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Good article! Interesting stuff.

I can't see The Taken King lasting for any longer than a couple more months. Oryx Hard Mode releases on Friday, and at that point all the expansion's major content will have been released.

I can't help but wonder how they intend to keep players engaged until the next retail expansion, presumably in September 2016.

I wish the Kotaku story had more information about exactly what happened with House of Wolves. Why was it delayed? Was there ever a raid being completed for House of Wolves? Was Prison of Elders originally considered a raid, and then reclassified as a different activity?

 

[Sirim]

Taken King's story is plenty campy and cheesy. Not sure what progress they thought they made on that front, at least.

I am excited for Destiny 2, though. Taken King is a good start but there's too much broken about vanilla destiny, like lack of large social spaces, empty open worlds, etc.

Hopefully they have enough time to make something richer.

 

[D i Z]

A couple of things that stuck out to me, and have been varified as being problematic.

What the hell were the higher ups doing before seeing the supercut that they weren't course correcting during all of that time it was in development?

There seems to be a massive problem with them planning to do vastly more than they can realistically do at every step of the way. As a result, now the burden of actually even approaching the initial planned production has been placed on the userbase financially (Microtransation sales driving ambiguous future content releases).
Even so, the removal, or shift of large parts of content from year one and two (Europe, Chicago, parts of Mars etc) to Destiny 2 intact seems iffy now, even with the head start outside help.
Even with TTK being as good as it is, the package is still nowhere near as vast, awe inspiring, nor engaging as was initially promised over and over again.
They might have done themselves (and us) a favor by rolling back on the grand promises that they knew they couldn't deliver on. But they didn't, so here we are.
My expectation is that for Destiny 2 they still will not hit the levels of content and lore that was promised for Destiny 1. Not without bringing in outside help that is adept at handling projects of this scope, and a serious internal restructuring that comes with a banquet sized platter of humble pie.

It is kind of disheartening to read that it wasn't until they were severely past the point of being neck deep in the shit that outside help had to step in to set them straight on the simplest and most elementary of rules: The player needs to leave happy.
This screams of the bullheadedness that was felt by everyone when they seemed resistant towards players balking at their obtuse leveling, content shortage and rng designs.
It's always felt like Bungie was stuck in their own bubble the way they would gush over the project pre-release, and floundering to understand why we weren't gushing along with them on day one.
I was often left with the impression while watching the devs speak that they were making a game that they and their head spaces would love to build, but not what conventional wisdom would tell them that other people would love to actually play.

The juggling act of changes they make in game for balance that they want is a constant tug of war with user expectations. These are to be expected.
But even with TTK, approaching the end game still feels like they didn't have a solid road map of how to best use content and keep user engagement, which is kind of the basis of the type of game they built. That's a big target to miss with every new content release. Hopefully they figure some of these things out, and do it before the next big release. Not during or after as has been the case every step of the way so far.
There are a ton of us out here that are looking forward to them eventually knocking it out of the park, with a vengance.

 

[FyreWulff]

How many of halo 3's levels were already prototyped in halo 2?

Publically:

The Storm
Floodgate
- both of these locations are whiteboarded in the Halo 2 making of, and it was mentioned that Halo 2's engine basically caught on fire trying to render what they wanted them to do, because they were trying to go all in on the stencil buffer lighting.

The Ark (which used to be on Earth, when the Arbiter was "The Dervish"), at least some basic concepts for it.

The end of The Covenant (the entire Arby vs Truth dialogue was recorded for Halo 2 and was used verbatim in Halo 2)

While you're playing Cortana you can actual dialogue straight from Halo 2 ("we exist together now...") from the Gravemind. It makes more sense in Halo 3 than it's placement in Halo 2 :V

tl;dr Read this

 

[Gator86]

I think this highlights how lucky Bungie were with Destiny, most studios would have died after this clusterfuck and their games another failure in the AAA industry.

Maybe they made the right call focusing on gameplay and fixing the story later

I think Muscle is right. It's pretty disingenuous to act like Destiny is some indie darling brought to prominence by its stellar gameplay. Yeah, the shooting is top-tier but the game also had immense marketing from both Activision and Sony as well as Bungie's name recognition behind them as the maker of Halo. If some no name developer crapped out launch Destiny, the post-mortem would likely be about the studio and not the game.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Like many of us were saying back then, a marketing campaign big enough can sell anything.

 

[Z3M0G]

Holy shit... even Dreadnaught was cut content?

This thread is going to be a fun ride... reading full article first though...

 

[biosnake20]

Publically:

The Storm
Floodgate
- both of these locations are whiteboarded in the Halo 2 making of, and it was mentioned that Halo 2's engine basically caught on fire trying to render what they wanted them to do, because they were trying to go all in on the stencil buffer lighting.

The Ark (which used to be on Earth, when the Arbiter was "The Dervish"), at least some basic concepts for it.

The end of The Covenant (the entire Arby vs Truth dialogue was recorded for Halo 2 and was used verbatim in Halo 2)

While you're playing Cortana you can actual dialogue straight from Halo 2 ("we exist together now...") from the Gravemind. It makes more sense in Halo 3 than it's placement in Halo 2 :V

tl;dr Read this

Damn I didn't know it was this bad.

 

[Perfect Cha0s]

Out of everything I read, the tool chain they have sounds like the biggest impediment to making Destiny a top-tier experience.

Honestly, I'd rather they take a year off and overhaul their internal tools. Let the live team put out smaller updates, and focus on making sure the tools that facilitate content creation aren't getting in the way.

 

[Skyo]

Maybe they made the right call focusing on gameplay and fixing the story later

The gameplay was pretty decent. they made the right call in terms of marketing, gaining hype, keeping the story tight lipped until the game was released. The money they made from initial sales and preorders must've been massive and maybe due to people putting their trust in Bungie from their previous franchise.

 

[Curufinwe]

Destiny came out on September 9, 2014. Most of the development team was proud of the game, a source told me, and many were shocked to see harsh reviews; although most at Bungie had anticipated that players wouldn’t love the story, the team thought Destiny made up for that deficiency in many other ways. One source says they had internal surveys pegging the Metacritic score at around a 90 average; it turned out to be a 76. (Bungie then missed out on a major bonus, that source confirmed.)

90... hahahaha.

 

[Ol No Bones]

I thought we knew all this already or did I just imagine it.

 

[Z3M0G]

The pre-reboot Destiny had way more of a focus on story than the actual game wound up having. “Story missions [before the reboot] always began with a Communique from a character,” said a source. “They were 30-45 second cutscenes of the NPC setting up the mission context. Osiris announcing a dramatic discovery about the Vex and asking you to dig up an ancient relic on Mars, or the Crow calling for help from the middle of a firefight with Fallen on Venus. And then every mission ended with a full cutscene, three to five minutes.”

holy fucking shit

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

 

[Militaratus]

I really hope Bungie learned a lot from that presentation from Blizzard, because that line they said - The Player must leave happy. - is so very crucial to me and many others, especially in regards to story.

Putting story on the backseat and focus solely on gameplay while still having a "campaign" will lead many people, including me, being flabbergasted at the sudden end of the "story", and thus I leave the game unhappy.

 

[BokehKing]

Like many of us were saying back then, a marketing campaign big enough can sell anything.

But can it keep people playing

 

[Steel]

But can it keep people playing

As games like Game of War: Fireage prove, yes. Yes it can.

 

[Juice]

Fantastic article.

I feel like Jason buried the lede a little, because the last few grafs were by far the most interesting to me.

Headline: Destiny's editing tools suck and that's why there's so little content.

This is why I don't understand the aversion to using established engines. You get a LOT for free that helps you build worlds and content. And when you use a mainstream engine like Unreal, you have a vast talent pool to ramp up on when you need to crunch/outsource artwork.

 

[border]

I often wonder exactly how Blizzard judges or sticks to that "The Player must leave happy" mentality.

It's not as if they haven't made hundreds of hugely unpopular decisions in World of Warcraft. It's an even trickier proposition for Bungie, whose audience is far less tolerant of MMO-influenced game design.

 

[Nabbis]

So... Expect Destiny 2 to be the same shit cause of a shitty engine? Yeah, im out.

TTK was a nice addition but it took them a whole year put out same content. Unless they can add new substantial systems to the game, like ship fights, i have no intention of buying anything anymore.

Edit: I think the dudes who expected 90 meta on vanilla were definitely on shrooms.

 

[Rentahamster]

That in-studio engine complaint story is hilarious. Bungie pls.

 

[zychi]

Great read. Assuming kotaku isnt lying, Bungie turned a mess of a decision by a few people into a really great game a few months after release. Destiny was trash at the original release, and ive been playing consistently since release, but they really did fuck over their fans by releasing half of a
product for $60+.


I wait patiently to see what Destiny 2 brings, and hopefully a pc release along with it. I wont be preordering this time tho.
I will be waiting for reviews

 

[Obliterator]

The thing this article does by far the most is worry for Destiny 2.

How do we have any guarantee the amount of content will be fixed given their shit engine tools and how on earth are we supposed to believe they have managed to fix all of this AND make another full game in 2 years?

I find that very difficult to believe

 

[Z3M0G]

They rebooted the first DLC pack, December 2014’s The Dark Below, scant months before it was due to ship, according to two sources. (One person familiar with development says Bungie sequestered a team and had them crunch out Dark Below in just nine weeks, which may explain how insubstantial it was.)

This article is full of WOW...

 

[Cob32]

The thing this article does by far the most is worry for Destiny 2.

How do we have any guarantee the amount of content will be fixed given their shit engine tools and how on earth are we supposed to believe they have managed to fix all of this AND make another full game in 2 years?

I find that very difficult to believe

I think I'll be waiting for like minded player (quit before even the first dlc) impressions before I buy Destiny 2.

 

[cakely]

I think this highlights how lucky Bungie were with Destiny, most studios would have died after this clusterfuck and their games another failure in the AAA industry.

Except that the end product was clearly good enough to get people playing and to keep them playing all year.

 

[Obliterator]

Except that the end product was clearly good enough to get people playing and to keep them playing all year.

The mechanics yes.

But the cotent in it? I've played the game since launch and have 230 hours in it but the amount of content that shipped on that disc is pretty inexcusable

 

[Lalalandia]

Fantastic article Jason, it's nice to have confirmation on the rumours that have been floating around and the extra info is illuminating. How have they not prioritised improving the tools, 8 hour loads (if it loads) are simply unacceptable. Pretty sure I'd have turfed my workstation out the window long before the level loaded.

Yeah this makes me worried for Destiny 2, Bungie management clearly cannot budget or scope projects correctly and they now have multiple independent studios to manage?

 

[Z3M0G]

So they went directly to Blizzard afterall and asked them to help them out... amazing

In December of 2014, Diablo III director Josh Mosqueira and a few other members of his team at Blizzard came to Bungie for a talk, according to two people who were there. The parallels were uncanny; Diablo III had launched to commercial success in 2012 but saw a great deal of criticism from fans thanks to randomized loot, frustrating online DRM, and a lack of endgame content. Both games shared a publisher, Activision, that thought Destiny could redeem itself in fans’ eyes the way Diablo III eventually had after its release.

“They basically came in and said, ‘Look, here’s our story of developing Diablo III and then bringing in [the expansion] Reaper of Souls,’” said one person who was at the Blizzard talk. “They were saying, like, ‘Hey, random numbers are not fun—dice rolls are not fun. You can give the illusion of randomness, but you want to weight it towards the player… The only point you have to deliver on is that when people leave your game—because they will—when they leave your game, they need to be happy.’”

People who were at the presentation say it was extraordinarily helpful for Bungie’s team. One source called it “invaluable.” Others said it drove some of the decisions they made for The Taken King. In previous interviews with Kotaku and other sites, director Luke Smith has talked openly about avoiding randomness and designing quests with guaranteed rewards, an approach that has served Destiny well throughout year two so far. Destiny’s meta-narrative has followed the same path as Diablo III’s: It had a rocky launch, then the developers found redemption.

 

[NullPointer]

This article is full of WOW...

$20 DLC, right there.

 

[D i Z]

Also, 500 mil invested.... and they start off with and end up with a gimped ass engine?

Please......

 

[Z3M0G]

Huh... this seems to be playing out:

“There was a bet that was, ‘Hey if we did microtransactions, I bet you we could generate enough revenue to make up for the loss of DLCs,’” said a source. “Instead of it going Destiny, DLC1, DLC2, Comet, DLC1, DLC2, they’re actually just gonna go [big] release and then incremental release. So it’ll just be Destiny, Comet, Destiny, Comet every year. It’s basically just switching the game to an annual model.”

I was always asking where DLC3/4 were, and why no season pass... guess this might actually be the answer afterall.

Edit: finally finished the article... so happy this finally happened.

Now time to read this thread...

 

[Kalentan]

that original story with a Qui-Gon character on mercury sounds fucking awesome.......also holy shit at the dreadnaught being in the original game and then just removed.....that means the dreadnaught was basically done? I'm guessing they had it designed already and everything for the most part for this year?

This is kind of sad to read what the story still could have been.....because Rasputin still isn't really much at all



so does this mean the next expansion will be their first legit original content and not cut? If so......wow its going to be interesting in the next year for this game.

As far as I can tell, nothing said in this means the content was done or even began to be worked on. Just because the writers had written a part in it that said to go to the dreadnaught did not mean the dreadnuaght was nearly done.

I mean in my own game I can say I have lots written for the story and goes to many places, but I haven't actually began work on physically making said places.

I'm 99% sure the TTK stuff was new stuff based on old stuff that was written down in the story. But that the House of Wolves and The Dark Below were taken mostly from work done before release.

 

[cakely]

The mechanics yes.

But the cotent in it? I've played the game since launch and have 230 hours in it but the amount of content that shipped on that disc is pretty inexcusable

There was clearly enough content there to get you to play it for 230 hours, and I assure you, you're not the only one putting in that kind of time.

Could Destiny have used a better-written, more coherent plot? Absolutely. Could it have used twice as much content? No doubt. But even in the state that Destiny shipped in, it hooked players for hundreds of hours.

I was sold on Destiny from the Alpha and then the Beta. People here saying that Destiny's success was based on clever marketing are a little off-base.

 

[Compsiox]

Oh god can't wait to read. Been waiting since launch for this.

 

[Obliterator]

Huh... this seems to be playing out:



I was always asking where DLC3/4 were, and why no season pass... guess this might actually be the answer afterall.

I get the vibe DLC for Destiny is over besides micro-transactions and small Quests that are free updates. Whatever DLC 3 and 4 were supposed to be are probably part of Destiny 2 now

There was clearly enough content there to get you to play it for 230 hours, and I assure you, you're not the only one putting in that kind of time.

Could Destiny have used a better-written, more coherent plot? Absolutely. Could it have used twice as much content? No doubt. But even in the state that Destiny shipped in, it hooked players for hundreds of hours.

I was sold on Destiny from the Alpha and then the Beta. People here saying that Destiny's success was based on clever marketing are a little off-base.

You can enjoy something and still call bull shit. I like the game quite a bit but they did sell us on the idea of a game they 100% did not deliver and a huge part of that is apparently their engine is awful.

We can only hope they went crazy trying to make that thing better in time for Destiny 2

 

[robertlebrone]

That's the most perfect description of playing Destiny that I've ever heard. I've enjoyed my time with the game last year and I utterly loved The Taken King, but after a while it still devolves into struggling against Bungie's baffling decisions.

It's a shame to hear Joe Staten got shafted the way he did. Can't blame him for leaving, must've been heartbreaking.

It really is. This is ultimately why I quit Destiny for good a few days ago. All the decisions Bungie makes with the game just slap the player across the virtual face. Most recently reducing weapon part drops, dropping the attack value of Black Spindle after people already obtained it and making all year 1 content obsolete instead of bringing it into Y2 in a meaningful way.

 

[Branniganz Love]

The revelation about the editing tools is really bad. You would think that being able to create new environments fairly quickly would be pretty important especially for a game that was planning 4 mini expansion and 1 comet expansion in under 2 years after release. Definitely explains why pretty much everything in the first 2 dlc's were just running through the same areas as before. I mean, come on, a whole solar system out there and we get 1 map per planet/moon...

Editing tools suck and are a huge time drain > Story was too expansive and could not be told with the resources that they were able to produce > Story chopped to hell and Frankenstiened to work with the resources they were able to finish.

Just speculation, but I wonder if the above also came in to play when deciding to axe the original story?

 

[Falchion]

Just finished reading it all, fascinating article. I hope they can fix many of the back end problems like the terrible dev tools so that they don't have to scramble as much before each release.

 

[Mike Works]

From the thread Destiny - 1 Year On, Looking back on cut content

I've spoken to 4 different Bungie employees over the past year, and I've heard a very similar story each time involving the story and how and why it got cut to shreds. It's really too bad, since there's such great potential for a wicked story to coexist with solid gameplay and gun mechanics.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173065865&postcount=162

I don't want to get into specifics that would piss off the people who chatted with me about it, but basically a lot was axed at a point in time where it was too late to fully re-create that amount of (story) content. I will say that despite Destiny 1's shortcomings when it comes to the story, it allegedly could've been a lot worse. That's something I heard from all 4 of them.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173067146&postcount=175

It was the right call.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173072129&postcount=199

Because the alternative is sitting through way more cutscenes that all centered around a muddled and frankly stupid story. Allegedly.

I'm not saying that releasing Destiny the way they did gave it a good story; it obviously didn't. There almost is no story (and yeah, a ton of it is hidden behind little playing cards... that you can't even read in the fucking game).

But no story can be better than convoluted awful story.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173080625&postcount=238

I'm going to quit my job and be a NEOGAF INSIDER NOW. How much does it pay again?

 

[forrest]

Great read confirming what we all knew.

It's sad that after all of the incompetence and inefficiency it's the consumer who gets the short end of the stick.

 

[Brerlappin]

Wow. The original vision of Destiny sounds like the game I wanted but didn't get

 

[Kalentan]

I'm going to quit my job and be a NEOGAF INSIDER NOW. How much does it pay again?

They pay you in:

 

[Nabbis]

It would actually be hilarious(in a sad way) if someone one upped Activision and made their own, proper, Destiny with way more diversity in gameplay.

Riding on the popularity of this game yet bringing some much better content while Bungie can't do anything due to the engine.

Spoiler

Expect an attempt from EA in two years.

 

[the_id]

Bungie got lucky. They're a talented studio to pull it off and get players hooked for hundreds of hours on their game. Proof of this is in the community such as Planet Destiny and Destiny GAF

Bu there is so much empty promises initially that was never achieved or delivered and I was one who gave up on vanilla and got back on after for TTK.

I hope budgie continues to listen to the community and revamp their fucked up engine.

 

[GreyWind]

So everything that Chris Butcher said about their engine at GDC was a lie? It sounded like they built their dream engine and content editor. Holy shit at the 8 hours part, that sounds a bit sketchy tbh.

 

[ToyMachine228]

Bungie got a good start with Destiny. They have figured out a lot of their mistakes and moved in the right direction. I'm glad that they're shifting focus to Destiny 2 and I hope they can deliver on more of their promises and do more to move toward creating a living, breathing world. I think that ditching the 360 and PS3 versions of Destiny 2 would go a long way and remove some restrictions.

 

[Compsiox]

So High Moon isn't working on DLC. It's working on Destiny 2.

Fuck this. All of this angers me. I don't have a right answer for what they could have done with Joe's story to make it less linear but holy shit. Bungie is truly fucked from here on out.

 

[GeordieMark]

By the sounds of that, its pretty remarkable that Bungie managed to ship what they did. The game had a ton of problems at first, but has always been fun to play. Its hard not to think of what might have been.

 

[Tillbo]

Having read the entire article I am left feeling depressed for the future of Destiny.

The Taken King seemed to be taking steps toward fixing what was wrong with the original game and I had been optimistic this trend would continue - not I am not so sure.

If the article is to be believed, there are clearly there are too many issues that need to be resolved but neither the time nor resources to fix them. How can they improve the games tools, continue to improve and repurpose the story, keep adding content to Destiny and complete a sequel that has much more content that the Vanilla game in the next couple of years?

Also, the talk of micro transactions is again another worry, clearly they cannot make enough content to make paid for DLC expansions so need to make up the shortfall by selling things to players. However, if they don't keep drip feeding sufficient content players will leave and they will depend on an ever shrinking player-base supporting the game through what will likely be increasingly iffy micro transactions

 

[GnawtyDog]

I am liking the previous story more...more Halo-ish on the rails. At least compared to the nonsense I played. You can actually see an actual direction reading through that article.

Having read the entire article I am left feeling depressed for the future of Destiny.

The story is junk that's why. Now they have to build a story with Destiny 2 on top of junk. Great gunplay, art and creatures can only get you so far. At least for me, it only gets the game so far... 1 playthrough binned.