Hey Tuxy, Thanks a bunch for getting back to me on the last questions I sent you (appreciate it) - and sorry for taking a while to get back to you on this. About your questions: A1. I still haven't gotten through every year-1 piece of content. I just started doing the Sleeper and Polaris Lance quests today, as an example. So, without new DLC, and with the sandbox changes and triumphs, there's a [i]ton[/i] of stuff to do even if you only have the base game. Just the Crucible weapon rewards and seasonal events would be enough to keep me busy throughout an entire season, let alone all the PVE content available with each expansion. The speed at which they're putting out content is too much for me. At the end of the day, it really depends on the player and how many hours a day/week he can put into a game. But I would be fine with less content and longer seasons, especially for that Redrix's Broadsword :). A2. I started playing Destiny - The Taken King on the PS3 in 2017, when support had been discontinued. My experience for over a year there was that people would come back over and over again to play the same content day after day, and most are still doing that, while looking for that random roll they really wanted, for some horns, emotes, sparrows, guns they haven't acquired, raids they haven't finished, and for just the addictive nature of crucible or Prison of Elders - heck, I didn't get everything I wanted and am still working on that in D1 on the PS4. So, in a closed environment, people stay if they can still get something out of it because the game encourages repetition really well. However, the PS3 player base must be small at this point and D2 isn't a closed environment. So, it seems unlikely that the majority would stay. A3. It is. Without those types of customers, crucible would have dwindled. Bungie knew that, so they opened up the flood gates so everyone could populate the different playlists in order for those who supported the company by buying CoO and Warmind could have people to play with in those DLC maps - which are pretty good. They also knew that when they added the game to PS+. The game is now filled with people who haven't spent a dime on the game, besides those who only bought the base game - and that's a good thing. This opens up avenues for recurrent monetization through DLC purchases and MTs, so this move will turn (turned, and will continue to turn) various players into recurrent customers. Smart business moves. Bungie just wants to sell MTs and DLCs, and keeping as much people as possible in the game and happy while they do so, will give them just that. In fact by keeping them in the game and using this new pay-to-win-DLC & season-pass strategy, Bungie will enhance their probabilities of success even further, no matter how shitty it is to manipulate people to buy stuff by frustrating them. I don't think Bungie differs customers by DLC package they have, so I imagine we have the same amount of pull when it comes to suggestions and requests. ---------------------------------- [quote] At this point, Bungie has not stated if Trials or IB will remain available to all players regardless of the dlcs.[/quote] Bungie said that IB and Trials will be open to everyone. It's gonna be very interesting to play IB next week. [quote]Truth be told, it only is going to matter for the first few weeks of new content. Once time passes, pretty much players balance out and all are close enough to the same level to negate any difference[/quote] If power advantages don't mean a thing after a couple of weeks, why have them in the game in the first place? To give crucible players something to strive for? I think that Crucible should be measured by standings and rankings and special rewards, to keep people engaged and to drive competitiveness up. Acquiring more power just drives PVE engagement up, not PVP, since that's where you'll find more ways to increase your power. [quote]we used IB to level as it would drop current level gear post match. So while you may be getting clobbered but you are powering up as you go.[/quote] It would be possible to get high-power rewards after a game is done if power-advantages were turned off. Bungie would just need to code that into the game. That's exactly what happened with the Leviathan during year 1. It was a 300-power activity that rewarded you guns/armor that were higher power than your current power level, whether you were 310, 355, or 370 (for example). So you can do that within IB and Trials and keep every single match as competitive as possible. [quote]They may have learned their lesson and are returning to their more sound strategy of DLC locking the events. [/quote] If you paid for the content, you should have access to it and be able to play it - be it PVE or PVP. If they want, they can create separate playlists to accommodate different DLCs, but other than that, I think you should have access to something you paid for until servers go down. ------------------------- I could accept power-level advantages if there were as many routes to get power in PVP as there are in PVE, but only if there was an IB and Trials playlist for players who have the most recent DLC. Everything outside of that realm should have those advantages turned off. It has been cool to talk to you about this and get a different opinion on all these matters, but from where I stand, you seem to be defending something that doesn't matter other than for a couple of weeks, unbalances IB and Trials, and is mostly acquired through PVE activities. It's possible to implement better solutions to give your what you want, without compromising the cornerstone of any competitive mode: skill. Hope you're enjoying Forsaken. I'm loving it. :) Take care.