Perspective (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Sunday, January 25, 2015, 12:04 (3382 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I don't want to sound like a total contrarian, but I do feel that we've paid to beta test the game for Bungie.

The most apparent example of this is the raids. The sheer number of bugs and frequency with which they occur is very disappointing, as is the apparent selectivity with which the bugs are fixed. And it's not just bugs. Core design of Iron Banner changed dramatically because it simply didn't work as advertised the first time around. Don't get me wrong; I'm thrilled that Bungie is listening to the people and making changes that are definitely making the game better, but these are the sorts of decisions that should have been ironed out in beta; and the solutions should have been landed on well before the final game's release. The list goes on: Exotics that needed to be re-tuned (and many that still do); the Queen's Bounty concept which apparently ended all plans for interesting temporary content that wasn't Iron Banner; the number of bounty slots at launch; etc. etc..

So you're right - there are games that tell you straight up that you're paying to play a beta. And then there's Destiny, which told us we were paying for something 10 years in the making, that clearly still has fundamental systems which are being tweaked and remade on a weekly basis. I paid to play this beta, and I mostly enjoy it, but let's not gild the lily and pretend like the game you're playing today hasn't changed quite a bit from the game you paid for, or that it won't continue to change from this point forward. It's not a finished product. It is buggy. It has some elements that I feel it is fair to describe as terrible design.

The good news is that the changes do seem to all be moving the game in the right direction. What was a 6 when I bought it is a 7 today and may very well be an 8 by the time that House of Wolves comes out.

But I don't think Destiny will ever be as fun for me as any of Bungie's Halo games were and, frankly, I was expecting halo levels of awesome as a baseline, rather than something for Destiny to aspire to. If the problem there is my expectations, then it is equally the many broken promises of the hype leading up to this game's launch.

Laid out this way, Bungie can't win. (Neither can any game company, really.)

Either they release a perfect game out of the box (and I must say, what's perfect for you sure as heck ain't perfect for me)... or they tweak things as they go along. Those are really the only two options, right? (Well, I suppose they can release a non-perfect game and tweak nothing, but that's sort of dumb, and they couldn't sell future releases, because they're the same as the current release.)

So they chose option 2 - and you're holding their feet to the fire for it. They released what they thought would be fun, and we showed them that not all of it was fun. And rather than just telling us to suck it up (as many companies have done), they've made changes along the way, improving parts that weren't great, tweaking things to be fairer, etc.

But you're saying that since they're continually making changes, the game you're playing is a 'beta' - and you don't want to have paid for a beta.

I'm (personally) finding Destiny to be as entertaining and engrossing as the Bungie games that came before it. Better than some, worse than others - but in reality, NONE of them can be compared directly, since we experienced them in non-similar contexts. Our lives were different for each release, the gaming landscape was different for each release. I can only look at my ENJOYMENT - and I'm enjoying Destiny, quite a lot. (Clearly, you're not enjoying it as much as you enjoyed some (all?) of the Halo titles. That's a bummer.)

Whether or not it's as good (or better) than what came before it, it seems sort of unfair to say "you can't change anything without me calling it a Beta, and you can't keep it the same because it's not good enough yet."