Destiny is getting microtransactions, sources tell us. Don’t freak out too much, though: We hear this paid DLC will be limited to cosmetic items like emotes and sparrow skins. And the developers at Bungie will be doling out free story content every few months until next fall.
This is all part of a new plan that could start as early as this month, according to two people familiar with Destiny‘s development. Rather than sell big expansion packs like they did last year, Bungie is planning on giving out quests and missions for free, sources say. This will likely involve big drops every few months until the fall of 2016 but could also include trickles of smaller stuff throughout the year.
That means the game’s next paid expansion will be Destiny 2 in the fall of 2016, as has been known for a while now. That will be $US60.
You may remember a marketing slide from earlier this year that discussed a two-year roadmap for Destiny. Turns out that slide is out of date — instead of selling two big packs of downloadable content over the next year, Bungie is going with cosmetic microtransactions and free content.
It’s likely we’ll hear more about Bungie’s plans soon. Stay tuned.
UPDATE (6:39pm): At around 5pm ET, we reached out to Activision for comment on this story, giving them a deadline of 8pm. Shortly around 6:30pm, a representative told us they would be announcing the news themselves, which they did here. Sounds like the microtransaction store will open on October 13.
Comments
26 responses to “Sources: Destiny’s DLC Plan Is Changing Big-Time”
Normally I would rage at the idea of micro transactions…but for skins and dances? Not even mad. If they start selling strange coin packs and shit I’ll be pissed because they’ll inevitably make those items stupidly rare if you don’t buy them regularly. As for the free missions along the way; SUCK IT DESTINY HATERS! YOU CAN’T BITCH ABOUT THE PRICE NOW!
*When
Fixed that for you, buddy.
Not a dumb idea at all. People who are invested will buy, but you can’t very well argue it’s changing the balance of the game one jot.
In a perfect world, in theory, this is awesome. But we’re not in a perfect world, this isn’t theoretical, and we’re dealing with Activision. What we’ve got here is the beginning of a micro-transaction focus in Destiny’s future. It starts with cosmetics, but it ends with gameplay affecting elements of the game being paid for with real money.
And it’s not even something they can avoid, they have to appease the micro-transaction payers by making the things they pay for suitably rare enough without paying that they feel they are getting their money’s worth. This means tweaking drop rates of things like Strange Coins so that paying for them seems an appealing option.
It’ll start with emotes and sparrow skins. It’ll then move on to something like Strange Coins / Motes / Legendary Marks. We’ll probably then see class items, the bonds, cloaks and marks (which now have stats, remember) and eventually probably weapons and armour. This won’t happen straight away, it’ll take a very careful audience manipulation, the kind that takes time and patience. But it will happen. And depending on its success, it might be as soon as Destiny 2.
This, in theory, is fine, and the company focusing on purely cosmetic items means everyone wins, the people who want to pay for “cool” (really reaching here) emotes, and the people who don’t who will get free content updates. But we’re still not that naive, are we?
Seen quite a few bits and pieces calling The Taken King, ‘Destiny 2.0’.
Makes me wonder if there will actually BE a Destiny 2, if TTK is 2.0.
Seems like a stealthy way to say that TTK IS what they were planning for Destiny 2.
I thought the prevailing term was “Destiny 1.5”. There’ll 100% be a Destiny 2. Even articles i’ve read about this actual news say it would lead up to Destiny 2’s release in 2016.
When you think about it, it does seem like the actions of a company entering full development of the sequel. Now we’ll have a smaller, dedicated team, releasing regular, smaller updates to the game for the next year, with no pressure for fully fledged expansions or DLCs keeping most of the team from working on Destiny 2 properly.
Sounds like an interesting content plan, but it’ll be entirely dependent on the execution. I don’t want 3 missions every 3 months or something. We should be getting a new strike every 3 months at least, with missions every month. Ideally a raid somewhere in there.
Wait, doesn’t the Taken King come with two DLC packs? This doesn’t sound like a change in the way we pay for Destiny, just an additional optional cosmetic store on top of it.
The Taken King is basically Destiny 1.5. It revamps the base game and builds off the previous content, but the leaked released schedule indicates there’s two more mini-expansions coming soon, which we can assume will be similar in scope to The Dark Below/House of Wolves. Can’t remember what they’re called off the top of my head and they’re likely to change before then anyway.
Destiny, at launch, had a collector edition that included the season pass for the first two DLCs. However I don’t think that the 3rd and 4th mini-expansions post TTK have been confirmed, let along had a price set. Hence, speculation that instead of selling us a season pass for that content like they did for mini-expacs 1 & 2, they’ll drip-feed the missions to us for free and make their money off other purely cosmetic or non-gameplay microtransactions, which is becoming a common and not unwelcome trend as far as I’m concerned.
Taken King comes with the base game, the two previous expansion packs, as well as all the new stuff and changes that the Taken King gave us, all incorporated into one cohesive whole. Their plan going forward is to supplement free content (like missions, exotics, quests and such) with paid cosmetic emotes (and likely other cosmetic stuff down the line).
The previously leaked schedule, while pretty accurate up to the release of the Taken King, is not really accurate anymore with the change in how they plan to deliver ongoing content.
I wonder if stuff like raids would be free as well. If so it’d be a big step in the right direction, but I’d be concerned if they went back to the paid DLC route if the microtransactions didn’t take off. I can see an exotic or two being placed in a microtransaction only store some way down the line
I don’t understand – I thought Destiny was a ’10 year’ game (arguably)? Is Destiny 2 coming out in the form of an expansion to the original? Or will it be an independent release?
Bungie and Activision have a 10 year publishing deal. From very early on they have said that Destiny 2 will launch in September 2016. They have also said that your characters will transfer over. We don’t know much more than that. If all of Destiny’s content will be accessible in Destiny 2 etc.
Thanks for clearing that up, had no idea
Presumably Destiny will be an all new game rather than building on the current assets, but our characters will very loosely transfer across. I assume we’ll see a very rapid obsolescence of our gear to be replaced with Destiny 2 gear, if not some Mass Effect 2 style cataclysm that gives us an opportunity to remake our character and redo the tutorial.
Yeah, I assume that will be the case. Which is fine. I want the world to keep evolving and moving forward. But the biggest thing holding Destiny back thus far has been lack of content so it seems a little silly to make all the existing stuff no longer accessible.
Destiny 2: What should have been in The Taken King Originally. I’ll see myself out.
That said, I don’t mind having to buy emotes and skins. If I have a few bucks credit on my Xbox Live account I might buy an emote but that’s about it.
Is that Bungie making it right?
I just want less raids… and more story stuff.
Please.
Just curious, have you done the raid?
Not the most recent one.
I bought into destiny on the premise that it was another epic story by the people that brought me Halo. I play Halo for the single player stuff… the same as I want to do with Destiny.
I don’t like playing with others.
It’s awesome.
If you’re playing Destiny for the story you’re playing the wrong game 😛
It wouldn’t be so bad if you could short-term PUG-match the raid, but as it is, you have to actively ‘meet’ people and make some kind of commitment that lasts past the minute you started looking.
It’s a bit of a turn-off. I don’t always know when I’m going to be playing, making plans and commitments is not what I game for.
Exactly, thank you. I play when i can but it is not at regular time or length. The flipside is that I have also had the odd whole day off playing Destiny uninterrupted and sent messages out to try start a raid but no one replies to a first timer wanting to do Aethon or Crota. The raids, high level POE and strikes are near impossible to partake and gain any rewards.
if you buy these twelve step emotes, you can get all the story you could every dream of*
*Please note, story will only be visible by signing up for daily destiny grimoire facts subscription service at $20/month
Sounds good to me. Make the expansions like TTK for $$ and give us content packs like TDB & HoW for free.
Just give us more strikes imo.
So long as it is only for cosmetic items, I’ve got no problems. Its also worth noting that they’ll be giving us some free silver, enough to cover one or two emotes 🙂
Then they’ll tell us that those emotes are what you need to get into the secret raid room lol