Since September 2014, i have been playing Destiny on a regular basis. Destiny is an online shooter on PS4 and Xbox one that was sold as an MMO shooter. As you guys know, an MMO is considered a social network as well. But how social is Destiny?.
MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer online game, which means that multiple players can play in the same virtual world at the same time (Wikipedia, 2015). Most people are familiar with the game World of Warcraft which is an good example of an MMO. Bungie however, was the first one to make an MMO which was also a shooter. I was very excited when bungie announced destiny and bought it at day one. Unfortunately, i was kind of disappointed in the promises bungie made.
A MMO isn’t just a virtual world where people can play together. It’s also a platform that connects people. For instance, if you want to play a certain part of a game that requires three people, the game would make sure that there is matchmaking, which connects you to two other random people. This is what’s makes a MMO fun and Destiny lacked it.
The biggest part of Destiny, and the part that made people come back to the destiny universe, was the raid. A raid is a type of mission in which a number of people attempt to defeat one or more bosses. In Destiny, this raid was meant for 6 people and believe me, you could not do it with any less. Bungie decided to not implement matchmaking in the game which led to a lot of criticism and a lot of people quitting the game. I was lucky enough to have 5 other friends playing the game but without them, I would have stopped for sure.
How is it possible that you sell something as a social network, but you don’t give people the possibility to connect with each other. That’s like making a Facebook profile but not being able to share something with other profiles.
Bungie’s argument for not implementing matchmaking is that the raid would be too hard to complete with just random people and that communicating is the most important thing. That’s why they believe you should just do it with friends.
Nowadays there is a website called Destinylfg.net which proves Bungie wrong. LFG stands for Looking For Group. This really is a social network because it connects people who are in the same part of the game and who don’t want to do it by themselves. I’ve used this website multiple times now and within minutes i was connected to other people. Off course, sometimes it’s harder to communicate because some people lack English. Sometimes I even quit because the people are just not good enough and wasting my time. But in the end it’s your own choice if you want to play with them or not and bungie should have given the opportunity to do so.
I know it’s hard for you guys to give your opinion about this matter, because you never played it. But what do you guys think Bungie should do. Some people where even saying that they want their money back, because Bungie sold them something that wasn’t as promised.
In my opinion Bungie is losing a lot of players with this system. Friends of mine are also playing this MMO shooter game, and I know they are having a hard time to find time in which they all could play the raid. Besides that it’s hard to find time in which all six persons are able to play the game, I think it’s unfair for people who have bought the game and don’t have six friends who also play the game. As I can remember Destiny have published a expansion on the game that was very expansive. Besides that, they also locked out much of the old content, which forces people to buy the expansion. But why should people buy the expansion if they not have six friends to play with? In this way Bungie is also losing a lot of money. In the most ideal situation they integrate an matchmaking function and lower the price of the expansion. However, I have heard that Destiny was very expansive to create so maybe lowering the price of the expansion isn’t an option. But I feel that the least that they could do is integrating an matchmaking function, to encourage all users to buy the expansion. This makes in beneficial for Bungie and players of Destiny.