Okay, kinda a weird title but stay with me, it actually makes a bit of sense. So before we saw much of the game and when they first announced the battle pass and told us how it worked it sounded amazing. A battle pass that isn’t a grind or a chore to do, one that never expires? Man, 343 is really knocking it out of the park, right? They had fans of almost every other live service game looking at them saying “This is great, we need more games to follow what Halo is doing.” They were essentially The Chosen One in terms of live service games, pro consumer in almost every way.
Well now fast forward a few months to now. The muliplayer has officially launched and we have had hands on with the game for a bit now, including the 3 flights we had. Now some troubles started to pop up in the flights, mainly the players not liking certain aspects of the game like how you rank up, lack of customization, and aspects of the game being changed when no one wanted change, for example: player collision. I really feel 343’s response to those criticisms was a major red flag that was missed by a lot of people. For a majority of the core complaints they were brushed under the carpet and we were told to “give it a chance, I’m sure it will be great for launch and everyone will really like our new systems that we’ve implemented.” Well 343, we did that and people are screaming for player collision, more gamemodes, more colors/customization, A PROGRESSION SYSTEM.
While they have addressed these, their responses have not been adequate. They said collision was split, though these forums and Reddit make it clear a majority of people want it. And they are working on a progression system, but it really should have been here from the get go, because people are already leaving the game for the lack of one. But as for customization, that’s where the idea for this post came from. This game has THE WORST customization out of ANY Halo game that has come before it, even Halo 5. Like it is such a chore to even unlock bp levels as is, but the fact that most of the armor is missing and not in the current game, or that for free players they have almost no customization at all. People aren’t being rewarded for their time spent. They took all the goodwill that the internet gave them and took it for granted, now they have fallen to the Dark Side and are milking their players insane amounts of money for very little reward. This is the worst progression system I have personally ever seen.
But unfortunately I’m not done. So all that missing armor right? Well we’re gonna be unlocking it through the campaign right? Through those armor lockers, so that’s actually really cool… except it’s not. You don’t unlock any armor from the campaign. mainly coatings, charms, and a stance… wow. This is just bad, where is all the armor? Are they really gonna try to sell each helmet to us for $10? 343, it truly feels like you are trying to kill your game will all the bad decisions you’ve made. The base game is amazing, it plays better than most of the new games out there now, you made a solid game that launched will little to no issues… except when it comes to player happiness and retention. 343, please come back to the light and be the hero you were originally thought to be. Be Anakin Skywalker, not Darth Vader. I really don’t want to wait over 20 years for your son to bring you back.