@hotspray: It's apparent you do not follow Destiny at all. It's not about adding in multiplayer maps. ME3 had some hefty bugs in its multiplayer that were never fixed. It had a couple of very serious balancing issues, that were never fixed. It's pretty clear what I mean by support isn't it? No other game has received weekly updates on this scale except MMO's that require a monthly subscription.

It's just sad how the game had some issues, that were fixed pretty quickly, then some minor issues remain and what you have to say is essentially that the game is a mess and Bungie is the anti-Christ.

If so, let's all call CD Project Red the worst developer in PC gaming history. How dare they make a game for PC that isn't optimal. How dare they have game breaking bugs in their game that still exist? Rocksteady is an awful company. They purposefully outsourced the PC port because they don't want to put in the work. The PC version of their game is and will be a mess for a long time, simply because they don't give a shit. How dare Bungie have some issues with their game that they fixed in less than a month. What a sack of evil wallet grabbers.

Destiny is legitimately a great game right now and Bungie has shown to listen and implement changes to the game based on the criticism of their fans.

I wanted to quote this for the new page, because it's a fairly new development that most people probably don't know about yet.

Also, what if Luke would have just said "Our season pass was 35 dollars, and many of our players bought and played our DLC for over 100 hours. This latest expansion includes more content than both of those add-ons, and is priced at only five dollars more, so we think we give our players an excellent value for their money." I know the UK numbers wouldn't sound as good, but it's hard to argue with "hundreds of hours of entertainment."

Seriously, PR is not that hard. I know Luke doesn't work in PR, but if he's this bad at PR, he should never have been allowed anywhere near an interview.

@spaceinsomniac: Yikes...all things considered this looks like really, really poor timing to be rolling out a promotional schtick like that.

@spaceinsomniac: PR is definitely hard. What's your experience in PR of this scale to even make such a claim? The questions you sometimes get are incredibly tough to answer honestly. The hard thing about PR is being completely honest, while promoting your product the best you can. If they had just posted the actual video instead of writing it down to make the tone of the interview disappear, this wouldn't even be a controversy to begin with. Even the interviewer himself went out and stated the outcry over this is ridiculous as the interview didn't reflect the interpretation people have of it.

Destiny The Taken King. Such good value that they see nothing wrong with locking content away behind a $2 energy drink.

@spaceinsomniac said:

It's really strange to see someone advocate for more barriers between press and developers on Giant Bomb when one of the site's overriding principles is to erode those barriers.

Overview of that Red Bull thing:

And as if that wasn't gross enough in and of itself, here's an info snippet about the whole thing the retailers apparently got. The language probably isn't anything out of the ordinary for stuff like this, though that doesn't make me like it any more:

@zevvion: to be honest, I played destiny and me3 extensively at release and the contrast only serves to make destiny look worse,

One is a good 3rd person story based rpg, with fun 3rd person shooting mechanics, a good story (with a shaky ending) which offered 70 + hours of coherent story at release as well as a tremendous multiplayer horde mode which added plenty of new maps and weapons over the course of the games lifespan at no charge, supported by micro transactions which were totally optional. The game also had DLC which significantly expanded the core narrative at a fraction of the cost of a destiny expansion.

I thought destiny was going to be a next gen. first person mass effect, with the pedigree of the people who made halo, and the way they discussed the game, I feel that wasn't a ridiculous assumption for me to make.

What I got for my money at release, was bout 1/4 of a games worth of single player content which the devs expected me to repeat endlessly to get better loot, as good as that 1/4 game was, it was just that. Raids, which as a person without a massive psn friends list I couldn't access without using third party tools, and DLC priced at retail game levels which when added together just about makes what I expected I would get from destiny on launch.

This game is a cynical attempt by a publisher to see how much money you can squeeze out of a loyal fan base, an exercise in using game design and psychology to keep gamers playing a small amount of content for as long as possible, then changing those that got hooked over the odds for their next hit.

Which e3 video had the Luke Smith/Jeff conversation?

@grimnacho: It was the 3rd segment of the day 2 video, I think.

I don't think it's the game that is the problem at all. I can completely see how people could enjoy the game through all the mud. What it boils down to is that Activision/Bungie is refining a lot of ugly practices that historically caused complaints and pushing the limits of consumer decency. It's good for people to voice that they feel they're being taken advantage of but its even better for them to put their money where their mouth is. When interviews like this come out the only thing we can do is voice our opinions.

@zevvion: Hmm. If so many people feel that Bungie is fucking up, then they're fucking up in the PR department.

Are the people that are offended right or wrong? It doesn't matter, what matters is how it looks like for the general audience, and it looks like Bungie is a greedy corporation. A company can be greedy, but if they have good PR, it doesn't show as much. Or- a company can be listening to the players, trying to be fair with pricing etc, but if they have bad PR, it's going to look like crap.

Bungie- hire better PR people.

Also- make more early game content, I'm playing through Destiny for the first time right now, and I would LOVE more things to do at the start of the game.

@altairre: "Destiny consumers are used to paying a premium for downloadable content similar to this quest".
Fucking what. That's a weird way to talk about your consumers in a public setting.

Yes, it totally was. That's not what Destiny is, and complaining that 'this is something different than I thought it was', is not a valid argument in this discussion that Bungie is handling fan feedback poorly.

It's also incredibly condescending of you to state that people who like Destiny are basically being tricked and fooled. I love Destiny. It is one of the best games I've ever played. I don't put hundreds of hours into a game easily. I'm not being tricked, I know what I pay for and it's worth it for me. Also very disconnected of you to think you can speak for a fanbase of a game you aren't a fan of. The fans of Destiny love Destiny for what it is and what it has become.

I wish Destiny was this niche game that nobody knew about. Because as a fan and someone who plays and knows the game inside out, it's so obvious people who hate on it don't know what they are talking about and try to speak for everyone else. It's cool to hate the big thing, I get it.

For the record, ME3 is my favorite Mass Effect game and one of the most fun games I've played online. But suggesting it is better supported than Destiny is just ludicrous. Especially when you consider the overpoweredness of some classes and weapons (that were never patched), that were only obtainable through randomness. Essentially making you pay if you ever wanted to get your hands on that stuff, because the chances of getting it randomly was incredibly rare.

I don't think the general audience doesn't care one bit about what Creative Director Luke Smith thinks. Most of the people I play Destiny with wouldn't even know who the hell he is or what his pedigree is. They also mostly make decisions on games based off trailers of the game and not on the opinions of gaming sites (I sometimes wish i could go back to the that kind of mentality). Those us on Giant Bomb are a small minority of people that are gamers, that look on a gaming website, and actively choose to post on said website.

Sure pricing is a very valid debatable issue but the idea of what we consider "getting your money's worth" is all subjective. I definitely feel that I have gotten my money's worth and more out of what I have put into Destiny. Its been a long time since I felt actively scorned by the purchase of something.

@spaceinsomniac:First of all this isn't new news. We knew all about the Red Bull side quest awhile ago, and it annoyed a lot of people then, as it should. But putting out the official unveiling right now is Red Bull trying to capitalize on popularity of the "Destiny Conversation" right now. You know Bungie and Activision are pretty pissed they decided to unveil that right now.

@grimnacho: You can find that on Junkboy0's post, but it's GB Day 2 at around 59 mins.

Mass Effect 3 is actually a pretty awful comparison to Destiny. The only thing they have in common is they use guns and are stories told in the future and Space. Outside of that they cannot be compared. ME3 is the third game in a franchise that had almost 5 years to hone it's craft so to speak and become the game it was. This is year 1 for Destiny. ME3 is also a story driven single player RPG, that also happens to be in top form of it genre. Destiny pretty much carves out it's own genre since the only game franchise that can even remotely be compared to it is Borderlands since its a FPS, loot driven, coop based game. So a game content comparison would be like comparing Mike Trout and Lebron James in a game of basketball, it's a completely unfair comparison. If we want to talk about DLC structures and pricing on those games, I"m all for that, because that's a completely different topic.

To that end, I think a lot of people are forgetting how predatory EA was with Mass Effect 3, a game I quite frankly was in love with. Mass Effect 3 basically forced you to play their multiplayer to fully experience the ME3 story, which is pretty garbage if you ask me, those entities should have been entirely separated. Then we start with the From Ashes DLC, that was pretty much mandatory to fully understand and flesh out ME3's story, which was locked behind the collectors edition of the game, or paid DLC that launched with the game for $10. Content that arguable should have been included in the base game to begin with. Then you get into multiplayer in which progress is so awfully slow, it basically forces you to buy multiple packs to attempt to get characters and weapons with their Spectre Packs. I know I was pretty upset at the time that I felt like I had to drop an extra $10-$12 on forced content at the time so that I could progress in the story without having to spend 100 hours in their multiplayer, which was decent, but not 100 hours good. Also, all of those free multiplayer packs with characters that were mentioned earlier only allowed you to unlock those weapons and characters via buying or unlocking more Specre Packs at $2-$3 a pop. Granted they did release 3 pretty worthwhile DLC's for the story but that's just another $40 they siphoned from us. In total I paid a lot more on Mass Effect 3 in year 1 than I did on Destiny. Destiny got $95 from me, ME3 got $110 plus all that I spent on multiplayer packs and single player weapon packs and skins, which was probably another $20. That being said a lot of people would say that ME3 had a lot more content than Destiny, and original content, that's probably true. But I'm 1000 hours into Destiny, and spent around 150 into ME3. I personally got a whole lot more bang for my buck from Destiny than ME3.

I didn't think that Red Bull/Destiny thing was real, thought it was some joke or something. Boy oh boy that sounds simply laughable at best, whose running Bungie these days. Sometimes I want to slam my head against a wall. I actually like Destiny despite its flaws but sometimes it seems as if Activision/Bungie are actively going out of their way to troll fans.

I follow the industry very closely, and I always have. I'm also someone who plays Destiny quite regularly with friends. I just think some folks are getting wayyyy bent out of shape over a text interview. With a developer who is constantly being pushed over and over again over meaningless exclusive content. If I were getting hounded over the same thing, I'd probably have a similar response: "If you want this content so bad that you'll kick up such a fuss over it, then buy it. Either that or just shut up about it."

I am not gonna look too much into an interview where all the nuance of the conversation may be completely lost, yet posted in such a way that can garner lots of attention from a group of gamers, who have shown time and time again that they are very easy to rile up.

Isn't the most interesting aspect of this whole thing: Will the expansion sell? I have a hard time believing anybody who purchased the Destiny season pass were happy with the content they got to be willing to spend another $60 on a single expansion that just maybe has the amount of content every single piece of season pass DLC should've had?

I wasn't gonna buy the expansion anyway, but the way they were talking about their players and now this Red Bull promotion makes me just think "fuck that game."

I'll make a new character when my friend, who recently got a PS4 buys the game, but I have no plans to invest any more in the game (or really, any of Bungie's future endeavors given the narrative in all their games has been pretty terrible, yes, including Halo.)

Nuance is pretty irrelevant when the following quotes from Bungie exist:

"Well, we have nothing more to talk about regarding your opportunity to spend extra money in Destiny"
"If I fired up a video right now and showed you the emotes you would throw money at the screen."
"Ever heard the old adage about trying to please everyone?"
"Destiny consumers are used to paying a premium for downloadable content"

That all speaks pretty clearly to a shitty attitude from Bungie towards its own customers. You're not wrong that gamers rile up easily, but this is a case where they should be riled up. It's one thing for them to dangle another carrot to try to get wallets to open again (hell, that's to be expected from Destiny at this point), but openly insulting the community while doing it is pretty fucking insane.

I'm still a pretty big fan of destiny, but they're just running it into the ground in classic, but accelerated Activision style IMO. I don't regret getting the season pass 'cus the moment-to-moment shooting is so fun, but the shooting itself doesn't make up for the severe lack of content. Me and everyone I play with has become so burnt-out from playing the same crap over, and I have absolutely no desire to ever play the game again.

It's like they opened up this cheap burrito stand that only sells one burrito, and that burrito is pretty good! So you stop by and get that same burrito every day at lunch for a month, then holy crap, why are you still getting this burrito? You're so sick of it, but woah! Now they'll add green chile to the burrito for twice the price, so what the heck, you still go there for another month. You hate yourself, the burrito guy is such an asshole, the burrito still tastes pretty good, but man you've eaten so many burritos, what the hell are you doing with your life? The burrito guy starts handing out flyers 'cus he's adding cheese to the burrito next month for 2 bucks more. Two bucks for cheese? "If I showed you a picture of this burrito covered in cheese, you'd throw money at the poster" he tells you. Fuck that guy and his now 10 dollar burrito. You never want to see another burrito like his for as long as you live.

i'm glad that i will be able to embody the Brand Traits of Red Bull in the upcoming Taken King Expansion for $40 + the cost of some red bull, which i will be throwing at the screen

@catsakimbo: It's not very nice to make burrito analogies during lunch time. Now I gotta go to a Taco place for lunch.

Hahahaha, well put.

Yeah I knew something big was changing internally back when they inexplicably fired Marty O'Donnell.

This is great; analogy par excellence!!!:

'It's like they opened up this cheap burrito stand that only sells one burrito, and that burrito is pretty good! So you stop by and get that same burrito every day at lunch for a month, then holy crap, why are you still getting this burrito? You're so sick of it, but woah! Now they'll add green chile to the burrito for twice the price, so what the heck, you still go there for another month. You hate yourself, the burrito guy is such an asshole, the burrito still tastes pretty good, but man you've eaten so many burritos, what the hell are you doing with your life? The burrito guy starts handing out flyers 'cus he's adding cheese to the burrito next month for 2 bucks more. Two bucks for cheese? "If I showed you a picture of this burrito covered in cheese, you'd throw money at the poster" he tells you. Fuck that guy and his now 10 dollar burrito. You never want to see another burrito like his for as long as you live.'

What? I really enjoyed the interview, and I'd like to see a lot more of that sort of journalism, but I still understand the fact that a company needs to take an official stance regarding every controversial decision they make.

I don't see that as "advocating for more barriers between press and developers." I see that as "hey, look at all those people in your community pissed about this thing. If you're asked about this thing, this is our official stance on this thing." If your company isn't doing that, or someone can't stick to that message, then the only people doing interviews should be people who are prepared to handle those questions.

Perhaps "PR is not that hard" is a little too hyperbolic, though. I'll give you that. Talking to your customers without making them mad isn't always easy.

@zevvion:

I certainly cannot, don't want to and don't think I did claim to speak for the destiny fan base or anyone other than myself. If that came across in my post, it certainly wasn't intentional. So for what it's worth, sorry if that came across Dick-ish, certainly wasn't my intention.

That said, I very much had the destiny bug when it first came out, and from memory had three characters in the mid to late 20s. Did my fair share of strikes, weeklys and dailys, and sadly (in my opinion due to the poor design choice not to have any form of raid matchmaking for those foolish or desperate enough to want to do raids from public lobbies) never got to see what by all accounts is the games best content. I think that in itself is a very valid criticism from someone who has played the game a lot, and didn't feel happy with my experience. I'm also confident that the issue of raid matchmaking hasn't been addressed.

On the subject of being condescending to current destiny players, I'll hold my hands up, I make the comments about being hooked on the game as someone who was, but on reflection I think I was stuck in a loop dailys and so forth, trying to get better gear in the hope of finding something in a game that I had already put a lot of time, and really hoped for something special from. When I stopped playing destiny, it wasn't with a feeling of "that was awesome and it's done now", I came away feeling that I had wasted time on something that on reflection had given me more frustration than enjoyment.

I make the comments about the game hooking players on the back of the devs comments on the E3 stream, I don't have exact quote but listening to what they said about "learning it was ok for people to stop playing your game" and how they got the balance of dopamine wrong etc, they knew exactly what they were doing. To an extent for that reason I think everyone who played destiny was either a victim of cynical psychology based game design/playing a very cleverly designed addictive game. (Delete as appropriate.

I am glad you enjoy destiny, and I say that with out any sarcasm or snark, but I didn't enjoy the game that shipped on launch. I played it regularly up until the first DLC was announced and so I honestly feel it's slightly unfair of you to write me off as a sort of gaming hipster, desperate to hate the popular games. I'm not that guy, honestly. I haven't played the most recent content because I'm not willing to spend more money on a game I have played a lot of, and felt let down by. That,I think is where I struggle with your assertion about "liking what destiny has become". It's great that you do but to find out what it became I need to put more money into a game that I have big issues with. Bungie didn't really "fix" destiny, they bolted things on at extra cost.

I think destiny is a bit like going out for a meal and ordering a steak, which seems nice at first but has a horrible after taste. When you complain about it, you are told that the chef has made a new sauce, and the sommelier has found a wine that complements it they make it taste great ....... But you have to pay extra for them. I'm not going to get extra things to make the original steak better because for the money I paid, I expected a nice steak.

On ME3, hey I had fun with it. It had its faults but all in all I felt I got more than my money's worth for the 40 pounds I paid for it. They single player was a full game in of itself, and the multiplayer was a nice cherry on the cake, I never bought a single of the packs for weapons and character and was able to get all of the characters and weapons I wanted, including a rank 10 black widow.

Full disclosure, I was in university at the time and had waaaaay more free time than I do now so perhaps that's the difference. Who knows.

Any way, you guys continue to enjoy destiny, I'll continue to be disappointed by it. If it helps I'm sad I don't like it, I wanted to like it. That's why I put so much bloody time into it.

@zevvion: I give you a lot of credit for wading into this thread and defending something you feel strongly about. It's obvious you're passionate about Destiny and that's rad. If you feel like you're being insulted by people hating on the game, I maybe just wouldn't read any of this. Saying "Destiny is manipulative" doesn't necessarily say you're an easily manipulated fool. You could be playing for any number of reasons. We're always talking in broad strokes, and there are always different perspectives.

As for me, I WISH I didn't follow Destiny lol. Truth is, I follow it enough to write congressional report on it. Even if I hate what Bungie has become, I still think it's one of the most fascinating meta-stories in gaming. I think the low point was Dark Below from a content and design perspective, with the high point being House of Wolves. That's a lot of fluctuation in a span of one year. I'm holding out hope that Destiny will slowly start coming around to being a "normal" game. Less mobile psychology and more fun shooting and rad abilities. I feel like this first iteration just isn't technically capable of changing or improving THAT much, and we will need to wait for a sequel to see the full blossoming of a lot of the better ideas.

The sharpest criticism I have is for how insulated and myopic Bungie appears to have been during the extended Destiny development cycle. There are a stunning amount of design choices in Destiny that are just badly conceived. For instance: Destiny is a social game, with no social system. Bungie has had the luxury of standing firm on their "No Matchmaking" stance only because third parties have stepped up and created web apps to allow players to meet eachother. Once you build a friends list, you're cooking. But until then? Or players that don't know/want to do that? The game itself doesn't offer you any tools besides the cumbersome PSN/Live interfaces. That's just poor design.

An item based game with an item storage system so poorly engineered that storage space is limited by old gen hardware? Bummer somebody didn't think about that when they were mocking this stuff up. Poor design.

There are instances of this stuff big and small, and I do give a lot of credit to the team for working around the Light Level issue. They made old raids/gear permanently relevant with a GOOD design choice.

But essentially, a lot this feels like a beta test for a real game that will come out soon. Which makes the various collectors editions and expansions seem gross. Bungie is still sorting out MMO101 design, and charging customers a LOT of money to do it.

And no, it isn't the best supported game of all time. It's A supported game. The shades of grey you want to argue within that are fair and subjective, but it's not some city on a hill. I don't want to offend you by stating that, but let's keep it real.

Wow that Red Bull Campaign is fuuuuucking gross.

I've tried to make my peace with Destiny and ignore it, but holy fuck they keep waving their hands in the air screaming "Look how shitty THIS is!"

The issue with the Red Bull thing isn't that it is there, as ridiculous as it is and worthy of contempt on its own, but rather that they're locking content away in a game that is starved of content.

You even get others jumping in on taking the piss. It is like the PR people are asleep at the wheel.

I honestly have no problem with this interview - it basically reads like Bungie being 100% honest. Yeah, they're going to charge you a lot of money. No, that's not gonna change. Yeah, they know that people still playing Destiny will buy it pretty much whatever they do. Yes, you will have to buy the same shit again to get the emotes, because you know you want those emotes. You're already doing their digital cocaine - they don't have to be nice to you anymore to get you to try it - you're hooked.

My problem with Destiny is that it never panned out to be what they said it would before it launched. They've really worked on that actively, and gotten to a place that's good enough for some, which is great for everyone involved. And I stopped playing it. So that problem is solved.

Shouldn't we be glad that they've decided to be straight-up? Call it what you want, but at least it's honest.

Of course, if Bungie ever wants me, personally, to buy one of their games again, they're almost certainly shit out of luck. But hey - they seem perfectly happy with the customers they're cultivating. Good for them.

@catsakimbo: I'll make my own burrito! With blackjack, and hookers! Wait, what were we talking about?

@zevvion

I've played destiny for probably over 300 hours. I've had a lot of fun with it as well. I'm not angry because of the dumb emotes. I'm angry because I feel like Bungie has repeatedly had poor communication with the fans. I have 3 characters that are 32, 32 and 34. I keep coming back because Destiny is great, but I feel like I keep being disrespected with how my time has been spent overall.

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=13090

Update from Deej and Luke Smith on the collectors edition.

I don't know what needs to happen for them to realise they have a bad game on their hands and they need to fix it before asking people for more money.

So uh, the something better is a few cosmetic items that look like the billboard for a strip club near the airport.

With that $20 news, it now means that to get EVERYTHING, the new expansion will cost you around $65 plus tax.

That's...something. For something that will assuredly not be a full game's worth of content. People do have a right to be pissed now.

I dont really understand the uproar. CoD players willingly pay $60 a year for minor tweaks to the game and just because it has a new title no one says boo.

@squidc00kie: I don't think that's a true statement at. CoD has been consistently booed for that.

What are you actually getting for that $20 because it sure does not look like a lot.

Yeah, I'm even more confused with their editions post. GJ Bungie. Or maybe I'm legitimately baffled that they're charging $20 for things that are IN NO REALITY worth 20 bucks. And this is coming from someone that spends $100 on Forza every year.

This has to be the most masterful troll I have ever seen a game studio pull. "Oh, you're anxious about those emotes huh? You need those emotes? You're entitled to those emotes! You'd throw money at the screen if you could, right? Well, now you can! 20 bucks for this worthless junk you said was so important. Enjoy!"

I didn't like Destiny that much and I haven't purchased anything past the base game, nor do I have any plans to. But I think this weird, condescending messaging Bungie has had from the start has now flipped over to comedy gold for me. I can't wait to hear what they say next!

You get everything that comes in the digital collector's edition that is also 20 bucks more than the retail version. Except now it's available to everyone. I know it won't keep people from bitching but at least we can now put all of our time and rage back into Batman.

Move along nothing to see here now.

$20 'bundle' for cosmetic goodies for day one players. How generous. Yeah, Bungie/Acti really listening to their fans here. :/

Starting to feel as though Luke Smith is just caught in the middle though. No one above those guys gives much of a shit apparently.

Well... I guess at least everyone's now paying the same for those shaders and emotes. I could think of worse solutions, though I could most assuredly think of some better ones, too.

So, if I read that update right, they're throwing "day one" players a bone by allowing them to purchase the emotes a la carte for $20 and giving them some space marine dolly dress-up gear new players "can't get". The best part is that they're encouraging the day one people now to taunt new players about the gear they can't get, probably so Bungie can later try to sell the day one gear to new players. This is pretty amazing. It's Cartmanland come to life.

@zirilius: Probably because it's not good value?

Just saw Jeff's take on the whole thing as well: http://jeff.zone/post/122398946866/bungie-is-going-to-let-destiny-players-pay-20-for

@squidc00kie:

I've never really engaged with COD, just zombies at friends houses or borrowing a copy of the game to run through the single player campaign here and there so don't know enough about it to be angry.

I have added the new PS4 Destiny bundle into my cart about five times now, and every time i go to the check out i can't pull the trigger because i don't know if its worth it even though the $80 price tag is a great value. You all make valid points for the games faults and pluses. And whats worse destiny on the surface should be every thing i want from a game but i have played all three classes in the PS4 demo and i am still filled with indecision about this game. And i am also worried i missed the window to be part of the larger community.

And if people want some context in regards to Luke smith google "luke smith and 1up"