Wasn’t planning on playing it but now I’m definitely not going to. Minimum system requirements will probably be absurd anyway. 69420gb of ram and a rtx 9990ti.
There are so many other games to play that I’m still probably on the plan to postpone my second playthrough until the Definitive Edition comes out (probably next summer), but this is a much needed patch.
The way Larian describes the new epilogue, I’m thinking this is them re-adding some of the “17 000 endings” they were talking about pre launch. In any case, more and better epilogues were sorely needed so this is great.
Hopefully they can keep salvaging cut content and polish up Act 3 until it reaches the same quality of the other two.
Despite what others are saying, the game is fine (at least compared to its previous state/status)… They’ve made a lot of changes to improve the onboarding experience and remove pain points. They’ve made things less grindy and more engaging every expansion.
The last DLC just had kind of a meh story to it, “the discovery of strand.” The environment they used also wasn’t all that pretty or interesting. It wasn’t snow, it wasn’t a swamp, it was a minimalistic city-scape with some canyons.
That, plus increased pricing and over dramatization of the loss of the red war and foresaken content (which wasn’t even that good compared to the new stuff mind you – it was extremely short and grindy) has almost definitely caused the profit loss.
Not to mention, playlist activities still feel bland… Implement map voting and modifier voting, and make a higher difficulty playlist for PvE content. I swear once you’re caught up, it’s either stomp over everything in the same 5 maps over and over, or face the exact same somewhat challenging (or extremely challenging) encounter over and over for an entire week. They have all this content they could open up to high end rewards and mutators, but they don’t.
Except Bungie isn’t creating a new game here, they’re continuing a game they’ve been supporting for years. They have years of metrics and they should have a pretty good understanding how much revenue to expect. Even if they were overly optimistic and set an unrealistic projection it doesn’t explain missing it by 45%.
I can’t really comment on the current quality of the game in 2023, since I noped out about 4 years ago, but there are any number of explanations.
Lack of new content. I haven’t seen the game discussed much in the gaming press, which means there probably haven’t been any notable content drops for a while. It sounds like the game’s next expansion has been delayed, and the game is being maintained by a skeleton crew while the rest of the studio focuses on Marathon.
Competition. With few exceptions, good games always slowly bleed users as shiny new alternatives attract players. This is compounded if you’re running a live service game and have a long content drought.
My point isn’t “Destiny good”, I don’t really know that. My point is that we can’t really draw conclusions about the quality of the game based solely on missed revenue targets.
I agree that you can’t draw conclusions about the quality of the game simply by the fact that it missed the revenue target. But I’m not drawing the conclusion based on the fact that it missed the target but rather based on by how much the target was missed. If they missed by 15% then sure, it’s not an indication because maybe they really did overestimate their target. But 45%? You don’t miss by that much when you have yearly revenue numbers showing you the trend. My point is that such a severe miss in this case does end up being indicative of the quality because the explanations, even yours, will end up being negative about the game.
It sounds like the game’s next expansion has been delayed, and the game is being maintained by a skeleton crew while the rest of the studio focuses on Marathon.
FWIW, they have ~650 people even after the layoffs for destiny 2 alone. Hardly a skeleton crew. The content drops have been the same as they’ve been for years, seasonal content drops in-between expansions. There is definitely a lul period where there’s not new stuff getting released to give people a chance to catch up.
Competition. With few exceptions, good games always slowly bleed users as shiny new alternatives attract players.
There is some of this. I think there also just seems to be a general recoil of players at what games are costing these days. I’m personally fine with it, but I see what feels like infinite complaining about how greedy … basically every company that isn’t indie is being.
Realistically, I’d say it’s A) bad PR and B) a failure to make new gameplay loops that shake things up significantly C) a failure to fully utilize old content (there’s not a lot of reason to play old strikes, not a lot to encourage players to help others out in old story missions, etc – replay value is artificially neutered by making too many things curated which limits choice)
I think there also just seems to be a general recoil of players at what games are costing these days. I’m personally fine with it, but I see what feels like infinite complaining about how greedy … basically every company that isn’t indie is being.
I think this is mostly just the fact that the people who spend the most time on social media are also basically kids with very little spending money. None of my millennial peers even blinked when AAA game prices went up to $70 with the new console generation. We have fairly mature careers and have paid off our student debt by now.
Maybe, but we’re also seeing it in reviews in such high quantities, it feels like it has to be more than just kids. And like, sure I’d love if the games were cheaper, but they certainly haven’t gotten cheaper or less risky to make.
It’s frustrating either way… I don’t care if the game is $100. I want to know A) does it have pay to win mechanics or gambling (things I actually consider to be predatory – another word that is significantly over used right now), B) is it fun?, and C) how much replay value is it (i.e. should my expectations be set for a really great 80 hours or potentially hundreds – I’m okay with the former sometimes, but it’s nice to know what I’m getting into).
Lately with steam reviews it’s like “tHiS gAMe coSt toO muCh. Y u So gReDy!?!” Which tells me none of those things and just gives me old man yelling at a cloud energy about how things (particularly live service stuff) does cost money to develop and run beyond a 1 time purchase of $25.
This is like one of those websites where you look for the date of the new season of that show you like, and instead of actually giving you any useful information it waffles on and says a whole load of nothing with a line somewhere in the body of the text saying “we don’t actually know anything yet”.
Yeah that’s a bit confusing, too. And sure, Endwalker brought a Healer and Shadowbringers brought a Tank, but they both also brought DPS, and now it’s a DPS only expansion making queues worse again. They need to do 1-2 expansions of only adding a tank and a healer.
If you’re looking for the real logic behind it, its because the majority of the player base is dps. Every expac has to have a dps as a new class. Otherwise the majority of the player base wont have a new class to play for an expac.
Last expac was healer/dps, one before that tank/dps, and before that dps x2. Its cyclical. So we were “due” for another double dps expac. Obviously the devs and director are free to make whatever decision they want, but this is the logic yoshi/the devs have talked about on their quarterly chats. (To my understanding)
Edit: If you’re looking for sympathy though, yeah i feel it. I always want more tanks. Warrior has always been my favorite and none of the other tanks have tickled my fancy since.
I just want classes with big two handers. All of them being tanks sucks. Sam/drg are just a skinny 2h with big muscles. Drk dps rotation lets me sort of live my fantasy though i suppose
Hardly surprising and it fits the scenario: a relatively small indie dev studio with only small-mid sized games under their belt with leadership deciding to buy into one of the most expensive IP available. Now, not only do they have a publisher looming over their work but are also under serious financial pressure to perform as well as expectation of a huge fan base plus promising a AAA sized game.
The leadership simply bit off far more than they could chew and panic set in, resulting in cut corners everywhere.
End result was a predictable disaster. Could have been avoided with smarter/better leadership. Clearly they didn’t think much of their dev team.
They could give away the game for free for a short boost in players, but they need to do something about the endgame first. Or else they end up in the same position they are in now.
Yet another reason to avoid Activision Blizzard. It’s amazing to me how their corrupt and broken internal culture is apparently widespread throughout the company and their subsidiarys, and no one stopped to be like, “hol’ up, we can’t act like this” while the culture was taking form. So now you end up with people like the article trying to fight against it and getting doors shut in their face.
Also, it should be pretty easy to prove whether or not she resigned voluntarily. The resignation form would either be missing her signature or have a forged signature. Dunno what Activision Blizzard is doing trying to claim she resigned voluntarily.
Edit: I thought Bungie was still owned by Activision.
I had an employer try this on me too. I beat the claim in court by pointing out that people who quit don’t tend to bother showing up on time and ready to work at their next shift. Judge agreed with me. Shortly after I was offered about 80% of my claim as a settlement with the understanding that the taxes on the settlement would be paid by the company. Pretty good deal when I didn’t even have a lawyer ngl
I mean yeah ABK has toxic culture, but Bungie has been with Sony for over a year now (Aug 2022), and Alm was hired just few 2 months before Sony acquisition and the issues followed up until September with false termination.
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