Sounds like you might have to actually pay for dungeons in the future

That's according to this response from a D2 CM on Reddit:

Hey everyone. We’ve seen some debate around the new dungeon content and wanted to clarify how it will be delivered next year.

If you get the Digital Deluxe Edition of The Witch Queen you will receive the expansion, all four Seasons for the next year, and the two Dungeons. If you get the Standard Edition, you can still upgrade to the Deluxe Edition to get the dungeons later. We will also be offering a separate way for you to purchase the Dungeons in the future, but they will not be included in the Season passes.

We will share more info on this closer to when this content is set to go live.

Yowza. Hiding actual in-game content behind a "deluxe edition" is pretty scummy, to be honest. I'm past my Destiny 2 phase for the most part but this is a pretty bizarre decision to make.

That's ridiculous, but typical for them these days. Gotta make up for not having that MS/Activision money I guess. Bungie makes a lot of bizarre decisions these days. For instance being locked out of crossplay for 90 days if you need to switch an account. I was gonna play it on Game Pass but I had the wrong Xbox account attached and now I am locked out for 90 days because apparently its for security reasons. I think EA does something similar as well. I'm all for security but 90 days is obnoxious and there is no way around it. Suffice to say I doubt I'll be returning in 3 months. Geez.

Also reminds me of EA putting the Fifa next gen upgrades behind a 40 dollar extra Deluxe Edition.

This is typical, dating back to when they locked daily strikes behind a paywall if you didn’t buy the newest expansion leaving you with nothing to do.

I'm so glad I stopped playing this game after... whatever the Moon expansion was and never went back. I really like playing Destiny and it could very well have been my "forever game" but I'm pretty sure I spent more on Destiny 2 than any other game I've ever bought and got the least from it in comparison. I thought abandoning Activistion would make this stuff better, not worse.

Gee @rorie, it sounds like you have some kind of problem with paying for an expansion, paying for the dungeons for the seasons related to that expansion as a separate purchase, and then having both the expansion and those dungeons put into the "vault" and made unplayable in a couple years. I don't understand why anyone would object to any part of that.

Destiny 2 might be worth it if all you play is Destiny 2 but if you like to play a bunch of different games it may well be the worst deal in gaming, especially if you bought the base game back before it went F2P.

I play a half dozen different games that are directly predatory and I still see Bungie announcements and wince.

You know, I never thought I would see a model that made monthly subscription fee seem like a better option. Congratulations, Bungie! You did it!

I really enjoy D2, hell I bought the 30th dungeon (stupid I know), but if this is the pricing going forward then I might be out. Could easily see Bungie selling raids separately at this pace.

Then after you pay for your dungeon, you get it taken away from you in a few years!

Greed, greed never changes.

Destiny 2 (like many live service games) is a trainwreck if it's not the only game you play.

I got suckered into buying Forsaken and Shadowkeep when they went on sale around the start of 2021 and now I'm on a timer to play them before they get "vaulted"; just like I was on a timer to play the base game content before that got vaulted around a year prior.

I wonder what @hestilllives19 and @zevvion are up to these days.

As someone that never stopped playing and has 7000 hours in the game, I really don't care. I can however see how someone who just wants to pop in and out wouldn't like this.

@rorie: will issue a correction matt that it is not locked behind the deluxe edition in the response cosmo said that there will be a way to buy the dungeons spreatly from the deluxe edition later on just like there will be a way to upgrade to the DX if you just buy the standard version now

@facelessvixen: Lives rarely plays right now cause he is busy with work, I see zev on every now and then though more than lives

@uppercaseccc: I might be mistaken, but it sounds like until the later option is available, the dungeons are locked behind the deluxe edition.

@eccentrix: The dungeons aren't releasing with Witch Queen, they are coming "later in year 5."

*laughs in MMO player*

LMAO, this is incredibly shitty and a bad way to monetize content. I feel the same way that I felt when I first read about the content "vault."

As someone who plays daily with thousands of hours in: this isn’t nearly as bad as people make it out to be. They told us when they announced the witch queen this would be the case, and the cost ends up being the exact same as the model we have now except the dungeon content is tied to upgrading to the “deluxe edition” which is the year of seasonal content, rather than tied directly to the expansion instead.

This is a huge freak out over nothing, mostly from people who don’t play and don’t know that Bungie is doing extremely okay for themselves, have built a strong community relation and are now in an extremely rapid expansion of their studio team.

The 30th anniversary stuff just seems like a bonus, which I get why it would be a separate cost.

The Witch Queen will have its own raid and there’s speculation where they will bring back another raid (probably King’s Fall) next year also. All of that stuff will probably be tied to Witch Queen and the seasons. (Can’t remember if Vault was a strict season pass thing or how that worked)

I don’t think this is necessary that big of a deal, but I say this with the assumption that this is a one off. If Lightfall launched with a similar thing, that’s a trend, and a pretty crappy one at that. Destiny kind of bounces around between having a lot of engaging stuff and events that I shrug off due to a lack of content or a lack of desire of repeating something for the next month. If they get in a model of having people regularly pay for season passes and then bonus end game stuff, that sucks.

I paid for the deluxe version since I felt like I got more than my money’s worth out of the Beyond Light stuff, but I know that may be a hard sell for people. Again, kind of want to see if they try something similar down the line.

Great that they're being very successful, but that doesn't mean that players can't be upset with how the dev's decisions impact their experience. Players have a vested interest that the companies they enjoy do well and can keep making the content that they enjoy. But that's pretty much where the line is drawn; Players shouldn't have look through every decision through the lens of whether it might be good for the company's bottom line.

And sure, on a general gamingsite, you'll find a bunch of people react to news to a game that they don't play. But it's not like it's hard to find plenty of Destiny players that are critical about this too. Pretty sure this story about a fairly old game wouldn't even make it here , if not for the playerbase making enough of a wave to get noticed.

As someone who hasn't played Destiny in a long time, stuff like this makes me extremely glad I dropped the game when I did. I stopped playing when they announced vaulting, which to me felt like them taking away content that I'd already paid for and still actively played.

I just don't understand the strategy going on here. I wonder if the bean-counters at Bungie understand just how difficult this crap makes it to attract new players? Between having 20 different "editions" of new content and vaulting, people who are maybe thinking about making a purchase have no idea what they would be getting for their money or what they need to buy to get the content they want.

@eccentrix: you are mistaken because locked implies that the only way to get them is to buy the DX edition which is false as they will be able to be purchased later a locked item is the pre-order ghost shell and emblem cause there will be no outher way to get that outher than pre-ordering

@uppercaseccc: Is that a definition specific to this type of thing? Normally something that's locked can be unlocked, no permanent seal implied.

Some of my friends occasionally ask me where to start, and I honestly have no idea. I never stopped playing, so I don't know how the onboarding works now. Bungie has been straddling the line between the hardcore and casual players, while simultaneously straddling the line between getting new people in and keeping the old happy. I kind of wish they would give up and just go all the way towards those of us who never gave it up, but how long could that last?

did they ever introduce any other enemies

Truly new factions? No, it wouldn't make sense in the lore, at least not until the actual darkness shows up, probably in the Lightfall expansion.

New enemy units? Tons. Every existing faction has had a bunch of new unit types added over the years, as well as the Taken and Scorn, which are new-ish factions based on the existing ones that have entirely unique units (gameplay wise) from the factions they're based on.

This dungeon situation is yet another example of Bungie having a PR blunder that, when you really dig deep into the specifics isn't that bad, but just appears so bad and anti-consumer that it doesn't matter if it's not a big deal when you get into the details.

The $80 for the deluxe edition is the same price as buying the expansion and seasons individually, so when it's all said and done you don't really have to pay more for the dungeons, you just have to pay it all at once. That still doesn't change the fact that it looks bad and just creates yet another PR mess that makes Bungie look greedy and creates a bad feeling for players/potential players.

The counter argument is of course that there will be three dungeons released over the next year-ish and prior to this there have only been three dungeons in total since 2018. Going from getting one dungeon every 15 months or so to 3 dungeons in about a year is a pretty big jump, and I know a lot people that love the endgame probably would be willing to pay to get dungeons and raids more frequently.

Of course, rather than coming and saying that they've ramped up production of endgame content and that costs money so there will be a corresponding price, they have this confusing and obfuscated price increase, but not really if you pay for everything up front, that just pissed off basically everyone.

So my final takeaway is not so much that this is a terrible and unwarranted price increase, but just another example of Bungie's poor communication and ill advised decision making that almost seemed designed to both sound worse than it actually is and cause as much controversy and ire among players as possible.

It's rough both ways. I have a coworker who's trying to get back into gaming and his friends recommended Destiny 2, but he gave it about 3 days before he came into work and said it was just too much too often, he had no idea what to do and his friends could never really figure out what he should do as a new player, either. He could've done the campaigns that are still available, but it wasn't very fun with his friends who were much higher level and had all the cool gear while he was rocking greens and blues.

Or in my case, as someone who's played both Destiny and Destiny 2 heavily, it was wild to boot the game up a little over a month ago to test it out on PS5 and immediately be thrust into whatever the story with Mara Sov and not-quite-Osiris was for a handful of missions in a row, then get dumped into whatever the new area was (H.E.L.M.?) with no clear idea of who I was supposed to talk to or what I was supposed to do. It was almost like the game assumed Tower knowledge would carry over but...nah, son. I wandered around for a while and everyone I stumbled into had some new type of challenge or currency to offer, and while I'm quite sure it would've been as easy as looking at the map and looking for the familiar sigils to get going on some stuff I was familiar/comfortable with, I just realized how much of an investment getting back into Destiny 2 was going to be (especially without owning Beyond Light and the then-current season well underway) and logged off.

Plus, that game takes up a lot of hard drive space these days. It sure does run fucking awesome on that PS5, though.

@nodima: Destiny is a terrible game to return to not only is it full on icon vomit with choice paralysis, but because they often raise the level cap with each expansion just playing throught the old content feels like a pointless endeavour.

Yikes, imagine paying devs for content. Oof.

As someone who is currently playing Destiny 2 and have been playing it the whole year, this is no surprise. I've taken advantage of a sale earlier in the year which allowed me to purchase the new DLC with the yearly seasons battle pass for a decent price. I'll wait and do the same in the future, but people need to get used to the nickel and dime tactics by these developers. People had a chance to stop it when it got started, but they didn't and now its starting to become a mainstream thing, just like $70 dollar games and so on. Microtransactions used to be a big thing, but because of the backlash in recent years, developers are trying their best not to use that model. Its all about what the people will tolerate at the end of the day. If there is enough of a backlash against making dungeons separate content, then they won't do it, or at least they won't do it for long. Personally, It's no big deal. Those things require fireteams and the like, and even though I'm part of a clan, I don't have personal fireteam friends to do raids, dungeons, and very difficult strikes with. I play solo most of the time.

At the end of the day Vaulting content is still my number one issue with how Destiny is managed. On its own I'm not vehemently opposed to something like this but all of their choices mix together in an unpleasant way for me.

@ll_exile_ll: I honestly think this is the bigger issue, because all of these things are no where near as bad as people claim it is. The Vaulting feels like a non-starter: When you go into base, there's a computer that is literally there to hold old campaign levels. It's clearly obvious that that's where they're going to dump old campaigns for you to go back to at your leisure.

The lack of transparency that goes into how Destiny is made is a problem, because there's a misunderstanding on how these games are made. Which leads to a public to assume the worse and causes a fucking headache for all involved. Because I get why they're doing it--they're just not doing a good job of saying those reasons.

@kemuri07: I think vaulting is a massive problem inherent in Destiny's design or I should say a deliberate choice, none of the old content is worth playing after the light cap is raised for the latest expansion.

This sounds completely unsurprising, I love the art of Destiny and the shooting feels great but everything else about it is absolutely awful, wish they would just make single player campaigns like Halo again.

As long as the fans allow themselves to get fucked like this it will continue. I stopped at beyond light, and I am glad I did. They are now vaulting more content as well, something they are (I think) still charging full price for? Seems like the core fans don't care though, so they will continue to be milked by a pretty shady company. Too bad cause the core game was really good, I put 600+ hours into that thing and bought two expansions (both became worthless after Beyond light and one is getting vaulted ).

Definitely done with Destiny and Bungie as a company

Yeah, I'm sure it sounds worst on paper than in practice for people who actually play the game. I have it via the free version and every time I hop on I'm overwhelmed by all the options and can't tell what is free and what isn't. I'd be ok if it simplified with this vaulting and gave them back to us for free when needed. It also would be cool if they just let those who brought it have it. Not sure what to feel about it all since the game just isn't good for newcomers to come on for more than a bit play a level then dust out cause there's so much and you don't feel like your progressing anything. At least I don't cause I don't know what to do to even play the main game before they took off the main game...or did they not...what story can a free person even play, is it all strikes. IDK.

There's very few examples of decisions made in Destiny that feel coherent from year to year, whether it's having to do with game design or its business model, so at this point there's literally nothing that Bungie could do that would surprise me or upset me. If Bungie said they were permanently shutting it down tomorrow I don't think I would mind, and that's coming from someone that's played it more than any other game in the last few years.

It's become the digital equivalent of a theme park. An eclectic variety of rides that seasonally get cycled in and out. As rides get added or retrofitted they introduce new membership paywall tiers in the hopes of generating more revenue from their diehard fans. There's no story to speak of, no meaningful RPG char building or level progression, no sense of a shared persistent world like an mmorpg has. You buy a season pass, get a colored wrist band that entitles you to most of their facilities (while they're still available), and you try not to spend additional money on the equivalent of overpriced popcorn and mouse ears.

If Bungie could wind the clock back and do Destiny over again, I seriously doubt they would willfully make it into what it has become. It feels like a never ending series of ad hoc design decisions prompted by unforeseen business changes and technical hurdles.