Bungie worked hard to trap you in Destiny

General Discussion
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source: http://www.gamesradar.com/heres-how-bungie-trapped-average-playtime-destiny-77-hours/

Bungie worked hard to trap you in Destiny
Louise Blain April 2, 2015

Ever wondered why you’re still playing Destiny? Still grinding for the ultimate pair of boots? Still dreaming about it…? Well the staggering average 77 hours playtime we’ve all put in so far was helpfully explained by Bungie’s John Hopson at GDC. In his ‘User Research On Destiny ’ presentation he revealed the secrets of the ways the game was tested for the ultimate experience where we’d just keep coming back for more.

Play-testing took place in a specific lab where players of all types tested Destiny. The team identified 5 kinds of players - short and long campaigners, short and long omnivores and the specialist. Bungie focussed especially on the ‘omnivore’, a player type that would play multiple types of content and that’s what it wanted to promote with Destiny’s various game modes.

Testing started an impressive three years before release - months ahead of Halo 2 and 3’s seemingly paltry exercises. Bungie was serious about delivering something we just couldn’t give up. Needless to say there was serious security in place to make sure there were no leaks but the extra time gave the team the chance to hone the experience and continue to make changes as needed.

Because the feels matter most, emotion was tested at various parts of each map with players pressing a button to identify how they felt. And yes, that meant that for once, the DualShock 4 had an ‘Awesome’ button. Of course it was X. Eye-tracking technology was used for testing the interface and each player was recorded while they played, swears and all.

Hopson himself is a specialist in behavioural game design. With a Ph.D in behavioural and brain sciences, he’s dangerously qualified to diagnose when you’d like nothing more than to patrol for six hours straight. You can read his thoughts on behavioural game design here.

And, of course, it worked. Hopson confirmed during the presentation that with 17 million registered players and over 1.1 billion hours played overall, Destiny has an average play time of 77 hours per player. 200 billion aliens have sadly lost their lives in the process and the average daily play time is a not insignificant 3 hours. Here’s to the death of another 200 billion…

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I totally get what Bungie did. It’s a combination of MMO and FPS. No wonder people got hooked, they want character progression. Games like Halo 2,3 are done.

I would of liked to see more MMO into Destiny. Also, more reward for PvP. Hell, a realm vs realm type of thing would of made it epic.

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The equivalent there would be big team battle. Right?

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No, bigger.

I’d love to see a FPS version of GW2’s WvWvW. Think something like Planetside.

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I am not in the norm here as it just didn’t catch me so I never got trapped in the first place.

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theres talk about Destiny 2… but other talks about just more and more DLC like a typical MMO… which do you guys think?

the whole “comet” thing seems to add a lot. but for me. i could only go back if there was actually new stuff. like lala said, some type of WvW, or why faction war, or a REAL STORY! when are those 3rd slots for sub classes being unlocked??

I was listening to AlfredoPlays who found out he has 900+ hours in the game. He knows the game has faults like story and shallow content, but mechanics are so good, he goes back. he also looks at it like COD or BF. playing the same content with friends over and over. i never thought of it like that.

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77 hours. Pppffft… I have 927.

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psh, your xbox doesnt even have that much.

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http://destinystatus.com/xbl/koldfront%20kraig

Total time played under each character.

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Look at my awesomeness.

http://destinystatus.com/xbl/sjam613

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ive pooped for longer than that

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I’m floored…

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PVP sure, but the story or whatever you wanna call it… nothing changes, nothing is unexpected. its the same over and over and over. same enemies, same stategies, same same same same… only difference would be that the weekly shit, enemy will have different weakness. but its still the same path, same rooms, enemies spawning same spots. same-ness.

so to me it got stale extremely quick. so i never thought of it like that.

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Not with the same thing over and over. Even with the dlc, you’re still playing the same areas and they keep adding economies to keep the grind up.

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i wil never say i didnt get my moneys worth. i got ~70 hours. 33 in PVP… but a lot of that was helping others, and them talking me into it… i probably got bored before that… still worth my money. but a huge disapointment to me about what it was supposed to be, (in my mind.)