Expansion packs are about cohesiveness and interconnectedness of the content, whereas DLC is about interchangeable content. Expansion packs deliver an experience where the content is related and builds upon itself, creating something that almost resembles a new game. It is sold in large chunks because the content is woven together, and to remove anything would be to unravel the experience.

DLC is about mixing and matching, and creating standalone experiences that can be skipped and have little impact on the experience (or else they'd be included). This is why they can be sold individually.

I'll bet the studio teams are less burnt out! That pays off in quality of future content.

I hope that is true, but I might not be around to see it :-/

I think I'd prefer one giant mega package once per year actually.

Is that not what we're all waiting for in year 3? Bungie said there would be no big DLCs in year two, only bits of content trickled. Everything big comes after year two is over.

What surprises me is that Bungie doesn't seem to be designing to the strengths of the game. The core gunplay and movement of Destiny is a joy, but the vast majority of actual gameplay is staid, repetitive, and grindy as hell.

I've been trying to get the point across that such a failing is inherent to the genre itself. Bungie DID design Destiny to its strengths. That's why it's an MMO that is actually somewhat bearable to play, which is a testament to their abilities. But it's working as a genre in which stale, repetitive grinding is not only prevalent but necessary. Hence my trashing the entire genre of MMOs.

Cruel's description of how Chroma works is absolutely insane. Nobody who actually loves games and is trying to make the best experience possible would ever sign off on something so utterly stupid and exploitative.

I fear they are on the MMO train, and there ain't no getting off till the stop. If they redesigned Destiny as an RPG, then it would not be at an inherent disadvantage, and could possibly rise to greatness without caveats.

First, I think Cruel's description of Chroma is off a little. It costs 100 glimmer to reroll your slot and there are only four options: White, yellow, blue, and red. You only lose a chroma rerolling if you already socketed a chroma in the slot before you rerolled. You also get a bunch of chroma for free from each of the free weekly packages. At 3 free packages per week (one that just shows up in your mailbox, one from pvp, and one from PoE), I'm currently sitting on 10 of each color just chillin' in my vault. And you get chroma from scrapping chroma-related gear. It's not hard to come by at all, so much so that it would make more sense to just let you apply it for free without there being some weird resource associated with it.

Second, Destiny is already an RPG. You play the role of a guardian in this game. It also has RPG tropes: character levels, progression, items, inventory, skills, magic, enemies, enemy levels, dungeons, etc... It's all there.

The fact that it's not ringing true isn't because it isn't an RPG, it's because the RPG elements kind of suck. The FPS elements are mostly great. Amazing movement, amazing feeling guns, generally good gunplay. But the level design is pretty bad. It's all stolen from WoW and is linear, boring, and restrictive. There are no missions where you choose which way to go, how to approach the fight, or are given the ability to be creative with your powers or gunplay. Every fight is either "shoot it til it dies" or "do the very specific thing that we designed this fight for you to do." Minor exceptions like Golgoroth are really just optimization issues rather than emergent gameplay.

There also isn't anything close to a compelling narrative, especially where the player character comes in. Not only do the other characters never tell you what the hell is going on, but there's no hook to make you feel like your actions are important in any way. Wow, I did all that for one mote of light? Gee, thanks Mr. Speaker. Sure was worth it. Until TTK, none of your actions had an impact on the game world, either. TTK at least you get to drop the patrol beacons and set up patrol mode on the Dreadnaught - that was super cool to do! But then you finish the few story missions and you're back in pointless endgame.

Now, I happen to find the pvp really compelling (except when there's lag), but the endless strikes and raids really bug me. Why aren't there more long term goals? Why aren't there weekly community goals? Why are the rewards so fucking RNG-awful? Well, we know why. It's because they built the game intentionally to be addictive with all sorts of meters to fill and levels to level at the direction of someone who designs slot machines for a living. They intentionally made the game to abuse dopamine responses in their players, not so the players would *enjoy* the game, but so they would keep playing even when they did not enjoy it.

It's pretty fucked up.

And yet TTK was good. Going back to play my alts through the new subclass missions a few weeks ago was great. It was like, "oh, wow, this is what this game can be." But for some inscrutable reason, TTK didn't add that polish and glow to the endgame experience. I cannot fathom why not. For most of us, our primary memories of Destiny are the lackluster and grindy endgame, rather than the warm glow of TTK's cutscenes, humor, decent plot, and engaging characters.

We can only hope that they take their design philosophies from TTK and expand them to every activity of Des2ny. Especially the endgame.

I know that I personally don't enjoy Destiny's story content that much, but back when TTK first launched, a lot of our regular PS4 group seemed to be experiencing a sort of "pressure" to get ready to raid ASAP. I'm sure that feeling lead several people in our group to try and race through the content faster than they may have wanted to. I expect it would effect their enjoyment of it as well.

Either:

1. Bungie deploys the raid later to give people time to get to level (ok).
2. The PS4 crew makes a pact to stay spoiler free and tackle it when ready (better).
3. Bungie doesn't set outrageously high requirements for the raid given the time frame to begin with (best).

I think part of the problem with misunderstanding is actually the other way as well. Cody has been so interested in the Raids that for every expansion that's included one he's hurried to max his level out to make sure he can play the raid on day one. Rushing through content A-Y to get to specific content Z is always going to make you resent the A-Y. I believe you and I both enjoyed all the content along the way because while we were looking forward to the Raid, we also were looking forward to the missions and the strikes and Crucible maps.

I know that I personally don't enjoy Destiny's story content that much, but back when TTK first launched, a lot of our regular PS4 group seemed to be experiencing a sort of "pressure" to get ready to raid ASAP. I'm sure that feeling lead several people in our group to try and race through the content faster than they may have wanted to. I expect it would effect their enjoyment of it as well.

That's not the complaint. That's a fundamental limitation, not one imposed by the software.

If the end result is indistinguishable to me, why should I care?

Why should YOU care?

You also never experienced VoG or Crota blind. Great experiences (VoG more so), but to do that you most certainly would have had to do things you didn't find fun. I know you've come around to blind raiding.

I enjoyed blind-raiding on KF, yes. I don't, even after experiencing that, feel regret that I never blind-raided the two that came before. This, I understand, is a fundamental difference between the way you see the world and the way I see the world. And I am ABSOLUTELY GOOD with the fact that I can look back on things I did in my life and understand that I left things on the table, for whatever reason... and not be sad about it. :)

Yep. How does that mean I didn't have fun immediately?

I loved my childhood. I wasn't allowed to drive until I was 16, but that didn't stop me from having fun as an 8 year old. It has undeniably made parts of my life better now that I AM allowed to drive.

You can't reach the pedals or see over the wheel when you are 8. Those are fundamental limitations, not limitations that are self imposed.

Are you suggesting that if 100% of a game isn't playable in minute 1, it's broken? Because that's the stupidest thing I've ever thought you said. :) (Maybe you didn't say it, which is why I phrased it that way.)

In some sense. I think having the option to instantly unlock say, all tracks in Guitar Hero, would be a great addition to the game. But I would't take it to the extreme. There's a reason even story based games let you do chapter selects after you finish them.

Even IF I could have done those things I pushed down the road right from the start, I couldn't have - BECAUSE THERE ARE A LIMITED NUMBER OF HOURS IN THE DAY. So I can do A, B, and C, but not D - but that's okay, because really I only have time for A. So I have to push B and C down the road ANYWAY, just because there isn't time.

That's not the complaint. That's a fundamental limitation, not one imposed by the software.

If I found myself with a gap between when I found things that I COULD do fun, and when I was ABLE to do things I COULDN'T do, you'd have a point. But in the 2 years since I first played Destiny, that has never, ever, ever happened.

You also never experienced VoG or Crota blind. Great experiences (VoG more so), but to do that you most certainly would have had to do things you didn't find fun. I know you've come around to blind raiding.

We just play this game so, so very differently that communication about its problems is difficult. :(

If we all thought the same way about everything, the world would be a very boring place :)

I got a Chaperone after SRL - because when I first received the Jolly Holliday quest, I tried it out, decided I wasn't interested in playing Crucible a way I didn't enjoy, and forgot about it. SRL came along, and suddenly there was a trivial way to finish this quest, so I did, and got the gun. And yeah, it's fun to play with (though I'm so crappy with shotguns in general that I didn't do much more than try it out before putting it into my vault). But not having it for a year didn't bug me in the slightest.

I didn't get a Thorn for well over a year; it was too much of a pain in the ass to try and figure out how to make Fusion Rifles work well enough to earn the points needed (a Void FR was the only void weapon I had at the start), so I just ignored it. Eventually, I had a Word of Crota, a Void LDR, and a Truth - and suddenly the requirements were pretty simple, so I completed them. It's a nice gun - but I'm not very good with it (I was a Last Word fanatic at the time I got it, and it just fired too slowly for my taste), so it's mostly in my vault. I never once felt like I was missing something.

In my head, I have no problem with any of what you described because it was all completely up to you. You didn't feel like completing the requirements, and you could come back to them at any time because Bungie created concrete ways to earn those weapons.

When I talk about feeling like I need to do a bunch of stuff I don't like just to reach the stuff I do like, I'm talking about a few different things at once. Some of it comes down to my enjoyment of the content itself. Using Vanilla Destiny as an example, I absolutely loved a couple of the end game activities, but really didn't enjoy most of the game leading up to those activities. The story missions, the 1-26 grind... it was a total drag for me. So that created a dilemma for me. I really wanted to have multiple characters so I could experience the end game activities using multiple classes. But to do so, I would need to invest a massive amount of my time into playing parts of the game that I didn't want to play, so that I could reach the stuff I enjoyed. Ultimately, I went ahead and brought multiple characters up to raid level. And I'm glad I did, because of all the fun I've had with those characters since, but it was only barely worth it for me. Plus it is a recurring problem. To this day, I haven't loved any of the story content that Bungie has introduced into Destiny. I enjoyed the TTK campaign more than the rest of the story missions, but not enough to want to play it multiple times. And yet that's exactly what I have to do if I want to continue having fun with my alts in the end game.

So that's the loop that Destiny creates for me. The parts I love, the parts that all my friends love doing together, are always at the very end of a long and often tedious (for me) process. So that's why I'm so hyper sensitive to every little design choice which I feel is less player-friendly (ie needlessly time consuming) than it should be. That's why it bothers me so much when Bungie adds content like the new quest in the April update: it's so mediocre, so half baked, adds nothing in terms of truly new or unique experiences... it's just filler in a game that already has to much filler IMO.

There have been many times over the past year that I've considered scrapping 2 of my characters and just playing as a single guardian. Yes, I would miss playing as my alts, but it would mean I'd need to spend so much less time with the parts of the game I don't want to replay. But then RNG comes into the mix. Going back to the examples you brought up, Bungie has gotten better when it comes to adding more clear, direct paths to some of the loot in the game. But a lot of it, most of it, is still RNG dependent. And to this day, Bungie stacks the RNG odds so far against the player that without 3 characters, I'd probably never get to use 90% of the gear I want to play with. Much as they've streamlined some of the process, it is still a major time commitment to get the gear I want to use, bring it up to Trials level, upgrade all the nodes... If I were limited to 1 set of activity drops per week, I would be missing out on huge amounts of the fun that I currently have with the end game. I love coming up with specialized builds and unique combos of perks, weapons, and armor. If I only enjoyed playing story missions or patrol, that would be easy. But again, the activities I enjoy are so dependent on light level that creating those options for myself takes A LOT of time. And I really don't feel like it should. Not to the extreme that it does.

I sort of hate flashy armor. Most of my characters are clad in black. So Chroma was irrelevant to me. I tried it out (and I've colored a couple of weapons just to make the stupid yellow outline on their boxes in my inventory)... but I really couldn't care less about it. Which means I have a vault full of all colors of Chroma. If, at some point, I change my mind and decide I like the concept of glowy armor... I can have as much as I want, in whatever color I want. Zero grinding, because it falls frequently enough that if you don't actually use it you build up a mountain.

So that's pretty much how I approach it as well, with a couple exceptions. Even so, it quickly becomes a pain in the ass. I have more pieces of Chroma than I'll probably ever use. That's not the problem.

I really like the new Titan Spektar armor. I finally got a full set, and I thought it would all look badass with blue chroma. But none of my pieces came with a blue slot, so I had to re-roll each piece many times before I finally landed on blue slots in each of them (seriously, I rerolled my chest piece 5 times in a row, landing back on yellow every single time, before the 6th roll finally came up blue).

Finally, I got my armor all re-rolled and ready for blue Chroma. I fired it all in... and I didn't like the way it looked. Didn't turn out the way I thought it would. So I decided to try red. I went through the whole process again, spending a bunch more time and glimmer. This time I was happy with it. I LOVE it. It looks totally awesome. But doesn't that seem like a completely insane process to need to go through for a silly cosmetic tweak? Doesn't every other game that offers any kind of armor color selection just let you choose the color and detail lines that you want from a menu? Why would anyone at Bungie think this is a good experience for the player? I don't care if it only took 10 minutes, it should take 30 seconds. Bungie puts so much work into making certain aspects of the game as smooth, efficient, and user-friendly as possible (UI, for example). Why add SO MANY HOOPS for me to jump through just to add some red lines to my armor? #FlipsTable #EndRant

Anyway, hopefully that all makes sense :) Just sharing my own perspective on this. I know I play the game differently than many others, and I'll run into different situations or issues. Just enjoy talking about this stuff with you and everyone else here :)

Maybe the best way to understand is to go play games that DONT take. You'll see the difference like night and day. If all you play is Destiny you might not see it, but plenty of games give you a great time without pushing any agenda or manipulative design practices. You don't have to wait down the road for any activities. You can just have fun immediately.

You're suggesting I didn't have fun immediately with Destiny? That would be an incorrect suggestion.

You said yourself some activities you had to put off till later down the line.

Yep. How does that mean I didn't have fun immediately?

I loved my childhood. I wasn't allowed to drive until I was 16, but that didn't stop me from having fun as an 8 year old. It has undeniably made parts of my life better now that I AM allowed to drive.

Are you suggesting that if 100% of a game isn't playable in minute 1, it's broken? Because that's the stupidest thing I've ever thought you said. :) (Maybe you didn't say it, which is why I phrased it that way.)

Even IF I could have done those things I pushed down the road right from the start, I couldn't have - BECAUSE THERE ARE A LIMITED NUMBER OF HOURS IN THE DAY. So I can do A, B, and C, but not D - but that's okay, because really I only have time for A. So I have to push B and C down the road ANYWAY, just because there isn't time.

If I found myself with a gap between when I found things that I COULD do fun, and when I was ABLE to do things I COULDN'T do, you'd have a point. But in the 2 years since I first played Destiny, that has never, ever, ever happened.

Maybe the best way to understand is to go play games that DONT take. You'll see the difference like night and day. If all you play is Destiny you might not see it, but plenty of games give you a great time without pushing any agenda or manipulative design practices. You don't have to wait down the road for any activities. You can just have fun immediately.

You're suggesting I didn't have fun immediately with Destiny? That would be an incorrect suggestion.

You said yourself some activities you had to put off till later down the line.