If you are still willing to buy anything in the store after the update, you are part of the problem. You are one of the reasons the game industry is in the state it’s in. You are one of the reasons 343 launched an incomplete game and are fixing it at a snail’s pace. If you are ok with that, that’s fine. But stick around, and hopefully I can help you partially understand things from a different perspective.
I need to be very clear about this first thing. The updated store prices are still gouging. I know that you believe these prices are fair. You have your reasons for saying that, but you are objectively wrong. They are fair for you. That’s the point of calling you a whale. To the general population of the game, they are gouging. 343/Microsoft does this on purpose because they know if they normalize exceedingly high prices, more and more people will cave and buy them. That’s the reason you keep hearing people say that whales are all 343 cares about, and it’s partially the truth. They’re banking on the community believing that. Literally. They know that if we see other people are willing to pay these prices, they can convince us these prices are set in stone. If we believe the prices won’t change, we’ll buy just in case. They pretty much know that we have no self control over our panicky human brains. And they are hoping that panic brain will turn a previous non whale, into a whale.
And that’s why they designed the store from the ground up to help you part with your money. Want anything at all? You have to spend a minimum of $5. Why? If you’ve got a few extra credits laying around, you’ll probably be willing to buy more credits in the future. You’re just a few credits shy of that new item in the shop, right? Not sure if you want to buy something from the store today or this week? Well we’re going to imply that it probably won’t be coming back again. And if it does come back, we’re not gonna let you know when! Make sure you check the store everyday, so you don’t miss it! Or any of our other products ;^}. BTW, is there something that you liked in one of our previous games? We’re selling it as part of a $20 bundle! No, you can’t get an individual piece of the bundle for a lower cost! Why? Because legally we can call this a bundle and sell it for any amount we want. We know the government will never come in to regulate us, so it doesn’t matter. We can literally do whatever we want. In fact, these are “rare” now. And these are “legendary”. WE know these are arbitrary rankings made up by us, because there is no limit to the amount of items and almost none of them are acquired through grinding. But if YOU believe this false rarity is real, you might buy it ;^}!
I could go on, but I think the point here is made.
This store is intentionally as scummy as possible, and 343 lied to us about it the entire time leading up to the launch of the game. Especially about FOMO. And now they’ve again misled us for the last few weeks with their updated store claims. Telling us they’re “listening to the community”, yet I have seen literally no one asking for a helmet to be $7. That’s a joke. I saw people saying $5, and even then, most people weren’t agreeing with them. The average response was being willing to pay between $1 - $3, with the latter being most common. And a very common agreement on the price of most skins is for them to be $1. Not for basic colors like pink or white, but for more intricate patterns or gradients or simply anything that actually took artistic endeavor to create, not just a color on a spectrum. Same with visors. Not ONE SKIN (that would have been included in previous games) and ONE VISOR to be $4. And I know this is all speculation on my part. But I think we can at least all agree that the community is giving heavy feedback on what they think the price should be, and that price is not $7 for a helmet. Imagine being a company that gets this much feedback from their users, telling you exactly WHAT they’re willing to pay for and HOW MUCH they’re willing to pay, and then you just completely ignore them. Most marketing departments would cream their pants for that kind of data. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who expected more slots available in the store for individual items to appear, not them taking up established slots. I don’t actually care about this part that much because I’ve been boycotting the store since the game came out, but I imagine this has to frustrate a good amount of the people who do use the store regularly or were waiting for certain items to come back.
Look, If you buy that helmet, good for you. You probably live a comfortable life and I’m glad you have the luxury to do so. But don’t forget that you’re making a statement to 343 with that purchase. That you also believe everyone else who plays this game deserves to pay that much money as well. If you bought this helmet because ODST’s are your effing favorite part about Halo, I need you to think about this for a second. Every kid who’s picking up Halo for the first time, isn’t getting to fall in love with it like you did. You played campaign, you saw those badass helljumpers, and you made it your multiplayer helmet because you thought it was the coolest -Yoink!- in the world, and you wanted to represent it. A kid can’t do that anymore. They have to consciously decide whether or not it’s worth it to convince their parent/caretaker/someone to purchase it for $7. As a gaming community, we’re already outraged at that price. How many kids do you think will be able to convince a non-gamer to spend $7 on an online helmet? And yes, the battle pass does include a variation of the ODST helmet. But what do we do when $7 is the norm for helmet prices, and there aren’t variations of it somewhere? Is this the standard we want? Kids literally can’t experience falling in love with this game in the same way we did, purely because of corporate greed. These kids also don’t get to experience custom games, forge, or co-op campaign, but that’s just too much to get into at the moment.
IF YOU READ ONLY ONE PART, READ THIS PART
The craziest thing to me, is that the ultimate goal is to sell items in the shop. We’re straight up telling 343 what we are willing to pay. 343 could lower the store prices for a week or two, and see how the sales compare. If it doesn’t work, they can just make the prices whatever else they want. There is nothing stopping them from doing this. They are dragging their feet as hard as possible just in the hopes that they can sway public opinion to believe these prices are normal. Don’t fall for their bull-Yoink!-.
The bottom line is, 343 is incredibly greedy and the only way to combat them is to not give them your money. Yes, we all know this is stupid and it feels pointless (it’s not) and this isn’t how the world should work. And yet. Here we are. So find a reason you care about, to not give them money, and just stick with it. At least until they make improvements you feel are good enough to spend money on again. I personally have a plethora of reasons. Game crashes, desync/netcode, ranking system (almost every way it affects the game), sandbox imbalance, BTB, no custom games, no forge, rampant cheating in multiplayer, and ESPECIALLY BECAUSE OF THE OVERPRICED STORE. Hopefully I’ve been able to expand anyone’s view of the situation. I also hope that the replies will help to expand my view.
TL;DR
-343 can lower and raise prices whenever and as many times as they want. They aren’t doing it because they want to convince you these prices are ok. They’re not.
-343 lied about the store prior to the launch and are still lying to this day
-the only thing you can do is not spend money
-Imagine being a kid and not being able to wear your favorite armor unless you begged your mom to pay for it. Would you have been able to fall in love with the game the same?