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Destiny: The Taken King leaves behind players who didn't upgrade (Kotaku)

Kinyou

Member
My nephew plays vanilla Destiny fairly regularly. He was maxed level and working towards some helmet or other. He finally got enough to buy the helmet (after TTK launched) and found that the required level had been changed to 40. He can't afford the extra packs and was fine playing the vanilla stuff.

So now with all the pay walls in place and not even being able to use the equipment he bought he's screwed. Obviously from the number of complaints he's not alone.

Shitty move Bungie.
They raised the level requirement of gear? Wouldn't it make much more sense to keep the old gear the way it is and make completely new one for TTK? I mean that's how other loot games do it, right?
 
They raised the level requirement of gear? Wouldn't it make much more sense to keep the old gear the way it is and make completely new one for TTK? I mean that's how other loot games do it, right?

No not really

Its roughly equivalent.

They changed the light level system and various other system mechanics. Its quite a large overhaul but a very good one overall.

I totally understand the confusion. Its a lot to process but you should be able to find all the info in one place if you search for Destiny 2.0 update
 

Kalentan

Member
They raised the level requirement of gear? Wouldn't it make much more sense to keep the old gear the way it is and make completely new one for TTK? I mean that's how other loot games do it, right?

The gear they changed level is for the exotics. As some exotics have year 2 variants that are level 40. The old exotics are still the same levels.
 

Jezabel

Member
Man bad juju in crucible is sexual.

I think I'm happy with thergendary mark system if you do the daily story and Crucible that's a minimum 30 a day, plus I've noticed the legendaries are starting to come thick and fast
 

ParityBit

Member
Which is strange. Did you expect to play vanilla for the entire series run?!?

This is one aspect of the post-TTK play for vanilla players that surprised me. When TDB and HoW came out, the gear from the tower vendors was updated and everyone, expansion or no, could get access to it. So I was surprised that that option was removed when TTK came out.

They should have updated the system so if you did not have TTK, you still saw the HoW stock and could buy them with legendary marks. Destiny is a loot and gear game, and the vendors are a decent share of where that comes from, especially with the Nightfall removed for vanilla players. I hope this is addressed.

Stuff like this.
 

Tomeru

Member
If a player didnt have TDB expansion, he could still have access to the new gear? I don't remember this, becasue when I tried purchasing TDB on vanilla destiny, I couldn't.

So for me, while I understand it sucks if you don't wanna buy the new content - the situation now is not surprising.
 

Error

Jealous of the Glory that is Johnny Depp
Expansion or DLC exclusive gear is not the problem, it's perfectly ok for them to lock that content. Locking out content you paid for because you didn't upgrade is what's bothering people.
 

Moneal

Member
Expansion or DLC exclusive gear is not the problem, it's perfectly ok for them to lock that content. Locking out content you paid for because you didn't upgrade is what's bothering people.
What content, not end game modifiers, did you pay for that you can no longer access? You can still play all strikes, story missions, raid(s), patrols, and crucible modes you could play prior to the update. The only difference in content is combined crucible modes.
 

YoungHav

Banned
So vanilla players actually gain content then

And basically only lose out on weekly/daily activities (which got overhauled and changed anyways)

This whole topic is a mess

Probably a symptom of games that change during their run as much as Destiny has. Easy to get lost

If anything I would say Vanilla players got a much better game for free
Yes and no. After they released TDB maps for free, they took some original MP maps (which were better) out of rotation for months.
 

YoungHav

Banned
What content, not end game modifiers, did you pay for that you can no longer access? You can still play all strikes, story missions, raid(s), patrols, and crucible modes you could play prior to the update. The only difference in content is combined crucible modes.
They removed Normal and Hard difficulty in Campaign and Co-op for vanilla players. What's the point of being Lvl 34 and doing a Lvl 20 strike? Why can't I play on normal or hard anymore?
 

FyreWulff

Member
They removed Normal and Hard difficulty in Campaign and Co-op for vanilla players. What's the point of being Lvl 34 and doing a Lvl 20 strike? Why can't I play on normal or hard anymore?

The highest level strikes before were 28 with a level cap of 34. Destiny doesn't let you massively overlevel enemies, level 2 patrol enemies can kill you in 2 punches as a 40 because there's a cap on how far you can outlevel anything.

There's also currently no benefit (mission rewards) to playing the higher difficulty of story missions. You have to wait for them to come through as a daily, which we don't even know if non-TTK missions are going to be dailies again. They also seem to have removed the bounties from Year 1 that required you to kill __TARGET__ with Heroic active.
 

Nvzman

Member
I agree, if you been playing religiously the last few months, you probably own TTK already or pre ordered it months ago.
That's not true. I purchased Destiny a while ago because I had a lot of friends who played it. I wanted to buy MGSV and pre-order BO3 instead of getting TTK because I assumed at least I could be on level with them without all the expansion stuff which I didn't mind.
Now Bungie goes full-on restrictive and took shit away that I could do previously, meaning now I can't be on level with my friends unless I pay $40 to game I hardly care about.
That shit is inexcusable and does not deserve any sort of defense.
Fuck you Bungie, in a year from now I would need to shell out another $40 just to avoid the same damn issue now.
 

Kalentan

Member
That's not true. I purchased Destiny a while ago because I had a lot of friends who played it. I wanted to buy MGSV and pre-order BO3 instead of getting TTK because I assumed at least I could be on level with them without all the expansion stuff which I didn't mind.
Now Bungie goes full-on restrictive and took shit away that I could do previously, meaning now I can't be on level with my friends unless I pay $40 to game I hardly care about.
That shit is inexcusable and does not deserve any sort of defense.
Fuck you Bungie, in a year from now I would need to shell out another $40 just to avoid the same damn issue now.

It's inexcusable that you don't get the new levels and gear..? Are you kidding me? So you should get it for free? Tell that to MMO developers who need you to buy their expansions to get new levels and gear.

Also if you hardly care about the game... Why do you give a shit..?
 

spannicus

Member
My son used to play on ps3. Came home from work to him complaining that he couldnt do shit anymore without the taken king. I ordered ttk on my xbox one. Gave him my spark and let him make a new charachter on xbox. Shit was messed up how they did it. Anyone who says othwrwise is blind.
Oh yeah screw activision as well. Bastards still asking for 50 dollars on psn for that lame ass vita cod.
 
My son used to play on ps3. Came home from work to him complaining that he couldnt do shit anymore without the taken king. I ordered ttk on my xbox one. Gave him my spark and let him make a new charachter on xbox. Shit was messed up how they did it. Anyone who says othwrwise is blind.
Oh yeah screw activision as well. Bastards still asking for 50 dollars on psn for that lame ass vita cod.

What couldnt he do? The restricting thing seems to have been going on each expansion:
TDB cut off certain PvP content, sometimes Heroic and Nightfall weeklies and dailies, highest tier strike playlist which had the engram rewards moved up to the TDB strike
HoW pretty much did the same thing but was nicer on the rotational stuff so you didnt have weeks where vanilla owners couldnt play both the heroic and the nightfall

I mean nothing seems to have changed from Destiny to TDB to HoW to TTK which how things started moving up and requiring the latest content to play. Two expansions worth of precedent there. My guess is your son had the expansion pass and never noticed until TTK came out, yet that was a complaint at each expansion launch for those that didnt have said expansion.

Bungie definitely does not a better approach here. You look at any MMO and its really just the new stuff that requires the newest expansion, you can still play the old content with nothing changed.
 

Mindwipe

Member
Your character is Level 34......you are having trouble doing a Level 26 raid? Even with all the armor and gear you can net from the Prison of Elders?

A Level 34 character is no better off than a Level 28 character. But now with poor equipment.

How would a player who has not bought the DLC supposedly access the Prison of Elders?
 

spannicus

Member
The game is a blast. The most fun i had in a long time with random people though. Just should have figured out,a,better way to allow those with vanilla a way to have the same freedoms they used to have. Why couldnt they allow players to do everything else minus the ttk content?
 

IISANDERII

Member
The game is a blast. The most fun i had in a long time with random people though. Just should have figured out,a,better way to allow those with vanilla a way to have the same freedoms they used to have. Why couldnt they allow players to do everything else minus the ttk content?
Bungie is hungry for whales.
 

border

Member
A Level 34 character is no better off than a Level 28 character. But now with poor equipment.

How would a player who has not bought the DLC supposedly access the Prison of Elders?

As others have pointed out, the game still drops loot/engrams appropriate for your progression level whether you run a Level 28+ strike or not. I got a 195 Light Weapon out of a Level 7 Devil's Lair yesterday. You only need 140-160 Light gear to do Vault of Glass.

If you haven't bought TTK but bought you HoW you can run Prison of Elders for 170-light loot. If you are running only the base game, you have to grind it out of strikes.

Though at this point I have a hard time imagining you'd need to be anything other than level 26 for VoG. Even if you insist on buying no expansions or DLC, every other player in your fireteam is going to be so massively overgeared then your setup won't have much affect on things at all.
 
That's not true. I purchased Destiny a while ago because I had a lot of friends who played it. I wanted to buy MGSV and pre-order BO3 instead of getting TTK because I assumed at least I could be on level with them without all the expansion stuff which I didn't mind.
Now Bungie goes full-on restrictive and took shit away that I could do previously, meaning now I can't be on level with my friends unless I pay $40 to game I hardly care about.
That shit is inexcusable and does not deserve any sort of defense.
Fuck you Bungie, in a year from now I would need to shell out another $40 just to avoid the same damn issue now.

You sound like the type of person who buys COD: Black Ops 1 in 2015 and complains they can't play with all their friends playing COD: Black Ops 3.
 

cakely

Member
That's not true. I purchased Destiny a while ago because I had a lot of friends who played it. I wanted to buy MGSV and pre-order BO3 instead of getting TTK because I assumed at least I could be on level with them without all the expansion stuff which I didn't mind.
Now Bungie goes full-on restrictive and took shit away that I could do previously, meaning now I can't be on level with my friends unless I pay $40 to game I hardly care about.
That shit is inexcusable and does not deserve any sort of defense.
Fuck you Bungie, in a year from now I would need to shell out another $40 just to avoid the same damn issue now.

You're really upset now. I'd hate to see what happens if you felt slighted by a game that you actually care about.
 

Kyne

Member
expansion is a blast. As someone who had a lot of issues with the Year 1 Destiny this DLC is worth every penny.

$40 for what I can already see is 100+ hours worth of genuine fun? Sign me up, yearly.
 

RichGS

Member
Kinda off-topic, but this seemed like the most relevant place to raise this issue as i'm not able to create new threads yet.

The problem is, the codes contained in at least the European version of the Destiny Limited Edition set are no longer valid, as they expired on the 9th September. As someone that played the game heavily at launch but never found time to redeem the DLC and jump back into it when the expansions launched, I was pretty pissed off to find that they wouldn’t work when I tried them the other day.

Seen as the Limited Edition is still available to buy in the shops AND the DLC is still available to buy on the PSN store, this is a pretty shitty move by Bungie and/or Activision to have the codes expire so quickly.

I know people will say “The Taken King includes the content anyway” but that’s not really a solution. 1. I wanted to try the other expansions before committing to but The Taken King and 2. Owning both of the prior DLC’s enables you to just buy The Taken King cheaper than buying a new physical copy.

After this, may just not bother with Destiny at all now. It’s got to be one of the most anti-consumer releases of recent times, right?

Posted about this on my website yesterday, but given that i don't want further people possibly wasting their money I thought I’d highlight the issue here to raise awareness.
 
If you haven't upgraded to Taken King yet, you should. It's awesome. Also, I don't think the excuse that someone "can't afford" Taken King holds water. They could afford $60 Destiny, a year subscription to PS Plus or XBL, and a new console...
 
Kinda off-topic, but this seemed like the most relevant place to raise this issue as i'm not able to create new threads yet.

The problem is, the codes contained in at least the European version of the Destiny Limited Edition set are no longer valid, as they expired on the 9th September. As someone that played the game heavily at launch but never found time to redeem the DLC and jump back into it when the expansions launched, I was pretty pissed off to find that they wouldn’t work when I tried them the other day.

Seen as the Limited Edition is still available to buy in the shops AND the DLC is still available to buy on the PSN store, this is a pretty shitty move by Bungie and/or Activision to have the codes expire so quickly.

I know people will say “The Taken King includes the content anyway” but that’s not really a solution. 1. I wanted to try the other expansions before committing to but The Taken King and 2. Owning both of the prior DLC’s enables you to just buy The Taken King cheaper than buying a new physical copy.

After this, may just not bother with Destiny at all now. It’s got to be one of the most anti-consumer releases of recent times, right?

Posted about this on my website yesterday, but given that i don't want further people possibly wasting their money I thought I’d highlight the issue here to raise awareness.
I may be wrong here so tell me if I am. But are you saying it's Bungies fault that you couldn't be bothered to en'ter a code on your PS4/Xbone?
 
Kinda off-topic, but this seemed like the most relevant place to raise this issue as i'm not able to create new threads yet.

The problem is, the codes contained in at least the European version of the Destiny Limited Edition set are no longer valid, as they expired on the 9th September. As someone that played the game heavily at launch but never found time to redeem the DLC and jump back into it when the expansions launched, I was pretty pissed off to find that they wouldn’t work when I tried them the other day.

Seen as the Limited Edition is still available to buy in the shops AND the DLC is still available to buy on the PSN store, this is a pretty shitty move by Bungie and/or Activision to have the codes expire so quickly.

I know people will say “The Taken King includes the content anyway” but that’s not really a solution. 1. I wanted to try the other expansions before committing to but The Taken King and 2. Owning both of the prior DLC’s enables you to just buy The Taken King cheaper than buying a new physical copy.

After this, may just not bother with Destiny at all now. It’s got to be one of the most anti-consumer releases of recent times, right?

Posted about this on my website yesterday, but given that i don't want further people possibly wasting their money I thought I’d highlight the issue here to raise awareness.

You had a full year...takes 10 seconds to redeem a code and you can redeem it from the PS Store anywhere (PS4, PC, Phone). Trying to hold on to the code was your fault.
You say that you played it heavily at launch and never redeem the code? Come on...
 

pantsmith

Member
Bungie is hungry for whales.

Thats not how "whales" work. Even if you were obsessed with Destiny and bought everything you could as it came out, there are a grand total of four one time purchases you could have made, all of which is game content whole teams of people worked on, plus two very optional "collectors edition" upgrades where you can pay more for the cosmetics from the physical limited editions.

The business of "whales" is putting in optional micro transactions meant to get someone truly addicted to break down and bring in large chunks of cash for the company. That has yet to happen, and at any point they really could have let people pay for engrams (loot rolls) and planned to make serious bank.

I dont know if you were being sarcastic, but as steep as $20/$40 DLC is you can at least break down what youre buying and decide of its worth it to you. That is absolutely nothing like tossing the word "whale" around.
 

RichGS

Member
So you're telling me its acceptable that a Limited Edition that you can still buy in the shops, with DLC that is still available on digital stores, contains codes that are no longer redeemable? Are you serious?

So what if ive had a year to redeem them? I could have bought it last week, that's not the point.

I actually play more games than just Destiny, because you know what? I like to play a variety of games. With The Taken King just released I thought I'd get back into it

The fact is providing codes with such a short expiry date is a joke and quite simply a money grab. If you're disputing that, you're a bit of a goon.
 
So you're telling me its acceptable that a Limited Edition that you can still buy in the shops, with DLC that is still available on digital stores, contains codes that are no longer redeemable? Are you serious?

So what if ive had a year to redeem them? I could have bought it last week, that's not the point.

I actually play more games than just Destiny, because you know what? I like to play a variety of games. With The Taken King just released I thought I'd get back into it

The fact is providing codes with such a short expiry date is a joke and quite simply a money grab. If you're disputing that, you're a bit of a goon.

A short expiry date? It was a year, this is all on you. In what universe is Bungie/Activision sitting in their ivory tower hoping that consumers don't redeem their codes? I'm pretty sure almost all codes have an expiry of 1-2 years, not just Destiny DLC. You had a WHOLE YEAR to redeem it, I buy a lot of a games and I have never taken longer than a week to redeem a code. Especially a code that has a monetary value of around $30-$40 essentially. This is ALL on you.
 

RichGS

Member
A short expiry date? It was a year, this is all on you. In what universe is Bungie/Activision sitting in their ivory tower hoping that consumers don't redeem their codes? I'm pretty sure almost all codes have an expiry of 1-2 years, not just Destiny DLC. You had a WHOLE YEAR to redeem it, I buy a lot of a games and I have never taken longer than a week to redeem a code. Especially a code that has a monetary value of around $30-$40 essentially. This is ALL on you.

I think you'll find that most games have codes that last for at least 3 years, and many don't even expire after that date anyway.

Regardless, it doesn't matter to me now. Amazon are taking it back for a refund and have stopped selling it after I alerted them to the issue.

Have fun playing Destiny! The game that launched with hardly any content and requires further payment of nearly £60 just to make it what it should have been. I know i wont be buying it again.
 
I think you'll find that most games have codes that last for at least 3 years, and many don't even expire after that date anyway.

Regardless, it doesn't matter to me now. Amazon are taking it back for a refund and have stopped selling it after I alerted them to the issue.

Have fun playing Destiny! The game that launched with hardly any content and requires further payment of nearly £60 just to make it what it should have been. I know i wont be buying it again.

But you can get the Legendary edition for £42 to make it what it should have been. You seem really bitter about this videogame. I've been enjoying TTK so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

IISANDERII

Member
Thats not how "whales" work. Even if you were obsessed with Destiny and bought everything you could as it came out, there are a grand total of four one time purchases you could have made, all of which is game content whole teams of people worked on, plus two very optional "collectors edition" upgrades where you can pay more for the cosmetics from the physical limited editions.

The business of "whales" is putting in optional micro transactions meant to get someone truly addicted to break down and bring in large chunks of cash for the company. That has yet to happen, and at any point they really could have let people pay for engrams (loot rolls) and planned to make serious bank.

I dont know if you were being sarcastic, but as steep as $20/$40 DLC is you can at least break down what youre buying and decide of its worth it to you. That is absolutely nothing like tossing the word "whale" around.
I said they were hungry for whales, not that this is what they're hunting for. I think theyre actually going for porpoises. Porpoises are smaller but there are more of them.
 

FyreWulff

Member
PSN codes specify an expiration date, and if you had bothered to contact Sony or Activision, there's a 95% chance they would have been able to help you out.

Instead, you got a full refund from Amazon, who sent you codes that actually worked, and you couldn't be assed to redeem them for the entire year you had them, after playing the game thoroughly for a year.
 
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