Breaking: Bungie Still Behaving Horribly

I didn't phrase it correctly, I mean the uproar seems inappropriately large for something so small. I mean, I would like these emotes. I'm way into Destiny. But I'm not going to buy a 80 dollar thing to get it, and screw it, I don't care that much. I'd like to buy them for a dollar for sure, but if that isn't available, that's too bad. Sucks they made that move but... whatever?

So I bought just the base game and didn't buy the season pass outright because I'm not a fucking idiot. What puts me off from getting back into this game is the fact that if I were to buy the Taken King, I wouldn't get the previous DLC content. It would make sense if it contained all the DLC, as Blizzard lets you just upgrade to the most recent version of WoW for like 10 extra bucks or something? Like does the Taken King even work without the previous DLCs on your account? It doesn't seem well implemented for a game that was mostly an empty promise anyway.

Crying over emotes is stupid. Emotes aren't essential to my shooting/looting/mmo experience.

"Destiny is a load of fucking bullshit,"

(but I'd totally jump back in if there was a reasonable way to get the fullest and most recent version for not that much money)

People may be passing over the fact that £40 is not what a new game costs in the UK unless you're buying the PC DVD or it's Nintendo first party, a new retail game usually costs £55 - £60, which is the equivalent of apparently $95. Destiny's limited edition with season pass on release was something like £90, which is equivalent to $140. Meaning someone who has bought everything for Destiny from release in the UK will have been charged the equivalent of about $200 and is still apparently not getting everything available.

It's a stupid system, especially when people talk about the value of a $60 game. Would you buy the same $60 game if it was $90? Hell no, and definitely not if they keep up practices like this.

I admit it is pretty gross and I can even understand why people are pissed off about the emotes (even if it would be easier for me to empathise with Putin than them), but hey! Was anybody under an impression that such games are devised for anything else than for syphoning money out of people with addictive personalities? Who do you think creates such games? Poeple who use the medium as a playground for their imagination? Or maybe people who want to shower the world with fun?

I'm sorry for being frank here, but it all seems like an outburst of cattle who still want to be fleeced but in a slightly less visible manner.

@notnert427 said:

Not that this changes anything at all because the real issue is the arrogance they have developed(not to mention they want too much money IMO for not enough content...as a Day 1 player that is, if you are new to the game it really might be the first time the game is worth the 70 bucks they want for it, but I digress)

Anyway I have to wonder if that particular line was said more as a sarcastic question as opposed to a statement. I mean they can't really be that far up their own ass that they actually believe someone would throw them an extra $30-40 for 3 emotes can they? Wait scratch that they totally are aren't they?

Like Exile, I'm not sure why everyone seems to be bashing Luke Smith for the Euro price of the game. People are acting like this is just a Bungie problem, when it's an industry problem. We see time and time again that every publisher just post the digital price point at for example $40.00, 40 euros, and 40 pounds. Luke Smith, as a Creative Director for Bungie has zero control over that and Tom Phillips was being completely unfair to Luke Smith to keep pressing that issue, especially after Luke said he was only going to refer to $ as the currency. It's pretty blatantly obvious that Tom was trying to put Luke in a bad light, that was his entire goal of the interview. That being said, Luke should probably just stick with doing video interviews because his humor does not go over very well in text format, since he came off as kind of a dick. As far as the emotes in the collectors edition goes that seemed pretty reasonable to me, its a year two collectors edition of a game, nothing about a few emotes and class items existing players don't need hurts my player experience all that much. Hopefully the best thing that could come out of this "controversy" is The Founders Pack having emotes as well as maybe even Emote and Shader DLC packs being sold later.

Let's be honest here, to say that Destiny only has 10 hours of content so far for the $100 we've spend is just not true. The main story campaign is roughly 6-8 hours long. Another 3-4 hours if you do all of the non-dlc strikes and an hour for the Raid. The Dark Below was the least content for $20 with around 2.5 hours of story, 2 hours of the Urn Quest, a half hour strike and half hour Raid. Then House of Wolves came out with roughly 3-4 hours of story, another half hour strike, a half hour to 2 hours of Trials of Osiris (dependant on how good you are), and probably 5 hours of Prison of Elders. This is only if you only play one character and only play each piece of content once, and no multiplayer. That's at a minimun 24.5 hours to only do everything once for what most people paid $80-$95. Also, most who play Destiny regularly have well over 400 hours into it, so the value proposition of Destiny is not near as bad as you are making it out to be.

Personally I do, like most think the DLC prices are higher than they should be, I think $15 each and $25 for a season pass, plus $30 for the Taken King would have been the sweet spot on price, but Activision has been gouging us on DLC prices since Call of Duty 4 almost a decade ago, something entirely out of Bungie's hands. Say what you will about Bungie, but they have been listening to player feedback more than any other developer in the industry and the changes to Destiny over the past year reflect that immensely. This is all just to say I think a lot of the f*** Bungie sentiment around here is a little overboard guys.

@the-nanomachines: I generally see brand new games on this generation going for between £40 and £50 (on the Game website right now, The Witcher 3 is listed at £45, which I believe is the same as on release day. Batman Arkham Knight is listed at £50, although they are calling it the "limited red hood edition" or something (exclusive pre-order bonus). Amazon is generally around £40 though (Arkham Knight on amazon UK at the moment is £38.50).

I generally think of £45 being the "new" price point, so eurogamer are definitely stretching a point. £40 is last generation's price! I will admit that the Playstation online store is pretty gougey, with Arkham Knight listed at £55. I guess that's your reference point?

@pontron: You can buy the physical version of The Taken King for $60. It comes with the base game, both The Dark Below and House of Wolves (the 2 DLCs out so far) and The Taken King. You need both DLCs to play The Taken King.

Don't buy it.

People keep playing and buying Destiny stuff, so they keep ripping people off. Its a bad game, always was. Babbys first MMO. Just play something else.

55-60 pounds for a new game in the uk on ps4 does not square with my experience.

Perhaps the digital price, but .... Well digital prices are crazy, it's like the games equivalent of buying from the hotel mini bar.

@imsh_pl: I think you might be in the wrong thread.

@the-nanomachines: £50-60* if you’re talking about a brick and mortar shop but like most of the planet if your using Amazon/Game etc. then you’re looking at £40-£45* for a PS4 game a bit less for XboxOne.

*for a standard none CE game.

@thomasnash: My point of reference is actually my trawl of Amazon for new releases every so often and while they do seem to drop relatively quickly most things like the Witcher seem to come in at £50 or so on launch. Maybe I am totally wrong! I don't buy things on release that often anyway.

All the maps they put out became free a month or two after release.

Bungie has basically spent the last year releasing content that might be 3/4 of a game and charging the equivalent of about 3 to 4 games worth. It's a good scam if you can get away with it.

I have a pretty low opinion of Destiny and Bungie as it is, but admittedly the thing that most stuck out to me reading this interview was that Luke Smith acted like the kind of arrogant, "take what we give you, peasants" developer he would have called a fucking asshole on 1UP Yours nine years ago. I know the dude's always been kind of a hypocrite, but man, talk about a wake up call that maybe that era of 1UP wasn't so great after all.

Never trust a journalist with an expressed purpose of going to the other side, I suppose.

The anger and hate you guys give this game is so over the top. Just don't buy it or support it! That's what I do. Not that you can't voice displeasure but saying the developers have social disorders and shit. Get real. This isn't Bungie being evil and everyone else in games being gold. Have we all not been paying attention to DLC pricing for a while?

This is one of the grossest interviews I've ever read. Props to the interviewer for being assertive.

The problem isn't necessarily with the fact that you have to buy the collector's edition to get the emotes, it's the voiced attitude that, for a typical Destiny player, paying $80 or whatever in order to get the emotes is something that Bungie thinks that they will do. If he had just said "The emotes are exclusive to the collection," and left it at that, this wouldn't be so big of an issue, but he didn't. He asserted that a Destiny player such as the interviewer would - and should - be willing to pay $80 for them. That implies a level of stupidity that is insulting.

But is it so unreasonable for Bungie to feel like they have total mental control over Destiny's fanbase? The numbers speak for themselves: Destiny players CONTINUE to clock 3 or more hours of gameplay EVERY DAY. Are they enjoying those hours of gameplay? As a former Destiny player, the answer for me was "no", I was just trying to accumulate whatever shitpoints I needed to get more light so I might be able to play the raid one day. The answer of whether or not a player is having fun is probably a blasé "not really" for most, frankly. But whether or not Destiny players enjoy their time with the game is irrelevant to Bungie. The fact of the matter is that millions of players are playing this game for so long, every day, period. When Bungie releases new, hollow, half-baked content, it's lamented and decried, but it is also ultimately purchased. Begrudgingly or not, it is purchased.

Destiny is game design at its most cynical and calculated. It is a system that exploits the human chemical response to achievement and discovery (as many very good games do), without any real incentivization or additional value. It is Pavlov's test on a Playstation disc, gussied up with pretty but meaningless sci-fi aesthetics. It is a model of gamification that all of worldwide industry can look to and say, "this is what we need to mimic in order to get more involvement & productivity from our employees/customers/clients/populous".

Hoo boy. The Destiny saga continues to enthrall. As someone who never played past the demo, everything surrounding this game is just so fascinating to me. I'm really anxious to see what long-term effects this game's turbulent reception has on Bungie.

Really? your'e upset they gave out maps for free?

No, they made it clear from day one that the maps would be free after a month or so. Also Halo 2 and 3 shipped with a lot of maps, so they weren't trying to short change anyone either.

It takes time and effort to make maps, so they needed to make some money back on them. I'm not defending Bungie now but saying they were always shitty to their community is incorrect.

The sad thing is it doesn't matter. It'll sell like crazy. They will be rewarded and move along with there lives. Nothing will change. People like my little brother that don't read news or really understand how money works will just get it regardless because for him all he cares about is that after school he can get on it everyday and hang out with his friends.

@iamjohn: I hate to break it to you.. but 1UP was never really that good.

I was talking about unique content. The exact same map with 3 new lines delivered from peter Dinklage doesnt count.

Ofc the regulars have much playtime that is what makes them regulars...

I myself has about 80hours in the multiplayer but about 40 of those are from the 3 beta maps and Bungie kinda hasnt added anything substantial past that which is ridiculous to say the least.

Activision has done a real number on Bungie. After all the enjoyment Ive had with the Halo series, it just makes me sad. Bungie won't be getting a single penny from me again until something seriously changes.

Man, people are really blowing this thing out of proportion. Sure, this comment is really bad PR but it is kind of true. People are just this insane about destiny stuff. I bet a large portion of the collector edition were sold to veteran players.

Are those shitty business practices? Yes.

But on the other hand, we're talking about fucking emotes here. Any sane person should not give a shit.

What's so bad about their pricing? If players don't feel it's worth their money then they shouldn't buy it. If this was too much money for not enough game then players simply shouldn't buy it.

We make video game players seem like sheep sometimes, that we're all willing to buy whatever and the big bad companies are charging too much. How about we don't buy things we think are overpriced and then companies will notice when their expensive add ons don't sell.

Also most DLC isn't this price because we're not used to it. About 10 years ago a $40 add on was the norm. Go check out some of those Sims expansion packs and tell me if those are any better than this.

I absolutely agree that Bungie is pulling some bullshit here, but I'll play devil's advocate for a bit and point out that cell phone carriers, cable companies, and a bunch of other businesses employ a similar strategy of gouging existing customers and rolling out the red carpet for any prospective new customers. So there's that. Then again, I'm a guy who went off on an Apple "Genius Bar" assclown and swore off Apple for life for trying to force me to pay full retail price to replace an obsolete broken phone while not under any contract and disallowing me to receive the upgrade price as an existing customer or start another contract like new customers were being offered, so maybe I'm just blowing smoke here.

Destiny is a controversial blip in the history of games. This is the stuff it will be remembered for. It perfectly demonstrates many of the worst trends in gaming and that's probably going to be it's legacy.

That being said, I'm just not going to support it or waste my breath on its foibles. I'll thoroughly examine any purchases I will make with Bungie in the future.

They aren't trying to fund the content? The maps are already made and are out, they figure the people that want to buy it will buy it, the people who don't won't. So instead of splitting the user base 4 times over 4 different map packs, it makes sense just to wait a while then release the maps for free and consolidate the user base so you aren't waiting 20 minutes for matches because the players are spread thin across multiple playlists.

The only reason they charged in the first place is because they live in the real world where you need money to pay bills, and develop Halo 3 and Reach and then Destiny.

@finaldasa: It's less about the DLC being overpriced and more about there being exclusive DLC in the expensive Collector's Edition with no other way to get said content than to buy the entirety of Destiny again (despite the fact that this content is appealing specifically to people who have already invested a ton into Destiny), and that Bungie's response to the criticism is: "We don't care; maybe we'll give you something else instead."

@iamjohn: Ah ok. I can't imagine that's permanent. Seems silly to miss out on all those people who could/would give you money in exchange for people who might.

I didn't feel like house of wolves was particularly worth 20$, so i think I'm probably done with destiny anyways. This game might be the most soulless loot lottery I've ever played, and now it's almost as expensive in 1 year as a monthly fee MMO.

Destiny seems like less of a video game and more like a playground to test how much they can push players with bullshit on every level until they break. Also, fuck this Luke Smith guy. What an arrogant slimy shit for thinking these are ok things to say. I've seen this comment before, but he really does sound like a drug dealer mocking you for giving up heroin.

"Destiny has an incredibly engaged playerbase who still log on for more than three hours every single day, on average." I wanna meet this guy and force feed him some other video games.

@two_socks: Wait WHAT..you need both DLC's to even buy(or more likely they would let you buy and just not be able to use) The Taken King?

Where is the logic in that? I suppose some nonsense about how it wouldn't make sense in canon since Oryx or whatever is coming do get revenge, problem being that illusion is broken by the fact everyone you are playing with is doing the same story, you can just as easily say he's coming after all guardians.

That settles that, definitely not getting the taken king now. No matter how good it is, I can't support decisions like that. That is assuming all that stays true which I'm sure it will. Though to be fair I likely wasn't going to buy it anyway I have my doubts that it will be enough content to justify my money(no raiding and no crucible take a good chunk of value away)

I can't be the only one(I'm not) who thinks that if Bungie had of structured their DLC differently they could of made more money or kept a larger fanbase which may have made the same amount of money in the short term but kept them around which I would think, would also make it more likely to bring more users through friends getting it and at the same time keep current players engaged, having them stay around longer giving them money.

Imagine if instead of releasing these two packs(TDB, HoW) they released a story pack that featured a new planet and a actually decent amount of story missions/quests and charged $15-20. A raid every couple months for $10-15 and finally a few crucible maps for $5-10 however often they think they can make money off them. And I guess a strike pack for $10-15 as well with 4-5 strikes

Then the destiny addicts would throw them money for at least 2/4 probably more and casuals who don't have a raiding group but enjoyed playing the game can give them money for the parts of the game they want more of. And of course they can sell a more expensive season pass and bundles. I feel as though the way it's currently set up if you aren't a hardcore destiny player you can't buy any content with out being completely ripped off. There are a decent amount of players who don't care for Crucible and can't/don't want to raid.

That said I would imagine that there's some accountants at activision/bungie who did the math and believe fleecing the hardcores is more profitable than putting out content that appeals to a wider audience *shrugs shoulders* it's a shame because it truly is a fun shooter but once you're done with the content you can only replay so much before it's stale, I guess I can always come back 4 or 5 expansions from now when they are giving you everything for a fair price.

The complaints about this are valid, but I know most of the people bitching are still gonna buckle down, take it up the ass, and pay for it anyways. If you really believe in this vote with your wallet. Thing is most people aren't that strong willed. With the supposed public outcry you'd think The Taken King would flop, but I bet it's otherwise.

None of this is about that. This is about it being cool to hate on Destiny. Just look at the OP, he created a new account specifically to post this hate-thread so he could add that Destiny is a cancer in case he got banned.

Sure, they could've handled the emotes thing better. But this is such a small thing and being blown way out of proportion that Bungie is the evil itself, because it's cool to hate on another Destiny thing. A normal, rational person would say: Huh, you should've actually allowed loyal long time players to also get that stuff without buying the game again; and be done with it. No need to compare the game to a deadly disease because of this, and the developers to nazi's. That's way out of proportion.

People say: from an outsider looking in, this is a real shitshow. The reality is, if you were actually looking, you'd see that tons of people think Destiny is one of the greatest games ever made, and it also has flaws like any other game. That's what it is.

To me, Luke Smith comes off in the Eurogamer interview exactly like he did the in the E3 segment: entirely flippant, and utterly clueless.

What the heck happened to Bungie, or was I naive and they were always a bit like this? I honestly hope the people responsible for the look & feel of the game (that gunplay is very satisfying) are different than the people who made the design, business, and marketing decisions for the game; and that some or all of them are one day able to peel themselves away from what Bungie has become and make great games that are not solely earnings-report-and-upsell-opportunity-driven.

@mustainium: Luke Smith makes a lot of sense to put forward as your public face. He was a regular on 1up Yours in it`s heyday.

Alternatively you can call it the first MMO like experience that doesn't play like trash

I think Luke Smith was sorta of just stuck having to defend something shitty because that's his job and Activision probably set that pricing. I can't say I would have handled it any better I dunno. He said all you can say in that situation

@ehbunner: I think this interview was much more casual, jokey and conversational than cold hard text can imply.

Guys. Crazy idea. Don’t buy it?

@whitegreyblack: You do know Luke Smith was a Design Lead that more specifically worked primarily on Vault of Glass, right? Not you specifically, but it seems a lot of people on here think he is some sort of PR guy for Bungie. He's just part of the design staff, a guy who helped turn Vault of Glass into what it was, which arguable is still the very best content in all of Destiny. He was pushed into a corner with unanswerable questions by a journalist trying to write a scathing interview to make him look bad. And he poorly chose to make a few jokes to get out of that corner and ended up creating this entire PR disaster and digging a hole so much deeper that he didn't realize he was in until 2 questions later. The sad thing is that if this was a video interview, and not text, this wouldn't even be a controversy. This is the exact same tone he took with Jeff in GB's interview, and it came off as playful and most people didn't mind it. It's just that it wasn't a video interview and in text he sounds so much worse and flippant about the whole thing.