“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

Via Polygon: I haven't touched Halo 5 and Destiny is to blame

I find this fascinating. Just a few days ago, I posted about Halo 5 and how much I've enjoyed it. I think it's a fantastic game. And yet, I find myself agreeing with the sentiments expressed in this opinion piece from Polygon.

Ever since I got my Halo 5 review code, I've only been able to play it in spurts. I'll jump in for an hour, maybe two, and then it's straight back to Destiny. As much as I enjoy Halo 5, I just can't quite shake my desire to play Destiny instead.

This piece from Polygon focuses a lot on the persistent nature of Destiny, and how it creates a constant pull to keep playing it in favor of other "static" games. I agree, but there is more to it for me. I also find the quality of Destiny's base-level gameplay and control mechanics are just that tiny bit better than Halo 5's. Everything you do as the player (running, jumping, shooting, etc) feels perfect, smooth, and satisfying in a way Halo 5 doesn't quite match.

Anyway, I just found this interesting and wanted to share.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

I ran Halo 5 in one sitting. Played some Warzone and Arena the following day. Then I played Destiny with a friend who didn't grab Halo 5 yet.

I think smooth is the wrong word for Destiny's core gameplay loop. It's almost more weighted in a lot of ways. Tactile. Halo 5 is too smooth. Oiled almost. I feel too floaty and that most of what I'm doing is detached. There is definitely something to note about how much Destiny pulls, though. And I don't think, for me, it is in a bad way.

I was just getting ready to post this.

I thought it was interesting, as well, as I too have felt the same thing. Yesterday I jumped on in Destiny with the intent of only getting my Armsday packages (Suros dis-43 with Full Auto, yes!), but soon found myself launching the daily. I had to force myself to quit after that and start up Halo 5 instead. I'm glad I did, as I had a ton of fun earning my ranking in Team Slayer.

It's not that I don't want to play other things, it's that Destiny's pull is so strong. I am glad that Halo 5 gives me a good reason to stay away for a bit, though. Maybe it'll give me enough strength to stay away long enough to finally finish the Witcher 3 . . .

I hadn't seen that Jason Jones quote before, which is very interesting, and it definitely sounds like they've accomplished that goal with Destiny. As we've discussed ad nauseam, maybe they've succeeded too well. For me, Halo has certainly always had that pull that kept me coming back, but in a way that felt more healthy than Destiny sometimes feels. Don't get me wrong, I play Destiny because I really enjoy it, but I have to admit that there is a small baseline of unhealthy addiction and unwillingness to stop playing for fear of being left behind that's not necessarily a good thing.

Anyway, interesting article.

As a sidenote, I listened to the RUL podcast this morning, and it was great. It was too short, but good. (: It sparked some interesting thoughts for me, so there will probably be a post coming from me over at HBO about it.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

Yup. Halo 3 was the pinnacle for me. Whenever I get together with my "old gang" for a LAN it's the game we play. I was emotionally released from it with the ending of the major story arc. Reach was a nice little prequel, but it didn't grab me the way Halo 3 did. I had no desire to play Halo 4, especially w/ you fighting against the Forerunner, it just didn't pull me in. When I bought the MCC I started playing some Halo 4, it just doesn't feel right, it's not drawing me in. Maybe I'll pick up Halo 5, but to be honest, it's just not the same for me now that Bungie's no longer at the helm.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

Halo 5 feels better in that regard than any other Halo, in my opinion. It feels grounded and less floaty, and the new movement mechanics add a lot to the core gameplay loop in a similar way that Destiny's jumps do.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

I had the same reaction initially to 343i seemingly flipping the "You ARE Forerunners" quote and subsequent expansion upon the Forerunners, but they've taken in what I think is a pretty interesting direction. I guess they've managed to sway me to their side, and it makes a certain sort of sense in that they're continuing something that Bungie very obviously intended and wrote to be completely finished. I'm not sure how else they could have played it, other than sparking up another war with the Covenant for some reason and keeping that as the central antagonist.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong or convince you of anything, just offering my opinion. And also saying that even if you don't like the story, the campaign might still be worth playing for you. It was, in my opinion, definitely the tightest Halo campaign yet with arguably the best encounter and level design.

Halo 5 feels really good, Blue. Try it.

As for the story, yes. For me, Halo ended with 3. I like the self contained story of Halo 5 though. It's pretty good shit. In my head, the 343 games are like Halo fan fiction. And if you have ever read Dispraiser's Halo fan fiction, you know it can be really good. Enjoy it for what it is and the game is fantastic.

Again, Halo 4 I DID NOT like. I was prepared to not like this one.

Halo 5 feels really good, Blue. Try it.

As for the story, yes. For me, Halo ended with 3. I like the self contained story of Halo 5 though. It's pretty good shit. In my head, the 343 games are like Halo fan fiction. And if you have ever read Dispraiser's Halo fan fiction, you know it can be really good. Enjoy it for what it is and the game is fantastic.

Again, Halo 4 I DID NOT like. I was prepared to not like this one.

So... can I pickup Halo 5 & not feel like I'm missing things due to the fact that I haven't played much of Halo 4?

Don't get me wrong, I play Destiny because I really enjoy it, but I have to admit that there is a small baseline of unhealthy addiction and unwillingness to stop playing for fear of being left behind that's not necessarily a good thing.

This is why I deleted Destiny from my Xbox. I really enjoyed playing the game, honestly, but there was this nagging feeling as you said to play 'keep up' or I'd be left behind.

- MacGyver10

I feel the same. Destiny is incredible smooth and beautiful. While playing Halo 5, i just kind of find myself shooting things and floating around. Sad as it is to say, I found myself more immersed in COD: Ghost than this Halo, which is pretty bad. They try and incorporate plot via in game chat, but the translation is lost. I also felt like the enemies looked really small, like misproportionate or something. Because of this I can't find any detail in them. No my tv is not small, or my settings off. Petetheduck also agreed with me on this. I was really hoping to get that Halo 2/3 feeling again in the multiplayer, but easily fell short. I don't like the REQ system all that much. The Warzone gamemode is great however, just not that system.

I really wish that Bungie could incorporate some sort of PvPvE aspect like this. Maybe not so much the Battlefield Rush gamemode, but having AI enemies in the PVP.

All in All, Destiny wins for me. I find myself FORCING myself to play halo, then easily talking myself back into Destiny. Maybe I have a problem

Yes. I'm playing the campaign on Saturday for the first time, but from what HBO is saying, after the first level and a half, it really becomes a new self-contained story.

- MacGyver10

So... can I pickup Halo 5 & not feel like I'm missing things due to the fact that I haven't played much of Halo 4?

Aside from a couple big points, I'd say yes. You might want to just look up a quick Halo 4 plot summary to get up to speed, just in case.

Lil'Blue has it on his Christmas wish list. I'm sure one of his aunts will get it for him. I'll play it then. I'm just saying I have no desire to go out and get it for myself. They really lost me with the artwork and story. Plus I'm still disappointed in MCC.

Don't get me wrong, I play Destiny because I really enjoy it, but I have to admit that there is a small baseline of unhealthy addiction and unwillingness to stop playing for fear of being left behind that's not necessarily a good thing.

This is why I deleted Destiny from my Xbox. I really enjoyed playing the game, honestly, but there was this nagging feeling as you said to play 'keep up' or I'd be left behind.

- MacGyver10

The thing is, being behind isn't that big of a deal. I guess I see that now. When the next expansion comes, everybody kind of starts on equal footing anyway.

Like, I hit the lighthouse in House of Wilves what, 14 or 15 times. Yet, I didn't really get anything that I really ended up using a ton and relying on. My messanger adept kicked ass, but it was identical in PvP to a regular messanger, which is far easier to obtain. The experience of playing trials and visiting mercury was great, and I'll always love that! But I don't think not doing it would have put me behind, nor would doing it less have made the times I did play less important.

There's a pretty huge cliff you hit where you get very sharp diminishing returns in Destiny. More so it seems for the slow laborious process to 320 light.

I'd love to play trials with the PS4 crew here, but not if it requires me to go nuts with grinding. 365 weapons and level 34 were easy to get in HoW. Doesn't seem that way in TTK.

Don't get me wrong, I play Destiny because I really enjoy it, but I have to admit that there is a small baseline of unhealthy addiction and unwillingness to stop playing for fear of being left behind that's not necessarily a good thing.

This is why I deleted Destiny from my Xbox. I really enjoyed playing the game, honestly, but there was this nagging feeling as you said to play 'keep up' or I'd be left behind.

- MacGyver10

The thing is, being behind isn't that big of a deal. I guess I see that now. When the next expansion comes, everybody kind of starts on equal footing anyway.

Like, I hit the lighthouse in House of Wilves what, 14 or 15 times. Yet, I didn't really get anything that I really ended up using a ton and relying on. My messanger adept kicked ass, but it was identical in PvP to a regular messanger, which is far easier to obtain. The experience of playing trials and visiting mercury was great, and I'll always love that! But I don't think not doing it would have put me behind, nor would doing it less have made the times I did play less important.

There's a pretty huge cliff you hit where you get very sharp diminishing returns in Destiny. More so it seems for the slow laborious process to 320 light.

I'd love to play trials with the PS4 crew here, but not if it requires me to go nuts with grinding. 365 weapons and level 34 were easy to get in HoW. Doesn't seem that way in TTK.

As I said elsewhere either yesterday or today, its not just being behind that's the problem, but being behind because you're pretty much running solo. Its not easy to solo a lot of TTK content, at least for me, and I just never got pulled in because there's a lot of pushback from the game with that difficulty barrier, partially artificially enforced by RNG. I don't want to loop around and reply a bunch of content just to get the stuff I need to move forward with the plot. That's not letting me play the way I want to, which is supposedly a core tenant of the game.

- No text -

Its weird, and kind of sad, because almost this entire community is made up of people that loved the Halo universe and games.
In fact a great number of people here made the... choice... To buy an Xbone with the hope that the Master Chief Collection would rekindle that love, and the hope that Halo 5 would fix the mistakes made in Halo 4.

But it seems like 343 didn't flinch away from their roadmap, and I could forgive a story that doesn't interest me at all, if the rest of the game had what I was looking for, such as campaign theater, an invasion game type, and Forge (which won't release for two months). It once again feels like an incomplete game rushed out in time for the Holiday season, only without multiple studios trying to glue it all together.

But yeah, almost all of us here were big fans of the franchise, but that joy seems to have teetered away for a number of us. And that sucks... But who knows, maybe Halo 6 will be the big return, if Destiny 2 doesn't blow us away...

I could forgive a story that doesn't interest me at all

Halo has always been about the story to me and I can't get past what 343i did with Halo 4 so I'm done with Halo.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo.

Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

-99

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

Yeah, the desire to answer every mystery (sloppily, what with English-speaking aliens that hate humanity just-because), the whole "it was prophecy that you would exist, because we programmed it", and the killing-off, then comic-book resurrection of Cortana (is that even a Spoiler, since the second level in the game mentions that in a throwaway line?)... It's just too hokey, and ruins the awesome simplicity of Halo 1, and even makes Halo 2-3 look focused and straightforward as a result...

343 basically said that they don't really care about the old fans, and then tried to lure them back with Blue team, to reportedly weak results. How has Halo 5 done sales-wise?

Honestly, I'm amazed that the Halo series has continued the way it has. After the Halo 4 population vaporized, and the MCC was the biggest trainwreck of a launch since the Sega Saturn, I'm amazed that heads didn't roll over at 343. They just kept chugging along...

Since there's no forge, there's no point in customs yet. If I have it around Christmas I'll hop on for some customs and maybe make a map or two. I want to see if we can create something like invasion again.

343 basically said that they don't really care about the old fans, and then tried to lure them back with Blue team, to reportedly weak results. How has Halo 5 done sales-wise?

I feel the same way about Halo as I do about NASCAR. I used to be a die hard fan. I spent tons of money road tripping to races, and spent every Sunday afternoon watching races. Then Brian France took over and made it clear he didn't care about the old fans. He did everything he could to get rid of the good ol'boy image and detach it as far as he could from the South.

For instance, he took one of the greatest traditions, the Labor Day Southern 500, away from Darlington and moved it to LA because he thought he could get a bigger market. It backfired. It was an insult to the old fans because it showed he didn't understand the traditions that they loved, and he then took something stripped of its roots and tried to sell it to a market that wasn't that interested. People came and checked out the race, but the crowd size didn't have any staying power. They satisfied their curiosity and moved on.

I felt that way about Halo 4. It felt like they wanted to turn Halo into something they thought could pull in the CoD and other games crowd, and in doing so turned off the old fans. Those new people came in, checked it out, then went back to whatever else they were into before. Meanwhile the old fans lost interest because it lost its original charm.

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

This is what has always baffled me. People did do that. Do you know how long even average Joes played Halo? I know so many people, who are complete casual gamers, who fire up and play through Halo again every once and a while. Chris101b and I just did it for all 6 games.

They don't need an "excuse" to do it again. Millions of people did it again because the game he helped create was a complete fucking blast, and unmatched by its peers. People will replay a game if they think they can have fun. The best way to do it is to create a game that's just crazy fun with no bullshit.

343 basically said that they don't really care about the old fans, and then tried to lure them back with Blue team, to reportedly weak results. How has Halo 5 done sales-wise?

I feel the same way about Halo as I do about NASCAR. I used to be a die hard fan. I spent tons of money road tripping to races, and spent every Sunday afternoon watching races. Then Brian France took over and made it clear he didn't care about the old fans. He did everything he could to get rid of the good ol'boy image and detach it as far as he could from the South.

For instance, he took one of the greatest traditions, the Labor Day Southern 500, away from Darlington and moved it to LA because he thought he could get a bigger market. It backfired. It was an insult to the old fans because it showed he didn't understand the traditions that they loved, and he then took something stripped of its roots and tried to sell it to a market that wasn't that interested. People came and checked out the race, but the crowd size didn't have any staying power. They satisfied their curiosity and moved on.

I felt that way about Halo 4. It felt like they wanted to turn Halo into something they thought could pull in the CoD and other games crowd, and in doing so turned off the old fans. Those new people came in, checked it out, then went back to whatever else they were into before. Meanwhile the old fans lost interest because it lost its original charm.

Funny you put it that way. When Halo 4 came out, I defended it a lot. It was different, but that didn't necessarily mean that it was bad. Heck, I was the first HBOer to hit rank 130, remember? I played it a lot... And then Black Ops 2 came out, and did everything that was "new" in Halo much better (and it also has what is probably the best Theater mode in any game before or since, until Black Ops 3 is released in nine days).
That week, the Halo 4 population plummeted. As you said, the new people satisfied their curiously, then left.
343 responded by rounding up the MLG folks (such as Bravo), and having them tweak and direct the changes to the game... To disastrous results. I really liked Halo 4 at launch, but the weapon tuning killed it for me so fast, that my joy Patrick Swayze'd out of it.
I'm not even that big of a CoD fan, but given that Halo 4 was the only alternative, I ended up just playing that.

And now, 343 doesn't put population counters in their games. Tells you something...

I completely understand what you're saying and where you're coming from.

But surely some of the Halo games (especially Halo 3) could "phone home" and deliver usage information to Bungie. Bungie then would have some idea of how much and how often people played these games. Maybe your anecdotal evidence doesn't hold true for a vast majority of the population.

I'm sure Jason Jones has spent a lot of time thinking about Halo and Destiny, probably more than even the superfans here. He probably also has access to a lot of usage data that we don't.

For some reason, based off the information he had, he thought the best thing to do for future games was to add hooks to get people to play back through the content.

I can't say I blame him--creating new playspaces is hard and costly; giving people a reason to play back through them gives more content per dollar. As Destiny has grown over time, I've found the re-use of spaces to be less bothersome, more natural, more interesting.

You know Battlefront comes out soon... just sub in "Spartans" for "Stormtroopers" and "Innies" for "Rebels" then you can hop in your Millennium Hornet and save Reach from UNSC control.

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

Via Polygon: I haven't touched Halo 5 and Destiny is to blame

I find this fascinating. Just a few days ago, I posted about Halo 5 and how much I've enjoyed it. I think it's a fantastic game. And yet, I find myself agreeing with the sentiments expressed in this opinion piece from Polygon.

Ever since I got my Halo 5 review code, I've only been able to play it in spurts. I'll jump in for an hour, maybe two, and then it's straight back to Destiny. As much as I enjoy Halo 5, I just can't quite shake my desire to play Destiny instead.

This piece from Polygon focuses a lot on the persistent nature of Destiny, and how it creates a constant pull to keep playing it in favor of other "static" games. I agree, but there is more to it for me. I also find the quality of Destiny's base-level gameplay and control mechanics are just that tiny bit better than Halo 5's. Everything you do as the player (running, jumping, shooting, etc) feels perfect, smooth, and satisfying in a way Halo 5 doesn't quite match.

Anyway, I just found this interesting and wanted to share.

What they talk about is exactly why I have resented touching Destiny after Halo 5 came out. When I went into Arena, I wasn't getting chewed up by guns that I haven't acquired because I haven't put the tens of hours of gambling in to get them (or set aside time every day to see if some random event has triggered for me to run it...)

I find Halo 5 feels much more physical, I actually feel like some kind of amazing powerful being sliding around boosting and charging into people. Destiny feels very pew pew whereas Halo 5 feels thwack thwack. Even the much improved missions in TTK don't compare to the gravitas of a lot of the missions in Halo 5. What Destiny has that Halo 5 doesn't is a Raid...

You know Battlefront comes out soon... just sub in "Spartans" for "Stormtroopers" and "Innies" for "Rebels" then you can hop in your Millennium Hornet and save Reach from UNSC control.

Sammy is stoked for that. You should Also get Black Ops 3 to go through the campaign with Sammy and I. Realistic Difficulty or bust.
Either way. Welcome home, Paddy.

This piece from Polygon focuses a lot on the persistent nature of Destiny, and how it creates a constant pull to keep playing it in favor of other "static" games.

I was habitually addicted to Destiny. The more I played, the less of a "high" I got, and therefore had to play more, had to pursue that last sliver of what I hadn't already had.

My break with Destiny came in June, long before the great August schism here on DBO. I dropped it cold turkey, felt the pull for about 3 or 4 days. I picked up Witcher III and -poof- I could no longer remember why Destiny was so important to me.

I was playing Destiny because I was addicted, and because I wanted to keep up with this community which I enjoy being a part of. I was paying in to Destiny more than it was paying back.

I feel strangely relieved. I feel strangely elated enjoying other games (Witcher III, Halo 5, and presumably Fallout 4).

Playing Destiny persistently is not inherently healthy; for me, it was.

Gee whiz, I still fire up old classics like Super Mario Brothers, Battle Toads, & Adventure and play them sometimes, just for the fun of it. This happens about once every 4-8 weeks.

But surely some of the Halo games (especially Halo 3) could "phone home" and deliver usage information to Bungie. Bungie then would have some idea of how much and how often people played these games. Maybe your anecdotal evidence doesn't hold true for a vast majority of the population.

I remember when Microsoft used to publish their weekly "most played" lists. Halo 2 was always on top, even after the 360 came out. After several months of a 3 year old game dominating the new stuff, MS starting splitting the lists between the Xbox and the Xbox 360.

I would say that Bungie had succeeded in making a game that people would come back to, without having to resort to dangling carrots.

I can't say I blame him--creating new playspaces is hard and costly; giving people a reason to play back through them gives more content per dollar. As Destiny has grown over time, I've found the re-use of spaces to be less bothersome, more natural, more interesting.

But this is the WORST way to to think about games. Content per dollar? That's stupid. It's about fun per second. Make games with high fun/sec values and people will want to play them!

but the weapon tuning killed it for me so fast, that my joy Patrick Swayze'd out of it.

Wtf man. Too soon.

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

I recall reading this quote back then, and thinking to myself: "huh?! What is he talking about?!"

I may well be the exception (haven't read all the posts following this one, and as usual, I'm late to the party), but I played Halo 1 over and over and over again. I WAS drawn "back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time." My "excuses": the story, game design, and split-screen co-op. I couldn't get enough of the story. The levels and game design were fun and challenging (only two weapons at a time!) and - most importantly - I feel like they could be tackled different ways.

I've said this before, but it never felt like Halo had boss encounters (Tartarus being the notable exception). I generally do not enjoy boss encounters; they are my least favorite part of Destiny. Unload a bunch of bullets, reload, repeat. Most Halo encounters allow for multiple ways of engaging the enemy and that alone helps to create an excuse to replay over and over again.

I still think about going back and playing those levels and experiencing the story, constrained from doing so only by life's other priorities. In fact, my daughter and I are planning to do just that as soon as we finish ODST.

Via Polygon: I haven't touched Halo 5 and Destiny is to blame

Look forward to reading this. Thanks!

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

This is what has always baffled me. People did do that. Do you know how long even average Joes played Halo? I know so many people, who are complete casual gamers, who fire up and play through Halo again every once and a while. Chris101b and I just did it for all 6 games.

By definition, the average Halo player hasn't even finished the Halo CE campaign. Achievement data has been used to back this up for years; only 30%-40% of the people who play any game will finish it even once.

You're coming at this from the perspective of a mega-fan. You and I and everyone here are FAR from the "average gamer". I don't think you appreciate just how far from average we actually are.

But surely some of the Halo games (especially Halo 3) could "phone home" and deliver usage information to Bungie. Bungie then would have some idea of how much and how often people played these games. Maybe your anecdotal evidence doesn't hold true for a vast majority of the population.

I remember when Microsoft used to publish their weekly "most played" lists. Halo 2 was always on top, even after the 360 came out. After several months of a 3 year old game dominating the new stuff, MS starting splitting the lists between the Xbox and the Xbox 360.

I would say that Bungie had succeeded in making a game that people would come back to, without having to resort to dangling carrots.

We need to couch this info a little bit. First of all, we need to remember that as recently as 2011(ish... might have been 2010) only about 50% of all Xbox 360s were connected to the internet. So "most played Xbox Live game" is already not representative of the "majority" of Xbox gamers.

We also need to remember that this was back in the days when there was very little competition for Halo 2.

Most people who buy a game play a handful of hours and never go back. Halo has always enjoyed a more dedicated fan base, but the long-term player base is still just a fraction of total sales.

That's my first goal when Forge is there. Can I make things in the script to do Invasion.

- No text -

Content per dollar?

I meant cost of creation, but I wasn't clear about that.

By definition, the average Halo player hasn't even finished the Halo CE campaign. Achievement data has been used to back this up for years; only 30%-40% of the people who play any game will finish it even once.

And the same is true for Destiny! So what does that mean?

This piece from Polygon focuses a lot on the persistent nature of Destiny, and how it creates a constant pull to keep playing it in favor of other "static" games.

I was habitually addicted to Destiny. The more I played, the less of a "high" I got, and therefore had to play more, had to pursue that last sliver of what I hadn't already had.

My break with Destiny came in June, long before the great August schism here on DBO. I dropped it cold turkey, felt the pull for about 3 or 4 days. I picked up Witcher III and -poof- I could no longer remember why Destiny was so important to me.

I was playing Destiny because I was addicted, and because I wanted to keep up with this community which I enjoy being a part of. I was paying in to Destiny more than it was paying back.

I feel strangely relieved. I feel strangely elated enjoying other games (Witcher III, Halo 5, and presumably Fallout 4).

Playing Destiny persistently is not inherently healthy; for me, it was.

I hit a similar wall last year and picked up Bloodborne and had a blast with it. But I never finished it. I know I'm pretty much at the end of the game, but then some of Destiny's DLC dropped and I got sucked back in, to the "I need to keep up" mentality.

Then I kinda just stopped it all (life things).

I've been on it lately, and while there are a lot of little changes I like and steps in the right direction, I'm just not enjoying it to the extent that everyone here seems to.

It's just barely fun.

It's not bad!

But it's just barely fun.

It's good to play and "snack" on for a bit, but once you've done the bounties for the day or whatever it gets stale, until it resets.

For me at least.

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

Via Polygon: I haven't touched Halo 5 and Destiny is to blame

I find this fascinating. Just a few days ago, I posted about Halo 5 and how much I've enjoyed it. I think it's a fantastic game. And yet, I find myself agreeing with the sentiments expressed in this opinion piece from Polygon.

Ever since I got my Halo 5 review code, I've only been able to play it in spurts. I'll jump in for an hour, maybe two, and then it's straight back to Destiny. As much as I enjoy Halo 5, I just can't quite shake my desire to play Destiny instead.

This piece from Polygon focuses a lot on the persistent nature of Destiny, and how it creates a constant pull to keep playing it in favor of other "static" games. I agree, but there is more to it for me. I also find the quality of Destiny's base-level gameplay and control mechanics are just that tiny bit better than Halo 5's. Everything you do as the player (running, jumping, shooting, etc) feels perfect, smooth, and satisfying in a way Halo 5 doesn't quite match.

Anyway, I just found this interesting and wanted to share.

What they talk about is exactly why I have resented touching Destiny after Halo 5 came out. When I went into Arena, I wasn't getting chewed up by guns that I haven't acquired because I haven't put the tens of hours of gambling in to get them (or set aside time every day to see if some random event has triggered for me to run it...)

I find Halo 5 feels much more physical, I actually feel like some kind of amazing powerful being sliding around boosting and charging into people. Destiny feels very pew pew whereas Halo 5 feels thwack thwack. Even the much improved missions in TTK don't compare to the gravitas of a lot of the missions in Halo 5. What Destiny has that Halo 5 doesn't is a Raid...

I haven't played Halo 5 yet, but this is how I've felt coming from Halo Reach to Destiny's MP.

You don't even have to try in Destiny and you're going to get a kill. You'd have to go out of your way to NOT score points in it. Well....except Defender Titan's, unless they get a poison bubble :P

In Destiny PvP, I'm overwhelmingly aware that I can die, respawn and run right into the action. Just constantly pushing forward. I mean, that's how the other players play. I played a few games earlier this week for the Festival event and I ran Defender pretty much the whole time and people just run into the bubble to die, rinse and repeat. I'd eventually get overwhelmed or run out of ammo but that was it. I'd have a new super charged with how many kills I got and just do it again.

Destiny PvP lacks that virtual couch feeling for me. Everyone has their own agenda for the games, be it bounties, or leveling something, or chasing loot etc. The team games always feel like two teams of lone wolves to me.

Feh.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo Reach....

I keep posting this here and there, but I'm really having fun with Halo 5. Locke is made bearable by Buck and the rest of the Osiris squad, and knowing the history of Blue team provides its own hook. In my mind 343 either succeeds brilliantly in leveraging Halo's strengths on small stuff, or fails spectacularly on big (and newer) stuff. To wit, they build on established relationships well--the Cortana/Chief dynamic was well done in Halo 4, but the Didact's (the who?) motivations were confusing and murky, and not in a good way. I haven't gotten far enough along to say that Halo 5 is burdened in the same way. I will say I don't know what the heck the guardians are, but there's a new confidence in Halo 5. Exposition feels natural, and it seems like they're at least starting to learn that less can be more.

I'm enjoying the mechanics. I'm not sailing through encounters, but organically discovering the best tactics. Here's the testimony: I was very tired when I played the first night, and I didn't mind replaying the same bits the next night when I was more awake. I look forward to playing. Duty to my history with these characters got me through bits of Halo 4.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo Reach....

Reach comes before Halo 3...

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

Yeah I was talking about this last night with some DBOers. I thought the Halo 5 campaign was fun, but the story just leaves me a little sad. Bungie is good at building mystery (with vanilla Destiny, maybe a little TOO good), but I feel like 343 on the other hand needs to explain almost everything. The mysteries that are left are mostly interpersonal ones, but nothing big and grand I'm dying to find out more about.

I've read through this thread and I'm pretty bummed about it. I'm about to word vomit everywhere but I haven't posted in a while either so....eh!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I loved Halo before I found HBO.

I like the people on DBO (most of them are former HBOers, after all!) but I don't like Destiny nearly as much.

I have not had the opportunity to play Halo 5 yet, and recently had the plot spoiled for me (well meaning co-worker, but oops!) but I still don't think Destiny is a step up from Bungie's Halo.

Maybe 343's Halo, but Bunige's Halo is better than Bungie's Destiny, for me.

This, is what Destiny is to me:

And before half of you get your panties in a bunch, I know the mobile games that they are lampooning are not the same as Destiny, but they are just enough.

To me Destiny is just *barely* fun.

In each Halo game and that includes Halo 4, I can name off a campaign mission that I can play over and over and over again because I genuinely enjoy it.

I cannot, for the life of me, even with TTK content, name a -single- campaign mission that I've replayed for pleasure.

Not one. Can you? Honestly? Daily missions aren't the same- there are rewards tied to those. I mean has anyone reading this in the last 24 hours fired up a mission just for the fun of the mission?

To me Destiny is a non-mobile but mobile game.

And I don't have problems with that (or mobile gaming in general) because after I've had my 30 minutes or hour of fun and say, completed my daily vanguard bounties I can hop off and I'm done.

But a lot of people don't play like that. Some of you here don't play like that. In fact, I legitimately wonder sometimes if certain people here even have jobs, or a career because if I didn't know any better I'd swear THIS was their career :P

With TTK I wanted this to be good. And to be sure, Bungie has made numerous improvements but Year 2 feels like year 1 to me still.

New content came out.

You all rush rush rush to consume it. Things to chase! Gotta be first to find the things before Reddit spoils it! Timed events! Timed missions! Oh you missed it! Darn!

I felt like I had to keep up with you guys but the reality of it is that I would probably enjoy Destiny more if I didn't come here so often (which sounds harsh or cry babyish, but I don't mean it that way). The things I've had the best fun with are the ones I discovered myself, and I fully admit that it's my fault for coming here and other sites to read about my friends exploits at the cost of mine.

My wife and I have missed the opportunity to do an unspoiled raid with you guys. If we want that experience, we're gonna have to an LFG or something. I appreciate the offers that some have given to do it with us and not say anything, let us figure it out, but we tried that with Crota and it just made our party frustrated until they just gave us ultra-hints hahaha.

{If you are still reading at this point, bless you}

There is this unconscious urge that destiny has on a LOT of people, me included, to keep playing it with how it is designed. It is very much the south park video above. Thankfully, i can say that the micro-transactions in Destiny are not like mobile, at least not yet. And if it does go that way, I am confident that it will be because players allow it because they want it to, and that's ok too.

But what's ironic about it all is that while I could play solo and try to catch up to you guys, Destiny TTK in it's very nature discourages this!

It is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE that I can't load up a Strike from the director and do it solo.

I just want to explore this world that Bungie wants me to play in, but I want to do it on -my- terms.

You know what my first Strike experience was with TTK? Doing Darkblade with a couple of rando's that sprinted the entire thing, while I wanted to go slow, look at things, maybe explore for ghosts (because god knows I'm TRYING to get invested in this thing, despite their attempts) and that sort of thing, but nope! It was not to be.

I was apparently too far behind and got warped to my teammates. Fuck this game, for that right there.

I shouldn't have to subjugate two of my friends to my wanting to stop and smell the roses, you know?

Sometimes you just want to do things solo. Bungie said I'd be able to do this. Have they lied to me? Patrols and crucible are not enough, friends. All content should be there for me to digest at my pace when I feel like it, and it is not. It's such a paradox. I spend time waiting for things to happen like public events when I want to do them -now- and on the flip side I get rushed along for trying to take time to explore strikes that have really good content to them.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I know what I want in gaming and I can't get it anymore. Not with Destiny and Halo at least.

I want LANs forever. I want MM nights online with 16 of my community members forever. I want 2001-2007 era Bungie forever. That time has passed.

I want what I know I can't have.

You can't LAN destiny. Fuck, you can't even play it offline, or with more than 6 people.

You can't LAN new Halo. You can't do 16 player HBO MM nights because there's only 6 people left and I can't stand 3 of them.

So I'm at an impasse.

I would have enjoyed TTK more had I not tried to keep up with players here.

I can't say the same for Halo, that's a different animal. But I can't read posts about Destiny VS Halo either.

They're not the same game. You guys want this apples to apples line up of them when all your doing is comparing oranges to giraffes.

So, I think this is what's going to happen for me:

• I'm going to play Destiny way, way less again. Just get on when my wife wants to get on.
  
• I'm going to rent Halo 5 and cross if off my list (and maybe buy it should I love it)
  
• I'm not ever going to worry about playing Destiny content day 1, ever again.
  
• I'm going to stay away from these forums until I've played through things myself. No matter what.
  
• And most importantly, I'm going to go play the games I've bought but not finished.

And for what it's worth, I'm happy that the you guys are enjoying Destiny so much. Just keep it in moderation, ok? Ok.

I cannot, for the life of me, even with TTK content, name a -single- campaign mission that I've replayed for pleasure.

Nope, literally only the raids.

Not one. Can you? Honestly? Daily missions aren't the same- there are rewards tied to those. I mean has anyone reading this in the last 24 hours fired up a mission just for the fun of the mission?

This is largely because the missions are meant to be short and repeatable, because they have to be able to be dailies. There needs to be a lot of them because there are a lot of days. So none of them really get the attention they require in order to really be great on their own.

You know what my first Strike experience was with TTK? Doing Darkblade with a couple of rando's that sprinted the entire thing, while I wanted to go slow, look at things, maybe explore for ghosts (because god knows I'm TRYING to get invested in this thing, despite their attempts) and that sort of thing, but nope! It was not to be.

This is why matchmaking is bad for campaign content. All co-op content should be with friends only. Not only would you always get a better experience, but the missions themselves could be better designed and require more from you, rather than just be obstacles to get through to get your drop from the boss.

As I said elsewhere either yesterday or today, its not just being behind that's the problem, but being behind because you're pretty much running solo. Its not easy to solo a lot of TTK content, at least for me, and I just never got pulled in because there's a lot of pushback from the game with that difficulty barrier, partially artificially enforced by RNG. I don't want to loop around and reply a bunch of content just to get the stuff I need to move forward with the plot. That's not letting me play the way I want to, which is supposedly a core tenant of the game.

Don't be fooled. I don't think Bungie cares at all about how you want to play or solo play. The new trademark from Bungie for Destiny should be "We make games for you to play how we want." It sucks for sure. Solo just isn't a thing, and they've gone to great lengths to try to discourage it imo. While I'd love to trash on H5 so as to tell you why you should Destiny it up regardless, I find it hard to trash a dead franchise. There's still hope for the future with Destiny. Unless microtransactions kill it. Slippery slope and such.

Don't be fooled. I don't think Bungie cares at all about how you want to play or solo play. The new trademark from Bungie for Destiny should be "We make games for you to play how we want." It sucks for sure. Solo just isn't a thing, and they've gone to great lengths to try to discourage it imo. While I'd love to trash on H5 so as to tell you why you should Destiny it up regardless, I find it hard to trash a dead franchise. There's still hope for the future with Destiny. Unless microtransactions kill it. Slippery slope and such.

There's nothing wrong with making a game that's not supposed to played alone. The absolute best parts of Destiny are with 5 other people tackling challenges that you could not conquer by yourself. That's like saying Gears of War was bad because you couldn't just run and gun everything. That's just… how the game is.

Did you play Portal 2? You could only play half the game alone. The other half required a co-op partner. That doesn't make it bad. In fact, I thought the co-op mode was quite cool indeed. I can easily imagine someday a game which is only co-op. Provided it has split screen, such a game could actually be pretty cool. Look at the quality of the puzzles in Portal 2's single player vs the Co-op mode. Look at the quality of the raids in Destiny when compared to story missions. There's a bunch of experiences out there players could potentially be having that are impossible alone!

I know that. Absolutely played Portal 2, and it's fantastic both ways. Unforunately, for his purposes, he can't always get a group going. I'm not saying that the entire thing should be solo accessible. I am saying that a ton of the game doesn't give you a lot of options under time constraints and other obligations. I get his frustrations. We actually did Portal 2 together, too. I maybe have played Destiny with him once, and I'm on a ton. I get why he and others feel left behind or excluded from large parts of the game, even parts that can be conceivably completed solo RNG willing.

Edit: Btw Effortless, if you're on or whatever and need a group or want to play, just message or join. I can help you through anything in Destiny. I primarily am on during Saturday evenings/nights/earlySundaymorning, but I can generally be around any evening if it's not past like 10pm PT.

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

This is what has always baffled me. People did do that. Do you know how long even average Joes played Halo? I know so many people, who are complete casual gamers, who fire up and play through Halo again every once and a while. Chris101b and I just did it for all 6 games.

I don't think Jones means "every once in awhile".

I also don't think a lot of people did that. At most, one replay a year, with perhaps an extra one just before the next sequel dropped.

Someone who plays Destiny on a regular basis, if they are doing the Daily Heroic on most days, has probably replayed Destiny's entire campaign close to 10 times now in a single year, and that's not even including strikes, raids, PVP, Prison and Court of Oryx.

I'd love to get a big stats dump from Bungie comparing how people play Destiny compared to how they played Halo, but I'm not holding my breath for it. It seems likely to me that all the old Halo data belongs to 343 now, and the two studios now are essentially competitors. I don't think either will want to open up a war on that front.

You know what my first Strike experience was with TTK? Doing Darkblade with a couple of rando's that sprinted the entire thing, while I wanted to go slow, look at things, maybe explore for ghosts (because god knows I'm TRYING to get invested in this thing, despite their attempts) and that sort of thing, but nope! It was not to be.

This is why matchmaking is bad for campaign content. All co-op content should be with friends only. Not only would you always get a better experience, but the missions themselves could be better designed and require more from you, rather than just be obstacles to get through to get your drop from the boss.

Yup. I basically stopped doing strikes in lists that have matchmaking when I'm not in a full fireteam. It's too annoying.

I remember the Cody Millers of the day on the HBO forum saying Halo 2 had bad design compared to Halo, and one of the big things were the boss battles. They felt to gamey, or something. It's been a while now, I forget. Anyway, they didn't feel like Bungie, apparently. The heretic and tartarus were big nonos.

Paradox is a mission that is gun to play through just for fun. Good story and gameplay.

I understand your frustration some. I think the raid was released too quickly. There was too much pressure to level up for the raid quickly so I could join a blind run group. Outside of that there's no reason to not progress at your own rate. There are plenty of ways to naturally progress to the level to do most end game content. I haven't done hard mode King's Fall and I'm not in a hurry to do it. My level is high enough for everything I enjoy doing.

Destiny is definitely built to be played with other people. It's a social game. I haven't had a problem finding people who want to play through at my pace or want to slow down and explore. Maybe it's different on the PS4 side. Over here on XB1 we have a great community that ranges from very casual to competitive.

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

Yeah I was talking about this last night with some DBOers. I thought the Halo 5 campaign was fun, but the story just leaves me a little sad. Bungie is good at building mystery (with vanilla Destiny, maybe a little TOO good), but I feel like 343 on the other hand needs to explain almost everything. The mysteries that are left are mostly interpersonal ones, but nothing big and grand I'm dying to find out more about.

Yeah it's like we actually get stories about characters and their relationships now rather than a mystery box...

Don't be fooled. I don't think Bungie cares at all about how you want to play or solo play. The new trademark from Bungie for Destiny should be "We make games for you to play how we want." It sucks for sure. Solo just isn't a thing, and they've gone to great lengths to try to discourage it imo. While I'd love to trash on H5 so as to tell you why you should Destiny it up regardless, I find it hard to trash a dead franchise. There's still hope for the future with Destiny. Unless microtransactions kill it. Slippery slope and such.

You must be super fun at parties . . .

I haven't touched Halo 5, but Destiny is only partially to blame. Mechanics wise, I enjoy the movement and shooting in Destiny more than I ever did in Halo. Aside from that stupid warlock jump, Destiny just feels right to me.

The bigger issue I have is the story. For me, the Halo story ended with Halo 3. Everything after that is just fan fiction. The original games heavily implied humans=reclaimers=forerunner descendants, and that's it. All this garbage about gaias and bad guy forerunner just turned me off. The forerunner were this mysterious awe-inspiring race, and they turned them into comic book villains. I've already read the plot for Halo 5, and it left me with no desire to play it. It just sounds like it was written by someone who never seriously played the original trilogy.

Yeah I was talking about this last night with some DBOers. I thought the Halo 5 campaign was fun, but the story just leaves me a little sad. Bungie is good at building mystery (with vanilla Destiny, maybe a little TOO good), but I feel like 343 on the other hand needs to explain almost everything. The mysteries that are left are mostly interpersonal ones, but nothing big and grand I'm dying to find out more about.

Yeah it's like we actually get stories about characters and their relationships now rather than a mystery box.

You thought the Halo stories were like that? I'm definitely not saying that vanilla Destiny was a better told story than Halo 5, I was mostly talking about Bungie's Halo stories, which while not always deep, left me with a lot of questions. And the cool thing was the questions were not important to understand the story, they were just interesting, and lead to a LOT of discussion over Halo's lore. I don't really see that kind of mystery opening up in Halo 5 even in the future because 343 answered all the questions, and didn't introduce any new ones.

- No text -

I want LANs forever. I want MM nights online with 16 of my community members forever. I want 2001-2007 era Bungie forever. That time has passed.

I thought this was poignant.

• I'm not ever going to worry about playing Destiny content day 1, ever again.
  
• I'm going to stay away from these forums until I've played through things myself. No matter what.

These are my 1 & 2 commandments. The online community is an absolute monster parallel-processor that uncovers easter eggs, de-crypts puzzles, maps dungeons, optimizes builds, analyzes story, and generates consensus in a way that was not possible even 5 years ago.

By definition, the average Halo player hasn't even finished the Halo CE campaign. Achievement data has been used to back this up for years; only 30%-40% of the people who play any game will finish it even once.

Halo CE didn't have traceable achievements until 2011.

I don't really see that kind of mystery opening up in Halo 5 even in the future because 343 answered all the questions, and didn't introduce any new ones.

It's not the same as it was when wondering about the Forerunners and their legacy, but there's still plenty of mystery regarding the Mantle and the Precursors. See this post over at HBO for a good discussion.

Personally, while I wasn't sure about it during 343i's Halo takeover, I actually like the direction they've taken the Halo story, especially as they start to focus more on smaller, interpersonal stories. I really like some of the political and ONI angles they've tackled since taking over, too. It'll probably never have the mystery it did during Bungie era, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm truly sorry to see that some seem to really hate Halo 5, as it has truly reinvigorated my love for Halo and makes me ridiculously happy. I wish more people enjoyed it, if only because most of my Xbox Live friends (which are folks from here, granted) are still playing Destiny.

By definition, the average Halo player hasn't even finished the Halo CE campaign. Achievement data has been used to back this up for years; only 30%-40% of the people who play any game will finish it even once.

Halo CE didn't have traceable achievements until 2011.

Yes, we're all aware of that. The doesn't negate his point, however.

I'm truly sorry to see that some seem to really hate Halo 5, as it has truly reinvigorated my love for Halo and makes me ridiculously happy. I wish more people enjoyed it, if only because most of my Xbox Live friends (which are folks from here, granted) are still playing Destiny.

Don't throw me in that crowd :) I enjoyed Halo 5's campaign quite a bit, and the multiplayer is MUCH better than Halo 4's, and I can even see myself playing it from time to time. I was just pointing out my one big disappointment with the game, which really just comes down to the fact that Bungie's style of storytelling is very different from 343's.

“If I would have done anything to Halo 1, it would have been to do something to draw people back into those experiences that they enjoyed the first time. Even in the smallest ways, just to give them an excuse to get together and do it again.”
- Jason Jones, July 9 2013 via IGN

This is what has always baffled me. People did do that. Do you know how long even average Joes played Halo? I know so many people, who are complete casual gamers, who fire up and play through Halo again every once and a while. Chris101b and I just did it for all 6 games.

I don't think Jones means "every once in awhile".

I also don't think a lot of people did that. At most, one replay a year, with perhaps an extra one just before the next sequel dropped.

Someone who plays Destiny on a regular basis, if they are doing the Daily Heroic on most days, has probably replayed Destiny's entire campaign close to 10 times now in a single year, and that's not even including strikes, raids, PVP, Prison and Court of Oryx.

I'd love to get a big stats dump from Bungie comparing how people play Destiny compared to how they played Halo, but I'm not holding my breath for it. It seems likely to me that all the old Halo data belongs to 343 now, and the two studios now are essentially competitors. I don't think either will want to open up a war on that front.

The question though is WHY Jason Jones would care how often people come back to Halo. Why would he care if someone replays Halo every week or every year? Why would he care if someone plays it once, or they play it obsessively like Rockslider? What does any of that have to do with the quality of the game, which is universally regarded not just as a success, but a milestone in the industry that's spawned imitators and had huge influence?

So I ask, why would he find it important that people revisit and replay the game on HIS terms rather than THEIRS? I really think the answer is insecurity.

By definition, the average Halo player hasn't even finished the Halo CE campaign. Achievement data has been used to back this up for years; only 30%-40% of the people who play any game will finish it even once.

And the same is true for Destiny! So what does that mean?

The difference is that there are more people who play Destiny on a weekly basis a year after launch than any Halo ever. Most people who buy a game put it down a week or 2 after launch, even Destiny. But Destiny has a larger and more active player base than Halo ever had.

Just look at press coverage: every major gaming website produces a ton of Destiny coverage, and has been doing so consistently for over a year now. Most sites have weekly posts dedicated to covering Xur and/or the gunsmith. Why? Because that coverage gets hits. People are interested in Destiny, engaged with Destiny on a massive scale. I went to the Polygon home page about a month ago; 9 out of the top 12 news items were about Destiny. Halo never demanded that much media coverage, not even the launch of a new game.

- No text -

The difference is that there are more people who play Destiny on a weekly basis a year after launch than any Halo ever. Most people who buy a game put it down a week or 2 after launch, even Destiny. But Destiny has a larger and more active player base than Halo ever had.

Because they are being persuaded to by exploitive design. They might be playing and putting in the hours, but how many of those hours are nutritious, and how many are empty calories?

Yup. I basically stopped doing strikes in lists that have matchmaking when I'm not in a full fireteam. It's too annoying.

What do you mean? What's annoying about it?

This is why matchmaking is bad for campaign content. All co-op content should be with friends only. Not only would you always get a better experience, but the missions themselves could be better designed and require more from you, rather than just be obstacles to get through to get your drop from the boss.

This doesn't make any sense to me. You're assuming
1) that the people who play with friends should be prioritized
2) that playing with your friends enables you to beat harder content / your friends are better at the game than randoms
3) that this design philosophy will change the game experience in major ways
4) that this will result in everyone "always get[ting] a better experience"

But all of these are just assumptions, and based on your super-narrow experience.

What if Bungie made the missions harder, but all of your friends are terrible at the game and none of you could actually beat them? What if you didn't have the time to go through the hassle of setting up a playdate with your friends, again meaning you couldn't beat the missions? It's probably hard for you to imagine that.

Your idea limits and degrades the experience for a wide swath of the population.

- No text -

$20 Newegg gift card when you buy it: http://slickdeals.net/f/8189345-halo-5-guardians-59-95-with-20-newegg-gift-card?utm_source=feedly&utm_content=fp&...

Yeah but this doesn't mesh with my experience at all. I'm trying to understand what is annoying about it.

This is why matchmaking is bad for campaign content. All co-op content should be with friends only. Not only would you always get a better experience, but the missions themselves could be better designed and require more from you, rather than just be obstacles to get through to get your drop from the boss.

This doesn't make any sense to me. You're assuming
1) that the people who play with friends should be prioritized
2) that playing with your friends enables you to beat harder content / your friends are better at the game than randoms
3) that this design philosophy will change the game experience in major ways
4) that this will result in everyone "always get[ting] a better experience"

But all of these are just assumptions, and based on your super-narrow experience.

What if Bungie made the missions harder, but all of your friends are terrible at the game and none of you could actually beat them? What if you didn't have the time to go through the hassle of setting up a playdate with your friends, again meaning you couldn't beat the missions? It's probably hard for you to imagine that.

Your idea limits and degrades the experience for a wide swath of the population.

It is not necessarily about it being harder. It is about it being more challenging and more interesting. If you think playing with friends is the same as with randoms, go enter matchmaking until you get the Echo Chamber strike. Either they will just leave, or they'll be clueless and make the boss fight hard. I've gotten a good fireteam of randoms a handful of times, but overall that strike is simply not fun unless you play with your friends. Why? Because it's the most challenging strike requiring you to work as a team.

I read this post a few times.

Part of me just wanted to post that "Old man yells at clouds" image in response.

Part of me wanted to actually respond.

My main takeaway is that you're comparing two things that are quite different.

Halo had Campaign and MP.

Destiny has Campaign, MP, Strikes, Raids, Patrol, Social Spaces.

It seems you're measuring Destiny's campaign against Halo's campaign while leaving out all the new content types.

You ask if anyone has re-played any missions "just for fun" and say that anything giving a reward at the end doesn't count. I've replayed all the missions--I've actually played through the entire campaign 5 times now. (Three titans, deleted two titans, made a hunter & a warlock.) I did that for fun.

Just last night I played some campaign missions just cause.

To me, Destiny is actually fun. I wouldn't play it if I didn't have fun. I'm not a "keep up with the Jones'" kind of person--I've only beat one section of the raid, and my highest character is 297.

A lot of your complaints seem to come from a place of mismatched expectations. I play Destiny solo, a lot--most of my playtime. I can do campaigns, strikes, patrol, MP, whatever.

For strikes, the normal use case would be "beat the boss as soon as possible." If you want to explore, that's something you should gather a group of friends for.
You even say:

I shouldn't have to subjugate two of my friends to my wanting to stop and smell the roses, you know?

So why do you want to subjugate two randoms to that??

Hope this didn't come off too argumentative..

I've beat that strike many times with randoms, no problem.

I've beat that strike many times with randoms, no problem.

So have I. What's your point?

The difference is that there are more people who play Destiny on a weekly basis a year after launch than any Halo ever. Most people who buy a game put it down a week or 2 after launch, even Destiny. But Destiny has a larger and more active player base than Halo ever had.

Because they are being persuaded to by exploitive design. They might be playing and putting in the hours, but how many of those hours are nutritious, and how many are empty calories?

Seriously? Now I have to eat my vegetable video games, instead of starting on the brownies, like Destiny?

Why do you hate fun, Cody? Why?

I've beat that strike many times with randoms, no problem.

So have I. What's your point?

wtf

You just said "if you think the two experiences are the same, go try this with randos - you'll have a miserable time." And he said "I did that and didn't have a miserable time." and you said "What's your point?"

His point is that you're incorrect. :)

Your whole approach to this discussion is unfairly negative. This is a guy who built a career out of providing interactive entertainment to others. He is someone who is looking for ways to provide even more entertainment to people. And he found that by and large players enjoy replaying the same content with new twists. Sometimes the twists are different types and numbers of enemies spawning. Sometimes it's being able to approach an encounter with a new ability or weapon. Sometimes it's replaying something with those you haven't played with before. A lot of the time it's actually all of the above at once!

Every game developer, film maker, author, and artist worries about how their efforts will be received. But insecurity is absolutely not the reason or main reason Jason Jones said what he said. His quote was spoken in regards to finding more ways to entertain given the time and money limits of game development.

Every game developer, film maker, author, and artist worries about how their efforts will be received. But insecurity is absolutely not the reason or main reason Jason Jones said what he said. His quote was spoken in regards to finding more ways to entertain given the time and money limits of game development.

I'm glad someone actually said this. I totally agree.

Your whole approach to this discussion is unfairly negative. This is a guy who built a career out of providing interactive entertainment to others. He is someone who is looking for ways to provide even more entertainment to people. And he found that by and large players enjoy replaying the same content with new twists. Sometimes the twists are different types and numbers of enemies spawning. Sometimes it's being able to approach an encounter with a new ability or weapon. Sometimes it's replaying something with those you haven't played with before. A lot of the time it's actually all of the above at once!

Every game developer, film maker, author, and artist worries about how their efforts will be received. But insecurity is absolutely not the reason or main reason Jason Jones said what he said. His quote was spoken in regards to finding more ways to entertain given the time and money limits of game development.

Wholeheartedly agree :)

I want LANs forever. I want MM nights online with 16 of my community members forever. I want 2001-2007 era Bungie forever. That time has passed.

I thought this was poignant.

Me too, but the sad part is that there's no good reason why LAN had to die. Developers simply chose to stop supporting it. That's the only reason we don't have it.

Don't be fooled. I don't think Bungie cares at all about how you want to play or solo play. The new trademark from Bungie for Destiny should be "We make games for you to play how we want." It sucks for sure. Solo just isn't a thing, and they've gone to great lengths to try to discourage it imo. While I'd love to trash on H5 so as to tell you why you should Destiny it up regardless, I find it hard to trash a dead franchise. There's still hope for the future with Destiny. Unless microtransactions kill it. Slippery slope and such.

You must be super fun at parties . . .

I guess if the parties are all about dead franchises or microtransactions, yeah, super fun. Just discussing a particular aspect of doom, that's all. Now, Raid Parties are pretty awesome, and I can be the life of the party! :D

Seriously? Now I have to eat my vegetable video games, instead of starting on the brownies, like Destiny?

Why do you hate fun, Cody? Why?

I think he's seriously alluding to the fact that Destiny is basically one giant Skinner-box and works very, very well at being an addiction machine. I wouldn't confuse that with people coming back because they genuinely are having fun and enjoying it (which countless people are doing, but another mass of countless people are definitely stuck in the addiction draw).

The difference is that there are more people who play Destiny on a weekly basis a year after launch than any Halo ever. Most people who buy a game put it down a week or 2 after launch, even Destiny. But Destiny has a larger and more active player base than Halo ever had.

Because they are being persuaded to by exploitive design. They might be playing and putting in the hours, but how many of those hours are nutritious, and how many are empty calories?

I'd say that's up to each player. I'd say 95% of my playtime with Destiny has been genuinely enjoyable, which is quite a lot of time since I've passed 1000 hours with the game already.

Each player will have their own ideas of what's fun and what isn't, but at a certain point we all have to ask ourselves "if I'm not having fun, why am I playing?"

And for the record, this issue is not unique to Destiny. I've gone through similar periods with Halo where I would get more and more frustrated match after match because of stretches of horrible matchmaking. I kept playing because I knew how much fun the game could be, but eventually had to shake myself and say "dude, you're not enjoying yourself. Put down the controller!".

The difference is that there are more people who play Destiny on a weekly basis a year after launch than any Halo ever. Most people who buy a game put it down a week or 2 after launch, even Destiny. But Destiny has a larger and more active player base than Halo ever had.

Because they are being persuaded to by exploitive design. They might be playing and putting in the hours, but how many of those hours are nutritious, and how many are empty calories?

Seriously? Now I have to eat my vegetable video games, instead of starting on the brownies, like Destiny?

Why do you hate fun, Cody? Why?

I love fun. Fun = nutrition. I want games to be as nutritious / fun possible.

Pff, your approach to bad Halo matchmaking is too hard and too drawn out. I just smashed my controller and all my problems were solved. :p

Every game developer, film maker, author, and artist worries about how their efforts will be received. But insecurity is absolutely not the reason or main reason Jason Jones said what he said. His quote was spoken in regards to finding more ways to entertain given the time and money limits of game development.

If that were true, then Destiny would have been made very differently… without being exploitative. These "skinner box' elements are tricks. You wouldn't have to play tricks if you were confident in your product.

This analogy is weird. If nutrition equals fun then was is sweet delicious cake? :p

Don't throw me in that crowd :) I enjoyed Halo 5's campaign quite a bit, and the multiplayer is MUCH better than Halo 4's, and I can even see myself playing it from time to time. I was just pointing out my one big disappointment with the game, which really just comes down to the fact that Bungie's style of storytelling is very different from 343's.

No, I wasn't trying to! It's just something that popped into my head after reading your post. I've seen a lot of Halo 5 hate (which is totally fine!) here and at HBO, and it just makes me a little sad. 343i is definitely different from Bungie in a lot of respects, but in my eyes they're not worse. Just different.

I guess I just don't like reading negative things, especially about things I enjoy (who does?), and it bums me out to see so much of it. And I've just never really understood it, I suppose. Sure, make a post describing your issues, engage in that discussion, but at a certain point, it's just regurgitation of the same negative talking points over and over, and points that 343i has made pretty clear aren't going to change. They've changed Halo to fit their style, obviously very intentionally. At this point I feel like it's silly to go into any new Halo experience expecting the glorious return of Bungie style Halo. It's not going to happen, and some point folks have to just accept that.

Again, not directed at you, Xenos! Just stuff that's in my head from the discussion, and honestly, probably stuff that doesn't need to be rehashed again as we've collectively had multiple similar discussions about folks expecting Destiny to be more like Bungie Halo, which Bungie has made pretty clear by now isn't happening.

"I can't see myself getting too deep into Halo 5's multiplayer, because if I'm gonna play an online shooter, it's gonna be the one where I get candy."

That's the saddest thing I've ever read about Destiny.

Shouldn't a game be built around fun? Shouldn't you want to play other games because they look fun too? I will never understand this stupid obsession with "loot". Collecting loot is not fun. It's not. It's a chore, it's boring, and it even feels like working a second job when it's something you require to participate in a certain activity.

For me, it takes away from the pure unadulterated fun of simply playing the game. It's all just cherries on a slot machine. Carrots on the end of a stick. An artificial incentive for you to keep playing and keep diving into the slogging grind.

If that is really the thing that puts Destiny above other games, then you're probably addicted to it. Destiny actually has strong gameplay too, but that's not the point of the game. The point of the game is to get loot. To me, that's hollow, and it's why I don't like Destiny. It was never necessary for Jason Jones to find new ways to keep me coming back. I was already coming back based on the strength of the gameplay.

This goes back to something I mentioned a long time ago (and was roundly criticized for), which is that Destiny is critically, fundamentally flawed. The decision to focus on loot was a mistake that affects everything about the game - how it plays, how it's designed, etc... It makes the game revolve around the meta-game of getting "candy" and pushing your stupid light number up, little by little, painfully slowly, rather than the actual fucking gameplay. It's such a shame because Destiny's gameplay is actually fun, but it's hard to enjoy on its own because it's tied down to such a huge boner-killer.

I'm getting really cynical about Bungie now. IMO, they know exactly what they're doing. They know most people don't see this at first. I sure didn't. I remember raving about the progression system in my review of the beta because it felt like I was being rewarded for my time with the game, but that was before I had a chance to appreciate how random the loot system is and how central grinding is to this game. Before you know it, they've got you hooked and they've gotta keep you hooked. It's a slot machine. It's crack cocaine. I'm so glad I bailed out before it got me too, because I'm no better than anyone else and would have gotten hooked too.

WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

Seriously, though, I know there are people who enjoy Destiny for what it is, and that's fine, but it's really sad to me to read about people who won't even give other games a chance because they're addicted to a goddamn virtual casino.

This analogy is weird. If nutrition equals fun then was is sweet delicious cake? :p

Sweet delicious cake is an immaculately scripted sequence that looks great at first, and feel good while you're in it, but when you realize what it really is you feels sad.

I've beat that strike many times with randoms, no problem.

So have I. What's your point?

wtf

You just said "if you think the two experiences are the same, go try this with randos - you'll have a miserable time." And he said "I did that and didn't have a miserable time." and you said "What's your point?"

His point is that you're incorrect. :)

He left out a critical piece of information. He may have completed it many times with randoms fine (as have I), but:

What percentage of the time did people just quit?
What percentage of the time did people suck?

Those percentages are uncomfortably high for me. He left that part out.

Sweet delicious cake is an immaculately scripted sequence that looks great at first, and feel good while you're in it, but when you realize what it really is you feels sad.

Wait, am I supposed to feel sad after eating cake?

I don't understand where the confusion is coming from; he spelled it out very well.

He often gets matched with folks that sprint through the whole thing, largely skipping encounters, not allowing any exploration because the game forcefully drags you along with the player in the lead. I don't believe that doesn't match your experience when going into strike matchmaking, as it happens in about 90% of the strikes I've ever played. I would say that a large majority of the Destiny population don't approach strikes as "Let's do this fun activity and shoot some aliens" but rather, "Let's do this as fast as possible so I can maybe get an exotic or get some Legendaries to dismantle for coins."

Sweet delicious cake is an immaculately scripted sequence that looks great at first, and feel good while you're in it, but when you realize what it really is you feels sad.

Wait, am I supposed to feel sad after eating cake?

If you eat the whole cake probably. (Are we still talking about games?)

- No text -

- No text -

"I can't see myself getting too deep into Halo 5's multiplayer, because if I'm gonna play an online shooter, it's gonna be the one where I get candy."

That's the saddest thing I've ever read about Destiny.

Shouldn't a game be built around fun? Shouldn't you want to play other games because they look fun too? I will never understand this stupid obsession with "loot". Collecting loot is not fun. It's not. It's a chore, it's boring, and it even feels like working a second job when it's something you require to participate in a certain activity.

You missed the entire point of the article, which was spelled out repeatedly.

BOTH games are fun. They're also, in the grand scheme, very similar in terms of gameplay mechanics. So the author is saying that given the choice between 2 games that are equally fun to play and offer similar experiences, they'll go with the one where they get "candy".

Is this all relative to age? I used to be able to eat a whole pizza at once with zero consequences. Now if I do that, while it's amazing and wonderful at the time, it's a sad time later on. And I have no idea if we're still talking about games. I want my cake and to eat it, too. And the pizza. With no downside.

Is this all relative to age? I used to be able to eat a whole pizza at once with zero consequences. Now if I do that, while it's amazing and wonderful at the time, it's a sad time later on. And I have no idea if we're still talking about games. I want my cake and to eat it, too. And the pizza. With no downside.

... I was definitely NOT OK for several days afterwards.

Enough to comment on my post instead of just ignoring it.

That's not quite what the article said.

I miss being able to eat an entire pizza with no consequences.

:'(

P.S., the who the hell cares was about me being childish. Sorry for any confusion troll15.

Every game developer, film maker, author, and artist worries about how their efforts will be received. But insecurity is absolutely not the reason or main reason Jason Jones said what he said. His quote was spoken in regards to finding more ways to entertain given the time and money limits of game development.

If that were true, then Destiny would have been made very differently… without being exploitative. These "skinner box' elements are tricks. You wouldn't have to play tricks if you were confident in your product.

You go from being unfairly negative to being willfully and maliciously dishonest when you refuse to acknowledge that Destiny was designed to be fun by people with good intentions. The game isn't perfect. Some of its systems interact poorly with some players' schedules and play styles. But you aren't being remotely realistic in your criticism here.

:(

Halo and Destiny aren't the same game, of course, but they're close enough that playing the latter so rabidly has completely doused my desire to play the former.

Just re-read the article. I was mis-remembering some of it (my bad), but this line is very clear to me:

Halo and Destiny aren't the same game, of course, but they're close enough that playing the latter so rabidly has completely doused my desire to play the former.

More importantly, I think it is clear to me that this article is being written by someone who enjoys Destiny. So your assumption that Destiny is not built on fun is kinda coming out of nowhere. You're entitled to that opinion, of course. But that is not the point this article is making.

Apology accepted, Avatard.

It's written by someone who enjoys Destiny, but has conflicted feelings about the way Destiny has affected his priorities.

And to be clear, I agree that Destiny's actual gameplay is fun. It's the loot grind that comes along with it that I don't like, and it's so pervasive that it ruins the entire experience for me. If there were a way to play Destiny without the loot grind, I would.

I would say that a large majority of the Destiny population don't approach strikes as "Let's do this fun activity and shoot some aliens" but rather, "Let's do this as fast as possible so I can maybe get an exotic or get some Legendaries to dismantle for coins."

To me, that sounds like a completely reasonable approach to Strikes and seems to be what they were designed for. I would alter it somewhat and say, "Let's do this fun activity and shoot some aliens and maybe get an exotic or get some Legendaries."

I don't do strikes when I want to explore. If I want to explore, I would do patrol or campaign missions.

You go from being unfairly negative to being willfully and maliciously dishonest when you refuse to acknowledge that Destiny was designed to be fun by people with good intentions. The game isn't perfect. Some of its systems interact poorly with some players' schedules and play styles. But you aren't being remotely realistic in your criticism here.

:(

Some of the game's systems interact poorly with treating your players like people, and with respect. You cannot with a straight face say that many of the objectionable design decisions in Destiny were honest attempts to make the game better. They are about keeping players playing so that their business model will work in funding their 10 year plan. In a roundabout way yes, it may be about fun, since no money = no way to make the game.

Destiny was as far as we know originally planned to subsist only on DLC releases, with no subscription or microtransations. When players are no longer playing and thinking about your game, DLC does not sell as well. Therefore, such a strategy requires making sure a large portion of your audience is always engaged with the game. Hence the design of the game systems.

These are business decisions. Of course Bungie is trying to make the game fun (they've made huge strides in Taken King) but ultimately they need to be able to fund development.

And to be clear, I agree that Destiny's actual gameplay is fun. It's the loot grind that comes along with it that I don't like, and it's so pervasive that it ruins the entire experience for me. If there were a way to play Destiny without the loot grind, I would.

I did it for the most part with TTK:

1. Play through the story.
2. Play through the post story quest lines leading up to the raid.
3. Play the raid.

I did all that, and there was little to no grind. After that is a different story. I'm simply not motivated to reach the 310+ supposedly needed to beat Oryx on hard.

I don't do strikes when I want to explore. If I want to explore, I would do patrol or campaign missions.

Oh really? Do tell me how to get to the Narthex in Patrol mode.

Some of the game's systems interact poorly with treating your players like people, and with respect.

I can't even pretend to take you seriously when you start talking like this. I might agree with them not properly respecting time or play styles but not treating players as people? Cut the hyperbole. It's making you say things that are needlessly insulting. Or would you really have an entire conservative face to face with Bubgie employees about how they don't recognize their fans as people?

Destiny was as far as we know originally planned to subsist only on DLC releases, with no subscription or microtransations. When players are no longer playing and thinking about your game, DLC does not sell as well. Therefore, such a strategy requires making sure a large portion of your audience is always engaged with the game. Hence the design of the game systems.

The inclusion of Microtransactions changes the equation a bit, but the thing you never seem to grasp is pissing off your fan base (by not tresting them like people or whatever over the top words you want to use) will lead to less sales, not more. You simply don't sell DLC to people who hate your game. Your player base will go away, will never come back, and will broadcast how terrible your game is to everyone they know.

Bungie's actual motivation isn't to make bad systems to keep people playing, as that is nonsensical. Rather, it's to provide people with ongoing fun and enjoyment so they buy the next DLC or game and so they spread the news that your game is worth their friends picking up.

Even a year and change later Destiby has some real problems. Some people do indeed stay away because of them. But many many more actually enjoy playing Destiny because it's problems aren't nearly as bad, or disrespectful, or money grubbing as you like to make them out to be.

Me and Narc did the heroic once and the guy cheesed the warsat. Totally not needed. And, because he was back there, whenever Narc and I died, we'd wipe and start in the back. At one point we just agreed to quit. That was obnoxious.

Some of the game's systems interact poorly with treating your players like people, and with respect.

I can't even pretend to take you seriously when you start talking like this. I might agree with them not properly respecting time or play styles but not treating players as people? Cut the hyperbole. It's making you say things that are needlessly insulting. Or would you really have an entire conservative face to face with Bubgie employees about how they don't recognize their fans as people?

I would. And I have. In many ways, good chunks of Destiny seem to be geared at treating the players as nothing more than a population number that must be maintained, whether through psychological manipulation or outright addiction. They started the Skinner-box tactics back during Reach. It's not hyperbole. He's right when he says that some of the game's systems interact in such a way. Just some.

Destiny was as far as we know originally planned to subsist only on DLC releases, with no subscription or microtransations. When players are no longer playing and thinking about your game, DLC does not sell as well. Therefore, such a strategy requires making sure a large portion of your audience is always engaged with the game. Hence the design of the game systems.

The inclusion of Microtransactions changes the equation a bit, but the thing you never seem to grasp is pissing off your fan base (by not tresting them like people or whatever over the top words you want to use) will lead to less sales, not more. You simply don't sell DLC to people who hate your game. Your player base will go away, will never come back, and will broadcast how terrible your game is to everyone they know.

You would think that it would lead to less sales, but it surprisingly doesn't. And they know that. The entire bullshit over their pricing model that led to steady debate and macrotransaction talk a few months back probably hurt them in the immediate short-term, but not anymore. Especially a game like Destiny, which is designed to addict people in many ways. And they know it. And it works.

They also know they can treat you in not the best of ways and that you'll still probably end up coming back and paying more. This is normally where a 343 Industries rant would go, but dead franchise and such. People talk a lot but rarely actually stop dropping the cash. Destiny, luckily, has a lot of fun and great things about it, you know? That's a good chunk of what keeps a large amount of people coming back. A lot of the more player/consumer hostile techniques bring a lot of other people back based on how they're designed to trigger that urge to return. Addiction's a powerful tool, and Destiny has done a good job of making it work (and I say that with a lot of comtempt).

I'm mostly just glad that I feel like the chunks of Destiny that aren't potentially or outright abusive to players shine the brightest and take up a majority of the game. It's a great and good time. I just have serious concerns about how far down the rabbit hole Bungie will go with it all.

Bungie's actual motivation isn't to make bad systems to keep people playing, as that is nonsensical. Rather, it's to provide people with ongoing fun and enjoyment so they buy the next DLC or game and so they spread the news that your game is worth their friends picking up.

I think that's a bit too optimistic, but I get what you're saying.

Even a year and change later Destiby has some real problems. Some people do indeed stay away because of them. But many many more actually enjoy playing Destiny because it's problems aren't nearly as bad, or disrespectful, or money grubbing as you like to make them out to be.

I'd say they are, but the majority of the game works, especially when you have a group of friends playing together and having a blast. The business side of the whys and whats that Bungie does in the game definitely aren't as fun or friendly as you make them out to be.

I read this post a few times.

Part of me just wanted to post that "Old man yells at clouds" image in response.

I do that from time to time.

Part of me wanted to actually respond.

I'm at a place now where I read posts, and I think of something I'd like to say back (be it a sentence or essay) and I usually end up saying "screw it, it's not worth it. I don't know what changed.

My main takeaway is that you're comparing two things that are quite different.

Halo had Campaign and MP.

And Forge and Theater and even episodic content in Halo 4. But then they neutered theater... eh.

Destiny has Campaign, MP, Strikes, Raids, Patrol, Social Spaces.

Strikes, Raid and Patrol all fall under the collective umbrella of campaign to me. If I really wanted to split hairs, I would agree that they are more analogus to Halo's Fire fight as all those activities are PvE multiplayer.

I'm also going to throw out "social spaces". Any place you enter party chat is a social space in my mind. The pre-game lobbies of Halo were social spaces.

It seems you're measuring Destiny's campaign against Halo's campaign while leaving out all the new content types.

You ask if anyone has re-played any missions "just for fun" and say that anything giving a reward at the end doesn't count.

Yes. The only reward I got replaying Assault on the Control Room over and over and over again was my personal fun. Now I'm not saying you or others can't and don't have those moments with Desinty's campaign, but Destiny has to add incentives it's activities beyond basic fun.

Destiny becomes a game of "What do I get for doing this? What is my reward? Why do I want to do this?"

Of course, not everyone is going to look at it that way, even I didn't to a point. But then you only start to do activities BECAUSE you get rewards. "I still don't have my Hawkmoon, better run the nightfall 3 times and hope" is a prime example. Yeah, Bungie can randomize the rewards and the skulls and keep it a little fresher longer, but more people are inclined to play something because Desinty makes you feel like you "get" something out of it.

Halo wasn't like that (until Reach and 4 with credits system). I wasn't chasing anything other than a good time. Competition. Lol's with friends.

Yeah, I can still get those things in Destiny (and I have!) but rewards taint it. They change the focus for a lot of people. They can become a focus, rather than a bonus.

I've replayed all the missions--I've actually played through the entire campaign 5 times now. (Three titans, deleted two titans, made a hunter & a warlock.) I did that for fun.

That's good! I'd say you're one of the few. I was sad and confused on my very first play though as a Titan. I was bored an irritated at my second as a Hunter. The new content IS better. Yet it is NOT memorable to me like campaigns of other games. I've played it once and that's all I care to do.

Just last night I played some campaign missions just cause.

Above comment again.

To me, Destiny is actually fun. I wouldn't play it if I didn't have fun. I'm not a "keep up with the Jones'" kind of person--I've only beat one section of the raid, and my highest character is 297.

As I said before, Destiny to me *is* fun. But just *barely* fun. "Fun" is also subjective. My fun comes from exploration and discovery. A lot of that was ruined for me because I got to TTK late and all the mysteries had been solved. Obviously, I should have stayed away from here and I could have found most of the stuff on my own, to a point ( and I will for sure not make this mistake again).

Raid discovery, arguably Destiny's best feature is such a rush to do it now NOW NOW that it puts pressure on some (like me) to go quicker than we want so we don't get left behind.

Destiny can make you feel like you've been left behind.

I'm not opposed to timed events, they add to that discovery factor,like Sleeper stimulant. I was partially in the hunt for that but because of life, I missed the mission to get it. So it's a double edged sword.

I know these events will come around again, but until they do, I'm left out.

You guys are all fun to play with, but despite what you say an no matter how many re-assurances you give, I STILL DON'T WANT TO BE THAT NOOB WHO FUCKS UP THE RELIC IN VOG AGAIN. It's off putting, especially to newer players. Just a small example.

After a week of the content being out, I feel like I'm being punished for not knowing how some mechanic or encounter is supposed to work.

A lot of your complaints seem to come from a place of mismatched expectations. I play Destiny solo, a lot--most of my playtime. I can do campaigns, strikes, patrol, MP, whatever.

Yes. My expectations for Destiny were clearly different.

For strikes, the normal use case would be "beat the boss as soon as possible." If you want to explore, that's something you should gather a group of friends for.

No.

I should also have the option to do this solo. I do not.

You even say:

I shouldn't have to subjugate two of my friends to my wanting to stop and smell the roses, you know?

So why do you want to subjugate two randoms to that??

Ultimately I didn't, nor could I if I wanted to. I participated and cleared out rooms with them, but when I wanted to stop and sweep an area to sate my curiosity, they were running to the next encounter. To the point where it warps me up to them.

I can't stand those assholes who run so far ahead, GET KILLED, and then we all wipe. Especially when chasing a no-death bounty.

So why should I be subjugated to people who want to skip content to get to the end as fast as possible?

Maybe they should go join a party that wants to do that...

Hope this didn't come off too argumentative..

No not at all. Arguments are good. They keep you sharp and make you examine your claims, while forcing evaluations of other perspectives.

Thinned skin people who can't have a debate or discussion should get off the internet and go to their safe space.

OK yeah I did have that exact experience on that strike. It was before I knew about the cheese so it was even more frustrating: "Why is this guy running into a wall????"

I would say that a large majority of the Destiny population don't approach strikes as "Let's do this fun activity and shoot some aliens" but rather, "Let's do this as fast as possible so I can maybe get an exotic or get some Legendaries to dismantle for coins."

To me, that sounds like a completely reasonable approach to Strikes and seems to be what they were designed for. I would alter it somewhat and say, "Let's do this fun activity and shoot some aliens and maybe get an exotic or get some Legendaries."

I don't do strikes when I want to explore. If I want to explore, I would do patrol or campaign missions.

You're basically making his point for him. Sure, that's how you want to play (and how most people DO play). That's not how he wants to do it, but because of the way Strikes work, he doesn't even get a choice. He plays them that way or not at all (or with patient friends, I suppose).

On a related note, Narcogen, I am definitely a slower player and love exploring the strikes, so if you see me playing Destiny and are in the mood for that sort of thing, send me a party invite and I'll join up.

Oh really? Do tell me how to get to the Narthex in Patrol mode.

It is unreasonable to expect randoms to do in-depth exploration during a strike with no advance notice. Exploring is the exact use case where teaming up with friends would be ideal.

If you're running a strike with the intent of shooting enemies and killing the boss, my experience is that matchmaking works fine.

I don't even know why I'm defending this. It confuses me that people would complain about not being able to explore with randoms in a game type that prioritizes lethal efficiency and forward momentum.

I don't even know why I'm defending this. It confuses me that people would complain about not being able to explore with randoms in a game type that prioritizes lethal efficiency and forward momentum.

I don't either, because literally no one here has said they expected that. They complain that they can't enter a strike SOLO and do it by themselves.

They complain that they can't enter a strike SOLO and do it by themselves.

That does make sense. I guess I misunderstood.

They complain that they can't enter a strike SOLO and do it by themselves.

That does make sense. I guess I misunderstood.

It was sort of a confusing discussion I think. He just used being dragged along by randoms as an anecdote to what happens because he can't play solo, I think.

Yup. I basically stopped doing strikes in lists that have matchmaking when I'm not in a full fireteam. It's too annoying.

What do you mean? What's annoying about it?

I like starting a strike at spawn and shooting everything in my way until I reach the end. Even if that includes patrol areas and enemies that don't NEED to be killed in order to end the strike.

Some strikes can be speedrun almost all the way to the end, and take about five minutes to finish.

What I dislike is being forced to bypass enemies and rush through encounters instead of playing them, or worse, wiping to a checkpoint because a single player rushed ahead into a darkness zone and died because no one else had gotten there yet.

Destiny PvP lacks that virtual couch feeling for me. Everyone has their own agenda for the games, be it bounties, or leveling something, or chasing loot etc. The team games always feel like two teams of lone wolves to me.

Rev, thank you for putting words to a feeling I've had, but been unable to verbalize.

- MacGyver10