Armor Color Customization in big jeopardy!

Games Halo Infinite
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*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

> 2533274855872059;40:
> > 2533274809988140;39:
> > Just to be clear…these coatings are going to have pre-set colors on them? so say I like the way one coating looks, i cant just substitute my color choice onto that specific coating?
>
> Nope. There is literally no “color choice” other than what’s presented on the coating. So if you really like the pattern on one coating and want to use blue on it when the coating is green you’re out of luck.

That is straight up HOT GARBAGE

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I haven’t read through all the replies, but…man for me i always love to customize my spartan…but at the end of the day I never even see the customized colors at ALL. I don’t ever really play FFA. All I see if red and blue. Although it seems ridiculous to me that color customization would be now introduced as shaders basically…amd then some will be pay walled it seems…I gotta honestly say it wouldn’t end up mattering for players like me who just play stuff like slayer. If it mattered (say red vs blue was no longer the default setting and now Spartans show up in their custom colors…like how destiny handles it) then I’d be pretty upset over it.

But let’s face it. Red vs blue won’t go anywhere. There would be a thread with thousands of replies from people crying over it. An option would be cool though.

But anyways…the shader system really sucks. How it normally is, is better. Hope they clarify everything soon.

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I figured this coating system would be all different patterns and textures and the player could pick individual colors. If that was the case then this system would be dope but no it seems like colors are gonna be locked behind a paywall of some sort. This is bs and 343 should change this before it’s too late.

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> 2533274842046585;42:
> I haven’t read through all the replies, but…man for me i always love to customize my spartan…but at the end of the day I never even see the customized colors at ALL. I don’t ever really play FFA. All I see if red and blue. Although it seems ridiculous to me that color customization would be now introduced as shaders basically…amd then some will be pay walled it seems…I gotta honestly say it wouldn’t end up mattering for players like me who just play stuff like slayer. If it mattered (say red vs blue was no longer the default setting and now Spartans show up in their custom colors…like how destiny handles it) then I’d be pretty upset over it.
>
> But let’s face it. Red vs blue won’t go anywhere. There would be a thread with thousands of replies from people crying over it. An option would be cool though.
>
> But anyways…the shader system really sucks. How it normally is, is better. Hope they clarify everything soon.

Doesnt the move itself imply that Red vs Blue may very well be out the window? 343i has a track record for taking things other games do and implementing into Halo. Everyone preaches how they loved Bungie so much so now they took a page from Bungie. Taking away color customization out of Halo and then locking it behind a paywall system is the absolute definition of Identity Theft as it pertains to this topic.

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I haven’t posted here in years, but I just had a thought: what if when you buy the game for $60 you get most of the coatings that the free-to-play folks have to unlock to get? Doesnt fix the issue, but it would be an interesting tactic. It would make me feel better about it.

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I literally have not seen a single person defending this terrible decision. If you bring up sprint, ADS, etc. there’s always two sides to the arguments… but with this, everyone seems to be in agreement that this is not good. I foresee Halo getting some really bad press within the next 24 hours, just as much if not more than when we got with the campaign demo. And that’s the last thing Infinite needs right now is even more bad press.

47

Oof. The “worst case scenario,” speculated about earlier on in this thread is confirmed.

Locking player color choice behind arbitrary shaders made by the devs and unlocked via any kind of in-game store (real money or no) or cross-promotional codes is a step back in terms of freedom and individual player expression from the democratizated primary/secondary system of prior games. It may be a “two steps forward, one step back,” situation as they do seem to be ramping up piece-by-piece customization and other elements, but there’s no denying that it’s a less player-friendly system than a carte-blanche color selector made available to all players, from the get go. I referred to the possibity of them doing this as astoundingly tone-deaf in an earlier speculation post, and I heartily stand by my previous appraisal here.

This isn’t to say that the new system cannot or will not prove meritorious or enjoyable–I’m not going to discount the possibility and write the whole customization suite for Infinite off just due to one (albeit major, in my opinion) bad decision to take away the single fundamental core of Halo’s customization dating all the way back to CE. It’s just a bit baffling that they’d go this route, constraining player color expression into a set number of impersonal, monetized shaders instead of expanding players’ individual ability to express themselves by adding–rather than subtracting-- the number of individual elements of armor a player can choose to color from a full and robust spectrum of shades, in any combination they individually like. That would’ve felt like a true expansion and evolution on the old core of Halo’s customization-- literally, just adding any number of additional tertiary color choices on top of the status-quo two.

Once again, with regards to this element, 343i’s decided they know better than to “stick to what works,” as part of the established “ain’t broke,” pieces of the Halo formula. I’ll be thrilled if they’re right this time. But as with so much else about Infinite, it’s on them to convince me and everyone else with doubts that we’ve all been wrong. This is just one more decision in the, “Seriously?” column that the final product will have to contend with.

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> 2533274889565121;46:
> I literally have not seen a single person defending this terrible decision. If you bring up sprint, ADS, etc. there’s always two sides to the arguments… but with this, everyone seems to be in agreement that this is not good. I foresee Halo getting some really bad press within the next 24 hours, just as much if not more than when we got with the campaign demo. And that’s the last thing Infinite needs right now is even more bad press.

To be fair, it could end up being dope. However, the way that they set it up in the post does not give anyone confidence that it will. Perhaps they should have given us more examples to help us understand why this could be a good change.

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Well. This is pretty much exactly what I feared when it came to armor coatings. Color customization is restricted within presets that are not changeable by the player. If we like a specific color and it just so happens that there is a certain pattern on the armor we are not a fan of and would like to change, like the undersuit of the Granular armor, there is nothing we can do to change that. We are stuck with the visor the coating provides us, and cannot change that either. Additionally, colors are now applied beyond armor: weapons and vehicles can now also have skins under this armor coating system.

They also note that different textures or materials could be applied on all three.

To weapons, the armor coating system is nothing more than the weapon skins of Halo 5. Vehicles are getting a variety of coatings as well, but are effectively the skins of MCC. I don’t mind them on MCC because they didn’t bother color customization. But in Infinite, for some reason, we are to lose our color/visor customization in favor of being able to put materials, textures, and colors in places they wouldnt usually be on our armor.

I don’t think this was a good compromise. It shouldn’t be a compromise. What does it take to apply this, effectively, skin system to vehicles and weapons only and allow us to freely customize our Spartans like in MCC? The change was made so we could have camouflages on our gear? Why not just give us options for camos if we wanted? Why not just give us the option to customize textures on our Spartan, or better yet customize more in depth the colors and where they are placed?

But instead of that, 343 has gone for a Destiny shader system. A system that I forsee being monetized, 100%. They can put whatever they want on our armor, whether it be a camouflaged texture, molten rock, glowing ethereal rainbows or whatever else they can dream of. It will effectively be a skin system that we can slap onto our Spartan, if we can afford it. And chances are, given the MP being free to play, that isn’t all they’re going to monetize. I would expect the helmet packs or announcer packs of Halo 5 to come into Infinite as well.

The bad outweigh the good, in my opinion. When Infinite launches and we can’t color our armor the way we like anymore and the more appealing shaders are locked behind a paywall, we will miss the freedoms we have in MCC and 5.

We will miss our colors dearly, and it will be a mark on 343’s reputation they will not easily scrub.

343 is only giving me more reasons to save my money for a better product.

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Honestly 343, I dont know why you thought this was a good idea. Even though you cpuld vompare this game to Destiny, Destiny’s shaders are mostly free, and you can easily change the colors of Each slot of armour and each weapon for the shaders. For this, this feels like it is a cash grab. If they change it so coatings are just skins, and giving players the freedom to change the colors of the Spartans. Honestly, this just bugs me

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If they do it like Borderlands 3 where you got “skins” that was just patterns and still let you choose the colors I’d be fine with it. If it’s Destiny style shaders then this is going to be very frustrating.

The more I learn of Halo Infinite the more I realize this game isn’t being developed with Halo fans in mind.

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This is an absolute joke. It is genuinely insulting to the fans to remove a feature that has been in Halo since Day 1. It was bad enough with the armours and emblems in Halo 5, but now we can’t even pick our damn colours?

I’m not going to support this practise. 343 just obliterated any good-will they generated from the MCC.

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Any and all respect 343 garnered for their MCC work has been lost.

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Customising armour colour was literally the first, and for the first game only, form of player customisation we had, besides player names which I wouldn’t exactly count. Now it seems that the level of customisation is being reduced to one coat of paint for the whole armour and it is all being locked behind third party product purchases and paywalls. It sounds like emblems, the second customisation option we got in the series, are being handled similarly. Locking them behind recs in Halo 5 was bad enough.

This all seems so cynical and greedy. After it appeared 343 had listened to all the complaints about Halo 5, they were actually hiding something worse? I sincerely hope that I am mistaken. That I have misinterpreted all of this and they are not doing what I think they are doing. I would love to be corrected.

I am no fan of Reach, but one thing I think Bungie nailed was the customisation and unlock system for that game. The breadth of options and level of detail, combined with the clear and visible requirements to unlock the exact pieces you wanted, actually made it something aspirational and fun. Something that made it worth shooting a little higher and playing a little more. 343 could have copied it wholesale and I think everyone would have been happy.

But what do we get? ‘Oh, you want your spartan to be purple? Go buy an energy drink to unlock it in your $60 game.’

If I am being hyperbolic and have misunderstood, please belay my fears, 343. Let us know what you are really doing. If not, course correct as soon as possible.

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I approve of the (admittedly ludicrous) amount of focus on customization that 343 is using. However, a word of caution, a pay-to-look-cool system is dangerous. If we budget players get ripped off because 343 is only giving extensive customization to those who pay, there will be a cry of outrage from the community. While I love the idea of, not only armor and weapons, but even VEHICLES getting customization. I have a sick feeling that this may only be granted to those who pay more than others. Remember Halo 5? You know, the game that came up with the REQ system? Yah, that didn’t work out so well. And I am getting chills to how eerily similar this is getting. I know that sucking out the money in the wallets of us fans like a leech is tempting to 343 but they have to control that urge if they want a happy fan-base. Halo Reach’s customization was so legendary because all the game asked was that you play it enough to get enough credits to unlock the armor you wanted. There were no REQ’s. There were no weird sponsor skins. There were no battle-passes that you had to pay for. All the game wanted in return was your attention and love. And so, we loved it. And thus, we got that DOPE armor that we always wanted, not out of money, but out of skill and effort. And we knew that we EARNED that skin. And so we loved it.

Learn from Halo Reach 343, give us a customization system that rewards us for effort, not money.

Although I am fine with the notion of sponsor skins. Do. Not. Abuse. The. Bloody. Pay-To-Win. System.

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Okay there’s a line every one over looked 343 did say they are making more coatings to be earned in game so the monarch and the recent coatings are just promoting infinite they will NOT monitzie this and I can assume the same will be said for emblems too so for we only have these 2 coatings to go off for all we know there could be more options on launch day so for let’s wait and when launch day comes we try it out I mean what else can we do?

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It is almost funny how there is genuinely ZERO PEOPLE who think that this is a good idea at all.

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343i, I think the community doesn’t like this move. In all seriousness I’m disappointed. Just gotta wait and see, but this doesn’t look good. You know what does look good tho? The new armor coating they showed. The one with scratches and grit. Very cool. Let down that its a coating tho.

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I’m disappointed, I don’t know why they did this. They should’ve expected this backlash but hey, hopefully they’ll listen and change it before the game launches.

Look on the bright side, at least the game didn’t drop and we figured this out day one…

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Perhaps this is something that should have been revealed in a video and not a couple of lines in a blog, but I appreciate the honesty I guess. Everyone knows that that this is a move that nobody in the community would support, might as well get it done and over with.

I really wish they took a note from Warframe or Rocket League, let players choose colours but have materials and patterns for unlockables. It’s a nifty system which would not have removed any pre-existing features in Infinite.