F2P is not an excuse

Games Halo Infinite
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61

I switch between Free to Play and Pay to Play on most games that I enjoy.

This free to play system is terrible. It’s worse than Destiny, it’s worse than most Battle Passes.
For the free players, even in Destiny, you still get a decent chunk of stuff. Normally it’s just that it takes a lot longer to get that stuff. {In most you can even earn currency}

Because I switch between F2P and P2P, I want two main things.
A chance to get decent stuff through free play, and when I do pay I want to progress through the system at a decet pace and actually get things I care about.

This battle pass progresses very slowly, additionally there’s pretty much two items I want from this Battle Pass. Most of these items I would have expected to be unlocked by default, so most people could get the basic ability to customize their characters.

These items aren’t great, the progression is slow, and so it feels that it’s pointless to purchase a pass. Especially since it doesn’t support Free to Play players that much.

When looking at individual armoursets or general items you can purchase, the price for them is ridiculous. I hate this credit purchase system, but it is what it is.

But 1,000 credits is about $13 bucks CAD. That’s for a full Battle Pass (that should supposedly have a lot of decent items on it to incentivise me to get it). Yet there are things on here that are on par or double that price for some items. That’s just ridiculous.

I’m only hoping you get a decent chunk of items for purchasing the campaign, but I have my doubts.

All in all, this BP is worse than Destiny, and that’s just absolutely sad. Halo was supposed to beat Destiny and be healthy, based on what the devs were originally saying.

This sucks. :c

2 Likes
62

I’m just going back to playing Warframe. I’m not falling for another Destiny style money trap. If I am not forced to pay hand over fist for cosmetics I will pay for better ones. I don’t mind dropping money in Warframe, because the monetization is unintrusive. Hell, I buy the prime accessories there on the reg, and will continue to do so, because the monetization isn’t scummy.

Simply put if you give people options they will gladly give you money for more, or better options. Give them nothing, and you get nothing. Take that lesson to the bank, Microsoft.

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63

Not to mention that in warframe you get what you buy, i bought an hcs skin foolishly believing i could use the armour coating on whatever, but its all locked to a preset, this idea of so heavily restricting the player while touting player first and player friendly is the real kicker. It sucks because i love this games customization system, its by far the best in the series, but its held so far back by being restricted, locked behind paywalls, and the inability to earn any through actual gameplay. I love getting blueprints in warframe from hard missions it feels good to accomplish that, theres nothing satisfying about spending 30$ on a skin from the store.

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64

I don’t even really like Warframe, but it’s such a great example of a decent (and succesful) f2p economy which Microsoft has clearly not learned anything from at all.

If people can work to get anything for free, the non-payers will keep the game interesting for the people who DO pay.

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65

Honestly this game is getting stale really really fast. I have played about 20 hours as of this reply, and I am honestly bored. Currently Diamond in ranked and it’s a mess, the ranking system is broken; there is only one way to derank AT ALL and that is if you leave a match or get kicked for any reason. So you have people that have never played oddball in DIAMOND/ONYX elo running around like its slayer. BTB is ok but the vehicle drops was a terrible idea; one team just gets screwed over by rng every game cause timmy got the wasp. Yah as far as battle pass progression goes, this is by far the worst I have ever seen, and everyone obviously agrees on that.

My question is, how did we as a community allow this? We really played Halo 3, Reach and Halo 4 with all of the customization options they had to offer, and then we played 5 and virtually everyone disliked the rec system and the monetization. SO HOW THE HELL did we just sit back and relax when 343 announced almost 2 YEARS ago that Halo Infinite would have the most extensive monetization yet, and that colors, COLORS would be locked behind a paywall? Seriously how did we let this happen? There is NOTHING to work towards, we really just lied down and let them sell colors, armor kits, and armor cores to us. Half of the coolest customization options in the game are locked to armor kits that cannot be changed at any level, whoever came up with armor kits and armor cores…I hope you are ashamed of yourself because your making Activision Blizzard look player friendly with this garbage. The core gameplay is great with a few adjustments to mkb and player collision (I still don’t know what 343 is smoking to think the community is “split” on that). But even with the nice combination of a Reach, and Halo 3 feeling game the lack of anything to earn, not even a way to display your stats, or achievements, or rank, or really anything to call your own…it just sucks man, we let 343 do this to us AGAIN.

3 Likes
66

Its because despite the community complaining and complaining, 343i doesnt seem to care, as long as someone is spending money they are a okay with the negative community out roar. They sat there and told us that armour coatings couldnt be changed and everypne just accepted it and anyone who criticized it these last few months had to defend themselves from every angle of 343i shills. Halo is an avenue of money for 343 and microsoft, no company can add these additions to the game without only thinking about the cash gain and not how the players would respond

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67

Yah its sad to see, this company has virtually destroyed what was my favorite game franchise. I would be willing to pay 80$ for campaign + multiplayer with actual Reach system customization (earnable credits) if it meant I didnt have to get this absolute abomination of a “free” to play game.

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68

And it would have been that easy, this could have been a 10/10 halo experience if it weren’t for all the corporate pencil pushing and monetization.
All the battlepass needs to do is give us like 10,000 cr and make the bp a straight cash purchase, that would make the store player friendly. If we just had reach style customization tho this multiplayer would be 11/10, theres so much cool -Yoink!- thats just locked behind an arbitrary paywall

69

Its not too late either, they can change this, they can fix it. They CAN make this a player friendly experience instead of the halo shopping mall experience, i just hope they can put aside their greed to actually give the players what they wants

70

I am afraid that is asking too much of them.

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71

Yeh I’m literally sick of seeing people using F2P to try to excuse the complaints while they act like 343i can do no wrong. Blocking content that has been accessible in every Halo that normally can get by earning goes against the fundamentals of the series.

I’d go as far as say it’s insulting/offensive that these restrictions were forced. People are now paying stupid amounts of money for content that was never worth the prices that there trying to force people to pay and yet there is very little content to actually earn. I kind of feel like the freemium model needs to stop because this model is just irritating everyone.

It’s like they get people to trust them with MCC then 343i go out of their way to sabotage the trust with Infinite.

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72

Thats my main problem with infinite multiplayer, theres like 300+ armour sets!! Cool! But you cant earn any of them outside of special events, and i can toss a bet there will be stuff you gotta buy for those too. Currently theres nothing to do in infinite, nothing to grind for unless you enjoy wearing the same armour you have been for the last 10 years, and even those are sold to you now.
Halo armour is meant to be earned not bought, this is literally halo 5 all over again but req packs have been replaced by the store, 343i has a very big problem with learning from past mistakes.

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73

Yeh it’s things like this that makes me want to drop the game eventually and just go back to MCC. Also yeh armour should be earnable. I’d understand if they made the premium optional so people could save up credits but they don’t and I feel like whoever is sorting out the live service is doing a poor job since this type of model may actually end up killing the game pretty quickly. Forge might save it for customs but I don’t have faith that the matchmaking population will last if 343i don’t start listening.

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74

Halo 5s player count never recovered, it was hard to find games, the player count was consistently dropping everyday, even if this game is free to play it CAN and WILL still die if something isnt done to address all these issues. Give us earnable credits or remove the store entirely. Fix the challenge system and give us basic xp gains for playing matches. Give us a leaderboard, stats, a functioning ranked mode that doesnt give bad players freebies to the highest ranks. Cross core customization since the bots have it yet we dont. So many things that seemed like simple wins 343 has turned around and made awful and complicated again, it really does feel like this game will have the same life cycle of halo 5

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75

Yeh guess so. Seemed ok for me but I dropped the game entirely when I hit 152 since didn’t like the multiplayer but it says a lot that a game that I’m not fund of can be to play to 152 and yet Infinite can’t peak my interest due to the way 343i have poorly handled the game. Yeh it’s just a matter of time till Infinite dies if they don’t sort their problems out. I feel like population may end up being worse if they don’t have a proper named ranking system with proper earnable unlocks since blocking content was not ok.

76

I think people are getting it backwards.
The reason for micro-transactions isn’t FTP, the reason for FTP is micro-transactions.

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77

Obviously they’re going to change xp progression due to the backlash. But content wise nothing will change much if at all with the multiplayer suite. As I posted they stated all day one maps and modes are now playable.

I fully support their decision to change the xp progression and applaud them for it. But customisation wise this game is severely lacking and the store pay walls are ott imo. More changes are required.

The ranked matchmaking also needs addressed, not being able to chose our preferred game types is ridiculous.

1 Like
78

Yeah it’s good.
Though I’d like to somewhat question the “praising”, as this was kind of heavily hinted at being a possability ( bad progression in the name of frustrating money out of players ), and how that was something not wanted, yet i343 went through with it.

“The stove is hot, if you put my hand on it, it’s going to hurt me”
“Okay”
bacon sizzle sounds
“I’m hurting because you put my hand on the stove I told you was hot, and it was going to hurt me”
“oh my bad”

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79

Totally agree. I should have stated they were warned and should not have done it. As for my praise, I could’ve chosen abetter word because I’m happy they’re addressing but not forgiving that they went ahead in the first place. If that makes sense.

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80

I kind of didn’t properly phrase myself in the best way either, I kind of meant the praise overall they get.

1 Like