So there are hundreds of posts on here that discuss the merits/lack-there-of for a battlepass “live service” halo.
Ultimately, beyond the potential profits 343 makes off of the battlepass by the remaining player base, it’s not widely considered a success by the community.
I’ve thought about the why to this a lot, because I spend an awful lot of time playing BP style games.
And ultimately, I think the issue is that outside of what you can unlock from the BP, you aren’t really achieving anything. We are assigned a “rarity” to weekly ultimate rewards, or BP items, that is for all intents and purposes meaningless. I don’t feel extra proud for unlocking an orange item at the end of a week as opposed to a purple item. Especially when the struggle to get there is the same.
What I WOULD feel a sense of accomplishment towards, is unlocking additional features to pieces I unlock from the BP through player experience.
With the Winter Update, we’re getting match XP on top of challenge XP, we are still getting double XP tokens, and all of that is okay, except that beyond getting to the end of the BP, what does a player have to look forward to?
CoD and Warzone on top of their battlepass have weapon skins, reticles, etc, to earn by using certain weapons in certain play styles. Now Halo already has some weapon skins and vehicle skins and what not to earn, but there could be a feasible shift in stuff that can be earned from the BP, and things you could unlock for playing a certain way.
Weapons are a bit difficult to focus on in an arena style game, as the introduction of this system would absolutely affect how players play a match. If there was suddenly some equivalent to a “gold skin” for a sniper, everyone would gun for the sniper, and other problems like that.
—the possible solution—
What we do have are armor pieces. I think it would be reasonable to have your base armor sets you earn without the BP, and the ones paying players get from the BP, have earnable armor enhancements you get by wearing the armor you unlock.
You get to level 20, and you unlock that awesome shoulder piece youve been eyeing since the beginning of the season? Cool. But now what? You and everyone else liked that armor piece, and now you and everyone else is wearing it. Except that YOU are exceptional at getting the most kills in a game, or perhaps you live the longest on average in a game, or perhaps you have incredible aim and land those headshots consistently.
These feats at this point, don’t have any real significance in the game. With the winter update, your ability to be a good player may gain you more XP for the BP, but beyond that? Nothing, really.
But they could help unlock alterations to that armor pieces you’ve been wearing. Different scarring effects on the armor pieces, a bullet crack in the visor, smoke emenating from your shoulder pads, whatever.
Reach had the expensive effect pieces and late LATE game armor pieces to earn that either required an incredible amount of time played or spending literally none of your money until you could get the storm effect
This would make it so you see a player with the giant, gaping hole in their armor where bullets and swords and what not have taken their toll, and you’ll understand that THAT player has spent an incredible amount of time winning their firefights when their sheilds are depleted.
Make your spartan look like YOUR. SPARTAN. This allows the BP to exist, and still gives players a long term objective they can decide to work towards that allows them to feel accomplishments long after their battlepasses are filled out.
This is a genuine discussion piece, I’d love to hear thoughts on this. What I want most is for MP in Infinite to thrive, and for players to enjoy logging on day to day.
Criticisms? Add-ons? What do you think?
- rFreefolk