There are no laws that dictate game design. It's called creative freedom.

[quote]There are no laws that dictate game design. It's called creative freedom.[/quote] ...and that's what gets so many artists into trouble. Freedom can only exists within the confines of STRUCTURE. Freedom without structure or rules is CHAOS. You can't just stand up and play anything you want in the middle of a jazz performance and have it SOUND like jazz. There are certain rules about which notes to play...when to play them...how to ACCENT them and how to CONNECT them...that if you don't obey them the music not only won't SOUND like jazz. It won't even sound like music. What **sounds** like creative freedom from a master soloist is someone who has learned the rules so well that they dont' even have to think about them anymore. Their music naturally incorporates the rules....and also knows where the rules are flexible enough that they can be bent or broken in fun and interesting ways. But you only get to that point after DECADES and DECADES of study, practice and playing. Bungie is enough of a master at the art of shooter game design that they know the rules....and can bend them and break them in creative ways. You hear that understanding from Joe Blackburn when he talks about increasing their capacity to make new weapons BUT NOT COMPROMISING ON THEIR QUALITY. The problem is that Bungie tried to do the same with loot-game design and systems...BUT THEY DIDN'T KNOW THE RULES WELL ENOUGH TO GET AWAY WITH IT. They tried to run before they could crawl...and the result is a chaotic MESS that they are still trying to clean up, and a game that keeps breaking down every couple of years and either needs to be overhauled....or abandoned Beause its loot system and power management systems self-destruct. OTOH, Look at Guerilla GAmes. Like Bungie they are know as a shooter game developer (Killzone). But unlike Bungie when they decided to make an RPG game (Horizon: Zero Dawn) they didn't approach it with an attitude of "We can do whatever we want". No. They went at it with the understanding that they were a beginner in RPG game developement...and that the genre had RULES that they needed to learn and follow. Rules that they need to MASTER before they could think about innovating. The result is that Horizon: Zero Dawn is considered to be an incredible game. Guerilla Games expressed themselves creatively through the STORY they told....not by playing fast and lose with the rules of open-world game design. They stuck to the rules of open world game design....so HZD basically plays like an Assassin's Creed game. But in doing so, they didn't frustrate their players or build TIME BOMBS into the game that got in the way of the story they wanted to tell. Bungie is finally realizing this, and is (slowly and grudgingly) WALKING BACK the host of bad design decisions they made....and getting back to the rules. The problem is that---as they start to finally OBEY the rules----its starting to shine a spotlight on the game's OTHER problems and OTHER bad design decisions. Which it will take them time to address and clean up. "The are no wrong notes (as long as you know how to set them up in ways that make sense and how to resolve them properly)." ---Miles Davis.

My problem isn't the sunsetting it's that they are reissuing the exact weapons they sunset. They could at least slap a new color scheme and name on it like they do everything else. Example Waking Vigil, rename it Sleeping Vigil and turn it into a 120 or 180 problem solved. At least then it would feel like there's a reason to chase it. Why should we have to/want to grind out a gun that we literally already have in the vault?

[quote]Sunsetting is a foundational aspect of loot games and MMOs.[/quote] Not going to well is it? Seems the vast majority of the community is against it. At least with shadowkeep even if it was a flop we still had the rest of the game (forsaken and other expansions) to save it. The loot pool is insulating low. Lord shaxx now gives out reckoning and SoTW gear. No new vendor weapons, they didn't need to replace everything but currently this reissued loot is a sorry attempt to make the loot pool look big. Soon warmind cell mods will be sunset because the weapons that produce them will be usless. Paul Tassie described the whole situation fine, each season is more about loss then gain. We will never have a net gain in loot. The season that is sunset will cancel out the season that is introduced. Players will be praying that they finally issue a weapon archetype thats been missing (540 pulses, Hakke Scout Rifles, ect). I think they should stop sunsetting weapons and armor that haven't been sunset yet. Reissue all the shadowkeep and forsaken gear to beyond light levels. Once that gear is sunset significantly reduce the price of sunset expansions, only the exotics would be the selling point. I don't think loot inflation will become a issue until late witch queen or even light fall. I would imagine bungie will move on to something else and just quit destiny or give it to someone else. Hopefully the someone else can have a better grasp for d3 if that's a thing. As I'm writing this the twab came out and seasonal umbral engrams are returning. A good step but why would people decrypt loot that is sunset already?

This player outrage was baked into this expansion. So baked in that I predicted it a year and a half ago. 1. Many people play this game in a way that is not compatible with a loot game or an MMO....so Bungie's decision to make it play more like an action-RPG and less of a conventional shooter was going to anger those players. 2. Many people dont' care about this game as a loot game. They are collectors, completionists, or PVP players who simply see PVE as a way to gear up for PVP. So both the changes to the PVE side of the game AND sunseting (which takes away their gear advantages in PVP) were going to anger them no matter how it was done. 3. The Lack of Sunsetting in this franchise for 5 years and this game for three years both created problems.....and allowed Bungie to ignore OTHER problems....to the point where they were threatening the survival of the game. (IOW, all the problems that are in the game now with sunsetting were int eh game last year WITHOUT it.) So Bungie had to resort to radical surgery to fix them....and it HURTS. But Sunsetting isn't the problem...and never was. The game is simply paying the price---NOW---for poor design and bad development choices made years ago. Bottomline is that This game would have never survived 3 more years without sunsetting. So this had to be done---as painful as it is. And those players who cannot accept the changes really need to go find another game to play. Bungie is showing no signs of backing down....and they have no room to backdown even if they did start to get cold feet. Their choice is to have their game destroyed by angry players (no objective evidence that this is occurring) or destroy their game themselves by continued catastrophic mismangement and becoming unmanageable and unable to run on last gen hardware.

[quote]This player outrage was baked into this expansion. So baked in that I predicted it a year and a half ago. 1. Many people play this game in a way that is not compatible with a loot game or an MMO....so Bungie's decision to make it play more like an action-RPG and less of a conventional shooter was going to anger those players. 2. Many people dont' care about this game as a loot game. They are collectors, completionists, or PVP players who simply see PVE as a way to gear up for PVP. So both the changes to the PVE side of the game AND sunseting (which takes away their gear advantages in PVP) were going to anger them no matter how it was done. 3. The Lack of Sunsetting in this franchise for 5 years and this game for three years both created problems.....and allowed Bungie to ignore OTHER problems....to the point where they were threatening the survival of the game. (IOW, all the problems that are in the game now with sunsetting were int eh game last year WITHOUT it.) So Bungie had to resort to radical surgery to fix them....and it HURTS. But Sunsetting isn't the problem...and never was. The game is simply paying the price---NOW---for poor design and bad development choices made years ago. Bottomline is that This game would have never survived 3 more years without sunsetting. So this had to be done---as painful as it is. And those players who cannot accept the changes really need to go find another game to play. Bungie is showing no signs of backing down....and they have no room to backdown even if they did start to get cold feet. Their choice is to have their game destroyed by angry players (no objective evidence that this is occurring) or destroy their game themselves by continued catastrophic mismangement and becoming unmanageable and unable to run on last gen hardware.[/quote] If the game all ready has these "loot problems" then why haven't the player numbers drop off before sunsetting. The player numbers have always stayed the same. Can you describe this "loot issue"? And why you think sunsetting and reissued gear is the solution? Isn't the reissueing of gear only hurting the game more based on the "loot crisis" you claims exist? I just want alot of weapons and gear to choose from. Why? Because why not, Bungie does good with gun design and I want to experience the potential of each weapon. It can take a while to get the perfect roll. What a "perfect roll" is differs from person to person. The reason people are so mad is because bungie LIED about the reasoning for sunsetting. They brought up "pinnacle weapon" balancing as the first crisis and stated sunsetting must be done for "balance". They ended up sunsetting all the pre shadowkeep gear. You talked about people never touching those weapons. But who are you to determine what people do with their guns. Some people use the older guns to good success. Who are you to say I want to make your gun usless because I think you'll never use it. What bungie has done is get rid of gear so they can re-issue it for their sake. They gave you old weapons for beyond lights campaign because I guess they couldn't come up with anything or whatever. And now bungie wants to take away more gear season by season, with no end in sight. All those hours of finding the perfect gun wasted. You might have to settle for mediocre rolls because the players have to constantly grind and grind to make up for lost old gear. They also need to pray to bungie that they finally give out a favorite weapon archtype instead of another gnawing hunger reissue. What bungie is doing is frankly disgraceful and insulting. It's not helping the game, I hope you know that. We aren't seeing exploding player numbers as a result of sunsetting or content vaulting. According to your previous post you state destiny 2 is successful and the metric to measure that is player numbers. We aren't gaining any new players. No one goes "mars and dlc gear finally got vaulted, now is the perfect time to play d2!" I don't mind sunsetting for balance. But bungie isn't doing it for balance. If your concern about power creep look at the new gear. Lament is beyond broken and so is cloudstrike, people should be up in arms that those weapons aren't nerfed. Cloudstrike is better then IZB ever was. Stasis is better then bottom tree striker or nova warp ever was. I don't care what guns people play with. Their choice, I want a diverse massive pile of guns. You used to see all these cool builds like the black armory sniper with kill clip or kindle orchid. If you wanted to sunset for balance, then do it but only if you have a good amount of F2P weapons people can access. To beyond lights credit we've basically solved the "damage plus reload perk" issue, the new perks are a great alternative. The raid wepaons are good. If mountain top and recluse were the type of weapons used to justify sunsetting, nerf them and make them exotics. They nerfed pinnacle weapons in the past, they could've done it again. I would rather have my pinnacle weapons suffer then most of my weapons become irrelevant. And armor sunsetting just doesn't make sence. Your grinding for numbers on a bar at that point. And it's way to expensive to masterwork armor. They really messed up with armor 2.0 and sunsetting. Unless you change the mods or make the old mods incompatible on new armor, I just don't understand the reasoning, I'm not being sarcastic. I really don't get the reason. Sorry it took so long to reply. I'm a busy man.

[quote]Sunsetting is a foundational aspect of loot games and MMOs.[/quote] Expansive and deep content is the foundational aspect of MMO games

Yes. But Destiny isn't a pure MMO, just like Diablo 3 isn't a story driven RPG. Destiny is an action game combined with an MMO. Just like Diablo 3 is an action game combined with an RPG.

Kelly... You say Destiny is an MMO or isn't strictly an MMO... keep changing the goal posts. When it comes to sunsetting its a "fOuNdAtIonAl aSpEcT oF mMos!" But when it comes to having deep content Destiny isn't a "pure MMO". So what is it? A failure of a new type of game or... an MMO?

No it isn’t moving the goalposts. It puts a stop to strawman arguments and personal definitions. [b]Bungie is calling Destiny an **action-MMO**. In the same spirit that games like Diablo 3 and Borderlands 3 are **action-RPG**s.[/b] Which means the game is an [b]action game[/b] that has [b]MMO-elements[/b] blended in. Just like Borderlands 3 is an action game with RPG elements blended in. So comparing Destiny to WOW or ESO is as inappropriate as comparing Borderlands 3 to Assassins Creed or a story-driven RPG. Destiny’s action game core is a looter-shooter....and therefore has to obey the rules that govern looter shooter game design. [b]Bungie tried for five years to keep ignoring those rules and all they managed to achieve WAS BREAKING THE GAME OVER AND OVER AGAIN.[/b]

So... its a terrible "Action MMO"? Got it.

Yep. I’ve been saying that the whole time. Until Smith announced this Unification of Vision, and their willingness to finally embrace the game’s core identity back in Summer of 2019? I was on the verge of quitting. The game was THAT bad and it’s management that random and rudderless. Forsaken told a good story and was a fun action game..,BUT IT WAS A HORRIBLY BROKEN RPG. And I got tired of listening to Bungie’s investment team arrogantly defend its brokenness, and some of the worst game design decisions I’ve ever seen. The issue is that Bungie is finally doing what they need to do to make it a GOOD game. It’s just that the process is going to take time...and like is been saying for 18 months...it’s going to be painful. I said that the game was going to change in ways some wouldn’t like. But this community never listens, unless you’re telling them what they want to hear.

"The game was that bad"? The game was perfectly fine in Arrivals, loot didn't sunset and there was a backlog of content to compensate for droughts. Now we got even more broken RPG aspects and a loot pool that you would expect out of a $10-20 indie game. If the process to make the game "good" is shit then the game... is shit, and having a long process of "fixing" the game will just turn away players. Destiny 2 is in such a shit state that concurrent players are dropping like flies on Steam and the game got surpassed by Terraria, Garry's Mod, Stardew Valley, Civilisation 6 and other Free to play games like Warframe. It speaks volumes when your game is free to play and is getting surpassed by games that are decades old at this point and haven't had many updates.

NO IT WASNT FINE. Just because you were getting what you wanted and chose to stick your head in the sand and ignore everything else doesn’t mean the game was “fine”. Every problem that you are complaining about was present in the game last year. The lack of loot. The lack of power to chase. The sameness of the loot. Large parts of the game not dropping relevant loot. People just didn’t have sunsetting to blame for these problems...AND THEY WEREN’T MAD ABOUT [i]MUH GUNS[/i] BEING TAKEN AWAY. So people ignored them and pretended they weren’t problems. Well they WERE problems....and I said a YEAR AGO they were problems and that the game was in trouble. SUNSETTING IS PART OF THE PROCESS OF FIXING THOSE PROBLEMS. And just because you are now personally UNHAPPY doesn’t magically put this game into [i]crisis.[/i] and give you permission to make up your own facts. The same million players a day are still playing this game everyday. You do not speak for the average player. You are part of an angry minority throwing a collective temper tantrum.

[quote]Yes. But Destiny isn't a pure MMO, just like Diablo 3 isn't a story driven RPG. Destiny is an action game combined with an MMO. Just like Diablo 3 is an action game combined with an RPG.[/quote] Destiny isn't an MMO. Diablo isn't an MMO. Maybe D2 can take more from the gameplay experience of Diablo in order to feel worthwhile to play. 😏

Agreed. The game Bungie needs to be looking towards is more Diablo 3 and less World of Warcraft.

[quote]Agreed. The game Bungie needs to be looking towards is more Diablo 3 and less World of Warcraft.[/quote] Right now, they aren't taking from either.