With the internet rife with severe discontent over how the Open Beta played out, what would Bungie do if all those reports of "not buying D2 after the Beta" and "played the Beta, promptly cancelled my pre-order" end up being a stark reality?
If true, what I'll be very interested to watch is: how does Bungie handle their first real failure?
Think about it.
With the entire Halo saga, most every title sold and performed better than the title before it. Even if you're one of the players who despised Reach, there's no argument that it was a smashing success. Every Halo title sold and performed in ways that made other development teams jealous.
With Destiny, Bungie was able to ride the coattails of that Halo success; and even if you despise the decisions Bungie made over Destiny's 3-year lifespan, there's no doubt that it was a success sales-wise if not by continued player population count.
But many, many people were very alarmed by the path that Destiny took after Y1. Their reputation began taking regular and severe hits, to the point that much of the Gaming world is now throwing around words like "incompetent", "blatant liars to their players", and "inept".
The vitriol was, and continues to be, very real.
But many players were looking to the Destiny 2 Beta to see how the game would play. They were going into that Beta to use it as a litmus test to see how the game feels, even if the characters were set at predisposed levels and power.
What we got, was a steaming pile of shit, that makes players feel so weak, slow, and ineffectual, that it makes the [b][i]worst[/i][/b] days of Destiny seem like a dream vacation.
The internet is rife with discontent. These Forums, Streamers' broadcasts, even the vaunted Reddit sub-threads that Bungie places so much trust in; even all of those places as well as their Facebook and Twitter accounts are rife with stories of Player's discontent with what they played. The reports from people over and over who've cancelled their pre-orders are legion.
There are just as many tales of people who said that they were waiting to pre-order D2 until they got a taste of it in the Open Beta, and then after playing it are reporting that they are definitely NOT buying D2 as a direct result of what they played.
So; Bungie is poised on the precipice of suffering their first real "loss" since they first started as a development company.
So, what do we think Bungie will do when the reality of all of their malicious subterfuge hits them where it hurts the most?
Do they finally admit that they were indeed not listening to their Players? Or in some cases, that they did the exact opposite of what people wanted due to arrogance and pure stubbornness and consternation?
Or do they do exactly as they did during Destiny? Power on as if nothing were wrong, claiming that D2 is a huge success even as sales plummet well below Destiny and player populations drop off a cliff?
What does Bungie do when faced with their first real failure?
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I think D3 will be put on a faster track than D2 was. Bungie is big enough to survive a bad game and I seriously doubt they will not make money on D2. I don't like D2 at all but the game will sell. I just don't think the longevity with D1 is sustainable with the design of D2. I fully expect D3 to go back to what made the game fun with some tweaks.