#This week at Bungie

[artemyiss]

Geppetto, your boy is tangled in strings again . .

[hyakunana]

Until the End and Beyond

[screebyy]

[boy problems by carly rae jepsen plays in the distance]

i. really enjoyed the radio message this week

ID: a 2 panel comic featuring Crow and Petra Venj from Destiny. Panel 1: Crow is sitting cross-legged on a purple couch. He is wearing a black t-shirt with a white bird on it, in the same pattern as his in-game cloak, and dark gray shorts. There is a reddish-purple blanket draped around his shoulders. He is holding a tub of chocolate ice cream in his left hand and is lifting a spoonful of ice cream to his mouth with his right hand. He is crying and has a comically sad expression as he looks up at his ghost Glint, who is floating to the left and looks sad. Crow says: "What if Jolyon doesn't want to talk to me though? What if he doesn't like me anymore? Wah." There are multiple frowny faces surrounding him in speech bubbles. Panel 2: A black cellphone has been thrown from off screen and hit Crow in the face with a "bonk" sound effect. Crow is in the middle of tumbling over on the couch from the impact, spilling his ice cream. Glint looks alarmed. A cartoonish cutout of Petra's face is shouting angrily from off-screen: "Just call him, idiot. And stop eating all my ice cream."

[kaiserouo]

(thinking about titan)

[l3rking]

So the State of the Game came out today and...there’s not too much to really talk about. 

It’s clear this wasn’t planned when LF launched (at least not this soon) and was written as a response to recent backlash (some necessary, most not). There were quite a few interesting things. Some meh. A couple disappointments. All in all I don’t think we really learned anything we didn’t already know. 

Hand Cannon buff next season is substantial

New Crucible map and modes

Stability improvements

Matchmaking improvements 

And probably the biggie imo: the future of Gambit

It’s an unpopular mode. We know that. It’s had poor community sentiment around it for years now. No amount of work short of a full overhaul will solve that. No amount of maps, or top tier weapons, or matchmaking adjustments are going to bring everyone back in. So they’re cutting their losses. It’ll still get its shader and new seasonal weapon and an old map but that’s it. Am I disappointed? Sure. Am I surprised. No. Not at all. Am I angry? Absolutely not. Bungie isn’t some deity. They’re people doing the best they can and usually their best is brilliant. They just don’t have the resources and NONE of us are in any position to argue that point. We just don’t know enough about the internal affairs of Bungie and no one except their employees ever will. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision to let Gambit down gently like that but it’s what they believed was best for the game rn. Who am I to argue?

Either way, I’m looking forward to next season. The new Crucible modes Relic and Checkmate sound like a lot of fun (I was a huge D2Y1 PvP fan) and the tease of some new exotic reworks is enough to get me interested in some new buildcrafting. This might as well have been another TWID for me. 

You’re going to  see people outrage over it. Disappointed in the Gambit news. Disappointed in the lack of information. And a lot were going to be disappointed no matter what Joe said. He could’ve promised every player all expansions for free and you’ll see rage bate at the top of r/DTG with a gajillion upvotes. It’s just the way this community is as exhausting as that can be. 

Either way, once the Final Shape hypetrain starts, we’re all going to forget about this and be excited again. 

Reminder: If you’re feeling burnt out. Step away. From the game. From online spaces. From even thinking about it. It’ll do wonder for you. And if you decide to stay away, that’s fine. I hope you find a hobby that gets you excited like D2 used to. If you decide to come back, I’ll see you in the tower next season.  

[ilumel]

y’all ever start audibly sobbing

[thefirstknife]

Btw Bungie replied to someone asking about the structure of quests on Reddit. You know who sometimes quests are kinda weird and require you to load into another zone, even when the NPC is standing right there anyway? Especially apparent in Defiance, with a quest having you speak to Mara at the Farm and then requiring you to go to the HELM to hear her on the holoprojector.

Well, Bungie knows that sucks! They already have feedback on it from internal testing, but apparently the issue that forces them to do it that way is something more complicated to solve. Here's the Reddit thread (linked to Bungie's reply).

Really cool insight into some details about development as well as some important information about how feedback works. A lot of the time people think that when something is broken or works badly, that Bungie simply didn't notice it or doesn't have internal testers. But they do, and sometimes the feedback they get is impossible to implement in time.

This is a really nice little piece of info that is refreshing to see and helps explain certain issues to players. People tend to always assume the worst (like "Bungie doesn't have testers") so hearing it in this way is really important.

Full reply:

Full transcript below:

Hi. I understand that you’re annoyed that some quests like this make you go multiple places, but there are logistical reasons why this happens. Sometimes it’s how the quest was built as part of the overall gameplay loop and its incredibly hard after the fact to change it, such as in Season of the Forge where you had to visit Ada multiple times.

And other times it’s due to time or budgetary constraints. Full vendor performances take up much more time and budget to create than an upper torso performance in the holoprojector or just a voice recording.

In your example about going to the Farm then the HELM and back to the Farm, that’s intended as part of the gameplay loop since both locations are important to the story, but the main reason is because certain performances are hooked up at each holoprojector and we can’t put them all in the same place without other issues occurring.

We actually have many gameplay specialists who play through the content prior to release, many many times, and then provide feedback to us about their experience. However, sometimes we’re unable to act on that feedback for various reasons, such as production schedules. More than likely the feedback you’re giving today was pointed out months ago. Could we have done things better? Absolutely, and that’s feedback we’ll be looking at for future seasons.

[your-fave-is-bi]

I think i gotta be firmly offline for a few days ngl

[crow-posting]

Taking my mind off of What Just Happened by yelling about this week's cutscene. Look at my boy!!

[twothirdsgenius]

whatever bungie. i don’t even care if i get the navigator i just enjoy spending time with the homies

[hyakunana]

"Your people need their heroes."

Their heroes:

[guardian-down]

[boogrr-7]

Riven plushie, please. I need you ಥ_ಥ

[kelgorath]

getting different combinations of the same four exotic class item perks every time one actually drops

[m4lfeasance]

it's been a day and i am still emo over that destiny ending

[telestoapologist]

#yeah same #like. i'm okay with them doing this as an experiment. experimenting is good! #but the way we got here shows that a lot of players just can't be bothered. they want the story to be done so they can move on #and i don't think those people are really interested so maybe we shouldn't be catering to them #and again. experimenting is fine. i'm interested to see how this will go and how i'll feel about it #but from the way this works now. i'm not a fan of huge drops all at once personally for the reasons listed here #esp spoiler issues. it technically gives you freedom to play as slow as you want but like #if you want to participate in the fandom you'll have to do it all at once. so it's not much of a choice #we'll see how it goes. but i really don't like this idea of catering to ipad babies #<- old. but like i learned to watch tv shows over months and months. episode by week with breaks and shit #i am definitely open to try at least. it's one act and then we stew for 5 weeks which is fine for me. #but i feel like the people who yell about no content will just yell worse

I deeply dislike how certain segments of D2 players have screamed to have ALL THE CONTENT released in one big batch - a whole season at a time and complain about the weekly stuff being 'drip feeding' and now Bungie is gonna be releasing whole Acts all at once (better than a whole Episode at once I guess).

I *like* the weekly releases of content! Liking it even more in the episode format with a few weeks of story, and then a few weeks off. Plenty of time to catch up, without there being a huge swathe of like 6 weeks+ without anything new.

I like having a week to mull things over and theorise and feel *creative* about what I've just played. I like the time and space it gives each bit of story to breathe and really sink in. I find it more impactful when I genuinely *can't* rush through things (ngl, I feel like Lightfall at least would have benefitted from having it's missions spread out over a long period of time instead of being all available at once).

I feel like having spaced out drops of new story is just... more convenient? Easier to catch up on a week of story than a whole Act if you happen to be away for one week. Also playing through a whole Act in one go is a significantly larger time investment if you want to stay up to date and avoid spoilers.

I really hate that in Revenant, it's gonna be required to basically play a whole Act on day 1 of release or be bombarded with spoilers enough to have to completely avoid any fandom spaces. And then... what?

The people screaming the most and loudest about wanting it all at once will just go back to immediately bitching about not having anything to do and 'no content', and there'll just be less fandom energy.

Same as with Netflix dropping whole seasons in one go - it feels like there's just no time to enjoy and appreciate the story in a measured way - gotta binge it all or be completely out of the loop! And then it's over.

I love the Tuesday/Wednesday weekly screaming session over new story with my friends, excitedly waiting till they're done so we can dive into theorising and enjoying the anticipation! I loved the new episode weekly energy with podcasts too! New episodes become an event, and people spend the week thinking about the story and creating rather than just... gulping it all and then it's done. Move onto the next thing. Disposable content.

*sigh*

Ah well, it is what it is. Just annoying.