Just wondering how people think the live team is getting on with regards to their key pillars:
These are the “Guiding Light” for the Live team:
Healthy engagement is paramount.
We maintain a player-first focus.
Provide unambiguous value.
Always be listening, learning, and experimenting.
What that means is that every new design, every piece of content we look at putting in front of the players goes through a vetting process, against these pillars. We hold the content plan up against these pillars and say, “Does this meet all of our requirements? Does it hold true to our values?”
For me, healthy engagement and player-first focus needs looking at again. Having game mode specific challenges that are impossible to progress for hours at a time because the game mode doesn’t appear is not healthy and does not put the player first - it doesn’t respect our time investment.
Now they’ve reduced the store prices I think they are providing more value than at launch (although I still haven’t purchased from the store). I also consider the premium battle pass to be good value. I do not consider the campaign to be of value as you can’t replay missions without losing everything so I haven’t touched it for months - very disappointing.
Always listening? Not sure on this, there used to be a community manager who would post regularly on the forums here. I don’t see much 343 presence here at all nowadays which is a shame.
What do you think about their pillars?
Edit: the event passes which are completely free definitely provide unambiguous value. I think they could easily have put the neon cyber punk helmet attachments in the shop, or the Yoroi Armor core or the recent helmet from Tac Ops but instead they gave them away for free on the event passes which is brilliant
Edit 2: so apparently unambiguous value just means no loot boxes, fair enough
Certainly failing on their first pillar, healthy engagement with the community from my perspective.
I know they said they would put out public facing ‘hot items’ and a roadmap which would help assuming they would also provide touch points and brief updates on their progress of the hot items but given their 90 day and counting delay of a roadmap with little to no acknowledgement allows development of doubt and lack of confidence in the team. Them staying radio silent only hurts them.
“Unambiguous value” means that you know exactly what you are buying. It is clear enough that there is no misinterpretation. Things like loot boxes are very ambiguous since you don’t actually know what you get until after you make the purchase.
I can not fault 343 for their execution of this pillar, I think the battle pass and all store content has been very clearly laid out. So much so that I knew right away that it wasn’t worth it to me to purchase anything.
Unambiguous value does not mean that you think you are getting a good deal with a purchase, it just means you know what you will get.
Including H5, 343’s last Halo title… I think it’s odd they moved away from “everything available through gameplay, just with a big grind” that was generally well regarded by players. (Loot boxes were not liked, but everything being obtainable for free was liked very much)
i thought it would be at very least be a Cortana voice because i didn’t realize Infinite was in the business of selling colors at that time. It was a smooth brain moment for sure.
So that’s how i accidentally spent $5 on the color purple.
Healthly engagement - grade: F
Since the whole Ukraine/mod thing there must be blanket order in 343 to shut up talking to the community. It should’ve been a learning opportunity for them and move on, not clam up.
Player first focus - Grade: F
The experience overall isn’t fun. From the challenges to the modes, to the weapons to the vehicles to the customization to the store. Its very “here it is, it’s ours not yours, take it or leave it” feel.
Provide unambiguous value - grade C+
The prices are coming down and when they have the store and pricing model figured out, I’m sure it’ll be better.
My biggest gripe is I can’t save any presets. So I’m constantly switching coatings for one armor that I want to play with. And that’s not value, that’s annoying.
Always listening, learning, and experimenting. - oh brother …
If you listen to favyns video about what happened before launch with the forerunners, if you listen to the turnover and development problems that 343 encountered…well
Listening: F- (343 doesn’t listen until someone aboves job is at risk, clearly)
Learning: D- 343 made several halo games. Forget multiplayer F2P for a second. This is stuff that should just be muscle memory at this point. And having 7 years…that’s almost 2 university degrees worth of time. You’re not good at learning.
Experimenting: just…don’t. now’s not the time. Meet expectations. Exceed them. Then you’ve earned the right to experiment and take chances with the material.
If you’re being serious then I’d say none of them.
I don’t think misleading fans about the progression system is healthy and not a stressless experience for staff or customers since lying about it would attract a lot of angry fans and some take it too far.
MT store shows they have zero interest in player first focus.
Anyway from my experience so far with Infinite they haven’t listened to a single word and sadly I’ve seen how snarky some of 343i have been for simple just asking about things involving the game due to 343i’s constant misleading info. The fact that people like myself currently don’t trust 343i is not a good sign for the company. I had faith with them in MCC after they fixed it and updated it for a while despite them leaving it for 5 years doing nothing.
They aren’t, because they don’t follow it. It’s about money, and how little they can do while still trying to make as much as possible. I think my forum signature should be enough to prove that.
343i, bring back open lobbies and open communication.
They’ve completely failed at the first and last goal. Every day that goes by is another day that proves 343 made a misstep with Infinite’s live service.
I would almost prefer the event stuff be all in the shop. I value my time, and feel blantantly disrespected as a player being pigeon holed into chasing tedious challenges in a gametype I have no interest what so ever playing.
I’ll argue that experimenting shouldn’t have been their key pillar at all, since the folks at 343 rather experimenting with the foundation of the building and make it collapse than experiment with the sandbox itself.
Experimenting is important, yes, but not in the way 343 has been doing it.
1st 343 dev: how do we make matches as one sided as possible
2nd 343 dev: we could give one team a tank and the other team a Gun goose (yes i’ve had this happen)
The concept is sound: randomly drop ordanance to keep the map interesting and every match is different. Random Racks also follow this concept.
But in practice?
People play Arena shooters not to get screwed by random chance. This is what made Halo 4 mp suck the most, a greater sin than loadouts.
Static power spawns create zones of high traffic. This gives incentive to fight in that area instead of just fighting by running straight.
Random base weapon spawns are just poor design because again, no one wants to be screwed by rng.
Building on point no. 2 : in making areas desirable to fight over, you can design your map to be more breathable and open instead of artificially carving lanes into the map.
It really looks like 343 understood the gameplay feel but still don’t understand Arena Shooter gameplay is only 50% of the puzzle, the other half is the bloody map and objects themselves.
