Reciting wrongness is just even more wrong as it is a lie not only to the truth, but also to one’s integrity.
How are they wrong? You haven’t refuted them yet.
You pay money to get better quality guns and vehicles.
Those who have the most quantity of these uber-guns and vehicles have a much higher chance of victory.
Had REQs just been a tier system to what your team could use INSTEAD of also stacking on the fact that you have to earn REQs in your packs, this would be a non issue.
But the fact of the matter is that I can pay BAZINGA dollars to get a LOTTA good guns and vehicles and such.
So I can spawn in an ONI Scorpion, get slays with that since it has more armor and damage than other Scorpions, and then if it is destroyed, I can have 9 more stocked up while the enemy team might have only one player with just one ONI Scorpion.
Which means if I destroy that one enemy ONI Scorpion, I automatically have a permanent advantage for the remainder of the match.
At least it isn’t as pay to win as Halo Online was going to be, I’ll give it that bonus point. For example, Halo Online was going to make it so that you RENT loadout weapons. Sure, you could GRIND for that item OR you could pay IRL monies to rent that gun.
- https://i.imgur.com/3UXExSj.png
None of those tools are gated behind paywalls. You can earn them with playtime. There is nothing that is purchased solely with real money. You need not spend an additional dime after purchasing Halo 5 to attain everything there is to offer.
Except there is an upper-limit of how many you can use in one game, simply constrained by REQ level, energy, and match time length. And to reiterate, Warzone matchmakes players based on their prevailing REQ arsenal. You know what that means?
To reiterate again, if you elect to queue into Warzone with a weak REQ arsenal, it’s your fault if you find yourself poorly matched against those who were prepared before queuing.
Again, nothing in Halo 5 is strictly gated behind paywalls. Everything can be earned with playtime.
That’s literally how any competitive game works.
Which makes it a good thing that Halo Online shouldn’t be considered in this discussion.
If your intention is to play Warzone, then you’re not going to have the high-level Weapons and Vehicles that can turn the tide if you’re just playing the game. That’s the issue with the system. MarcoStyles pulled a great video during his discussion on the issues with Halo 5, that showed the person in the video absolutely demolishing the enemy team using nothing but Prophet’s Bane and a DMR. If you’re just playing the game, you’re not going to be able to access high-level REQs like the Prophet’s Bane regularly.
The system may allow you to get everything by playing, but it certainly doesn’t encourage it.
And how do you get better REQs, pray tell? Why, you either grind for hours in the non-Warzone mode OR you shoot some money across to Microsoft and 343 for a drop of REQ packs so you can get the high-level stuff you borderline need to make the game actually playable. Funny that.
Everything in Warframe can be earned by playing the game, but it’s going to take a lot of hours to do it.
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Then you suffer the consequences of not having prepared beforehand by accumulating REQ cards, which, as I said earlier, can be earned with playtime either through Warzone OR Arena modes (which incidentally do not have REQ integration).
The Prophet’s Bane and DMR, as examples, aren’t exclusive behind paywalls. Any player can use them. This isn’t indicative of Warzone being “pay-to-win”.
Again, you incur the fault of not having prepared, “just playing the game” or not. Don’t expect the game to cater to you “just playing the game”.
Then this isn’t an issue with Warzone being “pay-to-win”, but that progression is solely intertwined with REQ packs that can be expedited with real money. I agree with this, Halo 5 could have had a better progression system, but again, this isn’t indicative of Warzone being “pay-to-win”.
Warzone or Arena modes. You accumulate REQ points by completing matches in either category of playlists, then use those points to purchase REQ packs. Did you play Halo 5?
Back in Halo 5’s heyday I would earn up to four REQ packs per hour. That’s already very generous. The grind itself doesn’t matter because, again, Warzone matchmakes players based on their prevailing REQ arsenal. Even if people are ahead of you by purchasing packs with real money, Warzone tries to prevent you from matching them until you have complementary REQs.
Are you complaining about a progression system in which you earn things over time?? Have you played, like, ANY video game?
Same goes with pretty much every pay-to-win game.
You can grind for the goods, but the fact that you can also pay to get the goods means that you are fighting an uphill battle against some player using Daddy’s Money to gain an advantage.
It is sickening for a fully-paid Triple-A experience to do that.
Yes, you get to play with players who have the same REQs access as you, but does that account for quantity?
There is a reason I mentioned the ONI Scorpion.
Because I have a match where I had to fight three of those at once and when we managed to destroy two of them, they were INSTANTLY replaced by two more!
At the time I had only two ONI Scorpions in my REQ Deck.
And none of my three friends had any to speak of.
Quite frankly, adding “Trading Card” levels of gameplay to a FPS shooter is odd.
If only there was a way to suddenly get the cards I need to play War Zone and actually have a better chance of winning and actually ENJOY the mode?
Sounds pretty Pay-To-Win, doesn’t it?
Again, just because you can grind for it as an alternative DOESN’T make it not pay to win.
For example, lets look at that image I posted in my previous comment.
At 216,000 Grind Points you could rent the ADV AR for 24 hours - OR - you could spend 860 MTX Points to do the same thing.
Again.
Who wins more often?
The player who grinds for the goods and ergo has far less hours with the ADV AR?
Or the player who sinks money into the game and pull up three weeks worth of time with the ADV AR?
NOPE
Skill is competition.
Pocketbook is just the Upper Classes winning against the Lower Classes, which we have already in real life.
Videogames are supposed to be equal matches with skills determining the victor.
NOT the victor being determined by bigger coffers.
Halo Online is Hard Pay-to-win because that applied to ALL gamemodes.
H5 Gorbians is more lenient as only two modes were Pay-to-win.
But Pay to Win is still Pay to Win.
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And yet, every time a new Halo game comes out, it breaks records. The name holds weight, especially when they market and promise constantly. The foundation of this type of capitalism is to lie. To create a problem and sell a solution. Want an example?
343i makes 8 seasons of content and an “Exchange” system in MCC
“Wow, that sure is so much content that’s so hard to grind out… What if you could buy your way through?”
343i now sells you a solution to a problem
A problem they created
That is simply how the machine works - and make no mistake, it will work.
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100% AGGREEMENT
Halo 4 is a prime example of this.
It sold well to the retailers at reportedly around 10,000,000 copies sold worldwide, with the majority being in North America.
And yet . . .
- Season 2 and Season 3 of Spartan-Ops were cancelled.
- Two years of DLC Map Packs, Armor Packs, and Weapon Skin Packs were cancelled
It sold well to retailers, but if we look at the player-population-counts; it makes me wonder how many users refunded the game? A refund that the retailers pay and NOT 343 or Microsoft.
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Again, I may as well copy-paste this, Warzone matchmakes players based on their prevailing REQ arsenal. You are less likely to match against players who have accrued a sizable REQ arsenal lest you already have weapons to complement theirs.
Allegedly, yes. But even if it were one player with three of one REQ and one with thirty of the same REQ, neither may even use three in a single game, and even if the one with thirty did, it must mean you’re stomping the one with the overpowered REQ.
Do you think all the Scorpions came from a singular player? Warzone is a team effort. Despite that, I don’t think it’d be healthy for Warzone’s population to be so scrupulous with its matchmaking. I believe it’s done by REQ rarity, not the REQs specifically.
You can’t trade them, and I think they’re like that because they’re consumable. I also think the style was popularized by Destiny. So.
That’s not indicative of Warzone being “pay-to-win”. That’s a demonstration of one’s lack of patience and impulse-control. Regardless, you wouldn’t get a “better chance of winning” because, again" Warzone matchmakes players based on their prevailing REQ arsenal. Whether you opt to purchase REQ packs or not prior to queuing, Warzone tries match you with players of similar REQ strength.
You’re perpetuating this narrative even though it’s not true whatsoever.
sigh
THAT’S HALO ONLINE, NOT HALO 5. THEY DON’T ADOPT AN IDENTICAL LOOT SYSTEM.
YEP.
When you defeat an enemy Scorpion without losing your own, the enemy team is now fighting an uphill battle until they defeat yours, You can replace ‘Scorpion’ with a variety of factors; power weapons, positioning, other vehicles, equipment, etc. Adapting to each situation is paramount in showcasing one’s skillset, and such a structure is reflective of any game, nay, competition, real or not, in which people are pit against people. Finding advantages, and exploiting weaknesses.
Again, not indicative of Warzone being pay-to-win.
You’ve yet to prove your assertion that it is. until then, Ipse Dixit.
See, you get it. They can’t actually release a failure in a financial sense.
So they have never had to make a working product. I feel like by now this should be terribly common knowledge. I mean… What, global sales for Halo 5, first week, were 400,000,000? That’s… Not tiny. Even for a game as “Awful” as 5.
Not really, friend. Warzone was unranked and on top of that you still had to actually get your level up. Besides, some of the most powerful stuff in the game were at Tier 2-5.
The Gungoose? Absolutely insane. Absolute monster.
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You don’t seem to realize what these means.
You unlocked the ONI Scorpion Certification and received 3 ONI Scorpions.
You use all 3 in matches.
Now you have none.
BUT
You still have the ONI Scorpion Certification, which means you get paired with people who have that REQ Certification.
Now.
Someone who buys 40 Gold REQ Packs has 8 ONI Scorpions.
And you still have none since you are grinding for REQ Points to get a gold REQ Pack.
Who wins?
Answer - Daddy’s Money Player Wins
I don’t see this as true.
After all, the queue times for War Zone would be ASTRONOMICAL for new players if that was the case.
And yet, I don’t remember being queued for more than 30 seconds while I had barely any REQs.
Obviously no.
But the fact remains that had War Zone been just “the better you play / the longer the match goes, the more tiers of goodies you can utilize to best your opponents” instead of “what I just said two words ago PLUS you have a deck of cards within the unlocked tiers to spend in order to gain the advantage”, we would have a much better game experience as it would be a game of Chess-like strategy of what weapons/vehicles are chosen by the players and used by skill rather than a game of Magic-The-Gathering-like strategy where it is what cards you have available to you that you can play combined with your skill with said rewards that expendable card gives you.
I called them Trading Cards because like with Trading Cards, you buy them in pricy packs to get random cards that are added to your deck and then used during the game. But since it is random, someone might have Three Chaos Dragons while you only got one because your booster packs didn’t give you three.
Ergo it is another element of luck being glued into the strategy play.
Usually gameplay goes as -
- Go get weapons
- Be skilled with weapons
- Have some luck because the enemy might have better weapons or weaker weapons for the encounter you engage them with.
(example from Halo 3 -
You spawned in on Sandtrap, ran for the BR because the Magnum is a bit of a dump weapon, and then you entered a structure to be smacked by the Gravity Hammer. Your luck was not with you as the Grav Hammer has CQC dominance and the BR has a slower TTK than it in CQC.)
But then Halo 5 Warzone goes with -
- Spawn in REQS
- Hope that your REQ Cards are better than the opposition
- Be more skilled with your REQs if they are equal to the enemy’s REQs or pray that they suck with the ones that are better than yours.
(Example from Halo 5 Gorbians War Zone -
You spawned in, chose to have the REQ of a Classic BR and the secondary of a Scattershot. You have an enemy Spartan invading your Armory. They have a Level 3 Overshield and the Oathsworn, they are able to outmaneuver you with their speed boost and kill you much more easily. Unfortunately for you, you don’t have a Level 3 Shield or an Oathsworn. You did two matches ago. But not now. So you cannot replicate this tactic anytime soon . . . . . . . . unless you wanna spend some $$$ and gamble for it.)
That is how Pay-To-Win works so well.
Given the option to grind for the goods, most players will. But make the grind too frustrating and you have people pay money for it.
It is especially common in mobile games.
For example, back when I played Clash of Clans, I couldn’t get past a level 9 Townhall.
Because I refused to pay for a shield to defend myself long enough from raids to build up enough Gold to upgrade my defenses to the next level.
That is an example of a Hard-Cap Pay-To-Win game.
Had I paid money for Gems, I would be able to level up to the next level of defenses and Townhall.
Halo 5 Gorbians has a Soft-Cap Pay-To-Win game with War Zone, but it is still Pay-To-Win nonetheless.
I wasn’t comparing the loot system.
I was comparing the fact that in both games, you could grind for a while to get what you want OR you could spend money to get it immediately.
Halo 5 - I want a Gold REQ Pack? Better grind for 10,000 REQ Points OR I can just outright buy the pack!
Halo Online - I want the ADV AR for some time I either have to grind for Currency A or spend money to get Currency B in order to redeem it immediately.
There, I spelled out the connection for you.
“Oh noes, they blew up my ONI Scorpion! Whatever shall I do?”
*pulls out another ONI Scorpion REQ Card to instantly replace the one I lost
*Meanwhile, the other player who just lost his Mantis to the second Scorpion
“Oh NO! That was my last one! Now we have no armor support unless my teammates can pull one out! GooberSlayer1337, can you give us some Armor?”
“Nah man, I only have a couple of regular Scorpions. The ONI one will blow it up. How about you FenixBoi99?”
“I have two SPNKR EMs and that’s it.”
“Okay, let’s combine that Scorpion with a SPNKR EM, and my Gauss-Turret to take it out!”
So now three teammates have to sacrifice THREE cards to deal enough damage on the ONE Card that dominates the landscape.
This means that someone who paid money to get multiple ONI Scorpions to replace them is causing the team to focus effort on ONE GUY.
In previous games, this was all map-based stuff. But in War Zone, it is dominated by those who have an arsenal of elite weapons and vehicles.
Ergo, a team of money-players would be far more likely to win.
Pay
To
Win
Latin, that is cute.
To that I shall respond with
“Caveat Emptor”
I speak from the driver seat with the Grenadier Goose (I refuse to call it the Gungoose because H2A introduced the Gungoose and it had machine guns.) that it is indeed a force of nature!
But yeah, some low tier stuff could be effective. But the fact remains that ONI stuff had more armor and more damage to dish out per shot. Add in the Hannibal gimmick and you have high tier vehicles dominating the battlefield.
I still call it Pay-To-Win because I often found myself having to choose “Random Air” or “Random Ground” in the hopes of getting lucky because I was up against opposition that was more than my deck of REQs could handle.
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No offense but that’s kinda’ just bad deck management. There were absolutely junk items to sell and process out. Things to keep, things to sweep, as it were.
For instance… Are you REALLY going to use that storm rifle variant?
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Yeah but that still adds more hurt to the whole setup.
You bought a Gold REQ Pack and you got less good stuff, some of it bottom-barrel. So congrats, you wasted your money and can sell it back for half-value.
It is almost as frustrating as R6 Siege where you grind for Renown, you trade it for an Alpha Pack, and you get a duplicate where the game goes “WHOOPS, you got something you already have, so we are going to give you back half-its-worth as a ‘refund’ as compensation to something that we did on purpose by design.”
Clearly it doesn’t matchmake by certifications. Come on. It matchmakes by consumables.
A healthy Warzone population is integral to the matchmaking working optimally, but that doesn’t mean it’s so restrictive. It’s trying to balance REQ arsenals, MMRs, connection, wait-times, etc. Everything works by ranges and margins of error, Like 5-10 of these REQs, 20+ or those, etc.
I never claimed how Warzone worked was perfect, there’s always room for refinement. However, this still isn’t indicative of Warzone being “pay-to-win”. You have to earn the applicable REQ level to utilize high-tier REQs by using loadout weapons and lower-tier REQs.
This is because Warzone is a different style of the Halo gameplay loop that isn’t 1:1 with how Arena is structured. It’s designed to be an expression of the sandbox and to lift restrictions that one may find by being unable to “reach the BR first”. Everyone can have their hand in the basket, that’s the point.
Your last example is also a demonstration in being unable to adapt to different situations, not one that demonstrates Warzone being pay-to-win. You suggest that there’s an inherent, absolute playstyle that is needed to counter another (Needing a Tier 3 Shiled and/or an Oathsworn to counter someone using the exact same), there are a multitude of ways to tackle a single scenario. You’re not restricted to using specific weapons that are also limited use. If your team is unable to defeat this player, they’ll eventually run out of Oathsworn ammo that cannot be replenished with normal shotgun ammo, and their overshield decays into nothing. On top of that, you cannot open REQ packs while in game, so there’s no way to surmount your immediate hurdle by paying real money. You have to collaborate with your team to surmount those odds.
I can speak for my own experience in that I’ve never felt the need to buy REQ packs impulsively. Heck, in my entire Halo 5 career I purchased probably fewer than ten. I also earned up to four REQ packs per hour, I can’t see this as a frustrating grind. Plus, I’d flip between Arena and Warzone games, and REQ packs have no integration into Arena modes. I also absolve the feeling of ‘grinding’ because I actually enjoy playing both modes. I’m not thinking of grinding REQ points, I just get them while I enjoy myself.
If you’re motivated solely by earning REQ cards, then yeah, it’d feel grindy. But it would also beg the question if you are spending your time wisely with a game you’re not motivated to enjoy outright. Since I enjoyed Halo 5, I never felt that I was grinding.
To your example of Clash of Clans, expediting progression in Halo 5 is nothing like expediting progression in a game such as that. That game literally requires time as a currency to progress with little agency in expediting it without paying. While Halo 5 shares progression expedition in this regard, the time-to-pay-off is far more generous that earning things actually feels achievable and timely. It’s similar to how Infinite is currently handling its shop: you can complete challenges to accumulate enough currency to purchase items from the shop, or you can expedite it by using real money. Halo 5 does have loot that directly affects gameplay (in Warzone only), but this still isn’t indicative of Warzone being pay-to-win.
This doesn’t amount to the silver bullet you think it does.
This speaks to a concession with progression being solely tied to REQ packs, but is still not indicative that Warzone is pay-to-win.
You need not spell dip for me because I agree with this. Halo 5’s progression could have been much better.
You can fabricate any niche scenario you’d like to suit your preconceptions, but it doesn’t actually refute anything.
This also suggests that the ONI Scorpion is an infallible force on the battlefield, it isn’t. It still moves like a Scorpion. What got the first one destroyed? Maybe it isn’t so infallible, so maybe try the same thing again? Warzone is a lot like a game of Uno.
But this scenario also conveniently ignores the point I made too many times by now: Warzone matchmakes players based on their prevailing REQ arsenal.
Unless a team is totally uncoordinated (which, if they were, they deserve to lose), the ONI Scorpion won’t last.
Apply this whenever you queue into Warzone without properly accounting your REQ arsenal. Take responsibility for being unprepared. Incidentally a great choice of yours.
So that’s actually not quite true.
Bang for your buck your best value WAS Silver, but the best way to get stuff was to grind out bronze common-uncommon tier stuff, then to grind out the Silver Rare pool, THEN the Gold Ultra-Rare to Legendary pool.
Following that pattern, you get a loooooooooooooooooooot of junk you can resell. I ended up rounding out the entire game’s collection in just a few months of consistent player. Always put on your boosters of course, and play to win, but y’know - there was a real process.
I actually consider Halo 5’s MTX system one of the most ethical in gaming, but it was really misunderstood. It’s still bad but as far as MTX systems go it honestly punished you for buying high tier MTX. The math was done!
I also happened to have thought the launch (NOT Early Access) Battlefront II 2 Loot Boxes were fine, because you got crafting parts, which guaranteed the ability to craft any card and focus on any thing you wanted. But, again that was misunderstood. But EA had a lot to work that out with - and frankly, it’s good the uproar happened.
We’ve been better off since.
Same.
Same! Sometimes felt I was grinding but generally I really loved Warzone, haha.
It also adds to the point that Halo 5’s progression system was pretty bad. Many players were getting their DMR certifications waaaaaaaayyyy later than me. In that regard, I can sympathize with their grind.
Poor bastards . There was absolutely a correct way to progress. I just wish more people knew about it.
When I ran my Spartan Company, I was surprised to hear so many people wasting their points on Bronze packs when they were like, SR90.
Oh goodness that’s so sad.