So I just recently heard about the rumors of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer being free-2-play and had quite the mix of emotions toward the idea. Generally, my feeling toward my multiplayer experiences is that I much prefer not being constantly reminded of purchase options or seeing other players in-game who’ve spent a ton of money for more expensive skins or items (looking at you especially, TF2…). Of course I understand that there are advantages to lowering the barrier-of-entry in order to have a larger player-base that will then translate to more in-game sales, but again, I just much prefer experiences where all players are on an even-footing and not constantly reminded of their lack of certain items or made to feel like they should purchase certain things so as not to be looked down on (as one can see constantly being the case with younger kids and Fortnite).
My sentiments out of the way however, it occurred to me that while making the multiplayer F2P seems like the right/more player-friendly thing to do if MS is planning on loading it with micro-transactions, this situation actually differs significantly from normal situations in which I would assume that logic to be correct. As I thought about it more, I realized that of course Halo Infinite is going to be a full-priced game, but in this case, that full price is going to get us what I assume will be a campaign-only experience; this differs from previous Halo games in which we would get campaign and multiplayer for the same full-price. Now of course my initial thought was something like, well the multiplayer is F2P, so technically we’re spending the usual amount and still getting the campaign and multiplayer like we have in previous games, so it all evens out, right? The issue comes in when the fact that the multiplayer is essentially removed from the $60 purchase and made F2P, the F2P status of MP will be used as an excuse to insert far more micro-transactions than usual and very likely include fewer customization items that just come with the game itself (like in Reach). It begins to frustrate me when I realize that we get this strange “split” system with regards to our purchase, where we’ll undoubtedly be spending the same amount of money to purchase the latest campaign/co-op entry, but will still be forced to deal with the F2P micro-transaction-riddled environment if we wish to play the multiplayer that would normally come with the purchase we made.
The more I consider it, the more almost disingenuous (and less player-friendly) this bizarre model seems to be. While I know there won’t be anything that allows players to completely stave off the F2P environment MP will doubtless have if the rumors are true (which, after being confirmed by multiple sources at this point, they seem to be), I hope that at very least, there is some kind of very significant bonus to players who purchased the actual game. I don’t know whether this would look like free battle-passes or amounts of in-game currency every month (this actually is making me feel sick to talk about this stuff in one of my favorite franchises of all time), but as it stands, if nothing like this is implemented, it looks more like a very clever way of having an excuse for micro-transactions under guise of monetization like most PURELY F2P games that haven’t split their experience with a $60 release legitimately need to operate.
I mean it is also launching on game pass so there’s that.
If you don’t play online then paying $60 for the full game gets you the same content on all Halo games, you are always paying for campaign only technically there. This is just better for everyone who wants to save money having the multiplayer F2P. Much wider audience which helps the game thrive.
Well forge is not there and co-op also - so basically you pay for a not even ready campaign lol… hard to think they wantet to release that game last year
You can either pay $15 and play the campaign, just need to ensure each time you want to play that Xbox live is up. Otherwise you can purchase the entire campaign for $60 and play it an unlimited amount of times without any worries.
For me personally I paid $60 the moment it became available, because I play the campaign once on normal, once of legendary then go for a 100% legendary run. I also have a mixed in multiplayer approach where I always try and achieve Onyx, so I personally can easily justify the purchase. You have options, choose one.
Atleast we want to have somthing 4 the full price! Like a Battlepass, Special-Skin, Permanent XP-Booster and … .
All of that would be the best and I would be statisfied. I think the permanent Xp-Boost would be the best.
I also hope the Story is not short like halo 4, i would call it a scam if it would be.
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> Atleast we want to have somthing 4 the full price! Like a Battlepass, Special-Skin, Permanent XP-Booster and … .
> All of that would be the best and I would be statisfied. I think the permanent Xp-Boost would be the best.
> I also hope the Story is not short like halo 4, i would call it a scam if it would be.
Thing is 343/MS doesn’t want us buying the campaign, they’d rather we get game pass.
If you look at it from the perspective the ‘the MP has always been free, you just had to buy the campaign disc to access it’, then Infinite’s split system is an improvement.
But I can understand the view that, yes of half of your product is now free, why is the other half still full price?
I have nothing to say about whether the campaign will be worth $60, as I don’t know how long it it, or what other content is included, and neither does anyone else.
But what I can agree with, is that 343 need to do more work to justify the decision they have made. Obviously the move to split the game apart was going to raise questions in the community, and they need to address this in some way.
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> I mean it is also launching on game pass so there’s that.
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> If you don’t play online then paying $60 for the full game gets you the same content on all Halo games, you are always paying for campaign only technically there. This is just better for everyone who wants to save money having the multiplayer F2P. Much wider audience which helps the game thrive.
Not exactly true. No forge or custom games browser on launch. All halo games have had those on launch bar halo 5 (which was supposed to have been the exception, not the example).
It’s really disheartening that we’ll be paying $60 for just the campaign. Halo games are usually only around 7 hours long while Playstation’s games range from 15-20 hours.
I’ve seen a ton of people say that it’s available on Gamepass so it’s okay, but Gamepass should never be a cop out for Xbox still charging $60 to own a short 6-7 hour game that’s going to launch without co-op.
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> If you look at it from the perspective the ‘the MP has always been free, you just had to buy the campaign disc to access it’, then Infinite’s split system is an improvement.
It’s also entirely possible then that the Campaign was free, you just needed to purchase the MP disc to access it.
Now they’ve just switched things and MP is free.
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> Can people please stop mentioning Game Pass?
> It’s not available everywhere.
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> > 2533274810945725;9:
> > If you look at it from the perspective the ‘the MP has always been free, you just had to buy the campaign disc to access it’, then Infinite’s split system is an improvement.
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> It’s also entirely possible then that the Campaign was free, you just needed to purchase the MP disc to access it.
> Now they’ve just switched things and MP is free.
Either way you approach it, making part of the game free is only a benefit.
In the past, everyone paid full price for a Halo game, no matter how much they played in either campaign or MP.
For players who never set foot in campaign, they can now play the MP for free.
For players who never set foot in MP, you are still paying the full price that you always have for the campaign, and if you want to scratch the MP itch, you can because it’s free.
To be honest, I struggle to understand people’s grievances with the campaign price point.
Well so are many other single player games. It’s open world Halo, not our traditional 8-level (at minimum) campaign. It should be much more extensive than what we’re used to, at least this is what should be expected since Infinite is heading in this direction.
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> Not exactly true. No forge or custom games browser on launch. All halo games have had those on launch bar halo 5 (which was supposed to have been the exception, not the example).
No Halo game has ever launched on 3 different platforms before. So we are also saying Halo has never launched with forge in Xbox One era. Modern games are just built different.