Bungie defends Destiny: The Taken King's £/$40 price tag (Eurogamer)

Jetman

Member
So this justifies calling him a 'cunt'?

He gave as much info as I'm sure he was allowed to give per Activision/Bungie. Just because he's creative director doesn't mean he can say whatever he wants.

If Bungie just wanted to advertise the DLC content then they should just say as much and not do an interview to the public who have questions about their product. That's what an interview is. Not a one-sided speech.
I think the questions asked were good and valid given the previous DLC that was released. Bungie lost some goodwill and trust after releasing those. Hell, they lost a lot of trust after releasing the main game.
 

Oogedei

Member
I don't know if this add-on will be worth my 40 bucks let's just wait and see (at least I hope it will be worth it!).
But I don't care for these "don't complain these are typical MMO costs for the DLCs yadda yadda yadda" excuses. I couldn't care less about the standard costs for this and that, I base my opinion on the delivered content and when this content isn't enough or simply bad than it's just not worth my money.
Furthermore, they have to stop with these cringeworthy interviews. Destiny is certainly not the best shooter ever made (and I'm saying this even though I play it on weekends and I'm enjoying it!) so it would be probably the best to limit these haughty statements.
 
This game sold a promise which it never fulfilled and probably never will. Now they want to give the dedicated fan base (Season Pass owners etc) an even greater burden by exploiting them... and apparently people are too subservient to care enough to actually say enough is enough. It blows my mind that people will still buy into this.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
I think it's more "Sorry you don't see any value in this, but obviously other people do. If you are wondering why it costs $80, it's because thousands of people will pay $80 --- and possibly quite more than that."

This is what he's saying, and he's not wrong.

Bungie doesn't seem to have to worry about internet backlash, because their game has somehow continued to be incredibly successful despite the internet backlash this game has been getting since before launch. I honestly don't understand how this game continues to be so successful, and I agree with the internet on the majority of the backlash, but there's not much you can do about it if the game keeps selling well and a huge number of people keep playing it.

Maybe PR-wise they'd probably be better off not saying anything, but PR or not, the underlying fact of this whole thing is that they're pricing things insanely because Destiny fans are insane enough to buy it anyway.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I take it you've never played an MMO before if you seriously think vanilla Destiny has as much content as an MMO.

Destiny after 2 DLC packs has less content than your normal MMO has at launch.
I'm not trying to defense the price of this expansion (I think it is way overpriced).

But VoG alone was enough to me pay $60 at Destiny launch... it is in my opinion a full game inside a full game.

My money was well expended.

PS. Destiny is not a MMO but it hold well for what it is... I already preodered TKK and if they give me something like VoG again I will be happy to give them my money.
 

Tovarisc

Member
They outlined the contents of the vip package when they announced TTK at E3. Before this interview.

If DeeJ uses Weekly Update to re-announce announced "Founders pack" [shader, emblem and sparrow] he better be wearing Flamesuit Mark 9000 or he won't survive posting that Weekly without some serious damage.

Also that package is super lackluster when compared to goodies CE gives.

Edit:
I'm not trying to defense the price of this expansion (I think it is way overpriced).

But VoG alone was enough to me pay $60 at Destiny launch... it is in my opinion a full game inside a full game.

My money was well expended.

I got Limited Edition ~year ago and I have gotten my investments worth out of Destiny, even when I haven't gotten into 2nd DLC yet. I just don't think it's very content rich game and planet zones aren't that large nor interesting after initial aww wares off. Best piece of content whole game has [without playing 2nd DLC!] is easily VoG, even when it was broken and buggy as hell. Interesting architecture designs, decently engaging encounters and Vex Mythoclast <3
 

Homeboyd

Member
If DeeJ uses Weekly Update to re-announce announced "Founders pack" [shader, emblem and sparrow] he better be wearing Flamesuit Mark 9000 or he won't survive posting that Weekly without some serious damage.

Also that package is super lackluster when compared to goodies CE gives.
Yeah we don't know specifics about either.. yet here we are.
 
I'm not trying to defense the price of this expansion (I think it is way overpriced).

But VoG alone was enough to me pay $60 at Destiny launch... it is in my opinion a full game inside a full game.

My money was well expended.

PS. Destiny is not a MMO but it hold well for what it is... I already preodered TKK and if they give me something like VoG again I will be happy to give them my money.

VOG a game inside a full game? WHAT.... no I can't do this.

KcipMcS.gif
 

border

Member
This game sold a promise which it never fulfilled and probably never will. Now they want to give the dedicated fan base (Season Pass owners etc) an even greater burden by exploiting them... and apparently people are too subservient to care enough to actually say enough is enough. It blows my mind that people will still buy into this.

People will pay more to play more of a game they really enjoy.

Most grown-ups don't think twice about dropping $20-$40 on a DLC pack.

Gaming I think is becoming more gentrified now that so many gamers are adults with middle-class jobs. There's a pretty massive gulf between what those people believe is worth $20, and what penny-pinching forum dwellers think is worth $20.
 

Aeqvitas

Member
And there will surely be more money hated exclusive strikes for another year, so I see no reason to ever purchase this.

Bungie took me from a long time fan (since Marathon) to never buying their products again. Never felt more burned than the buying digital guardian. Still only ran the raids a couple times because it is super inconvenient to find a group of people dedicated to playing on your schedule. The raids are meh and the PvP is horribly imbalanced. Never again.
 

Jetman

Member
VOG a game inside a full game? WHAT.... no I can't do this.

God, I laughed out loud at that. If most Destiny players feel that way, prepare for $10 Strikes, $20 Raids, and $15 Nightfalls, or a bundle pack of $80 for 3 Raids with 2 extra dancing emotes and a flashy armband.
 
I'm not trying to defense the price of this expansion (I think it is way overpriced).

But VoG alone was enough to me pay $60 at Destiny launch... it is in my opinion a full game inside a full game.

My money was well expended.

PS. Destiny is not a MMO but it hold well for what it is... I already preodered TKK and if they give me something like VoG again I will be happy to give them my money.
Dat destiny-ception
 
People will pay more to play more of a game they really enjoy.

Most grown-ups don't think twice about dropping $20-$40 on a DLC pack.

Gaming I think is becoming more gentrified now that so many gamers are adults with middle-class jobs. There's a pretty massive gulf between what those people believe is worth $20, and what penny-pinching forum dwellers think is worth $20.

It's about principle not money. People are being exploited, the community should stand up against that. But thanks for implying only the poor should be bothered by it.

Should I assume Poe's Law is in effect here and I just missed a joke?
 
I've had friends of mine ask me why the Destiny expansion was so expensive in the UK, I told them it was probably just a pricing mistake and they'll adjust it before launch, I knew it was $40, never occurred to me they would actually do a 1:1 conversion to £.

That's pretty indefensible, no other game does it that I know of and if they do they too should be called out on it. Prices for new retail games on the stores are pretty shitty over in general though I guess, so it shouldn't really be a surprise.

I remember liking Luke Smith when he was at 1up too, how times change, he might just be the fall guy for this interview and whats been decided above him to be fair, doesn't reflect well though.
 

lt519

Member
Most grown-ups don't think twice about dropping $20-$40 on a DLC pack.

I spent more on beer and pistachios tonight...

I've tried to stay out of the price discussion but they clearly don't even need to defend their $40 price tag. A lot of people are going to think it is worth it and already have voted with their wallets, a lot more will think it isn't after the first Destiny. So be it. But you're right, people on here shouldn't be telling others how to spend their money.

We're not dumb for buying a game, although flawed, that we enjoy. Give me an alternative to Destiny and I'll buy it and play it, but for now there isn't anything else like it. Borderlands is the closest but the gunplay is nowhere near as fun as Destiny's.

It's about principle not money.

Don't tell me what my principles are. I'm not going to let "principles" ruin my fun. Just because you don't think a game is worth the proposed value doesn't make it unethical...ridiculous. Just don't buy it.
 

KhaosXXI

Neo Member
I have been trying very hard to be optimistic with the future of Destiny... All of my friends have either given up and moved on or only played house of wolves because they got it with their Special Edition. I'm almost exclusively a PvE player. I was very much on the fence with buying the expansion. I was weighing my options with regards to price, how does the "story" progress, can they make PvP a better experience for someone like me, and will there be enough pleasurable PvE content.
But after this interview, I don't see Bungie receiving more money from me as of right now.
 

golem

Member
I didn't realize the Collector's Editions were already sold out.

Damn, I was actually considering buying one. No way in hell am I coughing up $80 for the digital version though. It's bizarre that they want the same price for the digital edition that comes with absolutely none of the extra goodies.

Not bizarre at all when you look at what they are doing with Destiny and how they are exploiting the playerbase. People will pay it, and in the end it is up to us to vote with our wallets.

Something gamers are actually quite bad at.
 

Raysod

Banned
I agree. I never had an issue with the pricing of this expansion, but I did have an issue with how suddenly they dropped the price of everything else combined to the price of just one of their lacking DLC packs. However, as I took a step back and looked at it from an MMO perspective it made a bit more sense as all of that content is going to be largely ignored now, and if you think of the price of their content as including subscription fees it isn't so bad. They really need to step up how much content they are delivering if they want this to remain a viable model. Once TTK comes out at $40 they are going to have a very hard time charging $20 for the DLC packs if they continue to offer as little as they do.

All of that said, what I absolutely can not get behind is forcing people to re-purchase content that they already own in order to get CE bonus items. No other MMO does that, and quite frankly it is a disgusting practice. I understand that they want this to be a new jumping in point for people, and they don't want to have to make a second physical CE that just includes the expansion, but they need to do something. This whole mess is easily fixable by offering a paid digital CE add-on pack for anyone that owns TTK. EA does this with their games, as they offer a $10 deluxe edition upgrade pack that allows anyone who bought the standard game to get the deluxe edition items. Blizzard also does the same thing with their digital CE content. There is simply no reason other than greed to force people to buy content they already own in order to get a few bonus items. I have to imagine they are going to offer some way around this by the time the game launches, but the fact that this is something that happened to begin with is quite disturbing. They either didn't see the outrage coming, or they anticipated it and didn't care. Either way it shows a lack of respect towards their loyal players.

I am going to speculate in my post now but I think that the inexperience of Bungie in developing MMO games and their choice to bring the game to last gen consoles as well are the reason that they cannot produce more (and richer) content of the game. I believe that they need to drop last gen support on Destiny 2 and use their resources to make more content for next gen.

On Activision’s part, and with the experience that Blizzard brings on the table on MMO handling/pricing, they still seem to want to market Destiny as if they try to sell it to the Call of Duty/Halo audience, or the average shooter fan, and not on an experienced/seasoned MMO player.

That is the reason that the game has virtually no story/campaign, they could have hours of story related content if they wanted, and there is a great differentiator with other MMOs at the moment.

They market Destiny from the start as a shooter and not as an MMO. The last expansion House of Wolfs was oriented to the shooter audience and not to the MMO audience. And to make thinks worse for MMO players the last expansion did not come with its own raid.

If you see the achievements that a player gets for finishing the raids, the percentage of people that actually finished the raids is really low and this maybe a factor for Bungie when they design the future of the game.

Maybe that is why they are adding more story to the game with TTK (with full voiced cinematics ha ha ha).

In the case of the collector edition of the game I really think that when they designed the concept of the product they were aiming on the players that never played Destiny.

They wanted to get a really premium/high price for the package (80 dollars) from the new players, they wanted them to be able to play with their friends from the start (level boost) and they wanted them to have some bragging items so they don’t feel behind in the loot area when comparing their armor/weapons with the exotic items of their friends.

In my eyes the new players are getting ripped off, because in the end of the day they will pay a large amount of money for content that they will never experience. Who will play the old story and strike missions or the old raid missions Vault of Glass and Crota's End (both being the best part of Destiny), when everyone will play TTK to the death for its better loot.

The solution of providing old players with different/better digital gifts than the CE does not change the issue of not informing the community of what game Destiny is and how the game will progress in the future.

There always will be the need to bring new players to the game and I cannot imagine what will happen in the community when Destiny 2 will be announced on Sept 2017.

Then Bungie will have to deal with the launch players, with the players that joined with TTK and with the completely new gamers. And if you add to the mix that Destiny 2 probably will not release on last gen consoles and all the people from 360, ps3 will have to upgrade to next gen, I believe that all of this will be crazy to manage.
 
I'm not trying to defense the price of this expansion (I think it is way overpriced).

But VoG alone was enough to me pay $60 at Destiny launch... it is in my opinion a full game inside a full game.

My money was well expended.

PS. Destiny is not a MMO but it hold well for what it is... I already preodered TKK and if they give me something like VoG again I will be happy to give them my money.

This seems a bit hyperbolic...
 
For anyone trying to compare the content of Destiny to MMOs, here are the classes Destiny and Guild Wars 2 supplied at release.

Destiny Classes
  • Hunter
  • Titan
  • Warlock
Guild Wars 2 Professions
  • Mesmers
  • Guardians
  • Necromancers
  • Rangers
  • Elementalists
  • Warriors
  • Thieves
  • Engineers
Oh and while Destiny released with only 4 "zones": Earth, Moon, Venus, and Mars. Guild Wars 2 released with the following zones. Also remember that each of those zones contained NPC quest givers and merchants. That's something Destiny couldn't be bothered with.

Gw2-World-Map-Labeled.jpg
 

border

Member
It's about principle not money. People are being exploited, the community should stand up against that. But thanks for implying only the poor should be bothered by it.

Only poor people should be bothered by it? I said nothing of the sort.

This is just a side-effect of capitalism -- prices line up with what people are willing to pay, and there is a large portion of the audience that is not that price-sensitive because they have decent income. Those people drive prices up, and low-income earners or value-seekers will either deal with it or move on.

"People are being exploited"? Who's being exploited and how? Does that not seem like a ridiculously dramatic way to complain about overpriced DLC or Collector's Edition goodies? Factory workers in China are being exploited. Americans paying 350% interest on payday loans are being exploited. Some nerd willingly buying a videogame with toys included is not being exploited.
 

Bizazedo

Member
http://m.imgur.com/VjOIcEi
So it looks like Deej is saying that Day-1 buyers will get some new "better" content than what's coming in TTK CE. Should see some more news in the weekly update on Thursday.
I appreciate how Bungie handles PR. It's like they don't know how to let the rage dissipate, they drip feed agonizing bits and pieces that just kindles the fire.

There has to be a better way, but at least it keeps me entertained at work.


LOL That's the damn emote the Hunter used during the Ghost's Ice Bucket challenge LAST YEAR.
Come the fuck on, Bungie. New, my ass.
Holy shit. It really is.
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
Yeap.

I just wanted to say VoG is better and bigger than a lot full games I already played in my life.

I could pay $60 just for it... so much fun and enjoyment.

And Destiny is not just VoG... it is a game by itself.

Bigger than a lot of full games? Come on now.
 

lt519

Member
For anyone trying to compare the content of Destiny to MMOs.

And I remember people being bored with GW2 after a reaching max level just as fast as Destiny players. You've also way oversimplified Destiny; it has a lot more going for it then just 4 zones (strikes, raids, crucible, bounties, etc). People that paid $60 and played all the base content with only one class had to of spent at least 20 hours on the game (likely a lot lot lot mroe). How is that bad value? Most games don't last 20 hours.

nvm
 
For anyone trying to compare the content of Destiny to MMOs, here are the classes Destiny and Guild Wars 2 supplied at release.

Destiny Classes
  • Hunter
  • Titan
  • Warlock
Guild Wars 2 Professions
  • Mesmers
  • Guardians
  • Necromancers
  • Rangers
  • Elementalists
  • Warriors
  • Thieves
  • Engineers
Oh and while Destiny released with only 4 "zones": Earth, Moon, Venus, and Mars. Guild Wars 2 released with the following zones. Also remember that each of those zones contained NPC quest givers and merchants. That's something Destiny couldn't be bothered with.

Gw2-World-Map-Labeled.jpg

Damn when you look at it like that, GW2 makes destiny look weak lol. Guid wars zones were huge too.

Vault of Glass is the best thing I have played in a shooter though.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Bigger than a lot of full games? Come on now.
That is true... I lot of game I played I finished in less than one hour.

VoG first run took me over 6 hours.

You can say I didn't know the mechanics but nobody knows until the next day... and I can say these game I finished in less than a hour I didn't know the mechanics too so it is a fair comparison.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Yeap.

I just wanted to say VoG is better and bigger than a lot full games I already played in my life.

I could pay $60 just for it... so much fun and enjoyment.

And Destiny is not just VoG... it is a game by itself.

vMn3g5.gif

Agreed, VoG was amazing and easily the best part of Destiny sans the community. IMO nothing has topped it. That said, Bungie could have done a better job with the DLC/expansion.
 

Grinchy

Banned
I'm so much less bothered by the $40 expansion than I am bothered by the fact that anyone who already bought the game and the other expansions automatically gets the worst deal. They know that those people are the real fans, so why not milk them?

I've purposely avoided buying any DLC for this game because I don't like the way that they build in the necessity for players to keep handing them $20 (making the weekly or daily content DLC-only). They create a false need to hand over money every time something comes up.

And now, their biggest fans, the ones who care about dance moves or emotes, have to shell out $80 for a package that contains the game and 2 DLC packs that they already paid $100 for. It's such a middle finger to them.
 

Odrion

Banned
I'm not trying to defense the price of this expansion (I think it is way overpriced).

But VoG alone was enough to me pay $60 at Destiny launch... it is in my opinion a full game inside a full game.

My money was well expended.

PS. Destiny is not a MMO but it hold well for what it is... I already preodered TKK and if they give me something like VoG again I will be happy to give them my money.

they do this because this is 95% of their audience. and really, why shouldn't they when this is 95% of their audience?
 

golem

Member
Yeap.

I just wanted to say VoG is better and bigger than a lot full games I already played in my life.

I could pay $60 just for it... so much fun and enjoyment.

And Destiny is not just VoG... it is a game by itself.

VoG is by far the high point of Destiny's design and gameplay. Its too bad that most players will never see/beat it.

After playing the expansions I am losing faith Bungie can ever reach those heights again however.
 
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