Bungie – Page 8 – MMO Fallout

Bungie Apologizes For PR Mishap, Promises Change

Bungie is in the middle of dealing with a PR fallout this week, first from customer backlash over how Bungie handled the collector’s edition of the Taken King DLC, to an interview with Eurogamer in which the company has been accused of disrespecting its longtime customers. Luke Smith, creative director at Bungie, has apologized for his tone in the interview:

Reading my interview with Eurogamer and imagining it came from some random developer of a game I love – that random developer looks like an Asshat. But that Asshat was me – and those words rightfully anger you. I’m sorry. My words made it sound as if Bungie doesn’t care about their most loyal fans. We do care. We are listening. And we will make it right.

To compensate, customers who pick up the Taken King DLC will be able to grab the collector’s edition limited content for $20, which includes the 3 emotes, 3 armor shaders, and 3 exotic class items with xp boosts. Players who already have a light level 30 guardian, or if you’ve played through the Dark Below and House of Wolves packs, you’ll receive a Year One VIP shader, emblem, and sparrow.

Another blog post is coming today that should answer more questions.

(Source: Bungie)

Bungie Says Goodbye To Toxic Destiny Players

Bungie’s latest weekly update for Destiny is out, and it targets bugs and bad players. For starters, the Destiny team is looking at the least completed raids and easing their difficulty so that more players are willing to see them through from start to finish. The team plays through raids on a weekly basis to see how players are responding to content, as well as looking at in-game metrics to see where problems are arising. There are also bugs that need to be squashed, since the raids are hard enough without the game getting in the way.

Next up, the company plans on dealing with idlers, players who go into strikes and pvp matches and do not contribute.

One player not contributing in an activity might seem like a small thing, but it can make a Weekly Heroic Strike unbeatable or make a Crucible match unwinnable. Those little bits of damage to the experiences other players adds up over time.

The most toxic players will be restricted from matchmaking, starting out as temporary punishments and eventually leading to permanent restrictions if the behavior is kept up. The system won’t catch you because the pizza man came to the door, however, it is designed to only trap habitual idlers.

(Source: Bungie)

Destiny Patch 1.0.2 Drops, Increases Loot

Bungie has dropped patch 1.0.2 onto the Destiny servers, as announced late last month. The patch makes several changes to the way loot works, by ensuring that engrams (loot boxes) will always decrypt into an item of the engram’s level or higher. Legendary engrams are now guaranteed to result in legendary items, and rare engrams have an increased chance of legendary gear. Ascendant shards and energy have been promoted in rank to legendary. Rare and legendary engrams have also been added as potential drops for daily and weekly heroics, as well as the Tiger Strike playlist.

(Source: Bungie)

Destiny Changes Loot, Farming, And More

Bungie has released the details of upcoming patch 1.0.2, aiming at player complaints over the game’s loot system. Starting when the patch goes live next week, engrams will always produce items of the same quality or better than the engram itself. What this means is that players will no longer receive legendary engrams and decode them to find sub-legendary equipment. In addition to this change, heroics and tiger playlists will now also have the possibility for rare and legendary rewards in addition to their existing reward lists. The patch notes caution players that all existing legendary engrams will be demoted to rare quality when the patch goes live.

Last week’s patch aimed at curbing players farming spawn points.

(Source: Bungie)

[Rant] Shame On Activision/Bungie

MMO Fallout doesn’t appear on Metacritic or Gamerankings, and it never will. Those of you who read our MMOments pieces will know that I refuse to attach a numerical score to my reviews, because the criteria for scoring differs between reviewers and the number is ultimately meaningless and only serves as troll-bait for the inevitable flame war courtesy of our friends in the perpetual hate machine. I also have a measured disdain for Metacritic, who treat all ratings as the same on a percentage scale and, when called out on their inaccuracy, flat out deny that the point scale differs between reviewers.

Destiny currently stands with less than an 80 on Gamerankings as publications continue to come out with reviews labeling the game as “good, but not great.” That’s cool, these reviewers are entitled to their opinions just as you or I are. According to an article I read on VG247, review scores may have cost Bungie $2.5 million in bonuses that would have been paid out had the title achieved higher than a 90% overall rating. The clause was revealed way back when Activision was embroiled in a lawsuit with Call of Duty developers Vince and Zampella.

Let me just say, shame on Activision for putting this clause into their contract and shame on Bungie for accepting it. Tying bonuses to performance is a standard in business, but if you’re going to hold money over a developer’s head, do it in return for sales. The fact that Destiny sold more than $300 million in the first five days should dwarf any talk about review scores, especially when this same panel of apparent experts you’re sticking up on a pedestal generally can’t even agree with one another on what constitutes a good game.

The problem here isn’t with Metacritic or Gamerankings, inaccurate as they may be. The issue lies with an industry that is dependent on the scores of a few people to measure their success, with developers refusing to hire people unless they worked on a game with sufficient ratings, or publishers using the scoring system as a method of withholding deserved money from developers. You’re not making a game for the reviewers, unless you are in which case you may want to rethink your choice of careers. You’re making video games because you hopefully enjoy them yourselves, and you want to sell them to gamers who will enjoy them. To put more weight on the approval of a handful of writers, most of whom have little more qualifications than the simple fact that they have an audience, rather than the purchasing power of the market is not only short-sighted, it’s self destructive in the long term.

If Michael Bay’s performance was based on review scores, his movies would be considered utter failures, but I get the feeling that Bay can’t hear his critics from under the mountains of money that he pulls in with the movies that he directs, not to mention the smaller mountains of money from the movies that he produces. Michael Bay doesn’t care that film critics don’t like his movies, because he doesn’t base his success on the opinion of critics. Age of Extinction broke $1 billion worldwide, I somehow doubt that Paramount Pictures is going to be withholding his bonus because the film didn’t get a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Otherwise I have no strong feelings on the topic.

MMOrning Shots: Down The Hatch

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Destiny, more specifically my own character in Destiny. We are six days out from Destiny’s launch and I am three days out from completing the story mode and hitting level 20. Some of you may be confused on how Destiny’s level cap is 20 yet the “real level cap” is 30. The way this works is that, after level 20, you begin finding equipment with a light value. The better the light value, the higher your post-20 level. This also means that it is possible to level down by removing light-bearing equipment.

Mount MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

MMOments: Destiny

Have you heard of the black garden? The greatest threat to us all lies there. I wish I could tell you all about Destiny’s rich story and lore, I really do, but frankly there isn’t much that I can remember that isn’t tied to a basic storytelling trope. Basically the story is that a giant construct called The Traveler came to Earth where it ushered in a new era of technology and innovation, taking humanity to the stars. In space, naturally, we encountered aliens hell bent on killing us for no apparent reason other than that they are evil and we have god on our side. A traveler named The Traveler, bad guys called The Darkness, and the guardians of light are Guardians? I’m rather surprised that Bungie didn’t go full force and have you taking missions from Goody McGooderson, aided of course by his eventually-outed-as-evil assistant, Badguy McBackstabby.

It’s hard to remember much about Destiny with such groundbreaking writing like “the Vex are so evil that they despise other evil beings.” Most of this is narrated by a Peter Dinklage who sounds suspiciously like he found a copy of the Destiny script while bored at the doctor’s office and Bungie stealthily recorded him narrating it out loud. The rest is told through grimoire cards, but you’re going to have to go to Bungie.net in order to read what they are because there is no in-game lore book like in, well, every other RPG with some form of lore book. I mentioned my hope in the beta that this would be fully implemented on release, count that as a disappointment.

It’s hard to not make comparisons to games like Borderlands, when the two are so similar. Destiny is a solid shooter and a fun time, and yet it will deserve every single one of the disappointed reviews that are currently making their way to press, and that is a shame because Destiny is a very fun game. When all is said and done, Bungie’s greatest sin in all of this will be that they gave too much hype to a generic game, like when McDonald’s would treat the return of the McRib as if it were a brand new discovery when it was the same sandwich we’d been having for years. We get it, Ronald, you put boneless rib on a sandwich and added some onion and a pickle. Twenty marketing campaigns later, and it’s the same sandwich.

Make no mistake, Destiny is an impressive looking game both in the graphical department as well as taking relatively small environments and making them look gigantic. It is also a solid shooter with solid RPG mechanics and progression system with some loot on the side. As with games like Borderlands and Diablo before it, part of Destiny’s draw is the never-ending quest for more loot, higher levels, and progressively more powerful weapons and armor to shoot a lot of bad guys who have committed the crime of carrying your loot. The shooting, Destiny does well. Weapons feel like they have real weight and especially handcannons pack a punch that feels like it could knock the controller out of your hands.

Combat against the AI varies in nature, and as with Borderlands can eventually feel like a chore. Devoid of any intelligent AI, Bungie’s take on difficulty is to employ the same cheap tricks used in similar games, and use them in intolerable numbers and combinations that make me think Bungie missed a course on how combat is balanced in RPGs. You see, in standard mobs there is a balance between power, defense, and speed. You can have mobs that are invisible, mobs that have high health, and mobs that run incredibly fast in large numbers and deal heavy melee damage. Creating a creature that mobs in packs, has a lot of health and does heavy damage, and runs around invisible? Ridiculous. Snipers using invisibility is a pretty common trope in gaming, but snipers that remain invisible while they’re shooting you? That’s just sadistic.

Bosses carry the same poor AI, considering that they merely serve as walking tanks. They aren’t difficult as much as they are unfair, merely large hitboxes with a lot of health carrying a weapon with ridiculously high damage and splash radius, which makes them very easy to defeat if you can keep moving. I think I died by one boss so far, and it’s because his area had a constant stream of mid-tier creatures whose guns all had lock-on bullets. Oh yea, enemies have guns with bullets that change course and follow you through the air. Otherwise, I can guarantee that your death will almost always come when the game goes “screw it” and just throws so many mobs at you at once that there is no way to kill them fast enough and nowhere to use cover to regenerate.

One problem Destiny faces is that Bungie’s take on sociability is, well, odd to say the least. On one hand, partying and getting into impromptu groups with random players and friends alike is seamless and enjoyable. I’ve taken on numerous boss dungeons where I suddenly found two other players by my side, and while none of them talked, everyone seemed to know what to do. Chat is handled through emoticons as well as through local voice chat if you can find anyone else with a headset plugged in.

On the other hand, the social aspect is essentially nonexistent outside of the off chance you manage to stumble upon one of the game’s exceedingly rare public events. The trade hub, the center for social contact, has little promise for social activity. Chat is nonexistent in both its vocal and keyboard form, there are no social mini-games, and trade doesn’t exist at all in Destiny so you can’t even go into town to sell off or give away your loot. Bungie’s official statement is that this is because they want every weapon to have a personal story behind it. This is a pretty heavy order, since it assumes that your combat moments will be memorable enough for players to actually remember how they got their weapons. I remember how I got each and every one of my weapons: I killed a bunch of unmemorable mobs until an orb popped out and then I picked that up.

PvP is a mess, and a real heavy step back considering we’re talking about the company that made Halo 2. The one thing Bungie did right was to consolidate stats in the Crucible, meaning you are no better than any other player just because you are a higher level or have better gear. Everyone is the same. Well, mostly. Maps are far too small and close-quartered, there is no segregation between competitive and noncompetitive players, you can’t vote on what map or mode you want to play next, there is no punishment for abandoning your team, no playlists, no private matches, and no matchmaking by pvp rank.

If there is one thing to be said about Destiny, it’s the knowledge that Bungie’s alleged dedication to the title means that all of these problems could be a thing of the past when you’re reading our updated review months from now. For now, though, what we’ve seen at launch is an incredibly forgettable story wrapped around a game that is, for all purposes, incredibly barebones and at the retail price of $60-150 despite missing a number of features. The social aspects are weak, if not mostly nonexistent, considering that this is apparently an MMO. Unless you are hell bent on getting the game immediately, give it a few months to go down in price.

Destiny falls somewhere in the realm of decent, and assuredly there are plenty of people who will find joy in it. Hopefully Bungie will work hard over the next couple of months to fix some of the game’s more glaring issues.

MMOrning Shots: Destiny

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Destiny, the latest title to be released on both Playstation and Xbox consoles. MMO Fallout is currently working on an MMOments article, which is being worked on as we speak and should be out in a day or so. Until then, enjoy this screenshot a guy at a place.

Be a guy at a place with MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Destiny Won't Allow Trading

During their latest Q&A session, Bungie answered one player’s question on whether or not trading would be allowed in Destiny. Short answer? No. Bungie wants you to earn your weapons.

As for swapping irons in the Tower? Nope. We want you to earn ‘em. You should be able to tell a badass story for every sweet jewel in your arsenal. Once you earn them, the various Guardians under your account will be able to trade them, but weapons belong to the players who acquire them through action and bravery.

As an MMO and a loot-driven game, the ability to trade items to other players is a feature that many players are likely to expect Destiny to include. Still, Destiny hasn’t launched yet and this decision may not be permanent.

(Source: VG247)

Beta Perspective: Destiny on PS4

Aren’t pre-order betas great? You throw $5 (refundable) down at Gamestop and, in return, you get what can nearly be called a preview copy of your game to play and figure out if it’s going to be worth buying. Where else can you get that kind of preview, apart from perhaps every other form of media? Given my status as fiscally conservative, which is code word here for “cheap bastard,” I generally come to the conclusion that a game is worth playing so long as the price drops from the initial $60. Red Dead Redemption was worth the $60 I paid for it new, but Timeshift was more than worth the $1.69 I got it for used. It’s all about perspective.

So I can say that, after playing the Destiny alpha, I went into Gamestop and not only secured my pre-order, I upgraded to the $99 collector’s edition. I won’t go as far as the $150 edition with the figurine, I like the game but not enough to buy an overpriced and mass produced chunk of plastic. Now, for the record I played the Destiny beta on the Playstation 4 (obviously). The beta on the Xbox consoles doesn’t come out until the 23rd, at which time I will not be previewing them because I do not own either system. Your mileage may vary.

I was already hooked on Destiny as of the first alpha test, so the beta was merely returning for another sip. Right now the beta caps out at level 8 with only the first handful of missions available to play and a number of features either inaccessible or unobtainable. There are three classes available with accompanying subclasses (at level 15, unreachable in beta), the Titan, the Hunter, and the Warlock. Each class is fully capable in combat, distinguished by the set of abilities afforded to them. My favorite ability is that of the Hunter, a special where he summons a three-shot pistol that can shred through most enemies like butter.

Weapons and equipment are picked up during battle and carry their own set of stats and special abilities. You can only have three weapons equipped at any time and each fall into their own categories that can’t be changed. The primary weapons include rifles and pistols, with snipers in secondary and machine guns and rocket launchers in heavy. Finding ammunition for the special and heavy weapons was a slow and painful process, with the natural expectation being that those weapons should be saved for more difficult battles. Equipment also carries special abilities, like a sniper rifle that can pick up ammo by shooting it, or a rifle that does more damage on the last half of a clip.

Destiny feels an awful lot like a smoother, far more serious Borderlands with persistent online interactivity. All of the action takes place on overworlds, sprawling areas of above and below ground zones filled with foes of varying level. The story missions act as a guide through this world, showing you a basic idea on what it has to offer without actually holding you by the hand and showing you its secrets. If you look around hard enough, you’ll find all that Destiny has to offer from its high peaks to low, hidden dungeons. In the beta, I even managed to come across several dungeons that went so deep that enemies eventually became “??” level. Frightening.

But Destiny is all about killing things in order to find better equipment with which to kill bigger things and so on and so forth. You pick from three classes with distinct abilities and eventually level them into their own subclasses, none of which were available thanks to a level cap of eight and a required level of fifteen. Choosing your class is a matter of taste, with the Titan focusing on brute force and tanking while the Hunter shoots from afar and the Warlock is more mid-range.

There is a wealth of content to explore simply in this small beta, with secret corridors around every corner. In addition to the dungeons available to explore, the overworld also plays host to numerous mini-quests, missions that are picked up on the fly and are often simple objectives like “kill these creatures for their data,” and “explore this dungeon.” Occasionally your exploration will be interrupted with a public event, generally involving a boss creature, where players absolutely must work together in order to succeed.

Death is very light in Destiny, there are no penalties for dying and resurrecting in the overworld. In dungeons, however, certain areas as well as boss fights are designated “restricted respawn,” where you must either be revived by a teammate or face having to start the area over again if the entire team wipes. According to other posts I’ve seen on the forums, there are hints in-game that armor will degrade upon death requiring repairs. Otherwise it is possible to die thirty-odd times fighting a giant mech walker boss on the overworld only to keep coming back and whittling its health down little by little.

Destiny’s PvP mode is the Crucible, where players can compete on deathmatch and territory control maps. If you have no interest in the rest of Destiny and simply want to battle it out with your fellow gamers, it is completely possible to level up in Crucible.

There isn’t enough content to fill up more than a day or two of playtime in this beta, but I consider my thirst quenched until launch, or at least the next beta phase.

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