 Hey everybody my videos late this time because I cut my finger up with a chainsaw Which makes typing a pain in the ass plus I've been going back and forth on what to write about I've decided my next video is probably going to be about why Call of Duty's multiplayer is so popular and what the people who Love to make fun of it are missing, but today we're going to talk about destiny 2's brave new world I have even more terrible monetization The fact is the game has never been smaller or a worse value And it's at this very moment that Bungie society they think it's cool to sell a dungeon a few armor sets and a couple of Exotics for 20 bucks After the logo this time the backlash is warranted I've played destiny since the beta of D1 I've been with the game through every disaster and controversy and through most of that I have usually been the one who's been pretty forgiving of the game Destiny 2 has slowly pushed the boundaries on its pricing model The off-year expansions have gotten simultaneously smaller and more expensive The Taken King and Forsaken were the only two expansions in the game's history that felt like they truly provided Excess value while the value that was provided by Rise of Iron was more than that of Shadowkeep Which was actually more than that of Beyond Light While this has happened Bungie has explained that it's simply not able to produce DLCs like Forsaken or the Taken King ever again And we should expect expansions to be smaller as more developer time is spent producing seasonal content So that the game never again suffers from a content drought like the one that existed between The Taken King and Rise of Iron which was a full year of almost nothing Aside from the sparrow racing league and the occasional barely there holiday event Before I go further into this I do want to make it clear that I actually think Bungie deserves credit for the seasonal model no matter each individual season's flaws There is at least a steady stream of stuff to do in Destiny 2 Now often that thing is something stupid like Serif Towers But even Serif Towers are better than the year of nothing that happened after the Taken King There are three big problems with Destiny 2 right now as far as I'm concerned and all of them Boiled down to being an issue of value. Let's start with the biggest one The content vault is inexcusable I Started playing World of Warcraft very soon after it launched aside from Half-Life GTA Vice City and the first Call of Duty. It was basically the only game. I played from like 1994 through the Warlords of Drainer expansion We had very little money back then and I had a PC that could barely run anything at all Still Wow, I could run Wow, like Destiny had a committed group of players that alternated their time between playing the game and Complaining about all the stuff in the game that pissed them off Still it managed to keep millions of people playing for years and years on the strength of its expansions and the Truly massive amount of content that existed in the game I eventually stopped playing mainly because I found that the tab targeting combat just wasn't that engaging anymore And when we were finally secure enough that I could buy a used Xbox 360 in 2013 I stopped playing and have not been back since all that time There were people like me who loved an ever-expanding always online world But wanted it married to something that had far more engaging combat When Destiny was announced it was like a game that had been designed to be exactly what I had always wanted So I started playing right when the beta was available on the Xbox 360 Destiny despite all the mealy mouth talk about a shared space shooter was clearly designed as an MMO It always drove me crazy when people would respond to valid criticisms by saying Destiny isn't an MMO Yep, but it is and it always has been I am so glad they finally admitted that But from the very start this game was marketed as an MMO This led most players to assume there would be an ever-expanding world So when Destiny 2 was announced as a full sequel there was quite a bit of pushback I was willing to give Bungie a pass on this one because by the time D2 was released Destiny was already looking somewhat old and outdated and definitely was held back by the Xbox 360 and PS3 Destiny 2 however remains one of the best-looking games around and runs on PC and the current generation of hardware exceptionally well There is no real need for destiny 3 unless there is going to be a fundamental redesign of how maps are built or how Enemies and encounters are designed and that's not going to happen So this is the opportunity to truly build destiny into the world of Warcraft replacement Many of us have wanted from the start and make no mistake Destiny is filled to the brim with people like me Next time you're in a raid ask around and you'll find a significant portion of the player base is lapsed Wow or Guild Wars players Wow did a ton of things right, but if there's one core thing about the game It's existing in a huge world and giving reasons for that world to exist as a max-level player You may not have a reason to visit the low-level areas that often But you do need the crafting materials that are there you can buy them from players who are leveling or you can go there yourself Or you can run old raids solo to get armor sets or weapons for transmog or You can farm ultra rare mounts or you can roll a new character and play those old areas and story lines again Lastly even if you rarely ever have a reason to go to duskwood or strangle horn veil The fact that it exists Makes you feel like you're existing in a larger world that goes on outside of you Destiny has always struggled with this aspect of the MMO experience Because it's open-world map design is more akin to an interconnected set of linear FPS levels When you combine this with the fact that planetary materials have always been totally pointless And there being no kind of player driven economy or really crafting system We'll see what happens now, but I sincerely doubt it's gonna be a deep crafting system You're left with a world that's kind of lifeless outside of the playlists The patrol maps do work pretty well as gameplay levels despite them being so easy. It's stupid, but they don't serve any wider purpose This has led bungee to believe that they have no value at all and that is where they are wrong I don't care about the shifting reasons bungee has given for why Huge swaths of the game I've fought are disappearing in a way that no other game in history has ever attempted At first they said it was an effort to save hard drive space But that is ridiculous as destiny isn't close to being the largest game around The latest cod is like 70 gigabytes larger than destiny 2 has ever been and I certainly don't give a shit If it's hard for them to chase down bugs Destiny 2 is for all intents and purposes a subscription-based MMO It sells yearly expansions Quarterly seasons and has a huge micro transaction store your five of destiny 2 if you want to play everything that comes out will cost a full $100 this on top of eververse where a huge portion of all new content sits I don't even care about charging for things like exotic ornaments, but it fundamentally hurts the game When the answer to holy crap, where did you get that cool emote is always always? Oh, I bought it in the store people didn't play older strikes Campaigns and patrols that much because there's simply no reward for doing so Meanwhile over in Warcraft. I promise you that at this very moment Hundreds if not thousands of people are grinding through old content for rare mounts and armor sets at this very second I haven't made this video before because it felt like beating a dead horse But we're now about to lose the best campaign in destiny 2 and for what? What tangible benefit does the paying customer get from this a slightly reduced file size? I'm good, dude. I've got like 8 terabytes of SSD storage on my machine. I can spare the space If the issue is console storage space check it out. How about a far better solution like allowing separate installs? Cod allows you to install the campaign multiplayer zombies and warzone or one of them or all of them If it really is because it's too hard to squash bugs and older content then try harder Because removing literally hundreds of dollars of stuff we bought is terrible no matter how you slice it There is no defense of it man destiny should have been focusing on how to make this old stuff relevant Things like having the new eververse stuff bought in the microtransaction store only after you find it in the game Imagine if every one of those weapon ornaments was a world drop that you had to get and then you can unlock in the Microtransaction store. That's how you drive people into the open world or older strikes or older raids Instead come December. We will have lost five full campaigns At least five raids several dungeons six entire patrol zones a ton of strikes a ton of PvP maps and Several gambit maps It contributes to why the game is starting to feel unbearably small and boring to me Grinding the same low-effort seasonal activity in the same one raid and two dungeons over and over feels like crap It also makes the game a worse value every single year because the content drops Have never come close to replacing what is lost Beyond light is objectively less content than most of launch D2 and all of the first-year DLC Which clean will almost certainly be smaller than forsaken and Next year. I have no reason to believe the expansion will be bigger than shadowkeep Instead of putting effort into the most important thing they could have which is refreshing and keeping relevant the mountain Excellent stuff that was already in the game They're making the game smaller and replacing it with seasonal activities that are meant to be transient and light and forgettable I would have traded serif towers for a heroic campaign system that was filled with unique and rare Cosmetic weapon and armor ornaments instead. We got another three months of throwing a ball at something The business model is about to cross a line. I Have already been pushed to the edge with how abysmal the very concept of the destiny content vault is in fact, I object to even calling it a vault What does that mean? We have still never once heard anything about when and if any of this stuff is coming back In fact, I think it's now very clear that all of these campaigns are gone forever. It makes me angry Do you think it would have affected the sales of DLC if it had been clear from the beginning that the campaign and patrol Locations would be stripped out of the game forever after a couple of years I think some people would have said yeah, actually fuck that Which means springing it on people feels like a scummy ripoff. I will never be okay with that Never never never it absolutely kills my desire to play because I considered a terrible business practice But at least through all of this the basic monetization model has remained consistent Prices have risen a bit and they have pushed it further and further with eververse But the actual seasonal model hasn't seen any major changes Which meant it was at least predictable Pre-order bonuses were confined to cosmetic stuff and occasionally early access to certain guns Which is horrendous, but they've been pretty awful with that shit right from the get-go But now we're moving into a brave new world of suck as we're seeing for the first time content drops that are both wildly overpriced and Confusing as well as starting to cut these things up into tiny pieces We found out that two dungeons this year will require that you pre-order the season pass This is awful and indefensible in response to the predictable backlash Bungie said there would be a way to upgrade your purchase to unlock the dungeons These have never once never once been sold separately before and it sets a precedent I am not really okay with supporting going forward The entire pricing is actually extremely confusing and Bungie has done nothing to make it less so as it stands You can buy the normal bundle that includes the expansion and season pass for the usual price But that not only doesn't include the thank you now give us money anniversary event It also for the very first time does not include the dungeons that will release next year throughout destiny 2 Dungeons have either been included with the yearly expansion or at least with the season they launched in in fact in a little Remembered tidbit Luke Smith once defended the Indefensibly huge ever verse store by saying it was the store that paid for dungeons that it was the store That paid for zero hour. Let's take a look at this quote right here. Shall we? This was straight up the rationale given for why more and more of the game's reward were shifting from the game Into a cash shop Now I guess that's no longer the case as we have to buy dungeons separately If dungeons can be sold separately, then why can't raids be if raids and dungeons and the exotics They hold can be sold separately, then why couldn't exotic weapons be sold right out of the cash shop I tend to be skeptical of slippery slope arguments But it's hard to scoff as I find myself sliding down a slope at this very moment Finally the people who defend this pricing scheme and believe me There is a truly depressing amount of people who defend this But they will often point out that if you just pre-order everything you'll get it all for basically the same price Outside of the grotesquely overpriced anniversary event that is supposedly a thank you to the players But is actually 15 bucks for one dungeon one gun and a bunch of stupid ever Shit that should be in the game for free as an actual thank you to the players who for years have dealt with the garbage Every time bungee shits the bed in a totally predictable manner So if you want the anniversary stuff, you will indeed have to pay more this year despite the anniversary pack Objectively being smaller than a season while also costing 25 percent more than a season And this again man for an event that by rights should simply be a free Thank you destiny to players have stuck with bungee through a never-ending series of face plants Like with double primaries that they were told was a terrible idea or no random roles That they were told was a terrible idea or 4v4 PVP that they were told was a terrible idea or Consumable shaders that they were told was a terrible idea or weapon and armor sunsetting that they were told was a terrible idea Or destiny content vault that they've been told is a terrible idea 90% of the time they just end up admitting the original idea was terrible and doing what players had asked them to do in the First place, but they've never budged on money And they're not gonna this time and even leaving aside the anniversary event shit Which we shouldn't because it's grotesque, but we will even leaving that aside Bungie has just created a pricing scheme that attempts to strong arm you into pre-ordering the entire year site unseen Not by giving neat little extras But by straight up taking shit away from you Are you the kind of person who on principle? Doesn't like the idea of paying a game company 30 bucks for stuff that hasn't even been announced And that you have no idea whether it will be good Well, fuck you either you pay up front now, or you pay a responsibility penalty later a Penalty which by the way they still have not explained beyond literally saying we'll figure out how we're going to charge you more And how much more later but for now we strongly recommend you put your principles away and pay or else Or are you like I was as recently as six or seven years ago? The kind of person who really needs to be careful with their money and simply can't pay for a full year of content You have no idea of the quality of well fuck off because they simply don't give a shit You pay up now, or you pay the penalty later Thanks for 30 years of great memories by the way, but fuck off and pay us or are you maybe the kind of player Who likes to wait and make sure a season is any good before you buy it and Commit time to playing it yeah get fucked pay up or pay the currently unknown future penalty When you add all this shit up, it's starting to be very hard to want to give them money Where is the bottom? It's been a never-ending pushing of the envelope the anniversary event on its own is enough to make me pretty salty Then the strong arm to extort you into buying the full year up front makes me even more annoyed When you add that to more and more shit being ever-versed only and literally two-thirds of the game You bought going poof because they don't want to maintain the game They've sold you or actually figure out a way to make it work Yeah, that really has me more disgusted than I've been since Curse of Osiris 2021 has been such a terrible year for games I'm having trouble even making a best of the year script, but 2022 looks pretty damn overstuffed with good stuff With a huge winter for games coming up and Bungie's business model orders of magnitude shittier than it was under Big Daddy Activision I'm finding myself with very little desire to log in at all spending the last week only playing controller games because my finger looks like hamburger has me feeling like I did when my desktop PC broke during Warlords of Draenor Discovering that I could maybe just not play Destiny 2 I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting pretty close All right, I don't know what's up next I'll put up a poll I guess because I have a bunch of different ideas and you know, it's busy I only got time for one of these every three weeks or four weeks So I don't know if you're interested I will put a poll on the thing that you see and you'll click and let me know all right Thanks for coming. I'll see you next time. Bye