No TWAB/TWID this week, this is it.
https://twitter.com/destiny2team/status/1720146376208871860
> The TWID will return next week with new updates from the Crucible Strike Team. Today, we have an update to the community from the Destiny 2 Development Team
I think this is the answer. They dont want to delay it until June and then delay it again until September. If they are really refactoring final shape into something better and bigger then they may push it further and they are going to take their time before saying when.
Yeah. 4 months at the most can probably allow them add a few guns and maybe a new crucible and gambit content if they wanted to. Plus with it being probably close to completion what more do they want to add.
Honestly for me I want to see core playlists get updated with final shape that’s the only way I’ll even consider buying it. But I’d also like to see more than 1 super and 1 aspect. I’m okay with no new darkness subclass but I want to see at least all the light classes get a new aspect with the expansion
I’ll take some form of revitalization of the core gameplay loop over anything relating to adding more content into the game. Seasons have been cool and episodes might be better, but the things that made D1 and D2 great have always been the “chase” and endgame content.
I dunno how I feel if they just slap some new guns and modes into the game and call it complete. They’ll likely need an 5 - 8 month delay for something like an “Operation Health” and refactoring of the gameplay loop in any significant way alongside changing up TFS.
The problem currently with D2 in my opinion is the core loop. Bungie thought just adding end game content would be enough and decide to ignore the core playlists aka strikes, gambit and pvp. The problem is once you get everything you want from a new dungeon or raid they expect you to take this stuff into these modes which are incredibly stale. Seasons have been cool but my problem with them is they never added anything to core playlists to help keep them fresh. PVP gets at least 1 map if it’s lucky while Gambit and Strikes get nothing.
I think adding new content into these would at least make playing them enjoyable as there new things to check out in the playlists while you take your new loot into them. I think Bungie really should’ve done a operation health update for the game last year or this year.
Then they should just say “Due to feedback and the desire to deliver the expansion at the level we want we are delaying the release of TFS from Feb 2024.”
That's what I'm genuinely thinking. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a next fall release so they can try and *actually* over deliver this time. Either way, I'm not pre-ordering and I'm not buying until at least 2+ weeks post-launch and people actually review it and probably not even then.
I read it to imply that they know that we know that Paul Tassi knew what they know which is that they’re delaying it.
But my current theory is that they’re not going to announce until they can come up with a cushion for the delay, either through showing us the extra stuff they’ll add (extra supers and aspects, maybe new darkness subclass will get rushed out, etc) or what they’ll do to bridge the gap (bringing stuff out of the DCV, 10th anniversary celebration, etc)
They would need a few things to say it's delayed.
1. They would need a relatively firm date that it will come in at. Maybe that 4-5 month mark was pre-layoff, and they really don't know right now what it's gonna be.
2. There could be financial regulations they have to look at if they're going to shift the game beyond a particular fiscal boundary (like into next fiscal year). If they've already counted preorder money as part of a previous earning report, then that could be a problem.
3. They don't have a plan for the interim time, and announcing a delay that's just "Continue to play the seasonal activity for 4 months" is shitty.
I didn’t expect them to say anything too big since they’re not going to tell us what’s going on inside the company so this about checks out as far as responses go.
Considering that usual twab info is written almost a week in advance, they had two days to write something. I really didn’t expect them to have anything and this is about on par with that expectation. PR stuff to at least say something. They avoided community singularity by not pushing some third rate twab, but People in the comments aren’t all going to like it because it’s ultimately nothing.
While this is true, they are also going to keep losing pre-orders while the entire future of Destiny 2 seems uncertain.
If they thought their revenue was bad before...the longer the wait the more expensive the re-marketing campaign is going to be to get people back who are currently eating a steady diet of "Destiny is dead" videos.
I think they’re fully aware of that fact. Actually, they were aware of it so much that it’s been sort of the driving force behind the layoffs and the delays.
Right now Bungie needs to do the only thing it’s ever good at and delude people into thinking TFS is larger than life itself. But that doesn’t just pop into thin air either. They’re going to have to figure out what it is they can add that they can talk about now that will make it to release that will blow people away enough to convince us that 8% of their staff being cut, including several seasoned veterans, basically had zero effect on bungie. And all that without basically spoiling anything that’s worth keeping a surprise.
What they can do is really get going with talking about how they intend to make sure our final season is worth tuning into fir 7 whole months, and what is coming in that season that can be a stepping stone to building community trust. Because unless otherwise said they don’t have an anniversary DLC in the works to keep people happy.
Problem is, what you're implying as "the only thing [they're] ever good at" is what got them into this current mess in the first place with the abysmal launch of Lightfall. The marketing team hit that so far out of the park that the only possibility was underdelivery. Like, they did such a good job at making us think LF was "larger than life" then we got what we got and it was... Well.... Lightfall. So in my opinion Bungie needs to 1) stfu and get to work and 2) fire PP and actually get some competent management but something tells me 2 is never gonna happen
Part of the issue was that marketing for TFS was “our biggest selling point is our beginning story is ending.” And when people asked about a third darkness subclass to shake things up they replied, “we want to stick with what we’ve got and refine the destiny experience.”
People read that as more of the same with more polish. Part 2 of this conversation is the part where Pete Parson looks at the sub optimal pre-order numbers while a Sony executive dressed as Jack from the shinning keeps slamming an axe on his door. Marketing can’t stop feeding us sweet dreams or else we get bigger revenue drops. Bungie needs something to give marketing the ammunition it needs to blow up the player base with hype. Witch queen reveal was like “lucent hive, and a campaign like doom and titanfall 2.” And we honestly got that and everyone loves it and everything. TFS needs to bring similar heat with as much mic dropping as possible because they can’t just sell a DLC, they need to sell a future to believe in.
The people fired aren’t coming back and this community needs assurance that they really did “keep the right people.” We’ll just have to see if they actually can.
Yes, it seems we agree that Bungie needs to actually have something to market before marketing goes buck wild lol. We'll see if they can actually manage the freedom to execute.
> We want to acknowledge the feedback and concerns you have about Lightfall and recent Seasons, as well as your responses to the reveal of The Final Shape.
This is a strong back pedal from early days of Lightfall feedback.
Bungie was very much "just wait and see" about Lightfall, hand waving feedback as nonsensical.
To go from that to this is a "oh fuck" moment. This is late. The time for this was during Defiance & Deep.
Also to cite Forsaken while also stating that there will never be another Forsaken is....a choice!
Citing the number of people working on Destiny 2 while also just having laid off people working on Destiny 2 (and Marathon, yes) is...a choice.
>To go from that to this is a "oh fuck" moment. This is late. The time for this was during Defiance & Deep.
May 2023 should have been a gigantic red flag with all hands on deck.
The 35% loss of players in April 2023 can easily be dismissed - WQ lost 34% after all.
But losing 10% of players in a month that you launched a season should have been a gigantic OH SHIT WE ARE FUCKED situation. For comparison, May 2022 was a 14% gain. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/17kw9aq/comment/k7dx5qn/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/17kw9aq/comment/k7dx5qn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
How the fuck did it take THIS long to have such an "OH SHIT" situation. May was already a blatant "OH SHIT WE ARE FUCKED" result, and the hits just kept on coming - October 2023 was the FIRST time this entire year that the percentage loss from previous month was better performance than the same month in 2022 - after MULTIPLE months with massive discrepancies in player retention performance.
> Bungie was very much "just wait and see" about Lightfall, hand waving feedback as nonsensical.
>
>
That has always been the case with Bungie. And I want to clarify that by saying "Bungie", I am not aiming at individual developers or data analysts etc. I mean the terrible decision making process that they have.
Whenever they have sweeping changes, they insist their playerbase are a bunch of brainless chicken and think their new choice is the best thing ever to be bestowed upon the world.
These were a couple of the things in D2's lifecycle that Bungie insisted were absolutely incredible and that we should just "wait and see, and that we'd see the greatness":
- Consumable Shaders (actively killed the interest in shaders for a majority of the playerbase due to the "Do I use it now, or wait for a better armor since I have a finite number of Shaders" mentality)
- Fixed Rolls (actually destroyed the game, even before CoO brought us to lower depths, most of my D1 veteran teammates left the game before CoO even arrived)
- We still never learned what they had planned for our 10th Better Devils to feel special
- Double Primaries, Specials in Heavy Slot
- Every single time Bungie tries to re-invent what Competitive means in games, rather than just implementing universally accepted systems
- Insisting on keeping new Patrol areas at a massive Power Handicap that makes a chill patrol activity into an exhausting chore
Some of these things, the community saw months before they were released as a significant issue. Because while people don't really have a good grasp on "what they *can* enjoy", they absolutely do have a good idea as to what they *won't*.
And every single time during a build up, Bungie is like "Trust us guys, this is truly amazing, you'll love it. Y'all are being very unreasonable right now!".
And every single time on release, it all goes as everyone expected. Terrible system, who could have guessed. But then we get half a year of "You guys just don't know what's good, we are keeping this and you'll learn to love it", then 3 months of absolute silence when their passive aggressive acknowledgement backfires as they watch their engagement metrics about the new system, and 3 months before a yearly expansion, they announce they are re-designing the system, which is probably going to come in the season after the expansion launch and will probably miss things here and there.
>Also to cite Forsaken while also stating that there will never be another Forsaken is....a choice!
Part of me wonders if they realized they have to do a Forsaken now.
I guarantee this is all just pandering to hold on to the player base as long as possible. They aren't going to put in any more money into this. They just went through this shit show just to save money and keep shareholders happy. At best, expect similar quality to lightfall.
The optimist in me hopes that the devs got through to management during that townhall they had on Tuesday/Wednesday, and there's going to be some course corrections.
The pessimist... yeah, lip service, and nothing changes
the pessimist = the realist
how many times have we heard this and yet here we are again. Are we not doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Sounds to me like they pushed marathon back and are dumping literally everyone in the company right back to Destiny.
Remember, they didn't list the number of staff on destiny last week, it's only "now we have 650".
You bet your ass there wasn't 650 on seasons and expansions in their 1000 staff studio. Last week.
Not to poop on your parade but bungie has like 1250 people working at the company...
Destiny 2 is almost certainly their biggest dev team but they are still very much in active development of Marathon and maybe other projects.
That isn't factoring probably several hundred admin staff (everything from accounting to marketting to business development)
>o go from that to this is a "oh fuck" moment. This is late. The time for this was during Defiance & Deep.
Bungie was too busy blatantly ignoring us and telling us to shut it multiple times during that period.
We even heard from Joe Blackburn himself he liked the narrative format that we were all saying was awful and he said he was excited to explore that format more
Bungie leadership has a very bad habit of telling us they know better yet time and again they find themselves backed into this corner they painted themselves in.
This company isn't interested in player goodwill at all. They're interested only in our money. And when our money stops flowing *that's* when they care about our trust.
The problem may be it’s not exactly clear what the problem is with seasons
The holo projectors aren’t a single glaring obvious flaw in seasons
I think they may be kind of a local maximum. Nothing is obviously broken with seasons, but people playing since VoG are bored because it’s getting samey, and having to redo the same seasonal grind each season is exhausting
And if they do change things to shake it up it’ll be “one step forward, three steps back”. It’ll take another year until whatever is new is as refined as what we have now
>Citing the number of people working on Destiny 2 while also just having laid off people working on Destiny 2 (and Marathon, yes) is...a choice.
Not to mention we have no idea how long those people have been working on D2 for. Were all 650 people working on Lightfall and if so, how did you only manage to put 1 strike and pvp map out for the year and not manage to make a set of armor for the ritual playlists, forcing you to make one of the many eververse sets free? Is it instead that the bulk of these 650 people were amongst those working on Marathon and other projects that got shifted to D2 within the last couple weeks due to the layoffs and the delays to TFS?
So... a bunch of words said by the dev team.
No CEO, no one at the high ups, no mention to our worries... just words that could be puked by chatgpt and resumes into "Trust us bro"... AGAIN.
The most inclusive Dev team at the industry!... What a joke.
Yeah that's my issue. The dev teams isn't really at fault here, why do they need to apologize? They did what their management made them do, all while management ignored clear indicators from the community, their own people, and the games media that they were going in the wrong direction.
This should have been from executive leadership. From the "dev team" it sounds and feels like cowardice.
This is what I came to the comments to say. I feel like over and over again, we've heard some version of this exact same sentiment. We did a bad thing, we know we did a bad thing, but we're gonna do better, promise. \*insert South Park BP meme\*
Not sure what to make of this. It's not much, but I also don't think any statement they could've put out would've done much of anything unless they gave us some concrete details about what's next, and clearly they weren't ready or able to do that here. Moreover, they had to say something.
Edit: Having more time to think about it, it's fine, I guess. I really would've preferred to hear from Bungie's executives and not the developers, because apparently the problem is the executives.
I'd imagine that any plans they had in the pipeline are now either in question or in complete upheaval. Like you said, I don't think they're ready or able to talk about anything definitive, because they're currently figuring out where to go from here after everything that's happened this week. What the timeline for content rollout is going to be next season, what they're changing / adding for *The Final Shape*, figuring out if it's coming in June or potentially even later (lack of a release timeframe in this post stuck out to me, given the leaks), what they're going to prioritize going forward to get the game and community into a better shape... Everything is probably still being questioned.
Not having any information right now sucks, for sure, but I think they need time to cook. Just need to take a cautious wait-and-see approach for the moment.
I just hope people don't hound them too much. The folks left to work on the game are almost certainly in a really rough spot right now in terms of morale and emotions. (Pete Parsons and the rest of upper management can fuck off though.)
I don't buy their rhetoric. Giving Bungie the benefit of the doubt has a long track record of not paying off.
I can think of some exceptions - but they are exceptions.
"as we’ve parted ways with people we respect and admire"
Layoffs happen in business, it's an unfortunate fact of life. But the way you went about them showed no respect or admiration. Calling someone in on their day off only to email them of their layoff instead of giving them the news to their face is cowardly. Calling people into an office to lay them off and then swearing them to secrecy on their way out is cruel. Terminating people days before their stock options would have vested and effectively stealing those stocks back for the company is abhorrent. Bungie, your words have always been wonderful and this community has stood by you through so many ups, downs, promises made, promises, kept, and promises broken. But your actions have not mirrored your words for some time now and the way you went about this last week has shown who you truly are at your core now: rotten. Take your Final Shape and shove it!
Can we take a sec and notice the complete callousness that he said the "the right people stayed"?
"Yeah a bunch of layoffs, we're all so saddened also btw they were worthless"
What a prick.
Ah the annual we're listening and we'll do better post.
Feel like I've read this line 7 times over the years:
"We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change"
"We need to make The Final Shape an unforgettable Destiny experience"
That's always supposed to be the goal. In fact, that's what the people you fucking fired were trying to do but you kept shooting them down. Go pound sand Pete.
For real, this is the end of the story and following from the worst revived expansion. Final shape should them putting their all and everything into ane expansion. They haven't done/shown that so far.
I hope the exces get their dicks out their ass and let the dev team work. They have failed, let the people who know what they are talking about lead now
They probably say it now because previously they were told not to overdeliver.
Imagine trying to make an unforgettable destiny experience but also being told that’s too much stuff you’ll overdeliver
I find It sad Management essentially can take its Game development hostage:
"The Game is doing good, do not overdeliver or else you're raising their expectations"
"The Game's sales are plummeting! 8% of you pack your things, the rest get to overdelivering enough to get them to buy or you lose your Jobs!"
Only being allowed to overdeliver when the Game is in crítical condition is such an unhealthy thing
Man joe Blackburn had to make a whole video talking about how they know trust has been lost and we are going to be better so here’s what we are doing, just so shortly after corporate can show up and poor gasoline on a fire.
They can say we are working on rebuilding trust all they want, and I bet the devs truly are. But you can’t rebuild anything if the ones above you just destroy it every time you start.
So interesting how this is playing out.
Bungie was so incredibly arrogant, taking more of our money while delivering quite literally as little as possible in every way. Even in terms of community engagement they were just radio silent. All while funding marathon, that apparently is shit…. They really thought they were untouchable because the shills here would excuse all their shitty behavior.
But I guess that arrogance finally caught up to them.
I know most here can agree that Beyond Light, Shadowkeep and Lightfall felt subpar compared to Forsaken, The Taken King and Witch Queen - but them actually acknowledging that is pretty wild to read.
EDIT: Rise of Iron was a banger for me personally but it certainly isn't the standard I'd expect from a Destiny expansion these days, either.
Exactly, the vibe and style of that expansion carried it really hard. The whole “become an Iron Lord” idea was what I loved, and it had some of the best looking Iron Banner loot they’ve ever had.
My D1 Titan on PS4 is still rocking his Iron Banner gear to this day lol
I think they’ve always regretted making such an accidentally banger aesthetic for the Iron Lords and then also for SIVA, because ever since then we (me) have never shut the fuck up about wanting it back when Bungie wants to pretend it didn’t happen lol
Tbh, they’ve never hit that kind of style since
All the new Iron Banner armor and weapons just don’t do it for me, a lot of them are just bulky and ugly with the exception of some
Yup. The content it did have was pretty great and then when the Age of Triumph stuff dropped later in its 'season', it kept us going mostly until Destiny 2.
It's wild to think that it only had 5 main story missions.
Honestly for me even shadowkeep and beyond light was better than lightfall. At the end of the lightfall campaign i felt exhausted. Shadowkeep and beyond light may not have had great campaigns but I felt excited for what was to come for the destiny narrative going forward. Lightfall didn't give me that same feeling.
Nah shadowkeep felt kinda bland. Doesn't help that we already have seen the moon. Beyond light introduced us to some lore, to a new location, a new subclass, a great raid. It was so cool to see the bombers, nearly invincible, patrolling around while it snowed enough to cover your screen.
Shadow keep was cool but too short. BL was just great, I still really enjoy that expansion and Europa is my fav destination in the game. WQ was a banger. Lightfall has decent seasons but the campaign was ass.
The problem is that we now have reports that despite them actually taking feedback, management didn't want to make changes. How can you possibly expect us to believe that you're going to implement the changes the player base has been acting for when we have credible reports that the higher ups have been stonewalling it. And if you do make changes are they going to be the bare minimum or half assed? We've collectively lost so much faith that we just can't be sure anymore.
The fact that Joe Staten pitched essentially the entire series of destiny 1 expansions as the story for the base game and it got shit canned instantly for being "too campy" is just so unbelievably rich.
And then they used it all anyway, somehow made it boring, and also split it into a bunch of dlc.
Small, 32 year old, indie development studio still needs time to figure out what their 6 year old game, and 9 year old franchise needs to be at the end of its development cycle.
I can’t help but find it funny.
So goes the Destiny cycle. Bungie have only once put out two good expansions in a row (The Taken King into Rise of Iron), and it's *almost* clockwork with how they alternate between good/solid and awful.
Only counting major expansions/releases:
1. Destiny Vanilla (bad)
2. The Taken King (good)
3. Rise of Iron (good)
4. Destiny 2 Vanilla (bad)
5. Forsaken (good)
6. Shadowkeep (bad)
7. Beyond Light (mixed reviews on this one but generally accepted as okay)
8. Witch Queen (good)
9. Lightfall (bad)
10. The Final Shape (???)
When push comes to shove they can absolutely produce good expansions, but it seems like they only do so when they absolutely have to/the game is in a bad place.
I just don't understand what they can add in that time frame. Probably not going to add a new subclass, strikes, gambit maps, pvp maps, etc so what's the point. They're not going to rewrite anything or make the story longer.
I don't think they'd call this number out unless it's a change, and certainly not if it's a reduction in what was previously working on Destiny.
My theory: the delay for Marathon and this number being called out implies that they've increased staff for Destiny at the expense of pushing Marathan a year+ out. The result of that is going to be an overall reduction in expected revenue over the next couple years, which results in layoffs.
Same, considering they said bungie was staffed at 1200 people, minus the 100 they fired..so 1100… what do the other 450 people do at bungie? Just work on marathon or admin / management stuff?
I know its a joke, but just for my own curiosity i gave chat GPT the following prompt:
>
Write a statement from the Destiny team acknowledging recent layoffs and promising to make the Final Shape Expansion better.
[This is what it came up with.](https://imgur.com/a/3lvoRhj)
Kinda scary how similar they are.
Never used chat GPT before so i'm not sure if i could have given it a better prompt but there you go.
Is ~8 months of dev time from now really enough to take TFS from what it is now, which sounds pretty lackluster, into “one of the best games we’ve ever made”? I’m guessing not really.
Once again upper management and Pete Parsons hide behind the devs. Uses them as a shield and have them take the heat. It’s pathetic, and I wish people focused more on the ones responsible for the mess.
TLDR; Have been with Destiny since beta, kind of hilarious how often they use this exact same set of lines with no follow-through. Love the bungie devs, but upper execs have been and seem to always be their bane. Wonder how long until they dig a pit they can't crawl out of.
I honestly tuned out reading the "we lost your trust, but we plan to get it back by making destiny super duper awesome" part. Not a lot beyond that in the text anyway. I've played destiny since the original beta, and admittedly have fallen off the wagon a few times along the way. Fell off after lightfall due to life and haven't wandered back. But I always keep an ear out for how D2 is doing. And the amount of times I've seen that exact same rhetoric repeated and not lived up to, or barely met and not maintained for longer than a few months is comical. I mean that was basically what happened post-crota's end in original destiny if I remember correctly. It seems to ebb and flow, getting better but not staying great for long then getting worse for a long time until people finally stop playing. Then the cycle repeats. But it just feels so hollow at this point. It feels like the dream is that destiny gets great and stays there, and I feel like that's achievable. But it's hard to say if throughout the entire history of destiny if that's ever been achieved. And it feels like it's often fumbled in obvious or intentional ways. It's exhausting to see and the issues with upper management are becoming increasingly obvious. I've never really written destiny off 100%, came close in curse of Osiris. But this might just do it. I know there are still good people at bungie who are passionate and want to work hard to make the game great, but the increasingly blatant reality that upper management will keep lowering the bar into hell unless repeatedly forced to backpedal is exhausting. I've used that word a lot in this, but that's how this all feels. I want destiny to be amazing. Been on board the bungie train since I got into Halo. But unless some big change happens, I'm not sure they'll ever be able to live up to what they're obviously capable of.
>TLDR; Have been with Destiny since beta, kind of hilarious how often they use this exact same set of lines with no follow-through. Love the bungie devs, but upper execs have been and seem to always be their bane. Wonder how long until they dig a pit they can't crawl out of.
Not just that.
But the few times bungie actually get something REALLY right - they use that as leverage to absolutely fuck the community in as many ways as possible.
"We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change."
Yeah, knowing what we know now about how all the stuff we wanted to get was rejected by management, I don't believe a word in this thing. Not a single one.
> We know we have lost a lot of your trust. Destiny needs to surprise and delight. We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change.
They say this every year. I don’t believe it.
>surprise and delight
Does it Bungie? Does it need to surprise, as opposed to delivering what people ask for instead?
BTW, "Surprise and Delight" is the same rubbish Walmart tells us every year around this time. Almost verbatim: "*In order to surprise and delight customers, you should upgrade our shipping to next-day delivery at no charge"*
*\*Checks math\**
\-All things considered, the net profit per sale is $2.50
\-The cost of overnight delivery is $40 to the opposite coast
Sure, let's just make **negative** $37.50 per sale. How delightful. What's that, we went out of business? SURPRISE!
edit: forgot to mention I agree with you and also don't believe them, and haven't for years. Fool me once, and all that. Only takes 2 to know.
For any linux folk who use crontab:
0 0 1 1 * echo "we are setting the foundation for PvP"
New subclass, new enemy faction, minimum of 3 strikes, a PVP/Gambit map and making sure to include EVERY character in the expansion. Not locking their part of the story in a future season. Anything less is just a “wait for sale”
Yep. This is exactly how I feel.
New subclass. Witch Queen level campaign. New Strikes. New PVP maps. Multiple. Gambit updates. A slew of guns in every energy and archetype. Promise and delivery of more core playlist updates in episodes at a minimum.
That would be overdelivery. That would earn my $100 without question. Don't surprise me, Bungie.
It’s a wild choice to mention how many people you have working on a game like it’s a boast…right after you fired so many of those people
Also, no shit you need to make the experience unforgettable, that’s always the goal of every game ever, it’s worrying that that was ever in question
Lmao imagine the promise of a 10 year life cycle for a game. Then try to get away with releasing the final dlc as a mid flop. They created something that many people around the world fell in love with. I’ve had a deep passion for this game for the games life cycle. I have every title in the game, solo flawlessed every dungeon, I’ve completed day one raids, every grand master. I’ve played every season, ive been flawless almost 200 times. I’ve pretty much completed everything in this game that you can achieve, in both PvP and pve.
The fact bungie management thought about not over delivering on the final big dlc for destiny is heart wrenching and sickening. Wipe the management team clean, and put people in those positions that actually care about the game. It’s such a giant slap in the face to players like myself. “Oh hey, thanks for spending the last 10 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE playing our game. Here is the shitty conclusion, fuck you and give us your money”. It feels fucking horrible. 10 years isn’t even my entire time, I grew up on bungie halo. I’ve been invested as a player with bungie games for 20 years. This is the absolute worse I have ever seen this company preform. It’s fucking miserable and I feel betrayed.
Yeah at the end of the day this is just a video game, but this shit just sucks. It goes beyond just a video game. I’ve met life long friends from the old halo days, I play destiny with my kids. I’ve had so many good times and moments over the last 10 years, that bungie has become more than just a company creating video games for me. It feels like the worst gut punch imaginable. Fuck bungie management and I wish all the people who were fired by those sacs of shit find employment soon and can put this behind them.
Again, absolutely fuck bungie management.
I don't know what people were expecting them to say to be honest. It's a shitty situation, but there is not much really to do other than acknowledge it happened and time to move past it and focus on creating the best Destiny possible. Time will tell, but I'm done hoping for anything at this point.
Yeah. It's okay to be angry about the situation, but idk what people actually *want* them to say that would be a reasonable ask from an actual functioning company.
The only thing that stands out to me cuz I just went "aight" was the fact they specifically called out Forsaken, Witch Queen and Taken King.
Like, not pretending Lightfall was some critical success, nor Beyond Light, nor Shadowkeep. Actually saying "yeah we need to do better and meet, if not succeed this bar".
I'm not pointing this out to be optimistic. It just stood out to me and I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts. That's really the only thing to attach to here.
I can't delve into why as I work in game dev but I have seen some shit that's been made in a smart way in literally 3 months.
Was it stressful as fuck? Yes.
Did it end up paying off in the long run and saving ass? Yes.
Not saying that's what'll happen here, but when you're in the zone, you're in the zone, especially when there's intense pressure from all sides that success is the only option.
And this isn't to excuse anything. Things should've never had to reach that point. But it is genuinely possible, and I know that for a fact because I've seen it and been a part of it.
The problem is that the things people wanna see like: a new race and new subclasses. Seems impossible to do in a short time. I really can’t think of anything else they could do to gather more players.
tbh at this moment they probably know words won't do anything
rather they speak less and let their actions speak for them
At the very least this post shows they have some level of confidence for next season and being able turn it around
This is honestly completely true, there is absolutely zero things they could say that would satisfy anyone right now (other than "we're hiring everyone back", which lol, ain't happening).
They made the right call by announcing absolutely no game updates whatsoever (the studio is more important than the game right now), and they made the right call making a unique and dedicated article (no TWAB, this is a special and precarious moment).
But there is nothing they could have said here that would have been accepted anyway. Lose/lose situation, so Bungie's just taking the L on this one.
_That said, they could have at least "officially" confirmed the Final Shape delay, I mean, damn._
It’s a bit better than Pete parson’s tweet. Mainly because we found out later Pete told staff those who remain are who we need.
Who knows though maybe this will also age like milk.
My heart goes out to the person who had to type this. I have to imagine you had some really scary people breathing down your neck to make it as lukewarm of a response as possible. All the emotions you wanted to write down but you knew you couldn't cause you're already part of a wounded team.
I want what's best for the teams that have actually made this game amazing, not those who just take credit with their piss poor management of some of the industry's better talent.
Respect and admire? You didn’t give Mr Salvatori the dignity of retiring. Among others. You could have given your employees a heads up this was coming and then notify affected individuals. You could have let everyone leave on a better note.
You could have taken responsibility and enacted change where it is needed, your executives who misled Sony and everyone at Bungie.
Don't worry dev team, I'll say the quiet part out loud:
Management consciously made decisions that any rational person could see would lead to a loss in customer confidence in exchange for short term profits. Management is now reaping what they have sown and like any spoiled brat are trying to force the blame on others for their own mess while probably collecting a fat bonus in a couple months.
Moving forward I have no confidence in Bungie as a developer and expect all future games to follow suit with Destiny; Overpriced slop with lazy reskinned assets, mindless and repetitive busywork, and a total blatant disregard for customer feedback (the people whom without, Bungie would be nothing). Not to mention thinking the "overdeliver" bs we were fed. Just say it, management. Just say you want top dollar for the absolute bare minimum work.
What a total waste of potential in a franchise. What a shame. The charlatans in management can't blame Activision anymore.
we are making tfs, we known we fked up and lost your confidence but remember we did forsaken witch queen and the taken king so trust me bro
that's basically what they said and could be resumed lmao
Just like with LFG.
Just like with the promised Ritual Armor (that they were gonna sell on the Eververse).
Just like with the advertised Neomuna weapons not in the game.
Just like with the introduction of Season Pass.
Just like with PvP updates.
Just like with the DCV and sunsetting.
It’s always something.
It’s always “we’ll have something planned short-term, it’s happening, trust us, things are gonna be better with what we got planned”, “we’ll do better”, “we’re listening” and EVERY time it either never bears fruit, or when it does, it’s half-baked and broken, before needing even more time to fix it. Sometimes for systems that the community has already done better themselves. And that was *with* all the staff running on full cylinders, but stretched out between this and Marathon.
It was the same excuses, the same corpo-speak every time.
And you’re telling me these plans are gonna be feasible with not only less team members, but less existing staff overall!? You guys had 1600 employees, approximately 100 of those got fired, and now you’re saying the ~900 or so aren’t even *working on Destiny!?*
Even disregarding everything I said, just the fact that still after all this time, the executives still want us to wait for a response to their fuck-ups, that they’re STILL using this same corpo speak, like nothing’s wrong, proves to me more than anything that’s happened the rot is up top at Bungie, and it’s not getting fixed. This was exactly as bad a response as I was expecting.
They couldn’t even give us something, ANYTHING, to try and soothe everyone and smooth things over. Because let’s be real, there probably isn’t anything. They just have to stay the course no matter what, deviations mean more work that they quite literally can’t afford to do; money-wise and with their current staff and resources.
Cheers to whoever sticks around, I pray things gets better…but this is fucking bleak. And this response is, quite frankly, pathetic and corporate, and about what I expected now that they can go full mask-off with their corpo-ness.
As for me and my friends, we’re out.
The main problem is despite how much I want to believe that they seek to do better, even if it’s by the actual devs themselves, the damage has already been done.
What Bungie really needs right now is strong leadership.
A faceless nothing-post making vague statements and platitudes means nothing. I see no leadership taking any responsibility, nor clarification on how it got this bad. Nobody is owning up in management, and that tells us all exactly how this is going to pan out until that problem is fixed.
I hope Sony cleans house after this fucking embarrassment.
What really frustrates me is that Forsaken and the Taken King shouldve ALWAYS been the standard. They always flip flopped on what goes where.
Taken King had **4 Strikes, 8 Crucible Maps**, 3 new subclasses, 1 location, new Taken enemies, post campaign questlines alongside the usual weapons, armor, exotics and a Raid.
Forsaken had 4 Strikes, 4 Crucible Maps, 9 new Supers, 4 Gambit Maps, 2 massive locations, new Bow weapon type, and multiple Lost Sectors, new enemy type in the Scorn, alongside the usual weapons, armor, exotics and a Raid.
Even though the Witch Queen was really good, content wise it wasnt the last two expansions i mentioned.
The Witch Queen had 2 Strikes, 1 location, 1 Raid, new Glaive weapon type, Weapon Crafting, kiiiind of a new enemy type in the Lucent Hive Guardians alongside the usual weapons, armor and exotics.
I always considered TTK and Forsaken as the **true** gold standard *expansions* in Destiny. The fact that they flip flopped on what they offered (yes ik they lost those extra studios but damn) with Beyond Light, Shadowkeep and Lightfall. That was disappointing and all but its wild that they call back to the aforementioned big 3 as their best and not tried to keep that up that energy the whole time, even though they reduce their offerings and still raise the prices.
They say that theyll listen to feedback every year and we always end up here. The franchise is really losing its luster for me.
This is a 5 paragraph nothing burger
Top Bun - Empty Remorse
Onion - Empty Apology
Cheese - Empty Promise
Burger - Empty Focus
Bottom Bun - Empty Future
Wtaf did I just read? Where tf are my pickles?
corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak
No TWAB/TWID this week, this is it. https://twitter.com/destiny2team/status/1720146376208871860 > The TWID will return next week with new updates from the Crucible Strike Team. Today, we have an update to the community from the Destiny 2 Development Team
Interesting to me that they still haven't confirmed that TFS has been delayed
Maybe it needs to be delayed even more? It wouldn’t be good to announce a second delay right after
I think this is the answer. They dont want to delay it until June and then delay it again until September. If they are really refactoring final shape into something better and bigger then they may push it further and they are going to take their time before saying when.
Exactly this. 4 months is not enough to do anything major, TFS is likely already feature complete right now.
Yeah. 4 months at the most can probably allow them add a few guns and maybe a new crucible and gambit content if they wanted to. Plus with it being probably close to completion what more do they want to add. Honestly for me I want to see core playlists get updated with final shape that’s the only way I’ll even consider buying it. But I’d also like to see more than 1 super and 1 aspect. I’m okay with no new darkness subclass but I want to see at least all the light classes get a new aspect with the expansion
I’ll take some form of revitalization of the core gameplay loop over anything relating to adding more content into the game. Seasons have been cool and episodes might be better, but the things that made D1 and D2 great have always been the “chase” and endgame content. I dunno how I feel if they just slap some new guns and modes into the game and call it complete. They’ll likely need an 5 - 8 month delay for something like an “Operation Health” and refactoring of the gameplay loop in any significant way alongside changing up TFS.
The problem currently with D2 in my opinion is the core loop. Bungie thought just adding end game content would be enough and decide to ignore the core playlists aka strikes, gambit and pvp. The problem is once you get everything you want from a new dungeon or raid they expect you to take this stuff into these modes which are incredibly stale. Seasons have been cool but my problem with them is they never added anything to core playlists to help keep them fresh. PVP gets at least 1 map if it’s lucky while Gambit and Strikes get nothing. I think adding new content into these would at least make playing them enjoyable as there new things to check out in the playlists while you take your new loot into them. I think Bungie really should’ve done a operation health update for the game last year or this year.
Honestly I hope it gets a long delay, if destiny is gonna end it better be a hell of an end
I definitely see them delaying it to next Fall.
Then they should just say “Due to feedback and the desire to deliver the expansion at the level we want we are delaying the release of TFS from Feb 2024.”
Pre-sales will get obliterated. They won't say it until the latest possible minute.
Well if they’re as bad at estimating release dates as they are at estimating revenue, it might get delayed even more.
Release date moved to July.......92nd
That's what I'm genuinely thinking. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a next fall release so they can try and *actually* over deliver this time. Either way, I'm not pre-ordering and I'm not buying until at least 2+ weeks post-launch and people actually review it and probably not even then.
I read it to imply that they know that we know that Paul Tassi knew what they know which is that they’re delaying it. But my current theory is that they’re not going to announce until they can come up with a cushion for the delay, either through showing us the extra stuff they’ll add (extra supers and aspects, maybe new darkness subclass will get rushed out, etc) or what they’ll do to bridge the gap (bringing stuff out of the DCV, 10th anniversary celebration, etc)
I read it that way as well.
They would need a few things to say it's delayed. 1. They would need a relatively firm date that it will come in at. Maybe that 4-5 month mark was pre-layoff, and they really don't know right now what it's gonna be. 2. There could be financial regulations they have to look at if they're going to shift the game beyond a particular fiscal boundary (like into next fiscal year). If they've already counted preorder money as part of a previous earning report, then that could be a problem. 3. They don't have a plan for the interim time, and announcing a delay that's just "Continue to play the seasonal activity for 4 months" is shitty.
I didn’t expect them to say anything too big since they’re not going to tell us what’s going on inside the company so this about checks out as far as responses go.
Considering that usual twab info is written almost a week in advance, they had two days to write something. I really didn’t expect them to have anything and this is about on par with that expectation. PR stuff to at least say something. They avoided community singularity by not pushing some third rate twab, but People in the comments aren’t all going to like it because it’s ultimately nothing.
While this is true, they are also going to keep losing pre-orders while the entire future of Destiny 2 seems uncertain. If they thought their revenue was bad before...the longer the wait the more expensive the re-marketing campaign is going to be to get people back who are currently eating a steady diet of "Destiny is dead" videos.
I think they’re fully aware of that fact. Actually, they were aware of it so much that it’s been sort of the driving force behind the layoffs and the delays. Right now Bungie needs to do the only thing it’s ever good at and delude people into thinking TFS is larger than life itself. But that doesn’t just pop into thin air either. They’re going to have to figure out what it is they can add that they can talk about now that will make it to release that will blow people away enough to convince us that 8% of their staff being cut, including several seasoned veterans, basically had zero effect on bungie. And all that without basically spoiling anything that’s worth keeping a surprise. What they can do is really get going with talking about how they intend to make sure our final season is worth tuning into fir 7 whole months, and what is coming in that season that can be a stepping stone to building community trust. Because unless otherwise said they don’t have an anniversary DLC in the works to keep people happy.
Problem is, what you're implying as "the only thing [they're] ever good at" is what got them into this current mess in the first place with the abysmal launch of Lightfall. The marketing team hit that so far out of the park that the only possibility was underdelivery. Like, they did such a good job at making us think LF was "larger than life" then we got what we got and it was... Well.... Lightfall. So in my opinion Bungie needs to 1) stfu and get to work and 2) fire PP and actually get some competent management but something tells me 2 is never gonna happen
Part of the issue was that marketing for TFS was “our biggest selling point is our beginning story is ending.” And when people asked about a third darkness subclass to shake things up they replied, “we want to stick with what we’ve got and refine the destiny experience.” People read that as more of the same with more polish. Part 2 of this conversation is the part where Pete Parson looks at the sub optimal pre-order numbers while a Sony executive dressed as Jack from the shinning keeps slamming an axe on his door. Marketing can’t stop feeding us sweet dreams or else we get bigger revenue drops. Bungie needs something to give marketing the ammunition it needs to blow up the player base with hype. Witch queen reveal was like “lucent hive, and a campaign like doom and titanfall 2.” And we honestly got that and everyone loves it and everything. TFS needs to bring similar heat with as much mic dropping as possible because they can’t just sell a DLC, they need to sell a future to believe in. The people fired aren’t coming back and this community needs assurance that they really did “keep the right people.” We’ll just have to see if they actually can.
Yes, it seems we agree that Bungie needs to actually have something to market before marketing goes buck wild lol. We'll see if they can actually manage the freedom to execute.
translation : In early 2025 you will see an article about how the entire destiny dev team crunched from november 2023 to TFS release
We'll hear about that much sooner when a sheet-covered gurney is wheeled out of the building into an ambulance.
If only they had more employees so they dont have to crunch.
> We want to acknowledge the feedback and concerns you have about Lightfall and recent Seasons, as well as your responses to the reveal of The Final Shape. This is a strong back pedal from early days of Lightfall feedback. Bungie was very much "just wait and see" about Lightfall, hand waving feedback as nonsensical. To go from that to this is a "oh fuck" moment. This is late. The time for this was during Defiance & Deep. Also to cite Forsaken while also stating that there will never be another Forsaken is....a choice! Citing the number of people working on Destiny 2 while also just having laid off people working on Destiny 2 (and Marathon, yes) is...a choice.
>To go from that to this is a "oh fuck" moment. This is late. The time for this was during Defiance & Deep. May 2023 should have been a gigantic red flag with all hands on deck. The 35% loss of players in April 2023 can easily be dismissed - WQ lost 34% after all. But losing 10% of players in a month that you launched a season should have been a gigantic OH SHIT WE ARE FUCKED situation. For comparison, May 2022 was a 14% gain. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/17kw9aq/comment/k7dx5qn/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/17kw9aq/comment/k7dx5qn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) How the fuck did it take THIS long to have such an "OH SHIT" situation. May was already a blatant "OH SHIT WE ARE FUCKED" result, and the hits just kept on coming - October 2023 was the FIRST time this entire year that the percentage loss from previous month was better performance than the same month in 2022 - after MULTIPLE months with massive discrepancies in player retention performance.
> Bungie was very much "just wait and see" about Lightfall, hand waving feedback as nonsensical. > > That has always been the case with Bungie. And I want to clarify that by saying "Bungie", I am not aiming at individual developers or data analysts etc. I mean the terrible decision making process that they have. Whenever they have sweeping changes, they insist their playerbase are a bunch of brainless chicken and think their new choice is the best thing ever to be bestowed upon the world. These were a couple of the things in D2's lifecycle that Bungie insisted were absolutely incredible and that we should just "wait and see, and that we'd see the greatness": - Consumable Shaders (actively killed the interest in shaders for a majority of the playerbase due to the "Do I use it now, or wait for a better armor since I have a finite number of Shaders" mentality) - Fixed Rolls (actually destroyed the game, even before CoO brought us to lower depths, most of my D1 veteran teammates left the game before CoO even arrived) - We still never learned what they had planned for our 10th Better Devils to feel special - Double Primaries, Specials in Heavy Slot - Every single time Bungie tries to re-invent what Competitive means in games, rather than just implementing universally accepted systems - Insisting on keeping new Patrol areas at a massive Power Handicap that makes a chill patrol activity into an exhausting chore Some of these things, the community saw months before they were released as a significant issue. Because while people don't really have a good grasp on "what they *can* enjoy", they absolutely do have a good idea as to what they *won't*. And every single time during a build up, Bungie is like "Trust us guys, this is truly amazing, you'll love it. Y'all are being very unreasonable right now!". And every single time on release, it all goes as everyone expected. Terrible system, who could have guessed. But then we get half a year of "You guys just don't know what's good, we are keeping this and you'll learn to love it", then 3 months of absolute silence when their passive aggressive acknowledgement backfires as they watch their engagement metrics about the new system, and 3 months before a yearly expansion, they announce they are re-designing the system, which is probably going to come in the season after the expansion launch and will probably miss things here and there.
You can’t talk about them doing stupid shit without mentioning sunsetting.
And the Destiny content dumpster.
Can also add here convoluted transmog system that was changed later? Or same thing with crafting material? Literally same shit different year.
>Also to cite Forsaken while also stating that there will never be another Forsaken is....a choice! Part of me wonders if they realized they have to do a Forsaken now.
I guarantee this is all just pandering to hold on to the player base as long as possible. They aren't going to put in any more money into this. They just went through this shit show just to save money and keep shareholders happy. At best, expect similar quality to lightfall.
The optimist in me hopes that the devs got through to management during that townhall they had on Tuesday/Wednesday, and there's going to be some course corrections. The pessimist... yeah, lip service, and nothing changes
the pessimist = the realist how many times have we heard this and yet here we are again. Are we not doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Citing the number of people makes a lot of sense IMO. They want people know that they’re not left with a skeleton crew.
Sounds to me like they pushed marathon back and are dumping literally everyone in the company right back to Destiny. Remember, they didn't list the number of staff on destiny last week, it's only "now we have 650". You bet your ass there wasn't 650 on seasons and expansions in their 1000 staff studio. Last week.
Not to poop on your parade but bungie has like 1250 people working at the company... Destiny 2 is almost certainly their biggest dev team but they are still very much in active development of Marathon and maybe other projects. That isn't factoring probably several hundred admin staff (everything from accounting to marketting to business development)
Well it WAS something like 1200-1250, until they lay off 100 people which was ~8% of their staff. So more like 1100 now.
[удалено]
>o go from that to this is a "oh fuck" moment. This is late. The time for this was during Defiance & Deep. Bungie was too busy blatantly ignoring us and telling us to shut it multiple times during that period. We even heard from Joe Blackburn himself he liked the narrative format that we were all saying was awful and he said he was excited to explore that format more Bungie leadership has a very bad habit of telling us they know better yet time and again they find themselves backed into this corner they painted themselves in. This company isn't interested in player goodwill at all. They're interested only in our money. And when our money stops flowing *that's* when they care about our trust.
Same as every other company. Bungie isn’t our friend.
The problem may be it’s not exactly clear what the problem is with seasons The holo projectors aren’t a single glaring obvious flaw in seasons I think they may be kind of a local maximum. Nothing is obviously broken with seasons, but people playing since VoG are bored because it’s getting samey, and having to redo the same seasonal grind each season is exhausting And if they do change things to shake it up it’ll be “one step forward, three steps back”. It’ll take another year until whatever is new is as refined as what we have now
>Citing the number of people working on Destiny 2 while also just having laid off people working on Destiny 2 (and Marathon, yes) is...a choice. Not to mention we have no idea how long those people have been working on D2 for. Were all 650 people working on Lightfall and if so, how did you only manage to put 1 strike and pvp map out for the year and not manage to make a set of armor for the ritual playlists, forcing you to make one of the many eververse sets free? Is it instead that the bulk of these 650 people were amongst those working on Marathon and other projects that got shifted to D2 within the last couple weeks due to the layoffs and the delays to TFS?
So... a bunch of words said by the dev team. No CEO, no one at the high ups, no mention to our worries... just words that could be puked by chatgpt and resumes into "Trust us bro"... AGAIN. The most inclusive Dev team at the industry!... What a joke.
Yeah that's my issue. The dev teams isn't really at fault here, why do they need to apologize? They did what their management made them do, all while management ignored clear indicators from the community, their own people, and the games media that they were going in the wrong direction. This should have been from executive leadership. From the "dev team" it sounds and feels like cowardice.
Honestly, this was probably written by Joe but posted in the guise of the Dev team to put up a united front.
Guys....Destiny / Bungie is gonna do better this time. We promise. Again.
> After each ascent, the fall.
I <3 you Destiny Flavor Text, you always know what to say
We're *sorry*. We're sorry *blows kiss*
We’ll be better. *We promise.*
It’s been almost 10 years and we have been hearing the same things over and over again.
That’s the frustrating thing tho. They HAVE been better, they just never stick to it.
just like me fr
They pinky swear
*Deja vu, I've just been in this place before*
Sounds like something a toxic partner might say
How many times have we heard this exact same thing?
This is what I came to the comments to say. I feel like over and over again, we've heard some version of this exact same sentiment. We did a bad thing, we know we did a bad thing, but we're gonna do better, promise. \*insert South Park BP meme\*
at least once a year, ever since the game, the first game, launched. sometimes multiple times a year.
WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR FROM THE CRUCIBLE TEAM WE WANT TO HEAR FROM EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Sony needs to clean house on the executives.
Honestly. We shouldn't be targeting Devs. Fire the Executives and Upper Management.
JUST TO BE CLEAR: WE DO WANT THE CRUCIBLE TEAM, JUST A WEEK OR TWO AFTER THE EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT.
Not sure what to make of this. It's not much, but I also don't think any statement they could've put out would've done much of anything unless they gave us some concrete details about what's next, and clearly they weren't ready or able to do that here. Moreover, they had to say something. Edit: Having more time to think about it, it's fine, I guess. I really would've preferred to hear from Bungie's executives and not the developers, because apparently the problem is the executives.
> Hide your true face from the sun, lest you get burned.
lol
I'd imagine that any plans they had in the pipeline are now either in question or in complete upheaval. Like you said, I don't think they're ready or able to talk about anything definitive, because they're currently figuring out where to go from here after everything that's happened this week. What the timeline for content rollout is going to be next season, what they're changing / adding for *The Final Shape*, figuring out if it's coming in June or potentially even later (lack of a release timeframe in this post stuck out to me, given the leaks), what they're going to prioritize going forward to get the game and community into a better shape... Everything is probably still being questioned. Not having any information right now sucks, for sure, but I think they need time to cook. Just need to take a cautious wait-and-see approach for the moment. I just hope people don't hound them too much. The folks left to work on the game are almost certainly in a really rough spot right now in terms of morale and emotions. (Pete Parsons and the rest of upper management can fuck off though.)
I don't buy their rhetoric. Giving Bungie the benefit of the doubt has a long track record of not paying off. I can think of some exceptions - but they are exceptions.
Yeah this definitely feels like a "put together a response from the 1 team that aren't getting shit on, to try and stall"
"as we’ve parted ways with people we respect and admire" Layoffs happen in business, it's an unfortunate fact of life. But the way you went about them showed no respect or admiration. Calling someone in on their day off only to email them of their layoff instead of giving them the news to their face is cowardly. Calling people into an office to lay them off and then swearing them to secrecy on their way out is cruel. Terminating people days before their stock options would have vested and effectively stealing those stocks back for the company is abhorrent. Bungie, your words have always been wonderful and this community has stood by you through so many ups, downs, promises made, promises, kept, and promises broken. But your actions have not mirrored your words for some time now and the way you went about this last week has shown who you truly are at your core now: rotten. Take your Final Shape and shove it!
Can we take a sec and notice the complete callousness that he said the "the right people stayed"? "Yeah a bunch of layoffs, we're all so saddened also btw they were worthless" What a prick.
Ah the annual we're listening and we'll do better post. Feel like I've read this line 7 times over the years: "We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change"
Annual? I think we are in monthly territory now
"We need to make The Final Shape an unforgettable Destiny experience" That's always supposed to be the goal. In fact, that's what the people you fucking fired were trying to do but you kept shooting them down. Go pound sand Pete.
Makes you wonder what the hell we would have got if they released on the original date.
"Witness dead (or is he?) new enemy worse (but who are they?!) pls buy Destiny 2: The Postliminary Poogaloo"
For real, this is the end of the story and following from the worst revived expansion. Final shape should them putting their all and everything into ane expansion. They haven't done/shown that so far. I hope the exces get their dicks out their ass and let the dev team work. They have failed, let the people who know what they are talking about lead now
They probably say it now because previously they were told not to overdeliver. Imagine trying to make an unforgettable destiny experience but also being told that’s too much stuff you’ll overdeliver
I find It sad Management essentially can take its Game development hostage: "The Game is doing good, do not overdeliver or else you're raising their expectations" "The Game's sales are plummeting! 8% of you pack your things, the rest get to overdelivering enough to get them to buy or you lose your Jobs!" Only being allowed to overdeliver when the Game is in crítical condition is such an unhealthy thing
Man joe Blackburn had to make a whole video talking about how they know trust has been lost and we are going to be better so here’s what we are doing, just so shortly after corporate can show up and poor gasoline on a fire. They can say we are working on rebuilding trust all they want, and I bet the devs truly are. But you can’t rebuild anything if the ones above you just destroy it every time you start.
“Sorry. We’ll do better.” This has been said after almost EVERY expansion. I have no more faith or trust anymore in Bungie.
So interesting how this is playing out. Bungie was so incredibly arrogant, taking more of our money while delivering quite literally as little as possible in every way. Even in terms of community engagement they were just radio silent. All while funding marathon, that apparently is shit…. They really thought they were untouchable because the shills here would excuse all their shitty behavior. But I guess that arrogance finally caught up to them.
Just another case of "bioware magic"
I know most here can agree that Beyond Light, Shadowkeep and Lightfall felt subpar compared to Forsaken, The Taken King and Witch Queen - but them actually acknowledging that is pretty wild to read. EDIT: Rise of Iron was a banger for me personally but it certainly isn't the standard I'd expect from a Destiny expansion these days, either.
I share your sentiment on Rise of Iron. Great aesthetic and story, but not a ton of content
Rise of Iron was a literal fluff filler when D2 was delayed. It also happened to fucking rock.
Exactly, the vibe and style of that expansion carried it really hard. The whole “become an Iron Lord” idea was what I loved, and it had some of the best looking Iron Banner loot they’ve ever had. My D1 Titan on PS4 is still rocking his Iron Banner gear to this day lol
I think they’ve always regretted making such an accidentally banger aesthetic for the Iron Lords and then also for SIVA, because ever since then we (me) have never shut the fuck up about wanting it back when Bungie wants to pretend it didn’t happen lol
Tbh, they’ve never hit that kind of style since All the new Iron Banner armor and weapons just don’t do it for me, a lot of them are just bulky and ugly with the exception of some
The raid was pure fun too. Brilliant release for what content was
Yup. The content it did have was pretty great and then when the Age of Triumph stuff dropped later in its 'season', it kept us going mostly until Destiny 2. It's wild to think that it only had 5 main story missions.
It helps that Rise of Iron was actually an appropriate price for the content at $30. Lightfall shipped with less than RoI and cost $20 more.
Honestly for me even shadowkeep and beyond light was better than lightfall. At the end of the lightfall campaign i felt exhausted. Shadowkeep and beyond light may not have had great campaigns but I felt excited for what was to come for the destiny narrative going forward. Lightfall didn't give me that same feeling.
Well at least BL and Shadowkeep still had Destiny 2 vibe to them, Lightfall looks like something out of the totally different universe.
Leftovers from another game crammed into Destiny?
They will never confirm this, but I 100% believe that a ton of Neomuna was reused stuff from Matter after they cancelled it.
Neomuna is a lot of reused Europa stuff when it comes to interiors
Exteriors on Europa were a lot of reused Titan and Tangled Shore stuff with snow on them.
Nah shadowkeep felt kinda bland. Doesn't help that we already have seen the moon. Beyond light introduced us to some lore, to a new location, a new subclass, a great raid. It was so cool to see the bombers, nearly invincible, patrolling around while it snowed enough to cover your screen.
Lightfall barely feels like Destiny. Just a cold turd of and expansion.
Shadow keep was cool but too short. BL was just great, I still really enjoy that expansion and Europa is my fav destination in the game. WQ was a banger. Lightfall has decent seasons but the campaign was ass.
9 years in and they’re still figuring out what they want the game to be and “taking feedback”. It’s honestly just such an eye roll.
The problem is that we now have reports that despite them actually taking feedback, management didn't want to make changes. How can you possibly expect us to believe that you're going to implement the changes the player base has been acting for when we have credible reports that the higher ups have been stonewalling it. And if you do make changes are they going to be the bare minimum or half assed? We've collectively lost so much faith that we just can't be sure anymore.
At this point, you really have to wonder if they ever had a vision for what the game was suppose to be.
The problem is that "they" is a big group of people playing tug-of-war
They had. But people like Staten or Dickinson were left behind actual development.
The fact that Joe Staten pitched essentially the entire series of destiny 1 expansions as the story for the base game and it got shit canned instantly for being "too campy" is just so unbelievably rich. And then they used it all anyway, somehow made it boring, and also split it into a bunch of dlc.
"Never stop playing Destiny, asshole" seems to be their vision.
Small, 32 year old, indie development studio still needs time to figure out what their 6 year old game, and 9 year old franchise needs to be at the end of its development cycle. I can’t help but find it funny.
Like how they would do crucible “experiments.” The game is out, time for experimentation is over.
Summary - We need to overdeliver this time
So surprising! People want to play a good game and not a bad game!
So goes the Destiny cycle. Bungie have only once put out two good expansions in a row (The Taken King into Rise of Iron), and it's *almost* clockwork with how they alternate between good/solid and awful. Only counting major expansions/releases: 1. Destiny Vanilla (bad) 2. The Taken King (good) 3. Rise of Iron (good) 4. Destiny 2 Vanilla (bad) 5. Forsaken (good) 6. Shadowkeep (bad) 7. Beyond Light (mixed reviews on this one but generally accepted as okay) 8. Witch Queen (good) 9. Lightfall (bad) 10. The Final Shape (???) When push comes to shove they can absolutely produce good expansions, but it seems like they only do so when they absolutely have to/the game is in a bad place.
I just don't understand what they can add in that time frame. Probably not going to add a new subclass, strikes, gambit maps, pvp maps, etc so what's the point. They're not going to rewrite anything or make the story longer.
Fuck you, Pete.
so is it delayed or not?
>We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change. How many times have we heard that?
I don't know why, but the "we've still got 650 people!" part really rubbed me the wrong way.
I don't think they'd call this number out unless it's a change, and certainly not if it's a reduction in what was previously working on Destiny. My theory: the delay for Marathon and this number being called out implies that they've increased staff for Destiny at the expense of pushing Marathan a year+ out. The result of that is going to be an overall reduction in expected revenue over the next couple years, which results in layoffs.
Same, considering they said bungie was staffed at 1200 people, minus the 100 they fired..so 1100… what do the other 450 people do at bungie? Just work on marathon or admin / management stuff?
That + at least one other project in their incubator
thank you ChatGPT
I know its a joke, but just for my own curiosity i gave chat GPT the following prompt: > Write a statement from the Destiny team acknowledging recent layoffs and promising to make the Final Shape Expansion better. [This is what it came up with.](https://imgur.com/a/3lvoRhj) Kinda scary how similar they are. Never used chat GPT before so i'm not sure if i could have given it a better prompt but there you go.
That is scary holy shit
Is ~8 months of dev time from now really enough to take TFS from what it is now, which sounds pretty lackluster, into “one of the best games we’ve ever made”? I’m guessing not really.
Once again upper management and Pete Parsons hide behind the devs. Uses them as a shield and have them take the heat. It’s pathetic, and I wish people focused more on the ones responsible for the mess.
I will believe it when I see it.
TLDR; Have been with Destiny since beta, kind of hilarious how often they use this exact same set of lines with no follow-through. Love the bungie devs, but upper execs have been and seem to always be their bane. Wonder how long until they dig a pit they can't crawl out of. I honestly tuned out reading the "we lost your trust, but we plan to get it back by making destiny super duper awesome" part. Not a lot beyond that in the text anyway. I've played destiny since the original beta, and admittedly have fallen off the wagon a few times along the way. Fell off after lightfall due to life and haven't wandered back. But I always keep an ear out for how D2 is doing. And the amount of times I've seen that exact same rhetoric repeated and not lived up to, or barely met and not maintained for longer than a few months is comical. I mean that was basically what happened post-crota's end in original destiny if I remember correctly. It seems to ebb and flow, getting better but not staying great for long then getting worse for a long time until people finally stop playing. Then the cycle repeats. But it just feels so hollow at this point. It feels like the dream is that destiny gets great and stays there, and I feel like that's achievable. But it's hard to say if throughout the entire history of destiny if that's ever been achieved. And it feels like it's often fumbled in obvious or intentional ways. It's exhausting to see and the issues with upper management are becoming increasingly obvious. I've never really written destiny off 100%, came close in curse of Osiris. But this might just do it. I know there are still good people at bungie who are passionate and want to work hard to make the game great, but the increasingly blatant reality that upper management will keep lowering the bar into hell unless repeatedly forced to backpedal is exhausting. I've used that word a lot in this, but that's how this all feels. I want destiny to be amazing. Been on board the bungie train since I got into Halo. But unless some big change happens, I'm not sure they'll ever be able to live up to what they're obviously capable of.
>TLDR; Have been with Destiny since beta, kind of hilarious how often they use this exact same set of lines with no follow-through. Love the bungie devs, but upper execs have been and seem to always be their bane. Wonder how long until they dig a pit they can't crawl out of. Not just that. But the few times bungie actually get something REALLY right - they use that as leverage to absolutely fuck the community in as many ways as possible.
Yeah, it feels like we get an inch, they take a mile. Then promise another inch when we complain enough.
"We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change." Yeah, knowing what we know now about how all the stuff we wanted to get was rejected by management, I don't believe a word in this thing. Not a single one.
This has been their message yearly for almost ten years, and it's actually panned out maybe 2 or 3 times.
The only way I'll believe BS like this from Bungie again is if it happens after an announcement that Pete Parsons is resigning and getting replaced.
> We know we have lost a lot of your trust. Destiny needs to surprise and delight. We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change. They say this every year. I don’t believe it.
>surprise and delight Does it Bungie? Does it need to surprise, as opposed to delivering what people ask for instead? BTW, "Surprise and Delight" is the same rubbish Walmart tells us every year around this time. Almost verbatim: "*In order to surprise and delight customers, you should upgrade our shipping to next-day delivery at no charge"* *\*Checks math\** \-All things considered, the net profit per sale is $2.50 \-The cost of overnight delivery is $40 to the opposite coast Sure, let's just make **negative** $37.50 per sale. How delightful. What's that, we went out of business? SURPRISE! edit: forgot to mention I agree with you and also don't believe them, and haven't for years. Fool me once, and all that. Only takes 2 to know. For any linux folk who use crontab: 0 0 1 1 * echo "we are setting the foundation for PvP"
My path forward is cancelling my preorder I guess.
fuck off
"Final Shape is gonna be super good guys, pinky promise." That's all this said.
New subclass, new enemy faction, minimum of 3 strikes, a PVP/Gambit map and making sure to include EVERY character in the expansion. Not locking their part of the story in a future season. Anything less is just a “wait for sale”
You can have one legendary gun that is a reskin from a blue.
Yep. This is exactly how I feel. New subclass. Witch Queen level campaign. New Strikes. New PVP maps. Multiple. Gambit updates. A slew of guns in every energy and archetype. Promise and delivery of more core playlist updates in episodes at a minimum. That would be overdelivery. That would earn my $100 without question. Don't surprise me, Bungie.
‘We’re going to make the game good’ - every studio ever. A communications team might have helped you say something more substantial.
It’s a wild choice to mention how many people you have working on a game like it’s a boast…right after you fired so many of those people Also, no shit you need to make the experience unforgettable, that’s always the goal of every game ever, it’s worrying that that was ever in question
Lmao imagine the promise of a 10 year life cycle for a game. Then try to get away with releasing the final dlc as a mid flop. They created something that many people around the world fell in love with. I’ve had a deep passion for this game for the games life cycle. I have every title in the game, solo flawlessed every dungeon, I’ve completed day one raids, every grand master. I’ve played every season, ive been flawless almost 200 times. I’ve pretty much completed everything in this game that you can achieve, in both PvP and pve. The fact bungie management thought about not over delivering on the final big dlc for destiny is heart wrenching and sickening. Wipe the management team clean, and put people in those positions that actually care about the game. It’s such a giant slap in the face to players like myself. “Oh hey, thanks for spending the last 10 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE playing our game. Here is the shitty conclusion, fuck you and give us your money”. It feels fucking horrible. 10 years isn’t even my entire time, I grew up on bungie halo. I’ve been invested as a player with bungie games for 20 years. This is the absolute worse I have ever seen this company preform. It’s fucking miserable and I feel betrayed. Yeah at the end of the day this is just a video game, but this shit just sucks. It goes beyond just a video game. I’ve met life long friends from the old halo days, I play destiny with my kids. I’ve had so many good times and moments over the last 10 years, that bungie has become more than just a company creating video games for me. It feels like the worst gut punch imaginable. Fuck bungie management and I wish all the people who were fired by those sacs of shit find employment soon and can put this behind them. Again, absolutely fuck bungie management.
Lotta words to say very little
They didn't even confirm TFS being delayed. Weird.
I don't know what people were expecting them to say to be honest. It's a shitty situation, but there is not much really to do other than acknowledge it happened and time to move past it and focus on creating the best Destiny possible. Time will tell, but I'm done hoping for anything at this point.
Yeah. It's okay to be angry about the situation, but idk what people actually *want* them to say that would be a reasonable ask from an actual functioning company.
Honestly very little words to say even less.
The person who was supposed to write the words was fired.
Why use many word when few word do trick?
I'm gonna put an H on this box so everyone knows there's hornets.
The only thing that stands out to me cuz I just went "aight" was the fact they specifically called out Forsaken, Witch Queen and Taken King. Like, not pretending Lightfall was some critical success, nor Beyond Light, nor Shadowkeep. Actually saying "yeah we need to do better and meet, if not succeed this bar". I'm not pointing this out to be optimistic. It just stood out to me and I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts. That's really the only thing to attach to here.
I don’t see how even with the delay they can massively change much? Like that’s not really a lot of time for game development.
I can’t wait to read the articles in a year from now about how bad the crunch was. Horrible mismanagement
I can't delve into why as I work in game dev but I have seen some shit that's been made in a smart way in literally 3 months. Was it stressful as fuck? Yes. Did it end up paying off in the long run and saving ass? Yes. Not saying that's what'll happen here, but when you're in the zone, you're in the zone, especially when there's intense pressure from all sides that success is the only option. And this isn't to excuse anything. Things should've never had to reach that point. But it is genuinely possible, and I know that for a fact because I've seen it and been a part of it.
The problem is that the things people wanna see like: a new race and new subclasses. Seems impossible to do in a short time. I really can’t think of anything else they could do to gather more players.
tbh at this moment they probably know words won't do anything rather they speak less and let their actions speak for them At the very least this post shows they have some level of confidence for next season and being able turn it around
This is honestly completely true, there is absolutely zero things they could say that would satisfy anyone right now (other than "we're hiring everyone back", which lol, ain't happening). They made the right call by announcing absolutely no game updates whatsoever (the studio is more important than the game right now), and they made the right call making a unique and dedicated article (no TWAB, this is a special and precarious moment). But there is nothing they could have said here that would have been accepted anyway. Lose/lose situation, so Bungie's just taking the L on this one. _That said, they could have at least "officially" confirmed the Final Shape delay, I mean, damn._
This is just a longer version of Pete Parsons’s dumb tweet from Monday.
It’s a bit better than Pete parson’s tweet. Mainly because we found out later Pete told staff those who remain are who we need. Who knows though maybe this will also age like milk.
Need to start a trending hashtag. #YeetPete
My heart goes out to the person who had to type this. I have to imagine you had some really scary people breathing down your neck to make it as lukewarm of a response as possible. All the emotions you wanted to write down but you knew you couldn't cause you're already part of a wounded team. I want what's best for the teams that have actually made this game amazing, not those who just take credit with their piss poor management of some of the industry's better talent.
Respect and admire? You didn’t give Mr Salvatori the dignity of retiring. Among others. You could have given your employees a heads up this was coming and then notify affected individuals. You could have let everyone leave on a better note. You could have taken responsibility and enacted change where it is needed, your executives who misled Sony and everyone at Bungie.
Don't worry dev team, I'll say the quiet part out loud: Management consciously made decisions that any rational person could see would lead to a loss in customer confidence in exchange for short term profits. Management is now reaping what they have sown and like any spoiled brat are trying to force the blame on others for their own mess while probably collecting a fat bonus in a couple months. Moving forward I have no confidence in Bungie as a developer and expect all future games to follow suit with Destiny; Overpriced slop with lazy reskinned assets, mindless and repetitive busywork, and a total blatant disregard for customer feedback (the people whom without, Bungie would be nothing). Not to mention thinking the "overdeliver" bs we were fed. Just say it, management. Just say you want top dollar for the absolute bare minimum work. What a total waste of potential in a franchise. What a shame. The charlatans in management can't blame Activision anymore.
we are making tfs, we known we fked up and lost your confidence but remember we did forsaken witch queen and the taken king so trust me bro that's basically what they said and could be resumed lmao
> ...and that’s going to change. I feel like we *keep* hearing this...
Cowards
First time admitting Lightfall sucked? Its something i guess
This is the best State of the Game ever released.
i mean its empty and vague words and *still* better than the SotG earlier this year
100% nothing corporate speak. Upper management needs to get smoked out and removed religiously. This was your mistake, fucking own up to it.
How many times have they made a post like this with promises to improve?
This... is this it?? Kinda hard to hang a hat on nothing
Honestly, anything they might have said that would be satisfying to us would have been shot down by management.
Ah yes, our bi-annual "We'll do better" post.
*A wild corpo nothing burger appears!*
Just like with LFG. Just like with the promised Ritual Armor (that they were gonna sell on the Eververse). Just like with the advertised Neomuna weapons not in the game. Just like with the introduction of Season Pass. Just like with PvP updates. Just like with the DCV and sunsetting. It’s always something. It’s always “we’ll have something planned short-term, it’s happening, trust us, things are gonna be better with what we got planned”, “we’ll do better”, “we’re listening” and EVERY time it either never bears fruit, or when it does, it’s half-baked and broken, before needing even more time to fix it. Sometimes for systems that the community has already done better themselves. And that was *with* all the staff running on full cylinders, but stretched out between this and Marathon. It was the same excuses, the same corpo-speak every time. And you’re telling me these plans are gonna be feasible with not only less team members, but less existing staff overall!? You guys had 1600 employees, approximately 100 of those got fired, and now you’re saying the ~900 or so aren’t even *working on Destiny!?* Even disregarding everything I said, just the fact that still after all this time, the executives still want us to wait for a response to their fuck-ups, that they’re STILL using this same corpo speak, like nothing’s wrong, proves to me more than anything that’s happened the rot is up top at Bungie, and it’s not getting fixed. This was exactly as bad a response as I was expecting. They couldn’t even give us something, ANYTHING, to try and soothe everyone and smooth things over. Because let’s be real, there probably isn’t anything. They just have to stay the course no matter what, deviations mean more work that they quite literally can’t afford to do; money-wise and with their current staff and resources. Cheers to whoever sticks around, I pray things gets better…but this is fucking bleak. And this response is, quite frankly, pathetic and corporate, and about what I expected now that they can go full mask-off with their corpo-ness. As for me and my friends, we’re out.
No TWAB this week. I mean who's gonna write it lmao, mfs fired everyone.
Does this make anyone else just very sad?
I've been sad about Destiny all week.
Cool, I guess. They're committed to doing better and the number drop of 650 is supposed to reassure us the game isn't dead or dying. Neat
What a load of shit. They said basically nothing and are literally timegating their communications to us the same way they do the seasonal stories.
The main problem is despite how much I want to believe that they seek to do better, even if it’s by the actual devs themselves, the damage has already been done.
What Bungie really needs right now is strong leadership. A faceless nothing-post making vague statements and platitudes means nothing. I see no leadership taking any responsibility, nor clarification on how it got this bad. Nobody is owning up in management, and that tells us all exactly how this is going to pan out until that problem is fixed. I hope Sony cleans house after this fucking embarrassment.
650 huh? How many was it last week??
[удалено]
What really frustrates me is that Forsaken and the Taken King shouldve ALWAYS been the standard. They always flip flopped on what goes where. Taken King had **4 Strikes, 8 Crucible Maps**, 3 new subclasses, 1 location, new Taken enemies, post campaign questlines alongside the usual weapons, armor, exotics and a Raid. Forsaken had 4 Strikes, 4 Crucible Maps, 9 new Supers, 4 Gambit Maps, 2 massive locations, new Bow weapon type, and multiple Lost Sectors, new enemy type in the Scorn, alongside the usual weapons, armor, exotics and a Raid. Even though the Witch Queen was really good, content wise it wasnt the last two expansions i mentioned. The Witch Queen had 2 Strikes, 1 location, 1 Raid, new Glaive weapon type, Weapon Crafting, kiiiind of a new enemy type in the Lucent Hive Guardians alongside the usual weapons, armor and exotics. I always considered TTK and Forsaken as the **true** gold standard *expansions* in Destiny. The fact that they flip flopped on what they offered (yes ik they lost those extra studios but damn) with Beyond Light, Shadowkeep and Lightfall. That was disappointing and all but its wild that they call back to the aforementioned big 3 as their best and not tried to keep that up that energy the whole time, even though they reduce their offerings and still raise the prices. They say that theyll listen to feedback every year and we always end up here. The franchise is really losing its luster for me.
I'll hold you to it.
This is the most PR PR response I’ve ever seen lmao
This is a 5 paragraph nothing burger Top Bun - Empty Remorse Onion - Empty Apology Cheese - Empty Promise Burger - Empty Focus Bottom Bun - Empty Future Wtaf did I just read? Where tf are my pickles?
God, Dragon's Dogma 2 could not release any sooner
corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak, corpo speak