No Satisfaction : Destiny 2

Media is reporting that Destiny 2 physical sales are down 50% during this period over the 2014 Destiny 1 release. While not a big surprise as consumers shift away from boxes, analysts hit Activision pretty hard.

“The launch month of Destiny 2 was well short of the original iteration by a material amount,” Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson wrote in a note to clients Friday, citing the NPD data.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter also called the “Destiny 2” sales “underwhelming” in a Friday report.

Pachter added the September NPD “Destiny 2” sales data missed his forecast for the game by 37 percent.

I take no joy in this, but am also somewhat okay with the fact that (if reported correctly) the market is voting with their wallets.

I still believe that Destiny 2 is what happens when you try to launch a big game with as small of a budget as possible. I do believe, since the game is really just a reskin of the first, that it will be Activision’s most profitable game – maybe ever. So little work went into Destiny 2 as a sequel that an expansion team probably built it. So, while the market and analysts may be giving Destiny 2 a hard time I am sure Kotick and company are laughing in the background because they are still going to make billions off of a game they put little effort into improving.

Activision didn’t even really help matters by not gushing over the sales volume of Destiny 2, back like it did for Destiny 1.

Activision Blizzard on September 15 announced Destiny 2 sales “surpassed the original’s records for engagement and digital sales in launch week.” However the company did not reveal a total sales number for “Destiny 2” inclusive of physical retail store sales in contrast to the “more than $325 million” first week press release for original title in 2014.

When you stop bragging about things it’s normally because you have nothing to brag about (cue World of Warcraft subscription numbers). Then again, they may be waiting for the PC release. This too will be skewed information since you can buy Destiny 2 with WoW tokens now. Either way the game has earned it’s negative press. I am nearing max light and I haven’t seen a raid or a nightfall strike. I wait until Tuesday (reset), get my 3 powerful engrams – one of which by doing an activity I hate (Crucible) get a few light levels and abandon the game for the rest of the week. There is nothing there for the 84% of the player base (on PS4) that hasn’t completed the raid.

Outside of the terrible story and the recycled enemies, weapons,and classes the ‘true emperor has no clothes’ moment for me came this week when I was playing and I realized that they didn’t fix the AI. Destiny (1 and 2) had two quirks with it’s AI that I always thought was completely lazy (noticing a theme here?). First, let’s revisit when I called them out on crappy AI in 2014:

The AI is some of the worst I have seen in modern day FPSs (to be fair, I am comparing PC FPS AI – I don’t have a console experience equivalent). At best it is the same as FPS games i have played in the last decade. This was an opportunity to really step up the genre not be the status quo. I was fighting through the final Moon “task” mode last night and there was a room that was hard to complete – I started retreating backwards and I hit an invisible line on the ground that soon as I passed, the mobs stopped attacking and turned around. I could still shoot them. Step forward, they turn around and charge. One step back, they turn their backs to me and walk away, I shoot them. Rinse repeat.

I had not experienced this in Destiny 2 but I found it once again while questing for my Midi Multi tool. Swarms of thralls start rushing me and I think I am going to die. I am backpedaling, pull out my shotgun, grenade is on cooldown, Super is not charged – this is going to be a tense moment and I am probably going to bite it but maybe, just maybe I can pull it off! Continue backpedaling while shooting, health is at 5%, 10-15 enemies are on me AND – they stop and run away. I crossed a line on the ground that made them disengage. Step forward, they stop running away and charge again! Step back one step and they run away again. You can trivialize encounters this way. I did.

It’s the exact same game, kids.

Add to the bad AI is that when you die enemies continue to shoot at your “ghost” / body.  You are dead. Enemies keep shooting you. There is no AI trigger to stop shooting the dead guy and focus on the other, live players in the room.

There re many other games to play and Destiny 2 will be out of the spotlight until the next DLC which I (now regrettably) pre-bought  with high expectations they would improve the game. I will probably complain at that time (rightly so) that the DLC content should have been in at launch since there is so little content to do currently. My guess is that the DLC is already done and they are just waiting for the right lull in interest to fire it up to get back to media sites and good press about the amazing “new” content they have provided.

And yet I play my hour or two each week waiting and hoping the game will somehow just get better. That makes me almost as – or just as – bad as them.

3 comments / Add your comment below

    1. Stretch on the glutton for punishment, but I keep playing Destiny 2 expecting/hoping to feel differently about it, only to get further frustrated as I find out more things (like the AI issue). It’s self defeating.

      Warframe update is my next post as I am over 18 hours in and still confused – but sorting through it. It’s a bit of a mess in the opposite way of D2 – too much to do, too many components, lack of focus/clarity. I find the more I play the more I figure out but that it is done on my own, rather than told to me.

      Will save the rest of the impressions for next post =) If you are bored go try it out – it’s fun and the whole environment is traversable – they really have cool movement (and fighting). The systems become more clear as you play so as long as you have the patience to understand that you might understand how something works later on you will be OK =) O

      1. Time. SoW is taking all of it. It’s not GOTY (Horizon will win that), but the sheer randomness of the gameplay is extremely refreshing. It’s just not possible to continually use the same approach, so you always have to use a different set of skills for what seems to be the same problem.

        I’ve played Warframe back in the day. I can only imagine how much it has changed in the past years. Seems to be a lot of articles on the interwebs about it recently too.

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