Hello, I'm writing a forum post in the vain attempt at breaking through to Bungie about how their marketing strategy has done more to harm the game's potential than good. TL;DR (I set out to write a wall of text) I criticize marketing's shortsightedness and use water as an analogy For a few years now I've thought of player retention as a River, and the health of that ecosystem is based on how many dams a developer, and it's marketing team, have put up in the same waterway. We'll start upstream, where new players give the game a try. Here noobies will find themselves in a confusing and short set of introductory missions meant to take the place of a full campaign (Red War), and while it's certainly better now than when it was introduced, it still doesn't convey enough about the world to get players invested in where it's going. Once done, you're faced with a question of what next. Friends can help with that. They'll probably need to buy some expansions and dive into the world to get a handle on how to play, what items are good, what subclass do they like, who are the people talking to me on the radio? The first thing they see is: The Final Shape, The Final Shape + Annual Pass, Lightfall, Lightfall + Annual Pass, A Silver Bundle, A Poorly Named Expansion Bundle, Witch Queen, Beyond Light, Shadowkeep, Emaciated Forsaken, 30th Anniversary Pack, Another Silver Bundle, and an Emote Bundle. Already too much, what needs to change? The previous expansions need to be all-in-one, selling "Ala Carte" really hasn't worked out, it looks terrible to the most important people in Player Flowthrough, how many of these am I supposed to buy? The whole package costs five hundred dollars. Looking at competitors, we'll start with World of Warcraft (yes, destiny is akin to MMORPGs, even if it lacks some features), where Blizzard has stopped selling previousand "outdated" expansions for a while now. They did this presumably because it would be absurd to ask a player to buy every expansion starting from Cataclysm, which will be the example start point, as it's more comparable to the state of Destiny 2 after vaulting. But Bungie is proud of it's past content and wants the money for it, reasonable. Another competitor, Final Fantasy XIV, does sell previous expansions, however they do it in a much more customer friendly manner. They sell you a bundle outright, you don't have the option to buy anything piecemeal, the starter bundle will give you access to everything up to and not including the current expansion. Not to mention their free trial, which includes three of their past expansions and damn near all of the content they offered, but I won't suggest Destiny needs to offer everything for free. This would be perfect for D2, anyone currently playing could point to that end-all-be-all bundle and say "start there, buddy, we'll see you starside." This sums up the first dam that Bungie has erected in the waterway. Joining in on the fun as a new player is stifled by the overwhelming way in which they're asked to pay for an experience that doesn't do enough to get them invested in a game that's been running for 8 years. Now we enter the Lake, the river eventually flows through here, this is where the concurrent playerbase settles in for a while (but note, not forever). Here, players both old and new who make it this far will populate the queues and zones of Destiny 2. A healthy player onboarding makes sure the water level stays high, keeps old players satisfied with how quick and easy it is to matchmake, and assures new players that there's plenty of people to play with as long as they want to keep playing. A dam belongs here, the dam is Gameplay, Friendships, Worthwhile Content. As we can see with the water level at the Hoover Dam, it doesn't matter how big your dam is if the waterflow upstream is dropping. Somewhere along the way to the lake, a player may get tired of the amount of purchases in the way of seeing exciting new content, whether it's expansions or dungeons or a season pass. So the river streams off, to other games (and so much more). Not a problem in itself, a game is never just competing against other games. Whether someone wants to play the new thing, or they want to spend time with their other hobbies instead, players will always bleed off in other directions, and that's healthy. What's important is to have a good offering to come back to, that respects your time and money as something that may be spent on any number of other things. I love Destiny, and I always dip back in to see how it's doing, but having things that I previously paid for removed has certainly made me more reluctant to invest too much time into it. Friends have stopped playing, and my go to buddies for this game helped me want to invest time here, but no more. So the second dam that should keep the lake full is less functional than it ought to be, there's not enough [i]flow[/i] upstream to keep it as full and hopeful. Downriver, veteran players stop playing for any number of reasons. Life, Work, Interest in other Hobbies. This is normal, and necessary. If a game were designed to keep players playing nonstop, they'd get burnt out, and that burn would keep them from wanting to play again. I don't feel Destiny has too much of a problem here, but to go into detail anyway as a warning for the future, many Live Service games walk the path of demanding too much time investment for too little reward, and die for it. Whether or not they come back depends on how well you treat them. Offering an anniversary pack with much less content than an expansion for the price of an expansion [i]burns[/i]. It's important not to let your pride in your work, your legacy, and your need for capital get in the way of treating your players like you actually love them. They're the reason you have the income to build an incredible artistic collaboration like a Video Game. They want to have fun with your hard work, and maybe eventually come back if they've taken a break. This affects your sales. To use an anecdote, I spent a stupid amount of money on Wildstar, not because it demanded it in any way. You could access all of the game's content completely free for a reasonable time investment. I was just happy to give carbine money despite their failings cause I loved the game. That's the kind of relationship you strive for with your players. We could tie this section up as outflow, and the watercycle delivering water back upstream to flow back into this waterway. My issue with Bungie and Destiny at this point is that I don't believe that the "money people" at the company have considered for any meaningful amount of time how their decisions affect the whole flow of players to and from this game. Major changes to how you introduce players, and how you treat them as loyal players, are probably in your best interest. I think Destiny is a wonderful and compelling world that I wanna keep exploring as I grow wrinkly, but that other people may not come to share my opinion if the gateways to my stance on what this game has been and can be if the barrier to entry is too big and too complicated. Anyway, that's the River of Player Flow P.S. you vautled my favorite playgrounds, Titan and Tangled Shore, and if you vault Europa (the planet I first thought of when I understood Destiny was about exploring and defending the Solar System) I will never play this game again.