The ultimate season of Future 2 is right here, and it’s being overshadowed by yet one more big advertising and marketing blunder on Bungie’s half. So, collectively, let’s uncover how Future 2’s new seasonal bundles aren’t incomes Bungie any good will.
Not way back, Bungie laid off round 8% of their workforce, together with the legendary composer Michael Salvatori. The information shocked the gaming trade and put a foul style into lots of Future 2’s present and would-be gamers. From that time on, Bungie wanted to win us, the gamers, again—to earn our belief once more the place it’s been damaged many occasions earlier than.
Quick ahead to the launch of Season of the Want and two new bundles made their solution to the Steam retailer. One bundle instantly angered the Future 2 neighborhood and gaming world as a complete. Dubbed The Future 2 Starter Pack, for 15 {dollars} you’d get an Unique ghost shell, Unique ship, Unique sparrow, 125,000 Glimmer, Enhancement Cores, Prisms, and an Enhancement Shard.
Worst of all, nonetheless, was the three Unique weapons that Bungie put into this pack. The three weapons have been a strong mixture of Major, Secondary, and Heavy weapons that included the Traveller’s Chosen Unique Sidearm, Ruinous Effigy Unique Hint Rifle, and Sleeper Stimulant Unique Fusion Rifle. Whereas these Unique weapons aren’t notably meta (in the intervening time), this can be a way more egregious type of paying for energy that Bungie has solely flirted with by way of growth preorder Unique weapons.
However past the paying to win, the most important difficulty right here is that Bungie was charging a whopping $15 {dollars} for straightforward entry to weapons you will get in recreation. As a result of for $15 a brand new participant can, and rightfully ought to, purchase a few the sport’s earlier expansions to pad out the content material they will grind for and get entry to. For instance, throughout a sale, a brand new participant might at the moment decide up the Past Gentle and Witch Queen expansions for not way more than what the starter pack is asking for.
However no, Bungie put short-term earnings forward of long-term development by making an attempt to nickel and dime but once more. It’s like they nonetheless haven’t discovered that over-monetizing can and can push new and previous gamers away out of your recreation. I learn an article earlier in the present day that mentioned Future 2 is changing into increasingly like Diablo Immortal, and I needed to weep at how true that felt. If Bungie had made the starter pack free, then there would have been reward—that’s what Bungie must give attention to.
After which you have got the painfully pointless Season of the Want Silver Bundle that principally sells you the $15 Silver pack and provides a forgettable Legendary Emote to it. How is that an attractive bundle? You get the identical quantity of Silver between each packs, when bundles might stand to be much more attractive and well worth the cash.
What makes these packs really feel quite disingenuous is how they describe the quantity of Silver they provide. The common Silver pack says you get 1,500 Silver plus a 200 Bonus, whereas this new bundle says you get 1,000 Silver plus a 700 Bonus! That leads me to imagine they worded it like that to make gamers suppose they’re getting a greater deal and that feels so soiled. It’s that type of observe that makes me care even much less about new content material when the upper ups at Bungie haven’t appeared to be taught something from their errors this far into improvement.