Challenges and Progression

Games Halo Infinite
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All base Challenges should be Play XYZ Matches (of any kind), Get XYZ Kills (with any gun), and Score XYZ Points (in any mode). We should be able to play and use whatever we want, and still be able to progress in the battle pass. This is only going to become more of an issue as more modes, more playlists, and hopefully more weapons come out. The random and “all maps/modes in one playlist” nature of playlists and weapon spawns make it impossible to complete a challenge based on your own ability, and instead they rely solely on RNG.

The Weekly Ultimate challenge can become more difficult as a trade-off, since that’s the one required for the Weekly Item. Instead of 3 Perfects, make it 7. Instead of 5 Back Smacks, make it 10. Instead of 3 Joy Kills, make it 5. Whatever. That’s a difficult weekly thing for the grinders to do. It could even become 3 challenges.

Events can be a mix - maybe the first 5 are generic challenges, and the tiers give you some of the more mundane items like knees, visors, emblems, etc. The second half could be event-specific, and be the high-demand stuff like helmets, coatings, shoulders, etc.

But basic progression should not be locked behind the pure RNG of teammate/enemy skill, mode selections, and/or spawns of weapons/equipment. If there were other ways to progress (which I know is on the to-do list) it wouldn’t be an issue. But in the interim, swapping all challenges for generic equivalents (same challenges, but non-specific requisites) would help greatly in improving a player’s morale when just trying to get a cool helmet like they used to do in Halo.

Frankly, Halo 5 REQ Packs were better than this. I can play whatever modes and playlists with whatever weapons I want, get some points, and spend them on cosmetics. We’ve already seen that challenges can be swapped and changed quickly (albeit requiring a reset). This fundamental but basic change to challenges would make the challenge system as good if not better than the mess H5 was. Right now it’s a pain and a slog just to unlock anything, forcing us to do things we don’t want.

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Easy solution: Copy and paste MCC’s model.

And, no. This is not one of those situations where it’s appropriate to defend the current system with, “Then go play MCC then.”

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It’s certainly the easiest designed solution, but definitely not the easier to implement. This solution requires minimal design changes, and still uses the current implementation which means it can be turned around way more quickly.

Optimally, yeah. MCC had a perfect Challenge/Battle Pass system imo.

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Why make it more difficult/for grinders? Not everyone has so much time to spend playing Halo. I think at this stage it’s more important to have players actually play the game and try to retain them on gameplay. If you introduce grind you also get player burnout.

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The current design is for specific reasons - engagement and sales. We can’t just ignore the fact it’s there for financial reasons. In a perfect world, yeah, it would be just as easy as the others - but that defeats the purpose of the whole system anyway.

Maybe the original phrasing wasn’t good though. It wouldn’t be more difficult than it is now, at least not by much. It would just be more difficult than the new standardized challenges. Currently, you already need 10 Perfects or Back Smacks or whatever spread throughout the various challenges. This is just taking that existing requisite, and isolating it to a single challenge.

In a perfect world, this weekly challenge would be able to be worked towards throughout all matches regardless of the other challenges available. So while my XYZ Matches/Points/Kills are happening, I can also be working towards my 10-20 Back Smacks. But that requires more dev time and design planning than my proposition.

My goal with my suggestion is to help provide solutions to problems that management, accounting, and devs/designers will counter with.

“What about our money?” You can still buy challenge swaps if you don’t like your 3 Weekly Item Challenges.

“Does this fit in our current challenge system?” Yes, it uses the same system, just altering phrasing and requisites and swapping in ones that already exist - it’s simply removing the others.

“How long does this take to implement?” We’ve already seen it happen once, within a couple weeks of launch. We all hated the challenge system from Nov 15-Dec 8, and by Christmas we had a revamped system.

“Does this drive engagement?” Even moreso than the current system. You’re totally right - excessive grind drives away the target demo of a Social FPS. This is alleviating the bulk of the grind for the casual players, while still offering a sense of accomplishment and difficulty for the hardcore players.

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