In Destiny it’s a new way of thinking. Destiny 2 is set to bring DLCs. This reveals the plans for “Live Content” in Destiny 1 as empty marketing promises.
At the end of 2015, Bungie marketed it to the players as a “great innovation” and something “positive”: Destiny revamped the content plan. There would no longer be 15€ DLCs between the major releases like in Year 1, but rather “Live Events” and free updates.
The supposed improvement in the content flow is slowly turning out to be what it really was: marketing talk. Bungie wanted to sell Destiny players a workaround as an “improvement”. That didn’t work.
The absence of DLCs in Year 2 was marketed to Destiny players as something “good”
Destiny transitioned to free content updates and events. Never again would players have to wait 4 months for new content and then pay for it. From now on, the “Live Team” would handle events and content updates.
In 2015, it still sounded like a good idea. The two Year 1 DLCs “The Darkness Beckons” and “House of Wolves” were rather subpar. While they brought new things like the raid “Crota’s End,” the “Prison of Elders,” or “The Trials of Osiris” – especially the story content disappointed the Guardians. Often, it was just familiar missions that had to be played in reverse.
A change in plans was initially well received. Especially since it would be free. The price tag of 15€ for new content had annoyed budget-conscious Guardians in Year 1.
“No Season Pass” – “No Content”
In practice, however, the whole situation looked much bleaker. Where Year 1 at least brought “game content” with the DLCs, it was bleak in Year 2 and Year 3. The “Live Team” could basically only recycle game content, bring balance changes, or develop some cosmetics – real boss challenges or story developments were no longer present.
The events often turned out to be attempts to keep players engaged with minimal effort. They offered emotes and all sorts of cosmetics through a cash shop.
Destiny 2 is set to receive DLCs again – and players apparently love it
The fact that all this “We’re focusing on events now, it’s going to be great” was just empty phrases is now evident with the plans for Destiny 2. Here, a “Season Pass” is already being sold before release, which is supposed to guarantee two DLCs. They are reverting to the old model.
Players apparently have no problem with this at all. In the pre-orders, the editions that include the season pass are more sought after than those that do not.
Were events in Destiny 1 just a workaround due to poor dev tools?
Behind the scenes, there have been rumors for a long time that Bungie switched to “event content” solely because they couldn’t find the time to develop proper DLCs alongside working on Destiny 2 and the major expansions “The Taken King” and “Rise of Iron”.
Bungie couldn’t manage it in time. In Year 1, they were able to do it only because the DLCs were developed before release, when they had more time and didn’t have to maintain a “live game”.
With this knowledge, it seems the “Live Team” content was planned from the start as a workaround, sold to players as an “improvement”. They didn’t dare to say: “Guys, we can’t deliver DLCs. We’re currently working on Destiny 2 and that’s our focus.”
Now, ahead of Destiny 2, unconfirmed sources are leaking that the content weakness in Destiny 1 was due to a difficult engine and cumbersome developer tools. These problems are supposedly resolved with Destiny. Perhaps Destiny 2 can now continue with reasonable content.
Other games also struggle with “content supply” and are moving away from the season pass and DLC model; The Division scrapped its season pass for Year 2, since then there has been boredom there. Electronic Arts has already expressed doubts about the season pass model for Star Wars Battlefront 2.
For more information about Destiny and what could happen content-wise, read here:
Destiny 2: Leak – We’re going to Saturn, more towards “Open World”
