The Tuesday update, with the rewards and the increase in loot, was a step in the right direction. Some people are going to get pissy with me because they are still mad about other things, and I am not sweeping those under the rug. That however being said, the lack of loot was a big complaint. The removal of unstable cores, as you guys have stated is being done, and not resetting people for the new expansion, is also another step in the right direction.
So let me go over what you guys need to do next. Since you guys are at this moment in a listening mood. Whilst what you guys have done is a step in the right direction, that should be acknowledged, there is still more to do.
Firstly the new player onboarding experience is not so great, I think the better idea would be to make beyond light completely free, because no new player is going to buy an expansion with the current state of Destiny 2, the reality is that new players when they pop in, you get about 10,000 of them, but none of them stay, which means we're not growing our numbers here, they join in, they don't know what to do, the things that you have implemented to tell them what to do don't really work, and they're not very invested in story, so just give everyone the beyond light pack for free, and make that their introduction, the new player onboarding experience is just the beyond light campaign. Get them invested in the story, and then when you're done with that, lower the prices of the old expansions. When you ask a new player, to play a game that they have no investment of story in, and then they'll turn around and look at what it cost to play any of the story, most of them just up and leave. The old content is not going to be sellable to new players to begin with, because they're not invested, so there's no way in hell they are going to pay 15 or 20 or 25, let alone $35. Asking $25 for lightfall, when the reviews are still incredibly mostly negative, when lightfall is considered a let down at launch and still kind of is, is asking too much. The final shape, being $40, would be okay, if everything before it was 5 or $10, preferably on that $5 mark. The value for the old player who has transitioned from playing on one console to a different console or to steam, is not going to spend the amount of money, even though they spent $100 on it the first time around, and I'm telling you that as such a player that has bought every DLC ever except for EOF, that I'm not going to buy them again on steam, at their current price point, and no new player is going to buy them at their current price point, so the price needs to be lower. You're either selling the product or you're not making money, and you're not making money on those because nobody's buying them. As far as edge of fate pricing goes, I get that you guys can't lower the price right now, but it's such a super hated part of Destiny right now, that you guys got to find some kind of a way to give the player value. Edge of Fate is less content than the final shape was, it can't be in the same price point as the final shape, the same goes for renegades, even with everything that you have shown us, renegades is 1/3 of the content that the final shape is, so charging $100 is just not going to fly. It's just not going to work. The math is not mathing, the game play is not working at the moment, you have to cut your prices. Your prices have to reflect the content, based on past expansions, but past expansions also need to decrease in price, because they're old, and most of the content they had is no longer accessible, I can't go to a deep dive, I can't fish anymore, I can't load up the helm with a bunch of treasure, those things don't exist anymore, the price needs to reflect that. All those past seasons are gone, you're basically just paying for a campaign, a raid, and an exotic, and realistically, 5/10 bucks, because the other thing is the exotic is probably not going to be meta, and most players are not going to play the old raid, which means you have to play it by yourself which kind of sucks, so realistically all you have is a campaign of a story that you may or may not be invested in, that you may or may not have already paid for once.
Venders just have to come back, there is no ifs ands or buts about it, if I play crucible I need to be able to go up to shaxx and redeem in engram from him based on my vendor ring with him, same for every other npc. It can't be just that we can buy whatever we want, there has to be a thing actually given to us. It gives us a reason to go to the tower, which gets us to interact with other people, this is a good thing. This also gives people a reason to play everything else.
We are not asking for weapons to have teir system like the new equipment does, but you cannot exclude those weapons. There's some content in the game where you exclude old equipment. You just can't do that. You have to allow that equipment in the game. There is nothing wrong with letting us play with a weapon that is ancient and old, and has been around forever, that should actually be celebrated, and The thing is, before you released edge of fate, you did celebrate it, you gave us a new version of mountain top, Luna's howl, like an entire activity for us to do where we can get these items. I still have some of them, because they are amazing, we love them. I have three different versions of Luna's howl, let us keep and use these. Even in the new content. Let that content be untouched by time. Now if you're going to get rid of weapons, get rid of the ones that nobody likes. Riptide has been around forever, and everybody b****** and whines and complains that riptide sucks. I even have a roll of riptide that I actually like, and I still don't use it. That can't be a thing that you guys decide on your own either, that needs to be something that's voted on by the community. If you throw out "hey we want to add this weapon to the game but there's too much weapon bloat, what weapon should we remove from the game that you absolutely hate getting?" And let us tell you what weapons we don't like, we would absolutely gladly tell you what weapons we want removed from the game, so that you can add new ones. This is extremely important, it can't be something you decide, because you just don't know, you've tried it in the past and you've pissed everybody off in the past. Meanwhile there's still weapons that are just baffling to me that they are even still in the game, somehow they never got the sunset, and they just suck monkey -blam!-, nobody likes them, and they probably should have disappeared a long time ago. Here's the other thing, we have like a bunch of whites and greens and blues, just why exactly? Realistically you only need three of each category for each lower tier content, the new player who's leveling up from a brand new player into somebody who has all legendary and exotic stuff, trust me they don't care about any of those whites or blue weapons or armor, need to be cut down, because here's the other thing, when you are a player who is not at a level where you can get actually good gear like legendary purple gear, now you have this loop pool of garbage, that even you as a new player don't want to deal with, no one wants to deal with it. Why is it in the game? Do I really need three white snipers? Who needs three white snipers? So why is there like more than three of them? Show me who is hoarding more than one white rocket launcher? It's just goofy.
Look people are still complaining about balancing changes, in terms of difficulty, at some point you're going to have to handle it. If I were you, I wouldn't, but I would do something else. Every artifact that we've had in the past, I would re-add those to the game. I would let people cherry pick from whatever seasonal artifact they want to use at that time. This would actually give people a reason to buy all those other seasons and DLCs. This week appease your veteran players, but this would also give more content to newer players as well. Your players who are not getting exotics and stuff yet, can have whatever artifact they want, to help bridge the gap a little bit. Let's be real, some of us have such a vast arsenal of stuff, that were at the point where we don't even need the artifact. That's where I'm at actually. So realistically the artifact is just a little extra tidbit, put new players, and returning players, they struggle because they need as much help as they can get, if they can cherry pick their artifact, done bought and sold. and in that higher tear of difficulty in content, well now you can tailor pick which artifact you want to use, to better equip you to deal with that higher difficulty. This doesn't require you guys to do anything, except turn the artifact slot into essentially an equip slot, and make all artifacts available in collections.
These are just a few things that would suggest doing, there are more things that need to be done, there are other things that need to be touched on, there are other ways to do things. However I would try to do the things I've suggested before renegades comes out. Because if you don't, nobody's going to buy renegades and then what happens?! Your numbers are a struggle bus right now. If you do what I suggested I guarantee you, some players will come back, and if some players come back, it won't end the struggle, bill at least give you a chance.
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It's Bungie... 1 step forward 50 steps back.