[b]20)[/b] You do it really carefully, you start off with a good action game. You can't make a bad action game good by adding investment, but you can make a good action game bad by adding investment mechanisms, so they really have to look at it and say "is the game playing well? Okay, what are the ways can we add to the experience? A good example is breadth versus power, if you unlock new abillities and give people different weapons that are balanced but are different, those are valid rewards that doesn't ruin the game, it broadens the game, they give people more interesting opportunities and varied experiences. An investment game is also interesting because at a given point in time the game is really firm and balanced because you're not upsetting that, but over time you can let parts of that game come and go, you can say (Editor's Note: At this point they bleep out large chunks of what Tyson is saying)... you've gone and said "well maybe those abillities... they're not really availible anymore; those are on old items, things that don't drop anymore", and that creates a new environment, new variety in the experience, new opportunities for skilled players to excel and change their game, it keeps them from settling into a rut and staying there until they get bored of the game and leave. If everyone leaves then you don't have a community anymore. The investment game tries to make the action game better by creating breadth and personalization and personal identity and also helping it to evolve over time and balance itself. [b]21)[/b] Urk shares an anecdote about at one point for Hunter Builds the pistol was a secondary weapon and then one day he walked in and it was a primary weapon and it created huge ripple effects and it absolutely changed the way the sandbox felt, it just ratcheted it up (Tyson takes over) yeah that happened and now people were like "I really like that look and I like how that defines my character with my Hand Cannon Primary and I'm not just some space marine I'm a goddamn space cowboy gunslinger" and that's part of the awesome thing about using an investment game to help you build up self identity. [b]22)[/b] Is that an investment decision or is that a sandbox decision? Like how would you intersect with someone like Josh Hamrick on an investment system like that? Tyson says it would be a combination of a lot of things, for something like the earlier example it's the investment team going to Josh and saying "hey what if we shifted something like the Sniper out of the heavy category where it wasn't really working to the special category where it gets a lot more play? Now do we have a special category that has four items in it instead of three? Maybe it's more interesting if we moved [the hand cannon] up to the primary because what was the hand cannon really bringing to the special category? It was a longer range shotgun or a shorter ranged marksman rifle with a lot of precision, it existed in this weird space, so a lot of that did come from the sandbox side of things, they wanted to make that change, and investment said "Well cool that's good for us too because it broadens the scope of the primary slot and it makes the secondary slot really interesting even though it reduced the scope of the Heavy Slot, which wasn't a bad thing, because now those two weapons can be much stronger and really stand apart and be the fantasy of a rampage weapon. [b]23)[/b] How do you focus with regards to breadth, what is the thought process to balance that in a shared world and make it so that while "I might be better than Urk and I'm definitely better than DeeJ", how do we play together and have fun? What is the challenge? Sage characterizes balance not as "everyone is equal" but "not everyone is doing exactly the same thing" because if everyone is doing the same thing then something is not balanced because everyone is pursuing that one unbalanced thing, so the way they look at the balance of the investment game is they ask "well, is that driving people to do different things and try different things and explore different directions of using the sandbox and the game, or is it driving people to do exactly the same thing?", when they see the latter they say "well what is wrong with that, what do we need to do to fix that", part of the difficulty is that you just have to let the game mature and develop and then just ride with it. [b]24)[/b] DeeJ says it's interesting that they say that the Investment team has failed if everyone has the same favorite weapon and obviously with the huge arsenal in Destiny they don't want that to happen, they want people to say "My weapon is unique, I am unique, the way I use my weapon is unique", and he notes that Tyson has been with Bungie for as long as DeeJ has been aware of the company and he asks that as Tyson moves into the Destiny gamespace, what has been the biggest change over the years in terms of his approach to games and his approach to designing games. [b]25)[/b] A big part of it would be explicitly thinking about where the game will be 6 months after the game comes out, making sound decisions for the long game that won't make them regret their past selves. They're not building a game just to ship, they're building a game for the launch year, and that's a big shift for the entire studio. They don't build a game and then pivot towards building the next game, they have an evolving understanding of balance compared to what they had in the past where they say "We could drop it and the balance is perfect and nobody had to touch it anymore and it's a shining gem for all time", and that's something a lot of designers aspire to, they want to make the most perfectly balanced game of all time, but the problem is that those games don't hold a community the same way that an evolving game like League of Legends or DOTA 2 do, those games can build amazing communities about them and tons of excitement comes just from the fact that there's a metagame developing over time and the thing that was awesome before isn't so awesome and the thing you didn't think about before is suddenly the best idea you ever had and that kind of dynamic balance where the game is ebbing and flowing and changing and circulating, they think they understand that better and they want more of that now, they want to build a game that is exciting and entertaining always and not just exciting and entertaining because it arrived at a singularity point. [b]26)[/b] Halcylon asks if Bungie is prepared to say "Hey these new things are rolling out there's new investment there's new items there's new progression trees whatever have you" I just load up the game and there's a nag that tells you that the world has changed and you get to go in and experience these new progressions... (Tyson takes over) we want to commit to supporting the game as it's going and part of that means the investment game wants to be ongoing, we want to support that, so yeah, we look at 1000 hour grinds and we say "Oh god that's terrible" and instead they say "Let's make the game satisfying punchy and rewarding, and then support it and keep working on it, and keep making it good!", taking feedback from community and stuff like that, there's no avoiding that, if you don't take feedback, they will give it to you anyways. [b]27)[/b] In the past you can argue that people with these "perfect games" (Urk names CE as a hypothetical example) it endured and you can still play it and people got amazing at it and it's a great experience and game, but had we been able to go back and think "How can we add new maps and destinations and keep the story rolling and find ways to tweak and mess with the investment game and keep people coming back" like "Now gultch is a little different!" or "there's a new warthog variant!" and the way that would shake things up and make things feel dynamic and alive. [b]28)[/b] This happened not to long ago when Halo 3 was made free, there was a huge uptick of interest where they go "Oh my god everyone go to Xbox Live on this particular day and we're going to play Halo 3 just like old time!" and the thing about that which was sad was "Why should it be just like old times? Why shouldn't it just be like Whenever?" because that game is still vital and viable because there's a thriving community around it, why do games have to get old and die? It's been designed into those games. [b]29)[/b] DeeJ mentions that as much as you talk about deliberately sustaining the game with breadcrumbs for the gamers to have their best experiences, he enjoys the fact that it won't be a grind, because he's played games before where they take a great action game and they make it not as good with the inclusion of investment, he's played games where he says "why am I using this gun I hate using this gun!" but he's using that gun because he has to in order to get that other gun, he's force feeding himself a cauliflower to have a cinnamon roll later on. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63361438&path=1]Link to next post.[/url]