I think maintaining separate playlists for non-DLC owners is a nice-to-have feature, but not one without costs. I don't assume that I know or understand all the reasons behind the decision not to offer them, but it does complicate things, and I'm sure it costs something.

As an analogy, in a world where most people have cellphones, those who were used to having a phone booth every few blocks begin noticing that they no longer have as many options, but they can still use the phone system.

Destiny is a living world. I like being in it, but it's changing, and who knows? Down the road it may change to a point where I don't like being in it. This isn't Halo. None of us can play the game that came out in September. That game no longer exists.

You are definitely right, the game is ever changing. Now that I see more clearly what Bungie plans for the game, I am much more disappointed than I anticipated being. For instance I expected that the base game would remain whole throughout the next couple years. I expected lots of tweaks, changes, maybe some small things removed or added for balance or in response to players.

If I had to pay an upfront fee to get access to the network of payphones, with the creator promising changes and additions as the years went on, then yes, I would be very upset if that same creator switched the network over to cell phone and started removing pay phones 4 months after first installing them.

We want it all.

Nah, I don't want the new stuff ;P
As I'm sure you know, my issue isn't with a lack of content. I think the level of content is pretty standard for a new game. I just don't want them lobotomizing the game that I already have. I know this is asking Bungie to change the plan they have for the game. I know my request go against the effort they decided to put into the game. But I also think that this is what they should do.

I guess I didn't expect people to disagree with the idea that a company should never lock off chunks of the game to people who don't pay up.

Chunks of the game have been locked off from the beginning. I know people who have enjoyed the game but who have never touched challenge activities in part because they either weren't high-level enough or they didn't have people to play with. I have alt characters myself who literally cannot play the high-reward activities. The game says it's impossible, and the game doesn't lie.

Lots of things have changed that you do have access to, but I think you overstate the significance of having DLC content added into the rotation for these challenges. Lobotomies don't undo themselves the next day or week. I think most players who make use of the challenges are the same players who wanted more content and therefore wanted the DLC. In other words, I think the DLC-buying audience and the audience who tackles the challenges are more or less the same. I'm okay if the resources that would be applied to accommodating outliers in this instance are being used instead to create more cool stuff.

One more story. I have a friend who has played the demo obsessively for weeks now, but cannot bring himself to buy the game. He loves the demo, but the value of his money is worth more to him than the value of owning the full game. All of us with disposable income have that choice, whether we're talking about the game or the expansion content. There are trade-offs in everything. Consumer transactions are based on equity. Bungie supports their fans, and fans support Bungie with their money. If it feels unbalanced to you, you walk away, and if enough people do, Bungie will suffer. I still like what they're up to, and I want to give them my money.

But if they changed it so that the non-DLC people had a different Weekly/Daily... Then do the non-DLC people get two Weeklies/Dailies those days? If so, do they both give rewards, or just one? Would they then always get an extra Weekly/Daily? Further questions can be envisioned; I think they're worth taking into consideration?

Also, I've gotten engrams at the end of Tiger strikes, still, so that's a thing.

And now, having left this possibly redundant thought beyond, I'm gonna skedaddle.

Bungie doesn't owe you anything, Cody.

They don't owe him "the game"? Because for me they just swap out "the game" for a smaller version of "the game".

I think maintaining separate playlists for non-DLC owners is a nice-to-have feature, but not one without costs. I don't assume that I know or understand all the reasons behind the decision not to offer them, but it does complicate things, and I'm sure it costs something.

As an analogy, in a world where most people have cellphones, those who were used to having a phone booth every few blocks begin noticing that they no longer have as many options, but they can still use the phone system.

Destiny is a living world. I like being in it, but it's changing, and who knows? Down the road it may change to a point where I don't like being in it. This isn't Halo. None of us can play the game that came out in September. That game no longer exists.

You are definitely right, the game is ever changing. Now that I see more clearly what Bungie plans for the game, I am much more disappointed than I anticipated being. For instance I expected that the base game would remain whole throughout the next couple years. I expected lots of tweaks, changes, maybe some small things removed or added for balance or in response to players.

If I had to pay an upfront fee to get access to the network of payphones, with the creator promising changes and additions as the years went on, then yes, I would be very upset if that same creator switched the network over to cell phone and started removing pay phones 4 months after first installing them.

We want it all.

Nah, I don't want the new stuff ;P
As I'm sure you know, my issue isn't with a lack of content. I think the level of content is pretty standard for a new game. I just don't want them lobotomizing the game that I already have. I know this is asking Bungie to change the plan they have for the game. I know my request go against the effort they decided to put into the game. But I also think that this is what they should do.

I guess I didn't expect people to disagree with the idea that a company should never lock off chunks of the game to people who don't pay up.

I'm Talking about content pack ownership permutations. I Think you're on the right track to what I'm talking about when you refer to menu clutter. Adding more daily weekly is not linear because people can skip any number of packs, it's just that right now there is only one. Anyway. It's a reason if they go down the road of serving d/w up to people without the full set it should be done silently in the background at launch like matchmaking chooses a map.

I'm still not seeing the issue. My vision was that everyone would always be able to play the d/w/n, but depending on what content you purchased, you'd be able to choose between different options (in addition to the current choice of different difficulties). There's two major ways in which that could be realized: having an option for each content pack, or simply making it so that if the current week's "normal" choice is DLC, a base-game level is also available. They could even set it up so that the party leader was able to see in the selection window which option(s) their current party could and couldn't play.

If you were imagining that it would always reduce everything down to a single visible option for any given player, that would have some weird design hurdles (which choice to show, how to handle parties where different players have different options), but managing the system would still not exponentially increase in complexity with new DLC unless you literally accomplished the result by having the person managing the game fill out a general-purpose decision-making tree every time they updated the d/w/n. This would indeed be a confusing mess (both for players and Bungie!), but there's no reason to handle it like that. Rather, you'd want to have the person to just drop a couple options into a prioritized list, and each client's game would tick down the list until it got to an option that they could play, or something like that.
(But I'd really rather avoid any solution that shows a single option in each player's lists anyway, since it either make the party system confusing or break it, depending on implementation).

I think maintaining separate playlists for non-DLC owners is a nice-to-have feature, but not one without costs. I don't assume that I know or understand all the reasons behind the decision not to offer them, but it does complicate things, and I'm sure it costs something.

As an analogy, in a world where most people have cellphones, those who were used to having a phone booth every few blocks begin noticing that they no longer have as many options, but they can still use the phone system.

Destiny is a living world. I like being in it, but it's changing, and who knows? Down the road it may change to a point where I don't like being in it. This isn't Halo. None of us can play the game that came out in September. That game no longer exists.

What is the value of the game? Have the people who bought the game gotten their money's worth? Is part of their expectation that the game, or at least a portion of it, would continue to offer the same experience whenever they want to have that experience? To a degree, probably, but the nature of Destiny makes that expectation less realistic than it would be for a different kind of game. The other economics in play are the costs of developing content. We want it all. We want other planets, and we want those planets to be consistent in quality to what we've gotten so far, and I don't think making such things are easy or cheap. You don't just poop out environments like we see in Destiny. Speaking for myself, the game continues to amaze.

Bungie is threading a needle here. Can they continue building such a game, and keep users happy over the long term (and make money)? That last parenthetical brings out the cynics, who assume the worst of the companies involved, and there certainly is reason to distrust the money men. I think Bungie has been pretty responsive to users, but this game isn't quite like anything else, and some experiments within it might fail. I remain hopeful that over time, Destiny will grow into something that exceeds our expectations of it. I've seen glimpses in this DLC that it can.

Well said, Kermit. This might be the best post I have ever read on this, or any other, site regarding Destiny.

That said the idea that they don't "owe him anything" is if legally correct not a reasonable expectation that a consumer might have.

car15 was being sarcastic :)

Sorry I guess I addressed this too slightly. Besides my original point of time to implement and prioritizing, which I assume we are not talking about because you quoted this, I'm saying the problem is that the complexity of the solution does not scale well. Today they would need two options some weeks and one for others, if they wanted to simplify on original content weeks. I don't know if they would but I forsee people being upset that paying money lets you do the same things more often with the content they also paid for.

After the next expansion they would need one for OG game only, one for dlc1 only, one for dlc2 only and one for season pass. And the next step after that is even more complicated Because the number of total permutations coins almost exponentially (but not exactly because everyone has original game).

I'm not sure I follow. An implementation that had fully separate playlists would get somewhat messy in the menus, but an implementation that simply expanded each category into a few separate level options (depending on which DLC people in your party had) would be pretty clean, and the complexity of the implementation would scale lineary with the number of DLC options.

Actually, I'm having a hard time visualizing a solution that would have exponentially-expanding complexity, unless you're literally just talking about the total number of level-choice permutations, which isn't very relevant for these sorts of things as far as workload goes. As an analogy: a 16-bit number takes twice as much storage (and in many operations, processing workload) as an 8-bit number, not 256 times as much, even though there are 256 times as many possible values.

(but combine it other weeks? And then make a third and fourth chair club when the new chair upgrades release so as to cover all 4 permutations? This scales nearly exponentially, people)

Why wouldn't that be a reasonable solution? What would be the problems with giving DLC owners extra choice of mission?

Sorry I guess I addressed this too slightly. Besides my original point of time to implement and prioritizing, which I assume we are not talking about because you quoted this, I'm saying the problem is that the complexity of the solution does not scale well. Today they would need two options some weeks and one for others, if they wanted to simplify on original content weeks. I don't know if they would but I forsee people being upset that paying money lets you do the same things more often with the content they also paid for.

After the next expansion they would need one for OG game only, one for dlc1 only, one for dlc2 only and one for season pass. And the next step after that is even more complicated Because the number of total permutations coins almost exponentially (but not exactly because everyone has original game).

Even if they locked you out of the entire game until you purchased The Dark Below, that's still their right. They need to do what's best for the people dedicated enough to give them $20 every 3 months for the continued privilege of playing the base game that they already bought.

You knew you were only buying a license to play whatever Bungie chooses to let you play. You should be happy with this arrangement because it allows Bungie to fix bugs like the one that allowed players to strategize in the fight against Atheon.

ROC is a premium playlist for DLC owners, and why shouldn't Bungie cater to the people who are showing interest in the game by buying content?

Bungie doesn't have to offer anything new to people who don't by the DLC, they simply have to not take anything away.

1. If you don't have the DLC, the daily story and weekly strikes should change to a non-dlc version if a DLC mission is up in the rotation.
2. The level 24 Vanguard strike which used to give engrams should continue to if you don't have the DLC
3. Heroic, Nightfall, and daily should still max out at level 28 if you don't have the DLC.

If those three things were done, which are very very simple things, this conversation would not be taking place. Of course if you buy the DLC you should get tons of new stuff, but if you don't you should lose nothing you had.

Bungie didn't shrink the game. The game operates the exact same way as before

If I'm closed out of things that I previously was not closed out of, then no, the game absolutely does not operate the exact same way as before. Previously, when I got on, I could hop into a daily, a weekly, or a nightfall. Now I can't. The game has changed.

Casting access restrictions as "it's the EXPERIENCE, not the GAME, that's changed" is cartoonish euphamisery.

(but combine it other weeks? And then make a third and fourth chair club when the new chair upgrades release so as to cover all 4 permutations? This scales nearly exponentially, people)

Why wouldn't that be a reasonable solution? What would be the problems with giving DLC owners extra choice of mission?

You miss chair club, but that does not make the chair damaged.

In this form of the analogy, it does not damage the chair insofar as it is a chair, but if you bought the chair under the pretext that you'd be able to use it at chair club, the overall entity that you purchased (i.e. chair as a ticket to chair club) was damaged.

Bungie is threading a needle here. Can they continue building such a game, and keep users happy over the long term (and make money)? That last parenthetical brings out the cynics, who assume the worst of the companies involved, and there certainly is reason to distrust the money men. I think Bungie has been pretty responsive to users, but this game isn't quite like anything else, and some experiments within it might fail. I remain hopeful that over time, Destiny will grow into something that exceeds our expectations of it. I've seen glimpses in this DLC that it can.

I don't know. I'm substantially less excited now that I see their plan. It's getting worse as far as I'm concerned. I have to wait for Destiny 2 to see if it gets better, because House of Wolves is going to be more of exactly the same. Nothing short of a radical shift that only a sequel or an expansion can bring about (a REAL expansion, not DLC which we got) can bring this game back on track.

From where I'm standing, Destiny is the laughingstock of game critics, who are mostly mediocre thinkers, and even THEY joke about the grind fest and lack of real things to do.

Why should it be this way? What is stopping Bungie from having two different weeklys/dailys for different content holders?

Time.

What you are getting at is the point I was trying to make. Bungie made the decision to shrink the game for players who don't pay up in order to work on other cool things. It is a priority choice that they made, but there is no hard bound keeping them from making the opposite decision.

I spoke a lot about one viewpoint in the last post because I felt like it was being under-represented. I can simultaneously see two viewpoints, but what you have said here is slightly aside from either of them. Bungie didn't shrink the game. The game operates the exact same way as before (unless you are too low level to play the new harder dailies/weekly). YOUR EXPERIANCE however did shrink. The number of things you can do is less. I think a lot of the problem I'm having aligning with people on this is this conflation of two different things. (The other is the hyperbolic language).

I'm not without sympathy for the people who are enjoying the game less now, but I don't suffer the accusations of immorality. Anything sold for a cost — especially an upgrade to something —will leave some people behind. I see this as a hard fact of life in a capitalist system. No reason not to feel bad or not to be upset when it bites you but it's not an immoral act.

How about a bad analogy? In this capitalist system you go out and buy a sweet rocking chair, and the designer tells you that soon you can buy upgrades to the chair. That's awesome, you buy the crap out of it.
In a couple months the designer comes to your house and says, "The upgrades are available!" and you say, "Cool, I'll actually wait and see what other people think first". The designer says "Well, okay that's your choice. But I have to take the rockers from the chair from you. Don't worry, you can still sit in it, and it is still perfectly comfortable, it just won't rock anymore."
Legally you probably signed some document on purchase that had this buried in the fine print, but ethically, the designer is an asshole. Had the designer told you that he would be removing chunks occasionally if you refused to pay up, it would be a much more above-board deal.

You admitted up front its a bad analogy (as most analogies are) so I won't spent too much time picking at it. I'll just point out again that nothing was removed from the chair, only from your enjoyment of it. Beating the analogy well past death: You used to be able to bring your chair to chair club run by the designer and this week only the upgraded chairs will fit in the new location chair club meets at. You can't go to chair club this week. You can still sit in your chair in all the same places with all the same people, just not while the club meets at the new location. They won't make a new chair club just for the people who don't upgrade their chairs in the weeks chair club meets at the new location (but combine it other weeks? And then make a third and fourth chair club when the new chair upgrades release so as to cover all 4 permutations? This scales nearly exponentially, people) You miss chair club, but that does not make the chair damaged. These are different things.

Bungie is threading a needle here. Can they continue building such a game, and keep users happy over the long term (and make money)? That last parenthetical brings out the cynics, who assume the worst of the companies involved, and there certainly is reason to distrust the money men. I think Bungie has been pretty responsive to users, but this game isn't quite like anything else, and some experiments within it might fail. I remain hopeful that over time, Destiny will grow into something that exceeds our expectations of it. I've seen glimpses in this DLC that it can.

Certainly has been far too long since I've heard something correct come out of your cyber mouth, friend.

I understand it would have been a lot of work to offer one nightfall to one group and another to a different one;

How is it a lot of work? You change a few flags.

Well, then, all the more reason to have an option for non-DLC purchasers to receive a different nightfall.