Out of the loop. Why is Destiny 2 sinking? Didn't the game use to print money? Did the money not get reinvested back into the live service (like how FFXIV funds get vacuumed away to prop up the rest of Square Enix), or did Bungie make some bad artistic choices, or what?

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There are several contributors here.

Halfway through the lifecycle of Destiny 2 so far, Bungie realized that they have an insane amount of technological debt, and started cutting content out of the game, because it was unsustainable otherwise. The original promise was to rotate the cut content back in, but it was essentially just a lie.

One other outstanding issue is how bland, underdeveloped, and uninspired things are. Every update is "two tokens, and a blue". Every new event is either standing on a plate, or throwing a core. Core game systems don't work. The entire new season is fundamentally broken, and took away thing people still liked, just to return a ton of things people despised.

There is a lot more to it, but the core of the issue can be narrowed down to the business leadership being completely out of touch with reality, and bleeding resources

[–] cyd@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks. It would be really interesting to know what's going on behind the scenes. My understanding is that once a live service game makes it to the big leagues, like D2, resources aren't a problem if they get reinvested into development. For example, Genshin gets an annual budget of around $200m (basically one AAA a year), and pushes updates on a 6 week cycle. These big income earning projects all ought to be capable of doing crazy stuff that other studios can't match.

What sometimes happens is that the company milks the game to fund other stuff, so not enough is reinvested (like FFXIV). But it's so strange to see it happening to Bungie, because the whole point of the Sony acquisition was to have a healthy ongoing live service game.

[–] Narauko@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Behind the scenes Bungie decided they didn't want to be a single franchise studio and sunk all the money from Destiny 2 into a bunch of failed projects. Something like 8 new IPs they tried to get off the ground and none have seen the light of day. Marathon or whatever it might be called now might get a release, but no guarantees. Basically squandered all the money and good will for the Destiny franchise trying to become the next Activision or EA and committed corporate suicide.

Add the new massively expensive campuses while having a mostly remote workforce, and the CEO buying millions of dollars in classic cars to display, and you have this worst timeline we live in. Expect Sony to replace the board and completely take over the studio soon.

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Game had its big final several years in the waiting boss show up and its storyline basically ended. Now it feels more like we're doing post game sidequest stuff.

Also theres various reports of bungie firings and d2 being in maintenance mode while they try to push out a tarkov knockoff

[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Everything I've heard about marathon is that's it's becoming less and less like tarkov.

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe its changed up since I last read about it, but when I did it, iirc it was an extraction shooter, they brought a bunch of Tarkov guys out to try it, and asked them if they'd stream it if it was live, to which all of them gave a hard no. Maybe it hadn't been cooked enough yet so it didn't have a compelling vibe, or maybe Bungie decided to change shit up since then, couldn't say. I'm not a extraction shooter fan in any case so the whole thing has no appeal to me.

[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

After that they changed creative director, and since then it's been becoming less extractiony and more hero shootery.

[–] Renacles@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I don't have high hopes for any game that goes through such a drastic change late in development.

[–] cyd@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks. That sounds remarkably like the same slump FFXIV is currently in, actually. You'd think professional writers would be able to see this problem coming a long way away, and find a way to pivot smoothly to the next storyline. Especially with so much $$ at stake in a live service game.