Destiny 2, Sea of ​​​​Thieves and the problem with seasonal content

Sea of ​​Thieves recently received the long-awaited “Captaincy” update, packed with features that hopeful pirates have been clamoring for since the game’s launch in 2018. You can now name your ship and decorate it with custom trinkets and cosmetics – simple but appreciated things like this.

But the broader update wasn’t appreciated nearly as much. Since the launch of the Captaincy update, the game underreddit and official forums have been flooded With posts Condemning the new “Milestone” system, a layered series of trackers designed to allow you to “look back at all the unique things you’ve done,” as the game’s creative director Mike Chapman put it in the latest formulated by the studio Deep dive video season 7.

The thing is, Sea of ​​Thieves‘ Most committed players have already done ‘unique things’ – and a lot of non-unique things over four years. The game’s menu contains pages and pages of “recommendations” that record everything from the distance you’ve sailed flying certain factions’ flags to the number of skeleton ships you’ve sunk since achieving Pirate Legend status to have. But the new milestones all start from zero progress no matter how many tens, hundreds or thousands of hours a player already has in their log. Experienced players may have already earned tons of gold, completed hundreds of quests, and slain dozens of Megalodons – but if you want any of these new trinkets or rewards, you’ll have to do it all over again.

Putting new and veteran players on an even footing is one thing when it comes to new journeys or quests, but that’s quite another: an indicator that Rare recognizes the massive amount of time its most dedicated players are already putting into this one Game have invested not respected .

Rare has already updated the system to reduce some of the most egregious milestones, like sleeping 100 hours, drinking booze or literally being on fire – things that no player would ever randomly reach in the normal course of the game. Sea of ​​Thieves Lead Designer Shelley Preston participated in the game official blog To clarify the designers’ mindset around the update as a whole: “The intent of this system is to allow you to track your unique playstyle and the things you are most engaged with, and then give you rewards for doing so .”

In other words, these milestones aren’t meant to be a checklist that you work through one at a time, but to reflect your personal playstyle, which no single player is meant to complete in full. But the system is only meant to keep track of what a player accomplishes on a “captain” ship that hasn’t previously existed (although at its core this is a silly justification since I was obviously the captain of my own ship in Sea of ​​Thieves for years).

Preston also explained that many of these trackers were literally not previously coded into the game, making them impossible to award retrospectively. Anyhow, as a longtime gamer it still feels awful to see all those big fat zeros, especially for the trackers who definitely do was in-game in the form of commendations. To the Sea of ​​ThievesFor the most dedicated players, the Captaincy update has left a more sour taste than weeks of grog.

This is hardly a unique problem Sea of ​​Thieves, although. As a game designer, recently Cliff Bleszinski pointed out, more and more games are moving to seasonal models, promising players an endless treadmill of new content and developers new work. A game that, if it had existed a decade ago, might have received an expansion or two, exists today as a “live service game” – one that’s treated as a subscription ra ther than a single-purchase product, usually with a new premium Fight pass every few months.

There’s nothing wrong with the Battle Pass system itself; Whatever the game, it generally gives hardcore gamers new things to earn just by playing how they want, while casual gamers can ignore it entirely.

But the overlapping hamster wheels of the live services model — and the need for developers to constantly add new wheels to keep players engaged — often leave a game’s most ardent fans feeling unrespected.

That’s why I stopped playing destiny 2. In 2020, several months into the pandemic, developer Bungie announced the “Gear Sunsetting” system, which would see weapons and armor earned by players phased out to make room for the new toys coming with be released each season. This system should address several real issues: Destiny players tended to only use best-in-class weapons for each inventory slot, and ignored most of the new weapons released each season (many of which were boring reskins of older weapons, but that’s it besides the fact). That meant less looping through each season’s new content and perhaps more time playing other games. Additionally, Destiny’s vast sandbox of weapons and abilities has historically been unwieldy for Bungie’s designers to balance.

Whatever the intent, in practice the “gunsetting” system was simply the newest way for Bungie to wipe the slate clean. Instead of letting Wardens play how they wanted, the system forced them into funnels by continually rendering new batches of weapons mathematically useless. If I would log in destiny 2 Now, two years later, I’ve found a vault full of weapons and armor, trophies representing great memories from Nightfalls and Raids and Crucible matches that made my friends and I sweat and cry – most of which are practically worthless as of now . Their numbers just don’t go up enough.

destiny 2The developers of have spoken at length about their problems attracting new players. Here’s Assistant Game Director Joe Blackburn talking about it GameSpot

and design director Victoria Dollbaum talk about it PC gamer. It’s a tempting opportunity for developers to make onboarding easier for all players. But ignoring the achievements of players who have spent thousands of hours in their world feels like overcompensation.

In 2021, Bungie abandoned the Gear Sunsetting system. black fire wrote that although the studio “still believes in it [the] Goals” that Sunsetting’s infusion caps were intended to address “is clear [its] The execution was wrong.” However, Bungie continued to add things like objectives and activities to the “Content Vault,” effectively deleting them from the live game to reduce the game’s file size and direct players to newer content. With the announcement of destiny 2‘s next big expansion, incidence of lightthe studio promised to end this practice as well.

But for some players, including myself, the damage was done: Bungie had once again attempted to negate hundreds of hours we chose to spend in its world, and there’s no guarantee they won’t at some point in the will do again in the future.

Image: Bungie over Polygon

By definition, live service games are constantly evolving, and developers are still figuring out how best to attract new players while keeping invested fans happy. It’s a difficult balancing act – but it’s not impossible. Fourteen daysfor example, usually gets it right. Any cosmetics earned or purchased throughout the lifetime of the game remain usable forever, and things that are rare remain rare and continue to reward players’ investment – they were there for that in-game event or season, and they can still show off the loot no matter how much time has passed.

Some MMOs also respect player investments. Take Final Fantasy XIV, which received its version 6.2 patch this week and is adding new content like Island Sanctuaries. FFXIV Players can show off their achievements with earned titles and flashy relic weapons that never go out of style. The “Level Sync” system ensures that high-level players don’t have to plod through old content to earn prestigious items, while the game’s version of a transmog system called Glamours ensures you’ll always be able to level up show trophies.

All this is there to say are Live service games that strike the balance between saturating veteran players and promoting new players. Designing systems that reward both camps is undoubtedly a challenging task. But the alternative – repeatedly burning your game’s most ardent fans – can only have diminishing returns.