Follow up. *Really Long Post* (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Thursday, July 30, 2015, 22:59 (3402 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I'm going to sort of mass reply to this little sub thread here, rather than to each post individually.

CruelLEGACY said:

Personally, Destiny doesn't spark my imagination the way Halo did. I absolutely love playing the game, I think the mechanics are top-notch, but from a story/narrative point of view there just isn't enough in this game to spark my imagination the same way. Ironically, this is one of the very issues that leads to so many complaints from the community :-/

This sort of surprises me. Sure, it's arguable that there's not as much story in Destiny to draw you in, but there is much more lore within the Grimoire than we got in Halo. Granted, maybe a lot of folks in the Destiny population never even see that, but I would be willing to bet that a huge majority of folks on DBO have (if not everyone).

Destiny captures my imagination at least as much as Halo did, if not more. That imagery of the Traveler above the Last City is powerful, at least on par with the first time you land on Halo and look up at the ring. In the same vein, the wreckage at the Reef is enthralling. What happened there to cause so much destruction? How do the Awoken survive there? There's plenty of things within Destiny to capture imagination, I think it's just passed a lot of folks by for some reason.

Vortech said:

Addressing your post only: I think the difference is that I don't think talking about how halo could have been improved was worth the effort as the game was basically locked. Biggie has shown that they will take community feedback and implement it. Even retroactively making pretty large changes - nit just bug fixes. So that's why I think there are more suggestions for changes here.

I guess I can't argue with that. People in general seem to be more unhappy with Destiny than Halo, so that gets focused on. Halo was very on-the-ball, and provided tons of features that no one had done before; everything was new and awesome.

It's made me think, though, about expectations regarding games. Halo: Combat Evolved was pretty much universally loved and hailed as an incredible game, the best of it's time. If it was released today, would anyone give a shit? People expect more from games today. Everyone sort of naturally assumed they knew what Destiny was going to be, and when those assumptions turned out to be wrong, the angry mob emerged. Rather than realizing that Bungie didn't promise the game they were expecting, gamers decided they had been screwed and felt they needed to vent their rage everywhere and anywhere.

Claude said:

Forge didn't come along until Halo 3, but I was busy for hours a day, every day, cataloging creative stuff the community put together in the 8 years between when HBO opened and when Halo 3 launched.

Red vs. Blue being the obvious example. Machinima was possible then without Theater mode, why not now?

The Destiny community is MUCH bigger than the Halo community (part of that is 4 platforms, part of that is that more people game now than 10 years ago, etc)... and yet the 'creative' output is lower.

It saddens me. I am working on something, though. Was going to submit it for the Bungie art contest, but real life and a bit of laziness got in the way, and it's still nowhere near finished.

I certainly take responsibility for DBO not highlighting more of this stuff; I don't HAVE hours a day any more for this job, and I think that there's DEFINITELY a relationship between acknowledgement and more creativity... but even on places like Reddit (which, in terms of traffic, is orders of magnitude bigger than we are) it's not happening with the same regularity.

I think there definitely is a relationship, too, although that saddens me a bit, too. Being on the front page shouldn't be a driving factor to create awesome things, but maybe for some it is. Heck, when I was young and dumb, I used to love being called out on the HBO front page (What's that?) for pointing out a news story, and that's not even a notable achievement, so I do get the correlation.

By no means is the lack of community content your fault Claude (and I don't think you see it that way, either). I think part of it is maybe the fact that we're all older, have different priorities. I certainly don't have the time (or inclination) to waste days upon days playing video games, watching game videos, reading game sites and forums, etc. When I was younger, I could do all that for hours upon hours. It's taken a while, but I've come to realize that life is more important than that stuff. There's this wonderful thing called Outside that's pretty amazing to visit sometimes.

Granted, I don't know the ratio of new folks to old here. Being older and having other priorities can't account for all of it; I'm sure there are quite a few younger folks here, too.

Somehow, I feel like generally speaking for what I've observed, the excitement and wonder is fading from gaming in general. I remember each Halo release, being excited, the community being excited, the news channels all doing stories on how whatever Halo it was is supposed to be the biggest launch in gaming history, etc. It was a different time then, and I think (again, in general) folks are a bit more jaded now.

dogcow said:

Do I need to start crossposting lore based theories from /r/raidsecrets? I miss that aspect of HBO. For some reason I feel the community here isn't very interested in drawing parallels between egyptian/greek/roman/norse mythology & destiny. Maybe i'm wrong!

I think there's plenty of the Alpha-Lupi stuff (final image, eigth.mp3, geomancy, etc.) yet to be understood, anyone want to get into it?

Yes, absolutely you do. I'll admit, I've been to /r/raidsecrets a few times, but I didn't have much time to browse, or wasn't in the mood at the time to dig too deeply. I felt a bit like I was out of the loop, and I needed to be a bit more aware of what had already been happening to really get some of the newer posts. That's not a fault of /r/raidsecrets, or maybe not even necessarily true, but just something I felt.

I, too, love that sort of stuff, to an extent. I'm more into the lore of things; I couldn't really care less about a sixth chest (until it's found!). I don't care about all the posts looking for it. I think it's great some people are doing that sort of stuff, I'm just not going to spend my time thinking about or trying all sorts of ridiculous things to try and find it. I just like some of the lore connections and hints.

So, yes, absolutely post any of that stuff; it's the sort of thing I feel is sorely missed around here.

As a final thought:

I'm not implying anyone here is at fault for any lack of content or anything like that. I fully realize that I have not contributed much, or anything, in the way of speculation or cool art or anything of that nature.

I can't say it'll get better (I hope it does!), but I love this place regardless. You guys led me through my first raids, and it was an absolute blast. Also, as stupid as it sounds, it's great to play with some of the "big names" of the bungie.org community. The one hundred person friends list of the past generation prevented some of that (in my mind, at least. I always just figured that Wu's friends list was full, or Blackstar's, or Stuntmutt's, etc.) Now I play regularly with Kermit and Blackstar (I've still yet to play a game with Claude), but I feel more included now than I ever did at HBO (again, that pretty much all self-imposed). The only time in the Halo days that I've had this much fun with the community was during Halo 2, when the HBO clans were set up (HBOForerunners for life!), but those clans basically became their own separate community. I still talk to the few members of the Forerunners that are left pretty regularly, but they're not active here anymore.

Basically what it boils down to is this: When it comes to actually playing Bungie games, and having a great time together, this community is still the best around. We've just been slipping a bit on having the coolest things happening on the forum and coolest content creation, etc. That's no one's fault, it's just something that happened. Maybe perceived negativity of folks like Cody infected the place. I don't really feel like that happened, but I only came back into this community recently, so I can't say. It's been like this since I got here. I never really noticed it as a problem, until this thread happened and shit got crazy. I think I never perceived it because I took everything people said with a grain of salt. I took it for granted that everyone here (for the most part) is a Bungie fan first, and we all share that. I brushed off almost all hyperbole, thinking that folks were doing it on purpose just to make a point.

I still enjoy my time here, and I for those of you that I've been lucky enough to play with, I've greatly enjoyed that, too. It's what keeps me coming back here.