Destiny 2 - I don't have time to explain Bungie's MMO shooter 2.0

Big difference between one year and three (and the original plan for destiny was longer, as already mentioned). Thinking that you will get the same quality of content without a revenue stream is näive, don’t you think? Even if they could, why would they, when they could be working on something that would generate revenue? THAT’S silly.

The amount of initial revenue that destiny pulled in from software sales was way more than 3 times that of Titanfall 2.

The idea that the “original plan was longer” is pretty immaterial, isn’t it? Since they just released destiny 2, which is basically just destiny 1, but costs you another $60?

They would if customers demanded it.

Honestly, I don’t hate all DLC. I just hate when the guys doing it do it in an overtly exploitive manner, or when the DLC punishes those who but it, by limiting their ability to use it.

Destiny isn’t really a big example of that second point.

A better example is COD, when they release maps… even if you buy them, you don’t get to use them to the fullest, because you can only play them in a segregated playlist, since others don’t have access to them.

Titanfall dealt with this is a way which benefitted their players. And I’m pretty sure they still made a bunch of money on it.

I’ll add that Bungie has also been horrible on the subject of discounting DLC. With D1, they would regularly sell a bundle that had the game and everything up to the current expansion, but they never, ever put the current DLC on sale, it was always $30. So if you were a new player, they’d give you a deal on everything so you could be current. If you were an old player who might want to come back? You get to pay fill price, no matter if it’s months out of date. Rise of Iron, the last expansion, is still $30 to this day, and you have to have The Taken King to even buy it- it isn’t included in The Destiny Collection.

Blizzard solved that by having the current WoW expansion include all the previous ones (I think that’s still true) which makes a lot of sense.

I’m not sure how PoE does it, but for a game superficially similar to Destiny, I’ll do the ever-present pointing to Warframe. Several totally free expansions per year- usually a few small with a quest and a new character class and weapons, then one large with new areas and completely new gameplay systems. Yeah, it’s funded by microtransactions that are completely optional.

Yup, I was a founder (back when that meant, you know…a founder). But the point is that they have an ongoing revenue stream. And in the case of Warframe, there’s a lot of stuff locked behind real money purchases. Yes, it’s optional, but lots of people are willing to pay to get the various Prime weapons/frames and for more potatoes.

Destiny could absolutely work with that kind of model, but it would be a rather different game in some respects.for instance you’d have to grind way harder or pay to unlock subclasses. Instead of getting exotics in engrams, you’d get pieces of them or blueprints, etc. we’d be talking about killing Calus for the tenth time because you can’t get a certain part to drop, etc.

No argument there- Destiny would be very different if they needed an ongoing revenue stream. I honestly think Warframe is a little too grindy, and a little too ‘generic’ in its mostly-procedural content, but it’s still worlds above Destiny. Most of what you pay for its cosmetic, unless you just want to skip content. The biggest money stink IMO is character and weapon slots.

Seriously, though. I’ve paid at least $200 for all the Destiny content I’ve played so far (D1/2, first expansion pass and Taken King- never got RoI or this new one). I’ve played approximately 10x as much Warframe in the same time period, and paid maybe $60? And still have a ton of content to go.

What about Overwatch? That’s full-retail-price with free expansions, right? How do they do it?

Destiny had 3 paid expansions in the first year of release, so that doesn’t hold much weight.

Not the point, which is that games don’t just keep pumping content out in perpetuity without income. This isn’t difficult.

But it’s a meaningless statement, because developers don’t keep pumping out content in perpetuity, even WITH paid DLC.

They create content for some finite period of time.

So then the question becomes, “Can a company create quality content for some finite period of time, without forcing players to buy paid DLC?”

And the answer is then, obviously, "Yes.”

Titanfall 2 did it. Overwatch does it.

It’s perhaps worth stating that they actually do have revenue streams, in the form of purely cosmetic stuff you can pay money for.

Never said they couldn’t do it without paid DLC. In fact, I explicitly acknowledged that they could have.

The point you added at the end is the important one (about the revenue streams). Of course, you could argue Destiny does that as well, but I hope we can agree that the bright engram stuff is pretty minor in the scheme of things. They absolutely could have built the game around cosmetics as a major factor. People pay gobtons of money for cosmetics in League of Legends and Path of Exile and others.

I think the Destiny DLC, for all it’s bone-headed implementation, is significantly more content than Titanfall DLC.

Yeah, I would agree, at least as far as pve content… I think that Titanfall 2 offered quite a lot more in terms of added PvP content than destiny ever did though.

“We expect these changes to go live tomorrow at the end of scheduled maintenance to deploy Update 1.1.1.1. Moving forward, we are also looking to improve on Heroic Strikes, with new challenges, new Modifiers, and free access for all players.”

At least it’s something!

The best Bungie can do now is to make the Prestige Raid drop 300 LL items, and the Normal Raid to drop 330 LL items.

I suspect companies make decisions about which monetization path to follow based on numbers. As these companies are in the business to make money, not make games (games are simply what they are making money from at this point in time), those decisions are never, ever going to be based on what’s good for consumers, for game design, or anything else. Ultimately to change how games are monetized you have to change the cash flow equations.

That is, until consumers actually rebel against something, as with Battlefront II, sort of, nothing will happen. And even then, it’s pretty clear that for many, many gamers, the current systems of monetization are perfectly ok.

This is certainly true.

It’s actually part of what made me support Titanfall 2 as much as I did… in that they are, once again, a small developer who seemed to actually be more focused on making the game, rather than just making a monetization tool.

As a software developer, I fully support developers getting paid well. But we shouldn’t lose sight of what we’re doing.

Loot boxes.

Destiny 2 also has loot boxes, but the contents aren’t great and I doubt they’re pulling in a fraction of what Overwatch is.

What’s in them? Are they mostly cosmetic, or did they have gameplay benefits? I admit I have really no idea of what Overwatch is all about, but I’m pretty sure it’s only a competitive PvP thing.

Skins, sprays, emotes, victory poses, play of the game intros, etc. It’s really well done. The skins and character animations are good enough that you want to buy them, but they have zero impact on the game. No one is going to boot you from a team for not having Police D-Va.

The closest thing Destiny has is Shaders, Ships, and Emotes, all of which are in loot boxes. None of them are very exciting.