farce, Smith was able to cover all 3 of these equally shitty answers in one interview. He should never have gotten sucked into this conversation at all and had multiple opportunities to pull out. People are viewing his commentary as arrogant because he doesn't just say something stupid, he continually hammers home those opinions even when the interviewer is ready to move onto more relevant topics.
PR and interviews are hard. Assuming Luke Smith is a normal guy, it shows that even a normal guy with a journalism background can give a tire-fire of an interview if unprepared.
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
Levelling up through VoG was a big time investment. All that time and effort you spent running VoG (assuming you managed to find a group of players to do it with) hoping and praying for the one piece of armour you needed to hit 30 was almost instantly invalidated the moment TDB hit.
I think that was a pretty damn good reason to be pissed off.
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
yeah, it just really seems like a weird sort of feeling to me
like, no one is taking away your ability to do anything in that situation. you worked hard for what you got, and were at the top of the pile for months
and, because you're a more hardcore player than most, you'll quickly get to the top of the pile once again
that's the nature of the cycle
what does it matter that newer people are able to experience the content they've paid money for quickly?
I actually think HoW should have had everything at 39 light from vendors. Let people do what is new now, the day it comes out. Why should I care, I'm already looking forward to being on top. Who cares about before the expansion?
With regards to the release of The Dark Below, I absolutely don't think allowing new players the ability to get past level 30 fairly "easily" was a problem.
The problem was how awful it was to hit level 30 in the first place, something they've been working on since.
Screwing over new or returning players is almost always a worse idea than pissing off old players, if you have to choose between two design wise. If they'd released level 30 content and made every people run through VoG for months to get there, that would have been super fucked.
Resetting progress on exotics was stupid, and I hate that you have to reset progress when rerolling legendaries now too. It doesn't take forever to level them up or anything, but it's just busywork that I've already done once.
This is why WoW subs go through boom/bust cycles. It's a lot of fun to play at the start of an expansion, then people drop off, and getting into the middle of an expansion sucks (especially with how grindy the Legendary quests have been in MoP and WoD).
And they've actually gotten worse about this too, because it takes a lot more time to catch up to the newest content than it used to in previous expansions.
+1
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
Levelling up through VoG was a big time investment. All that time and effort you spent running VoG (assuming you managed to find a group of players to do it with) hoping and praying for the one piece of armour you needed to hit 30 was almost instantly invalidated the moment TDB hit.
I think that was a pretty damn good reason to be pissed off.
that's how progress in games works, though, and has always worked
you played the game for three months
was that time worth nothing just because someone new can catch up to you through the new content?
would you prefer the Everquest plan of never letting new people catch up? that worked out really well
i just don't agree that simply because someone who starts playing the game with the new content can catch up quickly and be able to play with existing players, all the fun i had playing the game up to that point is invalidated
and if i didn't have fun playing the game, why would i still be playing?
I dunno what Destiny was like pre-Dark Below but the fact that it's easy to max out your level (and even easier now than before HoW) as a new player is one of the primary reasons I like the game despite it being MMO-ish. I don't play MMOs. I've tried a couple of times and I just hate the way their progression systems work. What differentiates Destiny for me and makes it worthwhile for me to keep playing is that you can, even as a new player who is not awesome at shooters, go from level 1 to almost-max in like a couple of weeks of casual-ish playing. At that point you can access and play all of the content available and you're on a relatively even field with everyone else.
There's still stuff to shoot for in the form of harder-mode content and there's a bunch of gear to grind for to get the set of perks for the build you want or just for aesthetics, but you don't have to spend months of grinding away just to get to the point where you've seen everything. If I'd had to play for months to hit max level and be able to play the content that gives me the rarer, cooler items I'd have quit once I'd finished the story missions. Or quit before that if I had to grind to get through those.
If there was a months-long grind before Dark Below then I am overjoyed that they got rid of it and had I played back then and inevitably quit because of the grind that would have brought me back.
CptHamilton on
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
+2
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
Like, it seems like you can either play the game and accept that when new content comes out, the old content will be easier.
Or just not play the game because you don't want to be upset when people can catch up to you.
I was personally not bothered by new CE players being able to buy level 31 light gear from vendors when 32 was the new max, and this is speaking as someone who Vaulted three times a week.
I was more disappointed that my VOG gear could not be upgraded to level 32, and neither could the vendor gear. Old guns also were not upgradable.
Both issues have since been rectified by the ascension mechanic introduced in HoW, which I cannot praise enough and made the game an incredible value for me.
Hiryu02 on
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.
Hell, realistically, the gear you got from vog is still incredibly valuable, because almost all the best overall legendary weapons for their slots (and some just overall) come from VoG.
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
... that wasn't the issue as I had already explained.
The issue was that vendor gear completely invalidated vault gear. There was no recognition of the effort it took to obtain the gear, it was just obsolete overnight. It had less defence and the perks had no real impact in the dark below content.
It's hard to give you an experience you didn't go through given you only started playing just over a week before TDB hit (and Cilla didn't start until two weeks after it hit).
The current system is way better than it was back then because the anger that it caused made Bungie re-evaluate the system.
PSN: Holy-Promethium
+1
jefe414"My Other Drill Hole is a Teleporter"Mechagodzilla is Best GodzillaRegistered Userregular
Hell, realistically, the gear you got from vog is still incredibly valuable, because almost all the best overall legendary weapons for their slots (and some just overall) come from VoG.
People are still having to catch up to that.
Yup. Aside from exotics (which I'll mostly never use), if it's a primary w/o elemental damage I scrap it. Except for The Chance. I run nightfalls or PoE with friends and some don't have ANY primary elemental weapons. It adds a layer of difficulty to be sure.
Bungie gave you your proper dues when they gave you the game you are playing right now in exchange for currency. Then on top of that they're giving you some emblems and shaders for being dedicated players.
I think they should offer a Taken King + Season Pass bundle with the extras, but if they don't it is not a grevious personal insult to veteran players who like collectibles, it's just a lame business decision.
Calling Luke Smith a shitwizard on reddit for poorly answering a loaded question doesn't add anything to the already well voiced discussion but obnoxious background noise.
+1
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
... that wasn't the issue as I had already explained.
The issue was that vendor gear completely invalidated vault gear. There was no recognition of the effort it took to obtain the gear, it was just obsolete overnight. It had less defence and the perks had no real impact in the dark below content.
It's hard to give you an experience you didn't go through given you only started playing just over a week before TDB hit (and Cilla didn't start until two weeks after it hit).
The current system is way better than it was back then because the anger that it caused made Bungie re-evaluate the system.
i know the experience
it's how MMOs have been since forever
i just don't agree that it invalidates the playtime i already have
i was playing the game that whole time and enjoying it
literally the only impact of newer players being able to obtain better gear (which I can also obtain) has is there being a larger pool of players I can play with
i do prefer the HoW mechanic of making older gear still viable, i think that's a better system than simply making old gear obsolete
i just don't agree that all the time i was playing before is now worthless because there is now better gear
i don't get being pissed off because other people can level up faster now than you could six months ago
... that wasn't the issue as I had already explained.
The issue was that vendor gear completely invalidated vault gear. There was no recognition of the effort it took to obtain the gear, it was just obsolete overnight. It had less defence and the perks had no real impact in the dark below content.
It's hard to give you an experience you didn't go through given you only started playing just over a week before TDB hit (and Cilla didn't start until two weeks after it hit).
The current system is way better than it was back then because the anger that it caused made Bungie re-evaluate the system.
When I started doesn't really matter, because this system is more or less identical to an mmo I played for years and years. Months and months of hard work raiding invalidated overnight. One time, it was a full year. My opinion now is a result of all that. If you want to suggest I don't have the experience to weigh in on the matter (which I apologize ahead of time if this is not what you're suggesting), then you're incorrect.
I largely thought then as I think now, that I don't understand why people feel slighted when new content completely replaces old. It isn't invalidating all the hard work and satisfaction you got from hitting the peak in previous months. It's just giving you a new peak to strive forward to, and allowing others the opportunity to join you. It's, to me, looking and dwelling on the past, rather than the future.
While I agree that the current system of HoW is a good medium ground to take between the parties, I don't think they should have done it. Leave the past in the past, let everyone else move on.
The only thing I'll give on for the TDB issue is that it would've sucked having to give up heavy weapon ammo on boots to be able to run the new content, just as it would have to give it up if they'd dropped light level 39 content on vendors in HoW.
Hell, realistically, the gear you got from vog is still incredibly valuable, because almost all the best overall legendary weapons for their slots (and some just overall) come from VoG.
People are still having to catch up to that.
This was not the case in CE, as has been mentioned. For me, and many players like me, HoW Etheric Lights made the game worth playing again.
Edit: Posted addendum in it's own spot.
Hiryu02 on
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.
Posts
Luke Smith is right even if he is obviously annoyed and flippant, it is about the perceived value of the content. If you don't think it's worth $80 or whatever don't buy it. I'm sure they've heard the latest Destiny playerbase hissy fit loud and clear by now. They may choose to change the price or offer another bundle but either way Bungie doesn't owe their player base anything with respect to paid vanity items. You paid for a game and you played the shit out of it, the contract is sealed.
If you coordinate with your fireteam it isn't bad at all. Basically make sure to kill all the adds before ever shooting the boss. Then when you bring the boss's shields down make sure you pile on as much damage as you can as quickly as you can. If you bring down the bosses shield without doing much health damage all you're doing is summoning up a bunch more adds for your team to fight.
63$ for the TTK alone, no emotes for you.
Oh and you dont get various neat stuff again because thats playstation only, psh whatever, Just wait a year!
And this is all announced when I'm already feeling a bit burnt out and my friend just lured our other friend to buy Destiny again.
The interview with that dude didnt help either.
You/me/the interviewer all know that bungie have little to no say on how Destiny is priced in different markets.
https://medium.com/@alascii
Yeah. It's a fact that the pricing is going to be like that. There's not much he can say/do when pressed about it. Though he could have done better, and trying to take the offensive on the subject ("let me poke you a bit...") was also a bad idea.
Are you Luke Smith in disguise?
In all seriousness though, this is the latest installment in Bungie not giving fair dues to their existing playerbase.
Without us, there would be no game, there would be no opportunity for the taken king because Activision would've cut it's losses and run.
Now, go back to the release of The Dark Below, where Bungie more or less reset the progression on Exotic weapons and gave people the ability to hit a higher level than VoG raid gear with little effort. That was a big fuck you to all the existing players at that time that had spent months (literally months) trying to hit max level with VoG gear.
That brings us back to this old chestnut from DeeJ (since deleted from his twitter):
We now have this issue with the collector's edition. It costs $79.99, to buy it's contents minus the 'vanity' items (I don't agree that class items that provide permanent exp boosts are vanity items, hence the inverted commas) is $59.99, so we can say that those vanity items cost $20 for people new to the game. The Taken King on it's own costs $39.99, so to get those 'vanity' items a current player has to spend $40.00.
Now to go with that, we have Luke Smith's rather flippant and arrogant interview on the subject with Eurogamer.
There seems to be a culture at Bungie of only caring about new players and not about retaining the ones they already have. That's fine when you're talking about games like Halo where the community isn't necessarily part of why you buy the game, but for Destiny it's everything. None of us would be playing this game to this point if it weren't for the other people in Pax Arcadia. We've already lost a lot of people who used to be at least semi-regular players. You keep screwing over existing players like this, that's going to get worse and it's a self-perpetuating cycle.
The weekly update better knock people's socks off.
But I know enough to read up on what a pound is before going into a European interview.
EDIT: Or avoid any pricing discussions at all, of course.
That stuff all looks great! I'm glad things are diversifying.
Exactly. I get why they need to lure in new players, but for me, missing out on exotics because I'm not a new player is a deal breaker. I actually went out and bought GTA V today, to get something else to play for the next foreseeable future.
so, apparently, did the interviewer as it was only brought up once in a real offhand kind of way and dropped immediately
At least, MMOs have done this for ages. I don't play non-MMO games that have expansions, so I dunno how it's done for those.
I think the problem may be in looking at it as paying for the game again with the expansion instead of just looking at it as paying for a $40 expansion (which is also not unusual).
That the physical collector's edition and digital collector's edition are the same price is really dumb, though.
It softens your argument to bring up that tweet; DeeJ recanted/clarified the statement.
From the 04-Dec-2014 Weekly Update
(Destiny) Doot Doot, Shoot Brutes for New Boots, Woot Woot for Rad Suits and Phat Loots
I played the boss the first time around. I was more thinking the rounds leading up to him. Anything "terrible". 2? weeks ago the Arc burn hive was the worst. Anything like that again? or is it pretty doable? Juggler Cabal doesn't look like fun for the final round.
Oh I know he recanted it, it's just interesting how they have a habit of putting their foot in it before they had a chance to apply PR polish, on more or less the same subject.
That stuff all looks great! I'm glad things are diversifying.
The problem was how awful it was to hit level 30 in the first place, something they've been working on since.
Screwing over new or returning players is almost always a worse idea than pissing off old players, if you have to choose between two design wise. If they'd released level 30 content and made every people run through VoG for months to get there, that would have been super fucked.
Resetting progress on exotics was stupid, and I hate that you have to reset progress when rerolling legendaries now too. It doesn't take forever to level them up or anything, but it's just busywork that I've already done once.
It was. The problem they made for themselves was that they made it easy to surpass the previous max level. People were just as pissed off then about it as they are now about this.
It would've been a non-issue if the vendor gear just matched it (as is the case in House of Wolves now).
Fair point.
(Destiny) Doot Doot, Shoot Brutes for New Boots, Woot Woot for Rad Suits and Phat Loots
Last week the 34 was really pretty easy. The only things we wiped on in my one run through were (I think) the Hive Brawler round where we had 'kill the VIP' and, as per usual, there were like a half dozen yellow wizards floating around (it seemed, anyway) when we were trying to hunt down and kill the VIP knight, and then maybe once or twice on the boss before we figured out that diversifying your elements between people isn't the winning strategy. Just get everyone on the right element and burn him down fast instead of letting one person hit his shield and then the other two picking up. The recharge is (I think, from limited observation) on a timer that starts when you first hit him rather than from when his shield drops, so if you burn his shield fast you have longer to pound him. There are so many adds after a couple of rounds of shield recharge that you can generally refill your ammo after swapping weapons to the new type. And since it's juggler if you kill adds with your not-shoot-the-boss weapon you'll be mostly swimming in shoot-the-boss ammo.
This is why WoW subs go through boom/bust cycles. It's a lot of fun to play at the start of an expansion, then people drop off, and getting into the middle of an expansion sucks (especially with how grindy the Legendary quests have been in MoP and WoD).
There are three paths this conversation goes. Usually, 2 are shitty and 1 is good.
But because the 3rd path is such a farce, Smith was able to cover all 3 of these equally shitty answers in one interview. He should never have gotten sucked into this conversation at all and had multiple opportunities to pull out. People are viewing his commentary as arrogant because he doesn't just say something stupid, he continually hammers home those opinions even when the interviewer is ready to move onto more relevant topics.
PR and interviews are hard. Assuming Luke Smith is a normal guy, it shows that even a normal guy with a journalism background can give a tire-fire of an interview if unprepared.
Levelling up through VoG was a big time investment. All that time and effort you spent running VoG (assuming you managed to find a group of players to do it with) hoping and praying for the one piece of armour you needed to hit 30 was almost instantly invalidated the moment TDB hit.
I think that was a pretty damn good reason to be pissed off.
yeah, it just really seems like a weird sort of feeling to me
like, no one is taking away your ability to do anything in that situation. you worked hard for what you got, and were at the top of the pile for months
and, because you're a more hardcore player than most, you'll quickly get to the top of the pile once again
that's the nature of the cycle
what does it matter that newer people are able to experience the content they've paid money for quickly?
I actually think HoW should have had everything at 39 light from vendors. Let people do what is new now, the day it comes out. Why should I care, I'm already looking forward to being on top. Who cares about before the expansion?
So basically everyone
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And they've actually gotten worse about this too, because it takes a lot more time to catch up to the newest content than it used to in previous expansions.
that's how progress in games works, though, and has always worked
you played the game for three months
was that time worth nothing just because someone new can catch up to you through the new content?
would you prefer the Everquest plan of never letting new people catch up? that worked out really well
i just don't agree that simply because someone who starts playing the game with the new content can catch up quickly and be able to play with existing players, all the fun i had playing the game up to that point is invalidated
and if i didn't have fun playing the game, why would i still be playing?
It actively benefits everyone to have more people to play with, rather than less
There's still stuff to shoot for in the form of harder-mode content and there's a bunch of gear to grind for to get the set of perks for the build you want or just for aesthetics, but you don't have to spend months of grinding away just to get to the point where you've seen everything. If I'd had to play for months to hit max level and be able to play the content that gives me the rarer, cooler items I'd have quit once I'd finished the story missions. Or quit before that if I had to grind to get through those.
If there was a months-long grind before Dark Below then I am overjoyed that they got rid of it and had I played back then and inevitably quit because of the grind that would have brought me back.
Or just not play the game because you don't want to be upset when people can catch up to you.
I was more disappointed that my VOG gear could not be upgraded to level 32, and neither could the vendor gear. Old guns also were not upgradable.
Both issues have since been rectified by the ascension mechanic introduced in HoW, which I cannot praise enough and made the game an incredible value for me.
People are still having to catch up to that.
... that wasn't the issue as I had already explained.
The issue was that vendor gear completely invalidated vault gear. There was no recognition of the effort it took to obtain the gear, it was just obsolete overnight. It had less defence and the perks had no real impact in the dark below content.
It's hard to give you an experience you didn't go through given you only started playing just over a week before TDB hit (and Cilla didn't start until two weeks after it hit).
The current system is way better than it was back then because the anger that it caused made Bungie re-evaluate the system.
Yup. Aside from exotics (which I'll mostly never use), if it's a primary w/o elemental damage I scrap it. Except for The Chance. I run nightfalls or PoE with friends and some don't have ANY primary elemental weapons. It adds a layer of difficulty to be sure.
I think they should offer a Taken King + Season Pass bundle with the extras, but if they don't it is not a grevious personal insult to veteran players who like collectibles, it's just a lame business decision.
Calling Luke Smith a shitwizard on reddit for poorly answering a loaded question doesn't add anything to the already well voiced discussion but obnoxious background noise.
i know the experience
it's how MMOs have been since forever
i just don't agree that it invalidates the playtime i already have
i was playing the game that whole time and enjoying it
literally the only impact of newer players being able to obtain better gear (which I can also obtain) has is there being a larger pool of players I can play with
i do prefer the HoW mechanic of making older gear still viable, i think that's a better system than simply making old gear obsolete
i just don't agree that all the time i was playing before is now worthless because there is now better gear
When I started doesn't really matter, because this system is more or less identical to an mmo I played for years and years. Months and months of hard work raiding invalidated overnight. One time, it was a full year. My opinion now is a result of all that. If you want to suggest I don't have the experience to weigh in on the matter (which I apologize ahead of time if this is not what you're suggesting), then you're incorrect.
I largely thought then as I think now, that I don't understand why people feel slighted when new content completely replaces old. It isn't invalidating all the hard work and satisfaction you got from hitting the peak in previous months. It's just giving you a new peak to strive forward to, and allowing others the opportunity to join you. It's, to me, looking and dwelling on the past, rather than the future.
While I agree that the current system of HoW is a good medium ground to take between the parties, I don't think they should have done it. Leave the past in the past, let everyone else move on.
The only thing I'll give on for the TDB issue is that it would've sucked having to give up heavy weapon ammo on boots to be able to run the new content, just as it would have to give it up if they'd dropped light level 39 content on vendors in HoW.
This was not the case in CE, as has been mentioned. For me, and many players like me, HoW Etheric Lights made the game worth playing again.
Edit: Posted addendum in it's own spot.