Besides them recently admitting they have no idea about the story with the Darkness, another admittance that they didnât quite know what they were doing with the game.
Destiny wasnât necessarily an immediate hit. While it won fans over from the start, it was initially just a touch obtuse and unwelcoming to anyone not prepared to put in the effort. A lot of effort. Several changes and updates eventually made everything much more friendly but it very much feels like a game that grew into what it is now.
I recently spoke to Destiny 2 director Luke Smith about that process, and of the first gameâs early evolution. âI think candidly⌠I donât think we always knew exactly what we were making,â he tells me. âWe had high level things that we understood. Like, we want this to be a game you can return to every week. We wanted to be a game that was compatible with real life. And candidly, we failed there. Destiny 1 wasnât compatible with real life.â
Anyone whoâs played Destiny from the start will remember the early effort it needed to really reach the higher levels - people had to devote serious amounts of time to get anywhere. âIt became a game that became an obligation,â admits Smith. âIâve described it before - itâs hard to give someone Destiny as a gift. They open the game [and] thereâs a wedding ring instead of a disk. Youâre giving them this relationship, this thing thatâs going to take work. Compatibility with real life? Gone.â
The idea of making a game youâll play every week is still in place for Destiny 2 but Luke and the team seem more confident that, using what theyâve learned, theyâll be able to nail it first time with the sequel. âWith Destiny 2, [weâve] built a game that we want to call you and your friends back to it, but does it in away that is compatible with your real life,â explains Smith.
Time management is a crucial part part of this: âIf I only have two hours to spend I know exactly what to do,â Smith says of Destiny 2. âIn Destiny 1, if I said you only had two hours to spend youâd have to go to reddit. In Destiny 2 youâre not going to go to reddit, youâre going to press one button on the controller and the gameâs going to tell you what to do.â
Destiny 2 will be out September 6 with a beta starting July 21 so weâll be able to see whatâs changed quite soon. In the mean time take a look at everything we know about Destiny 2.
Opinion - Destiny players want Bungie to Invest in the game as much as they do.
As Bungie has released new information about its upcoming sequel, Destiny 2, over the past few weeks, Iâve been unable to get excited about the new campaign, new patrol areas and new visuals.
Dedicated players already have a complicated relationship with Destiny; nobody loves it unreservedly. Even players like me, who have played it for hundreds or thousands of hours over the span of three years, tend to have serious grievances with the game. In fact, the most dedicated players are likely to be the angriest about the way their commitment and investment has been treated by Bungie, and with good reason. As has often been the case with previous Destiny updates, the new sequel comes with a slap in the face to committed Destiny fans.
In March, Bungie announced that when players transition to the new game, none of their stuff â none of their gear, none of their currencies and none of their cosmetics â will be going with them to the sequel.
This might seem routine to some observers. Call of Duty players, for example, spend real money on supply drops containing weapon skins and avatar customizations knowing that theyâll be leaving that stuff behind when they transition to a next annual Call of Duty iteration.
But Destiny isnât Call of Duty; it more closely resembles PC franchises that are handled like services, with the expectation being that fans play for years and grow along with the updates and story.
And those games treat paying users a lot better than Bungie is treating the players who spent money on cosmetic items in Destiny.
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT EVERVERSE
To understand the scope of what Bungie is stripping from its higher-spending players, you need to know what the studio has been encouraging players to buy for the past couple of years.
Destiny, like many other games that offer microtransactions, has an intermediate currency called Silver, which is used to purchase cosmetic items and event-related loot boxes from special vendors associated with something called the Eververse Trading Company.
You pay $1 per hundred Silver, but Bungie gives you a bonus if you buy it in bundles, so you get 2,300 Silver for $20 and 5,800 for $50.
One of the biggest sinks for this currency is emotes. Emotes range from around $2 for simple gestures like a congratulatory or celebratory gesture to $5 for more elaborate stuff like jazz hands or air guitar.
Dancing is also a big thing in Destiny, and Bungie has sold a number of customizable dances for Guardians for $5 each, including the Hotline Bling dance, Gangnam Style, and the Napoleon Dynamite dance, as well as the Halloween-exclusive Thriller Dance, which costs $7.
Bungie has been releasing seasonal batches of emotes several times per year since 2015, as well as emotes tied to special events.
The most recent batch of Eververse emotes were released with the Dawning event during Christmas and New Yearâs, just a few weeks before the announcement that Eververse purchases would not carry over to the new game.
Additionally, Eververse releases randomized loot boxes tied to events and in-game holidays, containing cosmetically unique armor sets and ghost shells as well as exclusive Sparrow mounts, spaceships and cosmetic skins for exotic weapons.
At Halloween, there are special random loot boxes which contain cosmetic Halloween masks depicting different Destiny characters, and the 2015 and 2016 boxes each additionally contained a unique rare-drop mask that was only available during that event. In 2015, it was a flaming skull, and in 2016, it was a Wolfâs Head that had a cool interaction with the $5 howl emote. Since these were random, low-percentage drops from $3 boxes, many players had to spend over $50 to get them.
All in, if you want to fill up your emote kiosks, collected all the holiday and SRL mounts and chased down the rare-drop Halloween masks? You could have spent $400 on Destiny microtransactions, likely under the mistaken belief that your collection of cosmetics would follow you throughout the decade of Destiny adventures Bungie had planned for your persistent characters.
And, by the way, if you bought a $50 bundle of currency and didnât spend it all, that wonât be carrying over to the new game either!
THIS ISNâT HOW OTHER ONLINE GAMES TREAT PAYING CUSTOMERS
Riot Games announced a major upcoming system change for League of Legends, in which they will completely replace the existing Rune system.
Runes in League are customizable minor stat buffs you can apply to your character prior to entering a match. In the current system, you have to purchase the Runes with IP, the currency you earn for playing the game, and they can be pretty expensive. Even though players donât directly spend money on Runes, a lot of new players buy IP-increasing boosts to earn more IP to buy runes. You have to choose between spending IP on runes or on new champions, which means the current system encourages you to either buy champs with cash or live without a robust lineup until you can first get your runes in order.
WOW HAS NEVER TAKEN AWAY COSMETICS
You also need to buy rune pages, which allow you to save more rune loadouts. You can buy these with cash, and they cost about $3 to $4 each, although Riot sells them for half price a couple of times each year.
All in, a lot of players probably sunk $50 or so into the current Rune system in the form of IP boosts or direct rune page purposes.
The new system will be completely free, but Riot has assured players who invested in the current system that they will be compensated when their Runes go away, even though most long term League players bought this stuff years ago.
Similarly, World of Warcraft has been running for nearly 13 years, and contains hundreds of mounts, companion pets, toys and other cosmetic collectibles. If you bought a collectorâs edition of the original 2004 release, it came with a pet panda cub, a zergling and a mini-Diablo. You can still use these today.
Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 have similarly allowed players to preserve their collections of cosmetics over a period of years, and it seems similarly unlikely that Overwatch is going to transition to an Overwatch 2 in a year or two and erase playersâ collections of loot.
Bungie wants to sell us Destiny like it was a service, while playing by the rules of a standard $60 premium release. Itâs that tension that is rubbing players the wrong way.
CHANGES AND UPDATES DONâT JUSTIFY ERASING PLAYERSâ COLLECTIONS
When World of Warcraft first launched in 2004, it ran at low resolutions and its characters were blocky and skinned with muddy textures. The game launched as a contemporary of the PlayStation 2, and looked like it.
Blizzard has since changed every relevant game system, redesigned every character class multiple times, added support for numerous new visual and gameplay features and completely remodeled and retextured all the gameâs characters and environments. There still has never been a WoW 2 and, while old gear is eclipsed for functional purposes with each increase of the level cap, players have the option to transform their current gear to match the appearance of any of the thousands of older items they may have collected.
And WoW has never taken away cosmetics. All the collectorâs edition perks, all the event-specific items, all the in-game redemption prizes from Blizzardâs long out-of-print pre-Hearthstone WoW trading card game, all the Christmas presents and tabards and mounts, and certainly all the items purchased from Blizzardâs cash store still work. Many of the new UI features Blizzard has added in the last few expansions are designed to help players organize and catalog all their doodads.
League of Legends has similarly seen extensive visual and systems changes without ever having a sequel or breaking the continuity of playersâ collections of paid cosmetics. In addition to major updates which completely replace the game client or ui or completely rebuild the game environment, League has frequent updates that provide visual and gameplay updates to individual champions, replacing aging visual assets and outdated mechanics.
When a League champion gets an update, players who owned the old version get the upgrade for free, and when a champ gets a new model, Riotâs art team rebuilds all the characterâs cosmetic skins to meet the new standards. People who own the old skins get the new ones for free.
This stuff is possible, and other companies have made it work on a much larger scale, for many more years.
THIS ISNâT A CHARITY
When players raise complaints about Bungieâs Eververse policies on the Destiny forums, the overall tone from the community seems to be: âYou bought these emotes and sparrows and masks in Destiny 1. Destiny 2 is a new game. Thereâs no reason to expect microtransactions from an old game to carry over to a new game. Bungie doesnât owe you anything.â
That is entirely true, but itâs also really stupid.
Blizzard, Riot and Valveâs policies of carefully preserving playersâ collections of cosmetic items arenât the result of kindness or benevolence. These are large corporate entities that are focused on maximizing profits.
What they understand, and what Bungie doesnât seem to, is that it is necessary to maintain the trust of the community if a studio wants to have a game in which players feel comfortable spending hundreds of dollars on cosmetic items to customize their characters. Bungie should be taking care to keep the spenders happy, so they will keep spending.
If a player spent $500 on League of Legends skins, and then Riot announced that the game was going to become League 2 and all cosmetics would be left behind in the old version ⌠is it likely that player would continue to buy cosmetics after transitioning over to the new game?
BLIZZARD, RIOT AND VALVEâS POLICIES OF PRESERVING PLAYERSâ COLLECTIONS OF COSMETIC ITEMS ARENâT THE RESULT OF KINDNESS OR BENEVOLENCE
Most studios that maintain long-running online games seem to believe that separating players from their collections of cosmetic items is bad for business. Bungie is about to test that hypothesis, because Halloween, which comes only a few weeks after the Destiny 2 launch, is the biggest event on the Destiny calendar. Many members of the community have previously been willing to spend heavily at the Eververse shop to get the annual set of spooky emotes and the fancy rare-drop Halloween mask.
Will Destiny players open their wallets again, right after Bungie has negated their last two years of in-game spending? Iâm betting there will be a lot less trick-or-treating this year at the Eververse shop.
ITâS NOT TOO LATE TO FIX THIS
If dance emotes and custom sparrows were important enough to players to induce them to spend $5 each, Bungie should have recognized at a much earlier point that these things needed to carry over to the new game.
If itâs too late to implement some mechanism for porting this stuff into the new game â or if technical limitations make doing so impossible â Bungie needs to figure out a way to make people who spent on cosmetics in Destiny whole, possibly by giving them currency in the new game equivalent to what they spent in the old game. Even if that amounts to hundreds of dollars.
A studio canât maintain a healthy online game if the community cannot trust the developers to respect their investment of time and especially their investment of money. I want Destiny 2 to be fun, and I want to continue to invest in the game. Bungie is making it hard to do so.
Beta Start times
Destiny 2 beta â PS4 start times
- Pre-order early access: 10:00am PT July 18
- General access: 10:00am PT July 21
Destiny 2 beta â Xbox One start times
- Pre-order early access: 10:00am PT July 19
- General access: 10:00am PT July 21
Destiny 2 beta â PC
- Pre-order early access: âlate Augustâ [TBC]
- General access: âlate Augustâ [TBC]
Wow. Such rage.
By the time Destiny 2 launches in September, it will have been three years since the debut of the original Destiny. While Bungie and Activision are surely hoping the sequel will bring in a lot of new people, longtime Destiny players have been clamoring for Destiny 2 to recognize their achievements â and the fact that those folks have been there from the start, man.
Bungie is keeping some of its cards close to the vest in this area, both to preserve a sense of discovery for Destiny players entering Destiny 2 and to ensure they can enjoy subtle âyou had to be thereâ nods to Destinyâs legacy, the studio said today in a blog post. But since a few of the acknowledgments are tied to feats that players can still accomplish in Destiny â for now, anyway â Bungie did reveal some details on how it will pay tribute to its most dedicated fans.
Yup, you guessed it: emblems.
Destiny 2 will memorialize playersâ achievements in Destiny with at least seven emblems. Four of them are impossible to get now if you havenât already obtained them, since they correspond to accomplishments from the gameâs first two years of life (September 2014 to September 2016). But youâve still got a few weeks for the other three.
Laurel Triumphant: You completed a Moment of Triumph during Destinyâs first year.
Laurea Prima II: You completed all 10 Moments of Triumph during Destinyâs first year.
Slayer of Oryx: You owned The Taken King and completed a Moment of Triumph during Destinyâs second year.
Heard the Call: You owned The Taken King and completed all 8 Moments of Triumph during Destinyâs second year.
Young Wolf: You owned Rise of Iron and reached Rank 2 in the Age of Triumph record book.
Saladinâs Pride: You owned Rise of Iron and reached Rank 7 in the Age of Triumph record book.
Lore Scholar: Your achieved a Grimoire score of over 5,000 in Destiny 1.
Remember how we said âa few weeksâ above? While Destiny 2 doesnât arrive until Sept. 6 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Bungie needs time to prepare to launch the game. To that end, the studio will lock Destiny character data associated with these feats on Aug. 1. (Youâll still be able to play the game beyond then, of course, but if you havenât earned these emblems by that date, youâll have lost your chance.)
For those looking to fill out their Age of Triumph record book, Bungie laid out the pre-August dates for a number of relevant activities. Reaching Rank 7 isnât just tied to the Saladinâs Pride emblem â it also comes with a deal for a unique Age of Triumph T-shirt at the Bungie Store. That offer also expires Aug. 1. You can check out the list of dates, as well as screenshots of the emblems, in Bungieâs blog post.
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Destiny 2 still wonât explain the Darkness
As for the Crucible, Bungie gave two more important dates: the start dates for the final Iron Banner (Aug. 1) and Trials of Osiris (Aug. 11) events in Destiny. âOur two competitive end game experiences will be going into hibernation before reemerging to spread their beautiful wings in unexpected ways in Destiny 2,â said Bungie.
And in case you play Destiny on Xbox, you might be interested to know that all of the gameâs remaining PlayStation-exclusive content will cross over sometime in October. Items from Destiny: The Taken King will make their way to Xbox 360 and Xbox One, while stuff from Destiny: Rise of Iron will only jump to Xbox One. Bungie said it will announce a specific date later.
For more on Destiny 2, check out our hands-on impressions of the Windows PC version. A beta for the game will be available in July on consoles, and in late August on PC.
Just ordered the Digital Deluxe edition. Played a lot this week end and enjoyed it. I will be on the Beta July 19. Hopefully the Xbox X will be on sale before it comes out in September.
Wouldnât that be nice!
Omg⌠Sjam and the word walls!
No random rolls on weapons. That is a pretty big change and definitely a pvp balance. As a person who likes the crucible I am for this.
I agree with that. Now I shouldnât need 49 of some bs helmet just for strategy sake. Although I never kept much gear at all. Only guns.
Gimme moar guns please
I prefer this better. Nothing like getting a weapon you really wanted only to have shit rolls. That never made sense to me and screamed of lack of content. They only had âxâ amount of weapons, so the way to spice it up was to RNGesus that shit.
This is awesome news! I agree with you all hated random rolls especially since i never got a good roll. Lol
Hoping I get enough @PCGamers that are willing to wait out the delay and purchase it for PC rather than console.
i am tempted to get it for PC as well but that would require me to at least upgrade my monitors to 4K capable. Possible even a vidcard upgrade.
Er, how did I not know this?
In Destiny 1, the Motion Tracker searches for enemies at a set distance. If it does not find any enemies within that radius, it expands its radius, continuing to do so until it finds an enemy.
yeah i had no idea either. i always hated the motion tracker cause it was so hard to tell the distance. I am now thinking this is why.