(This post is NOT THE BUNGIE WEEKLY UPDATE. It is satire, please don't read it if you are easily offended.)
This week at Bungie, we had a great time at E3, revealing a host of exciting information about our forthcoming major expansion. We hope you are as excited as we are, its going to be a wild ride!
We appreciate you all have a lot of questions, so I hope we can address some of them here. On to business!
Money on the Table
We know a lot of you are wondering about the Taken King SKU split, particularly how we came to the decision of limiting exclusive items to the collectors edition, which in turn causes you, our loyal fans, to have to buy the same content a second time. Luke has already conveyed a lot of our thinking, but to further clarify I've got hold of our head of marketing, Tayke Yurmunny, to give a little further insight into the process:
"Well it really comes down to our corporate philosophy of ensuring we don't leave any money on the table. Let me expand..."
"A key concept in product marketing is market segmentation, there are often buyers out there who can and are willing to pay more. Of course, they won't pay if they aren't getting anything extra, so we have to give them unique features that are genuinely desirable. If we were to simply price the goods at a level which everyone saw as reasonable value, we'd be leaving 'money on the table'. This would be a disaster as we really like money."
Thanks Tayke! I really hope that gave you a glimpse into our thinking, it definitely captures the mood of the studio.
My Guardian, you Look Striking!
Can't say too much, but I can exclusively reveal the names of the forthcoming strikes in The Taken King. I think you may be impressed by how many we are adding!
Rial 'Slived Eht.
Atorc fo Lliw.
Feiht Wodahs Eht.
Stip Gninommus Eht.
Suxen Eht.
Nur S'retniw.
||| EaV Surebrec.
I hope you are as excited by these new strikes as the team and I. Who says Bungie doesn't understand value!?
It's Getting 'Emote'ional
We are always listening, and we've taken on board your feedback. Thus I'm pleased to announce a new emote for all our year one players. We call it the 'skinner box', and its a remarkable innovation in our emote technology. First you have find a piece of cover and run up behind it, then use the sit button. When you do this, your guardian will lower their trousers and prostrate themselves over the piece of cover. At which point, a vandal, lets call him Luke, will run up and simulate non consensual sex with your character.
We are pretty sure you are going to love it!*
A Special Treat for our European Friends
We know how much our European Guardians love the game, so we are excited to announce that we are giving you the opportunity to thank Bungie & Activision by donating 50% more for the European versions of the collectors edition! Bobby Kotick wanted to thank you personally, so here are a few words.
'Thanks for the la ferrari you socialist shitlords.'
Weapon Balance
We've know there has been a lot of feedback on weapon balance, and our thinking has evolved, so here is our weapon balance designer, Fayled Stats, to give a little more colour.
"After the success of our autorifle/shotgun rebalance, we took some time to let the dust settle to see where the meta has quiesced. There has been a lot of talk about Thorn, but perhaps one of the most startling stats we've seen is that Thorn/TLW/Red Death is only being used in 1% of pvp engagements. It seems that you are all really digging your shotguns!"
"Now we know that the last re-balance to moderate the desirability of your previous favourite weapon class, the autorifle, wasn't unanimously welcomed, so we've decided to take a different tack this time."
"With the next patch shotguns are getting a 500% range increase and 200% damage increase to be more in line with shotgun range in the real world. After all, people don't shoot pigeons with them from 2m, so why should you loyal Guardians!"
"We were also a little bit disappointed at the lack of primary weapon usage, so to test the waters and encourage you to try them, we've decided to give thorn a small buff. When you hit a target, they are now immobilised for 30 seconds whilst their super energy is drained. We hope this will encourage you to try this unpopular weapon category."
"Finally, despite our previous adjustments, we are hearing continuing complaints about the competitiveness of autorifles, so we are pleased to announce that autorifles no longer do critical damage."
"Happy hunting Guardians, we know these are the balance changes you have been crying out for!"
Embrace Your Inner Olympian
In recognition of Guardians outstanding efforts in long distance circuit running events, we will now be awarding Gold, Silver & Bronze medals at the end of the Skolas encounter. These will based on distance covered by your Guardian relative to your fireteam. To compensate for this additional drop, elemental primaries will be receiving a small decrease to their drop rate (987.8%) to ensure item acquisition matches our long term vision for the game.
Get those running spikes on!
Vault Space
Increasing vault space is technically very hard, after all, all xbox 360 & ps3 games were renown for their tiny inventories. We also know you don't like deleting weapons that sometimes take weeks to aquire. However we are going to make things easier for you, by formally announcing something that you may have long guessed at! That's right, we are never going to buff the nechrochasm. This means you can delete it right now and potentially free several slots in your vault!
The razor witted amongst you, may also have noticed that we have already taken steps with vault space by ensuring that you wouldn't want to keep any Prison of Elders drops, and I can reveal that this initiative has been incredibly successful. 98% of all queens weapons have been sharded! There are a few more Guardians running around with 598 str than we anticipated, but we think you will probably delete that gear soon as who needs Prison of Elders buffs when you aren't doing the Prison anymore?
Additionally, I can exclusively announce that we are going to continue to 'accidently' nerf the Mythoclast until it reaches parity with our vision for exclusive raid weapons. We are already a long way along that path, having nerfed the accuracy again, and you can rest assured this will continue! If you want to shard it now you will be freeing up vault space and saving yourself time later!
Trials of Osiris
At Bungie, we are all about partnership, and super happy that the Trials of Osiris has allowed our twitch community to fully monetise their play time by charging Guardians for carries to The Lighthouse.
In light of this act of generosity on our part, we are going to institute a revenue split whereby streamers must pay donate 60% of their Trials generated revenue subscriptions/donations to the studio. Given the popularity of this service, I am also pleased to announce that we are going to institute an in game payments system to futher streamline the process.
Furthermore we are going to create an exclusive 'twitch carry' exotic emblem that is awarded for those who were carried by any of our partner streamers. It's called the 'stretcher bearer', and when equipped, all the wearer needs to do is stay back behind cover for all in game encounters, and should their team mates die they will be automatically revived after 2 seconds. Be careful not to land any shots though guardians - if you secure a kill the buff is disabled for 5 minutes!
Anyway that's all for this week, buckle up as the run up to The Taken King launch is going to be one hell of a ride! And remember, we are listening!
n.b. Playstation exclusive, may be unlocked sometime after the heat death of the universel We still love you xboxers, just not as much as your sibbling!
