You can listen to the podcast here.. its an hour long. Jason interviews Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy from Bungie:
Credit for a transcript summary: https://old.reddit.com/r/DestinyThe...reier_interviews_luke_smith_and_mark/eqzvzr9/
- Destiny is now officially being called an action MMO. It doesn't mean they want 40 players doing a public event because of technical limitations but they want to replicate this feeling on a smaller scale. Playing an activity and running into a group of other players and teaming up is something Bungie wants to see happen more often.
- Started re-enhancing RPG part with Forsaken and will take a step further in the fall.
- They want the social game in a better place than it is today
- They want you to be able to customize your character/allow tinkering and make choices that matter thus deepening the RPG elements
- Luke - "In the future game, you're going to collect the modifications independently of the armour. So you'll have armour as the base thing with some stats on it, like The Taken King's Tier12 but with bigger stat ranges, and then you'll be looking for mods. Finding a mod is like adding it to your collections. "I found this new set of armour, I got the enhanced Fusion Rifle loader perk, now I'm going to get the energy up on my gloves and slot that in." That's motivating in different ways, so it's not just the power game overriding everything. The power game is still going to be important going forward, but that's an opportunity to keep on refining it. "
- Artifact slots are completely new (Might not be the final name come launch). There are about 25 different new mods each season with the artifact slot. Some range from Vex can drop tons of glimmer (Which bungie wants something to be of use instead of always holding 100k) to throwing a void grenade that creates a melting point effect on enemies.
- Luke Smith - "We haven't talked a lot about things like difficulty, but difficulty in general is the razor that drives creativity. Historically in Destiny, we have not provided difficulty options that would incentivise creativity and, as a part of build crafting, that's something we have to do with Destiny. "
- Luke got a 3D-printed Thorn from Jason Jones after TTK with a hand-written note essentially saying 'you took a game that was in trial and tribulation and helped boost it back to where it needed to be'.
- Their work with Destiny 2 is not done. They are looking into ways to make the game's file size smaller and dont think they can grow the size indefinitely.
[Mark] A part of us doubling down and saying we're an MMO means we're going to lean deeper into RPG and Social, but it's not so much a dramatic game design change for us. It's about us defining our space and our corner, and being upfront about what the game is. Destiny has had an identity crisis - we've seen it and thought it internally. Is it a Halo game with a campaign and some diet endgame, is it WoW with guns, or is it something else in it's own space? We weren't making a decision, we were trying to be a bit of everything to everyone, but now that we're in control of our own Destiny we're saying 'no, this is what we are'. In the past there was, how is a "normal" person going to walk into the store and buy it off the shelf, sit down and have a great story campaign for $60? That's not compatible with that. What we're saying now is, that person doesn't want Destiny, and Destiny isn't for that person.
- Mark - "The person who is going to play Destiny is someone who's going to choose to make it one of their preferred hobbies, join the incredible community and play it as little or as much as they want. That is not Jonny two-sticks from Wal-mart who buys two games a year, who gets Madden and GTA and maybe picks up Destiny. That person is not buying Destiny and we're totally complete with that. There are millions of people who love this game, we love this game, and we're going to make the game for those people. We'll trust that when some of them stop playing that they'll come back in the future for a new season/expansion etc."
- Luke - "Without thinking too much about the profit margins and making the numbers work, it's certainly easier to make work when you're self publishing. That aligns really well with 'hey, let's focus on the people who really love this game'. 'Let's build something for our core players that we're all going to love, and then make it easier for them to recommend to their friends.' "
- Luke - "A bunch of what we end up doing with Destiny comes from the inspiration the team creates. So, last fall, a couple of our lighting artists had some slack-time and took a interior D1 space on the Moon and re-lit it. They sent it over and it looked awesome. I had little nerd-chills, and thought about how I hadn't been there in a long time. Destiny taking place in our solar system means it inspires that curiosity, reason to go back and makes you wonder what's happened over the past 5 years. That re-lit image made it feel like an opportunity. "
- Mark - "We've made significant technology improvements to Destiny. The priority of a bunch of these initiatives was about collaboration and content creation. We got those things up into flight back in 2016, and now we're getting to a place where those long-term initiatives are coming into land and we're excited to keep making this thing. "
[Jason] So do you guys have that grand Marvel Cinematic Universe plan?
[Luke] The MCU is a high bar and very unique in media; I'm not going to say we have a 5-year plan. What we do have is a couple of images that the team has built over the years -striking emotional images(Concept Art)- that point to where we have to get to.
- Cross-play is definitely a part of their vision and they are taking the necessary steps to achieve it. They don't know when it will land though.
- Sony visited in January as soon as they were in control of their future and Bungie told them their vision of the future. They were super supportive and thought it sounded awesome. Jason pushed them about it happening at the last minute as seen on the ViDOC and Stadia images and Mark responded "It just took everyone some time to get on board but Sony was very supportive since their visit in January"
- They've talked about dropping the 2 from Destiny 2 but they think its a good reminder of where they started and how far they need to go with the game. Destiny 2 is here to stay as business is unfinished. They are very excited about the future.
- Destiny 1 is being supported by Bungie's own money right now. It is not a big community anymore and is pretty small. If at some point, numbers don't add up and doesn't make sense to keep d1 running, they may pull the plug. As of right now though, they have no plan to do that.
- Titan and the Archeology was the last place they built for D2. The amazing futuristic space is another big place of opportunity.
- The new pursuits tab recently added received bad feedback. There is already a bunch of stuff completed to fix it such as a keybind on PC for easy use.
-Work-life balance is very important at Bungie, and different strategies are being used to make there be not as much pressure on developers 100% of the time. For example, there were two teams for this year's Annual Pass, where team A did Season of the Forge, while team B worked on Season of the Drifter. Then team A worked on Season of Opulence, basically playing leap frog to have a better work-flow.
[Jason -] When are you bringing Vex Mythoclast back?
[Luke] The closest thing we've talked about to Vault of Glass was in an update I wrote when we seized control of our own Destiny. It's really poignant about how we're building this action MMO and a single evolving world that you can play anytime anywhere, and that not everything is lost in the dark corners of time.
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