DESTINY 2: The Final Shape

[Eivion]

3 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Jason Schreier tweeted that he will have a full story tomorrow to clear up the rumors that their won't be any more "expansions" for D2 - just small content updates and that D3 was "cancelled"

(He did already say that D3 was not cancelled because it was, in fact, never in development. There was a spinoff project called "Payback" that was cancelled years ago)

Curious to see what the expansion talk will be. I kind of figured they might pull back on them to try to increase the size and worth of Episode content. Doubt they are dead.

Payback being a another dead spin-off opposed ot D3 somehow makes more sense. Pretty sure there have been attempts to create one at least 2-3 times now. Its surprising nothing has worked as a Destiny spin-off should be easy with the sheer amount of lore to pull from.

Edited August 1 by Eivion

[Casey]

Supposedly the Final Shape hasn’t met sales goals and isn’t even performing as well as Lightfall did.

[Eivion]

3 hours ago, Casey said:

Supposedly the Final Shape hasn’t met sales goals and isn’t even performing as well as Lightfall did.

Unless they did something moronic with their predictions again like last year then TFS is actually around what Lightfall did sales wise. The aspect some were fearing is that players are dropping off faster than they did with Lightfall. I'm not shocked though as there were always going to be a good amount who used it as a drop off point due to being the end of a saga. Episode 1 could have been the most amazing thing ever, and it still wouldn't have kept everyone around at this point.

The bloodletting was always coming unless the Final Shape managed insane numbers. Parsons and co. fucked up too badly for that to not be the case. Its why its so frustrating that fucker hasn't been fired or resigned. Corporation reward failure way too much.

[RIPPA]

Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy were two of the people let go which is... telling

(Apparently they both lost the game of executive musical chairs when Payback was cancelled)

[madl]

2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy were two of the people let go which is... telling

(Apparently they both lost the game of executive musical chairs when Payback was cancelled)

Yeah, Grubb says they weren’t part of the layoffs,  but they were squeezed out.

Seen a few Bungie folk say (on Twitter) that Bungie management oversold the health and value of the company to get the Sony deal done, and that Bungie would have closed up shop a fair while ago without Sony. Seems plausible, at least.  Sony looks unlikely to get the kind of roi they were expecting. I’m not expecting Bungie to continue once Marathon is released, Destiny 3 doesn’t seem in the cards, Destiny 2 support seems to be at least winding down, everything else Bungie was working on has been canceled or given to another studio

Bungie was a heckuva studio during the Halo era.  But things change, and Bungie didn’t adapt well enough. It happens. 

 

 

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[RIPPA]

 

[Eivion]

Looks like expansions are dead for now due to Lightfall and Final Shape's sales. Still sounds like new content is coming including bigger stuff like raids and destinations. Curious on how this will be priced out. 

Also seems like we are getting more ITL free updates which I'm happy to see.

10 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy were two of the people let go which is... telling

(Apparently they both lost the game of executive musical chairs when Payback was cancelled)

Can't say I'm broken up about Smith. Never liked him in videos, felt like he made bad decisions, and it was noticeable when Bungie had culture issues that Smith was suddenly promoted away from the actual game. He seemingly failed to ever expand Destiny outside of the main game which was essentially his big job the past 4 years. We have yet to see any spin-offs, tv, or films for the series.

To me Smith is the type of firing that probably should have happened years ago like Parsons. Smith was no near as bad but still mediocre at his job.

Don't know enough about Noseworthy.

 

Edited August 2 by Eivion

[Eivion]

Rehearing that at least 1B of the $3.6B Sony paid for Bungie was for employee retention makes me realize they realistically shouldn't even been through a third of that yet, but somehow they already burned through it. Kind of surprised no one has pushed for an audit since if true there is basically no way in hell some of that money wasn't stolen by execs. 

Edited August 2 by Eivion

[RIPPA]

Due to the name change issue, I am actively looking for something else to play since I'm terrified to log in

[Eivion]

The name change bug didn't effect me so I have been ok playing.

The bad news from a coupe weeks back made me too down to mention it, but I did enjoy the Act II finale. Was neat seeing Maya revealed and there were some neat lore bits afterwards like Vex copies of her and Chioma living well within the network and even discovering ways to manipulate it to help out visitors and others stuck within it. Then there was an horrifying bit

Spoiler

about Conductor Maya flaying flesh off of some altered Exo version of Chimoa for "reasons." I really wish shit like that was shown within the game. It would up the level of the Conductor as a villain a good deal.

 

Missed a good week of gameplay due to the AC dying  and needing a power draining fan to not die of heat exhaustion. Been fine though since Friday. I strangely like the changes done to Solstice this year in terms of how to do the armor. Still need to get the glows, but this loot having some solid roles definitely makes it feel more worthwhile than the past couple of years.

[RIPPA]

The D2 Teams Twitter account claimed they would have an update on a solution sometime today so I have been waiting for that before logging on

[RIPPA]

 

[Eivion]

Trials continues to be one of the most miserable experiences in this game as a Hunter on console. You can always feel the difference between classes there, and its frustrating playing with people who are ridiculously out of my league on either end. Would say I miss SBMM, but that bs always placed with higher level players despite absolutely not being one. I would probably be less frustrated if this wasn't the one week there was an adept I give a shit about. My successes almost only come on the crap I don't care about.

[Eivion]

Managed to eek through my Passage last minute before I went to sleep via getting carried twice. I even got mostly the roll I was looking for. Still it bothers me that it happened when I was half dead inside and not really giving a shit. 

[Eivion]

Finished the exotic mission which also doubles for the big weekly story quest. Its big and long. Not as dense as Presage or Seraph Shield but a longer traversal. The beginning is reminiscent of the Whisper though not as bad. I dislike a lack of checkpoints due to its length. They also seem to not have it up yet for Fireteams which would at least make the boss fights go quicker though this was at least a good place to take advantage of Whisper and the sniper artifact mods. The lack of lore bits to find was disappointing though I'm hoping some secrets are there either in the coming weeks or after the first run. I wish there was more voice acting. Felt odd to hear Maya then have silent bits like in Enigma Protocol. The difficulty was annoying for me due to first time exploration running into my dinner time (I had to run it twice due to being timed out), but I do like it overall. Felt like they realized that Starcrossed was a bit on the easy side and adjusted. Its not crazy hard as a solo, but not super easy either.

Still need to try out the AR though that may end up being tomorrow.

I did like the opening cinematic a good deal. It gave some good insight into Maya's purpose and an interesting look to one of the big themes of the Episode.

Spoiler

Its oddly enough about love with the Maya/Chioma and Osiris/Saint relationships kind of mirroring each other. Maya is, in her own way, trying to do exactly what Osiris did but in an incredibly twisted manner that can only accept one specific result. She has become obsessive to the point where she doesn't seem to grasp the monster she has become. Curious to see what the endgame for this arc will be. 

 

[RIPPA]

I am in the middle of my hell week so I am not even bothering to start the new Act until this weekend.

Via the D2 comms team - starting with the next Episode, there will be separate Pathfinder tracks for Strikes, Crucible and Gambit

[Eivion]

Yeah definitely don't start until you have some time to spare.. Nothing is hard to figure out, but it will take some time playing solo.

Apparently Chris Barrett's release was related to him more being a piece of shit than cost cutting or poor performance. 

https://x.com/jasonschreier/status/1828840809590075742

Edited August 28 by Eivion

[RIPPA]

Couple of things from the new TWID

Since next week will mark Destiny's 10th anniversary - they will be a small in game celebration

They also will release a developer insight blog that will start explain the road ahead (The Codename Frontiers stuff). Apparently this will be the start of "regular communication" but didn't specify how frequently that was

Also starting with Episode: Revenant (Oct 8th) there will be two featured raids and two featured dungeons every week. This will shorten the time a particular raid/dungeon appears to 4 weeks

[Eivion]

Been seeing stuff about the anniversary for weeks now so its good to get in confirmed though a bit disappointing its small. I assume the work on TFS and layoffs killed any chance of something bigger.

Happy to see Frontiers talk coming soon. Been seeing streamers mention the need for some kind of roadmap though stopping at just Frontiers will probably not be enough for many.

[RIPPA]

https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/destiny_10_anniversary

Article has lots of links to other articles

Looks like they are moving to a model where every 6 months will be an "expansion" (this starts in Summer 2025) with a "major update" every 3 months

[Eivion]

Finished watching a video on the articles from Cross and Houndish.

Its interesting, at their cores the articles are confirmations of the release structure all the journalists were claiming last month. We just have proper explanation and details of said structure now. It feels a lot better now with the articles out instead of the feel of doom and gloom journalists were pushing last month.

Overall it seems like an attempt to overhaul everything to throw off the monotonous feeling much has from not changing all that much over the past 5-7 years. I kind of have mixed feelings on it since it seems like we could potentially be getting less story wise, but so much of that will be be based on the execution and density more than anything else. I will miss the the current campaign experience though I have to admit discovering the story via exploration could be more interesting. I do like that we are getting at least 2 expansions a year. Always feels odd to only get one new destination to explore when the story feels like it calls for more. Echoes and the lack of change on basic Nessus is a great example. I do like that it sounds like they may just be testing the waters for different storytelling formats in general with each expansion. I actually wouldn't mind it just being different each time depending on the story itself.

I am curious if that means we get two raids a year now alongside what the release schedule will be with raids and dungeons now.

Seasons being more about activities/ core gameplay changes is not a direction I hate, especially since they will be free. If they can mostly be Into the Light level I think they will work out fine. 

Guessing paid content beyond Eververse will just be Expansions/raids/dungeons. Curious what the price points will be. 

Not sure how I feel about gear changes. The tier system sounds interesting but could also be more power creep than ever. It also makes me wonder what it means for exotic weapons.

[RIPPA]

We able to play, briefly, for the first time in like 3 weeks.

Basically I went and got all of Cayde's stashes and that was it

I am hoping to finally have time for the Exotic mission tomorrow but we shall see

[Eivion]

Still need to do epilogue and catalyst stuff, but I finished Act III last night.

Enjoyed the story and activities, but I still felt a underwhelmed on the whole. The climax lacked the tension and impact they were going for. And it felt like a whole bunch of minor interesting things were happening bts with the Vex and within the Vex network, but we never really saw any of it. Really hope Revenant and Heresy can succeed where Echoes failed.