In the MMO shooter Destiny , the developers have evasively responded to the question about the trading system. Now it is said that discussions are happening again.
One of the largest US sites, “Gamespot,” has watched the Bungie live stream and extracted the news: “In Destiny, they are still thinking about a trading system.”
A trading system would mean that players could freely exchange items with each other.
Trade No Land Outside for Gjallarhorn
However, almost everyone agrees that such an idea would be catastrophic: it would eliminate the greatest motivational factor, the pursuit of extremely rare items, from the game. Now German sites are also reporting about this. But does Bungie really think about a trading system? What is the truth?
In Destiny, it holds: Never say Never
Now, the news is basically correct. It was said in the stream that they are thinking about it and discussing it, and that there are different opinions. But that is simply because Bungie would never directly say “No” to something. It is similar to the movie “Negotiable Items,” where Samuel L. Jackson explains to a colleague that as a negotiator, you never say “No” because that eliminates options, and that is something you want to avoid at all costs.
It seems to be against Bungie’s policy to use the dreaded “No” word. They always say, “This is something we talk about and consider, and we take player feedback very seriously.”
This happened during the live stream, when the Creative Director and the Community Manager listed all the disadvantages of such a system in response to the question about the trading system (and even spun anecdotes in the end), but couldn’t bring themselves to a clear “No”: It’s something that has pros and cons. And they are against it, but there are others who are in favor of it, and so on.
Normally, Bungie does not find itself in a situation where it really has to answer questions. But this time, they had to because they invited a community member who brought some sharp questions and comments right from the first minute and forced Bungie to evasive answers.
We Can Talk About Everything
But one should not make the mistake of concluding from a rhetorical and evasive “We rule nothing out. We talk about many things. We actually talk about everything. Nothing is off the table.” that they are “really” thinking about such a system. Bungie gave such answers during the evening on a lot of things. More than once, DeeJ performed a rhetorical dance to avoid giving a binding answer to a question. He said something like: Destiny has a future. In this future, things happen. We will answer the relevant questions in this future.
In this respect, the actual message is not: Destiny is thinking about a trading system, but much more: Destiny is thinking about everything. About an increase in the glimmer cap, about third subclasses, a trading system, and world peace.
Why a “free trading system” in Destiny is a really bad idea and why Destiny basically already has a much friendlier trading system than many MMOs have, we have explained in our article about the “Tower Legends”. Now the rumor is gaining new momentum.
