We’re in a weird era of mobile games right now. While low-impact time fillers like Subway Surfers and Candy Crush still dominate (the latter made nearly a billion dollars in revenue last year), much of the market is moving in the same direction as ‘core’ console and PC gaming: big-budget triple-A games with flashy graphics, high production values, and grippy compulsion loops. Mobile is already positioned for the kinds of free-to-play monetization models that Sony and other major publishers want to adopt, so in a way, it’s just easier to bring triple-A to mobile than it is to bring mobile to triple-A.
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Destiny: Rising Is Good Fun And Bad Fan Fiction
Destiny: Rising is a non-canon prequel that takes plenty of liberties with the lore.
But this has led to a lot of friction with that core gaming audience. Blizzard attracted headlines and hatred when it transformed its most popular looter into a pay-to-win mobile game with Diablo: Immortal, which is still treated as a meme despite earning half a billion in its first year. Since then we’ve gotten announcements for mobile versions of Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, The Division, Valorant, and Destiny. All of these games, you can be sure, will come with the industry-standard aggressive microtransactions.
I’ve been playing Destiny: Rising’s closed alpha this month, and while you can’t actually spend real money in it right now, all the monetization systems that will supposedly be there at launch are already present. Rising is a free-to-play, pay-to-win gacha game not unlike Diablo: Immortal, but speaking as someone who has a lot of experience with these kinds of games, Rising’s loot boxes aren’t nearly as egregious as I was expecting. In fact, they’re surprisingly kind of… fair?
Destiny: Rising’s Monetization Looks A Lot Like Other Mobile Games
Before you think I’m about to make a passionate “In Defense of Destiny: Rising’s Microtransactions” argument, you must not know ‘bout me. I’ll be the first to condemn any and every predatory mobile game, and Destiny: Rising has plenty of things to criticize.
The game has three different subscriptions. Three! You’ve got a battle pass, a Dazzlemory Membership, and the Tree of Light’s Blessing. The first is a typical ‘level up, get rewards’ plan, the second rewards you with a daily lot of currency for pulls, and the third increases the number of material rewards you get for completing activities, which is another way of saying activities have lousy rewards unless you pay up to make them worthwhile.
And on top of all of that (plus the cosmetic store, item bundles, and in-game currency that can all be purchased with real money), Destiny: Rising also has loot boxes in the form of character pulls. You yank on a slot machine and hope new characters will come out of it, and then you keep yanking on the slot machine because each additional copy of that character infuses with the original to make it more powerful. The thing is – and again, I’ve played a lot of these games – it’s not actually as bad as it sounds.
In Defense Of Destiny: Rising’s Microtransactions
If loot boxes are a hard line for you, Destiny: Rising isn’t going to change your mind. But if you’re concerned that cost and randomness will keep you away from Rising, here’s something that might convince you it’s not worth worrying about. Rising’s character pulls are not nearly as intrusive as other games, and you won’t be significantly gated from any content even if you don’t engage with it at all.
Technically, you only need one Lightbearer of each energy type, and you’ll get one of each for free during the campaign. You’ll be able to level those characters up, improve their relics, power up their weapons, and move through all of the progression systems even if you never pull them or any other character. The only thing you’re missing out on is a collection of passive bonuses on their skill tree. These are important for maximizing each character’s efficacy, but they’re not required. So far, the game has never told me I can’t move forward because I’m missing a skill.
The main currency for pulling characters, Lumia Leaves, are awarded to you constantly. You get them from daily quests, triumphs, events, and from the competitive PVP mode, Calamity Ops. In the Alpha – which again, may not be representative of the actual game – I’ve collected every character and unlocked the complete skill tree for four of them, and I can’t spend any money.
This Is Just The Alpha Though
I’m not naive. All of these games flood you with currency and materials early so that when you hit the wall, you’re desperate to spend money to keep your momentum. I don’t expect the full game to be as generous as the Alpha has been, but I don’t get the sense you’re going to be hamstrung by character pulls. The game definitely wants your money – a lot of it – but NetEase has seemingly recognized that centering a slot machine is not the best way to do that.
I like doing the occasional pull. I don’t pay much attention to my Lumia Leaves, but when I’ve finished all my dailies and and I’m about to log off for the day, I’ll check and see if I have enough saved up for a ten pull. I’ll end up getting a punch of random materials and maybe one or two characters that will feed into my skill trees. It never feels that important or game-changing, which is the perfect place for loot boxes to be.
If it’s significantly worse at launch, I’ll be the first to call it out, but right now it seems like Destiny: Rising has the maximally acceptable amount of gacha. We’re grading on a curve, people. Mobile is a cesspool, so we have to take the wins wherever we can.
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