Video Game Tuesday: Destiny Reborn?

Hi all, I’m getting peppered with questions from friends asking about Destiny’s latest leak and I’m going to deal with it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! It’s all about the question is Destiny Reborn?

What Leak?: Someone leaked an image showcasing supposedly the next Destiny Expansion slated to be released this September. It’s supposedly called Rise of Iron.

What else?: We know nothing else, and to be honest I could care less. I’ve made plain my thoughts regarding Destiny’s incredibly fucked up state of affairs for over a year now, and I accurately predicted any and most upcoming issues that new content was supposed to fix.

What do I expect?: I expect a new raid, maybe a new patrol zone (but if they didn’t include one I wouldn’t be surprised), New Weapons and a level raise.

Nothing else?: No. I expect nothing to be fixed, in fact I fully expect they’ll fuck up even more things. Granted it’s hard to see how they could do that, especially after the debacle with Hand Cannons becoming useless, but I fully expect Bungie to live up to this expectation (of mine) and fail miserably.

That’s it for this Video Game Tuesday, and yes I still think Bungie is a joke.

 

Video Game Tuesday: Why Bungie’s Plan is a Failure Already

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m holding nothing back anymore. I’ve had it with Bungie’s Plan for the future.

What Plan?: Last week Activision and Bungie both confirmed that Destiny 2 is coming out in 2017 Spring (Watch, it’ll get delayed until September) and that we’d get an “Expansion” sometime this upcoming fall. Also they’re raising the level cap in Destiny sometime this Spring (Probably in May or June).

How is it already a Failure?: Easy, first off for a game that had so much money poured into it, such a lack of content for up to a year and a half, at the minimum, and the lack of any details regarding it is unacceptable.

Secondly remember that the term “Expansion” when used by Bungie has meant things like The Dark Below, which was great for maybe the first week. Otherwise it was absolutely terrible.  I feel like an idiot regarding how much I was expecting from the game pre release and shortly afterwards. The Dark Below offered no expanded Patrols, and barely anything new mission wise.

Thirdly and finally, they didn’t even even go into detail regarding the Level Cap increase. Is it an increase to the base levels meaning we can get to 50? Or is it a raising of the Light Level cap, which is way more likely, and thus not only doesn’t add anything to the game, but is pretty much giving the middle finger to every player by saying “hah, and you thought “Forever 319″ was bad.” It doesn’t even matter if they add any new “missions” or exotic quest lines. Such content will satisfy players for a few hours at most, and in a game that strives to be an MMO, a few hours of additional content is laughable.

If they hope to prove me and others wrong, they’ll need to bring out a new patrol zone, new subclasses, missions, strikes and raids in the Spring Update. Needless to say that the likelyhood of any of that happening is so low as to be statistically impossible.

Bungie’s gone and fucked up big this time with their vague bullshit and non answers. People like me wouldn’t be so angry if we could just get some straight answers to important questions in a timely manner (read: a day or two at the most) instead of after months.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. The ball is in your court Bungie, prove me wrong.

 

Video Game Tuesday: The Importance of Community Interaction

Hi all for this week’s Video Game Tuesday I’m going to talk about what a good Game Dev needs to do with their communities. It’s all about Community Interaction!

What not to do: Don’t advertise patch notes that are incorrect for weeks in advance of an upcoming patch and claim things are working as intended and that it was merely a misplaced decimal point. The Auto Rifle Buff in Destiny is the most recent example of Bungie’s latest fuck up and their handling of the situation was absolutely terrible. They claimed that it was working as intended, and the next day edited the notes to show what actually took place. It was a .07% increase to auto rifle damage rather than 7%. I don’t need to tell you how fucked up that is, not to even mention that such a small increase is so pointless as to make the entire change meaningless. Another thing not to do is blame your poor server structuring and maintenance issues on the players when it’s clearly not their fault. Another thing Bungie did this past week with the Oryx Challenge mode. There is a reason Public Relations is such a huge part of the business model of Game Developers and Bungie has been forgetting this for the last year on a regular basis. It’s disappointing that they have fallen to become a joke of what they once were.

Another thing not to do is to break your own rules that you set for yourself months ago, Square Enix did that with the latest Relic Weapon quest line in Final Fantasy XIV and it’s a disappointment after the wonderful way they handled A Realm Reborn and the launch of Heavensward.

What to do: Act like Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) and be forthright in admitting your mistakes. Make up for it with earnestness and you will earn a lot of good will from your customers. In fact the way Yoshi-P has handled Final Fantasy XIV is such a good example that I’d love to see every game developer lead by such a person. It’d do the industry a ton of good.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, check back next week for my Best and Worst of 2015!