A thread about Bungie

[Uncle Mike]

Interesting use of the word "just" there.

[Superunknown]

On 09/12/2017 at 17:42, petrolgirls said:

 

I’d argue Titanfall flopping has more to do with its central idea of switching scale from regular to huge just doesn’t work well, it's just not fun. It’s a shame as I loved IW's previous work, all I want them to do is make a spiritual successor to MW/MW2. 

 

It's amazing fun. It's their multiplayer FPS control and movement scheme perfected, and your titan IS the killstreak. It's ruined practically everything else for me. I never want them to go back to the MW model.

[instasis]

I'm trying to wrap my head round what switching the weapon system back to D1 levels would do while improving charge times on supers and grenades.

 

In PvE it would become a horrible mess forma while until they could alter all the health levels, but at this point what do they have to lose. In PvP it would become a horribly unbalanced but very fun activity which they could then chip away at week by week to get it all bolted down.

 

And what would it take to do it? Switch some DB flags around and a couple of UI tweaks?

[Harsin]

Why it’s almost as if having one profile that's balanced for PvE and PvP at the same time is a boneheaded decision and there's a reason almost nobody ever does it.

[Dimahoo]

23 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

Interesting use of the word "just" there.

 

Space is hardly hard to get right these days though. You see a ton of Steam games that come through that can do a fair stab on indie and they've pretty much done it in the director.

Space was the first thing simulated on a computer after tennis. And this is bungie or whoever they're using.

They've already got all the assets apart from some cruisers and they probably have those drawn somewhere.

 

 

As it is, its just dull. Theres loads of parts where you just walking through a "pyramedian link tunnel". 

[RubberJohnny]

The community do seem to be running out of patience, Destiny 1 took a while to improve, but this new major-minor release cycle with the games developed simultaneously means they keep hitting the reset button on content and quality of life and features, so even if Destiny 2 improves faster than 1 did, it'll just be reset again faster too for Destiny 3. "Not worth buying at launch" is the message getting sent.

 

Honestly, I don't really see a way out of the situation other than not making the decisions they did. They seemed to be able to make two major locations a year (TTK had three originally, but one was the leftover EDZ from launch) I think continuing to expand the game with proper yearly expansions would have worked rather than sticking D1 in maintenance mode with Rise of Iron - they'd have had ten or eleven zones by now with four sequential campaigns, which would be a lot of game, and wouldn't have earned the communities ire by going backwards or scrapping PvP which they enjoyed. The smaller mid-year content drops like TDB, HoW, CoO are probably infeasible, just fund the raid itself with Eververse and release in a patch without feeling the need to bundle in a mini story campaign.

 

[Yoshimax]

This is what Jon wants but can’t actually provide due to not playing - legacy Bungie fun.

 

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/YoshiMax/video/40741410

[KriessG]

On 12/9/2017 at 17:42, petrolgirls said:

 

I’d argue Titanfall flopping has more to do with its central idea of switching scale from regular to huge just doesn’t work well, it's just not fun. It’s a shame as I loved IW's previous work, all I want them to do is make a spiritual successor to MW/MW2. 

 

If anything it's because 1 came out as an Xbox One exclusive near that horrendous launch (And no SP) and 2 came out right when COD and Battlefield were released.

 

Also, I completely disagree, the Titan's work great, the map design for the two scales is brilliant.

[Broker]

9 hours ago, Captain LeChuck said:

Have to agree with much of that. Even when I was still in the "loving this" stage, I did find I was missing the Cosmodrome, Venus, the Dreadnought, and other places. I'd liked to have gone on patrol back into those areas with the new weapons and armour. Plus it also doesn't make sense from a story point of view. I mean, are we just leaving Venus to the Fallen and the Vex? 

 

I found it really weird in the DLC when Ikora said her “team on Mercury” had found something. If people are just going to Mercury how come we’ve never been there before? And as you said, why haven’t they given us any explanation for why we can no longer visit the Moon or Venus or Mars? How come we can go to the EDZ but not the Cosmodrome on the other side of the same planet? It’s like they don’t even give enough of a shit to make up a story that justifies these weird development decisions.

[K]

The decision to start again with Destiny 2, rather than keep expanding Destiny, wasn’t a bad one in itself I think. I can definitely see the rationale now – if you’re coming to D1 completely fresh, it’s an absolute mindfuck. I’d convinced a couple of friends to jump in when the complete collection was on sale, and describing the game systems to them was like recounting a dream. It’s fine when you’ve been playing for three years, but having to explain “yeah, you get these things called engrams that decrypt into weapons and gear. You save up a load, but you can’t decrypt them all at once – you have to decrypt one and then check whether it’s got a higher light level than the item in the corresponding slot. If it does, then swap it out and decrypt the next item. Alternatively, you could infuse it into your existing gear, which you do by getting motes of light and glimmer…”

 

…at which point they just tune out, and go off to play GTA V or FIFA or whatever. The other problems was that as a result of the complexity of the systems, it took forever to get to max level. Streamlining the various processes was a good idea, and has had tangible results for me – it’s genuinely fantastic to see my friends able to get to grips with the game and keep pace with each other over the weeks. I suspect expanding the game and streamlining it to that extent would have been a mammoth task for Bungie, if nothing else because they would have had to test every single patrol area, every strike, every crucible map and every story level for the new systems. Imagine the bugs and glitches in that scenario.

 

So the decision to start again with a new baseline wasn’t a bad one, and was extremely successful on the most part from my perspective. The problem seems to be with what they built on top of that, but the base seems solid. I feel like they’ve removed a lot of grinding and faff, and let you focus on the actual game bit. The actual game bit and the progression has a few issues, but I think it’s important to recognise that the streamlining was a hell of an achievement in itself. It’s not perfect, but Destiny seems to exist in a state of perpetual imperfection. I can handle a work in progress is shooting things feels so flipping good.

[Harsin]

The best thing about the fresh start was that they were able to completely fix the vault which for years they said was being held back by last gen hardware.

[Talk Show Host]

Ι know I'm probably alone in this but the gameplay in Halo wasn't the only thing that made Bungie special for me. The world building, the scene directing, the mission design was just incredible. I wasn't waiting for Halo 2 because of the gameplay but because of the world, the story (which they fucked up by trying too much). 

 

Bungie is all about MMO stuff these days and that limits their potential so much. I really wish they became independent and just try to find that flame that started it all way way back. 

 

 

[mushashi]

But they are independent!

 

Most developers change personnel over time so expecting the same magic everytime seems a fool's errand, what made Halo special seems impossible to recapture, the later games primarily innovated the multiplayer, I certainly didn't pay much attention to the plot or lore, they became impenetrable and boring.

[Talk Show Host]

29 minutes ago, mushashi said:

But they are independent!

 

Most developers change personnel over time so expecting the same magic everytime seems a fool's errand, what made Halo special seems impossible to recapture, the later games primarily innovated the multiplayer, I certainly didn't pay much attention to the plot or lore, they became impenetrable and boring.

 

Oh sure, I am not expecting the same magic but I would like to see them turn towards a direction that allows for more proper storytelling instead of the MMO stuff. The first Halo was great story wise, lore, exposition, everything. The sequels, eh, not so much. Then ODST was great, Reach as well. 

 

Maybe the magic comes and goes. 

[mushashi]

Well the reason for Staten leaving Bungie was because management thought the original story for Destiny was too linear so they changed it, causing them to delay the game.

[RubberJohnny]

And then replaced it with completely linear stories.

 

EDIT: That's always seemed like internal studio politics to me, they never really had any writers or liked the story guys, who were originally parachuted in from Microsoft, even though it was a good part of their success.

[K]

The Director was the main overhaul they made to the interface after they delayed the game in 2013, and that was a pretty neat system that let you choose story missions, strikes, raids, social areas, patrols, etc, from a single unified UI. That was the main contribution to non-linearity - it let you flit between the different elements of the game as you saw fit, whereas before the modes were more walled off from each other.

[Harsin]

1 hour ago, mushashi said:

Well the reason for Staten leaving Bungie was because management thought the original story for Destiny was too linear so they changed it, causing them to delay the game.

 

That wasn’t the only complaint about it from what I remember of Jason Schreier's book, which goes into more detail than he Kotaku article. They were more concerned that his progress on the project was too slow and the story was too arcane and complicated after viewing a 'supercut' of his vision. Then a bunch of Bungie managers kicked him off the project after deciding they could write a better story. I don't know what his story was like, but they gave us 'I don’t have time to explain why I don't have time to explain'.

[mushashi]

Schreier posted an article based on his book about it, the quotes would indicate they completely gutted the writers' version and since that time it would seem most of the people who were hired to work by Staten on the writing side have left, replaced by a completely different set of people.

 

Quote

The pre-reboot Destiny had way more of a focus on story than the actual game wound up having. “Story missions [before the reboot] always began with a Communique from a character,” said a source. “They were 30-45 second cutscenes of the NPC setting up the mission context. Osiris announcing a dramatic discovery about the Vex and asking you to dig up an ancient relic on Mars, or the Crow calling for help from the middle of a firefight with Fallen on Venus. And then every mission ended with a full cutscene, three to five minutes.”

 

Quote

“So if you were going from point A to point Z in the course of [the original, pre-reboot story], they would take out section H-J because it was really tight encounter design and they’d put it off to the side and say, ‘How do we get H-J in this other storyline?’” said a source. “It was literally like making Franken-story.

 

Quote

They prioritized this instead of building a strong story; narrative took a back seat, as did the writers themselves. “The writing team Joe put together was ostracized,” said one person who worked on the game. “The story was written without writers.”

 

 

https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731