This is the only example I can remember of a game advert showing obvious in-game footage that never actually was part of the game. I've seen adverts with pre-renders and the like, but those were always obvious and usually had a disclaimer such as "*not actual game footage" at the bottom of the screen.

Well you must have a short memory because it happened with Bungie's previous game, Halo: Reach. There was a trailer where Halsey was going over the Spartan-IIIs and it featured scenes for each one that didn't end up in the game. For that matter, I'm pretty sure every Halo game was shown off with things that ended up not making it into the final game. That doesn't make it a good thing to do, but it happens.

As for the "you can go there" I took it to mean that they actually built massive worlds to explore in the vein of World of Warcraft.

Why? They kept saying it wasn't an MMO. Obviously they didn't and wouldn't say "it's not an MMO because it's too small", but it's not a big leap to think "oh they're saying it's not an MMO, I shouldn't be expecting things that I expect from MMOs, like a fuck-ton of space to walk around in".

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the advertising, I have not "become legend" either in the meta scope of the game or in the plot element of the game, either. The amazing legendary act I performed was, per the Speaker, worth only a single mote of light. No one in the tower recognizes me as "that Legend" but rather I'm just another Guardian. And how many times has Deej said that our gear would tell our tale? What's the tale of your Gjallerhorn? I bet it's along the lines of "I killed Phogoth 500 times and then I finally got this" or maybe, like mine, "My friend had a saved checkpoint at the harpy chest in VoG, so I joined him and opened the chest on all of my characters. Did that for weeks before I got it." Those are stories, so Deej wasn't lying when he said my gear would have a story, but they're terribly boring stories.

I sympathize and mostly agree with you there. The "make your story through your possessions" element is there but it's sparse and you have to work to make it not be so sparse. I have a story behind my copy of The Last Word, but a lot of people just had some coins lying around and bought it or got it as a drop for doing some unremarkable thing.

Okay, so what about the E3 presentation that started with "today we're going to explore The Wall outside Old Russia and see if we can't make it to the other side." That sets up that you had some kind of choice about where to go and that it wasn't part of a wholly linear story.

I'm not sure where you're getting that expectation from in that presentation or those words. Where did they say or show anything about a branching story or a choice of what to do?

Technically you can replay the first mission, but the presentation of it at E3 was that this was standard gameplay - there's areas you haven't explored that you can choose to explore. Presumably lots of them.

I think I'm not picking up on what you mean, because that's true until you've explored everything, just like every game I know of.

Wow, see the spaceship fall over when that alien ship warped in?! Oh man, look how much cool stuff is in Destiny. Except there's almost no big set piece action like that ever again. The satellite dish opens up in one later mission and.... yeah, that's it. For the whole game.

I don't understand why people are actually concerned about these things. Set pieces are not interactive and don't do anything for the story once you've seen them for the first time. They're nice to look at, but so is any work of art.

See what I mean about it's not an out and out lie but the implication that this is representative of what the experience of playing the game will be like is throughout the presentation?

That's my problem though, people keep claiming they did lie. I don't have much of a problem with people being displeased or complaining, but I take issue with anyone that accuses a person or group of something they didn't do.

Sure, in my mind I built these expectations, but every single thing they showed me prior to launch was consistent with those expectations. They never took any steps to temper those expectations, nor did they ever show us any part of the game that went counter to their main advertising goals of selling this massive, epic, incredible space adventure where you "Become Legend."

I'm not sure what you'd prefer for them to have said, "This is big, but don't get your hopes up, it's not actually that big"? There's no easy way to say how big a game world is. You can look at the playable area through in-engine numbers and you can convert that to something equivalent in real measurements, but that doesn't tell you how big it feels or how much of that area is interesting, because those things are subjective.

I mean... do you feel like your character has become legend? I don't.

That's a tagline, it means roughly nothing.

I feel like my actions have had zero impact on the game world and that I'm just one of hundreds of Guardians who are all basically the same.

That, finally, is a good point. All I can say is that I never expected it to be any other way, even though they implied (usually not even that strongly) that you could have individual impact or renown, because that's how games with shared worlds tend to be.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but I think you're putting too much onus on my expectations of Bungie based on my experience of their work and not enough on the fact that Bungie is also fully aware of their previous body of work and the expectations that body of work will set into the minds of consumers. Reputation is a real thing, and it's a thing that people pay millions of dollars for. Companies merge all the time, and they keep the name of the company with the best reputation. To argue that Bungie's reputation for great games and kept promises and not misleading consumers is not material to the case of feeling misled by the advertising for Destiny is simply wrong. It is completely material. I based my evaluations of the advertising, demos, official vidocs, etc. on my knowledge and understanding of the reputation of the company involved. That totality was misleading.

Bungie's reputation is relevant, but it's not quantifiable or objective. There is the element of the majority reputation, what the gaming public thinks of them, but that's only marginally relevant to a given game or a given player. There are people that didn't like Bungie's previous games but like Destiny. As for a reputation of not misleading people, that goes back to the actual question of how you were mislead. I hold that you should not take anything as a fact unless it's put in an advertisement or maybe prefaced with the words "we promise", and even then you should take it with a grain of salt because things change, plans fail, and people exaggerate. Other than the "you can go anywhere you can see" comment* (and maybe Mercury), I think you believed what you wanted to believe based on either minimal evidence or none at all. I get that Bungie never let you down before and it hurts now that it's finally happened, but to think it could never happen is totally naïve.

* I still don't get how that was supposed to work, every side of every world map ends in cliffs going up, adjoining very tall buildings, holes so deep you can't see the bottom, or water with no islands in it? Even then someone would say "I can see the water over there" or "I can see that higher/lower part of the cliffs/where the cliffs end" and complain they couldn't get to it.

This is the only example I can remember of a game advert showing obvious in-game footage that never actually was part of the game. I've seen adverts with pre-renders and the like, but those were always obvious and usually had a disclaimer such as "*not actual game footage" at the bottom of the screen.

As for the "you can go there" I took it to mean that they actually built massive worlds to explore in the vein of World of Warcraft.

--

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the advertising, I have not "become legend" either in the meta scope of the game or in the plot element of the game, either. The amazing legendary act I performed was, per the Speaker, worth only a single mote of light. No one in the tower recognizes me as "that Legend" but rather I'm just another Guardian. And how many times has Deej said that our gear would tell our tale? What's the tale of your Gjallerhorn? I bet it's along the lines of "I killed Phogoth 500 times and then I finally got this" or maybe, like mine, "My friend had a saved checkpoint at the harpy chest in VoG, so I joined him and opened the chest on all of my characters. Did that for weeks before I got it." Those are stories, so Deej wasn't lying when he said my gear would have a story, but they're terribly boring stories.

Okay, so what about the E3 presentation that started with "today we're going to explore The Wall outside Old Russia and see if we can't make it to the other side." That sets up that you had some kind of choice about where to go and that it wasn't part of a wholly linear story. Technically you can replay the first mission, but the presentation of it at E3 was that this was standard gameplay - there's areas you haven't explored that you can choose to explore. Presumably lots of them. Wow, see the spaceship fall over when that alien ship warped in?! Oh man, look how much cool stuff is in Destiny. Except there's almost no big set piece action like that ever again. The satellite dish opens up in one later mission and.... yeah, that's it. For the whole game. See what I mean about it's not an out and out lie but the implication that this is representative of what the experience of playing the game will be like is throughout the presentation?

Sure, in my mind I built these expectations, but every single thing they showed me prior to launch was consistent with those expectations. They never took any steps to temper those expectations, nor did they ever show us any part of the game that went counter to their main advertising goals of selling this massive, epic, incredible space adventure where you "Become Legend."

I mean... do you feel like your character has become legend? I don't. I feel like my actions have had zero impact on the game world and that I'm just one of hundreds of Guardians who are all basically the same.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but I think you're putting too much onus on my expectations of Bungie based on my experience of their work and not enough on the fact that Bungie is also fully aware of their previous body of work and the expectations that body of work will set into the minds of consumers. Reputation is a real thing, and it's a thing that people pay millions of dollars for. Companies merge all the time, and they keep the name of the company with the best reputation. To argue that Bungie's reputation for great games and kept promises and not misleading consumers is not material to the case of feeling misled by the advertising for Destiny is simply wrong. It is completely material. I based my evaluations of the advertising, demos, official vidocs, etc. on my knowledge and understanding of the reputation of the company involved. That totality was misleading.

Bungie's reputation is relevant, but it's not quantifiable or objective. There is the element of the majority reputation, what the gaming public thinks of them, but that's only marginally relevant to a given game or a given player. There are people that didn't like Bungie's previous games but like Destiny. As for a reputation of not misleading people, that goes back to the actual question of how you were mislead. I hold that you should not take anything as a fact unless it's put in an advertisement or maybe prefaced with the words "we promise", and even then you should take it with a grain of salt because things change, plans fail, and people exaggerate. Other than the "you can go anywhere you can see" comment* (and maybe Mercury), I think you believed what you wanted to believe based on either minimal evidence or none at all. I get that Bungie never let you down before and it hurts now that it's finally happened, but to think it could never happen is totally naïve.

* I still don't get how that was supposed to work, every side of every world map ends in cliffs going up, adjoining very tall buildings, holes so deep you can't see the bottom, or water with no islands in it? Even then someone would say "I can see the water over there" or "I can see that higher/lower part of the cliffs/where the cliffs end" and complain they couldn't get to it.

Nobody forced you to do nothing. You chose to do those bounties.

This is why I'm sad. The bounties aren't forcing you to do anything, but they are encouraging you to. They are nudging and poking you in certain directions.

Destiny is definitely the best it's ever been right now. It will probably get better. Eventually it may become the game that was advertised to us a full year ago. The ad guys did a terrific job writing checks that the game could not deliver on at launch. I truly hope someone who matters, somewhere that they're in a position to do something about it, learned from that.

I still want to know what was in an advertisement for the game that wasn't delivered on-- not a presentation or video on where they came from or what they considered or what they hoped to include, an advertisement of what the game would include. If they really put false information in an advertisement it would be grounds for a lawsuit, and if there were grounds for a lawsuit one probably would've been filed a long time ago.

Well, it's not like "we promise you 20 raids" or anything like that. I'm talking about things like the "Out here in the wild, this *is* how we talk" clip of in-game footage from the ads. And the interview where the designer said "Destiny is totally open world. If you see a mountain in the distance, you can go there."

That wasn't an interview, it was a presentation. Now, yes, that presentation should've been accurate, especially since it was repeated over the course of several days and broadcast during E3, but it wasn't advertisement. (An interview also wouldn't be advertisement.)

Saturn.

That was mentioned once in a vidoc, never anywhere else, including advertising.

All of the talk of the "epic story" when they really meant "epic setting with very little story."

You can't objectively say what is and isn't epic. It's like taking them to task for claiming it's "cool" when it doesn't meet your definition of cool. (Destiny's story doesn't meet my definition of "epic" either, for the record.) Anyway it's pretty clear to me they intended for the story to be epic by several meanings of the word, and it didn't work out. It does still span a large breadth of time and space in-universe, which is surely one part they were referring to.

Stuff like that. Things we thought would be in the game, but weren't, things we thought were reasonable to expect from a studio with the reputation Bungie had that we didn't get.

That's precisely why I asked the question I asked. People keeping mixing up their expectations with what Bungie actually said, and mixing up both of those thing with what was actually advertised, and then saying the advertising lied to them. An expectation not based on a direct, specific piece of evidence (if not several) is always suspect. You thinking Bungie's past games were good is not evidence of anything except their tastes and your tastes lining up to some degree and them not fumbling the execution too badly. The repeated semi-public presentation from before, on the other hand, is a pretty reasonable thing to base expectations on.
I focus on advertising here because it's supposed to be held to a higher standard than most communications. One of the few ways you can be taken to court for simply saying something in a country that gives you the right to free speech is to say something objectively false about something you're selling.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but I think you're putting too much onus on my expectations of Bungie based on my experience of their work and not enough on the fact that Bungie is also fully aware of their previous body of work and the expectations that body of work will set into the minds of consumers. Reputation is a real thing, and it's a thing that people pay millions of dollars for. Companies merge all the time, and they keep the name of the company with the best reputation. To argue that Bungie's reputation for great games and kept promises and not misleading consumers is not material to the case of feeling misled by the advertising for Destiny is simply wrong. It is completely material. I based my evaluations of the advertising, demos, official vidocs, etc. on my knowledge and understanding of the reputation of the company involved. That totality was misleading.

I'm not asking for 100 hours of awesome from any game. I'm just depressed that of those 100 hours, probably 60 of them were chore, and not at all fun. I'd much much MUCH rather have had a Halo with 20 hours of pure enjoyment than a Destiny with 40 hours of enjoyment mixed into 60 hours of slog.

I think what Funk is saying is that it's not Bungie's fault that you continued to play even after you realized you weren't having fun.

Just today I did a bunch of bounties I didn't want to do, so I could level up The Lord of Wolves. The gun is fantastic and a lot of fun. So I had to be bored now to have fun later. I'd have just rather had the fun. That's Bungie's fault for making you level up guns. It's not as simple as saying "don't play" when the end result really is fun.

Guns are pretty fun to play with WHILE YOU'RE LEVELING THEM - I enjoy seeing how strong they are when they're new, and how much better they get over time. You aren't FORCED to do bounties that you don't enjoy to level them - unless you're too impatient to play with a partially-leveled gun for a little while. :)

There's no point in using an exotic without the exotic perk that makes it special. I have zero interest in using the worst version of a given gun.

With exotics and raid weapons I can agree. With the new legendary weapons I actually like trying out the base weapon before dumping glimmer, motes and weapon parts into trying for the perfect roll. In Vanilla and TDB I would agree with you. But with the new system I'm actually enjoying the leveling of a weapon when you can essentially pick your perks.

I'm with this. The new "guns start at full attack power so they aren't totally useless" model is very nice. I don't mind leveling those up at all. But the old model (and current exotics model) stinks and is not fun.

The internet is like a giant, spoiled 5-year-old, and if it can't get a puppy for Christmas this year, everyone must suffer their tantrums.

Thank you Kermit for giving me a new way to describe the internet :) I love it haha.

The internet is like a giant, spoiled 5-year-old, and if it can't get a puppy for Christmas this year, everyone must suffer their tantrums.

Me feelings completely about ~70% of the complaints about Bingle.

This is the difference between content and grind. There are plenty of major AAA releases that give you dozens of hours of content, whether its GTA5, Skyrim, Dark Souls, Just Cause, Witcher 3, Etc. You get, at the very least a variety of content than can occupy you for a ton of time (and it comes with the base game, not after 80 dollars worth of DLC).

Destiny's base package offered about 15 hours worth of content, and the rest of was endlessly grinding experience bars (grind your levels, grind your guns, grind your abilities, grind the grind).

I pointed this out, among other things, when the game was released and people jumped down my throat.

Fortunately for myself, I never decided to get on the hamster wheel, but it is amusing to see every so often a post showing up here talking about how burnt out people are on this game.

So... you don't play Destiny any more?

Unfortunately, you gain exactly 0 exp while participating in and upon completion of raids, by design, preventing you from levelling up your gear while doing so.

Destiny's base package offered about 15 hours worth of content, and the rest of was endlessly grinding experience bars (grind your levels, grind your guns, grind your abilities, grind the grind).

I pointed this out, among other things, when the game was released and people jumped down my throat.

Fortunately for myself, I never decided to get on the hamster wheel, but it is amusing to see every so often a post showing up here talking about how burnt out people are on this game.

I'm not asking for 100 hours of awesome from any game. I'm just depressed that of those 100 hours, probably 60 of them were chore, and not at all fun. I'd much much MUCH rather have had a Halo with 20 hours of pure enjoyment than a Destiny with 40 hours of enjoyment mixed into 60 hours of slog.

I think what Funk is saying is that it's not Bungie's fault that you continued to play even after you realized you weren't having fun.

Just today I did a bunch of bounties I didn't want to do, so I could level up The Lord of Wolves. The gun is fantastic and a lot of fun. So I had to be bored now to have fun later. I'd have just rather had the fun. That's Bungie's fault for making you level up guns. It's not as simple as saying "don't play" when the end result really is fun.

Guns are pretty fun to play with WHILE YOU'RE LEVELING THEM - I enjoy seeing how strong they are when they're new, and how much better they get over time. You aren't FORCED to do bounties that you don't enjoy to level them - unless you're too impatient to play with a partially-leveled gun for a little while. :)

There's no point in using an exotic without the exotic perk that makes it special. I have zero interest in using the worst version of a given gun.

With exotics and raid weapons I can agree. With the new legendary weapons I actually like trying out the base weapon before dumping glimmer, motes and weapon parts into trying for the perfect roll. In Vanilla and TDB I would agree with you. But with the new system I'm actually enjoying the leveling of a weapon when you can essentially pick your perks.

I'm not asking for 100 hours of awesome from any game. I'm just depressed that of those 100 hours, probably 60 of them were chore, and not at all fun. I'd much much MUCH rather have had a Halo with 20 hours of pure enjoyment than a Destiny with 40 hours of enjoyment mixed into 60 hours of slog.

I think what Funk is saying is that it's not Bungie's fault that you continued to play even after you realized you weren't having fun.

Just today I did a bunch of bounties I didn't want to do, so I could level up The Lord of Wolves. The gun is fantastic and a lot of fun. So I had to be bored now to have fun later. I'd have just rather had the fun. That's Bungie's fault for making you level up guns. It's not as simple as saying "don't play" when the end result really is fun.

Guns are pretty fun to play with WHILE YOU'RE LEVELING THEM - I enjoy seeing how strong they are when they're new, and how much better they get over time. You aren't FORCED to do bounties that you don't enjoy to level them - unless you're too impatient to play with a partially-leveled gun for a little while. :)

There's no point in using an exotic without the exotic perk that makes it special. I have zero interest in using the worst version of a given gun that doesn't have that unique potentially game altering perk.

I'm not asking for 100 hours of awesome from any game. I'm just depressed that of those 100 hours, probably 60 of them were chore, and not at all fun. I'd much much MUCH rather have had a Halo with 20 hours of pure enjoyment than a Destiny with 40 hours of enjoyment mixed into 60 hours of slog.

I think what Funk is saying is that it's not Bungie's fault that you continued to play even after you realized you weren't having fun.

Just today I did a bunch of bounties I didn't want to do, so I could level up The Lord of Wolves. The gun is fantastic and a lot of fun. So I had to be bored now to have fun later. I'd have just rather had the fun. That's Bungie's fault for making you level up guns. It's not as simple as saying "don't play" when the end result really is fun.

Guns are pretty fun to play with WHILE YOU'RE LEVELING THEM - I enjoy seeing how strong they are when they're new, and how much better they get over time. You aren't FORCED to do bounties that you don't enjoy to level them - unless you're too impatient to play with a partially-leveled gun for a little while. :)

I'm not asking for 100 hours of awesome from any game. I'm just depressed that of those 100 hours, probably 60 of them were chore, and not at all fun. I'd much much MUCH rather have had a Halo with 20 hours of pure enjoyment than a Destiny with 40 hours of enjoyment mixed into 60 hours of slog.

I think what Funk is saying is that it's not Bungie's fault that you continued to play even after you realized you weren't having fun.

Just today I did a bunch of bounties I didn't want to do, so I could level up The Lord of Wolves. The gun is fantastic and a lot of fun. So I had to be bored now to have fun later. I'd have just rather had the fun. That's Bungie's fault for making you level up guns. It's not as simple as saying "don't play" when the end result really is fun.