But...surely, someone would've told you, right? I'm not talking about hunting Destiny streams or subscribing to DMG's tweets, but...word of mouth, chat stuff, heck even DBO here gave us updates throughout.

Nope. Saturday mornings are generally 'do work around the house' times. Phone is in the basement, turned off, charging. (Obviously, not every week - sometimes I'm out of the house, occasionally I'm even online. But usually.)

If there had been no warning, I likely would have come back to my phone and computer and seen a number of texts (and online posts) telling me what I missed - but I would have missed it.

I was there because they warned me the day before, and I made plans to be free.

I'm not saying my situation is universal, or that anyone had any responsibility to make sure I participated. I'm saying that I'm glad it didn't work out the way you suggested it, because 100% I would have missed it.

Yep. I'm a dad of a little creature. If I was told there was a major event happening in 30 minutes I would have had a 50/50 chance that little creature was sleeping (not necessarily the whole time) and if she wasn't then I would have to sell my soul to my wife (not that I haven't already) to have her spontaneous just take care of our creature full time for an unknown amount of time.

I now live on a schedule. The fact that I could say "Hey honey, can I play Destiny for a little little bit for this event tomorrow at 10?" means it happened for me. I'm just glad Bungie realized that a majority of Destiny players have a life outside of Destiny and have to schedule things instead of just jumping on on a whim.

On a side note, I am also not on twitter, so if it wasn't for people in this community that told me out side of DBO (I usually only check on the weekdays) then I would have come into work and found this entire thread and been majorly bummed that I missed this.

Yeah, I hear you, you had to wait too long, but you know, there's a reason attending a baseball game is more fun with friends. I think I understand the reality of the situation--Bungie probably felt that they had to be direct with the announcement to ensure a certain number of people were there because they needed them for what was essentially a live-fire beta test that could happen only at production. They took a risk, and with success suffered some criticism with the praise. I think it's a win. And in the future they can use some sort of community puzzle to spread the word, and then blame less-than-perfect expectation-setting on the vagaries of an ancient AI in a cave on Phobos or something.

Let's say it started a little later than they originally planned--in my estimation, every time someone began to think Bungie had done effed up, something changed. A good seductress removes her glove one finger at a time. Whatever you thought about the pacing, to me it was all worth it for that one moment--I'm pretty sure we all had it--that moment when we thought we might get mushed. I'm gonna have to fight through the flaming rubble of the tower AGAIN?

Already mentioned the 50-year-old memories it tickled when the whole world was mesmerized by the sky. I'm not the audience. I get that. Still. I think it was cool.

But...surely, someone would've told you, right? I'm not talking about hunting Destiny streams or subscribing to DMG's tweets, but...word of mouth, chat stuff, heck even DBO here gave us updates throughout.

Nope. Saturday mornings are generally 'do work around the house' times. Phone is in the basement, turned off, charging. (Obviously, not every week - sometimes I'm out of the house, occasionally I'm even online. But usually.)

If there had been no warning, I likely would have come back to my phone and computer and seen a number of texts (and online posts) telling me what I missed - but I would have missed it.

I was there because they warned me the day before, and I made plans to be free.

I'm not saying my situation is universal, or that anyone had any responsibility to make sure I participated. I'm saying that I'm glad it didn't work out the way you suggested it, because 100% I would have missed it.

But...surely, someone would've told you, right? I'm not talking about hunting Destiny streams or subscribing to DMG's tweets, but...word of mouth, chat stuff, heck even DBO here gave us updates throughout.

I genuinely believe that the 50 total minutes that I was suggesting, would be enough time for people to hear word, log on and access it, unless someone was asleep, at work or doing something more important; in which case they likely wouldn't have been able to access it in the first place.

I don't know if announcements were a deciding factor in the lukewarm response to this event, but I certainly know what was—the length.

There are at least three people in my clan who live in Australia or other parts of the world where reset is at an ungodly time for them. I know one of them (who of course said he wasn't going to on his day off) woke up for it. Now I heard from one of the big-name streamers that apparently Bungie weren't happy with the initial population of the Towers at the time of reset so they had pushed it back—at least that's what I heard. I landed about 10 minutes before reset. A friend of mine landed about an hour before. Some even earlier.

So the people who woke up at 3 in the morning had to wait until almost 5 for this to happen because it was late, because it was long, and because it was at a set time. While I think it was a very cool idea, it just wasn't executed as well as it could have been.

This is what we like to call an "entitled gamer" or I guess we can simplify it to an "entitled user". Yes, it's the role of the development studio to make a product that a user enjoys, but to simply leave it at that without consideration for sooooo much more is kind of naive. Thus, why I bring up someone who feels entitled.

I'm baffled that you would think it's "entitled" to have the expectation that the experience you are paying for is worth it. Both in terms of money, AND in terms of time. Time is actually the most valuable currency. If anything Bungie is entitled, because they feel like it is okay to waste the time of the player in many aspects of the game.

I have to step away. As a software engineer who has very specific clients, these kind of statements infuriate me. But that isn't much new when responding to you.

I have not hired Bungie. But if I did, and they they didn't or couldn't deliver, it would not be entitled to fire them and go with someone else who could. Conversely, if your clients are being completely unreasonable, you can 'fire' them too and end the working relationship.

And no, they never responded with that. They said that from the get go. They were simply acknowledging the hard work that went into this.

And all I'm saying is that hard work means nothing unless you make something great with it. To just say "I worked hard" does automatically mean we must like the thing you made. The world doesn;t run on participation trophies. I'm working hard on the Bungie Book, but if nobody wants to read it or they feel like it wasn't worth it to read I don't get to play the 'but it was hard!" card. Using it to deflect criticism is simply an excuse.

Bungie is taking an engine they've been using for 6 years (well, for some of the code, we could probably say 20+ years) and adding substantially new functionality to it.

This doesn't really make it any better. You're basically saying we should praise them for making better vacuum tubes, while others are moving on to transistors.

Nothing about the technology or the difficulty in making something matters. All that matters is whether the thing is fun and engaging. If it isn't, it's not any consolation to the player that it was 'hard' to do. We don't play games to marvel at human labor. We play them to have great experiences.

This is what we like to call an "entitled gamer" or I guess we can simplify it to an "entitled user". Yes, it's the role of the development studio to make a product that a user enjoys, but to simply leave it at that without consideration for sooooo much more is kind of naive. Thus, why I bring up someone who feels entitled.

You expect fun laid out to you without any consideration to time, effort, difficulty, plausibility. They didn't set expectations for this because they probably didn't know what was going to happen because it was difficult and they didn't know what would happen.

I have to step away. As a software engineer who has very specific clients, these kind of statements infuriate me. But that isn't much new when responding to you.

If someone says "I don't think this experience was great", you don't get to counter that by saying "But it was hard for me to do!".

And no, they never responded with that. They said that from the get go. They were simply acknowledging the hard work that went into this.

Nah.

I know I sound overly judgmental most of the time. I’ve accepted that they’re making a game I don’t particularly like anymore. And that’s fine. I wish it was different but it’s fine.

I have a very hard time believing they’re allocating resources intelligently based on the content we’ve seen over the last two years though. I miss the ambition of old Bungie. Maybe that’s not fair, I don’t know.

I'm just not saying either way. Yes, I feel they have lost a bit of a spark as well. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a first time chance at something. If they never learn from this experience with future live events then feel free to call me out :-)

They don’t have to give me perfection, but I need to see something interesting. They can talk about all the technical challenges they want, this event still wasn’t impressive on a moment to moment level, no matter how difficult it was to pull off. If it leads to something amazing, I’ll concede, but I’m not sure sharing live skyboxes across different bubbles even measures as a blip on the radar for “cool” stuff I’d like to see out of the game.

I share your frustration with the moment to moment enjoyment. But I also think that if they hadn't had the technical issues and the timing was a little better then it would have been amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience apart from that.

I genuinely hope they’re working towards something incredible. I just don’t see it.

It's like a kid saying to his mom, "hey I learned to juggle! I've never done this before" And his mom just bashes him because the neighbor has been doing it with flaming pins. This is a technical achievement people. Did they do it with no hitches? Did they do it perfectly to people expectations? No to both.

I mean, Bungie is an AAA studio. They aren't a kid. If you went to clown school for 8 years and could only juggle balls, yet you were trying to compete with the best jugglers out there, then the response would be appropriate.

Plus, we have the precedent of much, much smaller studios doing even better with less advanced tech.
That said, Bungie has been doing pretty skybox lightshows in Destiny since the E3 reveal for D1. If their fancy tech is more related with "look at it from different angles!", then that's probably a lot of effort for very little payoff. They once again hyped up a mildly interesting thing, and then wasted far too much of people's time, before granting you a generic-looking emblem as a reward. If that isn't Destiny in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

What did Bungie do to "hype" this up? I said it before that I personally only heard it in two places, twitter and in game. Both times it was a simple "you should be in the tower at reset" how is that "hype"? That seems more like a PSA.

And no, it's not going to be something that I hold onto as a special "you had to be there" memory, as much as it's going to be yet another embarrassing footnote to add to each season. I've seen far cooler and more ambitious stuff from devs with a fraction of Bungie's studio size and budget. With that in mind, I can understand people who only play Destiny finding this event to be "impressive", because Bungie just has such a lack of ambition, that they haven't had a "Forward Unto Dawn landing on the Ark" moment in ages, and people forgot what standards they set themselves.

I started talking this point... but then I erased it because honestly I've made the point so many times already that It just isn't worth it anymore.

Also, watching the big chunk of damage in the tower just blink into existence without an effect to hide it? Well, it didn't feel any more underwhelming than the rest of it.

I know I sound overly judgmental most of the time. I’ve accepted that they’re making a game I don’t particularly like anymore. And that’s fine. I wish it was different but it’s fine.

I have a very hard time believing they’re allocating resources intelligently based on the content we’ve seen over the last two years though. I miss the ambition of old Bungie. Maybe that’s not fair, I don’t know. They don’t have to give me perfection, but I need to see something interesting. They can talk about all the technical challenges they want, this event still wasn’t impressive on a moment to moment level, no matter how difficult it was to pull off. If it leads to something amazing, I’ll concede, but I’m not sure sharing live skyboxes across different bubbles even measures as a blip on the radar for “cool” stuff I’d like to see out of the game.

I genuinely hope they’re working towards something incredible. I just don’t see it.

I dunno.

Hey, the ostensibly main motivator of your game sucks right now, but good job on the mediocre skybox thing!

Maybe they should prioritize a little better?

How do you know they aren't? I don't know this. Maybe they aren't. But my bet is that they spent 10% of their resources on this while they are chugging away at whatever else they are doing.

It's apparent that Bungie has already failed you to a point that they need to do something that is near perfection for you to sway your opinion.

I think most of the complaints could have been avoided if they had either communicated the length of the event or the end time. Staying stuck to my screen for the length of a movie watching small lines and explosions because I didn't want to miss the end wasn't enjoyable. If I had known about when the end would come I could have checked back in off and on without fear I would miss it. That, or they could have shortened it to under 30 minutes and it would have been enjoyable.

I shoot professional fireworks shows. I very rarely go over 20 minutes for a show. After that you get audience fatigue. We have a variety of shells and effects, often synced to music, but eventually the novelty runs out. That 15-20 minute mark gives me, excuse the pun, the most bang for my buck. The sponsors (who pay for the show) feel like they got their money's worth, and the audience is entertained long enough before they start to lose interest. I definately felt the fatigue after the first 20 minutes of it actually starting. It being delayed 30 minutes just added to that.

I honestly thought there was no way it could be longer than 60 minutes and at the point that the sparkling had gone on for that amount of time, I thought "ok well I guess this will sparkle/explode at a later date" and logged off so I could help take care of my 1 year old.

If I had just the vaguest sense of when the main event was, it would have really helped me set mine and my partner's expectations. As such, it looks like I missed out what I personally think was a really cool event.

I didn't realize it was delayed by 30 minutes, I thought that the first 30 minutes was just the almighty very slowly getting closer/larger, but I couldn't tell...

I'm super excited about more events like this, I just hope they're better communicated in the future.

Bungie is taking an engine they've been using for 6 years (well, for some of the code, we could probably say 20+ years) and adding substantially new functionality to it.

This doesn't really make it any better. You're basically saying we should praise them for making better vacuum tubes, while others are moving on to transistors.

Nothing about the technology or the difficulty in making something matters. All that matters is whether the thing is fun and engaging. If it isn't, it's not any consolation to the player that it was 'hard' to do. We don't play games to marvel at human labor. We play them to have great experiences.

If someone says "I don't think this experience was great", you don't get to counter that by saying "But it was hard for me to do!".

Hey, the ostensibly main motivator of your game sucks right now, but good job on the mediocre skybox thing!

Maybe they should prioritize a little better?

It's like a kid saying to his mom, "hey I learned to juggle! I've never done this before" And his mom just bashes him because the neighbor has been doing it with flaming pins. This is a technical achievement people. Did they do it with no hitches? Did they do it perfectly to people expectations? No to both.

I mean, Bungie is an AAA studio. They aren't a kid. If you went to clown school for 8 years and could only juggle balls, yet you were trying to compete with the best jugglers out there, then the response would be appropriate.

Oh, c'mon. You're taking Mac's relatively tortured analogy and nitpicking.

Bungie is taking an engine they've been using for 6 years (well, for some of the code, we could probably say 20+ years) and adding substantially new functionality to it. It's less like comparing a beginner juggler to an expert, and more like if, say, someone had a truck and said "we're going to make this able to drive through shallow streams" and they seal up the bottom and add a snorkel, and someone says "but that company makes fully amphibious cars, this truck is lame". We're not talking about Bungie going to clown school and failing to learn to juggle, we're talking about Bungie upgrading a long-standing engine with abilities it didn't have before, and some people comparing those abilities to engines that were built from the ground up to do that sort of thing.

It's like a kid saying to his mom, "hey I learned to juggle! I've never done this before" And his mom just bashes him because the neighbor has been doing it with flaming pins. This is a technical achievement people. Did they do it with no hitches? Did they do it perfectly to people expectations? No to both.

I mean, Bungie is an AAA studio. They aren't a kid. If you went to clown school for 8 years and could only juggle balls, yet you were trying to compete with the best jugglers out there, then the response would be appropriate.

Plus, we have the precedent of much, much smaller studios doing even better with less advanced tech.
That said, Bungie has been doing pretty skybox lightshows in Destiny since the E3 reveal for D1. If their fancy tech is more related with "look at it from different angles!", then that's probably a lot of effort for very little payoff. They once again hyped up a mildly interesting thing, and then wasted far too much of people's time, before granting you a generic-looking emblem as a reward. If that isn't Destiny in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

And no, it's not going to be something that I hold onto as a special "you had to be there" memory, as much as it's going to be yet another embarrassing footnote to add to each season. I've seen far cooler and more ambitious stuff from devs with a fraction of Bungie's studio size and budget. With that in mind, I can understand people who only play Destiny finding this event to be "impressive", because Bungie just has such a lack of ambition, that they haven't had a "Forward Unto Dawn landing on the Ark" moment in ages, and people forgot what standards they set themselves.

Also, watching the big chunk of damage in the tower just blink into existence without an effect to hide it? Well, it didn't feel any more underwhelming than the rest of it.

Don’t get me wrong, there are so many ways this could have been better. They could have built it up over a week or two and actually used in game things to notify us what’s going on. Messages in the Tower, both text and over the loudspeaker. Let’s see people evacuating starting a few weeks ago. Imagine seeing lines of people leaving the City, and the City slowly just going dark as people leave, until it’s empty and all the lights are off. The Tower empties except for the Vanguard and the Guardians. Just something to show that anybody is taking this seriously. If Tess is still going on about not being unpacked, how am I supposed to take the Almighty seriously?

Relying on a tweet to get the word out about something like this feels out of place. I know that’s just the world we live in, and they’re not going to not advertise something going on, but I think it would be so much stronger if they didn’t. Just let things happen, and use the actual game to point to something happening.

More importantly though, they need to make the players feel engaged with the end result. Admittedly, I didn’t participate beyond the first week this season, but I have no idea how doing chores for Rasputin contributed to blowing up the Almighty. They need to do a better job of making the things we do feel like they actually matter. Until we even have the possibility of failing, I don’t think it ever will. It never mattered how many Vex parts we donated, or how much data whatever for the Obelisks we donated, or how many basketball games we played with Rasputin. Maybe it’s an unrealistic amount of work to ask of them to plan for two or more outcomes to any sort of event, but I think engagement would be much higher if there was actually a possibility of failing, of not doing enough.

It's like a kid saying to his mom, "hey I learned to juggle! I've never done this before" And his mom just bashes him because the neighbor has been doing it with flaming pins. This is a technical achievement people. Did they do it with no hitches? Did they do it perfectly to people expectations? No to both.

I mean, Bungie is an AAA studio. They aren't a kid. If you went to clown school for 8 years and could only juggle balls, yet you were trying to compete with the best jugglers out there, then the response would be appropriate.

You are assuming they are trying to compete in live events. They are not. They are competing in a loot and shoot game and while most people consider the loot aspect not so great, in my opinion the shoot part is still top notch in the field. So as a AAA game studio I think they are doing a pretty good job. Just because a studio is AAA doesn't mean it has to be amazing at everything and not make mistakes.

Feel free to bring up all of their other "mistakes" and I will promptly ignore them as we are talking about live events.

It's like a kid saying to his mom, "hey I learned to juggle! I've never done this before" And his mom just bashes him because the neighbor has been doing it with flaming pins. This is a technical achievement people. Did they do it with no hitches? Did they do it perfectly to people expectations? No to both.

I mean, Bungie is an AAA studio. They aren't a kid. If you went to clown school for 8 years and could only juggle balls, yet you were trying to compete with the best jugglers out there, then the response would be appropriate.