Tongue-in-cheek, but it illustrates the point that many have been making: there’s currently no reasonable and straightforward path on the BP progression except buying levels. As many have eloquently put:
Challenges put progression and quality of experience in conflict with each other.
Per-match XP is anemic.
Even when purchased, product types are not described sufficiently and usage restrictions are not disclosed (e.g. skins being termed confusingly as “kits”).
By the way, the “full price” of Emile’s armor in USD is $168 = $28 Premium BP + 70 levels at $2/level. The “sale” is the 15% bonus you get for buying 10,000 Halo Credits ($100) at a time.
A few weeks? Going to take way longer than that unless you have all day every day to grind and the challenges align. And if you time your double-xp boosts right.
My man here flexing that free time by grinding out 95% of the battle pass within a few weeks. Believe me, I would love it if that were even remotely possible for the majority of gamers without the luxury of boundless free time. That’s why many of us are calling for a rework of the progression system: not because “long” is a problem, but because “straightforward” is currently in need of improvement.
Yes, Emile armor kit is at level 95 (out of BP max level 100). And sorry to be salty: just frustrated with the current progression–shouldn’t have been salty with you, a fellow fan. Hopefully they adjust this system so it’s best for all of us!
I think there’s a few points that compounded make issues.
The challenge system inherently is bad for the core game. A challenge that has you get kills with the oddball leads players to quit non oddball game types and then leads that player to rush enemy player trying to get melee kill instead of hiding with it. This further is compounded when a teammate has the challenge get oddball wins and now has a teammate actively trying to accomplish something that conflicts with what he is doing.
The challenge system also forces players into modes. I don’t like btb as much but I have to play btb to win 3 stockhold or whatever game types. Few players are going to like every playlist and game type equally- and many challenges feel like chores day 1.
The heavy limitation of 4 or whatever active challenges at a time is pretty brutal. If you can’t organically complete one it feels like it’s wasting space and you have to complete it. The challenges are fine but they need to be like CoD where there’s tons of them available.
Customization is basically non existent outside the pass. We are talking on par or worse than halo CE.
The progress of doing these chores is also snail speed so completing something challenging like gun goose kills doesn’t feel rewarding at all when it’s the same as getting 5 BR kills.
The pass in general is pretty underwhelming especially coupled with 4). We literally got some of halo reaches armor and colors and stuff all things we’ve just had in other games- nothing new and dramatic nothing fancy and the pacing is pretty rough for high value items.
All in all it hurts everyone even if you don’t care about challenges or cosmetics and it’s irritating if you do and I can see it driving players to quit.
No worries man, I get that people a bit triggered by this, and most complaints are totally valid. I’m one of the few that is not just stomping my feet and criticizing. So, you’re not the first, and far from the worst.
Now, level 95 will be a long way to go, no doubt. At my pace from my first few hours yesterday this will take approximately 160 hours to reach. As we know, there are diminishing returns with long play sessions, so if we assume 10 hrs a week it will take about 4 months.
Yes, this is a long time. Considering this is undoubtedly the most sought after armor in this battle pass, it is not surprising that 343 placed it near the end of the progression. What better way to get impatient people to fork out more cash to get through the levels faster?
I keep seeing you being an apologist for this garbage progression system. There is zero way you can max the pass in a few weeks. All the experience you get is front loaded toward the first day or two of the week, then it’s a trickle after that, we are only on day 2 and it was already bad enough on day one.
Literally my whole point is that you should not be able to progress through the whole battle pass too quickly. Most seem to have gripes with the challenge system, and that is completely merited. My issue is with people wanting to unlock everything now. The battle pad is supposed to keep us busy until May. Folks need to cool their jets.
“My issue is with people wanting to unlock everything now.” This is a strawman, people just think it’s excruciatingly slow and does not respect the time you put into it.
“The battle pad is supposed to keep us busy until May.” No, it was originally supposed to last 3 months. This is a terrible excuse for the slow progression. Even if that was true it would still be 100% unacceptable to have progression this slow. People have lives outside of video games.
If we assume that it is consistently 1000xp to level up all the way to max, which is about what, 100 or something.
Let’s say you play for about an hour or two a day and level up once. It takes roughly about 4 games to level up with challenges, roughly 20 mins each, so that’s about right, ofc this is much longer if you don’t have good challenges.
You’re looking at playing for 100 days, if you grind and cut that in half, or pay extra for boosts you are looking at 50 days and asking players to put in four hours a day, each day without skipping any days. And this is of course assuming still, that each level is only 1000xp each.
There are 90 days in three months… You better start grinding if you want to unlock everything.
My guy, I have played like 6 hours so far, and I literally just completed the first level. That is outrageously slow. That’s over 20 matches for a single level. I should be getting XP for my performance in a match, not just the stupid challenges.
Except if it was about unlocking everything now, you actually CAN do that. The problem isn’t really the speed of the unlocks, it’s about the amount of time spent towards those unlocks (someone playing 24 hours straight will unlock the same amount of stuff as someone playing for 5), it’s about not making any progress towards unlocks except under certain conditions, it’s about unlocks being locked behind doing the challenges that go against just playing the game (the “weekly unlock”), it’s about challenges forcing you to play gametypes you don’t want to play or, worse, HOPING to get into a gametype you don’t want to play that you would be forced to play a specific way, and then instead getting into a DIFFERENT gametype you don’t want to play that does nothing for you.
The time respect issue is certainly valid. Perhaps the system would have been better received if the earlier levels were unlocked faster, of course this would mean the later levels would need to take longer. The overall completion schedule of being difficult for the average player to reach before the next season is important to the mtx system to encourage more players to pay. I’m not saying I like it this way, but it is a strategy that 343 is unlikely to back off much.
I’d have to go back and read the blog, but my understanding is that 343 accounted for the longer season time by adding more levels. If that is true then this pacing is meeting their intent. If they just stretched out the required xp for each level then I completely agree that they just shoot themselves in the foot with that strategy.