(DeeJ interview with Polygon) [quote]The first year of Destiny was an amazing journey for us, and the community was our partner in that Journey. With The Taken King, we begin another year of action and adventure. Appropriately it's a major expansion, it's got a full campaign, we're opening up a new destination on your director for you to go conquer and explore. As we discussed, we're giving your guardian a new subclass to adapt to. We're giving you new enemies to fight, so it is a very weighty expansion… Bigger than anything we've released before, and as we said, that just kicks off another year that we use to enjoy this living social world in a symbiosis with our community. The people who have played this game are so passionate, so enthusiastic, so willing to band together to enjoy these activities. So completely willing to come to our forum and tell us how the game could be better or what they've dreamed about experiencing in Destiny, so we can develop this game in tandem with the people who play it. It's an experience that we've always wanted at Bungie is to be connected to the player, to be able to listen and respond and react quickly. To be able to make this experience dynamic so that it grows and evolves over time just like their characters in the game. So this is another year of that experience.[/quote] (Polygon Interviewer) I've seen a lot of those same forums you're referring to DeeJ and a lot of those people seem mean, they seem mean about some things, so I'm curious, how do you balance the amount of time… but I think that comes from a place of investment, right? Like they're so invested because they've put so much time and effort and struggle into getting things... How do you balance (or not getting things after running...) [quote]Is this another Gjallarhorn question?[/quote] (Polygon Interviewer) No. How do you balance the work and time that people put into it and not wanting to disappoint those people and not wanting to make them feel like all of that was meaningless? How do you balance that fear of disappointing them with wanting to make like substantial changes to the game? [quote]Yeah well sure it's certainly a conversation. We have player data that informs us as to how people play the game. So if somebody comes to our forum and they say that everyone agrees that there's way too much focus on PvP content, we can take a look at all the really even distribution across all the different activities among the player base. Arriving at a consensus is actually very important. So places like bungie.net, places like reddit have that community curates waiting to the way the different topics are sorted. So if a forum post rises to the top and is able to trend, this is obviously something that has traction, assuming the people in the comments of that thread are agreeing with each other. So with Bungie user research, with destiny player support, with the community management team that is me and some other people at the studio like Eric Osborne, we're constantly looking at what the players of this game have to say, and there is truth in every piece of feedback. It might be in all caps, it might be laces with expletives, but it's still somebody with a valid opinion about the game they love to play. They've taken the time to come to our house on the internet and tell us about it and that's always something that's worth listening to. My hope personally is that people look at the 30 updates we've made to the game since it's launce not as Band-Aids, not as oopses or do-over’s. These are things were doing to make the experience more interesting to say that we agree with you. we play our game also, we've had the same experiences that you've had and we've read your feedback and we agree and the data supports that the game would be better if we were to make some of these changes… if we were to extract material grind from weapon upgrades, if we were to have the time that you spend on your weapons and gear be more valuable, if we were to take the raids and make them more challenging over time instead of just toppling bosses off the top of a building. You know we have done all of these things to make destiny durable, to make the experience last longer and to make it something that you want to come back to again and again.[/quote] -end- That was quite a wonderful interview and I wish I could believe it. Unfortunately, I've witnessed post after post (supported and championed by this community) removed from Trending and Highest Rated. You tell us it’s "algorithms". It's funny how these algorithms manage to pull every single matchmaking post, every TTK pricing post, every Thorn post... I want to believe you DeeJ. I want to think you're that community champion I thought you were 6 months ago. I want to believe our feedback matters… that we players have this symbiotic relationship with Bungie that you speak of. But I can’t. Why can't I? Maybe it's because you dropped your "philosophy" in my post and never once bothered to engage in a conversation as to why that philosophy might be wrong. Maybe it's because I have at least 12 posts of community concerns with over 1300 likes that have been systematically removed from Trending and Highest Rated. Maybe it's because I've seen at least 50 posts by other community members, all be removed as well. [quote]So if a forum post rises to the top and is able to trend, this is obviously something that has traction.[/quote] Do you see the quandary? [b]Topics that trend are influential, but influential topics are not allowed to trend.[/b] My fellow Guardians and I have come to these forums and poured our hopes for this game into so many passionate posts. We have been reasonable, we have been (mostly) congenial, we have questioned and we have offered ideas for change. In return, we’ve been met with silence and relegated to the Latest tab. Yet in testament to this community, our posts still manage to garner hundreds of likes. Let me tell you something from my point of view, DeeJ. I hadn't played a console game with any regularity since Halo 3. I was beyond stoked for the release of Destiny. Is it the game I expected? No, but it is still some of the most fun I've had gaming in years. I want Destiny to still be that game that I dreamed it could be and so I come to the #feedback forum to offer my opinion on what could improve this game. I'm not a developer. I don't claim to know the ins and outs of what you have to do to make things reality, but I know what makes a game fun for me. So when I'm told my opinion matters and I post a thread on something I truly believe can make Destiny a better world for everyone and it gets taken down, it feels like a betrayal. When it happens with every single post I put up, it's impossible to not take it personally... and to hear you say that it's "algorithms"? You all were wrong about the way you handled content lockouts for The Dark Below. [quote]You know we have done all of these things to make destiny durable, to make the experience last longer and to make it something that you want to come back to again and again.[/quote] If you truly believe that statement, how can you justify removing access to any meaningful endgame content a mere 3 months after release? Tell all the Guardians that couldn't even run a meaningful Vanguard Strike (because rewards were moved to the DLC-only RoC) that you did it to make their experience last longer and not to force them to upgrade. Please DeeJ, tell my wife why I had to buy TDB 2 weeks before Christmas even though it was the one thing I told her I was really excited for her to get me for Christmas. You're wrong on matchmaking. You've been replied to a thousand times by Guardians telling you how the lack of in-game matchmaking personally ruins the experience for them. You've had a month to re-join the conversation. You know as well as I do that the overwhelming majority of destiny players are great people with a shared passion for Destiny and yet you refuse to allow us to take the chance to meet in-game. Why? You're wrong about ignoring the calls for more vault space. I understand why you aren't replying. You never intended us to have the number of weapons we do. You intended us to continuously upgrade and replace. Unfortunately, you didn’t anticipate it would take more than 3 months for people to be tired of their favorite weapons. So you made all weapons upgradable. Good for the community, bad for vault space. Now with TTK you're pretty obviously going to do a course correct back to the original ideal and maybe the new weapons will be vastly superior and make us forget our tried and true and maybe vault space will be okay. I just hope you can find the balance of reasonable amounts of time to let us enjoy our gear before it becomes obsolete. You are wrong on TTK pricing. The fix is as simple as including all bonus content in the $40 stand alone expansion. When you ask established players to purchase an $80 expansion that includes all content they already own, you are spitting in the face of every veteran of your game. I hope that you and your colleagues figure out who have gotten you here so far (and maybe one day remember all the Xbox players who made Bungie the company it is today). Last but not least, you are wrong to let "algorithms" take down every single post that goes against Bungie's "philosophies" for the game and you're wrong to treat us as adversaries. We came to these forums as fans wanting to help build something, not to have our opinions of a company we love shattered. This is an olive branch, DeeJ. We're all still at the table.