Today, I want to quickly talk about the video game series Destiny and its current slate of games (Destiny and Destiny 2). After a strong start, Destiny 2 is currently in free-fall with its players. Many hardcore players are leaving for other games. The original Destiny supposedly had a slow start, but found its footing after the release of the Taken King. Those of you who read the blog from the beginning know that for the longest time, I had a Destiny countdown clock widget on the side of the blog. I was an avid Destiny player. However, Bungie, the creators have made a few mistakes that have caused me to fall away–but they aren’t the same mistakes that the current “narrative” would have you believe so I’ll cover what I think are a couple of the biggest ones.
“Shared World Shooter” vs “MMO”
Bungie was quick to point out that Destiny wasn’t an MMO (which has certain connotations in the game community), but was rather a “Shared World Shooter” (implying that it was a shooter first and that it was a shared world between you and other players). You could intersect with other players or go “lone wolf.” Well, that appealed to me–however, in actuality, the game functioned like an MMO. You needed a “crew” to do the best missions, The Raids. The content they added changed the game and the paradigm, and they kept tinkering with the game mechanics, rather than creating new (better) content to flesh out the world. They “sold” the game in marketing one way, but the presented the game in practice another.
“Vanilla” Destiny was actually better than “Taken King” Destiny
So this is one where the majority of Destiny players and I part ways: “Vanilla” Destiny, before all the myriad of changes, was actually pretty good. Bungie got too involved in listening to criticisms and changed the game based on people who had left rather than those who stayed. Their goal all the way through The Taken King seemed to be to “recapture” those who had left the game rather than on those who had stayed. Those who stayed just wanted more story. Had Bungie prioritized that over changing weapon balancing, fixing “cheeses” to bosses (ways of defeating boss characters in ways unintended by the developers), etc., I don’t think Destiny series would be in the position that it is. They made a different mistake with Destiny 2, but the result was the same. They focused on story in Destiny 2, but forgot that the players wanted compelling content for the endgame (additions that I didn’t care for, but seemed to resonate with other members of the hardcore Destiny community–such as Trials of Osiris). Destiny 2 should have included all the major components of Destiny and added new components to satisfy gamers until the next major expansion, but this didn’t happen–they went back to changing systems and mechanics that worked perfectly fine in Destiny, such as having two primary weapons, etc.
Here’s an example of Destiny 2 gameplay (PvP) from a high-level, highly skilled player, “Ms. 5000 Watts”:
The Social Network is not always Right.
The point that I’m trying to make is that by listening to the vocal fans who don’t even play the game and trying to create a game for them, Bungie lost focus and helped to dilute the game for those who were still playing. I no longer play Destiny because of the multitudinous game currencies, not getting enough story and answers about the The Traveler and The Darkness. I’m sorry, but I’m not all that interested in the “Lore” of the Guardians–The Curse of Osiris DLC, I’m looking at you–I want to find out what the Traveler and why its Light is gone and how I can “heal” it and I want to find out what the Darkness is, why it hates the Traveler and what I can do to stop it. I want to be able to do that on my own or with a team of 3-6 players (no less–sorry to inform you Bungie—Destiny is only fun by yourself or with a full”fire-team” because that’s how you designed it. Those 2 player events are annoying! To be honest, anything under a full 6 players is not really ideal, but I understand how hard it could be to get 6 players together to do all the content, but Bungie really should be designing with 1, 3, and 6 player/players in mind).
Basically, if anyone at Bungie reads this post, please stop listening to the forums and start listening to the people who actually play the game and to your own designers. The people who have left the game and who are “slagging you off” in the comments are never going to be satisfied with what you create–no matter how good it is. Your best bet is to follow the original creative vision you had to tell an epic story about The Traveler and The Darkness and let the fans who are really invested follow you along for the ride!
Sidney
- Read Skin Deep for Free at Aurora Wolf
- Read Childe Roland for Free at Electric Spec
- Read Faerie Knight in the anthology Fae, Rhonda Parrish, Ed. or the Kindle Edition
- Read Ship of Shadows in the anthology Visions IV: Space Between Stars, Carrol Fix, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
- Read WarLight in the anthology Visions VI: Galaxies, Carrol Fix, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
- Read Dragonhawk in the magazine Tales of the Talisman, Vol. 8, Iss. 3, David Lee Summers, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
OtherWorlds: A Science Fiction & Fantasy Web Journal 