Events like this Alpha Pack are FOMO. People can miss out on it because they are on holiday, busy at work/school, et cetera.
So right now a big portion of the playerbase just plays the game for the weekly reward or event items. After those are done they feel there is no longer a purpose. There are no military ranks like in Halo REACH. There are no items to earn like in any other previous Halo title. It doesn’t matter if you play good or bad, win or lose (with the only exception being ranked).
So how hard is it really to make 200+ cosmetics people can earn? Helmets and actual armor takes work, but visors and coatings are probably the easiest things to make.
We now have:
27 weekly rewards
30 Entrenched Event rewards
10 Interference rewards
10 Alpha Pack rewards
10 The Yappening rewards
That’s already 87 rewards. Dump in all weekly rewards and event rewards from Season 1 for the people who missed those. Make a bunch more until you have at least 200 items. Dump these all in the “reward pool”. People get a reward from this pool when they completed 20 random challenges. If they completed those, they get 20 new challenges. They don’t have to wait for this for the next week! They can earn as much as they want to.
If by some miracle people play so much they have unlocked all items from the reward pool they earn 100 credits for every 20 challenges completed. This way they can also “earn” shop bundles. Every season new items will get added to that pool.
This will have numerous benefits for the player, the playerbase and 343:
- People can play as long as they want to and still feel some sort of progress because they can unlock stuff. Playerbase goes up.
- FOMO is gone.
- A healthy playerbase is good for the game and 343.
Yeah, I know. I also prefer a rankup system like it was in Halo REACH. But I just don’t see that happening. So this is the next best thing: people can play as long as they want to and never run out of things to unlock. Hopefully we get a military rank system in the future.