A good game with bad monetization is a bad
game. This video is largely inspired by a video
from the YouTube Channel The Escapist titled: The Current State of Online Multiplayer Games
is Embarrassing. A really great video on the state of Online
Gaming in current year. And for those of us who have been around since
the days of the Xbox 360 we aren’t blinded by Nostalgia when we say that Gaming, especially
online gaming, is absolutely worse nowadays than it was up until roughly 2016. Since then, we’ve only seen quality, quantity,
and stability get worse, and monetization increase exponentially. For this video, I wanted to take several points
made in the Escapists video and apply them to Destiny 2 because it’s also changed for
the worse right alongside the rest of the industry over the last nearly 10 years now. Has it been all bad? No. Destiny 2 is a good game, but a good game
with bad monetization is a bad game. And Destiny 2’s monetization is one of the
most egregious in the industry. Some might say that EA or Activision are worse,
but I think EA and Activision could only dream of getting away with the shiz Bungie does. Their games have Battle Passes and Bundles
and that sucks. There’s nothing I hate more than logging
into a game and getting these two things shoved in my face. But Destiny 2 has Battle Passes, Bundles,
Expansions, Dungeon Passes, Seasons Passes, Eververse Ships, Shaders, Sparrows, Emotes,
Ornaments, 15 dollar armor sets, and Holiday Event Passes, oh and Transmog is even monetized. For as much as I have disdain for games like
Call of Duty and Battlefield they’re publishers only WISH they could milk their players on
the level that Bungie does. There was a time when Bungie used to say that
they needed Eververse to sustain the game. And even touted at one point that one weapon
ornament, the Whisper of The Worm ornament, was able to fund the Zero Hour exotic mission. That mission was then released for free because
they already made the money it cost to create the mission. Yet now, to get access to similar missions,
you have to buy the season. And then you’d think that a dungeon that
releases during that season would be included in the price but no, that’s a completely
separate purchase, even though Bungie has released Dungeons in the past for Free, seemingly
funded by the cash shop, or they would be included with Expansions or Seasons. So, does eververse fund nothing anymore? It would appear that way on the surface, but
I’m sure all of this extra monetization is being used to fund Bungie’s other projects
which fair enough, Bungie can do whatever they want with their microtransaction money,
they’re a private company. But I do wish they’d discontinue the facade
that the increased prices and constant nickel and diming is necessary to support Destiny
2 development because we all know that just isn’t true when the games quality and quantity
of content has dropped off so far. Reskinning old content is at an all time high,
and server stability is at an all time low. Now I can already see some of the comments,
those that will furiously defend Bungie and attempt to justify their actions in recent
years. But just remember. Players best interests make up maybe 10% of
the final decision in meetings. The other 90% is all about how to exploit
things like your Fear of Missing Out, your addictive tendencies, and figuring out how
to increase prices year over year while spending less and less on development. Their profit margins are all that matters
and are baked into every decision made. These things are not at all done for the benefit
of the player. So every time you make excuses for things
like this, the grins of the Big Suits at the top grows wider and wider knowing that even
their customers will defend their sleezy business practices. They know they’ve got the green light to
push the envelope a bit further each year. And this is why no company sees the need for
change. Going back to Call of Duty for a second, the
new MWII continues to lack in actual content and many bugs and glitches continue to plague
the game, but the 30 dollar Blackcell Bundle sold so well for Season 3 that they don’t
feel the need to fix the game when they can instead just make millions by creating microtransactions
for clueless normies to buy. And back to Destiny where expansions and Seasons
have increased in price each year despite having less and less content than they used
to. So players are literally paying more and more
money for less and less content. And if you’re a business, why would you
spend more money than you have to on creating content if your audience will buy it anyway
because they’ll buy anything you put out regardless of the quality. This is where we’re at with modern gaming,
and this is where we’re at with Destiny 2. I used to be an online only gamer, for years. Even with Single Player games, if they had
a multiplayer component, I’d spend more time in there. I was addicted to the social aspect, the competition,
and the progression systems. But the progression systems are really what
kept me around for ages on a game. Fast forward to 2017, Fortnite introduced
the Battle Pass and people thought it was revolutionary. When to me all a battle pass is, is the progression
system of a game being cut out, then sold back to us for 10 dollars. If you played Halo or Call of Duty during
their golden age then you know what I’m talking about. You could earn skins, camos, calling cards,
emblems, all sorts of things like that through the in game progression system. This meant doing things like Challenges or
Completing Milestones to unlock things, or even just level up your XP. Usually a combination of all of these. Battle Passes aren’t revolutionary, it’s
just a gutted feature that’s sold as extra with an expiration date that induces FOMO. In Destiny 1 when I ask someone “where’d
you get that?” It was almost always tied to some kind of
challenge. “Oh this helmet came from farming the Malok
Nightfall.” “Oh this chest piece came from running Archon’s
Forge over the weekend.” Or “This Shader and Ship came from my Faction
Rank Up package.” Nowadays, whenever I ask anyone where they
got that in regards to armor, ships, sparrows, shaders, you name it. They always reply. Eververse. OR. The Battle Pass. Now Destiny 1 didn’t have eververse for
it’s first year and wasn’t added to the game until part way through Taken King. And ever since it’s introduction I hated
it, as did many players as microtransactions were much newer at this time and the gaming
community used to rally against microtransactions MUCH harder back then. And Bungie, knowing this, kept Eververse to
a minimum. And at the time the only thing you could buy
were emotes. That’s it. Harmless enough. And in fact is the only form of monetization
that I support. Armor, Skins, Shaders, Sparrows, all of that
should be earnable loot, but emotes. Sure. That is acceptable in my eyes. But over time, Bungie would begin slipping
in more items to Eververse. At first it was with Festival of The Lost
and loot boxes that would contain Consumables like Jackolytes and Bats, but also Masks that
you could spend Glue to make permanent items in your inventory. But then with Sparrow Racing League, we’d
see Sparrows make its way into Eververse. And a 10 dollar event pass would be first
introduced that tracked your stats on various tracks. The April Update pushed things further by
inserting Armor Sets, Multiple Ships, Sparrows, and even Reputation XP boosters inside the
Sterling Treasure lootboxes. Taken Themed items that should have been rewards
from bosses or quests, instead ended up inside the loot boxes. By the time of Rise of Iron and it’s events
we’d have more items in eververse than there should be in a game designed around earning
cool loot. And really did actually harm the loot game
because the whales that dropped the cash would end up with all the good items day 1. Destiny 1 by the end of it was already impacted
negatively thanks to Microtransactions because even though they’re jUsT cOsMeTiC doesn’t
mean that we don’t play to earn cool looking cosmetics. Again, earning Cosmetics was the entire progression
systems for online gaming during the Pre Microtransaction days. But when companies realized they could just
sell it instead of make it attached to quests or in game challenges. Why wouldn’t they sell it. And as we well know, Destiny 2 accelerated
this issue when it launched. Eververse was even more egregious with more
Items than ever before, XP throttling so that players felt forced to buy Bright Engrams,
and the need to spend upwards of 10s of Thousands of dollars to earn all items in Eververse. Microtransactions are a slippery slope, and
if players don’t hold companies accountable and defend them by saying “it’s just cosmetic”
this is where we end up. Now things continued to be this bad for the
entirety of Destiny 2’s first year. Eververse had more loot than the actual game. But forsaken, Bungie reeled in Eververse a
bit and introduced the Prismatic Matrix. Not a perfect solution but certainly one that
many could get behind because it was so much more tame compared to what came before. And the loot game during Forsaken Thrived
because bungie put so much items in the actual loot pools of the game. But after earning back players trust, Bungie
would of course slowly start introducing more and more items and changes over time to Eververse. And when Bungie split from Activision it became
easier to justify these changes on their end, and fans were defending it because “they
need the money” as if they are some indie company working out of their parents basement. And where does 4 years of little to no pushback
get you? Right where eververse sits today. It has the vast majority of Loot and Vanity
items in the game. Which absolutely has effected the pursuit
of loot in the game. If Whale number 3012 can on his first day
have an exotic sparrow, an exotic ship, and cooler looking armor than what one can earn
in a raid all because he spent 50 bucks at eververse. Then loot is meaningless. Eververse has become the one and only purpose
for any Event in the game. Take Guardian Games or Festival of The Lost. These events have us essentially doing the
same activities we do any day of the week, but now there’s a bunch of themed items
for sale as well as an event battle pass on top of that. And that’s not to mention the increased
price for Eververse items across the board. Somehow Eververse went from something Bungie
NEEDED to instead being the primary focus for loot that doesn’t fund anything in Destiny
2. And to those that disagree. I would just point you to the fact that a
new Trials of Osiris Armor Set and a new Playlist Armor Set didn’t come this year despite
Bungie promising to release at least one per year, one armor set. That’s it. But this year they’re just missing. Looks like they’ve been so busy with Eververse
armor sets that they forgot to make armor you can actually earn in the core game. Every game company sets out to make a successful
game that makes money. That’s not a problem because nobody makes
a game with intention of no sales or players. And the way game companies used to compete
for customers was by making the BEST game. The most Creative or Innovative. The one with the best mechanics and progression
systems. But Live Service games like Destiny actively
discourage Creativity, Innovation, or Quality content because you need to be fast. Destiny 2’s General Manager, now CDO Justin
Truman laid this out exactly in a GDC presentation explaining why being fast at making content
is more important than making quality content. Basically the idea that 5 out of 10 content
that comes out every 3 months is better than 10 out of 10 content that releases once a
year. And how they’ve deployed this sort of strategy
with Destiny 2 since 2019 and it’s been successful for them financially. But financial success doesn’t mean it’s
a great game. As managers like Justin Truman said, they
aren’t aiming to be great. They’re aiming to be fast. So what does this mean for the devs. Well the creative ones are pushed away and
or reigned in and restrained to prevent “overdelivery” as Bungie calls it when you want to make a
quality product. And the only developers left are the ones
willing to make design decisions based on Data Analytics, Quarterly Projections, CEO
ideas, and community feedback. Which leads to a mass exodus of players who
actually want quality products leaving the community to be made up of people who willingly
partake in the perpetual carrot dangling and constantly shout over each other vying for
Bungie’s attention to cater to their specific needs. So Destiny 2 stays in a perpetual state of
a 5 out of 10 game no matter how good things like a new raid or dungeon or a new Subclass
ends up being, the game is stuck focused on Fast over Quality. Drip Feed content instead of Content Drops. It’s hard to be excited for a new Season
when the day of release, only 2 hours of content is available and I have to wait til next week
for the next hour of content, and the next week for another hour of content and so on
for the next few weeks and then its back to playing the same game we had before the season
for 2 months til the cycle repeats. It’s funny because Bungie’s attempts to
keep me playing have been the exact reason I STOPPED playing. Their FOMO tactics, their weekly login so
called incentives, do nothing for me anymore because they’ve gone way across the line. It’s barely a game. It’s a waiting room where every so often
there’s 30 minutes of new content. But this isn’t just a Destiny issue. So many other multiplayer games have a similar
problem which is why I find myself playing more single-player games these days, and usually
ones pre 2015 because they didn’t have microtransactions unlike a surprisingly large number of the
ones today. Now I do this not because I only want to play
single-player games but because there is nothing that Multiplayer games do for me anymore. They cater to the worst parts of the communities,
the communities themselves are generally pretty toxic if you bring up any sort of valid criticism
and they charge so much money for so little actual content. So I’ll answer the question “Why don’t
you play Destiny 2?” with another question. “Why do you play Destiny 2?” Is it because it’s fun with friends? Because kicking a soda can down the street
is fun with friends. To quote from The Escapist video again. “It’s more fun with friends. Why don’t you see that as a virtue of your
friends, not of the game?” Is it the story? If so, I find it hard to relate because Destiny’s
story quality has never been great, and even it’s strongest campaigns like Taken King,
Forsaken, and Witch Queen have only ever been good. The lore reads like poorly written fan fiction
these days, unlike a lot of the lore earlier on. And Seasonal Stories are mediocre at best. But hey, the Cinematics are good at least
so I guess there’s that. And to those that might say I’m a Destiny
2 hater. I’ll point to the fact that I didn’t once
knock the games solid gunplay, movement, abilities, raid or dungeon design. Those aspects have always been good and in
fact continue to stay good for the most part. Destiny 2 is a good game with awful monetization
and live service go go go design philosophy that completely destroys the experience. And has infected every single aspect of the
games design. From a Cash Shop that has ruined so much of
the looting aspect of the game, to increased Content Prices for less actual content. Drip Feed Timegating of content to incentivize
daily or weekly login instead of letting me play at my own pace. Chopping up content like dungeons to be sold
separately from Seasons, or Expansions. And I know I haven’t touched on it too much
in this video, but outright neglecting and ruining the games PvP Crucible mode. As well as the other Core Playlists. I would play Destiny 2 if Bungie could control
themselves and focus on Quality over Quantity but they can’t and haven’t been able to
since 2019. Destiny has never perfect and it’s always
had problems with plenty of examples of greed from 2014 to 2018, but this franchise truly
became BAD when it went free to play and dove head first into becoming one of the largest
examples of Corporate Greed and Milking it’s fanbase down to the very last penny, even
if it comes at the expense of games quality. I didn’t change. Gaming did. Destiny did. For the worse.
