Destiny 2: Into The Light / Final Shape

[Q]

I'll be damned if I didn't laugh and agree with a lot of this.






^^ 

How I learned about the above video.   A bit of agreement and some other points.     

More people openly admit that the departure from Activision was wishful thinking and romatically hyped.  A year later from that happening I remember regretting it. 

Sony seems intent on throwing a bunch of GLASS style game as the wall and seeing what sticks and if that's all it's going to be I just won't be there. 

People being dragged off of Destiny to Marathon, etc. has absolutely hurt Destiny and people aren't happy about it.  

[Q]

Accurate. The chorus is growing far and wide.

[Patriot]

Folks need to cut Bungie some slack. It's "pride" month, and as they've told us, this year they are louder and prouder than ever.

[Sandman]

Jun 17, 2023 9:14:18 GMT -6 Patriot said:

Folks need to cut Bungie some slack. It's "pride" month, and as they've told us, this year they are louder and prouder than ever.

And this year I've played less than ever, they can be loud and proud about that.  And it's not even because of the agenda and rainbow emotes, we all already knew Bungie was infected with the woke virus.  The game has just become a lukewarm pile of boring shit.

I was thinking the other day about how every so often a game would come along that was supposed to be the Destiny killer.  The Division, Anthem, Overwatch, whatever.  Turns out Bungie was the Destiny killer.

[Q]

"Turns out Bungie was the Destiny killer." Bingo!

[Q]

Largely accurate. It's true for other games, too, and it's like it's inevitable with any of these types of games.


I have zero interests in Marathon.  This doesn't help but it's about more than that.  

[Patriot]

Microtransactions in paid-for games with paid-for expansions and seasons is, and always will be, garbage. It makes sense in free-to-play games.

Meanwhile, there's Hello Games with 30-something employees pumping out free updates on the regular for No Man's Sky for free and with no mtx.

[Q]

No one is impressed with the "fishing time gated multiple steps for eventual exotic" quest.   A quest that was bugged until yesterday of course.  But Marathon!  GG Bungie.  

Meanwhile you have games like Diablo 4, Zelda, and FF16 out there and the drop in players is very noticeable. People that normally make mostly nothing but Destiny videos making more videos about other games and talking about burnout (see Datto) speaks volumes as well.

[Patriot]

Shadowkeep and the introduction of the current seasonal model that came with it was, IMO, the beginning of the downfall of Destiny 2.

I'd rather have Curse of Osiris over any of the D2 seasons that have came since Shadowkeep.

Drip fed content mixed with the same seasonal loop isn't fun. The game became a chore. Keep the hamster on the wheel, and even the ones who play it as a job can't remain interested.

Thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars invested in this stupid franchise, I want to like it and play it some. But they killed my desire to even boot it up occasionally. Killed it so much that if I even wanted to, I'd have to download the whole game again because I installed it.

A shame because the core gameplay is fantastic. There is no better shooter, gameplay wise, on the market. Just everything else around it is absolute crap.

It's sad that so many people jumped on the battle royale train, or now Souls-like games, and no-one tried to do what Destiny did. All the so-called Destiny killers (Anthem, Division, Outriders, etc) are third person games with bullet sponges. And in the case of Division, cover-based. Third person isn't the problem (I prefer third over first), but just make a game like Destiny that plays about on par and doesn't have all the BS that Destiny players have grown tired of. But no one even wants to try to do it.

EDIT: And here's the thing about Diablo. I can see my character getting stronger. I'm currently level 85 (100 is the cap). I had a few great drops Friday that substantially boosted my character's damage and survivability. I can now go into a T44 NM dungeon and have no problems slaying enemies 12 levels higher than me.

The loot is great. The core gameplay is great. The progression is great. It's also something you can mindlessly do when no super outleveled. I often hope into a NM dungeon 3 levels higher than me to farm XP, with the game muted while I listen/watch a YouTube video.

[Q]

If Matter and Marathon are separate projects then that just means the talent is spread out even that much more thinner and we can see how Destiny 2 has been faring as a result.

Some interesting details in this like the "high burn rate" on Bungie and so forth. 

Destiny 3? Forget it.  A Final Fantasy 14 "fix it up" routine?  Not optimistic. We will see. 

[Q]

Accurate. Everything is designed to be quickly disposed of.

[Patriot]

Destiny has a lot of problems. Sure, seasonal activities that aren't interesting being built knowing they're going away is a problem and a waste of resources, but ultimately isn't that big of a deal.

I haven't been keeping up the with the game. Haven't read a TWAB in months. Only Destiny videos I see are the ones that get posted in this thread. But I did see that a new exotic scout rifle mission is in the game today. And upon hearing about that, I never once thought, "sweet, let me hop on and get it."

Of course, even if I had thought that and wanted to, I'd have to reinstall it. But I wasn't even tempted.

It's not any one thing that is driving people away. For me, it's just that the game has drifted to far from what I liked about it. And now it's masquerading as something that it's not, and has become extremely grindy in all aspects. It's just not fun.

And when I say masquerading as something that it isn't, I mean a build reliant/heavy game. YouTuber's love to make build guides and proclaim OP, broken, nasty, whatever. Nothing matters in this game. Getting your grenade back five seconds faster isn't "godly." There's no point in this game where you go from, at level, struggling to do a GM to suddenly destroying it. That happens in a lot of games, where builds do matter, but not in Destiny. There is no "I'm a squishy glass cannon, but can absolutely nuke this entire room without taking damage" in Destiny. It's just not that game. You never reach a point where you can just delete something.

In fact, it's the opposite. The hardest end-game content, weakens you. It's why people play safe at a distance and prefer scouts, bows, snipers or whatever, instead of SMG's or sidearms in GM content. And that would be fine if Nightfalls were hard, but something you just did once a week per character. It's not fun when you're supposed to do it over and over and over.

[Patriot]

www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/state_of_the_game_aug_2023

I can't believe Bungie put that out. Folks start quitting the game, they panic and rush out THAT as something that's supposed to do what exactly?

They should be embarrassed.

To set expectations, our studio structure is built to support more overarching updates to PvP like the ones above, rather than focusing exclusively on maps. When we do focus our resources on building new Crucible maps, it comes with the tradeoff of multiple teams' bandwidth on work that contributes to a variety of experiences that players also hold dear, such as new story or Exotic mission content, core activities that make up the foundation of each Season, or new destinations.

Then your engine is absolute garbage then.

There have been plenty of games that have map creation feature where players pump out maps quickly. A lot of the times, better than the maps the devs themselves created. Creating maps for PvP shouldn't take multiple teams. It certainly shouldn't take whatever team is wasting time creating the copy/paste seasonal activities that you know are going away.

Players have pointed out that we didn’t release a new armor set for the ritual playlists (Vanguard, Crucible, Gambit) with Lightfall as previously called out in our yearly release schedule. Delivering ritual armor sets at the rates we have in the past has become increasingly challenging, especially considering these sets have historically had very low adoption by players as both base armor and cosmetic ornaments.

Ritual armor sets being the Vanguard, Crucible and Gambit armor, which is the exact same just with a different default shader.

To challenging to create ONE armor set a year? If that's the case, everyone there sucks. Should spend more time learning game dev and less time forming inclusivity clubs and preaching LGBTQ+ and racist BS.

Stop acting like a small indie studio. You were bought for over 3.5 BILLION dollars and have about a thousand employees.

You certainly don't find it too challenging to create Eververse sets.

And let's be real, people don't use the ritual sets or make them ornaments because they're ugly. That's always been a problem in D2, 90% of the armor looks terrible compared to D1 armor.

At this time, we are amending our delivery plans for how often we refresh these sets and will no longer be creating a new set for every expansion.

LMAO.

I remember a time when DLC meant complete refresh of weapons and armor for Vanguard, Crucible, Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, and Future War Cult. And a new set like in the Reef with House of Wolves.

Of course D1 was a different time and a different Bungie.

I have zero interest in their Showcase later this month. I'm sure the trailer guys will do a superb job. They're the best asset Bungie has. But after Witch Queen and most certainly Lightfall, I won't fall for their magician tricks again.

Too bad D1 can't get a 60fps patch. I'd play that again. But D2 has just gone straight down the toilet.

[Q]

It's a stopgap until this supposed big reveal in a few weeks in regards to Final Shape, etc. I will say I have seen as much chorus of either doom or at least highly underwhelmed among the Destiny community like I see now and it's largely justified.

It's painfully obvious to everyone that Destiny is on cruise control and backburner for the sake of Marathon (and possibly Matter if these are separate projects.) That's a crying shame and it sure as hell doesn't make me want to ever buy another Bungie product ever again. (The woke focus is increasingly unavoidable I've noticed)

Sure, I'm going to finish out with Final Shape but I'm under no illusions about where things are at. The engine is old and they can't put any more on the old skeleton. That's only part of the problem, though.

Sony turned Guerilla Games from a ho-hum studio to a powerhouse that churned out two excellent Horizon Zero games. That needs to happen here. The irony of Activision being bought out by MS is not lost on me here.

but my concern is Sony (and MS) are going to buy out everything so the other guy doesn't get it. MS has a notorious track record for buying out studios and then sitting and letting IPs die. I see two large conglomerates buying out everything and then there's the odd ball Nintendo who continues to survive despite themselves.

I hope Sony doesn't have Bungie churn out a bunch of GaaS games and see what sticks on the wall. Forget that. That will be zero buys for me.

Bungie lost their way.  That's the long and short of it regardless of the rest of it. 

[Patriot]

Finally completed the Lightfall campaign on my Titan to unlock Strand. Not a fan of having to buy the strand fragments again, but whatever. Completed the campaign on Legendary.

Currently on my Warlock but just doing normal for it and my god is an absolute cake walk compared to the legendary version.

[Patriot]

www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/this-week-in-destiny-11-22-23

LMAO

It's like Bungie sees that the playerbase is at its all-time lowest level, and decides to see how low it can really go.

This game does not need nerfs. It needs to be made fun again. Nerfing is the opposite of that.

[Q]

Nov 23, 2023 11:37:22 GMT -6 Patriot said:

www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/this-week-in-destiny-11-22-23

LMAO

It's like Bungie sees that the playerbase is at its all-time lowest level, and decides to see how low it can really go.

This game does not need nerfs. It needs to be made fun again. Nerfing is the opposite of that.

I'm tired of the nerfing. All it does de-incentivize.  I've looked through a few videos about this and saw people pretty upset about how some of their favorite builds (and some of better ones outright really) are being ruined and so forth.   I just don't see what it proves.      

[Patriot]

www.ign.com/articles/bungie-devs-say-atmosphere-is-soul-crushing-amid-layoffs-cuts-and-fear-of-total-sony-takeover

Multiple current employees confirmed to IGN that the company has implemented numerous other cost-cutting measures recently, including a studio-wide hiring freeze, reduced travel budgets, elimination of holiday bonuses, keeping its annual Bungie Day virtual, delaying its weeklong company “Pentathalon” event to next December, and reducing numerous morale events such as cooking and knitting classes from monthly to quarterly. Bungie is also pausing or fully ending benefits like annual employee compensation adjustments to meet market rates, its new hire lunch program, employee donation matching, its peer recognition program, and gift cards for employees birthdays. And yearly studio performance bonuses this year will only be the contractually obligated 80% minimum, after being above 100% for good performance several previous years running.

No problem with any of this.

These are bonuses that a company can afford to do when things are going well and money is flowing in. It's not something you just do to further bleed money.

These morale events are dumb anyway. No wonder the game is ass. In addition to all the time they waste in their inclusion club safe spaces and lecturing co-workers on which black owned businesses to support, apparently, they're sitting around every month taking company classes on how to cook and knit. Remember, just a few posts up, it's too hard and time consuming to make ONE ritual armor set per year.

At this point, the best thing that could probably happen to Destiny would be a complete Sony take over of it.

Along with the recent layoffs, this has resulted in a massive decay in morale within the company, according to IGN’s sources, one of whom told us that the mood within the studio has been “soul-crushing” over the last month.

An IGN source that's a Bungie dev just screams purple haired tranny to me. Of course, having to do a job and being expected to do it well instead of wasting company time and money with unnecessary identity BS is going to be soul-crushing.

Besides that, jobs are soul crushing to most people. Few people are thrilled to go somewhere they don't care to be, to do something they don't care about, to then have little time to do things they actually enjoy.

According to those still with the company, employee frustration and sadness in the days and weeks following the layoffs was met with a surprising amount of indifference or even outright flippancy or hostility from management. Several people we spoke to told us that leaders had reiterated, across multiple meetings, that they couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be more layoffs, with two specifically confirming previous reports that chief people officer Holly Barbacovi outright stating that layoffs were a “lever” the company would pull again.

LOL, what exactly do these people expect?

The irony here comes from outside Bungie with the so-called Destiny community. The ones on YouTube and reddit who make outrage posts and videos because of Bungie layoffs, while proclaiming that they're boycotting by not ordering The Final Shape. Which will just cause more people to be laid off and accomplish nothing.

You work for the company; the company doesn't work for you. If you don't like it, leave it. No one is being forced to work at Bungie, or any other game development studio.

If Sony were smart, they'd fully take over and shutdown Marathon and put all available resources into a new Destiny game. Current Bungie management has proven wholly incapable of managing finances and properly overseeing game development.

At the same time, they desperately need to reign in the cost of Destiny 2 from a players perspective. The barrier to entry for a supposed free to play game is insane and all-around confusing to any new player who might be wanting to jump in.

[Q]

This starter pack fiasco was so out of touch in light of all this that it was laughable and says it all. I think Sony should take it over ASAP and be done with it.  

[Sandman]

LOL at all the butt hurt. Welcome to reality, go woke, go more than broke.