Destiny: Rising devs on their relationship with Bungie, their "no mandatory voice" raiding policy, and more
We emailed questions to the Destiny: Rising development team. Here's what they had to say back
As I've written on the site before, Destiny: Rising has really taken up a lot of my looter shooter time over the past few weeks.
Rising is a pretty interesting project that comes at a pretty interesting time for Destiny 2, and its inarguable popularity (it was number one on both Google and Apple app stores the week it launched) suggests that Destiny still has a lot of cultural cache ... even if folks are a little mad at what Bungie has been doing with the main game recently.
A few weeks ago, the PR team that represents Destiny: Rising reached out to ask if we'd be interested in sending over some questions for an interview. We did just that, and have now organized the questions and answers into a Q&A format for you below.
We discuss NetEase's relationship with Bungie, how they cater to both mobile players and hardcore Destiny nuts (like me), how they do such a good job at onboarding new players to this infamously complex series, and more.
NetEase did not attribute any quotes to individual developers, so they're instead attributed to the Destiny: Rising development team.
They did not answer one of the questions we submitted. We've lightly edited our questions for clarity.
Rogue: As you were developing the game, what was the relationship like with Bungie? What were they able to offer to ease development? So many of the visual pieces are identical and I'm curious how you all worked together to make that happen?
Destiny Rising team: The Bungie team has been an invaluable mentor and outstanding partner. Collaborating from the perspective of Destiny: Rising's product development, we continuously discuss the new experiences we aspire to offer players.
Throughout this process, we share all our development content with the Bungie team for design and review. Whenever we require design support and guidance, the Bungie team participates in our design meetings, providing insights and sharing their expertise.
R: I ran the raid with a friend last weekend [several weekends ago, at the time of publication] and it was pretty remarkable how much it felt like a slightly simplified version of one of Destiny's raids. We were able to find a solid team, but I could see how it would give matchmade players trouble, especially on mobile. How do you think about balancing the experience for the core mobile gamer audience while keeping it alluring for highly engaged Destiny 2 players?
DR team: We've added a brand new 6-person cooperative gameplay mode (Gauntlet Blitz) as a prerequisite for Destiny: Rising's Raid. In this new mode, players complete a series of combat challenges and learn the mechanical prototypes used in the Raid. This ensures that when players enter the Raid - the ultimate challenge - they already have some understanding of what their character can do, and their goal becomes using these abilities to conquer the grand dungeon puzzle before them.
Additionally, all mechanics in Destiny: Rising's Raid follow a "no-mandatory voice" design principle. Players can use level environments or non-voice interaction systems to coordinate intricately with other players, reducing the pressure of forced communication.
The Raid currently available in Destiny: Rising represents what we consider an acceptable challenge and difficulty level for mobile gamers and new Destiny players. How to further satisfy Destiny 2 players is something we're constantly pondering. Currently, Players have experienced our Week One challenge version with upgraded Raid mechanics. We are still gathering feedback on this method. If this approach works, we'll consider applying it to every subsequent Destiny: Rising Raid design.
R: When building the game, what features from the inspiration Bungie provided had to be drastically altered or couldn't make it into the game because of the limitations of mobile? Both in terms of the power of the machines vs a console and needing to be playable with touch controls.