The prestige version of the raid for sure, not the normal raid (though you do need 300 power now)
Yeah, it’s “medium terrible”. It’s locking people out of the prestige raid, prestige nightfall, and I think the Trials of the Nine crucible stuff. So just the “hard” versions of those events, you can still do regular raid and nightfalls.
Still kind of a dick move.
You can only do regular night fall when the nightfall for the week isn’t a dlc strike.
Oh yeah, good point.
They are undoing some decisions concerning the locked content for not DLC havers.
This is why paid DLC, as a concept, is turbo trash and folks should reject it.
Titanfall did DLC correctly.
Ok, I haven’t played Titanfall, so not sure what they did, but you don’t expect to create new content ad infinitum without cash influx, do you? I’m perfectly happy to pay for content if it is worthwhile (Curse of Osiris is kinda ehhh for being a 20 dollar expansion)
That’s exactly what they did.
They put out a massive amount of downloadable content, new Titans, new game modes, tons of new maps… New DLC every month for like, I dunno, over a year?
And it was all free.
Which was great, because it meant that every time they dropped new content, you could fully leverage it, since the entire player base had access to it.
But that isn’t sustainable over the long term. It costs money to make new content. Of course, there are other ways of doing it (Path of Exile comes to mind with all the microtransactions). In theory at least, this is supposed to be the sort of game that continues evolving and adding new content for years (in theory because the first game was also)
If you view Destiny 2 like I’m sure Activision views it–game as service–it makes perfect sense. You don’t actually own anything. You pay a fee up front to access the service. You get to access the service from that point, but the actual content of the service varies over time, just like in an MMO. Dollars to donuts the EULA has something in it to the effect that there are no guarantees to what is actually in the game, or that anything that is in the game at one point in time will necessarily be there at another time.Sort of like nerfing class abilities or gear and making you buy the expansion to get the functional equivalents.
Consumer friendly? Not particularly. Annoying? Absolutely. Immoral or unethical? Much harder call; certainly, from their ethical framework, it’s just business.
Super lame that there is no 330 prestige version of the raid. What’s the point of a prestige version of the raid that is the same light level (and drops) as the base game level?
What’s wong with leaving the normal raid at 300 where anyone can play, but having a 330 raid for folks who want to continue on?
Yet they did it.
I mean, let’s be real… Destiny had a total lifetime of 3 years. Titanfall 2, with a much smaller initial sales, was able to sustain itself over a year of DLC without charging for any of the core stuff. You could still pay them money for poorly cosmetic stuff. Hell, I did just because I felt like they earned it.
But still, destiny only lasted for 3 years. It’s not like they had to sustain it forever. They sold how many copies? Like… A gazillion? At $60 a pop? I find the suggestion that they couldn’t afford to make any of the DLC for free kind of silly.
I don’t buy the story we are told these days that this is just how it needs to be… Especially when we have cases of DLC just unlocking content that was already developed prior to release. Especially when you see developers like Respawn making masterpieces like Titanfall and supporting it for months WITHOUT charging money.
It certainly does not need to be this way. Publishers want it to be this way, because (duh) it makes them more money. The solution? Don’t buy their games. It’s the only solution, really. But because nearly all publishers are moving in this direction, your options for gaming are getting more circumscribed if you really can’t abide this model, that’s for sure.
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?