http://www.gamespot.com/articles/destiny-2-launching-in-2017-large-new-expansion-co/1100-6434724/

EDIT: Okay, few details, but at least we know something.

Activision Publishing, along with its partners at Bungie, expects to bring a large new expansion to Destiny in 2016 and to release a full game sequel in 2017.

Source:
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ACTI/1496687550x0x874837/3BB2B4FA-6A05-45B1-8174-8D32C61BE8B5/Q4_2015_ATVI_Pre...

In This Week at Bungie ( https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=44353 ):

Prior to the holiday break we mentioned a second, larger update slated for Spring. That content release will feature a significant Light increase, a bunch of new gear to earn and equip, and new challenges for PvE players seeking some more fun experiences and replayability.

Beyond that, the team is focused on delivering a large expansion later this year, and a full Destiny sequel in 2017.

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Yup, see you later in the year.

I am definitely not going to play anywhere near as much as I did before, so would anybody be willing to do a blind raid (should one be included in the expansion) at a kind of leisurely pace? Three days to king's fall was way to fast.

I am definitely not going to play anywhere near as much as I do now, so would anybody be willing to do a blind raid (should one be included in the expansion) at a kind of leisurely pace? Three days to king's fall was way to fast.

I'd be happy to do a blind raid at a sane pace. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll get a new raid this expansion (call me a pessimist).

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I am definitely not going to play anywhere near as much as I do now, so would anybody be willing to do a blind raid (should one be included in the expansion) at a kind of leisurely pace? Three days to king's fall was way to fast.

I'd be happy to do a blind raid at a sane pace. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll get a new raid this expansion (call me a pessimist).

Well, Destiny 2 pretty much has to have one right?

I'd be happy to do a blind raid at a sane pace. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll get a new raid this expansion (call me a pessimist).

Well, Destiny 2 pretty much has to have one right?

For sure! I *hope* the (fall?) expansion has one, but I would rather be happily surprised than disappointed. :)

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• A new raid. Two raids per year seems reasonable to me.
  
• Another match-made Strike playlist that is harder than vanguard heroic but easier than nightfall. I don't care about the rewards, but I like the match-made strike playlists.
  
• Updates to Vault of Glass, Crota's End, and Prison of Elders to make them level-appropriate for current max level.

For sure! I *hope* the (fall?) expansion has one, but I would rather be happily surprised than disappointed. :)

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't see them not shipping a raid this fall. I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter; people will find something to bitch about no matter what, but no raid would be awful for their PR at this point. I know it keeps getting said with every mistake they make, and it hasn't appeared to matter much so far, but they can't really afford to keep screwing up in the public eye, and not shipping a raid after a year would definitely be a huge hit against them.

Seems like we're getting a full blown Destiny 2. How's everyone feel about that?

I don't much care either way (I am looking forward to hopefully being able to redesign my Guardians). I think it potentially allows them to move forward in a way they might not have been able to otherwise by being constrained to the framework of the original game, but I also liked the thought that we'd have one huge game by the end of it and that eight years from now we could go run VoG again without swapping games. Granted, that would be a lot of harddrive space by the end if it was all built on Destiny, but if we get a true sequel, there's no way that Destiny 1 stays on my hard drive for long, so all the Destiny 1 content will essentially be out of play.

Very mixed to negative feelings here. I liked the idea of Destiny simply being Destiny. And I wonder what happens to Destiny 1, an online only game, when Destiny 2 comes out...

I'm glad we're getting a sequel. Kick last-gen consoles off of it. Find a way to transfer characters and Vaults while allowing us to continue progressing our favorite armors (like with infusion), while also providing new alternative choices. It'd be nifty if in 7 years I could still be rocking my Trials armor or something. Oh, and have an actual story in this game. Add custom games. Get dedicated servers in there. I guess this turned into a wishlist post. Either way, sounds good to me. If my stuff can't transfer, whatever. Let me transfer my character and maybe mission progress or whatever like in Mass Effect.

Seems like we're getting a full blown Destiny 2. How's everyone feel about that?

I don't much care either way (I am looking forward to hopefully being able to redesign my Guardians). I think it potentially allows them to move forward in a way they might not have been able to otherwise by being constrained to the framework of the original game, but I also liked the thought that we'd have one huge game by the end of it and that eight years from now we could go run VoG again without swapping games. Granted, that would be a lot of harddrive space by the end if it was all built on Destiny, but if we get a true sequel, there's no way that Destiny 1 stays on my hard drive for long, so all the Destiny 1 content will essentially be out of play.

That's actually a concern… I recently ran out of space on my PS4. Destiny takes up about 42GB right now, so eventually it's going to eat up your hard disk before the ten years is out. I think the 500GB drive on my PS4 can store about 390GB of stuff. Wtf the other 100 gigs is doing I don't know.

When you get to have another go at something from a fresh start, it gives you a chance to learn from your mistakes and challenges of the past and integrate solutions to them into your creation from the ground up. Each issue of my comic gives me a chance to reevaluate what I'm doing and try new things, whereas if I was still building onto the previous issue, I wouldn't employ some of those solutions/different directions out of style parameters and continuity, etc.

I don't think we know enough to speculate about how they're going to handle the transition from Destiny 1 or if somehow both games will still be viable, etc., so I'm not going to worry too much about that now. Personally, I'd rather sacrifice Destiny 1 to the dust if it means a better game in every aspect. If they've managed to overcome the challenges of their building tools, if they've now mastered them, it could mean we get a Destiny that is more modifiable and is easier to build on to. We could get the game Bungie really wants to make, which is always the game I want to play. Halo 2 had a lot of issues in my eyes, despite my love for it, and all those issues were fixed for Halo 3 IMO.

...Except Warthog AI. That was like the one thing they never figured out in 5 games, hah! :)

Seems like we're getting a full blown Destiny 2. How's everyone feel about that?

I don't much care either way (I am looking forward to hopefully being able to redesign my Guardians). I think it potentially allows them to move forward in a way they might not have been able to otherwise by being constrained to the framework of the original game, but I also liked the thought that we'd have one huge game by the end of it and that eight years from now we could go run VoG again without swapping games. Granted, that would be a lot of harddrive space by the end if it was all built on Destiny, but if we get a true sequel, there's no way that Destiny 1 stays on my hard drive for long, so all the Destiny 1 content will essentially be out of play.

That's actually a concern… I recently ran out of space on my PS4. Destiny takes up about 42GB right now, so eventually it's going to eat up your hard disk before the ten years is out.

Hard drives get cheaper by the month. My 500 gig one still has space, but that's because I'm constantly going through all of my saved clips and purging what I don't need, and I delete games that I'll finish later (Shadows of Mordor, Game of Thrones).

We got Sammy a 2TB a while back, and have downloaded almost every game that we have/have had onto it, and it's still nowhere near full. At the rate that we buy games (not too often), it should last us another two years before filling up. By then, 4TB drives should be much more affordable.

I think the 500GB drive on my PS4 can store about 390GB of stuff. Wtf the other 100 gigs is doing I don't know.

That's actually a super-common misunderstanding of hard drive space. There aren't 1000 megabytes in a Gig. It's 1,024. So if your hard drive is 500gigs, then you have 500,000 megabytes of space, but it will show up as 464 gigs or so (I'm terrible at maths, so my numbers are probably way off) because of the conversion. On top of that, you have the firmware/OS that's installed, along with its own reserved space. That totals to about 410 gigs of space or so left over for your apps, save files, and profiles before you get to the games, so that's why you're left with 390Gigs.

I think the 500GB drive on my PS4 can store about 390GB of stuff. Wtf the other 100 gigs is doing I don't know.

That's actually a super-common misunderstanding of hard drive space. There aren't 1000 megabytes in a Gig. It's 1,024.

To my knowledge this was true in the past, but all major operating systems have switched to 1000/megs per gig when reporting file sizes. When I format a drive on my mac, it reads exactly the advertised capacity. Seems silly the PS4 doesn't do the same.

But keeping expectations low.

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Either that or Korny is right.

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It's 14% full. I think I'm good for awhile

This is mine. Both HDDs are 1TB nominal, SSD is 250GB nominal. All drives are using NTFS. I wonder if it factors in?

Apple changed how file sizes and free space were reported back in OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), moving to a base-10 numbering. The actual number of bits is no different, it’s just that the OS does base-10 math instead of base-2 math. This is true for iOS as well, apparently:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201402

As far as any other “major operating systems” go, however: nope, they all use base-2.

Technically speaking, everyone using base-2 calculations should report file sizes in KiB, MiB, and GiB, while base-10 should report KB, MB, and GB. Here’s a chart from the Wikipedia page on Binary Prefixes:

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WD 4TB

I would stay away from Seagate like the plague. They are currently under a class action suit for have over 100-200% failure rate (over 100% b/c replacement drives via warranty were failing too). Of course, those are all internal drives, but I've never had issues with WD internal or external.

http://petapixel.com/2016/02/02/photographers-beware-seagate-slapped-with-a-class-action-suit-over-bad-hard-drives/

I don't think we know enough to speculate about how they're going to handle the transition from Destiny 1 or if somehow both games will still be viable, etc., so I'm not going to worry too much about that now. Personally, I'd rather sacrifice Destiny 1 to the dust if it means a better game in every aspect. If they've managed to overcome the challenges of their building tools, if they've now mastered them, it could mean we get a Destiny that is more modifiable and is easier to build on to.

Bungie has said that they want you to take your Guardian through the ten year journey. That either means Destiny 2 won't be a clean start, or else it will have some way to import your guardian.

They absolutely positively need to abandon PS3 and Xbox 360 though. That's pretty important.

...Except Warthog AI. That was like the one thing they never figured out in 5 games, hah! :)

That's Max's Fault :-p

Seems like we're getting a full blown Destiny 2. How's everyone feel about that?

Good. I really doubt it'll be a bad thing.

Now, for the ultimate question, what does "Destiny 2" mean?

What I HOPE for:

Destiny 2 is simply an expansion the size of D1 or bigger. D2 can come on a disc or be a download. D2 will simply update the current destiny executable. Doing this will solve all the issues with #6 (below).

Here's what I think the worst case scenario would be:

1- Does it mean an expansion the size of vanilla destiny?

It won't be an expansion, but instead a full fledged new game.

2- Will this 'expansion' be on a separate disc?

Yes (see answer to #1).

3- Will it support prior gen?

No. (sorry prior gen peeps :( ).

4- Will my guardians carry over?

Yes, they will carry over. They are stored on Bungie.net and are not tied to a specific destiny game.

5- Will my weapons & gear carry over?

No, they will not carry over. (see #6)

6- Will I be able to play Destiny 1 content?

Yes, but with limitations.

If you want to play D1 content then you will simply launch D1 . You will not be able to use any D2 gear. Your guardian will be 'split', it will have D1 slots & vault, but these will only be visible in D1. The same guardian will also have separate D2 slots & vault, only visible in D2.

If they DO allow using Y2 gear then doing so might only be supported on current gen hardware. This will require Bungie to update the weapon&gear files on D1. This will also set a precedent requiring D1 to be always updated with current weapons & gear, D1 & D2 when D3 comes out... D1, D2, D3 & D4 if/when D5 comes out.

Apple doesn't use base 10 math when referring to RAM, it uses base 2. Apple doesn't use base 10 when referring to CD/DVDs either (at least I don't think it does). Yet for some physical storage it swapped to base 10 math to solve the problem created by HDD/SSD manufacterers using base 10.

My "Best" and "Worst" case scenarios are almost exactly as you just suggested, but 100% reversed.

So either one of us will be very happy and the other will be very disappointed, or Destiny 2 will be some sort of compromise in the middle.

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My "Best" and "Worst" case scenarios are almost exactly as you just suggested, but 100% reversed.

So either one of us will be very happy and the other will be very disappointed, or Destiny 2 will be some sort of compromise in the middle.

I guess I feel fairly positive about either way. I wouldn't be terribly disappointed if my 'worst case' scenario is what ended up happening. I can certainly imagine WORSE things happening, but I just don't believe they would.

Also, I see lots of benefits with my best case scenario. One is that we would have a larger # of strikes and PvP maps available for the various playlists.

That's a very interesting read. I had some issues with Seagate hard drives back in 2009 so I switched to WD hard drives in my home server in 2010. Then I had some of those hard drives go bad also. So I've been hesitant on any hard drive purchases lately but did buy a 2TB WD passport hard drive for my laptop. Wonder what is going on with Seagate?

In your scenario of launching the various releases of Destiny would you imagine this to work similar to Halo MCC?

My "Best" and "Worst" case scenarios are almost exactly as you just suggested, but 100% reversed.

So either one of us will be very happy and the other will be very disappointed, or Destiny 2 will be some sort of compromise in the middle.

I guess I feel fairly positive about either way. I wouldn't be terribly disappointed if my 'worst case' scenario is what ended up happening. I can certainly imagine WORSE things happening, but I just don't believe they would.

Also, I see lots of benefits with my best case scenario. One is that we would have a larger # of strikes and PvP maps available for the various playlists.

I'm a bit torn on this... Lately I've been wondering if I wish Bungie had just gone full MMO with Destiny in terms of monetization, content generation, and release schedules (don't freak out, Cody... I do NOT want typical MMO farming/fetch-quest activities).

I think I would be perfectly happy to pay $10 or $15 per month to play Destiny if we got the same kinds of regular content updates that WOW gets; significant, world-changing updates with boatloads of new activities. I'd be happy to pay another $40-$60 once every year or two, in addition to the monthly fee, for major expansions that add whole new locations, factions, enemy types, and large chunks of story content. I'd be happy to have Destiny exist as a game that keeps growing and growing without ever needing to reset or start us back at level 1.

Maybe this is because I've never actually played an MMO, so I don't have the same love/hate relationship with the idea that many WOW players have developed over the years. Or maybe it's because I don't find Destiny's combat to be very enjoyable until the upper levels, when my character's ability tree is fully unlocked and I have access to a wide array of gear. The idea of starting over from scratch is not exciting or appealing to me.

Beyond that stuff, there's a big part of me that looks at what we have right now and still sees so much unrealized potential. There is SO MUCH that can still be done with the cosmodrome, mars, venus, the moon... I guess I'm still waiting for Bungie to add something to the game we're playing right now that lives up to the amazing scenarios that ran through my imagination as I explored all these locations for the first time. I feel like it would be a bit of a shame to leave them behind so underutilized.

That's a very interesting read. I had some issues with Seagate hard drives back in 2009 so I switched to WD hard drives in my home server in 2010. Then I had some of those hard drives go bad also. So I've been hesitant on any hard drive purchases lately but did buy a 2TB WD passport hard drive for my laptop. Wonder what is going on with Seagate?

I work in the storage industry, no matter what company you use, hard drives will fail. Backblaze (a backup company who goes through a LOT of hard drives) analyzes them every year, and something like 20% of drives will fail within the first year on average. It's similar to most other tech industries: the amount of money needed to ensure that even 90% of their drives are defect free isn't worth it for them to invest.

In your scenario of launching the various releases of Destiny would you imagine this to work similar to Halo MCC?

No, I hadn't imagined it working like that. For those of us who didn't go digital & still use the Disc... I imagine we'd still have to swap discs & launch from the console's main screen. Sounds annoying to me & would really lock out the old content. something similar to MCC would probably be better. Tho' I must admit, I haven't done much in the MCC other than launch it two or three times.

i should knock on wood. Since 1998, I've only had 1 hard drive failure, and it was on a work machine (not a personal one).

That's a very interesting read. I had some issues with Seagate hard drives back in 2009 so I switched to WD hard drives in my home server in 2010. Then I had some of those hard drives go bad also. So I've been hesitant on any hard drive purchases lately but did buy a 2TB WD passport hard drive for my laptop. Wonder what is going on with Seagate?

I work in the storage industry, no matter what company you use, hard drives will fail. Backblaze (a backup company who goes through a LOT of hard drives) analyzes them every year, and something like 20% of drives will fail within the first year on average. It's similar to most other tech industries: the amount of money needed to ensure that even 90% of their drives are defect free isn't worth it for them to invest.

I always use Hitachi (HGST now) enterprise drives when we make raids for editing. Even when we had a 16 drive raid, being used everyday for the course of like 8 months with 6K Redcode, not a single drive went under. In fact, I've never seen a hitachi drive fail personally. The key isn't so much the brand I think, as it is getting enterprise level drives if you care about that. In most cases, it's just cheaper to back up and buy a new one if it fails.

On a lower budget film, we went with a raid5 (or raid6 I forget) with regular non enterprise seagate drives, and bought a few extra. I think 2 failed during the course of cutting, and the only inconvenience was rebuilding the raid overnight when we replaced the failed drive.

4- Will my guardians carry over?

Yes, they will carry over. They are stored on Bungie.net and are not tied to a specific destiny game.

This is why it's bullshit that your guardian is not platform agnostic. I understand Xbox and PS4 people not being able to play a raid together, but having to keep two sets of guardians is madness. I am going to assume this is because of PS exclusive stuff and not being able to work out how to deal with that. They should ditch exclusivity with content, and just let us log in with our guardian on whatever platform we pick.

4- Will my guardians carry over?

Yes, they will carry over. They are stored on Bungie.net and are not tied to a specific destiny game.

This is why it's bullshit that your guardian is not platform agnostic. I am going to assume this is because of PS exclusive stuff and not being able to work out how to deal with that. They should ditch exclusivity with content, and just let us log in with our guardian on whatever platform we pick.

Bungie (DeeJ, if I remember correctly) all but explicitly said that it was Sony and Microsoft holding that feature back.

Bungie (DeeJ, if I remember correctly) all but explicitly said that it was Sony and Microsoft holding that feature back.

How could they stop Bungie? Neither control Bungie.net, and both versions of the game connect to bungie.net to pull your guardian. The only way they could stop them is contractual, not technological. Which means Bungie chose this by agreeing.

I'm a bit torn on this... Lately I've been wondering if I wish Bungie had just gone full MMO with Destiny in terms of monetization, content generation, and release schedules (don't freak out, Cody... I do NOT want typical MMO farming/fetch-quest activities).

I think this is a little funny... bounties are exactly farming/fetch quests. Bungie has done a great job recently to allow you to pick a bunch up and "get them along the way", but at their core, this is exactly what bounties are -- daily MMO quests.

I think I would be perfectly happy to pay $10 or $15 per month to play Destiny if we got the same kinds of regular content updates that WOW gets; significant, world-changing updates with boatloads of new activities. I'd be happy to pay another $40-$60 once every year or two, in addition to the monthly fee, for major expansions that add whole new locations, factions, enemy types, and large chunks of story content. I'd be happy to have Destiny exist as a game that keeps growing and growing without ever needing to reset or start us back at level 1.

I'm actually surprised that this isn't what we are getting. The only non-shaky reasons I can think of not to do this are 1) console gaming has differing expectations, you'll get a "redo" with a v2. And 2) dropping older console support.

Maybe this is because I've never actually played an MMO, so I don't have the same love/hate relationship with the idea that many WOW players have developed over the years. Or maybe it's because I don't find Destiny's combat to be very enjoyable until the upper levels, when my character's ability tree is fully unlocked and I have access to a wide array of gear. The idea of starting over from scratch is not exciting or appealing to me.

I think you're already getting the MMO experience here with destiny. You start off as relatively weak, with few skills. You progress and unlock more and more choices, and then everything changes at the "end game" when you hit the level cap. I know they don't want to -say- that destiny is an MMO, but it's about as close as you get without actually being one. The best part, for me, about this is that I can hop in and play destiny for 30 minutes and feel like I accomplished something. Most MMOs are larger time sinks by design.

Beyond that stuff, there's a big part of me that looks at what we have right now and still sees so much unrealized potential. There is SO MUCH that can still be done with the cosmodrome, mars, venus, the moon... I guess I'm still waiting for Bungie to add something to the game we're playing right now that lives up to the amazing scenarios that ran through my imagination as I explored all these locations for the first time. I feel like it would be a bit of a shame to leave them behind so underutilized.

+1! In a lot of ways, destiny has taught me to ignore a lot of the super pretty aspects of the game because of how these spaces are used. I always have a mixed reaction to space reuse in destiny. On the one hand I really like seeing everything from other angles and they do a good job of making them "new" with minimal modifications. On the other, I'd love to see new, fresh content. I suspect we will see a better mixture going forward, like we have in TTK, with new areas opened up from old areas. Patrols especially could do really well with additions to this, and I think the dreadnaught was a good first step in some areas. I'm hoping we see incremental improvements on that model, and some expanding focus as well.

I'm a bit torn on this... Lately I've been wondering if I wish Bungie had just gone full MMO with Destiny in terms of monetization, content generation, and release schedules (don't freak out, Cody... I do NOT want typical MMO farming/fetch-quest activities).

I don't think that will help at all. You simply can't create meaningful content fast enough. There is a reason every single MMO on the planet sucks donkey balls: they have to stretch the content out to keep people busy till they make more.

I think I would be perfectly happy to pay $10 or $15 per month to play Destiny if we got the same kinds of regular content updates that WOW gets; significant, world-changing updates with boatloads of new activities. I'd be happy to pay another $40-$60 once every year or two, in addition to the monthly fee, for major expansions that add whole new locations, factions, enemy types, and large chunks of story content. I'd be happy to have Destiny exist as a game that keeps growing and growing without ever needing to reset or start us back at level 1.

If Bungie could deliver this, we'd have DLC every two months. They can't. Nobody can. Because Destiny has such heavy FPS elements, they have to make FPS environments, which are difficult and time consuming. Making RPG environments is much simpler since the interaction in MMORPGs is not very interesting or sophisticated.

Maybe this is because I've never actually played an MMO, so I don't have the same love/hate relationship with the idea that many WOW players have developed over the years. Or maybe it's because I don't find Destiny's combat to be very enjoyable until the upper levels, when my character's ability tree is fully unlocked and I have access to a wide array of gear. The idea of starting over from scratch is not exciting or appealing to me.

This is an interesting point, and also why DLC and incremental / episodic releases are worse than full games. Simply put, if you release a full game with lots of content you can effectively pace things out. You can't do that with a DLC model.

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So, do you think we'll be seeing new races in D2? Perhaps we can be Jovians (like Xûr)? Maybe the Fallen?

Bungie (DeeJ, if I remember correctly) all but explicitly said that it was Sony and Microsoft holding that feature back.

How could they stop Bungie? Neither control Bungie.net, and both versions of the game connect to bungie.net to pull your guardian. The only way they could stop them is contractual, not technological. Which means Bungie chose this by agreeing.

well, all games/updates have to be approved by MS/Sony, no? They could just deny them publication rights to their console.

Wonder what is going on with Seagate?

IIRC a natural disaster affected Quality control at a lot of their suppliers on drives built a few years back.

Bungie (DeeJ, if I remember correctly) all but explicitly said that it was Sony and Microsoft holding that feature back.

How could they stop Bungie? Neither control Bungie.net, and both versions of the game connect to bungie.net to pull your guardian. The only way they could stop them is contractual, not technological. Which means Bungie chose this by agreeing.

Unless they agreed, there would not be Destiny on multiple platforms and so the feature still could not exist. And i'm 100% sure that neither Sony nor Microsoft wanted cross platform compatibility (though I think from a business decision Sony SHOULD want it and would benefit from it.)

My hope is there will either not be a collector's edition I care about, and can buy it digital, or they will make a collector's edition that replaces the plastic disc with a download code.

But literally the only failed hard drive I've ever had was a 120GB Hitachi and I lost my pictures because the online backup has been failing and not telling me. Mozy sucks.

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Unless they agreed, there would not be Destiny on multiple platforms and so the feature still could not exist. And i'm 100% sure that neither Sony nor Microsoft wanted cross platform compatibility (though I think from a business decision Sony SHOULD want it and would benefit from it.)

I mean, let's be honest. That's a dumb position for either Sony or Microsoft to make. Not having Destiny on your console would be a much larger detriment to Microsoft at this point than for Bungie. Even before we really knew what Destiny would be, we knew Destiny was going to be huge.

I'd jump ship to Sony in a heartbeat if it suddenly became a Sony exclusive. I actually might anyway if Destiny 2 provides a good point for a fresh start.

My hope is there will either not be a collector's edition I care about, and can buy it digital, or they will make a collector's edition that replaces the plastic disc with a download code.

Halo 5 did that and everyone just bitched about it. I don't see that happening, honestly. I'd actually be really interested to see the numbers on how many of that edition were sold compared to how many people went through the process to get the physical disc for it.

I'm with you, though. I've pretty much accepted that I'll just never buy another special edition (which isn't necessarily a bad thing; most of them are garbage anyway. How many statues do I really need?), because not having to use a disc is much more important to me than a collectible that I can probably pick up on ebay for cheaper in a year anyway.

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Look, I get the thing about wanting all content to be playable together. I do. I really do. I would love that scenario, to be honest. But is it worth the game being stuck on the original engine for 10 years? Limited to the sorts of relatively small, segmented hub areas that it is now (a sacrifice that I think is generally known to have been due to the need to run on last-gen systems)? I say hell no. If Destiny's ever going to have the sort of scale and dynamic public areas that the ideal version of it should have, it will have to move on technologically, by a degree that I doubt is possible without new code.

But the exotics should be recreated. Don't take my MIDA Multi-Tool away again, dammit!

...Except Warthog AI. That was like the one thing they never figured out in 5 games, hah! :)

Vehicle AI must be incredibly difficult. Forza, though I love it dearly, still has weird issues pretty frequently. The AI drivers will sometimes brake VERY heavily for no real reason, for example, coming to a near stop in the middle of an open track. And here's the thing: Forza drivers only have to deal with driving on a static track, with just a few other vehicles providing obstacles. And the ideal route is always the same, other than said obstacles. Whereas the Halo AI won't necessarily have the same start or end point, so the whole route is often dynamic. Additionally, there are WAY more things that could potentially get in the way, or otherwise affect pathfinding.

I am going to assume this is because of PS exclusive stuff and not being able to work out how to deal with that.

This seems extremely unlikely. As an example, I know people who bought the collector's edition on one generation of console, but also played on the other console generation in the same family, and only had access to the collector's "exclusive" content on one of those consoles. When they played on the console that had the exclusives and equipped one of those items, then went and logged in on the other console, the game just unequipped the item, and it went back into their inventory (but either wasn't usable, or wasn't visible at all, I don't remember which). The game then equipped some default item in that slot.

The point being, there are mechanisms to handle that kind of thing. If your guardian has an item equipped that isn't available on the system you log in from, Destiny just puts something else in its place. Easy. I don't see any reason this couldn't be done in the cross-platform scenario. The game doesn't need to know or care WHY the item's not available (whether it's a platform exclusive or just because of a Collector's Edition code), it just needs to know that it is so.

No, I think it's far more likely that the platform holders are just being dicks, because that's what they do.

Yeah, but who would be the boss of that raid? What other threat to the Light would be so big it required six Guardians? Nokris?

I can see the other side — especially for MS. they both had new consoles out and want to encourage brand loyalty when upgrading. And MS was already facing a perception/reality problem with their console not being "for Gamers" Making it easier to go from 360 to PS4 would be a bad thing for them. Particularly since the only Bungie players at that point were people who owned a 360 so they couldn't hope to see a counterbalancing number of switchers.

As for it becoming a PS exclusive, I can't see it. there are still a HUGE number of Xbox players and at launch a big chunk of them were on 360. Bungie/activision would not want to forgo that group of customers (and if they could do without the XBOX players they would have just from a development cost perspective long before worrying about data sync issues). Would have been deafening to see the outcry if they had, though.

Bungie (DeeJ, if I remember correctly) all but explicitly said that it was Sony and Microsoft holding that feature back.

How could they stop Bungie? Neither control Bungie.net, and both versions of the game connect to bungie.net to pull your guardian. The only way they could stop them is contractual, not technological. Which means Bungie chose this by agreeing.

Exactly, which is why I suspect it was Sony who put the breaks on sharing characters across platforms. Sony paid a lot of money to secure their position as "lead platform" for Destiny. These kinds of deals are always a 2-way street. Sony gets some exclusive content which allows them to use Destiny to lure players to their side, and Bungie/Activision get a major marketing push from Sony. I guarantee Sony wouldn't like the idea of paying all that money to secure players, only to have Bungie allow them to switch consoles at the drop of a hat.