I don't believe I specifically called you out. But it was more along the lines of "the content is small based on what I've seen in the beta" vs "we don't know what's behind the walled off areas and the rest of the areas are gonna be much bigger".neither of which have any real evidence. Glancing at the Q&A posted in the beta withdrawal thread,it seems the missions are a reasonable representation of the missions available in the full game,which could be off putting for some
You generalized to only two sides and since I and Zakalwe are pretty much the only ones here 'defending' Bungie, I assumed you wanted to imply I was part of one of them. And even though I'm aware you might not mean me specifically, it was never just about the size of the areas here ( and we do have evidence that
a ) Old Russia is bigger than what we could properly explore, and
b ) Venus is very,
very probably bigger than Earth based on what we have seen in both the amount of content and environment variation from it. ). It was about people extrapolating the limited Beta experience onto the entire game, people accusing Bungie of cutting content with malicious intent and people claiming that Destiny had no content based on the arbitrary number of zones.
Regarding missions; some people seem to be mistakenly thinking that going into Explore and doing the Beacon 'missions' all day long is representative of what the core gameplay will be like in the full game because that is all there was to do in the Beta besides Crucible after doing the Story missions and Strike. That way of taking the limited Beta experience and extrapolating it onto the final game is inherently flawed, as it completely ignores what we know of the game beyond what we got in the Beta ( which, again, was fairly limited; level-cap at 8, only Common and Uncommon gear, limited progression in single Subclass, areas blocked off or guarded by invincible enemies, no purpose for materials yet, only Old Russia, only one Crucible game-mode, etc. ). But I have talked about that several times now as you probably know, so I'll not bore you with it again.
The datamined information also doesn't fully match up with some of the information that was already known. For instance, it shows less Story missions on Venus than were shown on its map in the E3'14 trailer ( 5 vs. 7 ). I don't think it is giving us the full picture on all the content in the full game. Why would Bungie even put
all data on the full release into the Beta? I think there is definitely some stuff missing there, but that is mostly just assumption from my side. I don't think people should get to hung up on that specific list or any arbitrary numbers until some context is provided.
I don't know. It suggests that the Beta was roughly 25% of the story, and Old Russia, as we know it, is 20% of the explorable area. If I had to sum it up, I'd say that I feel like it's a lot of stuff to do, but not a lot of content.
Right up until this thread, my head had this game chock full of content. "Explore the Solar System!". "The Beta is only 10% of the game". Hot damn, Old Russia is the tip of the iceberg, I'm thinking we'll have at least 9 more locations to Explore. Maybe we'll get to see the city under The Traveler, inside The Traveler, other Earth Ruins, Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury and one each of Jupiter and Saturn's Moons.
I thought the DLC would be a couple of Crucible maps and maybe a new explore area on one of the established planets. Hell, I thought D2 would take us to a whole new Solar System.
Now I need to adjust to the possibility that we're talking at most 4.5 explore locations. And have to wait and pay to see the rest of the Solar System.
The Beta was like only 10% of the game.
If by 'stuff to do' you mean the Beacon missions, I'd like to bring this up again; The Beacon missions in Explore are not representative for the endgame content. You are not supposed to stop at level 8 and do Beacon missions all day in the full game. Actually, I feel like Explore had little actual purpose in the Beta; we could not level beyond 8 to take on the ?? enemies, we had no real use yet ( and thus no drive to find ) materials and marks, Chests weren't very useful as good Lv. 8 gear was easy to get and some stuff was just plain inaccessible. In the full game, you'll go into Explore to get Materials to upgrade your weapons or take out that ?? enemy you can now finally beat to explore that one cave you didn't dare enter before; the Beacon missions are just there for you to pick up on the way ( You're going to do some killing? Get the 'kill enemies' Beacon and get some Vanguard Marks and xp in the process. You looking to collect Material? Do one of the Target Assassination missions for additional xp and several materials. Going to the other side of the map? Might as well pick up this navigation Beacon if you're headed there anyways. ), they are not intended to be the main event. They're just there for if you want to get more rewards.
