Destiny 2

[LowPolyOWG]

It's coming to Steam!

[Art Blade]

 
September 17, 2019

if there's no delay

[LowPolyOWG]

It will be free-to-play, but you can pay for extra DLCs/microtransactions. Which is fine, as you don't have to pay a $/€59.99 "starter package" of the game. Also, stats will be transferrable from Blizzard's servers. No need to start from scratch. They mentioned on their stream they didn't have to worry about corporate bull*bleep* and they will be able to do whatever they want

[LowPolyOWG]

Latest ViDoc from Bungie regarding the new expansion

[LowPolyOWG]

And delayed to October 1st. Anyway, I'd rather see something polished on release, compared to something cobbled together as a last ditch crunch effort.

[Art Blade]

indeed

[LowPolyOWG]

Which unfortunately happened with Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 on release. Engine taking too long to load up (it took devs nearly 8+ hours to make small changes to the Destiny 1 hubs) and mismanagement. Leadership didn't knew what their next post-Halo game would play like and Destiny 1 was criticized for not being what it was advertised as post-release. They literally scrapped their 3 year old prototype and cobbled something that worked at the last minute.

Activision had little control over Destiny, but they could decide what Bungie could do when it comes to revenue. Bungie then had some extreme crunch periods, leading them to a halt. Activision then approves the use of loot boxes/microtransactions through a thing called "Eververse", which Bungie hoped to get them out of this mess. The later DLC releases (dubbed Comets) salvaged Destiny 1. Unfortunately, none of the lessons learned from Destiny 1 carried over to Destiny 2, which lacked what Destiny 1 did great. It took them another year to "fix" it with a mega DLC. Activision getting tired of this mess/Bungie realizing they should just jump off a sinking ship, quit the deal with Activision in early June this year.

The original plan: Four Destiny games to be developed from 2010-2020s with mega DLCs between (Comets). What we got? Two games, with poor end-game reception, but fixed with mega DLCs 1 year later. Which, did not lived up to Activision's "expectations" (shareholders ) and the original "10 year plan" Bungie/Activision originally drafted. I still remember your long post about shareholders/companies, AB. Ironically, Activision was founded by ex-Atari developers wanting a higher pay grade.

[Art Blade]

I think the gaming industry does the most important things wrong:

They start with the expectation of making a certain amount of money, then they set a time limit which is mostly driven by how long shareholders are willing to wait (not long) and then they have a brainstorming on what kind of game they want to develop, then they set up a team with a bare minimum of programmers and so on, and of course, hiring at lowest possible wages. The result is what we know all too well: Releasing unfinished products with lots of patches over a long time until it finally somewhat works as intended, meanwhile publishers and developers have a falling-out over what to do and not to do, people getting fired, new people getting hired, and all the while the paying customer, the gamers, are gritting their teeth playing something they paid for under false pretences, hoping that some day it might become what they had been promised.

What they should do is:

Looking for fresh ideas and concepts. Either hire a team and let them come up with something or hire a team that already had an idea which only needs funding. Then you set some milestones, like quarterly report on how things are going, and hire more people if the project needs more. Maybe start some open beta giving it sufficient time and thoroughly analyse the feedback of the beta testers, make changes accordingly. Prepare for finishing touches, polish the game. Then, WHEN IT'S NEARLY FINISHED, start advertising it so they may still polish it a bit here and there, THEN announce a release date. PREPARE A GOOD SUPPORT TEAM focussing on CUSTOMER CARE. The outcome of it all: if it's done well, people will enjoy it, it will sell, and let's see how well it does checking the revenue. If everything was done well, there shouldn't be any nasty surprises and the sales should be good enough to convince shareholders that they bet on the right horse.

[LowPolyOWG]

New trailer for the next Shadowkeep DLC.

[Art Blade]

what I find strange is how I reacted to this watching it: I was quite amazed at the looks, the graphics look really good I think, large and wide rooms, cool colours, nice volumetric effects and all that. But as cool as the graphics look, as boring is the stuff that's going on: Big guys vs cool guys. Bigger guys vs cooler guys. Even bigger guns vs even Bigger Guns. Kind of: "yawn.. so?"

[LowPolyOWG]

Basically a Borderlands, but with prettier graphics/fantasy sci-fi elements to it.

Talking about graphics, here is the LEGO version 

https://imgur.com/a/Yf1g31I

[Art Blade]

sorry, not going to have my eyeballs popping out of their sockets again.

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[PZ]

 

[LowPolyOWG]

Pre-load is live. 80 GB Download. Unfortunately, due to different content delivery system, Steam cannot detect Bnet files and shrink the download