Once again, Skill Up's thoughts are pretty great. (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Wednesday, June 06, 2018, 08:05 (2439 days ago) @ CyberKN
edited by Korny, Wednesday, June 06, 2018, 08:16

There are tons of solid points and thoughts with regards to what Bungie is delivering and asking of players with Year 2 of Destiny. Much like with his Warmind review, I don't entirely agree with him (I definitely found Warmind and the update that came with it to be worth my time), but it's really hard to argue with the way he presents his thoughts.

Key thoughts:

-How much are you willing to pay to get the game that you should have received at launch? "Forsaken is a retreat to the best parts of Destiny 1", as he puts it (a lot of it has to do with general changes that will affect everyone, even those without the DLC).

-Bungie continues to embrace player-unfriendly practices, and the Year 2 season pass is yet another example of that. (All of the promised content in the $35 season pass is stuff that the Live Team gave us for free, from SRL to Age of Triumph, with the understanding that Eververse was paying for that. Bungie is clearly trying to make up for poor Microtransaction sales by asking players for a chunk of change up front to continue to get what we were supposed to be getting from a Live Service game, while still refusing to phase out Destiny's Eververse prominence.)

-The Annual Pass content should be stuff that we get in addition to DLC like Warmind, not in lieu of. (Despite having four studios working on the game, we were pretty explicitly told to lower our expectations for Year 2. If you recall noclip's interview with Rebecca Ford on Community Management, she pointed out that this approach is a huge misstep for a developer with a live game. Scrapping big content releases in favor of trickling out content over a longer period will not build or sustain your playerbase. You have to do both.
Rewatching DeeJ pitch the weaker-but-same-price Season Pass was just as painful as the first time that he stumbled through it. You're not fooling people, man...)

-Bungie shouldn't be forcing that you buy Curse of Osiris in order to buy Forsaken. Given the situation that Bungie has put themselves in, it's a lot to ask (as he puts it, Value is relative, but Bungie's goodwill bank is empty).

-But the Expansion itself looks great, and easily worth the $40 asking price if it's anything like The Taken King. (I'm still cautious, because this is the same Bungie that hyped up Lost Sectors, Guided Games, and 4v4 as gamechangers.