Disclaimer: This post is not a criticism directed at 343, Bungie or any of their products, it is simply a request for the future.
Some of you may have seen me around the forums before, I often comment on many different posts each day. Recently I have been a little more aggressive in terms of my attitude and the wording of my posts. This is due to my increasing frustration with a number of things, one of which is gaming. It seems that the industry as a whole is becoming worse. Not in terms of the games they make, but in terms of how they treat the consumers. Now much of what I’m going to bring up isn’t things becoming progressively worse, but how they could become better. I’m a firm believer that things should be fair for as many people as possible. I believe that you shouldn’t be forced to play in a way that you don’t want to to gain access to features you want.
Online play
Online gaming is becoming increasingly popular and I’m not about to suggest that they remove the option, on the contrary, keep improving it and making it better for the millions of gamers who use it, but don’t do so by removing options for other gamers. Lets look at Reach, the credit system may receive a lot of criticism**,** and indeed, it wasn’t perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. You were rewarded for playing the modes you wanted, online or offline. Or so it seemed. If an online player connected to Xbox Live once, they had their credits and armor taken away and could only earn 50 credits per game. Now I understand that many of you may think that this is a good way to stop credit farming but spare a thought for the offline gamers that love unlocking armor and customizing their multiplayer characters. I urge you 343, don’t cut content off from offline gamers. Perfect the system to work for the whole community, no matter if they play online or offline, campaign, firefight, MM or forge. It can be done.
On a related topic, many publishers have been trying to combat the sales of second hand games. I’m not going to go into the many, many reasons why I think this is wrong, but I am going to say this; make your online community as accessible as possible. Don’t restrict it. You’re working with Xbox Live so it’s already going to cost people to play online, don’t go down the road of adding any more fees.
DLC
The Halo series has done well with DLC. We haven’t seen it take the direction that so many do these days, where they develop the DLC alongside the game and release it day one. Such systems just exploit players and I hope that Halo never goes in this direction.
Halo 2 and 3 both released their DLC on disc at some point. I know that there were many people who were disappointed to find that the Noble and Defiant map packs would not be released on disc with CEA. In the future it would be better that the DLC is released on disc, it makes it more accessible for many and will increase sales.
Player models
Halo 2 introduced Elites as multiplayer models, in Halo 3 there were very few Elite armor permutations compared to the Spartans, in Reach the Elite models could not be customized except for choosing between a few different skins. Future games need to give more customization to the Elites. There are many players who love to use them but Reach gave them very few chances to do so due to gametype restrictions. Let them play on an equal ground to the Spartans.
Carry over systems
Many people have been pushing for the inclusion of a carry over system where you automatically have any armor’s from the previous games. These systems have been done in many games before and would work well in future Halo titles. By checking the save data on the 360, we could have any armor we unlocked in Halo 3 and Reach when we start Halo 4. These armors would still be unlock able to new players but those of us who have been with the series for a long time wont have to unlock the same things over and over agin. Despite what many people believe, such a system would not require Halo Waypoint.
On the subject of Waypoint, it should not be needed to unlock armors in game. Such a system is unfair on those who cannot access Xbox Live or download Waypoint.
Controls
This is a point that has been brought up a number of times before. All games, including Halo, need custom button mapping. For those of you against the idea just remember, there will still be default layouts for you to choose from, no one is forcing you to customize your controls, it is a system that can easily be implemented by developers. There is really no reason to not include such a system. It would benefit new players, players who would like a little refinement to the controls and even disabled gamers.
Ranking, credits and achievements
This is a touchy point for many. Many people want the ranking systems from Halo 2 or 3 to return. That’s fine, for a Matchmaking ranking system. How this relates to unlocking things like armor needs to be one that wont restrict other players. By ranking up in Matchmaking you should earn credits or achievements to go towards buying armor. Achievements should earn a sum of credits that varies depending on the level of difficulty. Instead of simply having Achievements to unlock armor like in Halo 3, Achievements should unlock an amount of credits equal to a certain piece of armor. This way you still get a certain armor reward for the Achievement but not one that makes it impossible to get that armor for players who may not have access to online play or may not enjoy campaign. The credits system should not have traditional ranks but rather something we will refer to as “Credit Milestones”. All credits will go towards moving through these milestones. If you rank up in Matchmaking, you should reach the next Credit Milestone. All game modes, whether it’s Campaign, Firefight, Forge or anything else, should contribute to your credits. Any restrictions to how many credits can be earned per game or day must be the same whether you are playing online or offline. This way we can have a system that is fair to everyone and will allow all players to unlock all armor permutations.
I’m sorry for the long post but I thought I should do it all at once. 343, you are in the process of earning a special place in the hearts of many existing and future Halo fans. By making the games fair to everyone, no matter how they play, you can keep the existing fans, win back past fans and earn new ones. Be fair to all your players 343, do not restrict their accessibility. Thank you for reading.
Just to note, while some of what I said does come from personal experience, much of what I have said or suggested does not actually effect me personally. I want future games to benefit all players and as such I have made suggestions based on what I have observed other players react to.