It’s been a rough few months for Destiny 2, a video game in which players travel through space, shooting aliens and then posting complaints on Reddit. Today, for the first time in 2018, Bungie put up a lengthy blog post addressing player issues and outlining what’s coming next.
Destiny 2’s The Dawning event
In the post, Bungie says it plans on “shifting the balance” for items such as Ghosts, Sparrows and ships away from Eververse, the real-money store, in favour of activities that require you to actually play the game. “We recognise that the scales are tipped too far towards Tess at the moment, and Eververse was never intended to be a substitute for end game content and rewards,” the studio said.
The studio plans to add more tangible rewards to endgame activities. And, in the near future, Bungie plans to bring back private matches and 6v6 to Crucible.
“At the end of last year, I made a promise that I would update you on our plans for Destiny 2,” wrote Chris Barrett, director of the game’s current team. “The team has been hard at work and we’re ready to share where we are headed. We used to wait to talk about game updates until we were certain we could meet our deadlines to avoid letting players down if we changed our plans. No longer. We’re not just listening, we are doing.”
You can see all of the planned changes and features over at the Bungie blog, but here are some more highlights:
- Starting January 30, you’ll be able to get Masterwork armour in addition to weapons.
- In February, Bungie will add a Strike scoring system and revamp the Mods system to make gear enhancements more valuable and less repetitive. (The Mods revamp might take a little longer, the studio notes.)
- The Tower will get text chat on PC.
- “You will finally be able to see the other members of your fireteam on the destination map. No more having to ask your fireteam where they went when they fast travel to another landing zone.” – About time, huh?
- Multi-emotes, extra vault space and a lot of other features that fans have been clamouring for, including better Iron Banner and more rewarding endgame activities.
Bungie also says that later in 2018 we’ll see:
- Item Collections and Records
- Weapon Slot and Archetype Improvements
- Additional Crucible Playlists (e.g. Rumble)
- Better Clan Rewards
- Masterwork Exotics
- Pinnacle Weapon and Gear Improvements
- Trials of the Nine improvements
- Shaders and dismantling
- The Future of Guided Games
- Address Solo Vs Fireteam matching
Bungie did not detail what will be in the second expansion, but said it plans to tweak the new DLC after reading fan feedback to the disappointing Curse of Osiris. “We’re taking the time we need in development of Expansion 2 that will allow us to react to player feedback from Curse of Osiris. In the coming months, we’ll talk to you more about what you can expect to find in Destiny 2‘s next story. The team is eager to show you what they have been working on.”
This blog post comes in the wake of a rocky few months for Destiny 2, as fans have complained about the reward balance, the lack of endgame, and the increasing gravitational pull of the Eververse microtransaction store. In recent days, hardcore Destiny 2 players have seemed ready to revolt. I imagine this outline will help placate them, although the game still has one fundamental problem that won’t be fixed very easily: There just isn’t enough to do.
Comments
32 responses to “Bungie Outlines Destiny 2’s Future, Says It Is ‘Shifting The Balance’ On Microtransactions ”
Wow, they’re not just listening guys, they are doing.
They’re great listeners. Every time they get caught doing something anti-consumer, they listen. And then they do. And then they have to listen all over again.
I’m not sure we should praise them for being anti-consumer and then flip flopping. A good company wouldn’t be anti-consumer to begin with… sadly there aren’t too many other companies to point to as a good example. Blizzard I guess.
Yeah, that was the point I was making poorly about having to listen all over again. They’re always getting busted, and they always respond by saying they’re listening. Over and over it goes.
Blizzard? Really? Maybe pre acti blizzard days…
Always online shenanigans for d3, auction house, splitting sc2 into 3 seperate games…
They havent done anything yet.. and there is no proof they are listening to players… if they are listening to anyone its Activision threatening to close them if they dont do better to retain players. cause less players = less money even in a lootbox economy there is a critical fail point…. else Destiny 3 will be a Blizzard production.
Woot finally Text chat that should of been in the game (on pc) from the very start. i hope th exotic weapons changes make it so they get the orb drop on multi kills, as i found that id much rather just have 3 masterworks now instead of an 2+ an Exotic due to the orb drop on multi kills
I bet a tonne of people will return, but I know a lot are also just done. Will be interesting to see what the numbers are like coming out of next dlc.
Having paid for the season pass before the release of D2, I definitely felt burnt out on the games choices in design. This update does give me hope for the future but I’m not jumping back on right away. I’ve enjoyed not playing for a while now, but I’ll jump in when DLC 2 comes out
Is it just me? Dosn’t Bungie trying to sound genuine about resolving the issues but in the actual action they are taking doesn’t resolve the issues and is more in line with cheap and quick fixes to get Destiny customers to get back into playing the game trying really badly to make Bungie look like good guys but in reality it will still have the same greedy practices in the game.
while not just you, the issue is some people dont want to find satisfaction. there is nothing they could have said, no amount of changes they could have done would be enough to change some peoples mind.
sure some (a lot) of their actions have been rubbish but so to has some gamers reaction to a lot of the stuff, even something like this where they literally hit every point of trouble head on, to some they are still whining that is not enough or it should have been there before. Blah blah. So on and so forth.
they are a business not a lover, everything they will ever say will not sound genuine if that is what you want to believe
Correct, you can’t keep everyone happy and some people will always be jaded.
But as usual, that has absolutely nothing to do with Bungies/Activisions actions nor the myriad of controversies that Destiny 2 is mired in.
Once again you hold blameless individuals up as a shield for the business and design decisions they had absolutely no hand in creating.
People stood up and said no and you wanna lynch some idiots who don’t rate or contribute in any way shape or form that’s worth a turd?!
what part of “sure some (a lot) of their actions have been rubbish”. and while a LOT of feedback has been spot on especially Eververse, a lot of other feedback has been nothing short of disgraceful, full of bs and hot air. While Bungie has dug their own grave, SOME gamers joined in the hate patrol because they lost sight that this is a game and when we bought their game we didnt buy their souls.
Some gamers dont even understand the flaw and stupidity in their ‘they already have our money so they dont care’. No business who owns a franchise would ever willingly sacrifice continual and long range profits for short term money making.
in this case Bungie misread the mood of gamers and state of gaming and pushed too hard. And got put firmly and rightfully in their place. So the gamers did good, on some front on others, appallingly.
The admission of Bungies mistakes just adds to the dishonesty when you then wildly refocus.
As though a poultry nod at the root cause is in anyway an allowance to then detail and accuse other irrelevant parties.
You aren’t standing up for anyone here, you aren’t defending or supporting anyone, or protecting them from the toxic monsters.
You are trying to align the very real and practical steps we are making, with some twats that upset you on the Destiny forums.
Muddying up actual good for false moral satisfaction.
I wasn’t aware I was standing up for anyone? Certainly not Bungie, certainly not the game. Because it is a GAME.
I am doing it because I like the game, in spite of its issues, in spite of stupid Bungie and their continual need to screw up. What I dislike (not just about this game) is the mass peer hatefest.
Practical steps? The overwhelming response to yesterday big stuff that literally hit on every single issue people are having was “that should have been in the game” or “that’s not enough to bring me back” or “it wasn’t genuine”. That’s al reddit is full of rubbish like like that. Page after page.
Sure you are right there is some good amid all that but while the PRECIEVED main voice is haters like that who just won’t leave and want to make everyone as miserable as they can, they continually drag the community down, just as much as any stupid Bungie decision
You’re defending bad practices, telling folks it’s the way of the world and then raising up a twits as a target.
The only one I see dragging the community down is you.
Invalidating and pushing and insane agenda, offering up your own monsters to fight.
Trying to bring the community down to the level of some idiots who aren’t worth our time, idiots you feed and are clearly fed by.
when the public face of the community, like all other online communities currently, is as entitled and hysterical as Destiny’s is, I can hardly be dragging it down… you know what happen if you try and make any form of adult comment over there, you get downvoted. You make any positive post about the game, you get downvoted. You say anything that is against the lynch-mob of the day topic has to say, you get downvoted. Its not just me, it happens time and again.
its not about accepting the way of the world, it is about understanding how the world really works and that while idealism is all well in good, if you cant rationally look at something you dont like from the point of view of an opposing side, your opinion is frankly flawed. its not about liking your enemy or respecting them, its about understanding why they do what they do, and how it actually comes from a place of logic FOR THEM. But that is too much of an adult concept for reddit and people who have no concept Destiny is a GAME, and we didnt buy the devs souls. they arent are indentured slaves.
Yeah that’s happens everywhere on the Internet.
Hell I get downvoted to hell here all the time, I don’t care though, I don’t see someone disagreeing with me as anything other than just that.
Bungies barrier to redemption does not rest with grumpy and jaded people of the Internet.
We have seen that genuine action and communication trumps PR and false words, any damn day of the week.
Look at Witcher 3, while it had some angry glumpkins making noise, not a single one of those barks defined a single aspect of the game and it’s history.
You make a good game and nobody, no matter how jaded, will come to play it.
You keep pretending to listen and then don’t…..repeatedly….over multiple titles, then cynicism is obvious conclusion until proven otherwise.
Snort. So, not much really changing in the way of Eververse. Just the absolute bare minimum necessary to try and claim it’s not their primary focus moving forward and something they’d have to do anyway to prevent the shop from imploding under the weight of its own drop table.
Source? Oh that’s right you don’t have one. You basically just want them to be guilty even before they try to make amends. Just what you THINK will happen. Of course they will do the bare minimum, they are a business not making games for our leisure.
Nothing they would have said would have convinced people like yourself that they were genuine and hell yes they are trying to save their ship because they have way more riding on the game being a success than our paltry 100 bucks.
Can’t they do both? Save their ship and satisfy some? No one’s morals in life are ever singleminded. Especially a big business answering to both fans and a mega publisher, to say nothing of the many other shakeholders involve.
Reasons are not excuses. They are not excused. Any reason for doing the wrong thing doesn’t change the fact that the wrong thing has been done. And this is the difference between turning yourself in to the cops after a crime, vs walking out of a siege with your hands up. Admitting fault is better than not, but there’s still fault, they don’t deserve any pats on the back for recognizing that their number was up. Bungie was dragged kicking and screaming into making this announcement by all the negative feedback. They didn’t want to make this announcement or change direction, and if not for prevalent, high-volume criticism, they wouldn’t have.
Bungie has chosen greed over player enjoyment. It’s self-evident in every player-inconveniencing change they’ve made. And by all reports, they approached Activision with the idea, seeking permission, as opposed to being dictated to by the evil corporate empire. So let’s not put the blame on all those stockholder stakeholders. Bungie’s stated plans for the cash shop amount to announcing that they’re planning on riding the balance of ‘as much as they can get away with,’ but that they need to recalibrate slightly because they’re not getting away with the status quo.
There has been no acknowledgement that the core philosophy of exploitation is harmful to this game (and gaming as a hobby), or that there must be better ways of engaging with a player-base while keeping the lights on. They’ve only acknowledged that the balance has slid far enough to become the almost primary focus of gaming blogs and social media so they need to dial back the exploit-o-meter to 10 instead of 11. And distracting us with a truly embarrassing number of quality-of-life improvements that should’ve been in the base game because they already figured out how to fucking do it years ago in the previous game is hardly laudable; one step forward, two steps back still leaves you behind where you started.
Simply put: what Bungie posted and the environment it was posted in makes it nearly impossible for me to view it with anything but cynicism. They don’t deserve kudos for forced admissions, and negative criticism clearly has the power for positive change worth dismissing the cheerleaders and apologists for. You said you dislike the hatefest, above. Well until they start doing the right fucking thing because it’s the right fucking thing instead of people saying mean things about them, the so-called ‘hatefest’ (which I characterize as ‘calling them on their bullshit’) clearly needs to continue.
once again you dont have a source, especially about the Activision. That came from ONE MAN, sure he has been around for the while and had some good scopes, but I am sorry I refuse to believe something based on one source and because I read it on reddit. that doesnt make it true. Even if parts of it is true, the rest is you just throwing everything in but the kitchen sink to try and make it some grand thing. When the truth is probably a lot less sinister in parts, the rest is probably people just making bad decisions and forecasting the temperature of the gaming community incorrectly. See the thing is you dont know, I dont know. We never will.
You arent wrong with a lot of the game play stuff but beyond it is a lot of hyperbole. Furthermore whether people make mistakes in the development of a game (that is if you class one persons idea of fun, not being the same as someone else’s version of fun being wrong) is irrelevant NOW. Whether it should have been a sequel or an MMO expansion, whether Tess should be there, whether no random rolls is right o whether X and Z should have been there at launch, its all irrelevant, NOW. it has happened, it is history. What matters is what they do to correct it. THAT’s what matters.
I idea that you even remotely relate it to a crime. Shows just how bad the community needs to make Bungie a villain. It. Is. A. Game. I hate to see how you treat friends or family when they lose their path or make bad decisions. Harping on the injustice or their past failures gets no one anywhere
Except when it’s literally the only thing that makes developers change course.
This isn’t some unfair ‘unwinnable’ scenario for Bungie. It’s not actually contradictory of players to be angry when Bungie doesn’t say anything, and then to be angry when Bungie does say something if what they have to say is crap.
It’s not either/or for Bungie, they’re not damned if they do/damned if they don’t.
They actually have a third option where people don’t end up angry, and that involves saying something believable about something good.
They put their cards on the table, sure, but it was a pretty shitty hand, so here we are, with understandable complaints about it.
Honestly this is really disappointing, barely seems to do anything to get more people playing. Also Masterwork exotics honestly seem like a terrible idea
You can get 80% of those changes right now by loading up D1.
Damn straight, but as a D2 PC convert, it makes my eyes bleed to go back to 30fps/75fov! Plus everything is so blurry! God how I wished they ported and up textured D1 to the PC!
So the game is only a few months old and is will soon be a $100-$120 purchase just to play with current content? DLC is fine my arse.
I didn’t realize this was still a thing. Probably too little too late for most that have jumped ship I think.
Too late, fuck your game, and fuck you, Bungie.
So much good stuff, but naturally it was sad to read reddit feedback. they same people complaining they werent talking or listening are now complaining it is not enough even though they clearly have hit every point of concern head on.
Gamer feedback in a nutshell… Complaining about X, demand Y to fix. They get Y, then complain about X.
If a developer overtly tries to set up the worst Skinner box the gaming industry has seen for it’s consumer base and consumers complain about it and only then does the developer back flip on design principles, the initial faux pas isn’t forgotten.
Bungie is no longer for the gamer as they once were, Bungie is for the stockholder and Activision executives and consumer trust is lost. Why would intelligent people willingly spend time in a universe designed to slowly bleed money from it’s consumer base by exploiting behavioral phenomena? I want to purchase any media knowing that I’m purchasing an experience to enjoy, not a further monetary exploitation opportunity.
It’s a shame because mechanically speaking Destiny is almost godly. As far as Skinner boxes are concerned, it’s like they made pulling the lever a fun activity and then linked it to addictive reward systems that ultimately coerce a consumer to drop more money. Just…no. There’s enough corporate evil in the world already thanks.
Lol too late assholes