Community engagement. (Gaming)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, March 23, 2018, 09:01 (2234 days ago) @ Blackt1g3r
edited by Korny, Friday, March 23, 2018, 09:45

I feel like something DE had to learn early on is that a game-as-a-service requires constant change. So the most important aspect of Warframe was really that they tried to make it easy to add new content early on. OTOH we've heard repeatedly how Bungie has found their new engine/tools/game technologies are making it take far too long to add new content to the game. The most important thing for Bungie to fix with Destiny IMO is to fix those issues so that they can add content faster. It sounds like they've been making real progress in that direction, but I suspect they still have a long way to go.

See, that's the thing that makes D2 more frustrating. It was supposed to be a "clean slate" where Bungie could implement everything that they learned from building D1. We were told about how much easier it would be to make and tweak stuff (down to quick stat changes on individual guns!). And in the nearly-seven months since D2 launched, we've had just one significant balance change, and even the broken-gun fix took them a week to put in, and a month to fix.
The patch notes are no bigger than D1's, and a lot of that has been reversing bad decisions (sometimes even dealing with D1-era mistakes and issues).

Like the documentary says, DE learned early on that in order to sustain the game as a service, you not only need constant change, but you need quality. You need to provide quality content as often as possible, while simultaneously addressing player and balance issues, and periodically throwing a big curveball at players. And most importantly, it all has to be communicated well. You do this consistently and honestly, and it will not only retain and grow your playerbase, but it will also earn you a lot of room to make mistakes.

DE has missed deadlines, they've walked back on promised features, they've removed content from the game, they're not perfect, and even now there are issues in the game that have been around for ages, that they said they'd look into...

But they key difference is that they have always made a point to communicate every step of the way. They've acknowledged when they've made a mistake, they are always explaining how they plan to address certain issues, and they never hide behind "we're listening" while going completely silent between "Roadmap" updates.

A lot of these issues remain, because DE is still a fairly small studio, especially when you consider the scope of their game. The tech is constantly evolving. They've moved huge chunks of the game to new engines, have patched in custom tech, and a lot of times it ends up making far more work than they can handle, so promised stuff gets pushed back. And yet, they still execute on delvering quality content, and delivering it often.

So it really feels like Bungie's issues are self-imposed. They hyped up the game, and their development, and they promised "this time it'll be different". And then it's not, and their excuse is "game development is hard!" "It's difficult to make new content, because our engine and backend!" Like Cheap said, they make a Twitch set-up, hype it up as a platform for communication, then they only use it for marketing purposes when their new DLC is coming. There is no communication. Repeatedly reminding us about your Roadmap is not effective communication. Updating that Roadmap once a month is not enough. A single Warframe update has more changes, features, fixes, and content than the entire Bungie Roadmap has for the entire year (this is not an exaggeration, just look at this week's update).

Bungie has more than double the number of employees that DE does. D2 has four different development studios working on it, remember? It really begs the questions:
"Just what are all those studios and employees doing over there?"
"Is development on D2 really so hard that all of those dev teams can't put out content any faster than Bungie could during D1?"
"What are those Microtransactions paying for?"
"Who's watching the cash register!?"

So yeah, they clearly have a long way to go, but I really wonder what has held them back so much that they felt the need to make a full sequel, and then they seem to have all of the same exact issues holding them back yet again (as well as new issues that they brought to the game).

It all wouldn't be so bad if we got even a single morsel to tide us over between DLC. A free Crucible map, a new exotic, some more lore... heck, even some new emotes (that last Warframe update includes six new free emotes).

I just want to hear something honest from Bungie. Having dmg04 working on the THAB was a great step, but if there's nothing upcoming for him to talk about, I feel like even his updates will become more and more like DeeJ's filler.