Jason Schreier interviewed Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 20:12 (1773 days ago)

On the latest episode of Kotaku Splitscreen, Jason interviewed Luke and Mark for nearly an hour. I haven't listened yet, but here's some interesting info copied from a reddit post.

• Armor 2.0: Armor mods drop independently of armor and can be slotted into any piece of armor, as long as the armor has enough energy (slotting mods uses up this energy). The D1 armor stats are back. The endgame will be focused on grinding for armor with the right stats you want (think tier 12) and building up your collection of mods.
  
  
• The Artifact is a seasonal progression item (like the clan banner). As you play throughout the season, you unlock mods for the artifact that are exclusive to the season. These mods sound like they'll be temporary and will get replaced each season (I could have misunderstood, though). A basic perk example: Vex drop more glimmer. Advanced perk example: throwing void grenades applies a melting point debuff.
  
  
• They want to change the economy of glimmer to make it more valuable. Essentially, they don't want you always sitting on 100,000 glimmer. They want players to perhaps farm for glimmer and find optimal ways of farming, a staple of MMOs.
  
  
• They want to add difficulty options. They say difficulty is "the razor that drives creativity" and that they have, historically, not added enough difficulty options. It sounds like they want to make their content more difficult, since difficulty incentivizes creativity and build customization. If everything is easy, people will just shoot shit mindlessly. But if things are hard, they will need to think more. Bungie wants players to strategize more often. Difficulty options will allow casual players to opt out of this, while hardcore players will face challenge.
  
  
• The "Massive" part of an MMO is something Bungie isn't planning to add because of technical limitations (they aren't going to have 40+ players doing a public event, for instance) but they want to replicate this feeling on a smaller scale. Playing an activity and running into a group of other players and teaming up is something Bungie wants to see happen more often.
  
  
• They are worried about file size but are finding ways to try and keep the game from getting too bloated. However, they do not have an answer to this problem and they believe they cannot keep growing the game indefinitely.
  
  
• Saying Destiny is an MMO is a matter of identity in Bungie's eyes. They recognize that Destiny has had an identity crisis and they have been trying to please many different crowds of people. By saying it is an MMO, they are fully committed to making the game for hardcore fans instead of casual players. They are no longer concerned with pleasing the casual masses.
  
  
• They were a bit vague, but it seems like they are less focused on reaching the high profit margins and player counts that Activision required... however, Luke Smith did reinforce that their goal for New Light was to get more people invested in the game, and they are a company trying to make money, so obviously they still have profit goals and such. That said, Luke did firmly state they will not be changing the game to make a larger profit. They will stick to their fans and what they want out of the game.
  
  
• Regarding recycled content: They want to utilize previous spaces by updating them and recontextualizing them. An example Noseworthy gave was the Taken King mission where you ascended the colony ships and fought a Shade of Oryx. In this mission, players revisited the Sepiks Prime boss room and got to see the corpse of the boss. They then traveled further into new territory and got to play in the colony ship people had always seen in the distance. They want to continue with these experiences and this utilization of old content. The Moon in Shadowkeep is a test to see how well this will work.
  
  
• Regarding recycled once more: Jason Schreier points out that they dodged his initial question, which is if they were still having problems making content fast enough, particularly with their engine. Bungie was really vague about this and sort of dodged the question again. Luke did mention they have made great strides on the technical side and things have gotten better since 2016 when they started improving the workflow... but still, they were really vague, so this means they probably still have some issues.
  
  
• They sort of have a plan for the story. They have concept art for future story events that direct them to where the story is heading. I'm sure the writers have a much clearer idea of where the story is going, but for the studio as a whole they have a general idea of the main story beats.
  
  
• Crossplay is on the table. They definitely want it and are coming up with plans for it. Resource and technical limitations are the reason we're only getting crosssave this year, but in the future they want to add crossplay.
  
  
• They haven't talked about D1 servers getting shut down and it doesn't seem like it'll happen anytime soon, however they are the sole ones supporting those servers, so they could eventually be shut down if they get in the way of future projects. Jason half-joked about having all the D1 content in D2 by the time the servers got shut down. Luke joked about the file size being big if that was the case. So bringing D1 stuff back is certainly possible, but it doesn't seem like they're planning to bring the entire game to D2. Especially due to file size, I imagine.
  
  
• Jason mentioned Titan (the moon) being so awesome yet he has no reason to play there. Luke agreed and even said it's a place they'd like to explore a bit more. No plans for it are underway, I would think, but they know it's underutilized.