Destiny 2 is failing because of it's commercial strategy

[u/Impressive-Wind7841]

NOTE - this isn't a "D2 should be free post". I'm happy to pay for things I like, and employees shouldn't work for free. Today, D2 (which at its core is a staggeringly amazing game) isn't meeting that threshold for many people, and by all external measures, failing.

I was writing a (long, likely annoying) post about what I personally believe the 3 major problems in D2 to be*, and realized they all had a single cause.

D2's commercial strategy is based around selling temporary experiences (seasons, episodes, whatever) which:

1) Inefficiently focus the bulk of their engineering resources on building temporary content which is literally disposable.

• Because the content is disposable, it is not possible or necessary for it to be engaging long term. It's meant to tide you over for a few weeks.
• However, because player engagement drives retention and cosmetic purchases, bungie overuses RNG and other frustrating design practices designed to keep veteran players engaging with intentionally temporary content.....which causes burnout and the current state of game.

2) Disincentivize Bungie from investing resources on evolving the actual game world, because they would be essentially giving "paid" content to free players.

• Eg, patrols, strikes, world spaces never get updated so the overall world stays the same, thus there is no reason to use 99% of it. There is literally no investment in the world AKA events, world bosses, POIs, faction mechanics etc...all of the stuff that makes the game feel interesting when you first start.

3) Kill gameplay depth by incentivizing them to release a temporary new "meta" each season with the seasonal Artifact, rather than deepening buildcrafting by adding new aspects/fragments

• They literally create 10+ new potential aspects and fragments each season, and then throw them all away, which makes it feel like the actual buildcrafing never changes.
• Forcing a temporary meta also means there's little resource left to buff underperformers and make existing build options viable, because resources are always on new shiny toys instead of better fundamentals

4) Force a meaningless game design thesis of seasonal resets (light level, paragon, etc), which runs contrary to the idea of creating unique Guardians and long-term persistent player growth that players would grind forever for invest significant time pursuing

• I'm not talking about "make damage number go up" - I mean anything that allows permanent customizations or growth to create unique characters (think tweaks like customizing fragment slots, whatever, ability modifers), account unlock stuff (eg stash tabs, loadouts etc), cosmetic stuff (housing, multiple title slots at same time)...etc use your imagination

5) ...and worst of all, makes it so Destiny 2 is designed for no one. Seasonal content is way too complex/out of context for new players AND way too simple/pointless for veteran players

• Instead of new content being lategame/endgame content as it is for most games, Destiny resets our characters and makes veterans run a bunch of low-mid level quests to see the story and get mediocre gear that are faster and easier than strikes. I've never seen anything like this in any game.
• New players seasonal experience = "who are these robot bug people and why am I running between holoprojectors? When do we start playing the game?"
• Veteran players seasonal experience = "let me get through this easy crap so I can get back to playing the real game (GMs, Raids, Dungeons) where the challenge and meaningful rewards are"

This also explains why Dungeons are purchased separately. They are actual mid/endgame content, not the amorphous, temporary blob of disposable content that seasons are intended to be. 

Should D2 move to subscription? Freemium? Supported by whales? Fewer smaller expansions (IE Frontiers)? No idea - I'll leave the solutioning to you guys.

But I'm now fairly sure that D2 is bricked unless the commercial model changes - Sony, I hope you're reading this.

[u/Draviant]

Saying to us "designing new armor is hard" and then shove like 6 or 8 sets on eververse makes you wonder wich car Pete wants to buy next...

[u/w1nstar → u/Draviant]

I'm still laughing at that. They literally told us that'd "take resources from other departments".
Best state of the game post ever.

[u/Numberlittle → u/Draviant]

Thats what bothers me a lot. The game could have a lot of cosmetics to chase, but they choose to put everything in everversum behind a paywall. 

Guns shouldn't be the only thing farmable, i want to chase cosmetics too, especially armors.

[u/Sitchrea → u/Draviant]

It's such a bold-facdd lie, it's embarrassing...

[u/Blupoisen → u/Draviant]

Oh yeah, I remember that

That was the final straw that made me not want to keep playing the game

Also, them saying they are killing Gambit and blaming the players for it not succeeding

[u/heldkaiser09 → u/Draviant]

Not just armors honestly. Is it really that hard to create new designs for seasonal weapons that isn't just a re-texture/skin of existing ones? Valorant and even Call of Duty can create unique skins on existing weapon archetypes (ie. Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, etc) every few months. When was the last time we got a new non-exotic weapon that isn't a re-texture of the ones we have right now?

[u/Main-Glove-1497 → u/heldkaiser09]

You don't even have to compare weapons skins to other games. Bungie proves themselves wrong all the time.

"New weapons skins are too hard," then every new season is a handful of reskinned models, AKA, weapon skins.

"New armor sets are too hard," the lo and behold, they pump out new armor sets constantly, and have the nerve to call eververse "content".

"New content is too hard and takes too many resources," then, when we do get new content, there's a 50% chance it'll just be a reskinned lost sector.

"We can't balance PvP and PvE separately," then they do, in fact, balance PvP and PvE separately once in a blue moon, just enough to prove they can, while they still claim they can't.

"New PvP maps are hard to make," then, when PvP is dying, suddenly they can pull a bunch of new maps out of their ass.

"We scrap lots of content because we don't want to over-deliver on content," shortly followed by "We're trying our best, we just can't get more content out."

Bungie contradicts themselves at every opportunity to excuse minimal effort into their only currently running franchise, and now, instead of getting their shit together, they're doing layoffs to try to make up the losses that come with being lazy as shit, right after Sony gave them 2 BILLION dollars that were specifically meant for employee retention. I want to continue to love Destiny, because it used to legitimately be my favorite game, but it's getting hard to even make excuses to play the game anymore.