Dissecting Frogs (Destiny)

by Robot Chickens, Wednesday, April 13, 2016, 18:01 (3090 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by Robot Chickens, Wednesday, April 13, 2016, 18:50

A frog is a wonderful thing. We can marvel at how it functions and how it is specifically adapted to its ecosystem. If we saw a frog for the first time, it would be really cool to see it jump for the first time. How does it make those noises and why? Did it just eat a fly by shooting its tongue out? That is awesome! But if we're more curious, we might want to see how everything works. What parts of it's body allow it to perform so well. Eventually you open up the frog and you've figured out how all the parts work, but you've got a dead frog. It no longer elicits marvel.

I agree with you and with what Cheaply is saying too.

The reception of this type of content has so much more to do with gauging expectations. If this had been announced on twitter last Wednesday with the words, "come by and visit on Tuesday" it could get hype, but it wouldn't balloon into the expectations we got. Honestly, I love the new PoE and the strike, but it isn't worth a month of announcements.

The mission is comically bad in context. But what if Bungie had only told us about the crucible changes and the gun updates before this launch? If the mission just showed up the on the Director and led to a new strike, everyone would be talking about how they just got to do a new thing they were surprised by, rather than feel like they somehow got slighted by free content. Light Level change? Imagine if they hadn't announced the new system but let people discover by playing that they were starting to get gear above 320? Let people have at it until the Friday weekly update and then explain in fine detail the nuances of the leveling system. Chroma? put the content into the the initial download, but don't activate it until after it is explained in the update so people don't spend money on a system they don't understand. Everyone is excited and Bungie scores a win in the community goodwill column.

Contrast that to what we experienced and you can see the problem. We experienced a dead frog. We received lectures and diagrams explaining exactly what would happen in every system before it even arrived. Rather than enjoying it for what it is, we already knew the mechanisms that would allow us to min/max our time to get loot.

However, this isn't totally Bungie's fault. The Destiny community, unlike any other gaming community I've been a part of (which isn't vast), wants everything explained in detail ahead of time. Or at least, Bungie thinks they do. I have no numbers to back this up, but I'm betting that the majority of players would be fine to be kept in the dark, but there is a vocal portion of the community that needs to know everything ahead of time and that portion has the avenues of communication to shift Bungie's behavior.

[edit] I should add that I'm part of the problem and I consumed the hyping materials. For what it is worth, I'm really happy with the content. I just think I would have enjoyed it more had it been a surprise. It is appropriate for Bungie to hype TTK, but this type of content might warrant a different delivery method.

TLDR: I wish Bungie would stop sharing so much.