Original Post: Click at your own discretion
Summary
Sometimes you need to get something off of your chest knowing that it probably won’t change anything. This is one of those times. I want to apologize for any bad grammar or misspelling. I will fix them in post edit when people point them out or when I notice them. If there are any concerns with the content by monitors just let me know.
After reporting my 20th player (rough estimate) today, I started thinking to myself about the current state of the game. For the first time since Halo: Infinite release, I opened my eyes wide enough to see the Halo clearly for the first time since launch. My Conclusion is that 343 values cheaters more than any other customer type when it comes to Halo: Infinite. It’s a wild claim, I know! So I will try my best to explain my thought process and I am sure this post will have some logical fallacies I would need to explain or retract and I am OK with that.
343 VALUES CHEATERS MORE THAN ANY OTHER CUSTOMER TYPE. Lets start by identifying common customers types currently playing Halo. Obviously, these customer types below aren’t the only ones and I understand that people will fall into multiple categories.
- The Campaigners - The people who mainly the enjoy PvE aspect of the game (CO-OP, Firefights, xyz)
- The Creators - The people who enjoy the creative aspect of Halo, creating new game types and maps
- The Rank Climbers - The people who enjoy the competitive side of Halo (not necessary pros)
- The Casual Multiplayer - The people who don’t like rank but enjoy the casually organize MP (Game modes such as BTB, SWAT, All Snipers, Zombies, XYZ)
- The Jack of all trades - The people who play any game mode anytime. They just want to have fun above all else.
- The High Profile Gamers- These are pros/high profiled streamers.
- The Buyers - The people who will frequently buy microtransactions.
- Cheaters - People who want the of recognition of being good without putting in the work to be good. So they cheat but also try to hide it. Don’t confuse these people with OG Cheaters. When I talk about cheaters below. I am talking about all cheaters. For some reason people tend to forget that their own teammates can be cheaters as well. I know have personally benefited greatly from having cheaters on my team. Its hilarious watching a person on your team cheat in theater mode because you can know they are solo queued and no one is making call outs but yet they know where all the enemies are on the map.
- OG Cheaters- People who just want to see the world burn. There isn’t anything you can really do about this group of customers. They don’t even hide cheating. They will do it without regard to consequences. The best kind of cheater in my opinion. They have my respect. They know what they want and they go out and do it. We will not be talking about them in the next section.
Now that we have some common ground, I will try to explain to you why I believe Cheaters are valued higher over each of these group. I am sure by now you have figured out a couple of examples yourself. Below I will be providing reasons for my perceptions on how each customer type is valued.
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The Campaigners. 343 released a game without co-op, no firefights, and no other way for a player to enjoy PvE outside of playing Campaign. They only thing these players got from 343 was a vague promise that Campaign DLC will be released and Co-op being release 6 months after the game has been release. By the time this is release, the magic that comes from playing a Campaign the first time through with friends will be dead and unrewarding. Campaigners would have probably LASO the game 4-5 times by this time and probably be attempting speed runs. Value as a customer 4/10
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The Creators - Create what? when? How? The creativity aspect of the franchise is non existent. The days of randomly finding oddly fun and stress free game modes are over. Currently, The best estimated release date for Forge is Season 3 or August 2022. This was based on the best information I could find. If we were to follow the current business model, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to buy Forge Cosmetic Packs to unlock advance shapes or structures. Otherwise players will have to enjoy being creative with squares and triangles. Value as a Customer 3/10
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The Rank Climbers - The title gives this one away. The report system and lax approach to cheating negatively impacts Rank Climbers the most because it ruins their games. However, you can also see the lack of value in the limited options of rank playlist. There is literally only one. 343 should at least have a ranked Rumble Pit playlist by now. Instead, They force every person into the same playlist. This leads to people AFK/Leaving, Throwing the game, or just basically not trying to win when they are forced to play Capture the Flag on Behemoth for the 3rd game in a row. it creates unnecessary tension between players who just wan to play Slayer and players who want to play objectives, which can lead to an awful experience. So if you get lucky enough to not have a cheater in your game, you will probably have a griever in your game that doesn’t want to play an objective game. Value as a Customer 5/10
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The Casual MP - Man I used to envy you guys back in the day. I felt like you guys had it all and genuinely enjoyed it all. The level of pure enjoyment the Casual MP type used to get from Halo is unmatched in any game. The amount of playlist and game modes you guys had to choose from seemed endless. Obviously you aren’t valued as much anymore because you only have a shell of what you used to have. BTB barely works. They finally bring over the cult classic Swat but that mode is can be a little too try hard for most casuals. In order to balance out the selection 343 makes Fiesta permanent, which was like the least popular game mode in Halo for as long as I could remember. They locked Rumble to single player so casual players can’t enjoy playing rumble pit with friends. No Zombies? No racing? No BTB on small maps? No selection. Value as a Customer 5/10
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The Jack of All Trades - This is pretty Self-explanatory. Essentially, they don’t value any of your trades so they don’t value you. Currently, I would say you are the least valued customer because you have no identity thus you have no voice. Value as customer 1/10
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The High Profile Gamers - How can cheaters be valued higher than these people?!? This is a one way street. They are value for the recognition can bring to the brand. However, they don’t value the High Profile Gamers Brand. If they did, they would also value the people who are important to high profile gamers, which are the other types of their customers. When 343 lose their other customers types, high profile gamers will also lose revenues and will be forced to move on to a different game. However, 343 does understand the importance of High Profile Gamers for their Brand recognition so they try to keep them happy. That is the reason for their score. Value as customer 7/10
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The Buyers - You buy things they like you. However, The quality of cosmetics vs price is atrocious. Its feels like they are looking for that sweet spot between quality of cosmetics and price where they can still overcharge for it and you know it but its not worth complaining about anymore. Personally, I don’t see any difference of quality between Legendary Cosmic, Epic, or common. Maybe there is one and its so small I don’t notice it. When I purchased my first “Legendary” cosmic it felt more like I purchased the “idea” that it was legendary and had a yellow highlight instead of an item that was unique compared to the rest of the cosmetics. Also the bundling system to encourage someone to spend $20 in one shot is awful. These bundles includes: one decent cosmetic, 2 “it could be worst” cosmetics, and the rest is just garbage. In games using similar pricing, $20 can get you a whole lot more. Buying $20 Cosmetics in this game feels unrewarding. However, this type spends money so they will slowly listen. Value as Customer: 6/10
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The Cheaters - This game was literally designed for cheaters to thrive in. The plan to handle cheaters before the games release was pretty much non existence. The anti cheat is unsuccessful and feels like it only detects cheats that directly alters the application and has no ability to detect other ways of cheating. The lack of transparency is frightening. When you give people the ability to operate in the dark, it empowers them not weakens them. After all of this, I was still giving 343 the benefit of doubt. I was creating excuses for them. They didn’t even need to do it for me. I kept telling myself “Maybe, they over looked it by accident”, “no one would plan for this”, etc. After my 20th report, I noticed the smoking gun right in front of me all along. THE REPORT SYSTEM IS DESIGNED FOR CHEATERS TO NOT BE REPORTED! Who would design a report system like this and still want to collect accurate data on the state of their game? The answer is No one. This system was never intended to be an effective way to report a player. Every step of the process is designed to detour someone from completing a report. There are so many things wrong with this system. Due to time commitment required to report, I have never reported a teammate for cheating despite knowing that they are cheating. I believe this is due to not having the necessary motivation fueled by losing to go through such a lengthy process. The Report system was designed for cheaters to have the best experience out of all of the customer types. I will put some examples of my biggest concerns below. Value as Customer 8/10
- The 49 MB Size Limit is ridiculous small. This means someone has to know how to reformat videos in order to report because all XB clips are over that Size.
- The clips must be short so it may be hard to show the gravity in which someone is cheating unless you are willing to spend the time reformatting multiple clips
- You can’t report in game. This forces people research on ways to report people.
- It requires players to spend time reviewing games and clipping the perfect examples which is almost near impossible in 29 second clips.
- The overall time it takes to report one player exceeds the time it takes to play a game. if you wanted to report every instance of cheating you see, you would have to spend a significant amount of time reporting players rather than playing the game.
- 343 gives a disclaimer saying they will not look at any report unless you have media attached to it
- To access the report player ticket, it feels like you have to unlock a hidden area of the website.
In my opinion, this was no mistake. This was no overlook. The lack of action to correct or offer reasonable or temporary fixes shows the real intent. How do you publicly recognize that cheating is out of control yet still require your player base to jump through hoops to report? 343 words are shaping up to be hollow wisp in the wind and their actions are slowly revealing their soul. The entire structure of Halo’s anti cheat protocols creates the perfect environment for cheaters to thrive without great risk. The only time 343 will hastily punish a cheater is if they are publicly exposed by a High Profile Gamer. I believe the motivation behind acting this quickly is because they want to protect their brand and ignoring publicly exposed cheaters ruins games. This is because 343 most valued customers are the Microsoft Share Holders Valued as Customer 10/10 I don’t know if there some statistics out there that can justify this business decision. Do cheaters spend more money than all other types of customers? I don’t know. I can’t understand why 343 would take this approach or the benefits of it. The only thing I know for certain is that there were millions of dollars spent on market research in order to gather and process viable information that would be contributors in the decision-making process of the game. The most important factor to their most valued customer is the Return on Investment (ROI). So, I am sure they have some spread sheet that justified their actions to please shareholders so they can keep the lights on and none of this was a mistake.
TL:DR: 343 actions shows that they value cheaters more than you. I will never go back to believing the current state of the game was a mistake. The game is performing as intended. Incorrectly analyzing the market research on the response of their customer base is the only mistake 343 made in their decision-making process.
EDITED: I tried to clean up the post for approval. I am not sure why it was flagged because I didn’t receive a reply. If you are monitor reading this. Please just tell me what to fix. I am a reasonable person. Can you please unlock the comment section so I can have a proper discussion with my peers
