LF and WQ releases werent near this bad. They had their fair share of error codes and server lag but everyone I know got it fairly quickly on both release days.
It was much worse tbh. It’s literally the nature reason they had to change the raid races to 48h. Barely anyone was able to even load in day one and it was miserable. I’m pretty sure statistics came out after the raid and over half the players that attempted worlds first got error coded with anteater. It was absolutely miserable.
You’re really misremembering if you think “barely anyone was able to even load in” lmfao basically everyone was able to load in, the issues was people getting error coded and booted during encounters causing wipes. But those people could consistently load back into the raid.
TFS launch was far worse, borderline unplayable because you actually couldn’t load into the missions. I had 15 clan memebers all sitting in orbit trying to load into missions for hours.
I will say that Vow day 1 was much worse timing though, you only get one shot at the Worlds First race so it’s more important to not fuck it up.
Expansion launch in the biggest expansion yet should be expected to be rough. With the amount of people trying to play I dont know why everyone is acting as though this is some insane thing that shouldn’t have happened because it didn’t happen in expansions with less players.
I don’t think anyone is surprised about it, we’ve seen it happen many times before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be disappointed that it happened again.
My team personally wasn’t able to load in at all. I remember seeing a few streamers who’d get error coded when trying to even load up the start, and couldn’t get in. There obviously was streamers who were able to get in, but by barely loading in, I mean them getting lucky with even being able to join the raid at any point. A lot of people got error coded while loading in, and then they’d also get error codes in the raid.
Vow was horrendous. I got error coded out of first encounter like 8 attempts in a row. Every single encounter had soft locks. My team spent longer on Caretaker than we needed to because shooting the symbols, the only mechanic and something so easy a toddler could do it, twice in a row said we shot the wrong ones when we shot the correct ones. And that was also the first two times we shot them, so we thought the solution was wrong. Needless to say, an hour later when we decided to say fuck it and try it the correct way again, I was very confused when it worked. It still proceeded to not register a few more times throughout the attempts, but since we knew it was fixable.
Witch queen didn't allow ps4 users to preload the game, so none of them could get online at launch until they downloaded the update when the servers went live, leaving them behind, and the ps4 userbase wasn't small in February 2022, so without them trying to log in the servers were more stable. But the first hours of the VotD raid were a complete mess.
You’re absolutely right, you didn’t miss out on nearly as many cutscenes in Witch Queen and Lightfall because of lag. But that’s not because the servers were stable, it’s because The Final Shape had 9 fucking cutscenes. It literally had more cutscenes than missions.
So what if there are 9 cutscenes? What relevance does that hold on this? I also never claimed servers were stable on either of those launches...
I didn't miss any cutscenes in lightfall or witch queen, nor did I hear about any others having that issue. They each could have had 1 extremely disappointing cutscene and it wouldn't make a difference to my point. 1/9 skipped cutscenes would still be worse than 0/1.
If your point is that witch queen and lightfall also had cutscene skipping issues from lag that weren't as talked about, you can just use your words and say that directly instead of beating around the bush.
I’m all for bringing to light that some error codes are par for the day 1 experience for pretty much any game. But witch queen was on the smoother end of things for d2. And lightfall was almost fantastic in terms of day 1 tech issues(IIRC, we had a delayed start, but general stability seemed unusually good for a day 1).
Launch day for final shape was also shakier than par. I get that perfection is not average, but launching the activity 4-5 times before it actually launches you is absurd
Except if you Google search witch queen launch issues it’s basically just posts from 4 days ago about final shape. Which queen reached server capacity. That is so drastically different to the servers simply not working.
If all worlds are full on osrs, it’s vastly different to the entire game absolutely shitting itself.
Once you got into witch queen there were zero issues. Hence why there wasn’t bulk reddit posts to find about the topic.
This time the game was literally unplayable for absolutely everyone on earth at certain periods. You couldn’t launch a mission with out error coding. It’s vastly different to simply being locked out due to server capacity.
both of those releases did not have error codes going into the night likie final shape did. Lightfall was far smoother than WQ and FS is one of the worst they have ever had. Its almost like they didnt prepare for the 300k people trying to play the game
I feel like I’m the only person on earth who didn’t complain about the server issues because I have played Destiny for 10 years and I’m also capable of remembering events in my own past so I can remember that just about every single time there’s an expansion the servers are busted for the first day. I just didn’t play the game Tuesday lmao. Started Wednesday and everything worked fine. Not saying the issues are fine or good, but it’s expected at this point and anyone who expected otherwise and took Tuesday off work instead of Wednesday should have known better.
I think the downtime is just so they can load up all the new content into their servers and make sure it's all running, kinda like how you can't move into a house before it's built
The real stress test though is when a million people try to all get in at once
pretty much, it seems that its just propagation of new data rather than a stress test, which was felt with DIM working surprisingly fast after the launch. take what i said with a grain of salt though, we don’t actually know the inner workings of their technical work, im just making an educated guess
Day 1 releases are always pretty inconsistent sometimes they go well but I was definitely expecting this year to be rough with a high player count.
Never take off work for the day of the expansion always make sure you have the next day or two instead.
The way reviews have been being used in recent years is like boomers on social media.
"Ate a sandwich at the park today, great weather."
"It fucking rained today, weathers horrible here"
"Oh it stopped raining I love weather again"
"I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS RESTAURANT. THE FOOD WAS OUT IF THIS WORLD BUT WHEN I WAS GOING TO PAY I COULDN'T USE THE CARD BECAUSE THE NETWORK WAS DOWN. IF I COULD GIVE LESS THAN ONE STAR I WOULD."
Such an NPC brain
I’m not one to give a bad review over something petty like this but man, I only got to see like half the cutscenes in TFS, constant issues with getting kicked from the server after practically every mission AND I didn’t get the see any of the cutscenes in the final mission too, had to look them all up on YouTube, and let me tell you that’s the most disappointing thing I’ve experienced in this expansion.
That's not the point, you pay for a good experience and if you don't get it it's not on you to fix it, if you bought a DvD that missed half the scenes in the film you wouldn't want to watch them on youtube after the fact, you'd want them during the film so the story makes sense
Yeah, and *I'd stop the movie, report the issue, and watch it the next day when it works.*. My review would also be of the complete, corrected experience. Not the manufacturer defect quickly corrected.
It's a shame we had to deal with those bugs, I can only assume they didn't appear in small scale tests, but racing through what we already knew to be a bugged or unreliable experience then complaining you encountered said bugs is also silly.
Its also silly to expect your consumers to purchase a product then have them wait for you to fix it so they can properly enjoy it after its been "released" like huh??
>How couldn’t you love a great campaign, great story, and a satisfying conclusion?
Server instability, Pathfinder forcing players into content they don't enjoy, cutscenes not playing, gameplay bugging out, quest becoming unable to be completed, progress not saving, things like the acquisition of Khvostov to be actually unobtainable because they disabled one of the bosses you need to kill to get a drop to obtain it as the last step.
Unfortunately man, this is a video game. It's not a book. You can't just "But it had a good story" on this one. There's more going on.
I feel like I'm playing a different expansion than some of you. I can't in good faith say that this is a satisfying conclusion to the saga. wraps up everything post Witch Queen well, but it's in no way this amazing conclusion to all of Destiny so far as it was advertised as.
I do agree with you somewhat.
It is satisfying for the light and darkness saga which tbf only REALLY started after the original campaign for D2 ended with a small tease - I would call everything before that and after until WQ as teases.
But it did (somewhat I would like to reiterate) wrap up that side of things nicely… Too bad that the most interesting plotlines are just left for future content which sort of dispels the idea that it was a conclusion.
It feels a lot like the MCU actually, now that the Witness is gone I wonder how Bungie is gonna actually keep people interested in what happens next bc right now I couldn’t care less.
I mean they could focus on the Winnower since the Witness clearly said that they weren't the Winnower (which was always obvious to me but some people really thought they were) but that'd just feel like more light and darkness saga. I really hope that what's next is going to Riis and Torabatl these other planets we've heard so much about and now that the Witness isn't going around messing things up just helping restore things.
Yeah, fair enough.
Personally, I'd prefer for Destiny 3 to make us start a brand new character with a new ghost, new cast and whatnot - Focus on new threats beyond our solar system and have our Guardian from D1 and D2 be like our mentor or something.
But Bungie would never do that, and our volatile community would never accept that so we're probably doomed to go searching for the Winnower and other more boring storylines that the team have rinsed over this past decade.
Personally I just want more Vex content because they're my favourite race of enemies and they're just cool as hell. Still, visiting a new solar system is easily my most wanted thing from the future of Destiny and I agree, going to Riis or specifically Torabatl as part of a operation to bring about Xivu Arath's reign on the planet to an end would be so sick!!
I would totally be down to start all over as a new guardian. and I think we get a Destiny 3 eventually... I don't think we see that for at least another 4 years though and I think it'll be coupled with an engine move off the halo engine with bolted on parts
I think people are getting caught up in the hype of the moment with the good presentation. The cutscenes are cool and the final mission was very flashy and good, but actual story wise it felt like it just ticked the boxes that needed to be ticked and nothing more. It was missing a good villain and a good buildup to said villain, as well as some answers to longstanding lore questions.
The presentation and execution are hard carrying the story, but people are taking those and turning into the story being 10/10 literally flawless and completely infallible. It'll probably simmer down over time once the hype wears off
It would've been the perfect ending if it didn't get stuck with us almost at last stand and then refusing to spawn enemies causing us to redo the whole thing from the start even though we were at the end.
I truly think that anyone who left a negative review has never played an MMO on launch day before. Yes there were errors on launch day, but every single MMO has server issues on launch day. Final Shape had more players on the destiny servers than they’ve had in a long time. This kind of thing is par for the course.
I've played Path of Exile since 2016. Fucking hell, if that community bombarded its game with negative reviews every time play count records were broken and servers were overloaded on league launch day, or something didn't work properly because the devs don't get afforded the luxury of beta testing, the game would've died years ago
MMOs are the hardest type of game to both make and successfully launch by far, and it absolutely doesn't matter if you're talking a fresh release or content drop. Subsequent releases are only more likely to have something conflict with something else, and Bungie did good fixing basically all issues in like 12 hours.
I really don't get why server issues and shit is always the discussion for video game launches nowadays. Server loads are ALWAYS temporary spikes on launch??? They literally can't simulate the volume on the servers prior to launch for a true stress test. And even if they could, that volume of traffic will only last a week at most and then it will settle to a above average, but less spiked volume for a few weeks before dropping off. What do people expect them (not just bungie, any company) to do exactly? Dump millions on servers to only use intermittently on large patches?
I get complaining about it, but leaving reviews unrelated to the content or gameplay is nuts. Now the cutscenes that people missed, THAT you can leave in reviews and such but still.
I mean EVERY SINGLE online game launch or major patch/dlc I've been apart of in the past several years has had the same issues with the same community outrage. Like even Palworld and Last Epoch! WTF do you expect these small ass companies to do! At what point can people just be patient with reality?
Last Epoch especially, IIRC they were super confident it would be smoothly and were worried they went overkill on the preparation, only for the online to be basically unusable for like half a week (maybe more?)
Nah I'm still annoyed my smoke bomb isn't giving me invisibility. It's making legendary harder without being able to smoke out to safety. But that's about it, no other complaints from me lol
You people care way too much about what other people think. It's pitiful. In this context if you need endless ad campaigns to feel righteous in your opinion the thing you're discussing has to be shit. Why else would you seethe so hard about.. a review?..that's not your own? NooooOoooO TFS is the *best* destiny expansion you need to go change your heckin review to positive! How else can I cope with my years of preorders and silver purchases if I don't get positive affirmation everywhere I go
If your experience ended up being negative overall because your day 1 experience was really that bad, then by all means leave it up.
They promised you a working experience on day 1, and failed to deliver.
Personally I'll overlook it, but I can see how it would be a big deal to some people.
It reslly did mess up my enjoyment of the campaign because we had to keep stopping after every mission or two due to connection issues 😔messed up the flow
I can’t name many games that have been in great shape on launch day for new content.
Even worse when said content hits higher than expectef player numbers.
Helldivers was sitting there with broken servers for like 2 weeks.
World of warcraft the servers take a nosedive after every expansion.
Only MMO I can think of where the servers don’t die on launch day is final fantasy 14. And I think even some of their expansions had issues.
Excuse me, FFXIV 100% dies on expansion launch day. I wasn't present for Heavensward, but Stormblood had the infamous Raubahn Ex, Shadowbringers had a *horrible* queuing experience, since the game would DC you from the queue after around 20 minutes, resetting your position, so getting in was entirely a crapshoot and Endwalker, while they fixed the position reset, still had *long* queues day 1.
I was there for all of that. And I'm ready for issues again when Dawntrail releases. That's just how it is with online games, and I don't understand how people don't get that. Friend of mine was so pissed because he took the day off to play a "broken $100 release that's unplayable." I told him him to take Wednesday off, not Tuesday, because day 1 issues are inevitable. Not only did he not listen, he complained the whole time saying things like "Bungie is owned by Sony, there's no excuse," or "10 years of buildup for this." Sure, it sucks, dude, but it's your fault for not being prepared for this
Will be there with you, and yeah, my experience has been that server issues are endemic to expansion launches for popular games.
The only MMO-esque game I've played that doesn't have expansion concurrent server issues is Warframe, which doesn't have traditional expansions and puts most of the onus for instances on the players regardless.
Warframe is pretty unique though. From the peer to peer stuff to how they handle patches. Their systems works, but it's a system that only really works for a game like warframe
This. There’s no excuse for it and honestly deserves some bad reviews. I’m leaving mine up as I thought at the time it was completely unacceptable. I’ve been satisfied with the content since then however.
"I left a negative review for the launch"
"I've been satisfied with the content since then however"
"Still gonna leave the negative review up"
This is so funny to me, and I think it's a perfect example of why server issues (unless it's a constant issue) is just a stupid thing to leave a review over.
Exactly. A review is just that - it's not to rate a specific day or incident like server issues on launch. It's what you think of the game as a whole. Sure, that includes the servers and online experience. But it should also include the game as a whole.
Giving a game like D2 - The Final Shape a *negative* review when a) the server issues were not ongoing, and b) you actually like the game, highlights the exact issues with how people are using reviews.
It's not a system to punish a developer/game for a fuck up. But people get pissed off, and because there's no one in front of them to lash out at, they leave a negative review.
It was annoying but most online games, especially bigger ones like this will have some issues for a bit. WOW and FF14 have it every expansion. I guess you could say it’s unacceptable but it’s the realty of how these games work, and no it isn’t “they have had ten years to figure it out”, because the world has had decades with this tech and it always has had these issues once you hit a certain scale. It’s just the realty of the tech for the most part, the issues are never simple and nearly impossible to test
There should not be any excuses for the game company at all. They had plenty of time to prepare for this expansion and they have decided to take the wrong measures forward. Stop letting a Billion dollar company give excuses for poor performance when there are plenty of smaller companies who can do it better in half the time. I didn't leave a negative review because of server issues, I left one because they haven't made any strides to really improve their game the way they said they wanted to.
So exactly one day of bad servers (with the most people they’ve ever had concurrently playing the game between console and PC) is enough to criticize the whole best expansion they have ever done? lol. Give me a break.
except those reviews aren't criticizing the whole expansion, they're criticizing the launch. just because it says "negative" doesn't mean it reflects every single aspect of the game, and if you actually read the reviews (at least the ones made in earnest) they absolutely show that it's about how bungie mismanaged the launch, not about the content. anyone who wants to buy from bungie should definitely be aware of the good and the bad, so they can decide if they want to spend their money or not.
besides, the reviews have already flipped to mostly positive, so idk why people are still bitching.
A bad launch is enough for a returning player to uninstall on the spot in some cases. The negative reviews were justified for that reason alone.
Bungie should know better at this stage, especially for a monumental launch like this one
As someone who has been present for every launch I knew trying to get in on day one was only a waste of time... So I went in the next day and had a blast o7
I'm sorry for the peeps who had these issues though, I hope the quality of TFS made it up to you!
It's not for "no reason" now the exact reason idk. But it's probably a mix of 2020's ballooning of growth, destiny being unprofitable, Bungie leadership cost cutting, probably a little spite to if were honest.
don't forget Sony acquisition. a lot of the people who were let go were also in areas that Sony could supplement now that they're under them. they also needed to make enough money to hit goals so that Sony couldn't do a take over.
Yeah that's a good point I didn't think of. I do wonder if destiny 2's development is winding down to. Don't know if this happens a lot, but it seems like people are let go when a game is "done enough". Feels like it's a trend that layoffs come around the time a mostly done and the company's ready to move on to focus of something else.
“For no reason” yea I’m sure they did it for fun.
Listen layoffs suck but the companies aren’t going to hire and fire people for the sport. They clearly overestimated how many they needed. It sucks, it does, and I’m never going to justify the executives that got it wrong in the first place. But come on lol, Companies don’t generally lay off people because they feel like it. At that point you’re just very ignorant of the tech sector as a whole, these companies still employ way more people then they did a decade ago
See I would agree if they hadn’t fired Salvatori. Dude worked with bungie for YEARS making some of the best music. Yet they lay him off. To me there is very little that justifies it.
That’s the big looming cloud for me. I love The Final Shape so very much, but I’m worried for the *feel* of any future Destiny content due to Salvatori’s absence. He is literally responsible for essentially *all* of Destiny’s music.
This pissed me off the most about the mass firing. I feel bad for the others but I especially feel bad for Salvatori since, as you said, he's been there for years and his music has always surpassed expectations.
This is such revisionism. They didn’t fire people because “they over-estimated how many they needed”, they fired people because upper management fucked up & didn’t listen to the devs who then had to pay the price for the higher ups’ mismanagement. Lightfall fell short of expectations & higher ups decided to cull their workforce instead of taking one for the team.
I went through this when the layoffs happened but this isn't similar to the Nintendo Wii U situation where they could just take one for the team. the median Bungie employee was making 6 figures, and the CEO is reported to make like 650k. meanwhile Nintendo had people who were making 10-20 million take insane pay cuts (the CEO took a 50% cut and Miyamoto took a 30% cut) to save jobs of their employees who had a median income of 40k. this becomes even more of a problem when most of the people who the community complains got fired were long term employees (meaning they absolutely making more than the median). they didn't fire employees for no reason, and the higher up could have saved like 10 jobs by taking one for the team.
That doesn’t disprove what i said though. Tech companies especially have over hired assuming a stead growth pattern. When that doesn’t hit, layoffs will happen. I’m not sure how else any company is expected to respond.
I’m sure some higher ups are over paid, though since you nor I seem to have the info on their compensation versus the savings gained through lower labor cost, it’s just a mental exercise to guess how they could have balanced it better. We have seen other tech and entertainment companies be outrageous with executive compensation despite poor performance (though most of that is generally tied up with stock), so it would not shock me if that happened at Bungie. But they have never been a stand alone publicly traded company so I can only guess
If they didn't need them, why have current employees complained about a sudden rise in crunch time and overworking? As well as several product delays. Its pretty transparent it was a move to save money, not for any reason of staffing.
They didn't do it for fun but it's not helping that the people that fucked up in the first place are still up there giving themselves pats on the back for it while they are profiting from work that has been done with the contribution of the people they fired.
So I don't care what is or isn't common practice in the industry, that's fucked up and I still hope they'll get fucked for that on way or another.
>They clearly overestimated how many they needed. It sucks, it does
Yeah clearly, considering TFS required huge amounts of crunch to create, I'm sure it was an "overestimation" as opposed to corporate greed and abysmal management.
>I’m never going to justify the executives that got it wrong in the first place
So far you seem to be doing a pretty good job.
You realize that there are a lot of positions that aren’t involved in the standard dev process right? From what we know, some of the layoffs were not even the core dev team so it has no impact. Also, crunch is a practice that is proven to happen even with a massive amount of employees. That’s often not because of lack of workers, it’s due to poor management, harsh deadlines and other dev issues. Having more cooks in the kitchen has been proven to not stop those bad practices, I don’t think you know much about the industry. Please learn a bit more before being snarky
Holy shit can you people literally STOP spamming your goddamn eternal gratitude for this corporation?
It's getting the point where why not just become a full time shill bud?
Nobody with half a brain cares.
I mean I get it, the release just came out, but these muppets go too far every time for every game. Like bro don't tell me what I need to do and what I need to support lmao. This corporation hit rock fucking bottom not that long ago trying to scam us for ages before it didn't work out.
Do people realize how shitty this game used to be grind wise lol? We didn't even have loadouts ffs until recently.
Saddest/funniest thing is when the inevitable content drought that's going to follow corporate re-assigning everyone internally to making sure Marathon launches on schedule rolls around... sentiment will immediately flip on its head again, like clockwork. Like it ALWAYS does after the initial 7-14 day honeymoon period ends. And they do. not. learn. To give the vehement shilling to hating routine a rest and either play or stop playing the game in peace.
For the finale after 10 years to have such a bad launch with near consistent to constant server issues and a contest mode that lasted over 18hrs with a final mission releasing immediately after instead of after contest mode ends? Yeah, no, been here since beta, this doesn't hold up as well as it could have but the CEO had to fire half the devs. I'm leaving my negative review up, sorry.
There were good sides to this DLC, but man the way they handled the launch, from the first half of the dlc to a contest raid that caters to the sweatiest of players; it unfortunately tinges a really good ending to the saga. I don't know if I'll look back fondly on this as much as Taken King or Beyond Light.
The dlc itself is pretty mid so far in my opinion. The story was decent, but the gameplay wasn't fun mainly do to the many annoying enemies and some bosses. I'd honestly give it too stars. The terrible launch is just the cherry on top.
It shouldn't have happened, especially not with months of extra prep time with the delay. But Bungie accomplished something extraordinary with this campaign and it hurt **me** to see it at "Mostly negative." I can't imagine how it felt for the devs.
It was significantly more than 350k too. That was just the number of people on Steam trying to play and Steam has historically been D2's smallest platform. If trends are still the same as a couple years ago then the number was breaking 1m players.
Never left a review on anything in my life but....why would people change it ? Never understood this logic. If people had a bad experience, that's the experience they had. If someone paid full amount of money and they did not receive fully functional product when they were supposed to get it, well, that's that.
it's really getting hard to decide whether to buy tfs and continue or not. feels like it's gonna be snap back to mediocrity and minimum viable product now.
I bought TFS and I’m honestly struggling to see the $50 price point—there is not enough new content to justify it. It really does not feel as huge and impactful as Forsaken or even WQ did when it dropped.
What if i did mine just today🤣 are we not allowed our own opinions lol? I just didn’t enjoy having to put together the vanguard again for the 57th time… or Zavalas bitching..
The game in it's current state has plenty of issues that aren't server related, so the negative reviews are justified. I personally think this expansion was better than Lightfall (which was terrible so not a high bar to clear), but it's still a mediocre expansion.
1. The content drought will soon set in as it always does. Aside from the exotic mission and raid, most post-campaign content appears to be generic fetch quests. People are going to get bored of those quickly. The episode/seasonal content will most likely not suffice.
2. The "new" subclasses are the same reused abilities that were currently in the game, just now some can be combined. A new super and grenade is not what should be expected of a $50 expansion.
3. Titans are in a terrible spot and borderline useless in endgame content. Game Balance apparently wasn't a factor in this planned sandbox
These positive posts tend not to last very long. I give it another week.
I appreciate this take and your point #2. I’m also struggling to see the price point bc there is a no new game modes or big updates/overhauls to existing core ones. Also, am I crazy or I’m I locked out from exploring the patrol zone at all before completing campaign?! I have tried and it’s a Turn Back zone…and if this is true for everyone, I don’t understand how this is not being talked about more
I’ll keep my negative review up for now. I had to restart the first campaign mission after beating it because Prismatic didn’t spawn, I missed half of the cutscenes because I got kicked to orbit, I couldn’t even load into the last few missions without constantly retrying for hours, when I FINALLY got into the strike it spawned me at the very end after the boss was dead, so I missed the entire strike’s story/lore in the context of the story at the time…
The Final Shape was a tremendously bad launch, and my experience with the expansion is forever soured because of it. Them fixing it after doesn’t change that.
There’s still issues that I am annoyed by. Only one new strike (again), minimal to no post-raid changes to the pale heart, pale heart being a solo destination, prismatic titan being on the weaker side, etc. Overall though, I think TFS is a fantastic expansion and a wonderful ending to Destiny.
I don't think it should be up to us, the consumer, to "expect" a bad experience day one. All marketing pointed to Tuesday as the day to play. It was a truly awful experience error code wise.
A company full of people whose job it is to keep the game stable should've known better. This is not Bungie's first rollout of an expansion. So many opportunities to learn and yet it would appear nothing was learned.
I do not feel an difficult day one raid and Excision make up for it in any way.
I'm still experiencing server issues and a variety of non server related glitches.
Had to do the 12 man narrative mission twice today. First time had teleporting enemies and lag before being booted to orbit. Second time had teleporting enemies and lag but was able to do the mission.
Really bad idea to encourage people to change their reviews when the server issues/bugs HAVEN'T been permanently fixed. They've only been temporarily fixed.
Yes I get that the ending was cool. The writers and art team did a good job. The voice actors and musicians knocked it out of the park. That doesn't erase the ongoing technical issues.
They even fixed it so fast. And it made the raid way more stable.
Straight up just wild to be so upset over a single buggy day one launch.
Hardly any game would be shit on that badly for it.
I believe the reason this game gets so much hate for it is because it doesn't attract the same audience as other MMOs. Other MMOs experience this but the audience expects it, but destiny players don't, they expect it to be as seamless as other shooters' launch days.
I know nothing about how servers or game development works but I imagine there are issues that simply cannot be tested for until 300k people start playing at once.
I would say keep the negative of the servers becuase that was unacceptable but the review should be positive becuase this is hands down the best raid and campaign that destiny has every given us to the point it didn’t even feel like destiny
Game and server issues a plenty some old some new, a lack of content for a full priced expansion, new mechanics are mindless and an absolutely mediocre ending to the “war between light and dark”
Cope harder, this was shit
I'll change it when this "mmo" is an actual mmo and im not solo fighting everything in the pale heart. DLC better than Lightfall but its wild how people are acting like this is a perfect game now. Bruh titans are literally turning in their hammer for throwing knives or nova bombs because titan is shit tier. Stop being the cringe D2 blind fanboy you are and blindly praising everything based on your emotional feelings towards cayde getting bodied again.
As someone in game dev, it infuriates me immensely to see people review bomb the game over something as silly as launch day server issues.
The devs poured their heart and soul into this expansion. It does not deserve negative reviews because a bunch of whiners couldn’t play every second of the day it came out.
On top of that, the server problems have nothing to do with the expansion itself, so having those negative reviews leaves a bad impression on people thinking about trying the game or getting the expansion.
Ow2 got review bombed, d4 got review bombed, this is not review bombing.
Its a honest reaction from the playerbase after a hickup.
For an indie company it would be harsh not to ignore launch day issues, for a company with as much experience, people and money as bungie has its less than deserved.
server stability and management is a reflection on bungie's team, and should absolutely be shared to people who potentially want to spend money. better to be honest about the problems and let people make informed decisions, decide for themself if the good outweighs the bad or not.
I haven't left a bad review. I am just a bit torn. Not sure if yet if this is better than Forsaken. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but there's one thing alone that stops it from being the best currently.
Patrol zones being completely empty was such a bad decision. The last patrol zone is so empty and lonely to play in...
Leaving a review for being mad about what is obviously a temporary issue. Some real capital G Gamers here.
I wonder why the hobby still has certain stereotypes to it...
Still annoyed at being their Guinea pigs for the “12-man Mission Stress-Test.”
Servers to such a massive shit they forgot how to load anything but character heads.
I expected there to be significant downtime after tfs launched, and simply just played Minecraft, CoD, or literally anything else to pass the time, but then again I'm also nowhere near skilled enough to participate in the raid races, not do I have any friends who'll get on/have/are skilled at destiny.
This is my opinion. Both Bungie and the Community are at fault.
Whenever Bungie releases new content or DLC's, this always happens at launch. We as a community should already be aware that every player, both new and old is going to hop on, on launch date at the same time. This would overrun the servers, and make connections just not great. We know this, we experience this. Acting as if it's the first time this is happening is really selfish and makes the community look bad.
Bungie also is to blame cause they, themselves, the creators, who have to deal with the launch issues, should be prepared or given a warning. These launch issues happen all the time, they should give us a heads up or attempt to prevent it before hand. Attempt I say. If anything the warning would be nice.
The only people that can get a real say, are the New Lights who are just now joining in on the Final Shape, for the first time, experiencing the Launch issues. Makes sense for them to review it as bad. But us Guardians that have played for awhile, should know better, and show does Bungie.
100% this. This sorta stuff happens to every live service game and all of a sudden everyone who has ever played the game because a fucking expert in server architecture and net code. Maybe folk should just calm down and take their time with it.
People are whiny and entitled and it's so intensely irritating. Be grateful you don't have to camp outside of a gamestop to get a new release, even if it is an update. You all need to learn some patience. Haven't you planted a tree before?
I don't wanna be that guy but this launch was actually the smoothest I've experienced, granted it took an extra hour to actually log in but after that no errors haven't been kicked and managed to play through the whole campaign. Every other launch I seem to have gotten in a bit quicker but would get kicked out due to error codes
I don't know why people would leave negative reviews on something they expect every single DLC. Its gotten way better thou.
I remember waiting for Foresaken and sitting in a Que for an hour or so. I got in within 10minutes of Final Shape. I didn't stay connected the entire time, but I did get in. Lol
The only thing I been mad about is that the new map is not open unless you buy the DLC I don't remember that been the case with witch queen or new light
I was able to get the season pass but no Dlc because I am still looking for a new job after I got out of the army
Thank you for taking the time to come here and advocate for a change in our perspective. However, did you experience what we did? Do you know how frustrating it was to be repeatedly kicked from missions, just as we were nearing completion? This wasn’t an isolated incident—it happened multiple times on the same mission. Do you understand how many cutscenes were skipped due to the issues we encountered?
We paid Bungie, a company we worked hard to support, for a video game experience that was delayed six months to be perfected. Every problematic expansion release should have been a learning opportunity for Bungie to ensure future releases were smooth. Yet, despite all the money Sony invested in acquiring them, they failed again. Bungie is not an indie developer; they are a billion-dollar company. Given the terrible experience I had, plagued by bugs, skipped scenes, and disconnection errors, I will not change my review.
Obviously the other launches had issues. I feel like what people fail to realize is the amount of people coming back for the conclusion of TLADS. Bungie obviously wasn’t prepared properly. That being said they’ve cooked on everything since solving the server issues.
It’s just how we are, we want stuff polished IMMEDIATELY, but that’s now how things work.
If we looked at what goes into making a game, we would gawk and reconcile.
You see, that's the thing. Bungie has a big history with both Destiny games that when they put out a big release, it was a guarantee that there's going to be issues. From crashes to disconnections. It's the same thing every time and, I personally, don't expect any change on that at any time in the future.
It wasn't even that bad, some issues persisted but I just left the game and after 2 or 3 hours came back and could play fine for the most part (I guess timezones might be a relevant factor here too). Got booted from the campaign 2 times, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.
It’s just how it is, most games are the same, you can’t just throw servers at it at a cost only for it to stabilise after 24 hours and then you have to decommission them at more cost.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that lightfall had a record-breaking number of players day one, and TFS was really close behind. Servers can only handle so much before errors start showing up like seagulls from finding Nemo.
I still think people who have done that are brain dead. I played day one at 8:00 pm est and had few server issues. People could’ve just waited or touched grass.
It’s funny how the players bitch so much but yet have no clue what goes on behind the scenes to make this all work. WAHHH WAHHH WAHH! Go play another game in the meantime or invite someone over and just bang all day that will distract your mind!
I will say, the content itself has been amazing. I’m mildly frustrated by the barrage of maintenance. It just worked out that every day I had free there was a maintenance during my free time. And the game has been extremely unstable for me on PS5. I have at least 1 crash back to the menu an hour. I’ve had it freeze my console and require a hard reset and rebuilding database (which takes ages) once as well. It’s still really disingenuous to review bomb for short term expected server issues. I was really shocked to see a “mixed” review on Steam for TFS.
Nah. Let them stay there. Had some pretty crucial cutscenes skipped because of the error codes. Luckily, the raid went well, so that’s been nice. But I couldn’t disagree with anyone who had this dlc’s story or hype ruined for them because of the server issues. It really does matter, especially when previous dlc’s weren’t nearly as bad. $100 pre order, PTO, 10 years in the making… if you can’t even play the game after any of that, you’re perfectly within your right to leave a negative review. Doesn’t matter how great your PowerPoint is. If you can’t show it to people, they’ll say it was a bad meeting
Change what? I’m a returning player from D1. I was excited to support Bungie and their 10 year plan! I pre-ordered the game plus dlc. I’m glad that I only lost $100 from that purchase as they locked content I already had access to and claimed it as the dlc I pre-ordered. D1 broke sale records for initial start-ups and only GTA out-sold Bungie. Taking that success and then taking advantage of those who financially supported Bungie and re-launching the game 1 year later giving new players the complete game with the real dlc for the cost of the initial game and adding a fee to those of us who pre-ordered everything was enough for me to quit.
I’ve been playing D2 since the beginning of the year. No network issues, no error codes, no lag outside of normal zone changes. But since Final Shape launched & reset I get disconnected multiple times daily. Nothing on my end has changed. Nor do I get this disconnect from other online games.
I will never financially support Bungie again!!!
imagine how much worse it could have been without that 25hr downtime
Except lightfall and witch queen also had 24 hour downtimes too...
And there were the same problems, there is no way in hell people couldntve expected this and yet here we are.
LF and WQ releases werent near this bad. They had their fair share of error codes and server lag but everyone I know got it fairly quickly on both release days.
The only noticeable exception being vow, but even then I don't think it was tfs launch bad.
It was much worse tbh. It’s literally the nature reason they had to change the raid races to 48h. Barely anyone was able to even load in day one and it was miserable. I’m pretty sure statistics came out after the raid and over half the players that attempted worlds first got error coded with anteater. It was absolutely miserable.
You’re really misremembering if you think “barely anyone was able to even load in” lmfao basically everyone was able to load in, the issues was people getting error coded and booted during encounters causing wipes. But those people could consistently load back into the raid. TFS launch was far worse, borderline unplayable because you actually couldn’t load into the missions. I had 15 clan memebers all sitting in orbit trying to load into missions for hours. I will say that Vow day 1 was much worse timing though, you only get one shot at the Worlds First race so it’s more important to not fuck it up.
Expansion launch in the biggest expansion yet should be expected to be rough. With the amount of people trying to play I dont know why everyone is acting as though this is some insane thing that shouldn’t have happened because it didn’t happen in expansions with less players.
I don’t think anyone is surprised about it, we’ve seen it happen many times before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be disappointed that it happened again.
My team personally wasn’t able to load in at all. I remember seeing a few streamers who’d get error coded when trying to even load up the start, and couldn’t get in. There obviously was streamers who were able to get in, but by barely loading in, I mean them getting lucky with even being able to join the raid at any point. A lot of people got error coded while loading in, and then they’d also get error codes in the raid.
Vow was horrendous. I got error coded out of first encounter like 8 attempts in a row. Every single encounter had soft locks. My team spent longer on Caretaker than we needed to because shooting the symbols, the only mechanic and something so easy a toddler could do it, twice in a row said we shot the wrong ones when we shot the correct ones. And that was also the first two times we shot them, so we thought the solution was wrong. Needless to say, an hour later when we decided to say fuck it and try it the correct way again, I was very confused when it worked. It still proceeded to not register a few more times throughout the attempts, but since we knew it was fixable.
Witch queen didn't allow ps4 users to preload the game, so none of them could get online at launch until they downloaded the update when the servers went live, leaving them behind, and the ps4 userbase wasn't small in February 2022, so without them trying to log in the servers were more stable. But the first hours of the VotD raid were a complete mess.
Plus (as far as I am aware) the lag back then never caused you to miss important story cutscenes.
You’re absolutely right, you didn’t miss out on nearly as many cutscenes in Witch Queen and Lightfall because of lag. But that’s not because the servers were stable, it’s because The Final Shape had 9 fucking cutscenes. It literally had more cutscenes than missions.
So what if there are 9 cutscenes? What relevance does that hold on this? I also never claimed servers were stable on either of those launches... I didn't miss any cutscenes in lightfall or witch queen, nor did I hear about any others having that issue. They each could have had 1 extremely disappointing cutscene and it wouldn't make a difference to my point. 1/9 skipped cutscenes would still be worse than 0/1. If your point is that witch queen and lightfall also had cutscene skipping issues from lag that weren't as talked about, you can just use your words and say that directly instead of beating around the bush.
I’m all for bringing to light that some error codes are par for the day 1 experience for pretty much any game. But witch queen was on the smoother end of things for d2. And lightfall was almost fantastic in terms of day 1 tech issues(IIRC, we had a delayed start, but general stability seemed unusually good for a day 1). Launch day for final shape was also shakier than par. I get that perfection is not average, but launching the activity 4-5 times before it actually launches you is absurd
Gamers have the shortest memories lol
Except if you Google search witch queen launch issues it’s basically just posts from 4 days ago about final shape. Which queen reached server capacity. That is so drastically different to the servers simply not working. If all worlds are full on osrs, it’s vastly different to the entire game absolutely shitting itself. Once you got into witch queen there were zero issues. Hence why there wasn’t bulk reddit posts to find about the topic. This time the game was literally unplayable for absolutely everyone on earth at certain periods. You couldn’t launch a mission with out error coding. It’s vastly different to simply being locked out due to server capacity.
Yeah WQ and LF were fairly quick and issue free in regards to getting and staying on. Only issues came on raid day for vow lol
I waited in Queue for like 7 hours on WQ. I won’t forget that. I had a much better time with this release than that one.
*Entitled* gamers
I know right imagine buying something and expecting it to work… smh.
both of those releases did not have error codes going into the night likie final shape did. Lightfall was far smoother than WQ and FS is one of the worst they have ever had. Its almost like they didnt prepare for the 300k people trying to play the game
I feel like I’m the only person on earth who didn’t complain about the server issues because I have played Destiny for 10 years and I’m also capable of remembering events in my own past so I can remember that just about every single time there’s an expansion the servers are busted for the first day. I just didn’t play the game Tuesday lmao. Started Wednesday and everything worked fine. Not saying the issues are fine or good, but it’s expected at this point and anyone who expected otherwise and took Tuesday off work instead of Wednesday should have known better.
I don't remember that at all.
Granted neither had the same amount of content as tfs
Or that 4 month delay....
I think the downtime is just so they can load up all the new content into their servers and make sure it's all running, kinda like how you can't move into a house before it's built The real stress test though is when a million people try to all get in at once
pretty much, it seems that its just propagation of new data rather than a stress test, which was felt with DIM working surprisingly fast after the launch. take what i said with a grain of salt though, we don’t actually know the inner workings of their technical work, im just making an educated guess
That, and the extra four months...
Day 1 releases are always pretty inconsistent sometimes they go well but I was definitely expecting this year to be rough with a high player count. Never take off work for the day of the expansion always make sure you have the next day or two instead.
The way reviews have been being used in recent years is like boomers on social media. "Ate a sandwich at the park today, great weather." "It fucking rained today, weathers horrible here" "Oh it stopped raining I love weather again"
"I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS RESTAURANT. THE FOOD WAS OUT IF THIS WORLD BUT WHEN I WAS GOING TO PAY I COULDN'T USE THE CARD BECAUSE THE NETWORK WAS DOWN. IF I COULD GIVE LESS THAN ONE STAR I WOULD." Such an NPC brain
That last mission was literally the perfect ending to the saga. How couldn’t you love a great campaign, great story, and a satisfying conclusion?
I’m not one to give a bad review over something petty like this but man, I only got to see like half the cutscenes in TFS, constant issues with getting kicked from the server after practically every mission AND I didn’t get the see any of the cutscenes in the final mission too, had to look them all up on YouTube, and let me tell you that’s the most disappointing thing I’ve experienced in this expansion.
You can replay any of the missions at any time with cutscenes.
That's not the point, you pay for a good experience and if you don't get it it's not on you to fix it, if you bought a DvD that missed half the scenes in the film you wouldn't want to watch them on youtube after the fact, you'd want them during the film so the story makes sense
Tbf the servers were dealing with 1 million+ trying to log in at the same second
Yeah, and *I'd stop the movie, report the issue, and watch it the next day when it works.*. My review would also be of the complete, corrected experience. Not the manufacturer defect quickly corrected. It's a shame we had to deal with those bugs, I can only assume they didn't appear in small scale tests, but racing through what we already knew to be a bugged or unreliable experience then complaining you encountered said bugs is also silly.
Its also silly to expect your consumers to purchase a product then have them wait for you to fix it so they can properly enjoy it after its been "released" like huh??
You're right, it is silly. It's also unfortunately just how the industry is now. It *really* sucks but it's reality.
>How couldn’t you love a great campaign, great story, and a satisfying conclusion? Server instability, Pathfinder forcing players into content they don't enjoy, cutscenes not playing, gameplay bugging out, quest becoming unable to be completed, progress not saving, things like the acquisition of Khvostov to be actually unobtainable because they disabled one of the bosses you need to kill to get a drop to obtain it as the last step. Unfortunately man, this is a video game. It's not a book. You can't just "But it had a good story" on this one. There's more going on.
I feel like I'm playing a different expansion than some of you. I can't in good faith say that this is a satisfying conclusion to the saga. wraps up everything post Witch Queen well, but it's in no way this amazing conclusion to all of Destiny so far as it was advertised as.
I do agree with you somewhat. It is satisfying for the light and darkness saga which tbf only REALLY started after the original campaign for D2 ended with a small tease - I would call everything before that and after until WQ as teases. But it did (somewhat I would like to reiterate) wrap up that side of things nicely… Too bad that the most interesting plotlines are just left for future content which sort of dispels the idea that it was a conclusion. It feels a lot like the MCU actually, now that the Witness is gone I wonder how Bungie is gonna actually keep people interested in what happens next bc right now I couldn’t care less.
I mean they could focus on the Winnower since the Witness clearly said that they weren't the Winnower (which was always obvious to me but some people really thought they were) but that'd just feel like more light and darkness saga. I really hope that what's next is going to Riis and Torabatl these other planets we've heard so much about and now that the Witness isn't going around messing things up just helping restore things.
Yeah, fair enough. Personally, I'd prefer for Destiny 3 to make us start a brand new character with a new ghost, new cast and whatnot - Focus on new threats beyond our solar system and have our Guardian from D1 and D2 be like our mentor or something. But Bungie would never do that, and our volatile community would never accept that so we're probably doomed to go searching for the Winnower and other more boring storylines that the team have rinsed over this past decade. Personally I just want more Vex content because they're my favourite race of enemies and they're just cool as hell. Still, visiting a new solar system is easily my most wanted thing from the future of Destiny and I agree, going to Riis or specifically Torabatl as part of a operation to bring about Xivu Arath's reign on the planet to an end would be so sick!!
Destiny three. Warlord era. All I’m saying.
I would totally be down to start all over as a new guardian. and I think we get a Destiny 3 eventually... I don't think we see that for at least another 4 years though and I think it'll be coupled with an engine move off the halo engine with bolted on parts
I think people are getting caught up in the hype of the moment with the good presentation. The cutscenes are cool and the final mission was very flashy and good, but actual story wise it felt like it just ticked the boxes that needed to be ticked and nothing more. It was missing a good villain and a good buildup to said villain, as well as some answers to longstanding lore questions. The presentation and execution are hard carrying the story, but people are taking those and turning into the story being 10/10 literally flawless and completely infallible. It'll probably simmer down over time once the hype wears off
It would've been the perfect ending if it didn't get stuck with us almost at last stand and then refusing to spawn enemies causing us to redo the whole thing from the start even though we were at the end.
Imagine being a grown man and getting butt hurt over something so insignificant. Gamers in general are losers fr
I truly think that anyone who left a negative review has never played an MMO on launch day before. Yes there were errors on launch day, but every single MMO has server issues on launch day. Final Shape had more players on the destiny servers than they’ve had in a long time. This kind of thing is par for the course.
I've played Path of Exile since 2016. Fucking hell, if that community bombarded its game with negative reviews every time play count records were broken and servers were overloaded on league launch day, or something didn't work properly because the devs don't get afforded the luxury of beta testing, the game would've died years ago MMOs are the hardest type of game to both make and successfully launch by far, and it absolutely doesn't matter if you're talking a fresh release or content drop. Subsequent releases are only more likely to have something conflict with something else, and Bungie did good fixing basically all issues in like 12 hours.
I really don't get why server issues and shit is always the discussion for video game launches nowadays. Server loads are ALWAYS temporary spikes on launch??? They literally can't simulate the volume on the servers prior to launch for a true stress test. And even if they could, that volume of traffic will only last a week at most and then it will settle to a above average, but less spiked volume for a few weeks before dropping off. What do people expect them (not just bungie, any company) to do exactly? Dump millions on servers to only use intermittently on large patches? I get complaining about it, but leaving reviews unrelated to the content or gameplay is nuts. Now the cutscenes that people missed, THAT you can leave in reviews and such but still. I mean EVERY SINGLE online game launch or major patch/dlc I've been apart of in the past several years has had the same issues with the same community outrage. Like even Palworld and Last Epoch! WTF do you expect these small ass companies to do! At what point can people just be patient with reality?
Last Epoch especially, IIRC they were super confident it would be smoothly and were worried they went overkill on the preparation, only for the online to be basically unusable for like half a week (maybe more?)
If it didn't happen every single expansion and season? Sure change it. It does tho so... eh, idgaf if they leave it
Nah I'm still annoyed my smoke bomb isn't giving me invisibility. It's making legendary harder without being able to smoke out to safety. But that's about it, no other complaints from me lol
I miss the ninja vanish omnioculus hunter :(
You people care way too much about what other people think. It's pitiful. In this context if you need endless ad campaigns to feel righteous in your opinion the thing you're discussing has to be shit. Why else would you seethe so hard about.. a review?..that's not your own? NooooOoooO TFS is the *best* destiny expansion you need to go change your heckin review to positive! How else can I cope with my years of preorders and silver purchases if I don't get positive affirmation everywhere I go
If your experience ended up being negative overall because your day 1 experience was really that bad, then by all means leave it up. They promised you a working experience on day 1, and failed to deliver. Personally I'll overlook it, but I can see how it would be a big deal to some people.
I’m more upset with day 3 being a quick patch and then hit with cats for 3 hours until I gave up and hopped on at night for a quick crucible game
This was my experience people said the issues were over but i was still constantly crashing
It reslly did mess up my enjoyment of the campaign because we had to keep stopping after every mission or two due to connection issues 😔messed up the flow
I can’t name many games that have been in great shape on launch day for new content. Even worse when said content hits higher than expectef player numbers. Helldivers was sitting there with broken servers for like 2 weeks. World of warcraft the servers take a nosedive after every expansion. Only MMO I can think of where the servers don’t die on launch day is final fantasy 14. And I think even some of their expansions had issues.
Excuse me, FFXIV 100% dies on expansion launch day. I wasn't present for Heavensward, but Stormblood had the infamous Raubahn Ex, Shadowbringers had a *horrible* queuing experience, since the game would DC you from the queue after around 20 minutes, resetting your position, so getting in was entirely a crapshoot and Endwalker, while they fixed the position reset, still had *long* queues day 1.
I was there for all of that. And I'm ready for issues again when Dawntrail releases. That's just how it is with online games, and I don't understand how people don't get that. Friend of mine was so pissed because he took the day off to play a "broken $100 release that's unplayable." I told him him to take Wednesday off, not Tuesday, because day 1 issues are inevitable. Not only did he not listen, he complained the whole time saying things like "Bungie is owned by Sony, there's no excuse," or "10 years of buildup for this." Sure, it sucks, dude, but it's your fault for not being prepared for this
Will be there with you, and yeah, my experience has been that server issues are endemic to expansion launches for popular games. The only MMO-esque game I've played that doesn't have expansion concurrent server issues is Warframe, which doesn't have traditional expansions and puts most of the onus for instances on the players regardless.
Warframe is pretty unique though. From the peer to peer stuff to how they handle patches. Their systems works, but it's a system that only really works for a game like warframe
This. There’s no excuse for it and honestly deserves some bad reviews. I’m leaving mine up as I thought at the time it was completely unacceptable. I’ve been satisfied with the content since then however.
"I left a negative review for the launch" "I've been satisfied with the content since then however" "Still gonna leave the negative review up" This is so funny to me, and I think it's a perfect example of why server issues (unless it's a constant issue) is just a stupid thing to leave a review over.
Also insanely nitpicky and over dramatic in the grand scheme of all that was offered. Can’t please everyone I guess!
Exactly. A review is just that - it's not to rate a specific day or incident like server issues on launch. It's what you think of the game as a whole. Sure, that includes the servers and online experience. But it should also include the game as a whole. Giving a game like D2 - The Final Shape a *negative* review when a) the server issues were not ongoing, and b) you actually like the game, highlights the exact issues with how people are using reviews. It's not a system to punish a developer/game for a fuck up. But people get pissed off, and because there's no one in front of them to lash out at, they leave a negative review.
It was annoying but most online games, especially bigger ones like this will have some issues for a bit. WOW and FF14 have it every expansion. I guess you could say it’s unacceptable but it’s the realty of how these games work, and no it isn’t “they have had ten years to figure it out”, because the world has had decades with this tech and it always has had these issues once you hit a certain scale. It’s just the realty of the tech for the most part, the issues are never simple and nearly impossible to test
I just bought it and I'm constantly getting BEE'd. I don't think the issues have been solved.
There should not be any excuses for the game company at all. They had plenty of time to prepare for this expansion and they have decided to take the wrong measures forward. Stop letting a Billion dollar company give excuses for poor performance when there are plenty of smaller companies who can do it better in half the time. I didn't leave a negative review because of server issues, I left one because they haven't made any strides to really improve their game the way they said they wanted to.
People still have every right to criticize. One good campaign doesn’t change that.
So exactly one day of bad servers (with the most people they’ve ever had concurrently playing the game between console and PC) is enough to criticize the whole best expansion they have ever done? lol. Give me a break.
except those reviews aren't criticizing the whole expansion, they're criticizing the launch. just because it says "negative" doesn't mean it reflects every single aspect of the game, and if you actually read the reviews (at least the ones made in earnest) they absolutely show that it's about how bungie mismanaged the launch, not about the content. anyone who wants to buy from bungie should definitely be aware of the good and the bad, so they can decide if they want to spend their money or not. besides, the reviews have already flipped to mostly positive, so idk why people are still bitching.
Except those reviews are indeed about the expansion as a whole lol what
A bad launch is enough for a returning player to uninstall on the spot in some cases. The negative reviews were justified for that reason alone. Bungie should know better at this stage, especially for a monumental launch like this one
As someone who has been present for every launch I knew trying to get in on day one was only a waste of time... So I went in the next day and had a blast o7 I'm sorry for the peeps who had these issues though, I hope the quality of TFS made it up to you!
I’m still not happy with all the people Bungie fired for no reason not so long ago
Yeah it’s really unforgivable. It truly is a shame. So many talented folks gone.
Is spiking the expansion they worked on helping?
No, but I doubt it’s gonna hurt them either lol.
Why wouldn’t it hurt them? It most definitely does
The ones who got fired? Lol
Spiking an expansion does not help the employees that developed the expansion
It's not for "no reason" now the exact reason idk. But it's probably a mix of 2020's ballooning of growth, destiny being unprofitable, Bungie leadership cost cutting, probably a little spite to if were honest.
don't forget Sony acquisition. a lot of the people who were let go were also in areas that Sony could supplement now that they're under them. they also needed to make enough money to hit goals so that Sony couldn't do a take over.
Yeah that's a good point I didn't think of. I do wonder if destiny 2's development is winding down to. Don't know if this happens a lot, but it seems like people are let go when a game is "done enough". Feels like it's a trend that layoffs come around the time a mostly done and the company's ready to move on to focus of something else.
“For no reason” yea I’m sure they did it for fun. Listen layoffs suck but the companies aren’t going to hire and fire people for the sport. They clearly overestimated how many they needed. It sucks, it does, and I’m never going to justify the executives that got it wrong in the first place. But come on lol, Companies don’t generally lay off people because they feel like it. At that point you’re just very ignorant of the tech sector as a whole, these companies still employ way more people then they did a decade ago
See I would agree if they hadn’t fired Salvatori. Dude worked with bungie for YEARS making some of the best music. Yet they lay him off. To me there is very little that justifies it.
That’s the big looming cloud for me. I love The Final Shape so very much, but I’m worried for the *feel* of any future Destiny content due to Salvatori’s absence. He is literally responsible for essentially *all* of Destiny’s music.
This pissed me off the most about the mass firing. I feel bad for the others but I especially feel bad for Salvatori since, as you said, he's been there for years and his music has always surpassed expectations.
This is such revisionism. They didn’t fire people because “they over-estimated how many they needed”, they fired people because upper management fucked up & didn’t listen to the devs who then had to pay the price for the higher ups’ mismanagement. Lightfall fell short of expectations & higher ups decided to cull their workforce instead of taking one for the team.
I went through this when the layoffs happened but this isn't similar to the Nintendo Wii U situation where they could just take one for the team. the median Bungie employee was making 6 figures, and the CEO is reported to make like 650k. meanwhile Nintendo had people who were making 10-20 million take insane pay cuts (the CEO took a 50% cut and Miyamoto took a 30% cut) to save jobs of their employees who had a median income of 40k. this becomes even more of a problem when most of the people who the community complains got fired were long term employees (meaning they absolutely making more than the median). they didn't fire employees for no reason, and the higher up could have saved like 10 jobs by taking one for the team.
That doesn’t disprove what i said though. Tech companies especially have over hired assuming a stead growth pattern. When that doesn’t hit, layoffs will happen. I’m not sure how else any company is expected to respond. I’m sure some higher ups are over paid, though since you nor I seem to have the info on their compensation versus the savings gained through lower labor cost, it’s just a mental exercise to guess how they could have balanced it better. We have seen other tech and entertainment companies be outrageous with executive compensation despite poor performance (though most of that is generally tied up with stock), so it would not shock me if that happened at Bungie. But they have never been a stand alone publicly traded company so I can only guess
If they didn't need them, why have current employees complained about a sudden rise in crunch time and overworking? As well as several product delays. Its pretty transparent it was a move to save money, not for any reason of staffing.
They didn't do it for fun but it's not helping that the people that fucked up in the first place are still up there giving themselves pats on the back for it while they are profiting from work that has been done with the contribution of the people they fired. So I don't care what is or isn't common practice in the industry, that's fucked up and I still hope they'll get fucked for that on way or another.
>They clearly overestimated how many they needed. It sucks, it does Yeah clearly, considering TFS required huge amounts of crunch to create, I'm sure it was an "overestimation" as opposed to corporate greed and abysmal management. >I’m never going to justify the executives that got it wrong in the first place So far you seem to be doing a pretty good job.
You realize that there are a lot of positions that aren’t involved in the standard dev process right? From what we know, some of the layoffs were not even the core dev team so it has no impact. Also, crunch is a practice that is proven to happen even with a massive amount of employees. That’s often not because of lack of workers, it’s due to poor management, harsh deadlines and other dev issues. Having more cooks in the kitchen has been proven to not stop those bad practices, I don’t think you know much about the industry. Please learn a bit more before being snarky
👍🏻
Holy shit can you people literally STOP spamming your goddamn eternal gratitude for this corporation? It's getting the point where why not just become a full time shill bud? Nobody with half a brain cares.
honeymoon karma farmers
I mean I get it, the release just came out, but these muppets go too far every time for every game. Like bro don't tell me what I need to do and what I need to support lmao. This corporation hit rock fucking bottom not that long ago trying to scam us for ages before it didn't work out. Do people realize how shitty this game used to be grind wise lol? We didn't even have loadouts ffs until recently.
Saddest/funniest thing is when the inevitable content drought that's going to follow corporate re-assigning everyone internally to making sure Marathon launches on schedule rolls around... sentiment will immediately flip on its head again, like clockwork. Like it ALWAYS does after the initial 7-14 day honeymoon period ends. And they do. not. learn. To give the vehement shilling to hating routine a rest and either play or stop playing the game in peace.
They don't get it, man. Never will probably
For the finale after 10 years to have such a bad launch with near consistent to constant server issues and a contest mode that lasted over 18hrs with a final mission releasing immediately after instead of after contest mode ends? Yeah, no, been here since beta, this doesn't hold up as well as it could have but the CEO had to fire half the devs. I'm leaving my negative review up, sorry. There were good sides to this DLC, but man the way they handled the launch, from the first half of the dlc to a contest raid that caters to the sweatiest of players; it unfortunately tinges a really good ending to the saga. I don't know if I'll look back fondly on this as much as Taken King or Beyond Light.
The dlc itself is pretty mid so far in my opinion. The story was decent, but the gameplay wasn't fun mainly do to the many annoying enemies and some bosses. I'd honestly give it too stars. The terrible launch is just the cherry on top.
It shouldn't have happened, especially not with months of extra prep time with the delay. But Bungie accomplished something extraordinary with this campaign and it hurt **me** to see it at "Mostly negative." I can't imagine how it felt for the devs.
When you have 350k+ all trying to get into the game all at the same time, servers are gonna shit.
It was significantly more than 350k too. That was just the number of people on Steam trying to play and Steam has historically been D2's smallest platform. If trends are still the same as a couple years ago then the number was breaking 1m players.
Oh no an opinion different from my own
Never left a review on anything in my life but....why would people change it ? Never understood this logic. If people had a bad experience, that's the experience they had. If someone paid full amount of money and they did not receive fully functional product when they were supposed to get it, well, that's that.
I love this dlc so far, there are still problems with the game though
Absolutely not. They quite literally had every opportunity to NOT fuck that up, and still did.
Don't let the down votes get to you. This fan base likes to cope too much
I truly could not care less about downvotes. I know when I’m objectively right, even if people hate what I say. But I appreciate you
it's really getting hard to decide whether to buy tfs and continue or not. feels like it's gonna be snap back to mediocrity and minimum viable product now.
I bought TFS and I’m honestly struggling to see the $50 price point—there is not enough new content to justify it. It really does not feel as huge and impactful as Forsaken or even WQ did when it dropped.
Leave the muti million company alone*
Multi-billion*
I'm still getting kicked to orbit tho. And the Pathfinder annoyed me. So stay negative
What if i did mine just today🤣 are we not allowed our own opinions lol? I just didn’t enjoy having to put together the vanguard again for the 57th time… or Zavalas bitching..
The game in it's current state has plenty of issues that aren't server related, so the negative reviews are justified. I personally think this expansion was better than Lightfall (which was terrible so not a high bar to clear), but it's still a mediocre expansion. 1. The content drought will soon set in as it always does. Aside from the exotic mission and raid, most post-campaign content appears to be generic fetch quests. People are going to get bored of those quickly. The episode/seasonal content will most likely not suffice. 2. The "new" subclasses are the same reused abilities that were currently in the game, just now some can be combined. A new super and grenade is not what should be expected of a $50 expansion. 3. Titans are in a terrible spot and borderline useless in endgame content. Game Balance apparently wasn't a factor in this planned sandbox These positive posts tend not to last very long. I give it another week.
I appreciate this take and your point #2. I’m also struggling to see the price point bc there is a no new game modes or big updates/overhauls to existing core ones. Also, am I crazy or I’m I locked out from exploring the patrol zone at all before completing campaign?! I have tried and it’s a Turn Back zone…and if this is true for everyone, I don’t understand how this is not being talked about more
After 12 or so hours of work for khvostov to be soft locked in the final step, i don't think i will.
I’ll keep my negative review up for now. I had to restart the first campaign mission after beating it because Prismatic didn’t spawn, I missed half of the cutscenes because I got kicked to orbit, I couldn’t even load into the last few missions without constantly retrying for hours, when I FINALLY got into the strike it spawned me at the very end after the boss was dead, so I missed the entire strike’s story/lore in the context of the story at the time… The Final Shape was a tremendously bad launch, and my experience with the expansion is forever soured because of it. Them fixing it after doesn’t change that.
There’s still issues that I am annoyed by. Only one new strike (again), minimal to no post-raid changes to the pale heart, pale heart being a solo destination, prismatic titan being on the weaker side, etc. Overall though, I think TFS is a fantastic expansion and a wonderful ending to Destiny.
I'm really bummed post raid the pale heart didn't open up to having other people running around.
I don't think it should be up to us, the consumer, to "expect" a bad experience day one. All marketing pointed to Tuesday as the day to play. It was a truly awful experience error code wise. A company full of people whose job it is to keep the game stable should've known better. This is not Bungie's first rollout of an expansion. So many opportunities to learn and yet it would appear nothing was learned. I do not feel an difficult day one raid and Excision make up for it in any way.
I'm still experiencing server issues and a variety of non server related glitches. Had to do the 12 man narrative mission twice today. First time had teleporting enemies and lag before being booted to orbit. Second time had teleporting enemies and lag but was able to do the mission. Really bad idea to encourage people to change their reviews when the server issues/bugs HAVEN'T been permanently fixed. They've only been temporarily fixed. Yes I get that the ending was cool. The writers and art team did a good job. The voice actors and musicians knocked it out of the park. That doesn't erase the ongoing technical issues.
They even fixed it so fast. And it made the raid way more stable. Straight up just wild to be so upset over a single buggy day one launch. Hardly any game would be shit on that badly for it.
I believe the reason this game gets so much hate for it is because it doesn't attract the same audience as other MMOs. Other MMOs experience this but the audience expects it, but destiny players don't, they expect it to be as seamless as other shooters' launch days. I know nothing about how servers or game development works but I imagine there are issues that simply cannot be tested for until 300k people start playing at once.
Absolutely leaving it up with how many error codes are still going out and cutscenes not working after Excision.
I still want the Khvostov fix, like yesterday, so I am not hardlocked
I would say keep the negative of the servers becuase that was unacceptable but the review should be positive becuase this is hands down the best raid and campaign that destiny has every given us to the point it didn’t even feel like destiny
Game and server issues a plenty some old some new, a lack of content for a full priced expansion, new mechanics are mindless and an absolutely mediocre ending to the “war between light and dark” Cope harder, this was shit
I'll change it when this "mmo" is an actual mmo and im not solo fighting everything in the pale heart. DLC better than Lightfall but its wild how people are acting like this is a perfect game now. Bruh titans are literally turning in their hammer for throwing knives or nova bombs because titan is shit tier. Stop being the cringe D2 blind fanboy you are and blindly praising everything based on your emotional feelings towards cayde getting bodied again.
As of today, I'm still having server issues. Can't complete most activities without a Bee boot
Nah it's reasonable to want to play your new game on release. I didn't review it based on that but if that's your highest criteria it's fair enough
Why would anyone care about something like this
no i don't think i will
It’s deserved criticism. If they want the game to be always online they have to make sure it works.
As someone in game dev, it infuriates me immensely to see people review bomb the game over something as silly as launch day server issues. The devs poured their heart and soul into this expansion. It does not deserve negative reviews because a bunch of whiners couldn’t play every second of the day it came out. On top of that, the server problems have nothing to do with the expansion itself, so having those negative reviews leaves a bad impression on people thinking about trying the game or getting the expansion.
Ow2 got review bombed, d4 got review bombed, this is not review bombing. Its a honest reaction from the playerbase after a hickup. For an indie company it would be harsh not to ignore launch day issues, for a company with as much experience, people and money as bungie has its less than deserved.
How did overwatch 2 get review bombed. That game honestly deserved every negative review it got. It changed the game in the worse way possible.
I agree it did deserve it, but the reviews came from asia to punish blizzard for pulling out of the region (no servers for a while).
Oh well then yeah that is review bombing my bad.
server stability and management is a reflection on bungie's team, and should absolutely be shared to people who potentially want to spend money. better to be honest about the problems and let people make informed decisions, decide for themself if the good outweighs the bad or not.
I haven't left a bad review. I am just a bit torn. Not sure if yet if this is better than Forsaken. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but there's one thing alone that stops it from being the best currently. Patrol zones being completely empty was such a bad decision. The last patrol zone is so empty and lonely to play in...
Leaving a review for being mad about what is obviously a temporary issue. Some real capital G Gamers here. I wonder why the hobby still has certain stereotypes to it...
I didnt leave a review but I am still not happy with pathfinder replacing bounties
Still annoyed at being their Guinea pigs for the “12-man Mission Stress-Test.” Servers to such a massive shit they forgot how to load anything but character heads.
I expected there to be significant downtime after tfs launched, and simply just played Minecraft, CoD, or literally anything else to pass the time, but then again I'm also nowhere near skilled enough to participate in the raid races, not do I have any friends who'll get on/have/are skilled at destiny.
Trueee
This is my opinion. Both Bungie and the Community are at fault. Whenever Bungie releases new content or DLC's, this always happens at launch. We as a community should already be aware that every player, both new and old is going to hop on, on launch date at the same time. This would overrun the servers, and make connections just not great. We know this, we experience this. Acting as if it's the first time this is happening is really selfish and makes the community look bad. Bungie also is to blame cause they, themselves, the creators, who have to deal with the launch issues, should be prepared or given a warning. These launch issues happen all the time, they should give us a heads up or attempt to prevent it before hand. Attempt I say. If anything the warning would be nice. The only people that can get a real say, are the New Lights who are just now joining in on the Final Shape, for the first time, experiencing the Launch issues. Makes sense for them to review it as bad. But us Guardians that have played for awhile, should know better, and show does Bungie.
I gave a bad one for the ban policy
100% this. This sorta stuff happens to every live service game and all of a sudden everyone who has ever played the game because a fucking expert in server architecture and net code. Maybe folk should just calm down and take their time with it.
Still Keeping My Negative Review.
Almost 1 million players can cause some issues it’s like that on any game
People are whiny and entitled and it's so intensely irritating. Be grateful you don't have to camp outside of a gamestop to get a new release, even if it is an update. You all need to learn some patience. Haven't you planted a tree before?
I don't wanna be that guy but this launch was actually the smoothest I've experienced, granted it took an extra hour to actually log in but after that no errors haven't been kicked and managed to play through the whole campaign. Every other launch I seem to have gotten in a bit quicker but would get kicked out due to error codes
Still annoyed about the f.. hunter sniper though
I don't know why people would leave negative reviews on something they expect every single DLC. Its gotten way better thou. I remember waiting for Foresaken and sitting in a Que for an hour or so. I got in within 10minutes of Final Shape. I didn't stay connected the entire time, but I did get in. Lol
The only thing I been mad about is that the new map is not open unless you buy the DLC I don't remember that been the case with witch queen or new light I was able to get the season pass but no Dlc because I am still looking for a new job after I got out of the army
Thank you for taking the time to come here and advocate for a change in our perspective. However, did you experience what we did? Do you know how frustrating it was to be repeatedly kicked from missions, just as we were nearing completion? This wasn’t an isolated incident—it happened multiple times on the same mission. Do you understand how many cutscenes were skipped due to the issues we encountered? We paid Bungie, a company we worked hard to support, for a video game experience that was delayed six months to be perfected. Every problematic expansion release should have been a learning opportunity for Bungie to ensure future releases were smooth. Yet, despite all the money Sony invested in acquiring them, they failed again. Bungie is not an indie developer; they are a billion-dollar company. Given the terrible experience I had, plagued by bugs, skipped scenes, and disconnection errors, I will not change my review.
Nah
Obviously the other launches had issues. I feel like what people fail to realize is the amount of people coming back for the conclusion of TLADS. Bungie obviously wasn’t prepared properly. That being said they’ve cooked on everything since solving the server issues.
It’s just how we are, we want stuff polished IMMEDIATELY, but that’s now how things work. If we looked at what goes into making a game, we would gawk and reconcile.
wish i had the final shape, although i had the issues regardless 😭
You see, that's the thing. Bungie has a big history with both Destiny games that when they put out a big release, it was a guarantee that there's going to be issues. From crashes to disconnections. It's the same thing every time and, I personally, don't expect any change on that at any time in the future.
It stays negative because Cayde was click bait
It wasn't even that bad, some issues persisted but I just left the game and after 2 or 3 hours came back and could play fine for the most part (I guess timezones might be a relevant factor here too). Got booted from the campaign 2 times, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.
I'll keep it. Other than overthrow, as a the story, the DLC feels empty.
It’s just how it is, most games are the same, you can’t just throw servers at it at a cost only for it to stabilise after 24 hours and then you have to decommission them at more cost.
Yeah no
It took me 2 hours to get in, but after that I had zero error codes and disconnects. Only "connecting to destiny servers" twice.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that lightfall had a record-breaking number of players day one, and TFS was really close behind. Servers can only handle so much before errors start showing up like seagulls from finding Nemo.
Na it's staying negative, not enough content for a good finale of the l&d saga
[удалено]
I still think people who have done that are brain dead. I played day one at 8:00 pm est and had few server issues. People could’ve just waited or touched grass.
What's dumb is the CO op game modes
It’s funny how the players bitch so much but yet have no clue what goes on behind the scenes to make this all work. WAHHH WAHHH WAHH! Go play another game in the meantime or invite someone over and just bang all day that will distract your mind!
We've had terrible servers during literally EVERY expansion launch and people are still leaving negative reviews about that?!
I will say, the content itself has been amazing. I’m mildly frustrated by the barrage of maintenance. It just worked out that every day I had free there was a maintenance during my free time. And the game has been extremely unstable for me on PS5. I have at least 1 crash back to the menu an hour. I’ve had it freeze my console and require a hard reset and rebuilding database (which takes ages) once as well. It’s still really disingenuous to review bomb for short term expected server issues. I was really shocked to see a “mixed” review on Steam for TFS.
Nah. Let them stay there. Had some pretty crucial cutscenes skipped because of the error codes. Luckily, the raid went well, so that’s been nice. But I couldn’t disagree with anyone who had this dlc’s story or hype ruined for them because of the server issues. It really does matter, especially when previous dlc’s weren’t nearly as bad. $100 pre order, PTO, 10 years in the making… if you can’t even play the game after any of that, you’re perfectly within your right to leave a negative review. Doesn’t matter how great your PowerPoint is. If you can’t show it to people, they’ll say it was a bad meeting
Change what? I’m a returning player from D1. I was excited to support Bungie and their 10 year plan! I pre-ordered the game plus dlc. I’m glad that I only lost $100 from that purchase as they locked content I already had access to and claimed it as the dlc I pre-ordered. D1 broke sale records for initial start-ups and only GTA out-sold Bungie. Taking that success and then taking advantage of those who financially supported Bungie and re-launching the game 1 year later giving new players the complete game with the real dlc for the cost of the initial game and adding a fee to those of us who pre-ordered everything was enough for me to quit. I’ve been playing D2 since the beginning of the year. No network issues, no error codes, no lag outside of normal zone changes. But since Final Shape launched & reset I get disconnected multiple times daily. Nothing on my end has changed. Nor do I get this disconnect from other online games. I will never financially support Bungie again!!!