Horrible interview. Here's my takeaway in TL;DR form... (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, July 10, 2015, 00:38 (3662 days ago) @ Kahzgul

"And I think the critics, and many players, call us on those things. And we’re totally trying to address those."
Here's where he says it. He then goes on to totally deflect every question about those things that they're being called on. That's not how you totally try to address those, that's how you totally try not to address those. I included this quote to set up how blatantly he doesn't address the concerns right after he tells the interviewer that they're fully trying to address them.

No, he didn't break it down issue by issue, but he did say:

Bungie and Activsiion are committed to Destiny in a way that’s pretty unusual. We announced this 10 year franchise, we have a large team, we love the game, and really we look across at all the features – whether it’s tuning the weapons, the way bosses work, the way we design destinations, it’s the storytelling, it’s the gear itself. And we ask ourselves how can we make this better? What’s working? What’s not working? We listen to fans. We’re players ourselves, we play in the evening. We’ve got hundreds of ours ourselves spent in the game.

And so The Taken King, we’re absolutely looking to make substantial improvements across the board, in all of these areas, including storytelling. And the player stories, we think those can be better too, and one of the ways is we want to reward players for their deeds. We want you to be earning loot out in the world by killing monsters, not necessarily saving up your money and buying something from a vendor. Saving up money and going shopping, that’s not the fantasy you have about being a space knight and saving the universe!

He hit on storytelling by name, he hit on better loot experiences, he hit on boss design, he hit on Destination design. And the real thing is, this is one single interview. Other interviews and videos have given us additional details. Not doing a huge point by point on every single issue in this one interview doesn't mean we won't hear more before TTK ships. We know Bungie is going to do closer looks at everything in the weeks ahead. They've told us so. And they did a good job of detailing House of Wolves before it launched. You're like Cody Miller complaining that Bungie lied about going to Saturn when in reality Saturn was always coming, just not when he wanted it to.

This was an "we're announcing The Taken King" interview, not a "let's talk about every single thing we're improving" interview. Further details will come and it's silly to call Bungie out on not fixing the actual issue because they didn't list them all in this one interview. And yeah, address was used in two different way... Don't confuse them for the sake of dinging Bungie.

I didn't add my own real commentary here, but the story of how I cheesed the VoG labyrinth chest for weeks on end and then finally got a Gjallerhorn from it isn't a good story. It's a crappy story. Sure, I'll remember it more than I remember who the Awoken are, but that's only because I have no idea who the Awoken are since the game never tells me. It's not possible for me to remember something that doesn't exist. The whole "Tell your own Legend" company line of Destiny, from the get-go, has just been totally lame to me. The story of my items are almost all "RNGeesus finally gave it to me" with the exception of "I bought it from Xur" and Thorn, which had a cool quest. I'm exaggerating a little, but really, the stories of how we got our loot just aren't that interesting in this game, and they're certainly a lot less interesting than the grimoire card backstories of... everything, but none of that is actually in the game (or even referenced in the game when it comes to the loot).

No one liner marketing slogan was ever going to describe everyone's gameplay, but yeah, I think you are exaggerating a lot. So what if you got your favorite weapon from Xur. It's your favorite weapon because of what it does, not where it came from. Even if every weapon and armor had its own multipart quest the stories should still mostly be about what that weapon or piece of armor did for you.

- Red Death (purchased from Xur) upgraded my Defender into nearly unkillable status and once won me a Crucible match by letting me take on four skilled enemies back to back where any other gun would have left me twice dead.
- The Last Word (purchased from Xur) helped my team achieve victory in the only Xbox 360 Bungie Bounty. I have an emblem that probably less than thirty people will ever have on the 360 in part because of that gun.
- The Helm of Saint-14 (purchased from Xur) was the deciding factor in my first successful Crota raid by letting my team finally survive the onslaught while we waited for the bridge out of the Abyss. I even got cheers when the sword knights were blinded part way through the wait!

Those are some of my Legends from the gear I bought. But then there's also Thunderlord which I got after getting pinned down my three Wizards during an Arc Burn Nightfall. The only way I finished was with the help of two DBOers, one of which brought down a Pike into the Hellmouth and vaporized everything!

I can probably tell you a story about most of my Exotics and a good number of the Legendaries I use on a consistent basis. Surely you have some Legends of you own of one type or another? And if yours include cheesing an encounter or shooting into a cave for an hour... well, who's fault is that?

But levity isn't plot. It isn't storytelling. I can tell you a joke, but that's not the same thing as telling you a story. "Hey Eris, you're weird" has no beginning, middle, or end, no arc, no character development, none of that. Destiny is chock full of backstory, but has no actual, present story to speak of. Even when we have goals "You must kill Omnigul" there's only the action of it, with no set up for why we need to (she's "building an army" that we never see...) and no resolution after the fact (did killing her do *anything* to hurt Crota's cause? No idea; never mentioned again). The HoW quests are better with the chase for Skolas, but again we're thrust into it without any set-up (we never see the wolves escape, we don't understand why the queen is pissed at them, heck - we never even see the queen). There is action and resolution, with a degree of character thrown in, which is great, but then there's a huge leap in plot from "we've captured Skolas" to "you need to go into the prison of elders and kill Skolas." Didn't we just spend a bunch of time putting him in there? Why didn't we kill him instead of capturing him? What happened in the prison that has made it so we have to kill him? The game lacks lacks lacks when it comes to storytelling.

Surely you don't think the extent of The Taken King's story improvements are going to be Zavala telling Eris that she is weird? Thats beyond ignorant and naive and has you approaching pretty darn close "made up problem" territory. If "hey Eris, you're weird" is the extent of the conversations in The Taken King I'll post a video of me snapping my Destiny disk in half.

And the thing is, most of those kinds of questions you asked are answered in game, in voiced dialogue even. Omnigul needed to be killed because she was in charge of wakening Crota... you know, the guy who drove the Guardians from the moon after killing thousands of them. Not killing her meant she would just try and revive Crota again and again. All of that is spoken in game. And it is elaborated on in the Grimoire. The Queen is pissed at the Wolves because they attacked the Reef, destroyed entire settlements, assassinated high ranking military leaders, sent assassins after the Queen herself, and, with Skolas' help, killed members of the Queen's personal guard and led the Wolves to break their peace agreement with the Awoken. All of that is spoken in game as well. All of it, and why we first capture and later kill Skolas, is further detailed in the Grimoire.

Do I want more cutscenes and better radio chatter and more scripted set pieces that have more going on than a bunch of enemies standing around waiting for me to kill them? Of course! But you can't ignore what was explained in game then complain that you don't understand this or that.