I'm not familiar with other shooters.
What's the expectation for constant content deliveries like? Hard to compare with annualized titles like CoD for obvious reasons, but do fans of other games generally demand "give me more or we quit" a few weeks after anything is delivered?
I ask because it feels like this is probably the most conceptually challenging part of the game's Frankenstein genre for Bungie. It's a FPS with top of the line production values but people expect MMO-tier content pipelines.
In a way I suppose it's a positive. I mean normally people are just done with a game whenever they do everything, whereas we continue playing the same thing over and over for fun. But it's just funny how some other games can be played over and over for fun (people are still playing Melee, Black Ops 2, any fighting game etc) years after release just cause they like it with zero expectation of new content being delivered.
I guess as a developer I'd be happy people are constantly asking me to give them more. But the flip side is, even if they drop 17 Raids in an expansion this community has been conditioned to always feel unsatisfied with the amount of content and ask for more as soon as they burn through it.
Depends on what you look at.
Diablo 3 has seasons and about 2-3 major patches each year. Seasons allow you the opportunity to unlock cosmetic items and try out new legendaries, they happen..since they were introduced last august, it's gone through 4 seasons, so that's about 3 seasons a year on average? So seasons add Legendaries, which are new ways to play the game. The character you make for a season is fresh, no shared gear until the season is over. There's about...2 major patches that came out since Reaper of Souls? Latest one having Kanai cube which radically changed the way to play. But the content is plentiful enough that collecting Legendaries and mix/matching them along with adventure mode makes replayability very high.
WoW....tends to have some major patches per expansion. Warlords came out November, and the last major patch was...4 months ago. WoO only had 2 major patches. So for WoO, you have a huge amount of content and end game raids, locations, and things to do. The first patch was about 4 months in, and included a new raid, class balancing, alot of new gear, etc...then 4 months later was the final patch which again included the same. This also includes PvP Seasons which has its own gear(That isn't just reskinned).
The huge difference between WoW and Destiny however, is the amount of content that existed before, so for new players who still want to experience new things in the game have a catalogue of things to do.
In Destiny...since they remove old armor sets and weapon sets(IE Vanguard gear, crucible drops, etc.), it's not really comparable. If they had a transmog feature...
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I wanna see how Bungie does it. It's not as easy as releasing some new missions that will be completed in a day. They definitely can't put in bulky amounts of content either. They CAN go back and remix the raids, but seeing as how Destiny 2 will be next year(If they keep to schedule), it'd be a waste to remix the raids UNLESS all the current content is able to be played in year 2. I mean, you saw how fast the Arena was abandoned from HoW. It's a shame really, they didn't offer new stuff for the arena.
That's another thing, the abandoning of old stuff. In WoW you could always go back and do old legendary quests or collect armor to put on display. It was possible to solo things once you got a high enough level. Then they introduced Transmog, and the amount of content possibilities that opened up in regards to doing old content to get a certain look...it was a good move.
....So back to Destiny. It's a year old and some change. The Halloween event was great, if they can keep that up, that creates a sort of content loop that's easily to repeat each year and add to it. But...at the same time by removing old armor sets, nullifying old content, it removes potential content to do in the game. If Bungie introduced Transmog, that would be huge. If they let you obtain old armor/weapon sets, again that'd go a long way to giving players content, more importantly old players will be able to feel that this content is something to do.
What Destiny does have for it, is a good gameplay loop that's addicting. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up for debate. I'm not going to give my opinions on it, but they've definitely created something that feels like it's close to being so damn good.
That was a huge post.
