Investment team didn't decide to make a game with no content (Destiny)

by scarab , Monday, December 15, 2014, 12:19 (3633 days ago) @ Spec ops Grunt

But what did happen?

They hired investment people very early on, even before destiny was announced. I can't remember when I first saw job adverts on BNet for IS peeps but it was a LONG time ago.

Jason Jones said that some people played campaign for eons but that most people didn't. I'm one of those long players. JJ said that he wanted to give the short players reasons to become long players. Hence the investment system.

When I heard about Destiny I thought that it would be a huge sink of effort and would eat content.

Arkham city has loads more to do than Destiny but I can still finish it in two weeks of casual play. When all the named bad guys are down and the last riddle solved the world suddenly becomes empty.

The ME games are living worlds right up to the last quarter of the game. Then they become lonely places were nobody on the ship has anything to say to you. As captain I present a sad, lonely, figure going from deck to deck trying to find someone to talk to me. I even took a love interest to try to get someone who would have time for me. (Oddly enough that doesn't work but is a distraction for this post.)

So even the best, content rich games that I have played just fizzle out. Not one of them would last (3?) years of continuous play.

Did Bungie think they could solve this problem then come to the awful conclusion that they couldn't?

I was a long term halo player because I really enjoyed the story and the world and the combat. I have a high tolerance for repetition as long as what I am repeating is fun and has a point. I'm always up for saving the galaxy and hanging out with my NPC pals (the marines and the grunts).

My experience with Reach and Destiny makes me think that if the original game had had an investment system then that system would have poisoned the game for me. Imagine if The Maw had been locked out until you levelled something up or if you had to "earn" the RLs you use in SC. Imagine having to do bounties: melee 30 enemies without dying, headshot 100 enemies, kill ten golds, etc. Imagine if you had to kill an Elite with his own banshee 10 times repeated over three characters. For me it would have sucked the life out of the game. I would have ground to a halt and would have stopped playing it.

The kill and elite with his own banshee comes from AotCR; you can use a RL to knock a banshee of its perch then fly it to a trigger volume which then makes the pilot spawn on the perch. Once he spawns you can kill him with the banshee. It is a fun thing to do and most of us will have tried it at some point. But imagine if you had to do it. OK, nobody is putting a gun to your head but imagine the reward would be something like the ability to carry 4 grenades instead of 2 so you don't have to do it in the strongest sense but you kind of do have to do it.

What fun remains in killing that elite if you have to do it say twice a week most weeks for at least 3 months?

So what now for Destiny?

Some people have no problems (or few) with the game. I can't play it any more.

Could destiny be made better?

Are its only problems down to a lack of content? If it had tons of content and an investment system would it be really good for most players?

For those people who think it is broken: how could it be fixed?