The Halo Community At The Moment Is Feeling Pretty Confused With The Progression System Change That Is Present In Halo Infinite.
Many people are calling for a return back to the classic Halo: Reach leveling system in which playing matches awards participation points and contributes to a feeling of constant progression. In this post, I’m going to highlight some of the major pain points that the community has with the current leveling system, but I will also try to convince you as to why H: Infinite’s battle pass leveling system is actually superior to H: Reach, and what this could mean going forward in the form of iterations.
Community Pain Points With Current Battle Pass Progression.
These are the common complaints from players currently floating around:
- Not enough weekly challenges
- Challenges dictate too much of how to play, making the game feel like it’s about completing chores before having fun
- Daily challenges don’t reward players time with scaled exp, the first challenge gives you the same amount of exp for completing 1 match as one might for 4 matches.
- The feeling of constantly progressing isn’t present if you don’t complete a challenge, even if you made progress on a challenge without completing it.
- The system feels set up in a way to force players into buying levels with credits, which bypasses the original value proposition of challenge-based leveling.
- Not having infinite varied challenges makes it feel like the developers are trying to slow your progression down to match casual players who progress slower.
The majority of players at the moment are leaving matches excited with their blood pumping at the end of a match as the end screen music plays, despite winning or losing. However, they are immediately reminded of the current pain points listed above. It doesn’t feel good to see the slow or little progression, especially if you played well.
Reach Progression Was Not Perfect.
The H: Reach & H:5 progression system also fundamentally suffered from similar flaws. If we take our rose-tinted glasses off for a moment, who can remember the grind to reach Inheritor in halo reach? or 152 in halo 5, both felt awful and chore-like and both also dictated how you played the game. If you wanted to level as fast as possible you needed to play certain matchmaking playlists that awarded more exp, this lead to playing game types you may not have enjoyed, and soured your experience leaving you feeling burned out. The challenge system in H: Reach felt better because it scaled its rewards to match player expectations after dedicating their time to it, e.g the weekly challenge was still worth doing even if you were near max level in H: Reach.
Halo Reach and H:5 also had Commendations, which acted as additional long-term challenges with multi-tiered rewards, your spartan had easily visible statistics and the ability to display your commendation progressions and which ones were completed the most.
The biggest complaint with Halo: Reach and Halo: 5 progression was that your cosmetics did not feel earned, unlike Halo: 3 where you had to complete achievements to progress your unlocks for multiplayer customization. So despite having more ways to level and level frequently in halo reach and halo 5, the hardcore players often felt like they were being held back and slowed.
The battle pass progression system is not the only progression system in Halo Infinite.
343 has also stated that core competitive playlists will feature the Halo 5 HCS ranking system and that this ranking system will award players with certain cosmetics upon reaching higher tiers. The campaign will also award cosmetic items for challenges and achievements that you may complete during your playtime as well, this is also a form of progression in terms of unlocking cosmetics, lastly, there will also be fracture events with separate battle pass tiers and more challenges to complete to keep us busy. We only like to level a battle pass because it trickles out content for us and makes us feel like we achieved something.
343 Developers have done a deep dive into what made Halos progression systems feel good over the years and they arrived at the right conclusion. Challenge-based, earn-it-yourself moments greatly help to make cosmetic unlocks feel more valuable to players and make lasting memories. Ask yourself this, why did people of higher rank in halo reach always use armor that the lower rank players did not have access to even if cosmetically it looked worse to them? its because they felt attached to the cosmetics that had a higher perceived value. 343’s logic here is that they should make all battle pass tiers and gear have a higher perceived value because it takes longer to unlock and requires more checkboxes to be hit than in previous halo games. This simulates the famous Hayabusa moment from halo 3, where personal achievement could be worn proudly.
How I would personally adapt the progression system and improve on 343’s vision
- Increase the time it takes to complete weekly challenges. This is a simple as increasing variables in the current challenges, for example, instead of play 2 matches, make it 15 matches and vice versa.
- Increase the exp given for completing all challenges to properly reflect time invested into the game. The daily challenges do not need to change objectives.
- Revamp game medals to earn exp. Medals earned should automatically payout exp every match, common medals should pay out small amounts of exp while uncommon medals such as “Demon” should pay out as much as 50exp. This allows players to play the game in the fashion they enjoy the most and still progress their battle pass. Having an animation for a high-tier medal granting exp post-match would feel very satisfying.
- Commendations system, same as Halo 5. The commendations system should award both exp and cosmetic items, we should also be able to easily see another player’s commendations at a glance for bragging purposes and status.
- Competitive Arena exp Boost, playing in this playlist should add a certain multiplier scaler similar to how skulls work in MCC. Higher ranks should pay out more exp for winning matches. Losing matches should not award bonus exp. This will make winning matches feel rewarding and meaningful to battle pass progression.
Thank you for reading my post
If anyone has any suggestions or disagrees in any way, I would be happy to hear them / know the reason why.