We also look at how well Seasons are engaging our players. Are people coming back each week? How long are they playing?

This is not really the best metric of measuring “engagement”… if these are the benchmarks this is exactly why I quit and Bungie isn’t going to change to bring me back.

Hmmm.

Not sure how to feel about any that.

My gut reaction is to agree with the cap on some weapons. I love all of my old weapons, but I still use them all because they’re comfortable and I don’t have to change. I never hinted as great roll on Blast Furnace because I already had a perfect Bygones that I love. I like Kindled Orchid and Austringer, but they can’t even come close to my Trust. I’m not a huge fan of taking toys away, but for all the guns that are in Destiny, a lot of them sure feel the same. I’m also not really sure it will actually fix that problem, but I guess we’ll see.

The timeline on those weapons (9 to 15 months) makes me wonder how long they’ll be supporting Destiny 2, though. I figured we’d be getting close to Destiny 3 territory in 15 months.

The faction rally stuff made me laugh. No one is asking for faction rallies back, just the old faction system with some vendor stock. Talk about missing the point.

Alrighty. Let’s see if I can unpack this without writing a dissertation of random quality.

First things first, I’m surprised we’re having a Year 4 of Destiny 2 – initially. Each “Season” averages 3 months, so next season starts in March and thus ends at the end of May or so. E3 2020 (of whatever quality it turns out to be) happens week of June 9th. If something BIG gets announced, and I’m not talking Destiny 2, by all odds it’s around that time. Nothing is going to be coming out at that point, so… duh. We’ve got a Year 4. Or… Year 7 if you want to be properly technical right? Geeze… what a ride. 7 years of …

Right! Year 4. Yammering. … (Fair warning, sea of quotes and responses ahead.)

--Aspiration--

Aspiration: 1. A hope or ambition of achieving something. 2. The action or process of drawing breath.

That’s one of the main themes of this “Directors Cut”. The “Aspiration”, the looking forward to play Destiny 2 because… X. Solve for Why.

In Destiny 2, aspiration is what keeps our game alive. It is the air that fills its lungs, it is the breath that gives the game meaning. Aspiration can be about entering Destiny 2 for the first time and feeling the potential of what you could become. It can be about the pursuits in front of you. Or it can also be PVP players looking over the horizon and seeing the Lighthouse and its treasures awaiting them – if they pass The Trials. ... 

Is it just me, and this thought comes from consideration and not from initial thoughts; is this "aspiration" purview just a touch reductive. Like all the eggs are in one basket. No LUKE, aspiration is NOT what keeps our game alive. It’s not about the stuff we collect, the foes we fight, or tasks we burn WAY too much of the midnight oil for. Destiny is more then that. SO much more. It’s… about the emergent MOMENTS. The little complexities you CAN’T plan. You can’t – if I may echo story for a moment - “simulate”. Our own innate extraordinary acts that we may not process in our non-virtual corporal forms; An expression. A living breathing thought experiment of being able to learn from as many mistakes as possible. It’s not about the THINGS, it’s about what we can DO with the things. How do we MAKE our PLAY?

DO GUARDIANS MAKE THEIR OWN FATE?!

I could iterate on this MUCH more… but I’m going to do something fancy and new and stop there. Yes, my dear fellow DBOers, it does in-fact, sting. Alot. Oof. Owy. I suppose change trends to that effect.

These are some of my observations, and no doubt they can be added to by my peers on this forum. Not that any of it matters of course since no one with the power to bring this up during a planning week reads this anyway. We’re not cool enough for Deej anymore. ;_;

Do not neglect what you already have in the name of change. Best intentions.

--Seasons of Change--

I’ve enjoyed the simplicity of leveling up Destiny’s version of a Battle Pass. We wanted a progression that you could advance just by playing the game. (We don’t think we’ve got the whole XP thing figured out. Running in and out of Lost Sectors and flash-farming XP isn’t what we had in mind, but we can keep tuning it!) 

“A million deaths are not enough for Master Rahool”

I recently sat with a couple of external folks who really love Breakneck. It’s the only thing they use. They aren’t ever going to use another primary weapon in Destiny 2. Why? Because they don’t need to. ... 

The use of “need” concerns me. Add that with…

… Part of aspiration is the pursuit that comes with it and, right now, the way we are (and have been) treating weapons in Destiny 2 isn’t actually fueling the aspiration engine. 

… this here and, oh bother. The weapons are part of the tool kit to PLAY. To say anymore would only reiterate what I’ve said just a dozen or so lines above.

We aren’t delivering the feeling of an evolving world. …

Yes.

What we’re discussing now – and which is early enough that things might still change – is how we focus our efforts around Seasons from a development standpoint, while also trying to create the moments that make memories, WHILE ALSO balancing the amount of “fear of missing out.” This is a tricky balance, because these elements don’t connect neatly and, in many cases, they work against one another. 

Ye...wait, did he say “create the moments that make memories”? ...

create the moments that make memories

HE DID! (too bad it’s not higher up ‘eh?)

We’re going to be continuing to take in the feedback our guts and data provides (your reactions and feedback are a part of that data, so do continue to let us know your thoughts) on our Seasonal model.

At risk of the Two Generals' Problem (vid), A feed back post on what you learned from our feedback would be nice. I am not expecting one though, because you will by all odds not read this.

This year’s version of Seasons has too much FOMO in them. We want to fix this, and next year’s Seasons will have less.

Good.

Because we aren’t spending our development resources and time as well as we could, we’re talking about moving away from creating Season-bespoke private activities and instead using that time and effort to build themes that aren’t just represented by a marquee event that will fade away, but rather to inject these Seasonal themes into more of the game. Like we continue to evolve the world’s narrative, we could invest more in the evolving world of our public spaces and take further efforts to …

Of ALL the paragraphs that EXCITE me, this PARAGRAPH (particularly the parts I’ve bolded)… makes me hope. You bastards… don’t do that! I mean… what did I just write down….uhh… “Do not neglect what you already have in the name of change.” THAT. Let’s add to that now because you gave me the opening! ( I TRIED DBO, I TRIED!)

The “public spaces” tech is some of the most UNDERUTILIZED tech that Bungie has been SITTING ON, be it for technical or design reasons. Be it as it may, the POTENTIAL IS IMMENSE! You know what one of my -absolutely FAVORITE- things to do was in Destiny 1? Helping people as a blueberry open the door into the Vault of Glass. Design wise it might not have been all that great, as it stacks the deck on what should be a proving ground, but it sure was fun.

Oh… and the things you could do if you gave more time to work on the public spaces… spit-balling here...

Lets get actual SEASONS & WEATHER in the forest! Have a door malfunction and open up a new uncorrupted, yet dilapidated space on Titan (which has some of my favorite spaces). Give us yet another glimse of a dream in the golden age. Have the vex working on some sort of “digitization” on Nesses. Have some earthquakes occurring on Io for “unknown” reasons. In all of these, you could have some environmental hazards. An Immune beast harassing you by the entrance of the dark forest. … yeah… so on. All in a public space. A living world.

Or even… perhaps… PvP public space? MMM? The most dangerous game?

There are few things more ENTHRALLING, then stumbling onto an unplanned adventure – well at least virtually. Your mileage may very real life wise.

...evolve Destiny 2’s core activities. Core activities? What are those? Core activities are a way we think about a player’s options and motivations in a given evening of Destiny.

A way? What are the other ways you “think about a player’s options and motivations in a given evening of Destiny“?

They are meant to be more evergreen (quest/campaign content, for instance, is not generally evergreen). It’s usually something matchmade and designed with replayability in mind, either from the properties of the activity itself or the rewards. For example Crucible is fundamentally replayable because the opponents can be different and other players are the ultimate A.I., where The Ordeal is fundamentally replayable because of its reward structure, rather than random encounter generation. (In fact, we hope The Ordeal is consistent within a given week to create mastery and efficiency in defeating it). 

TL;DR is a (usually) matchmade mode that a player can enjoy playing again and again and again? Am I getting the right? When you say matchmade, is this the “Wait on a screen” matchmaking, ah la Crusable? Or does this include the more dynamic Matchmaking seen in pubic spaces?

Ideally, core activities are convergence points for player motivations (e.g., “I want to maximize XP, chase awesome items, and generate economy that I can use to further my goals” [Yes, I know no one talks this way]). 

Fun? I want to have fun in this world where I can shoot pure “space magic” energy from my fingertips? Why does it have to be something? Can’t it just be? Can’t the world you’ve made be fun?

Just as we continue to evolve the narrative of our world, we can continue to invest in evolving the world of open world public spaces (in case you’re unfamiliar, these are the spaces where you seamlessly see other players appear). We’ve built a world where players can encounter others, but we haven’t made a world with fights challenging enough where you feel like other players matter. 

So... like an open world raid boss!? RAWR!

----------

... and with that I'm going to stop there for the moment. Still digesting the talk about "Weapons Forever: The Problem", "Cosmic Gardeners", and the "Shortcut" blerbs. Plus, I am TRYING to make this more digestible for everyone else, because apparently I'm the only person who enjoys drinking from a firehouse.

Weirdos. :P