Reddit: The gutting of Destiny's story

qa_engineer said:
I like your avatar. Is that Rahool's true face? The trolol face.
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Yes it is but i cannot take credit for this. Someone had posted this in the OT thread for Destiny.

So now we know what the content is, more or less, in the upcoming paid expansions, are you guys still on board? For me, I would neither either 1) way more content and loot or 2) some clarification about the story. I really hope that the reaction will give people more pause and give reviewers some time to experience the DLC and pass a fair verdict. As much as 404 says that DLC figures will be watched closely, it looks like its mostly to decide if more shit will be shoveled down our throats rather than an actual attempt to fix the larger issues with the game.
 
AEREC said:
They've already sold a ton, I really doubt they care that less than 5% of thier user base is upset about the lack of story.
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2 things:

a) source on the 5%?

b) The *lack* of a story, isn't the problem, at least not for me. The problem is that it is, without contest, the worst story in any game I have ever played.

This includes flash games and half-translated Korean MMOs.

Maulik said:
Yes it is but i cannot take credit for this. Someone had posted this in the OT thread for Destiny.

So now we know what the content is, more or less, in the upcoming paid expansions, are you guys still on board? For me, I would neither either 1) way more content and loot or 2) some clarification about the story. I really hope that the reaction will give people more pause and give reviewers some time to experience the DLC and pass a fair verdict. As much as 404 says that DLC figures will be watched closely, it looks like its mostly to decide if more shit will be shoveled down our throats rather than an actual attempt to fix the larger issues with the game.
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Yeah, I'm on board. Part of that is that I'm too lazy to get a refund for my Digital Guardian edition, and part of it is my sense of (morbid) curiosity. I want to see where they go with this.

I am not, however, currently planning on buying any additional content, either DLC or sequels.
 
AEREC said:
They've already sold a ton, I really doubt they care that less than 5% of thier user base is upset about the lack of story.
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They should care that a lot of less hardcore players are dropping off from the game. Half of my FL have stopped playing past 20 (if they got there at all) and I think that's where they'll shed a lot of interested players because of the way they structured progress beyond that. I don't see DLC bringing many back, either, as the repetition and boredom sets in well before that point for quite a few I've talked to. The lack of story pales in comparison to the lack of variety in progression options that feel fun and not blatantly grindy.
 
Poodlestrike said:
2 things:

a) source on the 5%?

b) The *lack* of a story, isn't the problem, at least not for me. The problem is that it is, without contest, the worst story in any game I have ever played.

This includes flash games and half-translated Korean MMOs.



Yeah, I'm on board. Part of that is that I'm too lazy to get a refund for my Digital Guardian edition, and part of it is my sense of (morbid) curiosity. I want to see where they go with this.

I am not, however, currently planning on buying any additional content, either DLC or sequels.
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My ass.
 
This sounds like the Halo 2 debacle all over again.

Publisher wants to ensure success of 10-year investment in single IP; force developer to cut story and content to be included in the sequels/DLC so people fall into the trap of, "Oh, they learned their lesson and added what should have been in the first game! Let's go buy it."
 
Maulik said:
Yes it is but i cannot take credit for this. Someone had posted this in the OT thread for Destiny.

So now we know what the content is, more or less, in the upcoming paid expansions, are you guys still on board? For me, I would neither either 1) way more content and loot or 2) some clarification about the story. I really hope that the reaction will give people more pause and give reviewers some time to experience the DLC and pass a fair verdict. As much as 404 says that DLC figures will be watched closely, it looks like its mostly to decide if more shit will be shoveled down our throats rather than an actual attempt to fix the larger issues with the game.
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I think what pisses me off about Destiny is that fans and Bungie expect everyone to be paying for the dlc too. I generally don't buy dlc and I shouldn't have to buy it to get a more complete game. It should have a sufficient amount of content to begin with. It's weird that a lot of people are saying that they hope they rectify some issues in the dlc. But I'm not paying another 30 quid or whatever it is to see improvements that should of been there in the vanilla game. Some of which were promised in gameplay trailers like what that guy above posted for example.
 
META said:
This sounds like the Halo 2 debacle all over again.

Publisher wants to ensure success of 10-year investment in single IP; force developer to cut story and content to be included in the sequels/DLC so people fall into the trap of, "Oh, they learned their lesson and added what should have been in the first game! Let's go buy it."
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Except Halo 2 was pretty much complete (and excellent) at launch.
 
My prediction for the first DLC: beards, moon warthogs, half of the missing content, and the sense from Bungie that they are somehow doing us a favor.
 
Your Character in Destiny is a lot like Fry in Futurama. He's in the future in a whole new world he knows nothing about. Futurama took several years to make it so that Fry was a knowledgable citizen of te future that didn't need things explained. Destiny treats you the same way after 5 story missions and just stops explaining stuff to you.
 
Two Words said:
Your Character in Destiny is a lot like Fry in Futurama. He's in the future in a whole new world he knows nothing about. Futurama took several years to make it so that Fry was a knowledgable citizen of te future that didn't need things explained. Destiny treats you the same way after 5 story missions and just stops explaining stuff to you.
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What's really obnoxious about it is that the narrative pretends that they *did* explain everything to you. Like, your character seems to know what's going on, but you, the player, are never informed.

META said:
But the story ended anti-climatically. Something which Bungie heard a lot of derision about.

I agree though, they still had an excellent game. Why?

Joe Staten.
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Eh. That's just a cliffhanger (which is, ironically, the definition of a climatic ending). Totally different scenario than Destiny, which is anticlimax personified.

And agreed that Joe Staten's departure seems to have been a key point in all this.
 
Story wise...

More or even bookend cinematics for each mission and NPCs in the game world would have went a long ways in improving the the storytelling. Really shocked by what was given to us.

I was concerned with the story considering even though Bungie has always been tight-lipped on their campaign stories before release they still tend to release "story" trailers and whatnot to hype the game. Unless I am mistaken there were none before or after release.

Gameplay wise...

Maybe even more shocking than the story issue is the lack of vehicles whether transport or combat oriented. The game has four major fairly large areas which are populated with only a magically appearing sparrow, the pike which is seemingly the same as the sparrow only equipped with turrets, and the interceptor (only available on one planet).

All that said, I still love the game and that classic Bungie combat shines though at least for me but I have always enjoyed playing the Halo campaigns over and over with the higher difficulty the better. Destiny sorta builds on that with progression based gameplay in difficulty, leveling your character + weapons, and loot wise.
 
Sorry but I find some things wrong here:

lifeexpectancy said:
"It's popular to hate Destiny, so I hate it too", the thread.
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Sure there is people "hating" Destiny. I don't. I like it, a lot, but the flaws of the game are pretty obvious and most of the people can see how this game can be improved (To no say, get finished).

lifeexpectancy said:
Guys, who gives a fuck if the story is coherent. I don't even pay attention to the story in well over 90% of the games I play, and the vast majority of people are like that. They just want to pick up a game and play it.
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Emm.. where do you get this stats? I'm not asking an Oscar worthy script but here we got something that ANY of us could write in, 30 minutes. That's unnaceptable. This is the most preordered game of all time. So it's the most "I don't know what I'm buying" game of all time. Yes, this is in part our fault, because we believen in Bungie, we loved the beta(When they said that is only the "surface").

lifeexpectancy said:
The gameplay is repetitive because it borrows too much from the MMO sphere. MMOs are repetitive as fuck. I mean like hundreds of hours of doing the same goddamn thing just to skill up a trade or a faction or whatever. HUNDREDS of hours of repetition.
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Sorry but the grind you need you do between level 20-26 I didn't see it in WoW, FFXIV and GW2.(Maybe you know more MMOs out there).

When you reach max level in FFXIV, you are geared enough to make the first tier of endgame content. New dungeons, trials and raids. So when you discover NEW content, you are gearing up to make the next tier of Dungeons, trials and raids. Then again, you get NEW content, and get geared for the next patch expansion.

The same with GW2. The dungeons are totally doable in Greens/yellows. And when you complete them, get tokents to buy new armor. You don't need to grind to do end game content.

In WoW again, you have several tiers or dungeons and Raids (I've played in the WOTLC and CATA era. Don't know if that changed) . So when you finish the main campaing you are geared enough to do endgame dungeons, and the first set of raids(Naxx, Onix), then Ulduar, then TOC, then ICC.

In Destiny with the bullshit stat(Light) make almost imposible to complete anything if you are below 1 level, so to complete de Raid in a normal way you need to be level 26. This is like in WoW, the only thing beetween max level and any Raid, were ICC 25 Heroic. Is (almost) imposible to complete and you need to farm icc tokens in the most boring ways. But at least when I do the Dungeons of TOC, i get GEAR for the raid TOC. When I complete dungeons for ICC, I get gear for the raid ICC.
 
Maulik said:
So now we have both Titanfall and Destiny out there. Which of the two do you think bungled their handling of SP worse?
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well Titanfall was always promoted as a multiplayer only game. Destiny was said to be up there with Star Wars. So yeah Destiny done fucked up.
 
Maulik said:
So now we have both Titanfall and Destiny out there. Which of the two do you think bungled their handling of SP worse?
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Hmm... well, Titanfall doesn't have an SP or PvE mode, while Destiny does, but (let's face it) on your own, it sucks.

I'd argue that the progression goes good>absent>bad, so Destiny screwed it up more.
 
My problem with Destiny at the moment is that after buying the game, I went outta town for 10 days. Came back, and now all my PSN friends (not that I have a lot) are all level 20+ and I'm at level 9. I wanna play with people, cause I find it dull solo.

How easy is it to party up with like-leveled people in the Tower? Haven't tried any of that yet...
 
Whoompthereitis said:
My problem with Destiny at the moment is that after buying the game, I went outta town for 10 days. Came back, and now all my PSN friends (not that I have a lot) are all level 20+ and I'm at level 9. I wanna play with people, cause I find it dull solo.

How easy is it to party up with like-leveled people in the Tower? Haven't tried any of that yet...
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Nigh-impossible. You're better off trying to rope some GAFfers into helping you out.
 
Whoompthereitis said:
My problem with Destiny at the moment is that after buying the game, I went outta town for 10 days. Came back, and now all my PSN friends (not that I have a lot) are all level 20+ and I'm at level 9. I wanna play with people, cause I find it dull solo.

How easy is it to party up with like-leveled people in the Tower? Haven't tried any of that yet...
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It takes me longer to form a party in the tower than it does to do the actual mission.

I used to send a few invites out one at a time each with a message saying what mission we would be doing. Got me nowhere. Now I just spam-invite almost everyone in the entire tower with no message and maybe after 15 minutes I'll have a fireteam.
 
Anyone on here have Diablo 3 on PS4? I'm really thinking of getting that but afraid that people have moved on to Destiny despite its issues.
 
Poodlestrike said:
I would argue that Destiny doesn't have any mystery now. It has pretensions to mystery, but I was never quite sold on the idea that it has much in the way of actual mysteries. Stuff like "I could tell you the stories, but I won't," or "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" is just obtuse, not mysterious, and a lot of the unanswered questions feel like they're unanswered because nobody (not even the writers) have come up with an answer yet. Sort of like later seasons of Lost.
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"I could tell you the story of the fall.." precedes him giving a synopsis of the results of the fall. He just doesn't list the details of specific battles.

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain that to you" was about the specifics of what the Mysterious Stranger's plans were... not about the overall story of the game.

The mystery is the details of what happened over the course of the fall. Not just that there was a battle here and this many people died. Those details of what happened over the course of the fall exist... but they're all in the Grimoire and a lot of it has to be discovered through finding Ghosts and completing things that the player has no way to know will reveal a new Grimoire card. So I still feel that the problem is with the execution.
 
Two Words said:
Your Character in Destiny is a lot like Fry in Futurama. He's in the future in a whole new world he knows nothing about. Futurama took several years to make it so that Fry was a knowledgable citizen of te future that didn't need things explained. Destiny treats you the same way after 5 story missions and just stops explaining stuff to you.
Click to expand...
A few things though.

1)We have context as to why Fry ended up in the future
2)Fry has characterization
3)People explain things to Fry
4)Futurama is a comedy
 
META said:
This sounds like the Halo 2 debacle all over again.

Publisher wants to ensure success of 10-year investment in single IP; force developer to cut story and content to be included in the sequels/DLC so people fall into the trap of, "Oh, they learned their lesson and added what should have been in the first game! Let's go buy it."
Click to expand...

What proof do you have that Activision was behind the cuts and not Bungie itself?
 
Jest Chillin said:
"I could tell you the story of the fall.." precedes him giving a synopsis of the results of the fall. He just doesn't list the details of specific battles.

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain that to you" was about the specifics of what the Mysterious Stranger's plans were... not about the overall story of the game.

The mystery is the details of what happened over the course of the fall. Not just that there was a battle here and this many people died. Those details of what happened over the course of the fall exist... but they're all in the Grimoire and a lot of it has to be discovered through finding Ghosts and completing things that the player has no way to know will reveal a new Grimoire card. So I still feel that the problem is with the execution.
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Right, but my point is that at no point does it ever really effectively sell me on the idea of Destiny being a game full of mysteries and wonder. A good mystery should intrigue, and inspire, and some of the Grimoire cards actually do that, but the material presented in the game is mostly just frustratingly obtuse.
 
META said:
This sounds like the Halo 2 debacle all over again.

Publisher wants to ensure success of 10-year investment in single IP; force developer to cut story and content to be included in the sequels/DLC so people fall into the trap of, "Oh, they learned their lesson and added what should have been in the first game! Let's go buy it."
Click to expand...

Halo 2 was already delayed a full year so I am not sure how they were forced to "cut content" when the content was not complete and ship ready when the game was scheduled to be released. The Halo 2 development story is much more complicated than saying Microsoft wanted to hold content for DLC or Halo 3.
 
Jarmel said:
A few things though.

1)We have context as to why Fry ended up in the future
2)Fry has characterization
3)People explain things to Fry
4)Futurama is a comedy
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What does being a comedy have to do with anything? They just make the explanations funny. The point is that the characters and Fry do t act like he knows all about the future after a few episodes. This was supposed to be about your character learning about our lost worlds. Instead you get a couple lines of context that make no sense without more context. What's Rasputin? A Warmind AI? Ok, so what. Man, Ghost you sound real pumped up to hear about this. But I have no idea why any of this is important.
 
Poodlestrike said:
Right, but my point is that at no point does it ever really effectively sell me on the idea of Destiny being a game full of mysteries and wonder. A good mystery should intrigue, and inspire, and some of the Grimoire cards actually do that, but the material presented in the game is mostly just frustratingly obtuse.
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Correct. Which is a problem with execution. Those lines in particular aren't actually offenders though. The primary issue actually lies with your Ghost never bothering to explain the details of what he's finding post-mission. You get a bit of detail pre-mission but very little post-mission to bridge to the next pre-mission dialogue.

In that sense, your Guardian really is a Grunt who is told where to go and what to do but never told why or shown how those decisions came to be. I think that's the major disconnect.
 
Maulik said:
So now we have both Titanfall and Destiny out there. Which of the two do you think bungled their handling of SP worse?
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Respawn specifically came out and said that the single player campaign was more just a tutorial and not their usual fare. It was a multiplayer only game and pitched as such.

What is the point of this post again?

"With the campaign multiplayer, you'll play once through as the IMC and once through as the Militia," Heppe wrote. "Because it's a multiplayer game, it's always moving. It'll start out with these scripted sequences, and there'll be way more dialog and characters and way more context for the world than you would otherwise get in the classic modes, but it's not a single-player game. It is still a multiplayer game with story elements woven in."
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http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/17/5420442/titanfall-campaign-multiplayer-play-twice
 
Anton Sugar said:
They're offensive because they're a)horrible and b)cock-teases in light of a game where we get no explanation for 90% of the game.
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I said offenders specifically in reference to the topic we were discussing. Which was Destiny not delivering on creating intrigue and mystery in terms of the overall story. Even if those lines were not used and instead detailed explanations were given... the topics have little to do with the plotline. They were just minor details that have zero effect on what the player needs or wants to do in the campaign.
 
Jest Chillin said:
Correct. Which is a problem with execution. Those lines in particular aren't actually offenders though. The primary issue actually lies with your Ghost never bothering to explain the details of what he's finding post-mission. You get a bit of detail pre-mission but very little post-mission to bridge to the next pre-mission dialogue.

In that sense, your Guardian really is a Grunt who is told where to go and what to do but never told why or shown how those decisions came to be. I think that's the major disconnect.
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Ahh... I think I see what you're saying now. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. The setting (and event he narrative) holds some potential, but the execution falls flat on its face. I don't really consider that a separate issue.

When I talk about Destiny's story, I'm referring to the sum total of its components, from character writing to world building to plot to interconnectivity of all those elements, and more. Those lines are issues to me because they come across as obnoxiously impressed with their own cleverness, pretending to be heralds of some great mystery that never really manifests itself in the game.
 
Poodlestrike said:
Ahh... I think I see what you're saying now. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. The setting (and event he narrative) holds some potential, but the execution falls flat on its face. I don't really consider that a separate issue.

When I talk about Destiny's story, I'm referring to the sum total of its components, from character writing to world building to plot to interconnectivity of all those elements, and more. Those lines are issues to me because they come across as obnoxiously impressed with their own cleverness, pretending to be heralds of some great mystery that never really manifests itself in the game.
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While I would agree with "I don't even have time to explain..." being over-wrought and cheesy, I don't feel like "I could tell you about..." falls in the same category because the reason The Speaker doesn't go into those details is because they don't matter in the grand scheme of things. The situation is bleak. The Darkness is returning and The Traveler is still in slumber. Talking in detail about the battles past is a waste of time and ultimately doesn't help the Guardian.

Really, the worst anyone should consider these as is bad lines(if you think of them negatively). They're not a source or an example of the problem of how the story is conveyed. If you want to consider them other issues within the greater issue of how the story and lore is delivered, then by all means do so. They're just not good examples of poor execution of story but rather examples of poor dialogue.
 
Rendition said:
E3 2014 Gameplay Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRRKtkuOeig

Promises
-"great story campaign"
-"match-made"
-public events (plural) "huge targets of opportunity"
-beat "Vault of Glass" to earn Destiny's ultimate reward
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The way they cut that trailer it almost seems like you can fly your ship through the atmosphere to the surface. They also took some mp map footage to try to make the worlds look bigger(that scene with the guardians sitting by the cliff is pretty deceptive).
 
Jest Chillin said:
While I would agree with "I don't even have time to explain..." being over-wrought and cheesy, I don't feel like "I could tell you about..." falls in the same category because the reason The Speaker doesn't go into those details is because they don't matter in the grand scheme of things. The situation is bleak. The Darkness is returning and The Traveler is still in slumber. Talking in detail about the battles past is a waste of time and ultimately doesn't help the Guardian.

Really, the worst anyone should consider these as is bad lines(if you think of them negatively). They're not a source or an example of the problem of how the story is conveyed. If you want to consider them other issues within the greater issue of how the story and lore is delivered, then by all means do so. They're just not good examples of poor execution of story but rather examples of poor dialogue.
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See, how can you separate story execution and dialogue like that? IMO, good dialogue is an intrinsic part of good story execution.
 
I played the beta and I was very confused.

What I had heard from Destiny's team was that it was going to be this grand space epic with weather and the players would make the story based on their actions and tons of places to explore yada yada yada. I would have loved that. However, the beta and the way things were presented just felt 'meh' to me. So I waited just hoping that they had gutted it b/c it was a beta and didn't want to give anything away.

I've done my fair share in the corporate world and I believe what the Reddit guy is saying is entirely plausible, not saying true - but wouldn't have any doubt that what they are stating is a very real possibility.


So I haven't bought Destiny, nor will I. A lot of you complain and feel betrayed by companies/publishers when they do this stuff but you still give them your money. You have to stop doing that. I get it, you've waited for this game for a very long time and you really want to play it but you have to practice some self control if you ever want this crap to stop.

With that said, there will be repercussions by doing this. If people truly do start standing up to major publishers and not buying a game that was either a.) expected to sell large quantities or b.) annually sells large quantities.....the first things that will happen are more game studios closing and people losing their jobs. That has a very real and direct impact on many peoples' lives.

For anything to change that wouldn't hurt a lot of people, would be the people working on these games that are getting gutted/not giving a final product that was trumpeted since public announcement to actually stand up within their workplace and demand better. But again, peoples livelihoods are pretty much always at stake and it is very hard for people to do that to themselves or their family.
 
Jest Chillin said:
While I would agree with "I don't even have time to explain..." being over-wrought and cheesy, I don't feel like "I could tell you about..." falls in the same category because the reason The Speaker doesn't go into those details is because they don't matter in the grand scheme of things. The situation is bleak. The Darkness is returning and The Traveler is still in slumber. Talking in detail about the battles past is a waste of time and ultimately doesn't help the Guardian.
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I don't fully agree. Your reasoning for why it is unimportant for the The Speaker to explain past events could be used as a blanket statement for the rest of the story/game.

It's not "important" that we are told ANYTHING about the world, if the ultimate goal is saving The Traveler. We're told, or it is heavily implied, that The Traveler is good and The Darkness is bad; therefore, saving the Traveler is good. Anything outside of this could be consider extraneous, using your reasoning.

The back story and the past IS important. It provides context for where we are, how we got here, and why we're doing what we're doing. It DOES help the Guardian (that is, us) because we understand why we're doing what we're doing.
 
MythicReclaimer said:
Halo 2 was already delayed a full year so I am not sure how they were forced to "cut content" when the content was not complete and ship ready when the game was scheduled to be released. The Halo 2 development story is much more complicated than saying Microsoft wanted to hold content for DLC or Halo 3.
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It was a 9 month delay and they had already completed work on a 10-level campaign which would begin on Earth, go to a Halo ring, and then come back to Earth for the finale. If you watch the Halo 2 documentary, Joe Staten explains the predicament they were in.

It was speculated that MS has demanded that they cut content and remake the game so that a third title could be released. How is that so hard to believe?

Patryn said:
What proof do you have that Activision was behind the cuts and not Bungie itself?
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I'm speculating; isn't that what this whole god damn thread is about anyway?
 
SillyNonsense said:
It takes me longer to form a party in the tower than it does to do the actual mission.

I used to send a few invites out one at a time each with a message saying what mission we would be doing. Got me nowhere. Now I just spam-invite almost everyone in the entire tower with no message and maybe after 15 minutes I'll have a fireteam.
Click to expand...

And that's what's stopped me playing the game. Level 27, wanting to do the weekly nightfall and the raids. But no matchmaking. And no, I don't want to add random people from GAF or Bungie.net to my friends list. I like to keep that for actual IRL friends, only one of whom bought this game and is several levels behind me.

I kind of understand the lack of MM for raids. And I'm willing to use external means to get a party together. But the lack of MM for daily heroics/weekly stuff? Inexcusable. That shit is just content I've already beaten with other people WITH MATCHMAKING.

Ugh. It's just strikes. With shielded enemies. There's no need for communication, not any more than the base game.
 
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