Totally agree about Destiny is disappointing in large measure because of expectations we created on our own.

are you saying that you have been disappointed and that was why?

So glad you've popped back up and are here.

Huh, I remember the rage of the Mac crowd pretty vividly too.

http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive2.pl?read=34625

Heh, from a few days before: young Kermit (a.k.a. Gorehead), making an early attempt at being a Bungie apologist.

http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive2.pl?read=34037

I'm so freaking predictable.

http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=81719#p81990
http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=81990

I'm going to sort of mass reply to this little sub thread here, rather than to each post individually.

CruelLEGACY said:

Personally, Destiny doesn't spark my imagination the way Halo did. I absolutely love playing the game, I think the mechanics are top-notch, but from a story/narrative point of view there just isn't enough in this game to spark my imagination the same way. Ironically, this is one of the very issues that leads to so many complaints from the community :-/

This sort of surprises me. Sure, it's arguable that there's not as much story in Destiny to draw you in, but there is much more lore within the Grimoire than we got in Halo. Granted, maybe a lot of folks in the Destiny population never even see that, but I would be willing to bet that a huge majority of folks on DBO have (if not everyone).

This is a good point as it reveals again the binary way the majority decides to discuss it. It's either tightly merged into the game or it fails. The work that was put into the lore is dismissed simply because it wasn't brought into the game. It's like Bungie is being punished for taking any time at all to include it. I even recall reading that folks *do* think that if it couldn't be fit within the game, that it should've been removed completely. I can't even process that.

That's not to say it can't be criticized, my point is just that it's seen as 0/1 which is unfair.

Destiny captures my imagination at least as much as Halo did, if not more. That imagery of the Traveler above the Last City is powerful, at least on par with the first time you land on Halo and look up at the ring. In the same vein, the wreckage at the Reef is enthralling. What happened there to cause so much destruction? How do the Awoken survive there? There's plenty of things within Destiny to capture imagination, I think it's just passed a lot of folks by for some reason.

I would add that there's alot of the game mechanics itself that is simply wonderous. I think it's glossed over just how spectacular the weapons and physics work.

Vortech said:

Addressing your post only: I think the difference is that I don't think talking about how halo could have been improved was worth the effort as the game was basically locked. Biggie has shown that they will take community feedback and implement it. Even retroactively making pretty large changes - nit just bug fixes. So that's why I think there are more suggestions for changes here.

I guess I can't argue with that. People in general seem to be more unhappy with Destiny than Halo, so that gets focused on. Halo was very on-the-ball, and provided tons of features that no one had done before; everything was new and awesome.

It's made me think, though, about expectations regarding games. Halo: Combat Evolved was pretty much universally loved and hailed as an incredible game, the best of it's time. If it was released today, would anyone give a shit? People expect more from games today. Everyone sort of naturally assumed they knew what Destiny was going to be, and when those assumptions turned out to be wrong, the angry mob emerged.

Rather than realizing that Bungie didn't promise the game they were expecting, gamers decided they had been screwed and felt they needed to vent their rage everywhere and anywhere.

This is very key to one of my own theories, because if you look back at THIS very forum here over a year ago. Folks were absolutely apoplectic that the game was going to be the second coming. And if you look at some of my early posts here, I was completely on the fence and did *not* like their marketing efforts. It was during the closing weeks before launch, seeing them at PAX, the interviews and panels they gave, that I started to see WHY they were having such a problem with the marketing. But anyway my point is that folks were completely hyped up, and then the game was released and (along with the shuffling off of those that just plain didn't like it) we got folks that were very upset that it didn't meet their expectations… that it was a poor attempt at an MMO, a bad hybrid, that it was ignoring established standards on how the mechanics should've worked. That laid the groundwork for Bungie to, from a PR standpoint, go into rescue mode, and the fans to go into "let me help you with my pointers on what needs fixing" - and it hasn't budged much I think. It's an interesting dynamic. Kermit touched on some great observations about that in one of his posts here.

Claude said:

Forge didn't come along until Halo 3, but I was busy for hours a day, every day, cataloging creative stuff the community put together in the 8 years between when HBO opened and when Halo 3 launched.

Red vs. Blue being the obvious example. Machinima was possible then without Theater mode, why not now?

The Destiny community is MUCH bigger than the Halo community (part of that is 4 platforms, part of that is that more people game now than 10 years ago, etc)... and yet the 'creative' output is lower.

This to me is another example of where Bungie made a gamble - They decided and I think it has been stated early on… that they purposely chose not to offer all the bells and whistles that would 'complete' the game. From their perspective, they were giving the community an opportunity. Look at all the great work done on Halo through the community. They wanted to leave an open spot for users to present their work. I think it has succeeded! But for some reason the corollary has been glossed over - it's still seen as a failure on Bungie's part for not having taken care of it themselves.

It saddens me. I am working on something, though. Was going to submit it for the Bungie art contest, but real life and a bit of laziness got in the way, and it's still nowhere near finished.

I certainly take responsibility for DBO not highlighting more of this stuff; I don't HAVE hours a day any more for this job, and I think that there's DEFINITELY a relationship between acknowledgement and more creativity... but even on places like Reddit (which, in terms of traffic, is orders of magnitude bigger than we are) it's not happening with the same regularity.

I think there definitely is a relationship, too, although that saddens me a bit, too. Being on the front page shouldn't be a driving factor to create awesome things, but maybe for some it is. Heck, when I was young and dumb, I used to love being called out on the HBO front page (What's that?) for pointing out a news story, and that's not even a notable achievement, so I do get the correlation.

By no means is the lack of community content your fault Claude (and I don't think you see it that way, either). I think part of it is maybe the fact that we're all older, have different priorities. I certainly don't have the time (or inclination) to waste days upon days playing video games, watching game videos, reading game sites and forums, etc. When I was younger, I could do all that for hours upon hours. It's taken a while, but I've come to realize that life is more important than that stuff. There's this wonderful thing called Outside that's pretty amazing to visit sometimes.

Granted, I don't know the ratio of new folks to old here. Being older and having other priorities can't account for all of it; I'm sure there are quite a few younger folks here, too.

Somehow, I feel like generally speaking for what I've observed, the excitement and wonder is fading from gaming in general. I remember each Halo release, being excited, the community being excited, the news channels all doing stories on how whatever Halo it was is supposed to be the biggest launch in gaming history, etc. It was a different time then, and I think (again, in general) folks are a bit more jaded now.

I'll add myself as the outlier, while I should be older and less inclined to play - the game has had a strong grip on me. There's a sweet spot for the amount of playing I can do and how much enjoyment I'd want from the game, and it has been met over and over the year. I have to give my wife many thanks for allowing me the time of course.

Did I mention arrows? Those are penises. Weapons, coat hangers, light switches... Pretty much the only thing that doesn't represent a penis in the art world is a penis.

Yeah I've had the same experience with some art professors. I think they may have studied too much late Freud.

Sometimes a light switch is just a light switch.

Says the dude named iconic banana.

http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive2.pl?read=34625

And, FWIW, on those discussions I simply don't participate. I stop reading and move on. I think if I felt I needed to bring the discussion around, that I'd either attempt to do so, or start a new thread in the direction that I wanted to see things done.

I feel bad that it's coming out that people are not posting because they don't feel comfortable, for various reasons, to do so. I wish they would. Because if they stay silent then no change will ever happen. And I too hope that when we all chime in that it's in a positive way.

I dunno. As much of a Bungie fan as I have been, I'm a Mac fan much more and I remember all the anger around Bungie abandoning the platform that made them who they are, and breaking their "promises" by not releasing on the Mac after they showed the demo at MacWorld Expo and allowing their Publisher/Owner to lead them to the evil dark side. All of this sounds SO FAMILIAR, like it was only a year ago…

I wasn't around for that, so I can't really comment there, other than to say I guess it probably is similar to what people are saying about Bungie/Activision.

I will say I agree that the expectations are greater. Not just for Games in general, but Bungie in particular. People were expecting so much while transitioning between the end of one franchise to the beginning of another and the end of one console generation to the beginning of another.

I guess that's my point. I think people built up their expectations too much. Remember what Halo: CE was? It was a campaign with tacked on multiplayer. Now think of how much Halo grew, how much was added to that already amazing base layer. Destiny is that base layer, and what is still to come is even better. People would do well to remember how Halo evolved. They didn't deliver everything all at once.

I've actually been meaning to start a thread, but may as well just ask it here: Do you think being the creators of Halo hurt Bungie in terms of Destiny? I would say yes; people expected too much, expected things Bungie never mentioned. People assumed Destiny would have Forge or Theater or whatever. I don't even find that unreasonable to assume, but from what I can recall, Bungie didn't even so much as HINT at any of those things, so no one really had any reason to assume they would be in Destiny.

I don't agree that we should always be "careful not to accidentally exclude swaths of the community by the words you choose". Because it's not my responsibility to keep tabs on the perspective of the people posting in a given thread, the forum as a whole, or even in the larger community. I'll try to be a good guy as much as possible. But I may say something that offends someone, or is taken out of context. That's life, especially on the internet.

I don't think Claude is suggesting that if you post something and it offends someone that you are ALWAYS at fault, I think he's more suggesting that some people don't consider it AT ALL. The biggest complaints I have about people on both sides of any argument are:

1. Many of them never take into account what they are saying, don't even re-read it or think about it after putting it expressing it.
2. Many of them take offense at a single word or phrase in an otherwise totally fine comment.
3. Many of them after seeing that some people react like 2. to a post they made as 1. then instead of realizing "oh that was kind of dickish, I should explain what I meant." they react like 2, starting the process all over again.

You can see it on this forum, reddit, bungie.net, and pretty much any other discussion site anywhere (you can even see it in this very thread, and no I don't want to discuss which ones), and to me is the core of most heated, hurtful arguments on the Internet, and CAN be easily avoided by both sides. Does this mean you have to carefully go through and sanitize every post you make, of course not, that would be insane (and is the core problem behind political correctness), instead it means using an attitude of acceptance instead of an attitude of hostility. The issue is always figuring out if you are someone who needs to adjust your attitude (I have no idea if I do, and I am prideful enough I wouldn't trust anyone telling me if I need to or not).

I agree with what you've said here, thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm not sure exactly what claude meant, but I'm seeing an undercurrent of this happening here, so I thought I'd bring it to the forefront.

For myself, if someone tells me to adjust my attitude, generally I take a good hard look at things and make sure I take care of it or that I'm not the problem. I think a lot of people do. I think that's what cruel is doing even in this thread. I think the vast majority of the time that's what happens around here.

Ragashingo said above:

What should have happened here is that Mig's post should have been condemed, but instead you with your first words condemed those who rightly choose not to engage. Mig's post should not have been acceptable in the least. Once that was made loud and clear maybe we could move on to a separate discussion about this "virus of negativity first" that has gripped our community.

I think this is entirely accurate. Cody, per usual, stirred the pot and made a controversial post, and added his goodbye to it. Responses were about what I expected up until Mig posted. That was an attack on what he sees as a problem, but mixed with some very personal comments and a very negative tone. People rose up to defend against an attack on a well liked community member. (Note that few defended cody. heh. Generally he's happy to defend himself and probably would want it no other way.) Others rose against that counter-attack to defend the attacker. And so on. Now it's a bit sticky and there's lots of little conversations happening around all of this. In the end, I've been disappointed that the overt personal attacks have been glossed over in favor of the underlying point -- which I think we can all agree should have been brought up as it's own topic rather than as a response to the goodbye post, mixed with negative talk about others on the forum. I'd like to participate in that discussion. But not in this thread. Not like this. And I can't start it like that, ignoring what's been said about a friend, in what I see as an unprovoked attack on him.

And I agree, the worst stuff can totally be avoided. Almost always I think that's good. I also think that it's good to sometimes not avoid the touchy subjects, to be just a little unfiltered, and have an honest discussion. Because, as you said, you shouldn't be on your guard all the time.

I'm not excusing anyone of anything. But I am concerned about how thing are shaking out here. I know I'll be thinking twice before posting anything perceptibly touchy here for a while. And that makes me a little sad.

It's not about being an english major - it's about being careful not to accidently exclude swaths of the community by the words you choose.

This is where I start getting nervous.

There's a difference between common courtesy and being afraid to let your freak flag fly. I agree that we should all be respectful and diverse in our opinions, that we should make room for everyone.

I don't agree that we should always be "careful not to accidentally exclude swaths of the community by the words you choose". Because it's not my responsibility to keep tabs on the perspective of the people posting in a given thread, the forum as a whole, or even in the larger community. I'll try to be a good guy as much as possible. But I may say something that offends someone, or is taken out of context. That's life, especially on the internet.

I'm not saying we should open it all up to whatever, whenever. But I am saying that this is all starting to sound like "we need to be politically correct". And I'm not sure that's going to actually fix anything.

This totally misses my point - and it's probably my fault.

I'm not even a LITTLE bit asking for political correctness, or that people should work on not offending others. That is so far from what I meant as to be in a different county.

Feel free to offend whoever. Go read some of my old posts on HBO - I had a running thing about eating kittens.

I guess it's really hard to explain what I'm trying to get at. It's about making sure that you don't phrase your arguments in a way that I have to write 10 paragraphs explaining where I START before I get to your actual argument.

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

That's not something anyone here would ever write (at least not on this forum) - but it's an example of how the CHOICE of words (or the way you ask something) dictates how the conversation will go forward, regardless of whether the person you're speaking to agrees with you or not. There is an IMPLICIT, unspoken base of assertions in that statement that (if you disagree with them) you need to spend considerable effort to dispel BEFORE you begin to answer the question.

That's what I meant by trying not to accidentally exclude swaths of the community - there are plenty of people who will look at an argument that comes with implicit assertions they don't agree with, and simply skip over the discussion, EVEN IF THEY WERE INTERESTED IN IT, because getting to the discussion is too difficult.

You can offend anyone you want. I don't give a damn. (Just do it politely, please. ;) )

Like GV said, there's also been a lot of reproach back at Mig. When you literally have an 'F you' post attached to a thread, I have a hard time supporting more punishment on the target, whether they are deserving of it or not. It's better to not get stuck in a loop if we want to make progress.

And it sounds like Mig is processing the reaction he caused. Apologies are starting to come and there has already been a great distillment of the hostility and a greater focus and elaboration on the issues causing the friction. I think that's the right direction. A line allows progress, a circle just gets everybody dizzy. There are acknowledgments of issues here that have irked many people with different opinions since before Destiny was launched and that's promising!

Vortech said:

Addressing your post only: I think the difference is that I don't think talking about how halo could have been improved was worth the effort as the game was basically locked. Biggie has shown that they will take community feedback and implement it. Even retroactively making pretty large changes - nit just bug fixes. So that's why I think there are more suggestions for changes here.

I guess I can't argue with that. People in general seem to be more unhappy with Destiny than Halo, so that gets focused on. Halo was very on-the-ball, and provided tons of features that no one had done before; everything was new and awesome.

I dunno. As much of a Bungie fan as I have been, I'm a Mac fan much more and I remember all the anger around Bungie abandoning the platform that made them who they are, and breaking their "promises" by not releasing on the Mac after they showed the demo at MacWorld Expo and allowing their Publisher/Owner to lead them to the evil dark side. All of this sounds SO FAMILIAR, like it was only a year ago…

I remember Penny arcade's scathing criticisms of repetitive content and stupid task-based storyline that leaves so many questions unanswered.

It's made me think, though, about expectations regarding games. Halo: Combat Evolved was pretty much universally loved and hailed as an incredible game, the best of it's time. If it was released today, would anyone give a shit? People expect more from games today. Everyone sort of naturally assumed they knew what Destiny was going to be, and when those assumptions turned out to be wrong, the angry mob emerged. Rather than realizing that Bungie didn't promise the game they were expecting, gamers decided they had been screwed and felt they needed to vent their rage everywhere and anywhere.

I will say I agree that the expectations are greater. Not just for Games in general, but Bungie in particular. People were expecting so much while transitioning between the end of one franchise to the beginning of another and the end of one console generation to the beginning of another.

I don't agree that we should always be "careful not to accidentally exclude swaths of the community by the words you choose". Because it's not my responsibility to keep tabs on the perspective of the people posting in a given thread, the forum as a whole, or even in the larger community. I'll try to be a good guy as much as possible. But I may say something that offends someone, or is taken out of context. That's life, especially on the internet.

I don't think Claude is suggesting that if you post something and it offends someone that you are ALWAYS at fault, I think he's more suggesting that some people don't consider it AT ALL. The biggest complaints I have about people on both sides of any argument are:

1. Many of them never take into account what they are saying, don't even re-read it or think about it after expressing it.
2. Many of them take offense at a single word or phrase in an otherwise totally fine comment.
3. Many of them after seeing that some people react like 2. to a post they made as 1. then instead of realizing "oh that was kind of dickish, I should explain what I meant." they react like 2, starting the process all over again.

You can see it on this forum, reddit, bungie.net, and pretty much any other discussion site anywhere (you can even see it in this very thread, and no I don't want to discuss which ones), and to me is the core of most heated, hurtful arguments on the Internet, and CAN be easily avoided by both sides. Does this mean you have to carefully go through and sanitize every post you make, of course not, that would be insane (and is the core problem behind political correctness), instead it means using an attitude of acceptance instead of an attitude of hostility. The issue is always figuring out if you are someone who needs to adjust your attitude (I have no idea if I do, and I am prideful enough I wouldn't trust anyone telling me if I need to or not).