This is a problem that I first identified in Destiny and Destiny 2, with their bounty system, where sometimes bounties would have weird and ancillary objectives that didn’t have anything to do with the goal of the game mode you’re playing. What this leads to is players who are more concerned with bounty progress than completing the gamemode’s objective, meaning that at best you had teammates that cared little for completion, and at worst, teammates that actively worked against you if their bounty required a certain amount of kills with a certain weapon, or against a certain type of enemy. This would go on to become a more severe problem over time, as more and more of the game just became about grinding bounties for season pass progress.
Infinite is at this point, where it severely impacts the play experience, and the game hasn’t even formally launched yet. I think it is very important to signal that a massive overhaul to the challenge pool, and battle pass progression in general, is essential so that this game survives for more than 6 months.
“So, Ben,” I hear you ask, “How do they reward players without (as many) challenges?”
Simple. Reward them for playing the game.
A potential title I had for this thread was “You’ve made a phenomenal game, now just let us play it.” Thrown out because it didn’t actually communicate any of the real criticism contained therein. But, I think the sentiment still holds strong. Queuing up and playing three hours of Halo Infinite is fun, a lot of fun. What isn’t fun, is loading into every match, immediately sprinting around looking for certain weapons, equipment, vehicles, and unique situations, all so that I can advance my challenge progress. That doesn’t feel like fun, that feels like a job.
And, I understand that they did implement a 50 XP reward per match. This is not a step in the right direction. This is a vague gesture, a sideways glance, in the right direction, at best. As it is now, a 50 XP reward means that to advance a single level, of 100, you would need to play 20 games. To go from level 25 to 100, would require 1500 games. It’s practically nothing, chump change compared to the standard 250 XP per challenge. And, it doesn’t address any of the other problems with challenge-based progression.
So, you want to fix (almost) all of your problems? Here’s how.
Keep the match completion reward at 50 XP. Add, on top of it, a bonus for winning a match, and an additional reward based on your score (function of k/d/a and objective participation) that maxes out at, say, 300 or 400 XP. This way, not only are you incentivizing players to complete matches, you’re incentivizing them to try to do well, and try to complete objectives at hand. Players that do pony up and play a big part in their teams victory are rewarded for it.
Severely revise the challenge pool, and limit it to challenges that can be completed alongside gametype objectives. Instead of “Stop an enemy player’s energy sword lunge”, a challenge which incentivizes me to allow the enemy team to get control of a powerful weapon, fill out the pool with challenges like “Hold the Oddball for 30 seconds”, “Get a Killing Spree in Slayer”, “Capture the enemy team’s flag, or return your own in CTF”. I could write up more, but I think you get the idea.
Challenges ought to be side objectives that can be completed alongside enjoying the game, and shouldn’t be completely estranged from the conventional play experience, requiring me to prioritize and orient my behavior around them in order to feel like I’m being rewarded. Requiring this of players is a very, very good way to kill your game in record time.
Feel free to discuss, I’m sure there’s something I’ve missed or haven’t considered.