Interesting reading after sleeping on it (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, October 08, 2015, 16:42 (3600 days ago) @ Claude Errera

Reading through this thread this morning, a funny thing strikes me:

TTK is the first almost-universally-acclaimed Destiny release... and it's also the first Destiny release that consistently (and relatively often) violates one of the first principles Bungie listed as goals for Destiny, back in February 2013. (That was long before whatever bad stuff happened in 2014, long before any major changes in vision - so it's something that could be considered a driving goal for the project.)

Destiny was supposed to be something you could play in bite-size pieces, when you had time, without feeling like you were missing out. (When they began incorporating MMO-like features, that was one of their biggest concerns.)

Up to now, for the most part, it has been. (Yeah, there were timed events - but they lasted a week, or they lasted a weekend (Trials), or whatever. They were RARELY (if ever?) limited to a single 24 hour period. I think the only exception I can think of happened during the Beta (you could only visit the moon on the last day). And even if you missed them, you got content LIKE them in regular gameplay - there was plenty of regular Crucible for folks who didn't like the hectic pace of IB, there's a less stressful Elimination playlist for folks who can't stomach Trials.)

For the past year, folks have played a lot - but they've also griped a lot. Many of those gripes have been wiped out (or at least mitigated) by TTK... but now we have this new mechanic (timed one-day events) that actually adds a ton of interesting stuff to the base content... at the cost of a founding pillar of the game.

I'm not sure it's a make-or-break problem - I was just struck by it today.

I've touched on this in my response to Beirn's OP, but I think these limited time events are at least partially done for practical reasons. With all of TTK's new quest lines and special versions of various strikes and missions, the player base is spread out across a huge range of activities. To me, limited-time windows for quests seems like a way to focus the community towards them so players can easily find others to play with (either organically or through matchmaking). Obviously, this system is causing a few new problems, but I think there is room for Bungie to tweet the way they roll out these events to allow everyone to experience them within a reasonable amount of time.