Speaking of Restaurant analogies and Free To Play... (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, January 05, 2018, 09:47 (2355 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

But they frog-in-potted players long enough that they've all but gone back on that initial promise, by integrating Everse deeply into the game's loot foundation.

I feel like we really need to separate Eververs and MTX. Because they are not the same thing. MTX's are sold by Eververse but that is also not all she sells. With that in mind let me continue.

True, but they fall within the same economy. An economy that did not initially exist in Destiny in any way, was added to be supplementary, and is now, numbers-wise, the core of Destiny's loot pool.
There's enough stuff post-patch that you can get from other factions, and for the moment, it's still for the most part pretty much cosmetic, so I don't have an issue with it being there, but the principles that Bungie started out with have gone out the window.

So Bungie acknowledged 3 things about Eververse:
1. It would not be a negative impact on the game
I for one can say that is really hard to quantify. That is purely based on how people feel about the game apart from MTX's. I personally consider MTX's a negative impact if when other people buy MTX's that it impacts my playing of the game. In this case it does not. In fact, with the boons that you can buy, it actually makes it more positive if I'm playing with someone who has one on! Also, the other loot she has is also not a negative.

And that's all true, but it's not how the vocal part of the community sees it, from the sensible folks who are frustrated by stuff like XP throttling, to the Spinfoil Hat-wearing people who cry about "slippery slopes" (and who seem less and less crazy as time goes on, though I don't believe they'll ever be right as far as Destiny is concerned), they all see Eververse as having a negative impact on the game, and it's not just because you can buy stuff with money, but because the reward system heavily skews towards Eververse, rather than in-game activities.

2. That it would be an optional market on the side.
Still true. I'm by no means required to use it to keep up or progress through the game.

Like I said, it was supposed to be supplementary. Now, it's a signiificant part of the experience, without much that outwardly noticeable to justify the original claims. Sure, ideals change over time, and we shouldn't be "your exact words were" with business models, but still, when an official statement is made, it's kind of frustrating when they exploit it to wedge things in that people wouldn't have been okay with originally.

3. That it would just be for people who wanted to help fund the Live team, and would give us cosmetic items for the sake of expression.
Also true.

It's not, though. The armors are initially cosmetic, but they don't integrate the stats of what you infuse into them, they have their own. Mods are fairly insignificant, but they technically are not cosmetic. Ghosts have practical applications, and if you dropped money on Eververse when you first got the game (like I did), then you could get a Sparrow before anyone else, saving you a lot of time, and helping you progress faster than other players.

And we have no quantifiable information about what the MTX money has helped fund so far. The Dawning? and... what?

Fans didn't like that, fans complained, and what did we get? Bungie said "We're listening", then had even more of the game's content getting locked into Eververse, and we had to pay for the new meal on top of that. Players have erupted in anger, and Bungie's response so far is... "We're listening".

wait wait wait, why do people keep saying that items from Eververse are "locked"? they are no more locked than any other item in destiny to my knowledge. In fact, I would argue that they are even easier to get because you can buy some of the stuff via dust instead of random drops. The only difference is that there is a bigger loot table, so when you random stuff you have less chance of getting the exact item you want.

I meant DLC-locked. There are CoO cosmetics that are in Eververse, so if you didn't buy the DLC, you're probably locked-out of new Eververse content, though a lot of the patch-reversals might have fixed the issue.

DE had that problem prioritized and resolved in a matter of days, and it was an optional cosmetic for an optional pet.

Listening doesn't always mean doing something. Because there are times Bungie has blindly listened to the community and done things I don't necessarily approve of.

But there's been months and months of it, with absolutely nothing communicated about what's being done (though recent tweets do show that they plan to communicate about it soon).

There's another quote right after the one I posted (the whole article is worth a read for those wanting a behind-the-scenes look into how a failing studio grew into one of the most successful on Steam, BTW), that also shows how DE handles communication, content-delivery, implementation, feedback, and iteration far, far better than Bungie, despite being a much smaller developer:

There’s a workflow they’ve established with the community where everyone knows what to expect, and on about what timeframe.

“Our PC audience knows that in the first couple of days, the first week when we release something, they’re the testbed to see if it’s going to work, and we’re just gobbling up their feedback, processing it and trying our best to alter, change, adjust values and balance it better,” Carter stated. “Once the console guys get it, they’re getting something that’s been thoroughly tested by our PC base, and our PC base knows that after a week we’re, generally speaking, having it in a place that they love it and we love it. ... Generally speaking, in that time we’ve ironed out those things that have offended them or we’ve made mistakes on. If we miss, we hotfix those things as quickly as possible.”

So yeah, while game development is complicated, and there are countless factors that go into even the smallest tweaks that we don't know, there's a clear precedent. There's a smaller studio handling what is a deeper and more complex game with far more communication, honesty, and results.
It only serves to make Destiny 2 more frustrating, IMO.