Destiny 2 - Clan Link 1st Post

Everyone has bitched ad nauseum about how D2 should be like WoW or other online games where if you have most recent expansion you have everything prior. The fact that Bungie hasn't done it probably doesn't have anything to do with competence, they probably crunched the numbers and figured it was worth leaving it confusing to make more money in the long term.

On the other topic at hand -- all those fired could be worthless diversity hires but we'll likely never know. The only big name let go looks to be a forced early retirement for Michael Salvatori.

Pretty sure Salvatori will have NO problems finding good work.

Qhue said:

I still go back to that original reveal trailer for Destiny and imagine what could have been had the first game not been fucked with

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I could never fully get onboard with D2 because I remember how much I enjoyed Destiny and they just let it drop. Despite playing the shit out of D2 up to BL part of me was guarded about enjoying it over much because I expected them to pull a similar stunt.

Grizzlebeard said:

I could never fully get onboard with D2 because I remember how much I enjoyed Destiny and they just let it drop. Despite playing the shit out of D2 up to BL part of me was guarded about enjoying it over much because I expected them to pull a similar stunt.

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At this point I almost wish they would. Reset it all again and move on to a better engine, game is optimized like shit and has memory leaks all over the place.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our studio’s history, as we’ve parted ways with people we respect and admire. We’ve spent this week supporting one another, including those who are at the studio, as well as friends and colleagues who no longer are.


We want to acknowledge the feedback and concerns you have about Lightfall and recent Seasons, as well as your responses to the reveal of The Final Shape. We know we have lost a lot of your trust. Destiny needs to surprise and delight. We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change.


To us the path forward is clear: We need to make The Final Shape an unforgettable Destiny experience. We want to build something that will be regarded alongside the best games we’ve ever made – a fitting culmination that honors the journey we’ve been on together for the past ten years. Forsaken, The Witch Queen, and The Taken King – these are the standard bearers we aim to live up to.

We are intensely focused on exceeding your expectations for The Final Shape. Destiny 2 has more than 650 dedicated teammates pouring all their energy and expertise into delivering this epic moment and its subsequent Episodes.

In the weeks ahead, you’ll be hearing more from us about what’s next on the short-term horizon, beginning with our next Season in late November. Afterwards, we’ll begin to unpack our team’s bigger, bolder, and brighter vision for The Final Shape, as well as the bridge we plan to build to take us all out of this Darkness and into the Light.

See you starside,

The Destiny 2 Dev Team”

Reading between the lines sounds like they know TFS in its current state is a crappy ending to the series and they plan to make it one of their best games by delaying it to June and putting a bunch of people on it to fix it. My confidence in them doing that successfully is low.

Yeah it’s not looking good at all. Another top tier developer of old speed running their decline, choo chooo!

Internal reports on TFS are that it's "good, not great." Not sure what they could do with an extra 3 months and a smaller workforce that would actually move the needle. I just want a satisfying narrative conclusion. I go back and forth on whether I think Forsaken or Witch Queen was a better DLC but I had faith up until the LF finale.

It's unnerving that they haven't even officially acknowledged the delay yet. It might be even longer than originally reported. We might be waiting until November.

Lenas said:

Internal reports on TFS are that it's "good, not great." Not sure what they could do with an extra 3 months and a smaller workforce that would actually move the needle. I just want a satisfying narrative conclusion. I go back and forth on whether I think Forsaken or Witch Queen was a better DLC but I had faith up until the LF finale.

It's unnerving that they haven't even officially acknowledged the delay yet. It might be even longer than originally reported. We might be waiting until November.

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That’s my guess as well, nothing official until they can actually get 2+2 to equal 4 and have a real idea of how long and how to unfuck themselves.

mkopec said:

Smaller work force but most of us work in offices and see wtf is going on, every place I worked is pretty much 80% of the work being done by 20% of the people. And the bigger the office is the more apparent this is, more places for the weak to hide. You would not believe what I have witnessed in my time in product engineering, and im sure its the same in game dev. 100 people being cut out of 1200 is not like they are decimating their work force. Its not like all 1200 of those workers were top tier cream f the crop, thats just impossible. Im sure they just culled the weak in the important dev and engineering departments. They are not going to get rid of their bread and butter work producers.

As to the music dude? Yeah it sucks because Destiny music was good, and the dude got the raw shaft and should have gotten the opportunity to retire from bungie on his own. But you have to think just how much a dude like that was getting paid as well. He alone prob saved 2-3 other people from getting fired. Also they now prob have 100s and 100s of hours of music recorded going back to D1 and im sure the next expansion was prob almost complete. And music can always be outsourced in the future. There is some mad talented musicians out there making game music at a fraction of the cost they were dishing out before.

All in all im sure this was a big fucking wakeup call for Bungie that they cannot just skate on mediocre anymore. And im sure Sony is keeping a close eye on the shit and in the future when shit goes south again like it has, I have a feeling that some of the management will be getting the boots to the ass, rather than the workforce.

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There are 2 people that immediately come to mind if they were fired, it’d increase my productivity just because I wouldn’t have to hand hold their dumb ass through absolutely everything anymore. I’ve literally had to rewrite documentation with the explicit instructions to make it in such a way that these 2 could follow it, I’m talking full color pictographs with crayons and a coloring book bullshit for people that never should have been hired into a professional IT Department.

I hope the changes were for the best, but I’m not gonna hold my breath. Even if Final Shape is the second coming, barring some absolutely mind blowing changes going forward, I think I’m done with Destiny until they release 3 and even then only if it is actually good.

Edit to clarify I plan to play Final Shape and then be done, but not getting anything this time accept the expansion, no preorder no season pass. I’ll keep tabs on the story via YouTube/Twitch and spend my limited game time elsewhere.

I'd be interested in Marathon to a degree if they hadn't gutted and prostituted Destiny to make it. Spite alone will likely prevent me from ever playing it at this point. I sincerely hope it's amazing and I have to eat those words, I'm not much for extraction shooters on the whole, so we'll see.

Give it a month. Nobody will be talking about this shit when the next season drops. The D2 community is so absurd man. Just look at comments or watch Twitch chat on any streamer. Many of them are saying this is "the last straw", and cancelling their pre-order. People are fired just like this all the time. Every week big tech is cutting heads. You really gonna boycott D2 when Google & Amazon fired 10k+ each this time last year? Bet these same virtue signalers are still searching google, and still looking for that 1 day delivery radial when ordering batteries or some dumb shit from Amazon. Those same people will be buying TFS in 6-8 months when their emotions wear off.

But really though, I haven't seen any skillset mentioned besides the music fellas that I can't help but roll my eyes at. Customer support, QA, HR, some marketing. Any true engineers or devs that were culled? Possible I just didn't see it, but as mkopec stated, I'm sure it's juniors or those hiding in the basement doing fuckall. The community at large is saying it's random. It definitely wasn't haha. People on the chopping block were on a curated list for a reason. Personally I've only been part of two companies that did layoffs, so I cannot say that I've been through it much, but not one person let go was a surprise in either case. Maybe they're finally realizing diversity hires are dumb. I'm not dismissing the shit those that were fired are going through but find a skillset or become irreplaceable. Hopefully they use this as a lesson to improve. Get revenge by getting better.

Further reported bullet points from Paul Tassi:

• CEO Pete Parsons and some other executives previously forfeited annual bonuses before the layoffs. But staff was not informed this happened until yesterday.
• Some employees were told that if the Sony buyout did not happen, that with current Destiny 2 performance the studio itself would have been in jeopardy if they were still independent.
• Employees are extremely angry with leadership now... Bets were made that did not pay off, but those who made them remain in the company, a fact lost on no one.
• There will be something in the season 23 gap, though no specifics.
• The Final Shape campaign and features are reportedly quite solid even in its current state, ahead of planned future work. But they want it to be better than Forsaken/TTK which is where the "good, not great" feedback came from.
• In-game LFG has been tremendously difficult from a tech perspective and reportedly was announced to the community before the devs themselves. It is far more complicated than players will understand even if it seems like it’s an obvious thing the game should have. It’ll launch, but it’s been a tough road.

That just boggles my mind that they’d announce a feature as complex as in game LFG before even running the idea by the devs. Like how do they lack such basic common sense

Fadaar said:

Everyone has bitched ad nauseum about how D2 should be like WoW or other online games where if you have most recent expansion you have everything prior. The fact that Bungie hasn't done it probably doesn't have anything to do with competence, they probably crunched the numbers and figured it was worth leaving it confusing to make more money in the long term.

On the other topic at hand -- all those fired could be worthless diversity hires but we'll likely never know. The only big name let go looks to be a forced early retirement for Michael Salvatori.

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and like most diverse hires they play the biggest victim with no common sense. This thing was working on marathon not even the improvement part of marathon