babies are not old enough to play T rated games. (Destiny)

by Harmanimus , Friday, July 28, 2017, 14:47 (2762 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I am concerned that it's down the slippery slope towards having two very different gaming experiences based on whether or not you pre-ordered, in an equally lame way to how the xbox version of D1 was a totally different game than the PS4 one because the PS4 exclusive Hawkmoon was an exceptionally powerful weapon that helped dictate the meta for pvp for over a year.

So it took me awhile to form my thoughts around your argument here. This is what I think drives a large wedge between you expectations of what is occuring and mine.

Through Y1 I played Destiny on both the PS4 and Xbox One. 6 Characters. PvE and PvP content. To suggest they were totally different games is the worst kind of misleading hyperbole. When Suros Regime was the meta, it was the meta on both. When it shifted to hand cannons, the shift was about the same on both. I think maybe I ran into Hawkmoon in the Crucible once out of every 10-20 or so matches, to estimate on the high side - once or twice a day of play for me. And we're talking one player running it. And yeah I'd be salty when I got two-shot by it (never got one-shot) but no more than any other encounter.

Even making the argument that the Strike and Crucible map content being different is incidental, really. These are minor differences in the scheme of things. Honestly, anecdotally, the only real differences between the consoles is that PS4 blueberries tend to be better in PvE content and Xbox blueberries tend to be better in PvP.

And in comparison, that also means that by buying Day 1 instead of pre-ordering, you are buying a completely different game than someone who gets it for the Holidays when the first expansion is out. Or who buys it when the GotY edition is released.

Yes, early adopters are going to be experiencing something that is different, but the importance and degree of that variance is totally not as extreme as you seem to fear.

So the option is no longer "pre-order" or "don't pre-order" but rather "buy the version of the game that comes with a bunch of stuff that isn't in the other version of the game, but you don't actually know if any of that stuff is going to amount to anything or not" vs. "buy a game that doesn't have any of that stuff, which you now know the impact of."

As far as I've ever been concerned it is still completely a case of pre-order or don't pre-order. Game previews exist. This isn't some start up company you have no history on. And especially with D2 you have a degre of understanding of where the company currently is in design and philosophy.

It's like if you pre-purchased movie tickets and got a bonus scene that people who waited for the movie reviews didn't get to see, ever. You don't know if that's a good scene or not, and maybe it's just some guy picking his nose for two minutes, but maybe it's like a fifteen minute major plot point that is important to understanding the point of the film.

I would actually suggest it is more like going to see a movie in a theater when you get a free poster or toy with the ticket or waiting for it to go to Netflix or RedBox. Content discrepancies are minor, but the difference is experiential.

The big question is what part of the experience is important to you?

tl;dr - the exclusive content is relatively minor over the total experience. Pre-order content holds a similar function. Honestly, the value of early adoption over delayed adoption is the only major difference.