Follow up. *Really Long Post* (Destiny)

by Miguel Chavez, Friday, July 31, 2015, 02:03 (3195 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I'll just add comments to some of your own, if you don't mind.

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).

This is a good point as it reveals again the binary way the majority decides to discuss it. It's either tightly merged into the game or it fails. The work that was put into the lore is dismissed simply because it wasn't brought into the game. It's like Bungie is being punished for taking any time at all to include it. I even recall reading that folks *do* think that if it couldn't be fit within the game, that it should've been removed completely. I can't even process that.

That's not to say it can't be criticized, my point is just that it's seen as 0/1 which is unfair.

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.

I would add that there's alot of the game mechanics itself that is simply wonderous. I think it's glossed over just how spectacular the weapons and physics work.

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.

This is very key to one of my own theories, because if you look back at THIS very forum here over a year ago. Folks were absolutely apoplectic that the game was going to be the second coming. And if you look at some of my early posts here, I was completely on the fence and did *not* like their marketing efforts. It was during the closing weeks before launch, seeing them at PAX, the interviews and panels they gave, that I started to see WHY they were having such a problem with the marketing. But anyway my point is that folks were completely hyped up, and then the game was released and (along with the shuffling off of those that just plain didn't like it) we got folks that were very upset that it didn't meet their expectations… that it was a poor attempt at an MMO, a bad hybrid, that it was ignoring established standards on how the mechanics should've worked. That laid the groundwork for Bungie to, from a PR standpoint, go into rescue mode, and the fans to go into "let me help you with my pointers on what needs fixing" - and it hasn't budged much I think. It's an interesting dynamic. Kermit touched on some great observations about that in one of his posts here.

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.

This to me is another example of where Bungie made a gamble - They decided and I think it has been stated early on… that they purposely chose not to offer all the bells and whistles that would 'complete' the game. From their perspective, they were giving the community an opportunity. Look at all the great work done on Halo through the community. They wanted to leave an open spot for users to present their work. I think it has succeeded! But for some reason the corollary has been glossed over - it's still seen as a failure on Bungie's part for not having taken care of it themselves.

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.

I'll add myself as the outlier, while I should be older and less inclined to play - the game has had a strong grip on me. There's a sweet spot for the amount of playing I can do and how much enjoyment I'd want from the game, and it has been met over and over the year. I have to give my wife many thanks for allowing me the time of course.