There is no data to evaluate. There are no spreadsheets to compile. There is no algorithm to tweak. Get a professional community communications strategy and implement it. That probably will involve restructuring your corporate culture, especially as it pertains to information flow. That's probably long overdue. From every publically available source, from leaks to press to tweets, Bungie's internal information flow seems paranoid, vindictive, and deeply arrogant. We all saw the fallout from XP manipulation, saw it made worse by a PR strategy that looked less like a professionally managed coms strategy than a teenager talking to the cops about what they found in his locker. You could have fessed up. You didn't. You were caught red-handed. The community had reverse-engineered the method for XP scaling and you still acted like it was a glitch. The podcast was 55 minutes of "design is hard". Not once have you acknowledged that this was [i]design, functioning as designed.[/i] You could have averted the current situation. When the XP issue blew up in your face you already knew what The Dawning was going to be. You already knew about two-tiered shaders and daily quests that don't actually deliver the seasonal content. You already knew about seasonal engrams padded with non-seasonal loot. You already knew about 7 dust shaders and shard shaders. You knew because it was [i]design, functioning as designed.[/i] You knew. You released it anyway. We had some guesses, but within a few hours of Dawning going live, we knew too. [b][i]Like we always do.[/i][/b] What I want to see from Bungie in the new year is a heaping pile of reality-informed humility. I want to see an end to a communications strategy that seems based on the idea that we, collectively, can't tell when we are being lied to. Most of all I want to see an end to the whinging rhetoric that 'this is hard", or that "we're learning" (which would apply if we were complaining about things that weren't on purpose), as if managing communication for a persistent multiplayer game has never been done before. You don't have to figure out how to do this from scratch. You could even hire someone who has done this before. That you haven't done so is deeply indicative. EDIT: - Thanks for the support, crew. A few quick points: - Community engagement CAN be done well, and that always involves transparency. I know that feels like a risk, that if you talk about a change the dev team is considering we'll take it as a promise and freak out (you've said so many times in interviews, panels, etc). Get that myth out of your head and off the table. If you say you're considering *feature X*, let us know. If it doesn't pan out (code problem, balance issue, etc), let us know that too. You'll get a few angry posts. You will ALWAYS get a few angry posts, no matter what you do. What you won't get with a casual, water-cooler conversation approach is daily articles in Forbes and a total lockdown of your forums. The most successful community engagement I've ever seen, and consistently delivered over years to a huge and contentious community, was Greg Street's stint for Blizzard (and he's still amazing at this). He told us everything short of actual code, and even explained why. We, the community, had reverse-engineered the game in near entirety (even including large portions of the server code), had done it almost instantly, and were providing Blizzard with a constant stream of feedback. Yes, there was a lot of rage (nowadays, "salt"), a lot of player entitlement, all the problems that are always present. There was also a solid data engineering community for WoW that provided very robust testing, balance feedback, and metagaming insight. Destiny also has a very sophisticated metagaming community. Consider how long it takes us to publish full statistical breakdowns on new gear, encounters, etc. Remember Sleeper Simulant, and how many hours (*HOURS*, not weeks) it took us to crack the code. Consider further that with a PC release, those community engineering times are only going to get shorter. We, collectively, are smarter than you, collectively. That's not a problem particular to Bungie or Destiny. One of my screenwriting professors hammered into our heads the fact that our audience will ALWAYS be smarter than us. They know who dunnit, which way the character should run, etc. They will spot every single time you break your world logic or drop continuity, so if I see a problem, I have to fix it, and do so knowing that for every glitch I catch, the audience will find a hundred more. The flipside of that is that the audience is also more forgiving than the author [b]if the author is making an honest effort[/b]. You may be surprised at how much support, goodwill, and [b]practical problem solving[/b] you will get from a community that feels you're being honest and transparent. You already know the alternative. I don't know if it's fully sunk in: we will find everything. If you try to sneak something by us we will catch you every time. We know what non-answers look like. We can tell the difference between a glitch (Mayhem nova-bomb) and a design (manipulative micro-economy of the Dawning). Be honest. Be transparent. Tell us what you're working on and what you need to know from us. Big, live games are a partnership, not a heist. 2nd Edit: To clarify: I think everyone can agree that the previous communications strategy wasn't working and that the prior content release structure (i.e. scant DLC and Eververse-heavy) wasn't working either. I don't want to castigate anyone for mistakes made in a complex corporate, technological, and financial environment. I want to hear about what's going to happen going forward. You can show us a new approach on the first official reply. Tell us what's being tested for sandbox changes. Tell us what's going to change about Eververse and what's moving to the general loot pool. Imagine we're all having coffee, we've already talked about the weather, there's a lull in conversation and you lead in with "Well, we're working on some pretty cool stuff, like...". And then tell us something. It's not a contract, it's not a promise, it's a conversation. This is a great time to permanently retire the "tease of the hint of the preview" approach that's been the go-to in the past. I like to know when a stream is coming up, but I don't need 2-3 consecutive TWAB's where that's the only info conveyed. Once a week you have an opportunity to build trust and goodwill. On any given week you have *some* information that is probably interesting and worth a discussion. Case in point: I would have enjoyed knowing what was in today's patch [i]before[/i] the servers came back up. It looks like you're trying to course-correct DLC locked content. That's great! It specifically looks like we've got a Faction Rally and Iron Banner coming sooner than later. Also great! That's info we could have heard at the same time as the downtime announcement. Maybe you're keeping quiet until you're ready to address all of this head-on. Maybe you're figuring out an approach. Maybe this actually isn't the best time for a short tweet about "Hey, DLC locking on Rallies and IB are getting fixed. They're coming on (insert dates here)". Maybe it's important to take every opportunity to show you're going to do things differently. Maybe you're going to say something in the next 24 hours that makes my entire rambling monologue irrelevant. The only reason I've posted any of the above is the belief that Bungie is staffed with people who want to, and are capable of, doing better on these fronts. I hope there are staff that find this empowering. You CAN turn this ship.