In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.

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[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Despite what others are saying, the game is fine (at least compared to its previous state/status)... They've made a lot of changes to improve the onboarding experience and remove pain points. They've made things less grindy and more engaging every expansion.

The last DLC just had kind of a meh story to it, "the discovery of strand." The environment they used also wasn't all that pretty or interesting. It wasn't snow, it wasn't a swamp, it was a minimalistic city-scape with some canyons.

That, plus increased pricing and over dramatization of the loss of the red war and foresaken content (which wasn't even that good compared to the new stuff mind you -- it was extremely short and grindy) has almost definitely caused the profit loss.

Not to mention, playlist activities still feel bland... Implement map voting and modifier voting, and make a higher difficulty playlist for PvE content. I swear once you're caught up, it's either stomp over everything in the same 5 maps over and over, or face the exact same somewhat challenging (or extremely challenging) encounter over and over for an entire week. They have all this content they could open up to high end rewards and mutators, but they don't.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the game was fine it wouldn't be 45% below their revenue projections.

[–] beefcat@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

plenty of good games fail to meet revenue projections

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except Bungie isn't creating a new game here, they're continuing a game they've been supporting for years. They have years of metrics and they should have a pretty good understanding how much revenue to expect. Even if they were overly optimistic and set an unrealistic projection it doesn't explain missing it by 45%.

[–] beefcat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I can't really comment on the current quality of the game in 2023, since I noped out about 4 years ago, but there are any number of explanations.

Lack of new content. I haven't seen the game discussed much in the gaming press, which means there probably haven't been any notable content drops for a while. It sounds like the game's next expansion has been delayed, and the game is being maintained by a skeleton crew while the rest of the studio focuses on Marathon.
Competition. With few exceptions, good games always slowly bleed users as shiny new alternatives attract players. This is compounded if you're running a live service game and have a long content drought.

My point isn't "Destiny good", I don't really know that. My point is that we can't really draw conclusions about the quality of the game based solely on missed revenue targets.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It sounds like the game's next expansion has been delayed, and the game is being maintained by a skeleton crew while the rest of the studio focuses on Marathon.

FWIW, they have ~650 people even after the layoffs for destiny 2 alone. Hardly a skeleton crew. The content drops have been the same as they've been for years, seasonal content drops in-between expansions. There is definitely a lul period where there's not new stuff getting released to give people a chance to catch up.

Competition. With few exceptions, good games always slowly bleed users as shiny new alternatives attract players.

There is some of this. I think there also just seems to be a general recoil of players at what games are costing these days. I'm personally fine with it, but I see what feels like infinite complaining about how greedy ... basically every company that isn't indie is being.

Realistically, I'd say it's A) bad PR and B) a failure to make new gameplay loops that shake things up significantly C) a failure to fully utilize old content (there's not a lot of reason to play old strikes, not a lot to encourage players to help others out in old story missions, etc -- replay value is artificially neutered by making too many things curated which limits choice)

[–] beefcat@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think there also just seems to be a general recoil of players at what games are costing these days. I'm personally fine with it, but I see what feels like infinite complaining about how greedy ... basically every company that isn't indie is being.

I think this is mostly just the fact that the people who spend the most time on social media are also basically kids with very little spending money. None of my millennial peers even blinked when AAA game prices went up to $70 with the new console generation. We have fairly mature careers and have paid off our student debt by now.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 2 points 1 year ago

Maybe, but we're also seeing it in reviews in such high quantities, it feels like it has to be more than just kids. And like, sure I'd love if the games were cheaper, but they certainly haven't gotten cheaper or less risky to make.

It's frustrating either way... I don't care if the game is $100. I want to know A) does it have pay to win mechanics or gambling (things I actually consider to be predatory -- another word that is significantly over used right now), B) is it fun?, and C) how much replay value is it (i.e. should my expectations be set for a really great 80 hours or potentially hundreds -- I'm okay with the former sometimes, but it's nice to know what I'm getting into).

Lately with steam reviews it's like "tHiS gAMe coSt toO muCh. Y u So gReDy!?!" Which tells me none of those things and just gives me old man yelling at a cloud energy about how things (particularly live service stuff) does cost money to develop and run beyond a 1 time purchase of $25.

Maybe you can relate ... Maybe not ...

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I agree that you can't draw conclusions about the quality of the game simply by the fact that it missed the revenue target. But I'm not drawing the conclusion based on the fact that it missed the target but rather based on by how much the target was missed. If they missed by 15% then sure, it's not an indication because maybe they really did overestimate their target. But 45%? You don't miss by that much when you have yearly revenue numbers showing you the trend. My point is that such a severe miss in this case does end up being indicative of the quality because the explanations, even yours, will end up being negative about the game.