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

I actually think they mean to push us away from all the old weapons and gear in The Taken King. I kind of agree too, force me to use something else than Fatebringer 95% of the time. It'll also solve their Gjallahorn problem. They shouldn't be releasing a major expansion that still has all the Vanilla Destiny weapons as the best weapons in the game. That's just not fun anymore. I think the "Upgrade to max level for Year 1" bubble may not change to "Upgrade to max level for Year 2" for the old weapons/armor. It'll also solve the Vault Space problem as the old weapons won't hold much weight in the new expansion.

I would be pretty pissed off if I can't keep upgrading my favourite weapons with me through the new content in Year 2. Seriously. Why cut the potential weapon pool down so much for no reason? It would make VoG and CE gear irrelevant. Trials gear, irrelevant. PoE gear, irrelevant. I highly doubt they would ever do this. The point is to make better weapons that people want to use because they are actually better (with better perks and abilities), not because some damage value is arbitrarily held back. There's a reason why people were so excited they could ascend their Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence. The VoG gear is still some of the best in the game, because all the new guns they make are extremely underwhelming in comparison, atk/defense stats aside.
 
Oh how the mighty have fallen. What went wrong at Bungie?

A big part of Bungie is gone. Look at the old Halo Vidocs, most of them are gone. Marty and Joe are gone, sort of makes you wonder how the lead writer leaves and the game has no story...

House of Wolves had more story in the trailer than in the missions. They didn't even show the Queen once in the actual game.
 

Laughing Banana

Weeping Pickle
I don't get it.

If it's 40 US dollars, then shouldn't it be around 35 Euro in Europe?

Why would they just flatline the 40 in both areas? 40 dollars = 40 Euro? What kind of logic is that?
 
I would be pretty pissed off if I can't keep upgrading my favourite weapons with me through the new content in Year 2. Seriously. Why cut the potential weapon pool down so much for no reason? It would make VoG and CE gear irrelevant. Trials gear, irrelevant. PoE gear, irrelevant. I highly doubt they would ever do this. The point is to make better weapons that people want to use because they are actually better (with better perks and abilities), not because some damage value is arbitrarily held back. There's a reason why people were so excited they could ascend their Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence. The VoG gear is still some of the best in the game, because all the new guns they make are extremely underwhelming in comparison, atk/defense stats aside.

VoG weapons are more interesting than the DLC ones, kinda shocking
 
I would be pretty pissed off if I can't keep upgrading my favourite weapons with me through the new content in Year 2. Seriously. Why cut the potential weapon pool down so much for no reason? It would make VoG and CE gear irrelevant. Trials gear, irrelevant. PoE gear, irrelevant. I highly doubt they would ever do this. The point is to make better weapons that people want to use because they are actually better (with better perks and abilities), not because some damage value is arbitrarily held back. There's a reason why people were so excited they could ascend their Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence. The VoG gear is still some of the best in the game, because all the new guns they make are extremely underwhelming in comparison, atk/defense stats aside.

Because then it stops being about the loot. And you don't want it to be about the playable content, there's not much of it. If they let you keep the same damn weapons throughout next year....what's the fucking point of exotics when you have a Gjallahorn. What's the point of auto rifles or fusion rifles when you have a fatebringer. In PvP, why even have anything other than the Thorn or Last Word or Hawkmoon?

That's not fun. Using the same damn gun through new content is not fun. Maybe let us 'transmorgrify' the look of a weapon like WoW, but don't let us carry the weapon. There will be no vertical progress.

God, such a shitty system. It was so much fun doing Trials and seeing Thorn and Last word every damn match, it's also fun using the goddamn Fatebringer because no other handcannon is good enough along with a Gjallahorn because no other exotic is strong enough.
 

border

Member
I would be pretty pissed off if I can't keep upgrading my favourite weapons with me through the new content in Year 2. Seriously. Why cut the potential weapon pool down so much for no reason? It would make VoG and CE gear irrelevant. Trials gear, irrelevant. PoE gear, irrelevant. I highly doubt they would ever do this. The point is to make better weapons that people want to use because they are actually better (with better perks and abilities), not because some damage value is arbitrarily held back. There's a reason why people were so excited they could ascend their Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence. The VoG gear is still some of the best in the game, because all the new guns they make are extremely underwhelming in comparison, atk/defense stats aside.

Yes, they really just need to get off their asses and make better weapons. But what could be better than a Fatebringer? What could be better than a Gjallarhorn? I don't really know.
 
Am I missing something? As someone who put 300 hours into the game I don't feel cheated by this release at all. 3 dance emotes aren't a huge deal, and I'm perfectly happy with dropping 40 bucks on an entire new world, several new strikes, and a new raid.

Honestly, it feels like most of the people on here are getting offended on behalf of the hardcore Destiny players who are perfectly happy with the value proposition of the new expansion

As somebody who loved the game until I realized how crappy the second xpac was, I have to disagree. I've stopped playing all together and was really hoping for a reason to come back to the game I used to love. I just don't see it.
 

bgbball31

Member
I've heard that House of Wolves is really, really good. I want to buy it. I can't.

If I buy it now, I would be spending $35 on the expansion pass and then $40 on The Taken King. I may as well wait and buy the collectors edition for $5 more at this point.

That said, if The Taken King is bad, Bungie doesn't get any extra money from me instead of $80. I kind of hope that happens at this point.
 

lt519

Member
I would be pretty pissed off if I can't keep upgrading my favourite weapons with me through the new content in Year 2. Seriously. Why cut the potential weapon pool down so much for no reason? It would make VoG and CE gear irrelevant. Trials gear, irrelevant. PoE gear, irrelevant. I highly doubt they would ever do this. The point is to make better weapons that people want to use because they are actually better (with better perks and abilities), not because some damage value is arbitrarily held back. There's a reason why people were so excited they could ascend their Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence. The VoG gear is still some of the best in the game, because all the new guns they make are extremely underwhelming in comparison, atk/defense stats aside.

You both are right, the outcry would be deafening unless they provide us with new weapons that are just as fun. How some games have done it in the past is they introduce new weapons and the old ones aren't upgrade-able but can re-drop at the new level. I think this is better than just grinding some materials to upgrade old weapons and then feeling done after a week. And they may artificially make the new guns better through some perks such that the old weapons are useless anyway. I have a feeling the new enemies won't be trackable by Wolfpack rounds in their Taken form (;

From a design standpoint it just makes no sense to keep rolling out expansions with inferior weapons and exotics and having your player base stick with the same thing because eventually that is going to get tiresome (it already has for me and I find myself using inferior weapons just for variety). New weapon classes may outclass old ones too. The old gear would still be relevant for all Year 1 stuff. I just have this hunch that using VoG weapons forever is not how they envisioned year one to play out.

At a minimum your Year 1 gear will be useless until you've finished all of TTK content. Maybe you can only upgrade old exotics once you've beaten the new content/raid. They started that idea with Etheric Light but it ended up being much easier to obtain than I think the planned. I pretty much had every weapon maxed that I wanted by the second week of HoW.
 
Because then it stops being about the loot. And you don't want it to be about the playable content, there's not much of it. If they let you keep the same damn weapons throughout next year....what's the fucking point of exotics when you have a Gjallahorn. What's the point of auto rifles or fusion rifles when you have a fatebringer. In PvP, why even have anything other than the Thorn or Last Word or Hawkmoon?

That's not fun. Using the same damn gun through new content is not fun. Maybe let us 'transmorgrify' the look of a weapon like WoW, but don't let us carry the weapon. There will be no vertical progress.

God, such a shitty system. It was so much fun doing Trials and seeing Thorn and Last word every damn match, it's also fun using the goddamn Fatebringer because no other handcannon is good enough along with a Gjallahorn because no other exotic is strong enough.

Then they should make better weapons, and harder content to reflect that. No reason in reducing the weapon pool, and Exotic is an Exotic. I mean, if they come up with Mythic weapons or something, that's one thing. Or weapon fusing. Or upgrade modules that have a chance of failing and a limited number of modules can be applied per piece of gear. Or, anything really. I don't want to be stuck with a "better" Hand Cannon that is in most ways actually worse than a Fatebringer save for it's ATK stat just because they want to have "new" guns.
 

P44

Member
Yes, they really just need to get off their asses and make better weapons. But what could be better than a Fatebringer? What could be better than a Gjallarhorn? I don't really know.

They need to be brought into line so we don't end up with ridiculous weapons or just not using season 2 weapons. The worst possible outcome in my view is that there is no year 2 etheric light equivalent, and we just shed weapons because fuck it. In your normal MMO, gear changing over time doesn't matter, but in an fps, x gun can feel completely different to shoot than y gun. For that reason I would hate to see year 1 gear just left behind.
 

Ramirez

Member
The VoG weapons are popular, because much like Gjaller, they're OP as fuck compared to any other weapon in the game. Time to inject some new blood into the game, no clue why people want to keep using the same 3 guns.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
Eurogamer: I'm not going to mention them again. I can't get them.

Luke Smith: But you can if you buy the Collector's Edition.

Eurogamer: I'm not going to buy the game and the two DLCs all over again.

Luke Smith: Okay, but first I want to poke at you on this a little bit.

Eurogamer: Poke at me?

Luke Smith: You're feeling anxious because you want this exclusive content but you don't know yet how much you want it. The notion of spending this money is making you anxious, I can see it -

Eurogamer: I do want them. I would buy them -

Luke Smith: If I fired up a video right now and showed you the emotes you would throw money at the screen.

Eurogamer: What I'm saying is that fan frustration is not because they don't understand the proposition. It comes regardless of how cool the exclusive content is. The frustration - and mine as a fan - is that the method of acquiring it requires me to re-buy content I bought a year ago.

Luke Smith: [Long pause] It's about value. The player's assessment of the value of the content.

This....is fucking nasty.

Real shady.
 

P44

Member
The VoG weapons are popular, because much like Gjaller, they're OP as fuck compared to any other weapon in the game. Time to inject some new blood into the game, no clue why people want to keep using the same 3 guns.

Make them un-OP, but let us keep upgrading I say.
 
Then they should make better weapons, and harder content to reflect that. No reason in reducing the weapon pool, and Exotic is an Exotic. I mean, if they come up with Mythic weapons or something, that's one thing. Or weapon fusing. Or upgrade modules that have a chance of failing and a limited number of modules can be applied per piece of gear. Or, anything really. I don't want to be stuck with a "better" Hand Cannon that is in most ways actually worse than a Fatebringer save for it's ATK stat just because they want to have "new" guns.

That's the thing, they had a chance to do that with HoW. Lets look at the exotics-
Lord of Wolves-Shitty unique perk, worse than other shotguns because it's not hitscan, and in turn there's nothing redeeming about it other than it's look

QueenBreakers Bow-charge up sniper. It has a cute gimmick with the changeable scopes, but again it's not something you'd take over a Black Hammer or Efrideets Spear, or LDR for PvP.

Dregs Promise-Just complete crap.

I have no faith in Bungie in terms of designing better exotics. If gjallahorn is the apex of what they have for a powerful exotic, than it's all downhill from there. If Fatebringer is the apex of a legendary handcannon that just has amazing utility...than it's downhill from there.

Make them un-OP, but let us keep upgrading I say.
Then what happens is that people just reroll weapons until they get near identical perks or even better perks on Hand Cannons and Scout Rifles and well...there's still no reason to get other weapons.
 
I've heard that House of Wolves is really, really good. I want to buy it. I can't.

If I buy it now, I would be spending $35 on the expansion pass and then $40 on The Taken King. I may as well wait and buy the collectors edition for $5 more at this point.

That said, if The Taken King is bad, Bungie doesn't get any extra money from me instead of $80. I kind of hope that happens at this point.

You can get the disc version that has everything for ~60 when it releases.
 

z3phon

Member
Nothing I can say that hasn't been said already by many in the thread. It's such a damn shame because Bungie created such a polished game and Destiny had so much potential to be a truly incredible game.
It almost feels like their trying so hard to make everyone hate them, to test how much they can get away with before they drive the Destiny IP in to the ground.
I love the game but I cant justify buying the expansion.
Am I missing something? As someone who put 300 hours into the game I don't feel cheated by this release at all. 3 dance emotes aren't a huge deal, and I'm perfectly happy with dropping 40 bucks on an entire new world, several new strikes, and a new raid.
Is it really a new open world (patrol) or just few new maps on a new location?
Also I might be the only one who feels this way but 1 new raid is just not enough per DLC let alone a supposed major expansion.
 

FStop7

Banned
This game and this interview really put a crimp in my scrotum. The interview really just reeks of arrogance and the sort of 'we know better' attitude that ended up crippling the Xbox One launch.

Bungie's had a "we know best" thing going on forever, and it's served them pretty well - mostly. Even now, Destiny is apparently a big commercial success though it seems to be coming at the cost of a lot of the good will of the core fans... it'll be interesting to see if how it plays out in the long term.
 

Skux

Member
WP5ZwpS.png

It's cheaper to buy a whole new game lol
 

lt519

Member
Sadly their way of making "harder content" is waves of yellow enemies and artificially inflated health. If they are going to do that and then bump the damage output of all the new weapons they mine as well not make the old ones upgrade-able. The only solution is to force all new gear on us or create new weapon perks that are super useful against new sets of enemies. i.e. like I said before Wolfpack rounds can't track Taken enemies but maybe there is a new Rocket Laucher that is heatseeking (maybe that doesn't work against Vex), etc. I don't have much faith in their ability to re-design the entire game around new perks for TTK so I'm guessing the solution is artificial difficulty rendering the older weapons useless. If they release TTK with only 5 new exotic weapons and they are all garbage I can't see the allure of loot keeping me around as long as vanilla Destiny did.
 

P44

Member
Then what happens is that people just reroll weapons until they get near identical perks or even better perks on Hand Cannons and Scout Rifles and well...there's still no reason to get other weapons.

Why should year 1 snipers have the same perk pool as year 2 snipers for example? Change the pools from base, to TDB to HoW so each output of weapons has its own character rather than changing snipers entirely etc.

On top of that, with the Lord of Wolves we've seen our first support weapon in a sense. Plenty of room to expand in that direction I think.
 

Wizman23

Banned
Let's also remember that Xbox players will be paying the same price as PS players for less content just to add to all of the fun in here.
 
Why should year 1 snipers have the same perk pool as year 2 snipers for example? Change the pools from base, to TDB to HoW so each output of weapons has its own character rather than changing snipers entirely etc.

On top of that, with the Lord of Wolves we've seen our first support weapon in a sense. Plenty of room to expand in that direction I think.

As a support weapon, it doesn't do much. A Destiny 'pro' did a comparison video and at the most it was a 1-2 second difference in regen, and at worse it was a .5 second difference or so. If it's a support weapon, it literally does nothing.

And they did change the pool of perks, but for scout rifles you can still get-Full Auto, Explosive Ammo, Firefly(Which would make a scout rifle better than Vision of Confluence.)

With Hand Cannons you can still get Explosive ammo, just not Firefly. For Sniper Rifles you want to get a scope that gives you more aim assist(With other perks being flavor.)

There aren't enough perks to really make you want to decide between others
 

lt519

Member
Why should year 1 snipers have the same perk pool as year 2 snipers for example? Change the pools from base, to TDB to HoW so each output of weapons has its own character rather than changing snipers entirely etc.

On top of that, with the Lord of Wolves we've seen our first support weapon in a sense. Plenty of room to expand in that direction I think.

Good point, I think the other option is to make the new character sub-classes more effective as attacks/status effecting. All the attacks in the old sub-classes by the end were only powerful enough to kill 1, maybe 2, yellow enemies. They were essentially useless when you were fighting 3-4 yellows at time. Make the new sub-classes the focus of content and you no longer need people to spam 30 Gjallahorn rockets. Make the new weapons play off the sub-classes and stack the abilities. I could actually see this being an option the more I think about it. It's an entire re-think of their encounter philosophy but they've been working on this for a year, so maybe it'll happen.
 

border

Member
As a support weapon, it doesn't do much. A Destiny 'pro' did a comparison video and at the most it was a 1-2 second difference in regen, and at worse it was a .5 second difference or so. If it's a support weapon, it literally does nothing.

Well obviously they just need to lean harder into the concept of support weapons. How about "Precision kills have a chance to grant Weapons of Light to your party"?
 
Bungie's had a "we know best" thing going on forever, and it's served them pretty well - mostly. Even now, Destiny is apparently a big commercial success though it seems to be coming at the cost of a lot of the good will of the core fans... it'll be interesting to see if how it plays out in the long term.

Hopefully it will bite them in the ass. Then maybe Destiny 2 will actually be even close to what it's advertised to be.

I've played the shit out of Destiny and its two expansions. Mainly as I got the limited edition so I already paid for the expansions. It can be a lot of fun with friends, though now with ESO out, we all have a real mmo experience to play that actually has a lot of content.

Will not be purchasing TTK. I was already pissed about the extra content locked behind a collectors edition of all 4 pieces of content, but this interview just seals it. Bungie is a shell of its former self. Anybody who actually cared for the community left with 343i or went other places.

This isn't just about a lack of content or story. That is all opinionated stances. This is objectively straight up shady and immoral business practices, and they shouldn't receive a penny from us.
 

TsuWave

Member
Then they should make better weapons, and harder content to reflect that. No reason in reducing the weapon pool, and Exotic is an Exotic. I mean, if they come up with Mythic weapons or something, that's one thing. Or weapon fusing. Or upgrade modules that have a chance of failing and a limited number of modules can be applied per piece of gear. Or, anything really. I don't want to be stuck with a "better" Hand Cannon that is in most ways actually worse than a Fatebringer save for it's ATK stat just because they want to have "new" guns.

i agree, i remember when the dark below dropped and I went into hard crota hoping to get the "new handcannon" which i had assumed would've been amazing and > fatebringer, then word of crota dropped and my reaction after reading the perks was "hold on, lemme read this again because besides being ugly it can't be this fucking terrible?"

I actually kept using my 300 atk capped fatebringer instead of using the new 331 atk weapons, and if they hadn't introduced a way to ascend it to 365 with house of wolves I'd probably still be using the 300 fatebringer because the new weapons are so poor
 

shem935

Banned
I'm glad I'm not OCD about collecting things in destiny
I totally am
because the extra stuff you can't get if you already own the game might cause me to rebuy the game
I might. Probably not. But...
 

T-0800

Member
Vote with your wallet people. I know that I'll probably end up getting it pending post release impressions. I've logged over 100 hours and my son is over 400 and neither of us are bored yet.
 

StUnNeR H2K

Member
And I think this is the biggest problem right now. I spent $90 on the Digital Guardian Edition 9 months ago, and have gotten just under 30 hours worth of gameplay from it. Now that I know that in 2016, I'll be able to get all of the 2015-2016 content cheaper and be able to play it in one chunk instead of via drip-feed, why should I even care about TTK?

Bungie is essentially telling people, "don't buy our game now, wait a year for the collection edition". That ain't a winning sales proposition.

EDIT: Especially considering how crowded for gaming the end of this year is. I'm already spending $120 on Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3 guaranteed.

I've put in over 700 hrs of gameplay, and the sad thing is I've only experienced probably around 50 hrs of unique gameplay. I did the same thing and purchased the $90 version of the game at release. I paid $70 for Dragon Age Inquisition and experienced around 200 hrs of unique gameplay (aka not exploring the same area multiple times then in reverse). The price points are like this is a big open world RPG, but it's not.

I love Destiny, and especially Bungie's shooters but holy crap... some the Halo campaigns had more replay value then the missions in Destiny. Not to mention a much more fleshed out story.
 
I don't get it.

If it's 40 US dollars, then shouldn't it be around 35 Euro in Europe?

Why would they just flatline the 40 in both areas? 40 dollars = 40 Euro? What kind of logic is that?
The same logic that suggests selling three missions with no new content and a raid for $20 makes sense. And then doing it again, makes sense. And then selling a third DLC for almost full game sequel price, makes sense.
 

patchday

Member
I knew they were going to charge $40 for the Taken King. Maybe it will be by far worth the price especially for the dedicated gaf fanbase, etc.

But I most likely will not burn anytime on it. The last dlc was fun for bout 2 weeks. Now I only log on if Xur sells a new dlc item that week. I log on, buy the item, and then logout asap to play something else

It's a fun game don't get me wrong but I personally get tired of running the treadmill. All the dlcs do is push up the level cap and force us to level up *all* of our equipment. Just feels awfully tedious.
 

OuterLimits

Member
£40? That's shocking. FFXIV Heavensward can be had for £29 on PS4 and that's an actual proper full on expansion that's had real effort put into it. Not the glorified DLC that's been coming out for this.

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you have to pay a monthly fee just to play FFXIV though?
 

border

Member
I think the problem stems from 2 completely speculative but not unrealistic assumptions:

1. Retailers will not buy a boxed game that requires the purchase of some other boxed product. This rarely happens in the console space; I cannot think of a time that it happened other than the first Halo 2 DLC map pack that was sold at retail. In the PC space you see it a little more frequently, but only with franchises that are proven to be sales juggernauts (WoW, The Sims). Therefore Bungie/Activision has to bundle Vanilla Destiny + Dark Below + House of Wolves in with The Taken King.

2. Retailers will not accept being undercut by digital download games. Therefore, the digital TTK CE has to be the same price as the retail TTK CE. If Bungie were to offer a $60 digital download of TTK CE, Gamestop would freak out. The fact that the TTK CE is a Gamestop exclusive is already an indication that retailer interest in a CE is pretty low.

Thus you end up with a situation where TTK CE has to be $80 in both digital and physical form, despite the fact that physical owners get way more bang for their buck. I wish that Bungie had held their ground on this one though.
 

StUnNeR H2K

Member
Hmm seems like I should still stay away from Destiny...forever.

Just wait for the end of the 10 year deal and they will bundle it all up for $60 and give you extra stuff that those who were dedicated over the 10 years don't have. This way they also suck more money from the loyal fans.

Also I just read the full interview. Props for sticking with your price point but be a little less of a jerk about it.

I'm really worked up over this... Probably because I'm so disappointed in Bungie, though this is probably a Activision deal they have no control over.
 

Lothars

Member
It's true.

MoKHks9.png


People who play know that's pretty indicative of how much I'm into Destiny. Don't even want to post how many hours I've sunk in, lol, but it's staggering. But Bungie fucked this up big time, and the regular group of people I play with all feel the same. They've got a hell of a lot of explaining and apologizing to do before Sept 15.
See I don't really get that how they fucked it up. I think the collectors edition stuff is the only thing I am seeing that's a fuck up but the expansion in general sounds really good and I don't believe they announced it all. so why are your group so pissed off about it?
 

KageMaru

Member
I really didn't think Bungie could have handled the DLC any worse. All this interview has taught me is if I want Destiny 2, it's best to wait at least a year after the initial launch to get the real game. I never say this, but I hope Destiny 2 bombs with the way they've handled the DLC.
 

Two Words

Member
See I don't really get that how they fucked it up. I think the collectors edition stuff is the only thing I am seeing that's a fuck up but the expansion in general sounds really good and I don't believe they announced it all. so why are your group so pissed off about it?

I think people wanted this expansion to be a game-changing expansion. So far it just sounds like an additive expansion. Maybe they will show things that change that, but it sounds like a bigger, more expensive expansion similar to the first two so far.
 

Lothars

Member
I think people wanted this expansion to be a game-changing expansion. So far it just sounds like an additive expansion. Maybe they will show things that change that, but it sounds like a bigger, more expensive expansion similar to the first two so far.
I guess so but I don't know how anyone could have honestly thought it would be much revolutionary with them having to support the older consoles.

I do hope it has a quite a bit of content though.
 
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