And therein lies the problem (Destiny)

by EffortlessFury , Sunday, December 03, 2023, 07:46 (147 days ago) @ Cody Miller

There's no good solution to emulating a shared experience that involves the passage of time without being willing to accept that the content, like the passing of time itself, must be transient.

That can only really be implemented in free-to-play games. Remember when Mercury, Mars and the Tangled Shore got vaulted? They were paid content. Specific DLC people could only access if bought. And they're gone. There's a very good reason for people to hate this, even if there was a lore reason for them to be gone.

This sour taste directly clashes with the vision of a "shared, evolving world". As long as Destiny ties destinations and activities to paid DLC, it will never be totally free to evolve the world. Either that or they'll piss off a lot of people REALLY fast (again).

Hmmm. So hypothetically, if you had a game that was free to play, and all activities were freely accessible (and attainable, not locked behind technically-possible-but-only-reasonable-if-you-buy-a-booster grinds), and the things that you actually paid for were permanent, then you could actually do an evolving game with changing narrative stakes and situations?

(Pictured: Everyone else in the world except me)

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a totally fair offering. Game preservation would obviously not be possible, and that may not be a worthwhile trade for some people (I know you're one such person), but I would argue that it's a fair proposition to make "actually free" content limited. That's every limited event in Genshin. Free story, free new minigames, gives you free currency and materials, sometimes free limited weapons or gifts a character for playing it, and the only thing stopping you is sometimes you need to be caught up with (at least some of) the story. Free content with rewards for consuming it, but it's all temporary.

Now, of course, this can create a sense of FOMO, and that has its own issues, but that is the nature of anything that evolves/changes over time. If you want an experience that emulates that nature, it will inherently involve FOMO.