+1001 (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Monday, January 20, 2020, 16:18 (1776 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

So, here's my consideration, as someone who only saw one reddit thread about it, thought "that looks neat," then promptly forgot about.

What's the overall value of something like this? How much was the dev cost for this, versus something like a strike or a crucible map? It seems really silly to me to spend what seems like a good chunk of time and resources making something like this, only for that to basically disappear from the game in a few weeks (and, even if it didn't, to never be experienced again in any case), when even a single Crucible map would have been more worthwhile in terms of value to the game going forward.

I know that's not exactly a straight-forward equation, as limited time events that ostensibly bring the community together definitely have a value. I just can't really get behind something like this or Niobe Labs over something like Whisper and Zero Hour, which are cool puzzles that also end up as really cool and fun repeatable missions going forward.

I have no dog in this race, but it's really difficult for me to not be cynical about this sort of stuff. I don't want to disparage the individual developers that designed and made this thing, as I'm sure they're very proud of it and were excited to make it and though it was cool and all that, but stuff like this ends up really feeling like filler content to round out a $10 season rather than a substantial piece of content in a great game. And that's where the seasonal model is really starting to break down for me--increasingly the stuff going into the game feels like it's answering "How can we fill out a season that will go away in a few months?" instead of "what really cool thing can we put into the game?" It just sort of feels like they're going about thinks a bit backwards to me. Maybe that's what it takes to make Destiny sustainable, and that's fine, bur the seasonal activities feel completely disposable because they are by their very nature. Instead of making extremely cool things, it feels like they're throwing shit at the wall because they now it won't matter in three months when they just move on to the next half-baked thing.