Preface
So this will be long and I'm sorry. If one person reads this and has felt it has been of value then I've honestly done my job. I'm writing this primarily to coherently explain what has been happening in the community, why things are they way they are now, what can be changed in a more digestible (non-inflammatory) fashion. I think the same things have been said for weeks now so I won't repeat the obvious but instead I will try to focus on why things are why they are now and what needs to happen. Not only specifics in regards to what needs to change inside the game in terms of mechanics and design decisions but in terms of big picture vision.
I will say that I'm not a hardcore Destiny 2 player. I played Destiny 1 a lot but not to the degree of those on the Era community. That being said I have played enough to know and explain many things in regards to the current situation and I say this only to show that I'm not ignorant. First thing is first, I will outline that there are three types of Destiny players: hardcore players, casual players, hybrid players. Hardcore players are the diehard fans and people that play Destiny an obscene amount. These are also the players that play this as a regular hobby. It's the "My Game" or "My Go To Game" essentially. There is the casual player. These are the players that pick up a game and once they feel that they've sufficiently "completed" the game move on to the next best thing and maybe come back. Maybe. Lastly we have the Hybrid players. Gamers that are hardcore and love Destiny but perhaps not play Destiny religiously. They for sure adore the game but they maybe don't commit the time to it. Essentially, they're invested, just not in terms of time so they are ultimately invested in the game's/franchise's future. I fall in here.
Intro
I will write this a bit like a debate. I think the current situation of where the game is at ultimately lies between two main reasons. The first is the community. The second being Bungie not understanding the market. I will center my explanations around these two points.
The Loudest Ones are Usually the Dumbest
Let's address the community issue first. When I say this I don't mean this to be belittling. Most gamers are not good designers. It's not a natural talent or it's not something they learned. They don't understand why (from an objective standpoint) why certain design decisions are good and certain ones are not. They don't understand why things are implemented the way they are. As a result when they offer feedback, it's usually crap. When you give the community too much voice and much of that voice is bad then it directly impacts the game negatively. I'll give a few example of this. Let's use Forever 29. It took forever to get to 30 in Vanilla Destiny to the point that it became a meme. This was an issue with a lot of people and there was a loud voice saying this was terrible. I have no factual proof but I would actually say that the largest quantity in voicing this opinion were the casuals that hit the wall super early. They noted that the grind was too long and it was too terrible so they needed to change it. What did we get? The ultimate end result is Destiny 2 where the progression and growth is quick and for the most part pretty even. I'll break this down in a few ways.
To bring this back home I want to make a contentious point: Destiny 2 is a result of the Community's fault. I'm not talking about the Hardcore Community. I'm talking about everyone who has voiced their opinion about the game. If you voiced an opinion, you're part of the community, and chances are a good chunk of the game's community at a certain point were full of casuals. The loud voices ultimately ruined the game. The casual gamers have garnered such a strong voice at the launch of Destiny 1 and The Taken King and the initial praise overshadowed everything and the developers took this feedback to heart. Bungie reacted in a kneejerk way and it ultimately impacted the game. I'm not saying Bungie shouldn't listen to feedback. If I wanted to say this in a succinct and no bars hold kind of way then I would say this: Bungie, most gamers are dumb and don't know good design and they definitely don't know what they want so why the fuck are you listening to them? (Now I will make a side point here. When I say the word "ruined" it's a matter of perspective. To the casuals it's actually not ruined. It's made better. However I use the word ruined here intentionally because of 1.) this game is a Games as a Service and therefore is not addressed to the casual crowd and 2.) my second point which I"m getting into)
Know Your Addressable Market
Game Development is a business. This is a fact. Bungie and Activision are ultimately here to make money. They want to maximize profits. However, it's difficult to maximize profits when you don't know your target audience. Or in more corporate terms: addressable market. When you try to sell a shoe and the person doesn't have feet due to military service then you're not doing yourself a favor. You want to make a product for a specific market in mind. When I see Destiny 2 I ultimately see a developer (and ultimately the publisher that didn't understand its product fully for marketing) failing to cater to a specific market. It reveals to me, from the outside looking in, that they don't understand who this game is designed for and shows complete ignorance in actually understanding their community's wants and desires. As a side note I will interject and make the point that I understand Bungie has come out publicly and said Destiny 2 as it stands right now is actually what they completely intended. If this is the case then this drives my point home even further (when put in combination with my first major point).
You can't look at Destiny 2's addressable market without looking at Destiny 1. Destiny 1 at the end of its lifespan was left to the hardcore. The super passionate fans who loved the game for what it ultimately became: a fulfilling loot-based shooter with periodic content upgrades that made progression meaningful. The game wasn't perfect by any means but Bungie made enough changes over years to make it a meaningful experience. By this point Bungie should've understood who they should be designing Destiny 2 for. This specific crowd. The hardcore players. These are the players that will stick by them through the fire and the storms. These are the players that will keep paying and buy more. It's brand loyalty. But it's also a group of players that ultimately get Bungie and Destiny. The hardcore understand the game and they love it.
For some reason, however, Bungie thought it was a good idea to create a game not for them. They created a game with a ton of more activities but doesn't reward them properly therefore creating a bad progression system. It affected play time. There is no incentive to keep playing like Destiny 1. Bungie thought it was a good idea to roll back many additions and changes made to Destiny 1's end thinking the hardcore players wouldn't notice them. This isn't a good business strategy. Why would you make an objectively inferior product for a market that you already know? Well, that's the issue actually. They weren't designing for the hardcore market. They were designing for the casual market. Bungie has gone on paper and stated that Destiny 2 is pretty much what they were aiming for. They wanted a game that's not meant to be continually played but a game that's played for a bit, then dropped while gamers go play other games, and then come back when there's a new content release. There are a few issues with that.
Destiny 2 is actually a biproduct of the The Taken King's positive reception and success. The casuals gobbled it up, praised it, and ultimately left the feedback to Bungie and went onto play another game. Bungie treated these praises as checkboxes and created a game around these checkbox improvements and released the sequel. They created a sequel with the critique and feedback of a group of people that wasn't even their addressable market and so the actual addressable market (the hardcore) are rightly upset. Do you often see people why people actually don't like The Taken King? That's probably because they're a hardcore player and chances are while the initial taste was great, the aftertaste was not.
Conclusion
I said a lot of things. This is very long. I'm sorry but I felt the need to write something like this to logically explain the state of things. I wrote this to explain the problem. So what ultimately should be the conclusion? Well, the solution is actually simple. Fix the problems I addressed above. Stop listening to the community and everything it has to say. We are smart sometimes but we are dumb a lot of the times. Secondly, know your product and who it's for. Furthermore, stand by it. Don't sell us something but it's actually not that product. Don't sell a GaaS to the hardcore audience but it's not a good GaaS. That doesn't work. No one wants to buy a crappy shoe. We want a good one. These are big picture solutions though. I wanted to go over what Bungie actually needs to do. Some actual tangible things.
First thing is first. Bungie, you need to talk. I understand you're a business. I understand you're a corporation. You have some politics to deal with. You can't share everything. We get that. We're not stupid. But because we're not stupid we're not going to put up with your PR talk and your PR excuses. You don't have to have an aura of mystery and professionalism and marketing all the time. Do you know why the Bungie community loved you for so long? Because of the community interaction you had. Bring that back. Posting something that the community does on your Weekly Update doesn't make you a community oriented company. Being real and upfront and honest does that. Own up to it. Open up and talk.
Secondly, you need to sell the product to us and actually give us a vision of the game. Yes, you make a product and we as the consumers gobble it up. It's the consumerism cycle and the sales cycle. We get that. However, just like how you pitched to Activision about the grand vision and scale of what Destiny franchise and project is, you need to do that for us. Not only do we need to feel your vision while playing the game but we need to hear you say it. We need to know what your ultimate goal is and share that goal with us. Share your vision so not only are YOU excited for the vision but so are your fans.
I'm sure I missed a lot. This was long to write. But this is all I had to say on this matter. I am concluding this in the most unprofessional way possible simply because I think it's only so poignant to end in such a way.
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If anyone ultimately disagrees with anything I've written here, I would love to publicly debate with you. Not to win. The whole point of a debate in my opinion is to share information, perspective, to understand, and ultimately to learn. Agree to disagree is a perfectly viable conclusion.
So this will be long and I'm sorry. If one person reads this and has felt it has been of value then I've honestly done my job. I'm writing this primarily to coherently explain what has been happening in the community, why things are they way they are now, what can be changed in a more digestible (non-inflammatory) fashion. I think the same things have been said for weeks now so I won't repeat the obvious but instead I will try to focus on why things are why they are now and what needs to happen. Not only specifics in regards to what needs to change inside the game in terms of mechanics and design decisions but in terms of big picture vision.
I will say that I'm not a hardcore Destiny 2 player. I played Destiny 1 a lot but not to the degree of those on the Era community. That being said I have played enough to know and explain many things in regards to the current situation and I say this only to show that I'm not ignorant. First thing is first, I will outline that there are three types of Destiny players: hardcore players, casual players, hybrid players. Hardcore players are the diehard fans and people that play Destiny an obscene amount. These are also the players that play this as a regular hobby. It's the "My Game" or "My Go To Game" essentially. There is the casual player. These are the players that pick up a game and once they feel that they've sufficiently "completed" the game move on to the next best thing and maybe come back. Maybe. Lastly we have the Hybrid players. Gamers that are hardcore and love Destiny but perhaps not play Destiny religiously. They for sure adore the game but they maybe don't commit the time to it. Essentially, they're invested, just not in terms of time so they are ultimately invested in the game's/franchise's future. I fall in here.
Intro
I will write this a bit like a debate. I think the current situation of where the game is at ultimately lies between two main reasons. The first is the community. The second being Bungie not understanding the market. I will center my explanations around these two points.
The Loudest Ones are Usually the Dumbest
Let's address the community issue first. When I say this I don't mean this to be belittling. Most gamers are not good designers. It's not a natural talent or it's not something they learned. They don't understand why (from an objective standpoint) why certain design decisions are good and certain ones are not. They don't understand why things are implemented the way they are. As a result when they offer feedback, it's usually crap. When you give the community too much voice and much of that voice is bad then it directly impacts the game negatively. I'll give a few example of this. Let's use Forever 29. It took forever to get to 30 in Vanilla Destiny to the point that it became a meme. This was an issue with a lot of people and there was a loud voice saying this was terrible. I have no factual proof but I would actually say that the largest quantity in voicing this opinion were the casuals that hit the wall super early. They noted that the grind was too long and it was too terrible so they needed to change it. What did we get? The ultimate end result is Destiny 2 where the progression and growth is quick and for the most part pretty even. I'll break this down in a few ways.
- The casual voice having a large meaning is ultimately bad for a game like Destiny. Contrary to popular belief the franchise and the installments are a loot-based shooter that works as a Games as a Service. If you don't think so then that is fine. When casual players who are not going to stick with the franchise for the long run ultimately voice something that is going to negatively impact the game in the future it punishes the population that will ultimately care about the game: the hardcore and hybrid players. They are voicing an opinion and the result is something that is contrary to the beliefs and philosophy of the hardcore. The hardcore want to have a carrot (perhaps not a shitty carrot but a carrot nonetheless) and keep playing the game. As crappy Forever 29 was, it was actually not the worst thing on the planet. Perhaps in the console ecosystem it was the worst the industry has seen but in reality it's not. It kept the hardcore playing and actually weeded out the hardcore from the casuals. Unintentionally it cut the casual crowd to the wayside and helped Bungie to identify their target audience (one that they can ultimately make money from) but we will get into specifics later in my second main point.
- The second example I'll use for why casual players having a voice in Destiny is bad is due to the random rolls. I'll preface with saying this, don't discount this opinion because you disagree with it or because it disrespects your time or whatever. Listen to the actual thought process here because perhaps this game wasn't designed for you (and we'll get to who the game is designed for later like I said earlier). Games as a Service is ultimately designed and created for you to continually play the game for a long time. I know people hate calling Destiny an MMO but it actually has all the hooks that make players keep playing like an MMO. If anything, it brought MMO like elements to console and made it a hit. This is a fact. Strikes are dungeons, Raids are raids, competitive PVP RPG elements are there. By its inherent nature the game rewards players who keep playing and those who don't. That's a fact in the design of games in this genre. Why should a player who played 12 hours be rewarded in a same way that a player who has invested in 120 hours. How does that make sense? It doesn't. People who complain about godrolls and random rolls being crappy, ask yourself this. Do you think it's fair that someone who has spent 12 hours playing the game should be given the same reward as a person as 120 hours? Getting godrolls is a probability game. The more you play, the more likely chance you are of getting that perfect gun. If your answer is that it is fair then you are being contradictory and you shouldn't be complaining. If your answer is no then ask yourself this, do you think as a Level 1 Guardian should have the same item and gear as powerful as a Level 20 Guardian? If your answer at this point is no then you aren't being logically consistent. The ultimate point I'm making is that people who don't like godrolls and people who don't like random rolls on Destiny have a legitimate reason to be upset. But the massive changes that resulted (which is the weapons system in Destiny 2) punishes the population that truly care about the game and those that want to put the time and dedication into getting those efforts. Not every player needs to get everything and have everything. People need to understand that. If your response back after reading this is to argue about godrolls and its legitimacy (or illegitimacy) then you missed my point. I only used this as an example to communicate one of my main points: the power of the casual voice and its negative impact.
To bring this back home I want to make a contentious point: Destiny 2 is a result of the Community's fault. I'm not talking about the Hardcore Community. I'm talking about everyone who has voiced their opinion about the game. If you voiced an opinion, you're part of the community, and chances are a good chunk of the game's community at a certain point were full of casuals. The loud voices ultimately ruined the game. The casual gamers have garnered such a strong voice at the launch of Destiny 1 and The Taken King and the initial praise overshadowed everything and the developers took this feedback to heart. Bungie reacted in a kneejerk way and it ultimately impacted the game. I'm not saying Bungie shouldn't listen to feedback. If I wanted to say this in a succinct and no bars hold kind of way then I would say this: Bungie, most gamers are dumb and don't know good design and they definitely don't know what they want so why the fuck are you listening to them? (Now I will make a side point here. When I say the word "ruined" it's a matter of perspective. To the casuals it's actually not ruined. It's made better. However I use the word ruined here intentionally because of 1.) this game is a Games as a Service and therefore is not addressed to the casual crowd and 2.) my second point which I"m getting into)
Know Your Addressable Market
Game Development is a business. This is a fact. Bungie and Activision are ultimately here to make money. They want to maximize profits. However, it's difficult to maximize profits when you don't know your target audience. Or in more corporate terms: addressable market. When you try to sell a shoe and the person doesn't have feet due to military service then you're not doing yourself a favor. You want to make a product for a specific market in mind. When I see Destiny 2 I ultimately see a developer (and ultimately the publisher that didn't understand its product fully for marketing) failing to cater to a specific market. It reveals to me, from the outside looking in, that they don't understand who this game is designed for and shows complete ignorance in actually understanding their community's wants and desires. As a side note I will interject and make the point that I understand Bungie has come out publicly and said Destiny 2 as it stands right now is actually what they completely intended. If this is the case then this drives my point home even further (when put in combination with my first major point).
You can't look at Destiny 2's addressable market without looking at Destiny 1. Destiny 1 at the end of its lifespan was left to the hardcore. The super passionate fans who loved the game for what it ultimately became: a fulfilling loot-based shooter with periodic content upgrades that made progression meaningful. The game wasn't perfect by any means but Bungie made enough changes over years to make it a meaningful experience. By this point Bungie should've understood who they should be designing Destiny 2 for. This specific crowd. The hardcore players. These are the players that will stick by them through the fire and the storms. These are the players that will keep paying and buy more. It's brand loyalty. But it's also a group of players that ultimately get Bungie and Destiny. The hardcore understand the game and they love it.
For some reason, however, Bungie thought it was a good idea to create a game not for them. They created a game with a ton of more activities but doesn't reward them properly therefore creating a bad progression system. It affected play time. There is no incentive to keep playing like Destiny 1. Bungie thought it was a good idea to roll back many additions and changes made to Destiny 1's end thinking the hardcore players wouldn't notice them. This isn't a good business strategy. Why would you make an objectively inferior product for a market that you already know? Well, that's the issue actually. They weren't designing for the hardcore market. They were designing for the casual market. Bungie has gone on paper and stated that Destiny 2 is pretty much what they were aiming for. They wanted a game that's not meant to be continually played but a game that's played for a bit, then dropped while gamers go play other games, and then come back when there's a new content release. There are a few issues with that.
- First issue is that Games as a Service is meant to be played continually. At a certain point it's supposed to be that gamer's "My Game" like DOTA2 and League of Legends is for many people. This may not be your game. You may not have a "My Game." To many gamers out there though, there is a single go to game that people always fall back on. They may go play Xenoblade 2 when it comes out or play the annual Assassin's Creed game. They will always go back to their "My Game" and chances are it's a Games as a Service game. A GaaS is meant to be continually played. I can't reiterate this enough. Bungie's addressable market should be the gamers that spend the longest time with their game. The hardcore gamers. If it's not then why make it a GaaS? Why make Destiny 2 like a GaaS? If a game is not a GaaS then I can understand the mentality of ultimately putting down the game until the sequel or not. Destiny is not that game. It was clearly not designed that way. We have events that happen. We have regular content expansions. These are clear signs that the game was designed to be a GaaS. So why would you come out to public and say something that is philosophically contradictory to core of GaaS mentality? It only makes sense when you draw the conclusion that Bungie doesn't understand its target audience, or they simply don't care, or they didn't pay attention.
- Second issue is that they do not understand the business repercussions it has when creating a game for the casual audience when it works as a games as a service. Games as a Service has a way of monetizing beyond the initial purchase. In-Game item purchases and expansion passes being the most prevalent for Destiny 2. Piggybacking off of the previous point, the people who are going to play your game the longest have a longer statistical chance of buying something in game. They're more invested so they don't mind dropping some dough. If you create a game that is not designed for the hardcore, then why do you have an element of monetization that is antithetical to that? Microtransactions is a pinnacle of success for GaaS, which Destiny clearly is, but the game is not designed to reward the hardcore so you have the following paradox. Destiny 2 is designed to be a GaaS but it's a bad GaaS so the hardcore don't play it as long. As a result they don't buy MTs. So you make less money. But you get the initial large casual crowd which will dwindle over the period of the product's life and therefore you have no increasing revenue flow. How does this make sense? It doesn't. This is business 101. You make a GaaS with MTs. You cater the game to the hardcore crowd (who cares if the casuals don't like it, they're not the addressable market) and the hardcore will naturally buy MTs. The casuals wouldn't stick long with the game anyway so they're not predictable sources of revenue income.
- Third issue is that there is the complete ignoring of the actual addressable market: the hardcore crowd. This will be piggybacking everything we've talked about so far. You design a game for the addressable market otherwise your product is worthless. If we take Bungie's word at face value and despite Destiny 2 being a GaaS, it's a product meant to be fore the casuals, what's the source of income? The initial sales? Why are you making DLC? Why are you doing MTs? Why are you ignoring the actual people that will keep playing the game. Because Bungie has designed Destiny 2 with a certain mindset, they are completely neglecting the crowd that had put up with its predecessor for 3 years. This is a bait and switch clean and simple, intentional or not. Ignoring the hardcore poses a simple problem. Life expectancy of the game. Every game without a hardcore fanbase in a GaaS will die. Casuals will ultimately leave the game. If you created a game for the casual and they are ultimately going to leave the game then where does that leave the hardcore? It actually leaves them nowhere. The franchise is smeared and it ultimately goes away. This is what's happening right now. It's been slowly happening but now we see the more public degradation in physical appearance. Reddit. I understand people think reddit sucks and it's crap but Reddit is still a good gauge for the health of a community. The past few weeks have been non-step hate trains. They're not illogical hate trains for the most part. They're pretty well-reasoned with lots of critique. This is the ultimate result of a group of people that went ignored. These group of people expected a certain product that would satisfy the same needs and wants of the predecessor but didn't get it. Bungie ignored the addressable market and created something entirely else and so the end result is the actual addressable market being upset that they got sold something that wasn't entirely what they expected. Destiny 2 and Destiny 1 are designed differently. Different designs? Different Product. Different product? Different markets.
Destiny 2 is actually a biproduct of the The Taken King's positive reception and success. The casuals gobbled it up, praised it, and ultimately left the feedback to Bungie and went onto play another game. Bungie treated these praises as checkboxes and created a game around these checkbox improvements and released the sequel. They created a sequel with the critique and feedback of a group of people that wasn't even their addressable market and so the actual addressable market (the hardcore) are rightly upset. Do you often see people why people actually don't like The Taken King? That's probably because they're a hardcore player and chances are while the initial taste was great, the aftertaste was not.
Conclusion
I said a lot of things. This is very long. I'm sorry but I felt the need to write something like this to logically explain the state of things. I wrote this to explain the problem. So what ultimately should be the conclusion? Well, the solution is actually simple. Fix the problems I addressed above. Stop listening to the community and everything it has to say. We are smart sometimes but we are dumb a lot of the times. Secondly, know your product and who it's for. Furthermore, stand by it. Don't sell us something but it's actually not that product. Don't sell a GaaS to the hardcore audience but it's not a good GaaS. That doesn't work. No one wants to buy a crappy shoe. We want a good one. These are big picture solutions though. I wanted to go over what Bungie actually needs to do. Some actual tangible things.
First thing is first. Bungie, you need to talk. I understand you're a business. I understand you're a corporation. You have some politics to deal with. You can't share everything. We get that. We're not stupid. But because we're not stupid we're not going to put up with your PR talk and your PR excuses. You don't have to have an aura of mystery and professionalism and marketing all the time. Do you know why the Bungie community loved you for so long? Because of the community interaction you had. Bring that back. Posting something that the community does on your Weekly Update doesn't make you a community oriented company. Being real and upfront and honest does that. Own up to it. Open up and talk.
Secondly, you need to sell the product to us and actually give us a vision of the game. Yes, you make a product and we as the consumers gobble it up. It's the consumerism cycle and the sales cycle. We get that. However, just like how you pitched to Activision about the grand vision and scale of what Destiny franchise and project is, you need to do that for us. Not only do we need to feel your vision while playing the game but we need to hear you say it. We need to know what your ultimate goal is and share that goal with us. Share your vision so not only are YOU excited for the vision but so are your fans.
I'm sure I missed a lot. This was long to write. But this is all I had to say on this matter. I am concluding this in the most unprofessional way possible simply because I think it's only so poignant to end in such a way.
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If anyone ultimately disagrees with anything I've written here, I would love to publicly debate with you. Not to win. The whole point of a debate in my opinion is to share information, perspective, to understand, and ultimately to learn. Agree to disagree is a perfectly viable conclusion.
