The Division is set to release in a few months, and it seems to be going after a similar sort of semi-MMO-ish, online, cooperative shooter space that Destiny occupies. Obviously it's highly anticipated by a lot of folks.

This puts Destiny in a position to potentially lose a lot of players. I figure that people still playing Destiny at this point really love Destiny, so maybe it's not as much of a danger as I think it might be. I seem to recall that there is going to be another event of some sort at the beginning of this year, and Deej hinted that there may be some bigger stuff coming at some point soonish.

Does Bungie have to do anything to intentionally combat people jumping ship for The Division? Or do they just accept that it is going to happen no matter what and let it happen, then maybe roll something out a few weeks after The Division releases to try and pull people back into Destiny?

I'm personally of the opinion that The Division isn't going to be the game people want it to be (much like Destiny wasn't for a lot of folks), and it's going to leave a lot of people disappointed. I'm not basing this on anything more than hunch. I haven't played it, or even followed it all that closely, but I just have a feeling about it (and am personally just not expecting much from it). I am definitely going to take a wait and see approach to it, and see how people enjoy it after it's been out for a bit, and may pass on it altogether unless it is just supremely amazing. I already have the gaming niche filled with Destiny, it seems, and I damn sure don't need another game like that to eat all my time.

I'm also not of the mind that Destiny needs to really "do" anything. People are going to try the Division no matter what, and I don't think people not playing Destiny for a bit is necessarily a bad thing. I'm just sure that Activision and Bungie won't see it that way. Every week a player goes without playing Destiny is a higher chance that they won't return at all, at least until whatever Destiny 2 is comes out, and I don't think that's a situation they want to be in.

So I was just wondering if we might be able to speculate on Bungie's plans based around The Division's launch, or whether that even enters into their equation at all.

Looking at some of the videos, The Division is different enough settingwise to play to a different audience. it is a cover based, slow speed third person shooter. Instead of trying to implement anti-griefing mechanics into the game, The Division encourages them by allowing people to kill other players and steal their hard earned loot while in the "shadow" zone and others. I was very interested in the game up till that point. There is no way I would raid in Destiny if another group could swoop in after defeating Oryx and kill me and steal my loot, and you know there will be people who setup for exactly that situation.

So, different enough gameplay, and lots more opportunity for griefing will attract a subset of Destiny players, but at the same time I think it will quickly burn lots of new players and cause them to look for alternatives. If they release in the next month or two we should see Destiny 2 drop right about their first DLC pack, which will pull lots of players back.

This is kind of the reason that a ten year plan is tough to work out, for a game where you are supposed to play it constantly. I mean, Halo had a 9 year run, but the games were not meant to be played repeatedly and everyday. You'd play each when it came out to continue the saga, play it more when you felt like it, revisit it every so often, then move on. If you set up your game that way, it simply doesn't matter what the competition is. That only matters when it comes to having some kind of multiplayer population.

There's always going to be other games people want to play. If your game can't survive that, it's a fundamental design defect.

The DLC / subscription model depends pretty heavily on people staying engaged with the game and constantly playing to want to buy the DLC. However, proper game releases every few years simply gives you a more complete, integrated, and new experience as well as value for money over DLC. Add to that the fact that traditional game releases do not require constant engagement, and it seems to me the episodic and perpetual DLC model is a failure both in terms of business and in terms of artistry.

I played a little of it, and I don't think Bungie has much to worry about.

I'll be honest: Other than the visuals and setting, the actual gameplay seems pretty weak to me. From the videos I've seen it looks a lot like really early MMO encounter design where the bosses aren't interesting at all and just have bigger numbers. It's really unclear to me whether or not the world is truly free roaming and explorable or if it's fake free roaming and you're really just stuck to a very confined area.

Jesus, I sound like I'm describing Destiny. Okay, seriously, how bad was the Division and why? Other than the weird nonsensical iPad integration.

I'm genuinely excited for the Division. However, Ubisoft has yet to release a single game with acceptably stable online features. Every single Ubisoft title with an online component is problematic at best... and none of them are doing anything as complex as the Division looks to be (or Destiny already is). So before I ask myself "what will Destiny do to counter it?", The Division needs to prove that it works.

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Edit: I mean, SRL + Iron Banner kept me away from Rise of the Tomb Raider for a solid month.

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I wouldn't call it bad, but it required handlers at the booth to explain to players on each team what they needed to be doing every step of the way, not just at the beginning. First time I'd seen that at a PAX booth. It was pretty and interesting, and I'm sure it will grab some people. My gut reaction is that it doesn't have the magic that Destiny has--that smooth movement and gunplay. The sense of place was pretty impressive, but I don't know if I want to live there, you know? With Destiny, especially after a break, it feels so good to come back, like I'm returning home.

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Two reasons.

1. It's a fools errand, Some small piece of content isn't going to hold off a major release and the player base dropping off to go play it. Trying to fight a multi million dollar marketing campaign is a fools errand. If Bungie wanted to they'd be better off waiting till people are getting bored with it, then dropping some content.

2. It's not that useful. People can leave destiny and come back. Destiny is actually doing pretty well in terms of player base numbers (A year out daily uniques in just the crucible was up around Halo3/Reach Numbers). People ebb and flow.

3. The division offers something pretty different, I think people will come for the darkness zone and real world setting, but those who want decent gun play and encounter design and classic PVP will stay with destiny.

I dunno, the videos of the division are really bland, but I hear some really positive impressions from those in the alpha.

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2. It's not that useful. People can leave destiny and come back. Destiny is actually doing pretty well in terms of player base numbers (A year out daily uniques in just the crucible was up around Halo3/Reach Numbers). People ebb and flow.

Where do you find these numbers?

1. It's a fools errand, Some small piece of content isn't going to hold off a major release and the player base dropping off to go play it. Trying to fight a multi million dollar marketing campaign is a fools errand. If Bungie wanted to they'd be better off waiting till people are getting bored with it, then dropping some content.

I guess that's sort of what I was trying to get at in my post, albeit in a roundabout way. I was thinking more along the lines of dropping an "event" maybe two or three weeks after The Division's launch. That might be long enough that many folks have played their fill of The Division and give them a reason to jump back into Destiny (if simply being bored of The Division and/or loving Destiny isn't enough).

2. It's not that useful. People can leave destiny and come back. Destiny is actually doing pretty well in terms of player base numbers (A year out daily uniques in just the crucible was up around Halo3/Reach Numbers). People ebb and flow.

I don't disagree with that from a personal viewpoint, but I'm not sure Activision and/or Bungie see players leaving, even if only momentarily, as an okay thing. Every day they're not playing Destiny is another day they may find something to replace it completely. I'm a perfect example, honestly. I stopped playing Destiny a few weeks before SRL dropped. I played for like three evenings during the first week of SRL, and I haven't touched it since. It's not that I don't love Destiny (I do!), but I've done most of the things I want to do in Destiny, and I'm using this lull in new releases to catch up on my backlog. Every time I even consider putting in Destiny, I know that as soon as I do I'm probably just going to end up playing that constanstly again, so I'm intentionally avoiding it for the moment. There might be more folks doing the exact same thing, and if The Division is given the chance, it might replace Destiny as their go-to game.

Again, I don't see that as a problem, but Destiny has pretty obviously been designed to try and keep as many people playing for as long as possible, so letting players leave in droves to go play the new hotness doesn't really seem to fit in with their plans. On some level, they have to know it's always going to happen when a new, highly anticipated game launches, but I'd be surprised if they don't do something to at least try to bring some folks back into Destiny after the fact.

3. The division offers something pretty different, I think people will come for the darkness zone and real world setting, but those who want decent gun play and encounter design and classic PVP will stay with destiny.

I dunno, the videos of the division are really bland, but I hear some really positive impressions from those in the alpha.

I don't disagree with that at all. I think it looks like it could have some promise, but unless it's much deeper and more interesting than what we've seen, I don't see it really earning my purchase.

2. It's not that useful. People can leave destiny and come back. Destiny is actually doing pretty well in terms of player base numbers (A year out daily uniques in just the crucible was up around Halo3/Reach Numbers). People ebb and flow.

Where do you find these numbers?

The guardian.gg guy posted them over on reddit. I'll go see if I can find them (You can see the snapshot at guardian.gg, It's at about 600k right now, and that's just tracking people who participate in PVP)

1. It's a fools errand, Some small piece of content isn't going to hold off a major release and the player base dropping off to go play it. Trying to fight a multi million dollar marketing campaign is a fools errand. If Bungie wanted to they'd be better off waiting till people are getting bored with it, then dropping some content.

I guess that's sort of what I was trying to get at in my post, albeit in a roundabout way. I was thinking more along the lines of dropping an "event" maybe two or three weeks after The Division's launch. That might be long enough that many folks have played their fill of The Division and give them a reason to jump back into Destiny (if simply being bored of The Division and/or loving Destiny isn't enough).

2. It's not that useful. People can leave destiny and come back. Destiny is actually doing pretty well in terms of player base numbers (A year out daily uniques in just the crucible was up around Halo3/Reach Numbers). People ebb and flow.

It sounds like this is kind of happening naturally. The division hits early march, and Destinies content drop will probably be sometime in march-may given the 2 month cycle between events.

I don't disagree with that from a personal viewpoint, but I'm not sure Activision and/or Bungie see players leaving, even if only momentarily, as an okay thing. Every day they're not playing Destiny is another day they may find something to replace it completely. I'm a perfect example, honestly. I stopped playing Destiny a few weeks before SRL dropped. I played for like three evenings during the first week of SRL, and I haven't touched it since. It's not that I don't love Destiny (I do!), but I've done most of the things I want to do in Destiny, and I'm using this lull in new releases to catch up on my backlog. Every time I even consider putting in Destiny, I know that as soon as I do I'm probably just going to end up playing that constanstly again, so I'm intentionally avoiding it for the moment. There might be more folks doing the exact same thing, and if The Division is given the chance, it might replace Destiny as their go-to game.

Again, I don't see that as a problem, but Destiny has pretty obviously been designed to try and keep as many people playing for as long as possible, so letting players leave in droves to go play the new hotness doesn't really seem to fit in with their plans. On some level, they have to know it's always going to happen when a new, highly anticipated game launches, but I'd be surprised if they don't do something to at least try to bring some folks back into Destiny after the fact.

According to that Kotaku article on the ups and downs, a big moment for Destiny was when the diablo guys told them that it's okay for people to leave, they just need to leave happy. I think that's where they are going, and I think that's evident in the design of the end game. Eg: the ramp to the raid in TTK is really good, very little grind time. A player could have a pretty good time, and get great value going through TTK content to the raid, and walk away. The end game of TTK however, is pretty heavy on those infinate replay hooks, (light level, perk system, etc).

This brings up something though; In Destiny, it's important if your friends come back too. There are mismatches when you want to come back but your friends walked away causing you to walk away. (OTOH, you may convince them to buy more). Moving to a more free content model helps, but I think at some level it's a community management/matchmaking problem that Bungie needs to solve if they want to keep it viable long term.

3. The division offers something pretty different, I think people will come for the darkness zone and real world setting, but those who want decent gun play and encounter design and classic PVP will stay with destiny.

I dunno, the videos of the division are really bland, but I hear some really positive impressions from those in the alpha.

I don't disagree with that at all. I think it looks like it could have some promise, but unless it's much deeper and more interesting than what we've seen, I don't see it really earning my purchase.

After watching a ton of videos of a recent Press event, I've also come to the conclusion that no one who is paid to talk about videogames knows anything about how to do it. The few people who can do it really well aren't professional (Campster, Mr. BTongue etc)

It sounds like this is kind of happening naturally. The division hits early march, and Destinies content drop will probably be sometime in march-may given the 2 month cycle between events.

That's sort of where I was going with my post, too, but again, maybe not in a very direct way. I tend to not really think out a post first, and write them as they occur to me; it leads to me leaving things out pretty often.

I'm not sure there is a two month cycle. We've only seen two events so far. Sure, they happened to be two months apart. Two events doesn't make a pattern that we can really definitely predict anything from. I was sort of positing that we can predict the next event by assuming that Bungie might place it near the launch of the Division to bring players back from it.

Placing just before or at the time of The Division probably doesn't help. An event like what we've seen likely wouldn't be enough to prevent people from leaving for The Division. Positioning an event a few weeks after The Division would more than likely be enough to get folks to jump back in, if only once to check out the event, but that would spark at least some returning more permanently to the game.

I know that article made a point to talk about the Diablo folks talking to Bungie and telling them to let people leave. I'm not entirely convinced that message really took hold. I'm not saying Bungie is trying to be nefarious, but it's natural that they would want people to continue to be interesting and playing Destiny.

TL;DR: It's at least plausible that the next event will occur shortly after The Division launches as an attempt to draw players back to Destiny.

Deej hinted that there may be some bigger stuff coming at some point soonish.

Yeah, I can't wait till we get all those surprises from House of Wolves! They're coming soon, he said!

And at 311 I stand.

Deej hinted that there may be some bigger stuff coming at some point soonish.

Yeah, I can't wait till we get all those surprises from House of Wolves! They're coming soon, he said!

And they're getting rid of all those currencies! Fewer currencies, they said!