Thar be whales in them tharr hills (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, November 04, 2019, 07:32 (1851 days ago) @ Cody Miller

This is okay by me. I would rather spend the same amount of money and have fewer, better experiences. If I could only afford 2 games a year, but those games were perfect 11s, I wouldn't mind. That's not the problem. The problem is the games and the experiences are becoming more terrible at the AAA level.

I think you're only going to get one of those things. As the "live services" trend continues to get pushed, everyone is trying to make more games that are the kind of game you could only play one or two of, because nobody has more time than that.

The response to the "there are too many good games and not enough time" is going to be to make games that are less good, but consume even more time. And to hook in-game purchases to them.

You are right about this if current trends continue.

There are a lot of anti-consumer practices that go unnoticed when those using them are at least able to execute their jobs with competence and deliver an entertaining product. That's what makes Destiny "not everyone's cup of tea" and makes Fallout 76 an embarassing farce.

If the only difference between Destiny and Fallout was competence, you would agree that Destiny is ultimately a con?

Maybe? But not really?

The problem is that isn't the only difference, and despite the huge backlash against FO76 for a wide variety of reasons, in terms of purely handling in-game MTX, they aren't the worst, either-- they're just over the line that Bungie is just behind. And EA and ActiBlizz are way over there just straight up running casinos.

Last I looked the only in-game item sales in FO76 that really cross the line are the repair kits.

The whole "Fallout 1st" debacle and their other issues are bad, but I guess I feel they're just not as emblematically bad. Most of the criticism is that what they are offering is broken, and that it's pure Hubris to even try and offer it when so much of what they did deliver is still horribly broken, unfinished, etc.

I think what Destiny is too much of is manipulative. I think it is leaning too hard into the social dependence area. I feel the arguments of, "hey, stop criticizing the game if you don't like it and play something else" rings hollow when every part of the game is trying to keep you playing it. I fear the day where, like some mobile game, they offer a way for you to feel like you're fulfilling your obligation to do your in-game chores, keep up with your friends, stay abreast of the new content, and do it more efficiently, in less time, by offering an in-game "timesaver".

I am definitely coming around to your position that obstacles are deliberately placed between the player and the "fun" (however one defines that) to keep populations around.

The optimistic interpretation of that is that because since Destiny is such a socially dependent game, you need populations around playing activities so that people have other people to play with.

The cynical interpretation of that is that every unit of time a player spends playing is another chance to sell them an item when they visit Tess.