State of the Eververse (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Thursday, October 17, 2019, 12:08 (1871 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I don't think any of this is black and white... but I think I come down on the MacAddict/Raga side more than the Cheapley side, on this one. (Defined that way mostly for who's arguing in this thread. ;) )

I do NOT disagree that Bungie has thought a lot about how to best sell the stuff in the Eververse store. I will not even disagree that for some people, some of the choices they've made can lead to unhealthy behavior. What I WON'T say is that they're wrong for doing it, that they've crossed some sort of moral line they shouldn't have crossed.

You (talking directly to Cheapley here), or the posts you've pointed to that back up your argument, have suggested that more transparency, in terms of what will/will not be available down the road for Dust vs Silver, would be 'fair' to the consumer. Why? Or, more specifically... why should Bungie be 'fair' to the consumer on this one? We don't tell Kohl's that they are required to lay out what items will be on sale, and when, over the course of the next year, or month, or whatever... why does Bungie have to do this?

You will never be able to convince me that if they laid out exactly what's 'free' (available for earnable dust instead of cash), that they'd make as much money as they do now. They're a business. Their primary goal is to make money. (You're not disagreeing with this point - you're just putting a value judgement on it, by calling it 'scummy'.)

They sell a product (Destiny), and they offer addons to this product. The one thing they've been really clear on is that the addons will not make you play the game better. That's what you paid for when you bought the game. It's not 'scummy' to try and make the for-profit items be more desirable - any more than it's 'scummy' for a supermarket to carefully stack, and wet down, the produce, to make it look more appealing to buyers.

I guess i'm looking at this from the standpoint of 'ALL cosmetics are an addon; ANYTHING we get for free is nice, but not necessary." If they stopped selling Eververse stuff for Bright Dust altogether, would that make the system less or more scummy? Then EVERYTHING that you saw that you wanted to have would cost extra money.. but at least you wouldn't have to wonder "if I hold off, will this be available later for free?"

I sort of feel like the people arguing that the current system is predatory DO feel like the system would be fairer if the Bright Dust economy simply vanished... which seems insane to me, since it's basically just free stuff.