NetEase, a major mobile games developer from China, has recently announced its latest project – Destiny: Rising. The game tells a story of an alternate timeline and allows you to explore many new things. Fans of the franchise have also looked at the announcement and are not impressed so far.
Who are the creators of Destiny: Rising? In fact, Bungie has held back in the development of Destiny: Rising and only supported NetEase from the background. When it came to well-known aspects of the story as well as the connections of the Guardians and their powers, Bungie was open for information, but the real developers are NetEase.
Famous titles from the Chinese game studio include Diablo: Immortal and Naraka: Bladepoint. Both games are free to play, but if you look at the core, you will find that their monetization is not user-friendly. Fans have already seen through this and fear bad things for Destiny: Rising.
Gacha or P2W
What are fans afraid of? Diablo: Immortal was released in a state that heavily relied on the P2W approach for monetization. Players with a lot of money had the strongest heroes, while fans wandering through Sanctuary for free had to invest a lot of time into their characters and were rather weak. This did not go down well with the franchise’s fans.
In Naraka: Bladepoint, it’s the Gacha system that NetEase applies for monetization. To acquire cosmetic items, you can buy chests to draw, with some luck, the items you want – unfortunately, the drop chance for the rarer items is very low, which is meant to encourage more purchases.
Now on YouTube, fans are discussing Destiny: Rising and agree: The game will either be P2W or have Gacha, otherwise the mobile game cannot be financed at all. The user MysticCasey sums it up in a comment on YouTube as follows:
Hello, here is someone who does a ton of alpha/beta testing for mobile. This will be heavily monetized on 3 fronts 99.999 % of the time:
1) Unlocking new characters to play. Go and read their blog about how weapons and abilities are tied to characters. They state that you can move weapons. That’s Gacha.
2) Upgrading weapons/equipment/abilities to become stronger. This is almost standard for mobile games that use equipment. Of course you have Exotics, but you CAN make them stronger than the base stats.
3) Resources. Yes, that is pretty obvious if you have ever touched a mobile game. You can either buy resources directly or buy something that increases resources.Bonus points!
Fees for unlocking weapons that are not tied to unlocking characters.
And other users share the same view regarding the monetization:
- “Free to play, mobile, NetEase – You thought Destiny 2 had bad monetization? WHOOO BOY…” – tronicalli7587
- “You’re dead! Pay $1.99 to live again before the delete timer runs out! You found an exotic engram! Wait 48 hours to open it, or open it now for $2.99!
You can already test the gameplay: Reach into your pocket, pull out your credit card, enter all the numbers into your phone. Repeat” – JabeRaddle - “Since it’s a mobile game, especially a Chinese one, it is pretty much guaranteed to have very predatory monetization, which raises the question… Is anyone of you sure you can handle worse monetization than the current Destiny 2? I certainly couldn’t, lol.” – pch1370
There is also praise
What is being praised? Fans on YouTube particularly praise the representation of Destiny: Rising. They find it amazing that games like Destiny can be portrayed on mobile devices without major issues.
Regarding the content, Destiny 2 players are envious. The Lightbearers are getting new talents like a scythe from the Void, allowing the Warlock to take on a more aggressive role. In terms of weapons, Destiny: Rising even brings a new weapon type into the game – the crossbow, while players in Destiny 2 are still seeing the same recycling that has been going on for years.
It remains to be seen what Destiny: Rising will offer once the full release is due. Everything that is currently known about the mobile game in the Destiny universe can be found on MeinMMO: The first trailer for Destiny: Rising reveals: The loot shooter is getting new classes and abilities
