For starters, the base product isn’t free...

In Korny's defense, he never said that Destiny was adopting a F2P model, only that the new DLC that is coming out next year is being released in a F2P pattern.

The Annual Pass is in no way a F2P model.

Care to explain?

Given the info that has been released as far as what the drops will entail, it lines up pretty consistently with "seasonal" changes/drops found in several popular F2P games. Except that, ya know, they want you to pay for it all up front.

So yeah, Destiny 2 is not Free to Play (though it is adopting a F2P release model with the Annual Pass), but if you remember the backlash that Bungie was hit by when they started trying to lock people out of content like they did in D1, and how hard they backpedaled, they need the people playing the base game. They need the Eververse sales and the healthy population. And just because the people buying the DLCs are content, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be giving the entire base reasons to log back in (how else are they going to encourage seasonal event sales?)

I mean, look at the fact that the base game was free on PS+. The tracked players on DT jumped from around 8.5m to 11.9m and now you see countless level 1-20s everywhere, and I've seen a bunch of level 30s on Mars, and yet there were only 1.8m total players tracked yesterday. How long until those 1-20 folks just run out of neat things to look forward to? How many of those have splurged at Eververse, or will once Festival of the Lost drops? Will they still be around come Dawning?

That all makes sense, however a whisper quest isn't going to fix that. If you compare the amount of content and time spent doing it in the DLC's vs the whisper type quests + seasonal events there is a very large gap. Adding a couple more whisper type quests is not going to keep a player base going until D3. I say D3 because apparently these people don't want to buy DLC's. It would be awesome if Bungie gave D2 players cool whisper type quests, but they have to think of the people who are actually giving them money first.

I appreciate the Heroic Adventures, and Wanted Targets were fun enough the first couple of days, but where are the Whisper-tier events that we were promised?

I'd call The Broken Throne quest a Whisper-tier event. It has all makings of the Whisper quest. It was unexpected. It is not always available. It takes place in a surprisingly large and varied play space. It has several combat and traversal challenges. It has that feeling of being almost impossible that will melt away to being totally doable in time. And, it ultimately rewards you with an Exotic weapon.

The issue that I have with that one is that it’s only available to people who have Forsaken, so it feels like prepackaged content, which I guess should be fine, but I was hoping for more universal events.

Honestly, I don't know how anyone can expect to be getting more content with a base game that is a year old now? I mean, the game is on 3 expansions now. You can't expect a company to be giving you free content at this point. If you are still just playing the base game then you should be comfortable with what you are playing.

I mean, you don't need the DLCs to run the Whisper quest. Sure, you get wrecked by Impossible enemies, but it was available to base game owners two DLCs in. Precedent is there.

Yes, including the entire D2 community would be cool but, that's like saying that Apple or Microsoft should keep making cool stuff for 3-4 OS's back. No, you gotta make cool content for current software.

P.S. I know that isn't a direct relation but I hope you get my point. I know someone will argue it so I'm just saying it now :D

Funny thing is that Apple's iOS 12 that just launched in the past month was specifically for their older products (all the way back to the iPhone 5s, which came out in 2013(!).
So yeh...

So yeah, Destiny 2 is not Free to Play (though it is adopting a F2P release model with the Annual Pass), but if you remember the backlash that Bungie was hit by when they started trying to lock people out of content like they did in D1, and how hard they backpedaled, they need the people playing the base game. They need the Eververse sales and the healthy population. And just because the people buying the DLCs are content, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be giving the entire base reasons to log back in (how else are they going to encourage seasonal event sales?)

I mean, look at the fact that the base game was free on PS+. The tracked players on DT jumped from around 8.5m to 11.9m and now you see countless level 1-20s everywhere, and I've seen a bunch of level 30s on Mars, and yet there were only 1.8m total players tracked yesterday. How long until those 1-20 folks just run out of neat things to look forward to? How many of those have splurged at Eververse, or will once Festival of the Lost drops? Will they still be around come Dawning?

Sure. By we’re not talking about something that needs to be solved. We’re talking about a rotating loot pool. That’s not a cool, fun thing to discover the mysteries of. There’s no mystery or puzzle, it’s just a weekly rotation. That’s the sort of thing that should just be clear to the player.

Just to play devils advocate here, that sounds like personal preference and how people want to play the game. To you, you just want to be told when you are able to get a weapon. Other people might not.

To me, I feel like it changes depending when I'm doing it. When EP dropped and I was a high light level enough to do EP I would have hated doing EP because I would know I was going to get a SMG. I would have honestly not done it. I would have had no idea if I was going to get anything else. All I would have seen was "SMG will drop in this event" It might say "SMG will drop this week" but how do I know that wouldn't be true next week? There are multi-drop weeks for EP. Knowing the drop would have killed the experience.

Now, that I'm leveled and have played it, it's true that I want to know exactly what will drop because I want to farm for a specific weapon.

The difference is, Bungie made the event for that first instance of people. Not for people to farm out a specific weapon (I assume). And they aren't going to chance their UI to cater to the farmers now that we have moved on to a new expansion. They are going to let the community figure it out.

[EDIT] What I think they could do to make it something in between is to add some sort of schedule or something like "available in EP in 9 days" when you select the weapon in collections.

I appreciate the Heroic Adventures, and Wanted Targets were fun enough the first couple of days, but where are the Whisper-tier events that we were promised?

I'd call The Broken Throne quest a Whisper-tier event. It has all makings of the Whisper quest. It was unexpected. It is not always available. It takes place in a surprisingly large and varied play space. It has several combat and traversal challenges. It has that feeling of being almost impossible that will melt away to being totally doable in time. And, it ultimately rewards you with an Exotic weapon.

The issue that I have with that one is that it’s only available to people who have Forsaken, so it feels like prepackaged content, which I guess should be fine, but I was hoping for more universal events.

Honestly, I don't know how anyone can expect to be getting more content with a base game that is a year old now? I mean, the game is on 3 expansions now. You can't expect a company to be giving you free content at this point. If you are still just playing the base game then you should be comfortable with what you are playing.

Yeah... this. It sounds like base game users get the "Iron Banner and Faction Rally type events" (maybe Festival of the Lost?). Hopefully, if SRL ever comes back it'll be universal. But at this point, if you want "new" content you should be ready to pay for it via expansions and the season pass.

Bungie has made it pretty clear that this isn't a free-to-play game.

In some sense, having players figure out WHAT drops is good. But not WHEN it drops. That's really stupid.

If the loot pool was just the loot pool, it wouldn't be an issue. Putting the pool on a schedule is something that needs to be clear to the players, in my opinion.

Imagine a gun only available on Friday the 13th, when there is a full moon.

My problem isn't that there are things that are only available on certain schedules. My problem is that Destiny is downright terrible at communicating basic information to the players on a pretty regular basis.

Bungie has this habit of wanting to let players discover things for themselves, and I guess that's laudable in certain instances. But having to go to reddit to figure out what weapon is going to drop from an event for this week is sort of stupid, in my opinion. Just put that information in the tool tip.

When I was a kid, we would talk about Legend of Zelda on the playground. What secrets we found. How we found a dungeon entrance. As a group of friends we exchanged info about the game and beat it collectively. I’m convinced that’s how the game was designed to be played.

This isn’t really any different. Instead of a small group of friends, it’s a large group of Internet strangers. But the concept is kind of the same.

I totally agree. There isn't a chance in hell that even my internet group of friends would find everything in the dreaming city. There is a reason why it's so big and complicated. Bungie is dealing with the internet they are trying to make it complicated so it's hard for the internet to solve. Sometimes they mess up and make something too complicated when it should be easier.

I appreciate the Heroic Adventures, and Wanted Targets were fun enough the first couple of days, but where are the Whisper-tier events that we were promised?

I'd call The Broken Throne quest a Whisper-tier event. It has all makings of the Whisper quest. It was unexpected. It is not always available. It takes place in a surprisingly large and varied play space. It has several combat and traversal challenges. It has that feeling of being almost impossible that will melt away to being totally doable in time. And, it ultimately rewards you with an Exotic weapon.

The issue that I have with that one is that it’s only available to people who have Forsaken, so it feels like prepackaged content, which I guess should be fine, but I was hoping for more universal events.

Honestly, I don't know how anyone can expect to be getting more content with a base game that is a year old now? I mean, the game is on 3 expansions now. You can't expect a company to be giving you free content at this point. If you are still just playing the base game then you should be comfortable with what you are playing.

Yes, including the entire D2 community would be cool but, that's like saying that Apple or Microsoft should keep making cool stuff for 3-4 OS's back. No, you gotta make cool content for current software.

P.S. I know that isn't a direct relation but I hope you get my point. I know someone will argue it so I'm just saying it now :D

Well, that explains it. What do you mean he was run off?

I would also like to hear what makes you say that, Korny. I knew he left, but didn’t hear any details. It’s a shame, either way.

He’s at Monolith now, by the way.

Part of me genuinely wonders if it was ever intentional now.

Right? It always seemed like it was very clearly intentional. But, if that was so, then it's totally baffling that they'd change it.

I mean, Bungie's main UI/UX guy, Dave Candland, was run off while Forsaken was mid-development. I'd wager that the new version was cobbled together after he was gone, but who knows?

Well, that explains it. What do you mean he was run off?

Part of me genuinely wonders if it was ever intentional now.

Right? It always seemed like it was very clearly intentional. But, if that was so, then it's totally baffling that they'd change it.

I mean, Bungie's main UI/UX guy, Dave Candland, was run off while Forsaken was mid-development. I'd wager that the new version was cobbled together after he was gone, but who knows?

a beefed up Sunshot

Whatever that would be, it would have to be classified as a heavy weapon.

I've been wanting a heavy weapon version of a hand cannon.

a beefed up Sunshot

Whatever that would be, it would have to be classified as a heavy weapon.

I've been wanting a heavy weapon version of a hand cannon.

a beefed up Sunshot

Whatever that would be, it would have to be classified as a heavy weapon.