I was going with what I thought was the common perception, things along the lines of child abuse and domestic abuse.

Everything has varying degrees of severity, and there really isn't a "common perception" that is as narrow-focused as you seem to suggest. Or at least, Kermit's use of the word "abuse" seemed entirely appropriate to my eyes.

I'm absolutely not being deliberately obtuse. You didn't even really defend your position, you mentioned some topics of this apparently abusive stuff that was said to you and then you just kept stating that what you said was true, so I don't think I can really be blamed for thinking you didn't have much backing for what you were saying and were thus being over-dramatic.
Oh, and I still don't know what you mean with the whole tree analogy (I thought it meant going to certain lengths but now I'm not sure), but I think you might be doing the same thing in getting away from the point I raised (twice) about having barriers and options regarding voice chat rather than completely taking it away, which I raised because you were talking like it was an either-or choice without options.

Okay, maybe you're not deliberately obtuse. You're just obtuse.

My position doesn't need defending because, for one thing, I don't have a firm one in regards to voice chat--I just described the problems that Bungie's approach is trying to address. Your tactic was to deny that these problems are problems, and frankly, that came across as idiotic. Find one person other than yourself who will argue that verbal abuse doesn't happen in online gaming. Everybody who has had much experience with online gaming has witnessed it if, that is, they know the meaning of "abuse."

abuse - language that condemns or vilifies usually unjustly, intemperately, and angrily; harshly or coarsely insulting language

I could provide many more links but they all say the same, and I don't know what more is required for you to understand a commonly understood meaning of a word that is commonly used to describe what often happens in voice chat between strangers during online games.

I was going with what I thought was the common perception, things along the lines of child abuse and domestic abuse. Comparing some jerk saying mean things to you over Xbox Live... well, it doesn't even compare, to me. I've met people that have been abused and you don't strike me as one of them.

You can want more open chat options in Destiny, and that's fine. I might want a little more than we have now myself, but the lengths you've gone to to disagree with everything I said are ridiculous. From my perspective, we don't need to continue this conversation.

cool

I'm absolutely not being deliberately obtuse. You didn't even really defend your position, you mentioned some topics of this apparently abusive stuff that was said to you and then you just kept stating that what you said was true, so I don't think I can really be blamed for thinking you didn't have much backing for what you were saying and were thus being over-dramatic.
Oh, and I still don't know what you mean with the whole tree analogy (I thought it meant going to certain lengths but now I'm not sure), but I think you might be doing the same thing in getting away from the point I raised (twice) about having barriers and options regarding voice chat rather than completely taking it away, which I raised because you were talking like it was an either-or choice without options.

Okay, maybe you're not deliberately obtuse. You're just obtuse.

My position doesn't need defending because, for one thing, I don't have a firm one in regards to voice chat--I just described the problems that Bungie's approach is trying to address. Your tactic was to deny that these problems are problems, and frankly, that came across as idiotic. Find one person other than yourself who will argue that verbal abuse doesn't happen in online gaming. Everybody who has had much experience with online gaming has witnessed it if, that is, they know the meaning of "abuse."

abuse - language that condemns or vilifies usually unjustly, intemperately, and angrily; harshly or coarsely insulting language

I could provide many more links but they all say the same, and I don't know what more is required for you to understand a commonly understood meaning of a word that is commonly used to describe what often happens in voice chat between strangers during online games.

You can want more open chat options in Destiny, and that's fine. I might want a little more than we have now myself, but the lengths you've gone to to disagree with everything I said are ridiculous. From my perspective, we don't need to continue this conversation.

Abuse is the perfect term for what I'm talking about.

You're being over-dramatic. People will say awful (awful) things to you, that's how people are. Granted, games are usually supposed to let you escape from life, but it's a game where you're constantly playing with other people. Heck, I'm on your friends list and you talk to me on here and we're having (what seems to be) a heated disagreement. You cannot avoid people being unpleasant unless you just don't engage with society, and it bothers me that this game would allow you and encourage you to do just that in its virtual world.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's evident that you'd rather climb a tree to disagree than stand on the ground and cede a point.

I don't see how you could fail to understand what I'm talking about, but I'll spell it out: I believe voice chat should be more open and more possible than it was in the beta...

At the risk of pulling a Vagueness and responding to an old thread, when I said I don't know what you're talking about, I meant I don't know what you're refusing to categorize as abuse. Furthermore, I don't know how you can criticize my word choice to describe the ABUSE I've witnessed when we weren't playing together, which is most of my playtime and ALL of my playtime when playing Halo 2 matchmaking, for example.

It's because of just what I said, it's a term that has a lot of weight attached to it. I don't think someone you don't know that's not anywhere near you can verbally abuse you in under 15 minutes (the longest an on-line game of Halo usually lasts).
I'm sure what you're talking about mostly falls under the dictionary definition of abuse (or a dictionary definition of abuse), but I see it as a psychological subject. I'm not a psychologist, so maybe I'm wrong, but in the absence of one I'm going with my impression that you're being over-dramatic, especially given the possibility of simply turning off voice chat.

I think you're being deliberately obtuse. Look up the word. Let's stick a fork in this one, GV.

I'm absolutely not being deliberately obtuse. You didn't even really defend your position, you mentioned some topics of this apparently abusive stuff that was said to you and then you just kept stating that what you said was true, so I don't think I can really be blamed for thinking you didn't have much backing for what you were saying and were thus being over-dramatic.
Oh, and I still don't know what you mean with the whole tree analogy (I thought it meant going to certain lengths but now I'm not sure), but I think you might be doing the same thing in getting away from the point I raised (twice) about having barriers and options regarding voice chat rather than completely taking it away, which I raised because you were talking like it was an either-or choice without options.

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

very much in your opinion.
I have enjoyed all of those things before, although I will say "abused" is a pretty weighted term and one that I wouldn't have used.

Abuse is the perfect term for what I'm talking about.

You're being over-dramatic. People will say awful (awful) things to you, that's how people are. Granted, games are usually supposed to let you escape from life, but it's a game where you're constantly playing with other people. Heck, I'm on your friends list and you talk to me on here and we're having (what seems to be) a heated disagreement. You cannot avoid people being unpleasant unless you just don't engage with society, and it bothers me that this game would allow you and encourage you to do just that in its virtual world.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's evident that you'd rather climb a tree to disagree than stand on the ground and cede a point.

I don't see how you could fail to understand what I'm talking about, but I'll spell it out: I believe voice chat should be more open and more possible than it was in the beta...

At the risk of pulling a Vagueness and responding to an old thread, when I said I don't know what you're talking about, I meant I don't know what you're refusing to categorize as abuse. Furthermore, I don't know how you can criticize my word choice to describe the ABUSE I've witnessed when we weren't playing together, which is most of my playtime and ALL of my playtime when playing Halo 2 matchmaking, for example.

It's because of just what I said, it's a term that has a lot of weight attached to it. I don't think someone you don't know that's not anywhere near you can verbally abuse you in under 15 minutes (the longest an on-line game of Halo usually lasts).
I'm sure what you're talking about mostly falls under the dictionary definition of abuse (or a dictionary definition of abuse), but I see it as a psychological subject. I'm not a psychologist, so maybe I'm wrong, but in the absence of one I'm going with my impression that you're being over-dramatic, especially given the possibility of simply turning off voice chat.

I think you're being deliberately obtuse. Look up the word. Let's stick a fork in this one, GV.

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

very much in your opinion.
I have enjoyed all of those things before, although I will say "abused" is a pretty weighted term and one that I wouldn't have used.

Abuse is the perfect term for what I'm talking about.

You're being over-dramatic. People will say awful (awful) things to you, that's how people are. Granted, games are usually supposed to let you escape from life, but it's a game where you're constantly playing with other people. Heck, I'm on your friends list and you talk to me on here and we're having (what seems to be) a heated disagreement. You cannot avoid people being unpleasant unless you just don't engage with society, and it bothers me that this game would allow you and encourage you to do just that in its virtual world.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's evident that you'd rather climb a tree to disagree than stand on the ground and cede a point.

I don't see how you could fail to understand what I'm talking about, but I'll spell it out: I believe voice chat should be more open and more possible than it was in the beta...

At the risk of pulling a Vagueness and responding to an old thread, when I said I don't know what you're talking about, I meant I don't know what you're refusing to categorize as abuse. Furthermore, I don't know how you can criticize my word choice to describe the ABUSE I've witnessed when we weren't playing together, which is most of my playtime and ALL of my playtime when playing Halo 2 matchmaking, for example.

It's because of just what I said, it's a term that has a lot of weight attached to it. I don't think someone you don't know that's not anywhere near you can verbally abuse you in under 15 minutes (the longest an on-line game of Halo usually lasts).
I'm sure what you're talking about mostly falls under the dictionary definition of abuse (or a dictionary definition of abuse), but I see it as a psychological subject. I'm not a psychologist, so maybe I'm wrong, but in the absence of one I'm going with my impression that you're being over-dramatic, especially given the possibility of simply turning off voice chat.

Regarding the happy medium, maybe Destiny won't hit that, but let's just consider that Bungie themselves unleashed many of the demons we've come to expect from matchmaking and perhaps now they're being aggressive in the other direction regarding communication with strangers. Perhaps this is all the result of asking one question over and over: what is fun?

-Fun is not some dudebro singing or playing music.

Well, sure, in your opinion...

-Fun is not being abused for your skill level or your gamertag or your gender or your accent or what have you.

in your opinion...

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

very much in your opinion.
I have enjoyed all of those things before, although I will say "abused" is a pretty weighted term and one that I wouldn't have used.

Abuse is the perfect term for what I'm talking about.

You're being over-dramatic. People will say awful (awful) things to you, that's how people are. Granted, games are usually supposed to let you escape from life, but it's a game where you're constantly playing with other people. Heck, I'm on your friends list and you talk to me on here and we're having (what seems to be) a heated disagreement. You cannot avoid people being unpleasant unless you just don't engage with society, and it bothers me that this game would allow you and encourage you to do just that in its virtual world.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's evident that you'd rather climb a tree to disagree than stand on the ground and cede a point.

I don't see how you could fail to understand what I'm talking about, but I'll spell it out: I believe voice chat should be more open and more possible than it was in the beta...

At the risk of pulling a Vagueness and responding to an old thread, when I said I don't know what you're talking about, I meant I don't know what you're refusing to categorize as abuse. Furthermore, I don't know how you can criticize my word choice to describe the ABUSE I've witnessed when we weren't playing together, which is most of my playtime and ALL of my playtime when playing Halo 2 matchmaking, for example.

Regarding the happy medium, maybe Destiny won't hit that, but let's just consider that Bungie themselves unleashed many of the demons we've come to expect from matchmaking and perhaps now they're being aggressive in the other direction regarding communication with strangers. Perhaps this is all the result of asking one question over and over: what is fun?

-Fun is not some dudebro singing or playing music.

Well, sure, in your opinion...

-Fun is not being abused for your skill level or your gamertag or your gender or your accent or what have you.

in your opinion...

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

very much in your opinion.
I have enjoyed all of those things before, although I will say "abused" is a pretty weighted term and one that I wouldn't have used.

Abuse is the perfect term for what I'm talking about.

You're being over-dramatic. People will say awful (awful) things to you, that's how people are. Granted, games are usually supposed to let you escape from life, but it's a game where you're constantly playing with other people. Heck, I'm on your friends list and you talk to me on here and we're having (what seems to be) a heated disagreement. You cannot avoid people being unpleasant unless you just don't engage with society, and it bothers me that this game would allow you and encourage you to do just that in its virtual world.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's evident that you'd rather climb a tree to disagree than stand on the ground and cede a point.

I don't see how you could fail to understand what I'm talking about, but I'll spell it out: I believe voice chat should be more open and more possible than it was in the beta, because a lot people (including myself) greatly enjoy it and place great value on it. I believe this in spite of people who don't want the evil randoms to intrude upon their ears, because it should and in all likelihood will be trivial for Bungie to put in functionality, and players to use functionality, that lets them mute individual players and shut out random players altogether.
I will say that certain people seem to have forgotten you can invite people to your fireteam or to party chat, but I believe those options are, to be frank, just not good enough (especially if they don't fix the thing where you have to go to orbit to form a chat-enabled fireteam). It's not good enough because people are reluctant to reach out to talk in-game or respond to others reaching out, and some have virtually no chance of reaching out in-game-- for example, you and I.
As for ceding a point, if it's a point I believe in, yes, wouldn't you do the same?

It's pretty straightforward, I thought: it means if you're trying to decide whether to include a feature that might affect how MUCH people play, you should consider the ones that are sticking around more carefully than the ones would would move on quickly to other games anyway.

I'm confused too, now; are you saying that

… someone [who] can't find five people and a few hours over the course of months or years …

… is automatically considered to have ‘moved on quickly to other games’? I'm not sure if I'll be able to find time/people to join in on raids yet, but I'd be very surprised if this means I'll quickly move onto other games. Once again I find myself wondering if constraints beyond a player's control are being confused for disinterest.

I didn't say anything at all like that. I simply reworded Kermit's statement. It was general - it wasn't necessarily being applied specifically to Raids, or even to Destiny as a game. You should really consider not looking for the MOST NEGATIVE POSSIBLE interpretation of any statement before responding to it.

I've kept my mouth shut in this discussion, for the most part, but you're really starting to sound like a broken record. Yes, we get that you think that intentionally limiting the pool of players is a bad call on Bungie's part, and that there are a myriad of ways they could have maintained the consistency of their experience without excluding people. They disagree. In this particular case, they've thought about it a LOT (Luke and crew have been working on this facet of Destiny for YEARS), and they've decided how they want to go forward. The game, in fact, is in production. Past describing your unhappiness, and your potential solutions (both of which you've done, a LOT)... I'm not sure what good continued discussion will possibly do. (If they come to their senses and realize what a terrible mistake they've made before the next iteration is complete, you can take comfort in the fact that they have a huge library of suggestions to look at for solving the problem.)

It's pretty straightforward, I thought: it means if you're trying to decide whether to include a feature that might affect how MUCH people play, you should consider the ones that are sticking around more carefully than the ones would would move on quickly to other games anyway.

I'm confused too, now; are you saying that

… someone [who] can't find five people and a few hours over the course of months or years …

… is automatically considered to have ‘moved on quickly to other games’? I'm not sure if I'll be able to find time/people to join in on raids yet, but I'd be very surprised if this means I'll quickly move onto other games. Once again I find myself wondering if constraints beyond a player's control are being confused for disinterest.

Regarding the happy medium, maybe Destiny won't hit that, but let's just consider that Bungie themselves unleashed many of the demons we've come to expect from matchmaking and perhaps now they're being aggressive in the other direction regarding communication with strangers. Perhaps this is all the result of asking one question over and over: what is fun?

-Fun is not some dudebro singing or playing music.

Well, sure, in your opinion...

-Fun is not being abused for your skill level or your gamertag or your gender or your accent or what have you.

in your opinion...

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

very much in your opinion.
I have enjoyed all of those things before, although I will say "abused" is a pretty weighted term and one that I wouldn't have used.

Abuse is the perfect term for what I'm talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's evident that you'd rather climb a tree to disagree than stand on the ground and cede a point.

Ultimately if someone can't find five people and a few hours over the course of months or years there's probably no helping them. At some p[o]int Bungie has to design their game for the people who are going to play it, not the people who aren't.

What does that even mean?

It's pretty straightforward, I thought: it means if you're trying to decide whether to include a feature that might affect how MUCH people play, you should consider the ones that are sticking around more carefully than the ones would would move on quickly to other games anyway.

My guess is that they hope word spreads about how awesome the raid was and more and more players will branch out and attempt it with friends.

Maybe that was the idea, but there's a difference between people not wanting to do raids and people not being able to do raids; the latter group are likely to want to do raids regardless, but can't, for whatever reason. No amount of hearing about how awesome raids are is going to help this group.

It'll help them get motivated to find some people to do the raid with. We're not even talking about needing to find a lot of people. Just five.

I can tell you from years of experience-- and not just Customs Night, several other one-time, short-term, and recurring events too-- that five people can be a lot of people to get together.

And if they really can't find the time or people to do a raid this week there's shorter, matchmade activities for them to do. I don't think we've really realized it yet, but once all of Destiny is playable, not just half of one destination, there really will be something for people with of every mood and time constraint to do.

This isn't about that though, this is about people who already specifically want to play a raid.

Ultimately if someone can't find five people and a few hours over the course of months or years there's probably no helping them. At some pint Bungie has to design their game for the people who are going to play it, not the people who aren't.

What does that even mean?

Regarding the happy medium, maybe Destiny won't hit that, but let's just consider that Bungie themselves unleashed many of the demons we've come to expect from matchmaking and perhaps now they're being aggressive in the other direction regarding communication with strangers. Perhaps this is all the result of asking one question over and over: what is fun?

-Fun is not some dudebro singing or playing music.

Well, sure, in your opinion...

-Fun is not being abused for your skill level or your gamertag or your gender or your accent or what have you.

in your opinion...

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

very much in your opinion.
I have enjoyed all of those things before, although I will say "abused" is a pretty weighted term and one that I wouldn't have used.

On the other hand...

-Fun is playing and communicating in-game with people you actually know.

-Fun is playing with friends to tackle a challenge that requires coordination.

-Fun is when a game provides events (and I don't mean public events explicitly--I mean experiences that make it worth the effort to plan and schedule an activity with others).

Having some barriers that prevent any random person from ruining your game experience seems to be what this is all about. Leveraging human networks as they actually exist in the non-game world seems like a decent approach to foster the kind of experiences Bungie wants us to have.

No one said there shouldn't be any barriers.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think the major difference we're going to see between WoW raids in their original state and Destiny raids at launch is that originally didn't raids need a lot more than 5 other people? I recall people talking about taking up to 40 people with them on a raid. There's a HUGE difference in finding 5 people to raid with and finding even 10 people to raid with.

Yeah, they did… but the game also launched with functional chat and guild systems :) It's a lot easier to organise a raid with people in-game if you can chat to them, even if they're not in your guild. Also, it's a lot easier to recruit people to your guild if you can chat with them, etc. etc.

40 member raids are definitely a relic of the past* — they moved to 10 and 25 member raids in the first expansion, then in the last expansion they introduced a ‘Flexible’ raid which could scale the difficulty based on how many people were in your group, which could be anywhere between 10 and 25. From the next expansion it'll be 10-25 flexible in both the raidfinder (now referred to as ‘Normal’ difficulty) and Heroic (previously ‘Normal’ difficulty), plus there will also be a hardest difficulty which is 20 person, now called ‘Mythic’ (previously ‘Heroic’).

There's a detailed series of articles on the changes to the raiding system in WoW over the years over on the Battle.net blog which I highly recommend as reading material regardless of your interest in WoW or MMOs, as it gives some real insight into the lessons they learned and how the game evolved to better suit players.

*This year is the 10th anniversary of WoW though, so they're going to re-release the classic Molten Core raid as a 40-man raid to try and relive some of the old days… that's going to be interesting!

They want their audiences to grow much faster than barriers to entry allow. They want to make games that everyone can enjoy.

Did your hackles just go up? I don’t blame you.

Why would that make my hackles go up? Why would making games that everyone can enjoy be a bad thing?

Because there are a bunch of people in the troughs, where you start off, and so very few in the peaks, where not everybody makes it the easiest way to level things up and open the game to more people is to lop off the peaks and mine down to the level of the lowest common denominator.

This sounds like the kind of elitist snobbery I've encountered from hardcore WoW players that assumes that the only way to make an accessible game is to walk at the speed of the slowest. I don't buy it. Same goes for this:

No matter how often developers and PR managers talk about “scaling difficulty” and “lowering the barriers to entry” we all know what happens when a game has its fangs drawn. The fun goes out of it for the hardcore, and it’s the hardcore who build long-lasting communities and keep games alive.

We had a conversation about something similar on TSDIRC the other night, and whilst I don't dispute that the hardcore are an important demographic, I think the notion that these people are the ones that ‘keep games alive’ is pure indulgence. No; hardcore gamers don't keep the game alive, a thriving player population does, and that means you have to cater to them one way or another. You can argue that hardcore players help in providing aspirational moments that help sell a game to other players, but once they're attracted they have to be retained somehow, and you can't do that if you shut them out.

I've mentioned it before, but Blizzard tried this hardcore approach with raids in WoW (something like only 4% of players ever stepped foot inside the final raid of The Burning Crusade). The following expansion they abandoned this policy, and raids exploded in popularity.

I guess we'll have to revisit this in 12 months time or so and see how it worked out for Bungie. Maybe I'll be proven completely wrong about it and most players will get to participate.