Usually I don't get worked up about things like these. I understand people need to earn a buck and DLC will exist for those who wish to purchase it. The reason why $99 microtransaction DLC's in full retail games never bothered me was because all of it was always optional. Abstergo credits and such were just shortcuts. I never felt shortchanged for not purchasing DLC for a full game.

What Bungie did with Destiny's new DLC seems unethical to me on many levels. I've talked about this in several places so I'll just copy and paste this next part from another thread.

What is absolutely insane and what no one from the games press seems to be talking about is that instead of making completely new playlists for people with the DLC - it replaces existing content. So for instance (as is the case this week) if the Weekly Strike and the Nightfall Strike are both taking place on DLC missions then people without the DLC basically don't get to do a weekly or nightfall strike for the entire week. Essentially if you didn't buy the new DLC, you are getting blocked off from content that was part of the base game for which you've already paid. They've reduced the amount of content available to you if you didn't buy into their "additional" content.

IF you're a high level Destiny player then Weekly and Nightfall strikes are essential. The nightfall gives you bonus XP as well as a chance at exotic drops while the Weekly heroic strike will net you 9 strange coins which are used to purchase exotics from a vendor that appears once a week.

But forget about that for a second. The bigger issue at hand is that up until the Dark Below was released I was doing weekly and nightfall strikes as part of the base game I purchased. Now, every once in a while when those DLC maps get put into rotation I will get blocked off from doing them. I will suddenly not have access to parts of the game I've paid for.

I really think this is something that @patrickklepek should be writing about since there were articles covering the Unity chests - except in this case it's actual core content that is blocked off unless you give them more money - core content that you already paid for.

Yeah, it's straight bullshit. Such is the nature of AAA games nowadays, they're gonna try to suck every nickel and dime out of you that they can.

It's more than bullshit, it's taking something AWAY from you because you didn't give them more money.

They've expanded the game at the late-game portion. You're no longer playing the complete game. Shitty, but I don't know that it's unethical.

That is mind boggling. So glad I didn't buy in to this Destiny nonsense, even the people who say they love it almost seem more desperate to convince themselves it's good more than anything else.

They shouldn't have done that.

I'm still glad I stopped playing this game. It's abusive.

Why would expanding the game necessitate the blocking of previous content? How come the game isn't smart enough to know that if you don't own the DLC it just loads a regular strike for you? There is absolutely no reason for why it would work this way. The people who buy the DLC are doing so to get something extra. So how come the people who have the base version are getting less now?

While I get that the strikes are a key part of playing the endgame, I think devs have the right to mess around with weekly events. I can see how it's unfortunate that now every 2-4 weeks (whatever the rotation ends up being), non-DLC players will just have to skip a Weekly Strike/Nightfall Strike, but hey man, it happens.

So yeah, the regular strikes are "part of the game you've paid for", but they were time limited and not accessible whenever, so you were already beholden to Bungie's arbitrary schedule. And you didn't enter into a contract with Bungie that the schedule was always going to be the same as when it launched. I've seen games alter the structure/timing of their "limited time events" multiple times, whether to increase player retention, bring more players back to the game by making it more convenient, or just to encourage more microtransactions. It happens, and online games are not written in stone. They get massaged for business reasons, and I've kind of accepted that that's the reality of persistent online games at this point.

If they removed the original strikes entirely forever, that would be unethical. What they're doing now is a business move that maybe convinces more people to buy the DLC. If you don't like their business practices, don't support the game anymore.

I had fun with it up to Level 20 but the grind past that is awful.

It's a very well produced game and if there were more missions that were better it could have been fantastic.

Hey, you're not gonna get any argument from me.

Though I will say one thing in Patrick's defense of him not being on top of it, he did record like 20 hours of podcasts the last couple days.

To be fair, being kicked out of playing Strike at times since the playlists prioritize the DLC which you need to pay for it to own is pretty shady. This could have been easily handled by having a different, separate playlist during the launch of the DLC and they could still patch it in later but as of now they are only inconveniencing the other people who also own the game but didn't buy the DLC and that really sucks.

This is how MMOs have always done it.

I don't know if unethical is the right word, but it's super shitty no matter how you look at it. There should be an option to choose between doing a Dark Below Strike or a regular Strike when you run the Weekly or Nightfall. They'd have to lock you into one or the other once you choose to stop people from doubling up, but I can't imagine that's an especially tricky engineering problem.

@bisonhero: Strikes were not time limited, they are always there. If things like the Iron Banner or the Queens event were somehow rotated to only use DLC content well that sucks but it's a special event. Weekly heroic strikes and weekly nightfall strikes were there as part of the base package. They weren't some ethereal special things they did once in a while.

I've said "it's just business" to many things in the past. I get where you're coming from. But this isn't such a case. This is something different entirely. The game has been out for 3 months and it's already received DLC to "massage" out the common complaint of not enough content. Now if you don't own the DLC you will be getting even less content than you started with.

I can see why one would be upset about this kind of "mis-match configuration" but it is something MMO players know about. It is a partially a "push" and partially a "pull" to do it this way.

Ultimately one shouldn't play MMOs like Destiny if they don't want to deal with MMO-like things just like this.

I totally understand and do agree that this is a pretty shitty thing for Bungie to do. However you have to ask just how many people it affects? The vast majority of players who still actively do the weekly activities are likely going to buy the DLC. I get that there are going to be some users who don't buy the dlc but continue to play the weekly stuff but I just wonder what percentage of the user base is that?

Man that is real shitty. I'm so glad that I stopped playing Destiny even more now. I definitely won't be buying anymore games from Bungie from now on.

It's about ethics in Destiny.

Eh... If you're still doing strikes or even the raid and you bought the game months ago you should probably buy that DLC. Seriously, weeklies and nightfalls got old kinda fast. I can't see an argument for grinding the same content for the hundredth time instead of picking up the new content. Destiny has been dead for weeks, if you're still suffering through it you should either do something better with your time or buy that DLC to get new content.

It really sucks if you bought the game recently but why would you do that anyway?

As I said in the other thread I kinda agree with this. I don't think I feel quite as strongly as you do, but it does bother me. The Nightfall and the Weekly Heroic are probably #2 and #3 on the important events to do each week (after the Raid). Locking people out of it completely because they didn't get the DLC week one seems kinda ridiculous. If you want to give a bonus to the players who paid more, that's fine, but don't take away from the ones who didn't.

I know people who are getting the DLC content for Christmas, and they've been left with half of the major weekly content gone for this week as a result. What happens if Xur ends up selling one of the top Exotics this weekend and a bunch of people miss out on it because they couldn't earn the Strange Coins this week? That seems like a shady way to upsell people on your content.

Honestly I think if you're big into Destiny (specifically the Raid content) then the value isn't bad - although that will obviously vary based on personal opinion - but that should be how you sell players. Maybe let them play that new strike this week if they want to do the weekly - then use that as a way to upsell people, rather than making them feel left out and forced into buying the content.

Yeah, that's annoying, but it's not really unethical. They could've just made the weekly strikes for people without the DLC the same as before, but they're including it all in a general pool which means that for some weeks you won't be able to get your weekly bullshit. Not quite the same as permanently taking away something you payed for.

What.

I can't tell if you're serious. I'd like to think you're not, but then here I am in a thread where someone's calling not having a shot occasionally at getting some XP and exotic loot unethical.

I got really addicted to Destiny I put a ton of hours into it. Though when I talked about the game, I had almost nothing good to say about it. I pretty much did everything there was to do, and had most the exotic items. That finally got me to quit playing. The DLC just wasnt worth it to me. I was basically paying 20$ for a raid, and some new gear. That just didnt cut it, so I sold the game, and have no regrets in doing so. I could go on, and rant about all the BS lies from the PR pre launch, and what we ended up with as a game, but w/e. Long story short Bungie lost a huge amount of respect from me, and I have no interest in playing or supporting Destiny.

It turns out that a game who's central appeal is addiction and repetition is attempting to extort extra money from you. Who'd have guessed? If enough people don't buy this stuff and actually stop playing Destiny then maybe Bungie will do a better job in Destiny 2. But hey, people still pay monthly for WoW and that game gets a tiny bit of new content every year. Turns out that addiction and social pressure can keep people playing and paying for the same content for a decade. I don't personally understand getting into a game that is so transparently a Skinner Box, but this sort of exploitative shit is going to keep happening until we put our collective feet down.

@confusedowl said:

To be fair, we don't know how much of this can be pinned on Bungie business guys, and how much can be pinned on Activision business guys. And I dunno, the kinda ramshackle nature of the mission design and threadbare story suggest Bungie was either in way over their heads and mismanaged their time and just never had the time to polish those sections, or there was some weird publisher interference from Activision where they just demanded the game ship on time, even if it meant cutting a bunch of story/a bunch of missions that actually had more interesting set pieces or mechanics or whatever because they were only half done or something.

My point is, this is probably only partially Bungie's fault, so don't write them off forever. But Bungie is stuck with Activision and Destiny for at least like 3-4 years, and I think the only way they get out early is if Destiny 2 tanks ridiculously hard and absolutely nobody buys it. So the two best case scenarios are that happens and Destiny is canned, or Destiny 2 is actually a revelation of online FPS gameplay and is awesome. The worst case scenario is if Destiny 2 is just Destiny 1 but with slightly better missions and voice actors that give more of a shit than Peter Dinklage.

yea its a shit move for them to do. at least give the option for regular folks to play weekly's and nightfall's without interruption. and recognize when players have the expansion pack and adjust the weekly's and nightfalls for specifically those players.

played through that content, its better than a lot of whats in the core game, but man its just still so plain.....i guess i believed in bungie too much. as this game to me just isnt what they promised at all and really is one of the more disappointing games in a while.

In my view this is about as ethical as charging a 14.95 monthly fee or whatever for an MMO, after you buy the boxed game (or expansion) for sixty bucks at retail

They [Bungie] never hid the fact that the game was going to progress through DLC, and sequels, as part of their ten year plan. Always seemed shaky and weird to me but seems like it paid off, at least short term, for them and Activision

I don't play Destiny, never have never will, but it's all people talk about nowadays so there you go, my opinion is that anyone who bought into Destiny tacitly agreed to this. As I have, too, with the countless MMO's I've tried/played over the years, this is just how it goes

I don't think 'unethical' is the term that applies here.

It's been pretty clear all along what sales model Destiny was going to use and what they would charge for the game over time. You can make the greater argument that 'Capitalism' is inherently unethical, but that's not really for discussion here.

They announced the game, the DLC plan along with costs months before the game was released. Like any other MMO when new content is release the old content becomes garbage you upgrade or you get left behind.

Unethical != I'm Sad

I'd rather they not, I'd love to not hear anything about Destiny til the sequel(s). It's an incredibly shallow game, trying to mask itself as having depth. Charging 20$ for the amount of content in this pack is absurd already, but to take away some of what little content there actually is in the base game is a exercise in madness.

I'll never get what people see in Destiny. To me, it was an utterly forgettable experience. Bungie had some potential here with the universe they created, but made the wrong move at every possible decision. They have shown themselves completely deaf, dumb and blind to the art of developing a "MMO-lite" experience, making themselves come off as completely incompetent at making a game worth sticking with.

I don't see myself buying any the 3-4 sequels they are planning. They are so far behind at this point, content wise, that it is seemingly impossible for them to catch up. They will forever be stuck in "Not enough content in this thing but the man behind me keeps prodding me with a fire iron so we gotta ship this thing" limbo.

Yea, this isn't unethical. It's no different from BF premium getting a 2 week head start on new maps. Before i bought it, i was kicked when those maps came up.

Unethical, no. Shitty, yes.

"Oh boy, oh boy can't wait for Destiny 2! Maybe the speaker will find new ways to tell us how he doesn't have time to tell us why the fuck we were or are shooting our enemies!"

Well I'm done with Bungie. Every bit of respect I had for them has been completely diminished and destroyed. It's not just Destiny, I probably won't buy anything from them for a very long time. Or at least until they figure out a way to get their heads out their asses. Bungie use to care about it's fans, not they only focus on sucking the money right out of you.

Initially, while shallow as hell, Destiny was at least fun, gameplay wise, but now they shoot themselves in the leg by tainting even that. They are basically screwing you over for scraps, which is absolutely pathetic. This is a new low, and I am extremely happy that I stopped playing.

Simple solution: Stop playing Destiny. I sure as hell did!

If Destiny is an MMO, it won't have a sequel. Sequel to MMO systems are killers because they split the base and make both games smaller. If Bungie knows anything about the market, they will never think about doing a Destiny 2.

You know what? Tough luck. I'm actually glad bungie is doing this. Too often DLC isn't integrated in the main game in a way that is meaningful often relegated to being put over it its own separate playlists or areas specifically for DLC. THAT is bullshit. They are actually making this content part of the overall experience in a meaningful way and I for one applaud them for that.

All DLC is technically unethical if you think about it from a perspective of "they held this content back from the full game so they could charge money for it later." The weeklys are their featured events. Are you honestly shocked that these now feature the DLC content? For the record, I'm not really defending what they're doing. In fact, I think it's kinda bullshit. Except the whole game is this same kind of bullshit. So....yeah. If you're still wanting to spend hours and hours doing raids at this point, acting like $20 DLC that they're pushing is some outrageous, unacceptable thing falls pretty flat.

Much of the Destiny community has battered women syndrome, and it's really old. Destiny is unapologetically abusive and exploitative. It is not at all surprising the DLC is as well. The only difference here is that instead of asking you to spend your time, they're now asking you to spend more money. You don't have to stay with Destiny. Destiny will smack you around again. However, if you choose to stay despite knowing this, don't keep complaining every time Destiny is Destiny.

...and once again a bunch of comments show Destiny is probably an okay MMO because the haters who hate it talk like it is the "worst thing ever" and that means it must be a pretty solid MMO. :)

Exactly. Like, welcome to MMO game design.

I swear Bungie has done this before with one of the later Halo titles (Reach maybe?) and it seemed like no one cared back then either.

I don't really like the idea that you are basically being taxed to keep existing functionality.

People making the MMO argument: does Blizzard lock you out of content after releasing an expansion to WoW? I'm pretty sure I can install the base WoW game without any expansions and still have access to the same, if not more, content that I could when it was first released.

@extomar: Being a Wow veteran, I think Destiny is a rather poor mmo. People keep saying that forcing players to buy content by locking them out of the things is an mmo thing, but it's not. If I only have the base game of WoW some how, I can still play all of the content up to level 60. Anything in that base game I can play. Plus, the grind in wow is not nearly as bad as Destiny's.

The nightfall/weekly thing really doesn't seem like a big deal. They'll be back for everyone next week and probably for at least 4 weeks after that, and it's something you'd knock out in under an hour anyway.

In fact, I bet more people would be upset if they didn't include the new strike in the rotation. The DLC is already really thin on content for the up to 20 buck cost of it, even thinner on xbox. It'd be a huge bummer if they didn't include the new strike alongside the others in the weekly rotations.

I guess it's kind of a no-win situation when the game starts out with too-little content and you have to pay to add more.

You understand this is a 10 year minimum franchise, correct? They have been working on Destiny 2 the very minute the first one came out. This thing isn't an MMO, nor did it ever claim to be. By Bungie's own words it is a "shared-world shooter". It has a lot of the horrible content padding that most MMOs have (Reputation grinding, running the same content over again, etc.), but none of the great aspects of an MMO, such as what that first letter stands for, "Massive". There is nothing massive about Destiny. The only thing massive about Destiny, for me, is how much of a disappointment it is.

It was Halo 3. Basically every multiplayer playlist save for two were locked behind a paywall.

This practice is really lame, by the way. You could totally feel something like this coming, though. Destiny is structured in such a way that it'd almost be more surprising if this didn't happen.

@japanesebuffalo: All the base content in Destiny is still available. No strikes were taken away, it just looks like that once every month and a half they won't be able to participate in a weekly event.

If this really affects that many people I wouldn't be surprised if Bungie fixed this, but as has been said before who's still playing this game to the degree of doing the weekly's and doesn't have the expansion?

@sodapop7: You still can't do the event. In a game lacking so much content and then charging 20 dollars for an "expansion" , locking away content is still bullshit.

They'll make a Destiny 2. If they're talking about ten years of Destiny then there'll be a Destiny 2. Probably because Activision will make or them or maybe because they don't know how to make an mmo.

@humanity: I don't know, I think any high level Destiny players that you describe will already be buying the DLC. The Daily/Weekly stuff aren't stopping you from doing anything, you are just being cut off from bonuses like strange coins or whatever, which are not essential to the base game. If anything I would be complaining about what sounds like a pretty light piece of DLC costing 20 when it should cost 10.

It is just for the opening week. I'm sure they will get back to doing random strikes for their weekly content next week. I don't see a problem with them promoting their new stuff for a week. I'm actually liking the changes they made and for the $35/2, I think they added some decent content and made some smart changes. I never went into Destiny thinking I could play vanilla forever, that's not how it works in MMO type games. New content comes along and pretty much obsoletes the old stuff. Maybe its because I've been accustomed to MMOs for years, that this doesn't seem that out of line.

ETHICS!!!!!

Adding DLC for multiplayer focused games is always going to suck. Either the people that buy the DLC are going to be stuck in their own little walled off garden of playlists that only include the DLC content or the people that don't buy the DLC are going to locked out of some activities/playlists, it sucks either way.

There's no right answer, but I remember back during Halo 3 I was glad that the DLC was actually integrated into the normal rotation and ranked playlists as opposed to be stuck in some inconsequential DLC playlist. I get that it sucks for those that don't buy it, but it would suck even more to actually spend money on something and be unable to actually get use of it in a meaningful way.

As for Destiny, the weeklies and Nightfall are second only to raids in terms of the endgame. The DLC would be an even worse value than it already is if the new strike wasn't capable of being the featured weekly strike. Just look at the way all the PS4 only content is implemented (strike is never nightfall, xur never sells the exclusive weapons) for an example of how meaningless extra content is if it isn't actually fully implemented into the game.That PS4 strike may as well not even exist since it's never a nightfall, which is all the matters for strikes when you get to a certain point in the endgame. If the DLC strike was in a similar position it would be just as meaningless (the new PS4 only one already is), which would suck after spending money on it.

It's a no win situation, but I don't know, I guess it's better the people who haven't spent any additional money are the ones getting slightly inconvenienced once every six weeks as opposed to the people that did spend another $20 not being able to actually use their new content in a meaningful way.

And this is why I wont give them money anymore for that game. Not enough content I feel for 60$+ in the first place and not enough content to warrant another 15$ each dlc. Ill wait till it goes on sale possibly sometime in the far future.

500 MILLION DOLLARS!