5. The game is… meh? Dunno just wasn't really feeling it. Being able to hover and fly everywhere kind of eliminates cool options for movement. You just kind of go where you want, instead of having to 'earn' it so to speak. Too much health and not enough weapon variety.

The content provided however is nowhere even remotey close to that of an ExPac. Debatably it's not even really enough to fill out a season but YMMV heavily there.

So far, rocking the samurai-themed crew has gotten me a lot more mileage than the others (healer a close second). Switching guns so they reload while you shoot the other one is neat!

You can just charge money upfront and still allow this to happen…

No. You. Can't.

They've mentioned that they thought about it, and the research showed that the bump in price needed to make up the difference was not palatable to the target audience.

You might pay it, but there aren't enough of you.

If you can remember or provide a link to this Id be quite interested.

And if that’s true, then it just supports my argument that expansion packs rather than f2p are superior! Expansion packs contain more content than equivalent f2p releases. So set theory says they can contain f2p content releases.

Edit: Never mind, I read further and apparently it was. And he was so close to having a really good argument

It's basic Supply and Demand, Econ 101. It is obviously a more complex problem but its easy to understand at a high level.

You can just charge money upfront and still allow this to happen…

No. You. Can't.

They've mentioned that they thought about it, and the research showed that the bump in price needed to make up the difference was not palatable to the target audience.

You might pay it, but there aren't enough of you.

Or am I missing something?

Only the reality of making modern video games, especially one as massive as Destiny, for a community as eager for content as the Destiny community is.

You can just charge money upfront and still allow this to happen…

If Bungie says that the Eververse is necessary to continue making content at the pace that they are, I believe them.

Have they actually said this? The funny thing is the 'content' doesn't seem as satisfying or substantial as in expansion drops.

Or am I missing something?

Only the reality of making modern video games, especially one as massive as Destiny, for a community as eager for content as the Destiny community is.

I will always think we should take more money from the top of any big organization, and I have no idea what they pay scale at Bungie looks like, but I really doubt there's enough money there to make up for what the Eververse makes (and I could be totally wrong about that). And even if there is, I doubt it's enough money to really keep a studio as large as Bungie going for all that long.

If Bungie says that the Eververse is necessary to continue making content at the pace that they are, I believe them. I certainly would rather see another model with less frequent but more substantial content drops, but that's not what they're doing and doesn't really factor into the discussion such as it is.

What you can't do is tell those of us that are actually okay with the overall development arc that you know what's good for us better than we do. (That is what the quoted sentence above is trying to do.) I disagree with your premise that there is NO way that you can make a good game while offering the same content for free or by in-game play - I LIKE the fact that I have a choice, and I USE that choice occasionally for differing outcomes, depending on my at-the-time-current circumstance.

Take any given game with microtransactions that can be either bought or earned by playing. We make one change:

Every microtransaction now costs $0.00.

Let's leave aside that in such a circumstance frictions would no longer need to exist. Let's just pretend they are still there. In such a scenario, how is everyone not better off, or at least the same?

Those who want to skip playing the game can still 'buy' the item. But it doesn't cost them money. They are better off.
Those who want to 'earn' the items are still free to do so. They are no better or no worse off.
The earners who do it for fun can still do that with no impact to them.
The earners who do it for prestige are still dealing with people who just buy the item. They are in the same situation.

There is literally no downside to this artistically. It is better. Or am I missing something?

Cody strikes me as particularly Puritan at times—no food with the slightest taint of sin shall cross his lips. I’m more forgiving I guess (maybe because I'm not as pure as Cody?

Oh quite the opposite. You are far more pure than I am.

Ha.

You know nothing, Jon Snow.

ANY reason someone would have to want to pay to not play could be addressed for free by changing the game design. The point is not that people don’t have reasons - the point is the best solution never involves a micro transaction (and that often the reasons are themselves created by the micro transactions).

The real problem with that sentence is the word 'best'. Your 'best' is not the same as my 'best' is not the same as Bungie's 'best'.

You know how you want the game to work. You are not unique; there is a group of Destiny players who have roughly the same desires from their gameplay experience. Bungie (or some subset of Bungie that is responsible for some of the higher-level decisions) has almost certainly considered your particular collection of wants and needs, and decided that it they cannot satisfy all of them and still build the game they want to build.

You can accept that they don't want to make the game you want to play. (You don't, or you would have stopped discussing any of this stuff a long time ago.) You can try and convince them that they're making a mistake, and that they should change their strategy. (If that's what you think you're doing, I'd suggest that you have picked a pretty lousy place to do it; I don't think there are any Bungie employees who visit here any more. They can't hear you yelling from way over here.)

What you can't do is tell those of us that are actually okay with the overall development arc that you know what's good for us better than we do. (That is what the quoted sentence above is trying to do.) I disagree with your premise that there is NO way that you can make a good game while offering the same content for free or by in-game play - I LIKE the fact that I have a choice, and I USE that choice occasionally for differing outcomes, depending on my at-the-time-current circumstance. I do NOT consider the frictions you see as odious as a problem; in fact, most of the time I don't even notice them. That they exist at all is acceptable to me, at the level that I perceive them, because they provide me with options when I'm playing the game I enjoy playing.

In short: your viewpoint, while valid for you, is NOT universal, and my viewpoint is not a result of my blindness - it is simply a differing opinion. And it's as valid as yours.