The Destiny Gestation Period

Let's quickly list off some things that really don't matter that much:
-It's Sunday
-It's comfortably temperate in the Midwest
-I'm in a coffee shop and forgot my headphones
-The music in here is ok, actually.

So, bearing all of that in mind, let's talk about Destiny. Mostly because I've been between games since my second run of Bloodborne (I'm saving myself for a third and that ephemeral, worthless platinum trophy) and this Tuesday's release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We're closing in on a three week gap between the them, and since Destiny has been resting unplayed on my hard drive for a spell, it seemed like as good idea as any to take another look at the game, now a little more than half a year since it's much ballyhooed release in September.

Destiny is a game you probably heard about: it's the one where you're a guy in space fighting against a random number generator, because there wasn't that much to do outside of running around and repeating mission after mission hoping for newer and better gear so you could redo those missions again in harder modes, if only a bit easier. For a little while, Destiny wasn't so far removed from the pre-World of Warcraft spectrum of MMORPG: you had a fair amount of space and plenty of stuff to kill, but after you hit the ignition there really wasn't that much to do except for grind, grind, grind. Most people, you may be surprised to learn, found this to be a bit of a letdown. Then, behold! A raid! A six-man mission featuring complex puzzles to flex your mental muscle as well as challenging combat to put that finger dexterity you've been building to use. The raid changed the game, as well as some smart, if late, tweaks to the main game's giving of gear and materials to reward players for ultimately doing nothing over and over again.

A few caveats...

I have never played the first raid, the Vault of Glass. I dipped out of Destiny not long after it was released a few months ago for a few reasons, but mostly because I was rapidly losing interest in running the same four or five strike missions every night with the three different character classes, and while I had met plenty of other Destiny players within those first few months of the game (as I played off and on until roughly Christmas), I never wanted to beg five of them to be my momentary BFF for a Vault of Glass run. Destinly, you're a fine-looking woman, but you're about as shallow as it comes.

Neither, too, did I drop the $20 into the game's first expansion, Crota's End. I don't really put too much stock into reviews for DLC, but Destiny was a game released with just too little actual meat on it's bones, so I studied the release window of Crota's End with an academic interest. It turns out that there certainly was a consensus, but not in the game's favor. While the new raid gave it some spice, it seemed, it wasn't as rich of an experience as the Vault of Glass, and the new story missions and strike combined were not enough for most, and definitely wouldn't have been justifiable for that kind of cash.

So here we are again; three weeks totally engrossed into Destiny on the eve of its second expansion, The House of Wolves, also being released on Tuesday, and also for a cool twenty clams. Here's what I found:

First, and most importantly, is that Destiny is, erm, destined to become a free-to-play game. This much was obvious to me after I dim-wittedly spent $60 on a new copy, but as more and more expansions are released, it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. There are two major forms of FTP games, those with "energy" components that only let you partake in a certain amount of the game at any given time (like Candy Crush, Final Fantasy Record Keeper, or Terra Battle...which may be the only one to do it right), and those that let you play as much as you want so long as you know that you will be grinding constantly for materials and upgrades to take on the higher-level challenges (like Warframe or AirMech Arena). By design, Destiny already falls into the latter category with it's loot and material-heavy game grind when a character hits the maximum experience level (something an able player can hit in a day or so, with a good foot under them). As the only to play the raids --which stand as endgame content for the moment-- is to level up armor to push the level limits, Destiny forces players to partake in a set routine of activities (which we're going to come back to in a second) to farm for one of three upgrade materials to level that gear, and these three materials are randomized upon collection, forcing players to either continue to another point of item-farming/hoping, or log back in with another character class that hasn't farmed those materials for that day.

That last part is important. FTP games make their money in taking part in what we'll call calculated limitation, or CL. In the fenced in housing development of CL, players cannot, say, play the game as much as they want (like the "energy" requirement), forge new weapons or armor, carry as much in their inventory, or take part in certain tasks more than once until a set time limit has passed. These things, again, already take place in Destiny. Once per day, a player can take part in a public event and be awarded high-level crafting materials. They can also enter a high-level story mission for these same materials. But that's it. While this isn't too egregious, the weekly CL is much heavier. From Tuesday to Tuesday, a Guardian in Destiny can only do the following:

-Take part in a weekly "Nightfall" Strike mission for special item currency (what we're considering upper-level crafting materials)
-Take part in a "Heroic" (hard mode) strike mission mission for upper-level crafting materials
-Amass 100 "Vanguard" currency for high level gear
-Amass 100 player vs. player "Crucible" currency, also for high level gear

There are a few things to note about that list: First, a player can grind as much as they want in missions for the Vanguard and Crucible currency, but it caps at a certain amount from week to week. With a well-equipped avatar, this currency can be plateaued in a night or two of playing. The problem here is that if a player is completely dry of this currency, they can only, perhaps, buy one piece of gear per week, depending on wants and needs. The Vanguard characters that sell this stuff prices armor at around 75 credits or more per item, and firearms will run you the low, low cost of roughly 150, which you cannot obtain in a week's time from starting at zero. There's another twist, though; the Vanguard and Crucible currency has a hard cap in your inventory of 200. This means that if you're down to stockpile weapons and armor currency until you spot whole sets of stuff that you want, think again. But while you can cap out at 200 and get two pieces of armor (which you will probably just break down to hope for, you guessed it, upper-level crafting materials), the simple math equates into really only some armor or one weapon after two weeks of work.

This is textbook CL. It stops you from doing exactly what you want when you want so you can look forward to playing again, keeping the carrot dangling in front of you for an amount of time that you (may or may not, I suppose) find reasonable. The alternative to this is to basically roll the dice with missions. As each strike mission grant a random chance for gear rewards, there's always a low chance of coming up with either a super rare piece of gear or upgrade materials, but there's also a chance that this good fortune can be marred by it being gear for a character you're probably not using or not leveled up enough to take advantage of it. In that case, you better keep playing so that you might.

The second thing that's important to note about Destiny's CL methods is a problem that's about to exacerbate on Tuesday: the haves vs. the have-nots. During the routine of Heroic and Nightfall strikes and story activities, the game randomly chooses which missions to use to give you the rewards. This includes missions from the first DLC pack, The Dark Below. Not buying The Dark Below blocks you from the daily story mission or worse, weekly strikes, which means it also slows your character's growth as you can't use the two strikes which are some of the more reliable methods for obtaining upgrade materials and currency. Destiny does not seem to be on a rotation for which of these missions will be one of the weeklies; it hasn't been impossible for The Dark Below stuff to show up more often than not, which is conspicuous. When House of Wolves is released on Tuesday, this problem will not only persist, but grow. This doesn't seem like too much of a crisis from the outside looking in, but a week is a long time, even by CL standards. Not being able to participate in your own growth, and possibly (probably) keeping you away from friends that are already playing these missions is yet another method of preying on your interest to spend the money.That's the way FTP games work.

Having said all of this, then, let's briefly and cynically list how Destiny will crack open its FTP structure once Activision eventually finds that people are no longer spending $60 on a copy of the game. You will:

Pay for a larger Vanguard "purse"
Pay for a larger Crucible "purse"
Pay for larger vault inventory space
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for weekly Nightfall strikes
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for weekly Heroic strikes
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for daily Heroic story missions
Pay for multiple reward opportunities for weekly raids (as rewards for completed raids can only be obtained once per week)
More, and repeatable daily bounty missions
Strange Coins the randomized high-level currency, will be bought with real world cash, meaning:
Strange Coin shops will be available at all times in social hubs (no more waiting once a week for Xur)
Strange Coins will buy you weapons and armor when you want it, no grinding necessary
Players will can purchase more Exotic Gear "slots" (normally, you can only have once piece of Exotic Armor/ Weapons equipped at a time)

This doesn't take into account The Dark Below and House of Wolves story missions, strikes, raids, and other larger wads of the game that come with content updates, something Bungie/ Activision is already charging for.

All of this was baked into the game already. Had Destiny been a total disaster upon release, it would have happened by now, as many, many MMORPGs like DC Universe, Elder Scrolls Online, and pretty much everything else I can think of has already shown us. Since Activision has been especially cagey about detailing exactly what kind of sales the game is pulling in, it's not totally unreasonable to believe that this kind of change is right around the corner depending on how things are faring during its one year anniversary in September. Remember, Bungie and Activision were very keen on reminding the world that this was a $500 million game to produce and market, and no matter how much they want us to believe that they recouped that cost, by not telling people what the exact sales were of the game, you can't really believe that. The FTP business model is turning more and more reliable by the month for the video game industry, while the ultra high budget AAA release is not. Believing that this game will stay with its current revenue model is naive.

Destiny launched with some problems. Problems the game already had. Problems that players found and exploited. Problems with there just not being enough content. Honestly, a lot of games of this scope launch with similar issues. Most MMOs, World of Warcraft included, are not quite in fighting shape on day one, so it's fair in my mind to give Destiny a pass for it's first nine months or so. However, we're about to hit a second batch of content expansion next week. That's two expansions in this same 9 month grace period. That's too much.

The problem is twofold: first, it draws attention to the fact that Destiny, for as vague as Bungie and Activions have been about it being an MMO, is as close enough to an MMO as can be for a game like this, and that means that there just wasn't that much content for a $60 buy-in on day one. DC Universe took a lot of flack for this when it was released, too, and content packs have come fast and loose since then. But the game went FTP very quickly after the first set of content updates came out, which mitigated with problem. Destiny is a somewhat shallow game from a content perspective since most missions are slight variations on kill guys, open a door, kill guys, open a door, kill a boss. The fact that they are asking you to pay for two additional expansions for what could be more of the same is a concern.

The second eyebrow-raiser is that this is an expensive proposition for a game's first year. A new copy of the game will run you roughly $40 right now, and with the full amount of content from both expansions, you're paying about $75-80 at the moment depending on if you bundle both The Dark Below and House of Wolves together (which is a gamble on your enjoyment of one or both). Now, weighing on person's worth of a penny vs. another is really subjective, but from a total content perspective, the same amount of cash for Destiny compared to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will buy you a lopsided amount of content, even if that $80 is only buying you about four months of an MMORPG subscription. Not a 1:1 comparison, sure, but still appropriate. It took a few years for the WoW to have The Burning Crusade, and it will have been well over a year for FFXIV to have it's first official expansion with Heavensward, and both of these are after substantial, free content updates for their games. Destiny isn't interested in this; the free content that the game slowly doles out is in occasional weekend PvP arenas and specialty missions that, like usual daily bounties, are used to grind for reputation, not instant rewards. It is playing the long game, and that long game will eventually cost you.

Weezer is now playing overhead. I retract one of my above statements.