343i, are you high?

yeah except its not. This is exactly like halo 5. I dont know why you people claim its like 3, i swear youre either on drugs or live in a different dimension

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its good for business. You would buy a literal piece of poop if they said it was cool

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None of this content is needed or has any bearing on gameplay. None. You can’t call something predatory when it’s regarding literal fluff. Predatory is price gouging based on consumer need, there is no need here. Minors don’t have credit cards, so unless empowered by a parent (and that would be their fault) they aren’t even in a position to be “preyed upon” to stick with your dramatic use of “predatory”.

Regarding what “used to be”, $60 also used to cover development costs and generate profit. That ship has long since sailed, yet gamers still balk at paying more than $60 all while demanding more from their games. The “what was” discussion has no place here. In high school I could have bought my parents house for 400k, but now it’s value at 1.2mil. While “what was” explains people’s frustrations, it has no merit in a discussion on modern pricing practices.

I do agree the shop rotation is an issue, primarily because without knowing what’s coming even frugal gamers may spend money on something that’s “good enough” without waiting to see what else is on tap. Hopefully with enough feedback this is something that will change moving forward, but the pricing for most of what they’ve put out to this point is in keeping with their competitors, and those competitors have made a ton of money at those prices.

A note on feedback: for feedback to be taken seriously it needs to be accurate and realistic. If an argument boils down to people taking 343i to task over what are industry norms, chances are your argument is going to fall on deaf ears. Offer your honest feedback, but keep perspective. You’re not going to make a major dev who’s planning based on a 10 year commitment to a platform buck an industry trend by being mad at them.

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I think he means it more like Obi-Wan when he said Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the Force. It was prophesized. They were the chosen ones. They were meant to do away with FOMO practices (like they said they were) and make F2P reasonable again.

Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t make it right, or even okay. In fact, like I said, the only reason they can price gouge like this is because they have a monopoly on cosmetics within their store.

Sorry to hear that. I am annoyed I have to stare at that $20 price tag all week. And yeah, it’d mostly be for the helmet for me as well.
If it helps, if we stand together as a community and boycott the store, we’ll get better prices.

It won’t happen though. Most of the millions of players are unReachable, especially here. Even Reddit only has about a million Spartans. All we can do is make our voices heard.

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Unlocking is part of gameplay. This is price gouging based on consumer expectation and ignorance. Not exactly the same, but it does use manipulative tactics to pressure consumers into purchasing, while simultaneously price gouging. What would you call a lure-and-trap tactic if not predatory? It’s certainly not catch-and-release.
Minors steal cards/stuff like that all the time. My brother once bought hundreds of dollars of games on a phone back in the day because the card was set up on the account and my dad didn’t know. I believe this system also has issues in that people have been asking for refunds and not getting them, though I may be mistaken on that.

I agree that $60 is underpriced for a game.
But… it’s way overpriced for 3 armor sets. $60 is what you might pay someone to model those armor sets as a custom job for one person, and maybe even the rights to use them. Hell, let’s say that was actually $200. $200 split amongst, what, 10 million gamers? They could make that back 50,000 times over just by charging $1 to everyone.

Obviously I know this isn’t why things are priced the way they are, but it is a part of the issue. Not to mention, Campaign is ALSO $60 (so this game would be like $120 if multi was $60), and the Battle Pass is ALSO $10. And the funny thing? If the Battle Pass was $20 (for a good amount of content) and the armors were $5 or $10? They’d be making WAY more money on this stuff.

If 343i doesn’t fix these problems, this game will lose its playerbase and it will fail. People hold Halo to a standard that they don’t hold these new-fangled F2P games to. There isn’t a standard of expected quality in place for Fortnite, and CoD has long been known to be a sellout. Halo has always stood apart. If it’s joining the ranks, it will die, and this monetization plan will fail along with it.

In the short term, I’m sure they’re rolling in it. But it won’t last. My guess is they have until the 8th before people stop giving them more chances, and by the time they fix it, it will be too late. Just like Anthem, just like Gears 5, just like Cyberpunk. This game will die. Deaf ears will be dead ears soon enough.

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I’d legit spend $5 a piece for the Tactilamp, and Vigilant Watch stance. But they are in different bundles and I won’t use the rest of the choices in them so I’m not opening my wallet.

So I’d spend $10 for just these two items, but won’t buy anything now despite the fact that the $10 Tactilamp bundle has four items in it.

Bundles are stupid.

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I agree with this completely, would much rather have everything available piecemeal. It’s likely mean things costing a buck or two more, but at least it let s people buy what they want.

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such a shame most of the halo community isn’t (:
like seriously, the amount of players i see whom have payed 343 for this nonsense is disheartening…

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“Right” or “ok” by who’s metric? You’re burying the lede here, these practices and fee structures have been proven to generate BILLIONS of dollars for their competitors. It’s a complete red herring to blame the success of FTP or microtransactions on “whales”, so who’s in a position to call it “wrong” and " not ok" when it’s working? You’re making a moral argument in an arena that doesn’t concern itself with morals.

It’s their product, of course they’re going to price it as they see fit, and that is being informed by the marketplace.

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Which is exactly the problem?

Also, just fyi, it’s “burying the lede”.

But yes, it is MORALLY wrong to price like this when

  1. they have a monopoly on the cosmetics
  2. they weaponize FOMO to pressure people into making purchases
  3. the rest of the “predatory” stuff.
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Agreed, I justified my purchase of the standard season pass and 1 bundle based on the fact that it is a free to play game. Still have about $35 to spend until I reach the cost of a standard game purchase haha.

I do however believe early customization is lacking and would cure some of the anger with progression. An easy start would be allowing armor coatings and visors to be used on all cores.

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If morals is your issue then you have no real argument. If they were the only dev doing this then you’d have something of a leg to stand on, but you’re literally demanding they take a loss (based on potential profits as established by their competitors) for something as subjective as morals.

This is video game cosmetics we’re talking about, not insulin. No one needs these things to play the game, few need them to actually enjoy the game (be honest about this now), and there is no penalty of opting out from purchasing them.

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I think that is a large part of the issue, and I’m hoping campaign tie-ins alleviate that at retail. Coatings and visors need to be universal though, this would immediately increase value of every pack they’re featured in.

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The argument is that these practices will kill this game. The consumers know we’re getting screwed over and we won’t stand for it.

First off, that’s not a loss. That’s less of a gain. Big difference.
Second off, Halo is held to a higher standard. It needs to be, because it has been out of the limelight for a decade now. And because they made assurances that it would be. Which is lying, or hopefully legally false advertisement.

It’s not about needing them. It’s about the fact that they pressure consumers into buying things they don’t need and potentially can’t afford due to their fomo practices. Which, mind you, are the ONLY reason these things sell AT ALL at these prices.

Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but all campaign cosmetics have been leaked and there isn’t an armor piece among them.

And, finally, please don’t continue to try to silence this feedback, even if you don’t agree with it. The prices should be lowered. That’s the feedback. Many will benefit from this change, but nothing will change if we say nothing.

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I couldn’t agree with this sentiment more. Business/market theory says they’d be fools for taking less, but the cost is sustainability and good will. I love this series and to see it suffer this way right out of the gate makes me so worried. We cannot forget that we got where we are today because not enough people spoke up and were heard to change the trajectory of the stores we see in f2p games.

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Yep. If not for player outcry, we’d still have games evolving off H4 and H5 changes. We’d still have lootboxes. Battlefront 2 would still be a mess.

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I haven’t seen anything that gives me this reaction. The entire customization system is so bad that I am just uninterested in it. I don’t think I would buy anything on offer in the current system even if it only cost $0.99. The only way something is worth getting is if there is a specific armor set with a specific armor coating that you think is so good that you won’t want to use anything else ever. The fact you can’t freely mix and match everything makes me think I’ll just use the default armor for a very long time.

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I’m sorry, did you say the Anubis helmet?

Like, THE Anubis helmet?

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Fair assessment. Of the leaked items, my hope was to wear the Anubis helmet with Purrfect audio.
But, together, those two pieces probably will cost $40. Ha nope.

Yes?

Sorry, I didn’t think I’d get to see that hat again. Thank you for letting me know! :]