It's more than just this, though *edited* (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, March 22, 2018, 13:29 (2515 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Thursday, March 22, 2018, 13:51

I think that probably 90% of the people that complain about how Bungie has changed don't acknowledge how fans (and their expectations) have changed.

I don't think what you or Xenos is saying is wrong, but I think there is more to the equation than just that.

First of all, I don't remember a time where the commentary on the Bungie forums was not teeming with negativity and vitriol (I frequented them as early as the Halo 2 days, so my experience with them doesn't go earlier than that. But that's still a long time ago). I do feel that it has gotten even worse lately, but I don't see that as simply a change within the community. That just doesn't track with Bungie's timeline over the past few years.

People would be jerks and get into heated arguments back in the Halo 3/ODST days over the silliest little things. But that is in no small part because the state of Halo in those days was pretty darn great. Halo (and Bungie) were on top of the world, and there really wasn't anything major to complain about, even for the more unreasonable players. So people would nitpick because people will always find something to argue about, but things were too good to argue over anything "big".

That is patently, obviously, not true today. Even granting all the subjectivity in the world, and the fact that everyone has different tastes, and some manage expectations better than others, Destiny 1 was flawed in ways that were so substantial, it blindsided most of the Bungie community. Nobody could have guessed that the story would have been that bad, or that the RNG/Grind would have been that punishing and player-unfriendly. I know at this point those old issues are a bit of a dead horse, but we can't pretend that it didn't happen, and we can't pretend that a sudden lack of quality in aspects of Bungie's work would have no effect on their fan base. Part of any relationship is trust. For years, bungie would tell us about what they were making, and the game they shipped would line up more or less with what they'd told us to expect. And then Destiny 1 came out and was miles off the mark from what Bungie had marketed. Even as someone who ended up enjoying the game for what it was, I could no longer take Bungie at their word.

I know some DBOers think of me as a bit of a downer when it comes to Destiny, but strange as it sounds, I'm typically known as a Destiny apologist outside of these forums. In my social circle, I have many friends who were passionate Bungie and Halo fans, and the majority of them have said that they won't buy another Bungie game ever again, after playing D1. Statements like that (whether we believe them or not) are not simply born out of feeling disappointed by a game. When I ask them why they feel so strongly, one of the most common answers is that they feel "lied to" or "betrayed". I'll try to tell them that they're overreacting, or that there's actually a lot to love about Destiny if they could only get passed whatever shortcomings they feel are present. But that's no longer the issue for them. They feel like their ability to trust Bungie's word is gone, and their loyalty to the studio is gone with it.

I think it is very clear that within the Destiny player base, there are many people who feel shades of what I described above, even if they don't feel it strongly enough to swear off Bungie's games. There are players who truly do enjoy the game, often despite many gripes or complaints that they may have. Some of those gripes and complaints are relatively large within the context of a videogame. And unfortunately, Bungie has failed to address some of these concerns (the storytelling in Destiny remains weak, despite a few short signs of improvement). But more importantly, there are certain mistakes that bungie just. keeps. repeating. In 2017, they still managed to lock players out of existing content when they released a new expansion, despite the fact that they've been through this "drama" (<- in scare-quotes) several times already. How many times are they going to make the same mistakes, leading to the same outcry from the community, and the same rush to fix the problem?

Its easy to say "back in the Halo days, Bungie didn't have to deal with the same kind of crap from their player base", but that's ignoring the fact that back in the Halo days there weren't paid expansions where the majority of the content was either recycled from the main game or had to be bought through additional micro-transactions. There weren't such flagrant examples of miscommunication with the player base over issues like XP or investment systems. Whatever side of the debate we land on with any of those issues, the fact that the debates exist at all is a sign that not all is well at the moment, and I don't think its fair to lay that solely at the feet of the players. Because those elements don't have to be in the game at all. On top of that, Destiny isn't the only game in the world. The community looks out at other games like Overwatch, Warframe, Titanfall 2, or The Division, sees the rate of change, the transparency between developers and communities, the general trend of steady improvement (rather than the "2 steps forward, 1 step back, 1 step forward, 3 steps back" path that Bungie has taken with Destiny). They see all of this, and can't help but think "WTF Bungie, would you just get your act together already?".

And this is, IMO, where a certain level of exacerbation from the community is expected. This is why we see people freaking out on the BNet forums when Bungie talks about the pentathelon or tries to have fun interactions with the community. Because Bungie really does take much more time to address comparatively minor problems than other studios seem to take with their own games. I'm not saying that the people who make the sorts of posts we're talking about here are dealing with things in a constructive way, or even being reasonable in how they express their feelings. But I would argue that their feelings aren't being invented out of thin air. Bungie is trying to talk to a community as if everyone is still friends, and a good chunk of that community isn't comfortable with that kind of talk because they feel like Bungie is no longer honest with them. Or even less dramatic than that... some simply don't believe Bungie is capable of delivering what they aim to deliver.

In the long run, I think the only way the situation will get better is if Bungie is able to settle into a clear and firm "upward trajectory" when it comes to the quality of the game. They need to get past the rocky "up and down" rhythm that they've been in for the past 3+ years. Fixed problems need to stay fixed. If they're going to say things like "we want to deliver a story that people care about", then they need to take those words seriously. Because they're competing with games like Horizon Zero Dawn or Mass Effect or The Last of Us. That's where the bar has been set. So don't even talk about the story in your game being important unless you're prepared to go to bat against the best of what's out there.

I think that if the player base starts to see Bungie truly deliver on the things that they say, we'll start to see more of a return to the kind of relationship that Bungie used to have with the wider community. For our part, I think all we can do is continue what we've always tried to do; be enthusiastic about what we love about Bungie & Destiny, and if/when we have complaints or concerns, voice them respectfully and constructively.

***edit***

I should add that even though I feel like Bungie has played a major role in the deterioration of their relationship with the community, I still feel that it is a real shame and I wish that more fans could separate their gripes with the game from the Bungie's attempts to give us a glimpse into life within the studio. I always loved reading about the team, the Pentathelon, or whatever other shenanigans everyone at Bungie was up to when they weren't working away on their latest game. It's sad to see that go away.