Jason Schreier interviewed Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 22:02 (2010 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Korny, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 22:07

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.

I really hope that they have more dedicated PvE mods again (think Shank Burn, or Raid perks). This would encourage armor build diversity, and would help with the problem of mods feeling pretty much inconsequential.
This could also tie into the endgame and playlist diversity:
Want Crucible mods? Best place to get them is Comp. Second best is quickplay, then Gambit Prime, then Gambit, then Custom Games.
PvE Mods? Heroic-difficulty Raids. Second best is Normal Raids, then Heroic Strikes, so on and so forth.
You could even throw in some exclusive ones at the endgame level, while preventing the Rich-get-richer design with Cosmetic mods, such as ones that cause Grunt Birthday Party against Comp enemies, to really demoralize them. Bungie has long underestimated the value and draw of cosmetics.

[*] 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.

That's neat, and encourages more focused play (assuming the unlocks are challenge-based). The resetting nature really helps with the carrot on a stick that many players crave, though I worry that can lead to Gjallys-only style issues when doing LFG.

[*] 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.

Resource starvation is terrible. "Finding optimal ways of farming" is a result of poor game design, it shouldn't be their goal.

What they should do is make Glimmer more readily available in certain events, that way people funnel to them more if they're chasing that one item. Say "Doing Patrol activities in the Flashpoint rewards double Glimmer. Consecutive activities without returning to Orbit increase Glimmer gains."
So now you're funneling players into the Patrol Spaces, and encouraging them to stay there.
From there, you can give them Boosters. "Complete three Heroic Events in the Flashpoint, and total Glimmer gains will double for two hours".
Now they can go off and play their activities of choice, knowing that their work has yielded more reward.
You can even extend this to stuff like Guided Games: "Successfully complete a Guided Games run (Host or Guest) and all Enhancement Core drops have a chance to count as double".

Tl;dr, don't starve players, reward them instead. Make stuff cost more if you have to, but always have a clear path for players to actively engage with your systems, instead of trying to find ways to cheat them.

[*] 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.

Again, this could all tie into rewards, whether it's the Power level of drops being higher than average, or getting exclusive emblems, shaders, emotes, mods, Ships, Sparrows, Ornaments, etc.
People will chase rewards, the fact that they are exclusive supercedes their utility for MANY people (even the beloved streamers). Heck, bring D1 cosmetics over, and people will go crazy for them!

[*] 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.

MMOs such as Guild Wars 2 have World Bosses, which show up at certain times, and depending on player level and participation, can drop rare loot.
Destiny has had the three key ingredients to make something like this work:
-Escalation Protocol bosses
-Public Event enemies that only show up during the Flashpoint
-And roaming Wanted enemies that the Spider gives you Bounties for.

Put them all together, bump up their mechanics to something like a Menagerie final boss, and you've got everything that made EP great, but presentable in a more organic and scheduled fashion.

[*] 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.

Destiny 2 really needs an integrated Launcher like Warframe has. It's allowed them to do "Remastered builds" where they've cut the game size nearly in half, without requiring you to reinstall the entire game (and which bypasses the annoying file check that the PS4 has to do before every update). Optimize the code, remove the excess, and hotfix on the fly.

[*] 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.

That's a bummer. "You have to do both".
One of Destiny's biggest issues has always been the falling-behind-if-you-don't-play-religiously problem. Sounds like they're embracing it as a means of encouraging people to play Destiny every day, as opposed to making it the type of game where you check in every once in a while and throw some money at if you like what you see.

[*] 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.

That's all nice on paper, but with the budget that the first two games have had, plus the cost of keeping the franchise? Bungie needs money, and the Eververse overhaul sort of goes against those claims. But who knows, if the content is solid, there's nothing wrong with a little extra content in the Eververse market.

[*] 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.

This is a great and smart thing to do. Recontextualize the familiar, and you make everyone (except Cody) happy. Revisiting the Sea of Storms? Great! It's another chance for Bungie to grow and expand on the foundation laid by the first game. They can increase the Patrol space size, add more secrets, improve the interactivity with the environment, and add more story. The potential with the time you have saved by reusing assets at scale is huge.

I talked to you about all of the additions they made to the Plains of Eidolon in Warframe. The foundation was the same, but they kept trickling in more and more content and technical improvements to it, to the point where it's an entirely different and more fleshed out experience, and which has all sorts of rewarding minigames and endgame content, all while running better and faster than when it first launched.

Bungie could do this (and to a degree, they have, with the new Forge areas added). I'd love to see them embrace their less-fleshed out areas (such as the Archology).

[*] 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.

As long as they do more Story, and not just thinking that Lore is a good replacement for Story, I'm all for them following loose points.

[*] 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.

Hope hope.

[*] 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.
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At least they added a great Gambit Prime map with the assets and art style of Titan, so they haven't entirely killed it off as far as developing that great art direction!