TIL I'm married to Efrideet.

Bungie needs to stop with the stupid expansions and their horrible implementations and just make Destiny a $5/month subscription game. It would be more money for them and everyone would always be able to access everything (as long on they're on a PS4). They could then just push content as it was ready (let's be honest, that's basically what they're already doing now) and they could shift their full design team to the Live game rather than splitting efforts between Des2ny and DesMicroTransUniversetiny.

I see problems with this. Good content takes a long time to develop. This means for good content, that hits critical mass, will be released infrequently. If that's the case paying monthly is pointless and you might as well sell them as expansions.

If you do get content every month, it will be small, insubstantial, and not hit that critical mass. Then why would it be worth paying for?

MMOs suck. All of them. Destiny can be a kick ass FPSRPG (or RPGFPS). Anything moving Destiny closer to the MMO model will not help the quality of the game.

I just wholly disagree that good content can't be designed with a steady revenue stream. You build some small events to trickle out and then occasionally drop something huge on your audience and they all freak out.

It doesn't have to do with the revenue stream. It has to do with the frequency of content release. If you paid 5 bucks a month but only got a Taken King every year and nothing else, I'd sign up.

You do realize that you get more than that for less right now right?

If you've been playing Iron Banner, you may have noticed that High School Sophomore Lady Efrideet (seriously, she could not sound any less tough) has been mentioning her "family" in the outer rim during quest turn-ins. Apparently she spent the last 400 years hanging out with these people, and while it was hard for her to leave, she decided the time was ripe to... I'm not sure why... sell us some stuff?

I appreciate how Lady Efrideet is unconventional to what we've seen from other Iron Lords, well at least Lord Saladin. She has her wits about her and doesn't get down on the terrors of the Darkness. It's so relieving. Cayde can't be the only completely jaded speaking character in the entire Guardian corps and Iron Lords. You don't have to sound tough to be a mofo'ing badass.

edit: So you're opposed to the concept of a subscription-based game, period? Even a hypothetical one with daily updates and massive amounts of content?

Yes.

It has to do with my own shortcomings; if I'm paying for something over time, I don't feel good about it when I have other things going on in my life. It's irrelevant that the yearly cost is the same as a one-time-purchase, because once I've spent the money, I'm okay not playing. But if I'm paying over time, I HAVE to play, or I'm unhappy. I understand that's me, but it keeps me from playing ANY subscription-based games, and I'm okay with that.

That's not a shortcoming, that's human nature.

A subscription like that incentivizes the audience to think that any minute spent not playing is a minute you're paying for something you're not getting.

If it was a subscription, it'd have to be yearly, like XBL itself. If you did it monthly, you'd have people wanting to go on vacation when they can't play so they could save five bucks, and then get back on the plan when they can play. Nightmare.

The only subscription game I ever played, briefly, was Eve Online. And they're adding a F2P tier.

edit: So you're opposed to the concept of a subscription-based game, period? Even a hypothetical one with daily updates and massive amounts of content?

Yes.

It has to do with my own shortcomings; if I'm paying for something over time, I don't feel good about it when I have other things going on in my life. It's irrelevant that the yearly cost is the same as a one-time-purchase, because once I've spent the money, I'm okay not playing. But if I'm paying over time, I HAVE to play, or I'm unhappy. I understand that's me, but it keeps me from playing ANY subscription-based games, and I'm okay with that.

Everyone subscribes for one month after an expansion. "Does" the content and then cancels to wait for the next one.
Pays $5 instead of $30.
Bungie closes.
(hill valley 1985 alternate timeline:to retain subscribers Bungie feels forced to make the game more addicting with more time gating and micropayment hooks.)

I really doubt that would happen. Bungie would just have to shift content rollouts to be more trickle-y, so like instead of RoI all dropping at once, maybe just the first mission shows up, and then the social space at the same time. When the next IB rolls around, Lady Efrideet is there, too. Then we all get some messages about the fallen, WHAT ARE THEY DOING? And then the rest of the RoI missions appear (it's now been 2 months). Then the raid two weeks after that. And so forth. Knowing something new could appear at any time, people will not want to cancel their subs, but rather would be more likely to keep it active and sign in every day looking to see if anything new was happening.

That would be awful, and I'd hate it. (I guess it doesn't actually matter what I think, though, because if they went to a subscription model, I'd stop playing, so my opinion on rollout speed is irrelevant.)

Really? The only games I can think of that really did this well were WoW and Kingdom of Loathing (KoL is the gold standard of F2P MMO games IMO), but it worked brilliantly for both of them. WoW is slightly different in that they also have large expansions on top of their trickle of updates, but for what Destiny is presently charging for xpacs compared to the actual amount of content in them, I feel like they'd be making a lot more money giving them away as part of a subscription, and - hopefully - we would get a lot more content with less obvious time-leech gated forced replayability married to it.

Never played either of those. Never even heard of KoL, but never picked up WoW SPECIFICALLY because it's a subscription-based game. Just not interested.

KoL is worth checking out. It's different from pretty much everything else out there, plus it's web-based, free, and hilarious.

www.KingdomofLoathing.com

edit: So you're opposed to the concept of a subscription-based game, period? Even a hypothetical one with daily updates and massive amounts of content?

Bungie needs to stop with the stupid expansions and their horrible implementations and just make Destiny a $5/month subscription game. It would be more money for them and everyone would always be able to access everything (as long on they're on a PS4). They could then just push content as it was ready (let's be honest, that's basically what they're already doing now) and they could shift their full design team to the Live game rather than splitting efforts between Des2ny and DesMicroTransUniversetiny.

I see problems with this. Good content takes a long time to develop. This means for good content, that hits critical mass, will be released infrequently. If that's the case paying monthly is pointless and you might as well sell them as expansions.

If you do get content every month, it will be small, insubstantial, and not hit that critical mass. Then why would it be worth paying for?

MMOs suck. All of them. Destiny can be a kick ass FPSRPG (or RPGFPS). Anything moving Destiny closer to the MMO model will not help the quality of the game.

I just wholly disagree that good content can't be designed with a steady revenue stream. You build some small events to trickle out and then occasionally drop something huge on your audience and they all freak out.

It doesn't have to do with the revenue stream. It has to do with the frequency of content release. If you paid 5 bucks a month but only got a Taken King every year and nothing else, I'd sign up.

Everyone subscribes for one month after an expansion. "Does" the content and then cancels to wait for the next one.
Pays $5 instead of $30.
Bungie closes.
(hill valley 1985 alternate timeline:to retain subscribers Bungie feels forced to make the game more addicting with more time gating and micropayment hooks.)

I really doubt that would happen. Bungie would just have to shift content rollouts to be more trickle-y, so like instead of RoI all dropping at once, maybe just the first mission shows up, and then the social space at the same time. When the next IB rolls around, Lady Efrideet is there, too. Then we all get some messages about the fallen, WHAT ARE THEY DOING? And then the rest of the RoI missions appear (it's now been 2 months). Then the raid two weeks after that. And so forth. Knowing something new could appear at any time, people will not want to cancel their subs, but rather would be more likely to keep it active and sign in every day looking to see if anything new was happening.

That would be awful, and I'd hate it. (I guess it doesn't actually matter what I think, though, because if they went to a subscription model, I'd stop playing, so my opinion on rollout speed is irrelevant.)

Really? The only games I can think of that really did this well were WoW and Kingdom of Loathing (KoL is the gold standard of F2P MMO games IMO), but it worked brilliantly for both of them. WoW is slightly different in that they also have large expansions on top of their trickle of updates, but for what Destiny is presently charging for xpacs compared to the actual amount of content in them, I feel like they'd be making a lot more money giving them away as part of a subscription, and - hopefully - we would get a lot more content with less obvious time-leech gated forced replayability married to it.

Never played either of those. Never even heard of KoL, but never picked up WoW SPECIFICALLY because it's a subscription-based game. Just not interested.

Everyone subscribes for one month after an expansion. "Does" the content and then cancels to wait for the next one.
Pays $5 instead of $30.
Bungie closes.
(hill valley 1985 alternate timeline:to retain subscribers Bungie feels forced to make the game more addicting with more time gating and micropayment hooks.)

I really doubt that would happen. Bungie would just have to shift content rollouts to be more trickle-y, so like instead of RoI all dropping at once, maybe just the first mission shows up, and then the social space at the same time. When the next IB rolls around, Lady Efrideet is there, too. Then we all get some messages about the fallen, WHAT ARE THEY DOING? And then the rest of the RoI missions appear (it's now been 2 months). Then the raid two weeks after that. And so forth. Knowing something new could appear at any time, people will not want to cancel their subs, but rather would be more likely to keep it active and sign in every day looking to see if anything new was happening.

That would be awful, and I'd hate it. (I guess it doesn't actually matter what I think, though, because if they went to a subscription model, I'd stop playing, so my opinion on rollout speed is irrelevant.)

Really? The only games I can think of that really did this well were WoW and Kingdom of Loathing (KoL is the gold standard of F2P MMO games IMO), but it worked brilliantly for both of them. WoW is slightly different in that they also have large expansions on top of their trickle of updates, but for what Destiny is presently charging for xpacs compared to the actual amount of content in them, I feel like they'd be making a lot more money giving them away as part of a subscription, and - hopefully - we would get a lot more content with less obvious time-leech gated forced replayability married to it.

Bungie needs to stop with the stupid expansions and their horrible implementations and just make Destiny a $5/month subscription game. It would be more money for them and everyone would always be able to access everything (as long on they're on a PS4). They could then just push content as it was ready (let's be honest, that's basically what they're already doing now) and they could shift their full design team to the Live game rather than splitting efforts between Des2ny and DesMicroTransUniversetiny.

I see problems with this. Good content takes a long time to develop. This means for good content, that hits critical mass, will be released infrequently. If that's the case paying monthly is pointless and you might as well sell them as expansions.

If you do get content every month, it will be small, insubstantial, and not hit that critical mass. Then why would it be worth paying for?

MMOs suck. All of them. Destiny can be a kick ass FPSRPG (or RPGFPS). Anything moving Destiny closer to the MMO model will not help the quality of the game.

I just wholly disagree that good content can't be designed with a steady revenue stream. You build some small events to trickle out and then occasionally drop something huge on your audience and they all freak out.

Bungie needs to stop with the stupid expansions and their horrible implementations and just make Destiny a $5/month subscription game. It would be more money for them and everyone would always be able to access everything (as long on they're on a PS4). They could then just push content as it was ready (let's be honest, that's basically what they're already doing now) and they could shift their full design team to the Live game rather than splitting efforts between Des2ny and DesMicroTransUniversetiny.

I see problems with this. Good content takes a long time to develop. This means for good content, that hits critical mass, will be released infrequently. If that's the case paying monthly is pointless and you might as well sell them as expansions.

If you do get content every month, it will be small, insubstantial, and not hit that critical mass. Then why would it be worth paying for?

MMOs suck. All of them. Destiny can be a kick ass FPSRPG (or RPGFPS). Anything moving Destiny closer to the MMO model will not help the quality of the game.