As of Season 2, free items from Season 1’s Battle Pass will no longer be free and only be available through purchase of the pass unless already unlocked.
This is fairly disappointing for players, especially for those who prefer the campaign and spent time playing, none of which progressed in the seasonal unlocks. I’ve put many hours in the game, but am behind in progression because of how I chose to play.
I’ve spent $60 on the game, asking for another $10 adds up to a pretty large amount, especially for every six months. Since the campaign offers so few cosmetic unlocks unlike prior games, maintaining the free items would be a good way to throw campaign players a small bone for showing their support.
Anything you have unlocked will be available to you. If you want to access a previous season to unlock additional items, you will need to purchase the battle pass.
Hopefully, after Season 2 it will be every 3 months. That being said, starting in Season 2, if you purchase the Season 2 battle pass, you will be able to earn enough credits completing it to purchase the Season 3 battle pass. This should continue going forward.
To purchase all the battle passes going forward, you will only need to purchase the first two ($20) and the rest can be earned in game.
There’s honestly more than enough incentive to pay for the full BP without taking away the free tiers to go with it.
If the BP is staying around permanently and was once free to a certain extent, those aspects should remain free. It would not only be a gesture of good will by the Devs, but also increase the accessibility to newer players as the game progresses.
In addition to this, from a business standpoint it also entices new players to purchase the full older BP if they unlock a significant portion of it through the free unlocks that already exist. I mean hell, the content and structure already exist, why put the extra work into locking everything up?
So free players can only access the current pass, but paid pass owners can work on any pass at any time? Makes sense I guess. Earning the stuff for free is a limited-time event, like all the other events and fractures, but if you pay for the battle pass, you own everything whether you unlocked it yet or not. Interesting move, 343. Basically time gating all content for people that were there when it happened. FOMO just got an upgrade.
Especially since so many of the items are consumables, like challenge swaps and experience boosts. Not to mention, I believe some of the free cosmetics are encountered in the campaign, it’s a bit mean to dangle the rewards in front of people who’ve paid such a high cost for the campaign.
Though leaving those free items untouched altogether would be really nice and fun for players, but I know that might be counter-intuitive to getting free players to contribute funds and but something. This feedback is more reflective on my frustrations that people who pay a full price are being treated identically to those who paid nothing.