Halo pricing, dlc and the price of "free"

Games Halo Infinite
1

Now, with Halo dlc, we have had a price per map of;
halo 2: 55 cents,
halo 3: $3.07,
halo reach: $2.69,
halo 4: $5.77,
and halo 5 $0*

Now we can say that multiplayer is free all day long, but the fluff of cosmetics has increased a ton, and seeing how halo 4 was going, halo 5 can be charted even higher with exponential increases, seing req packs could be bought multiple times. Only 4 of the 12 dlcs for halo 5 included new Maps as dlc, most dlc for halo 5 included new reqs to be aquired through their req system.

A total of 15 base maps were added, 3 of them were empty canvases for forge, and 3 of them were half sized variants of their warzone counterparts leaving 9 total dlc maps.Halo 5’s req system, is a lootbox lottery giving items a rarity. Items include Announcers, Helmets, armor, visors, emblems, stances, assasinations, weapon skins, Loadout weapons, power weapons, vehicles, xp, and reqpoint boosts. The ONLY way to get these items is through the req store. Req packs come in 3 tiers, Gold, silver, and bronze prices currently on 6/17/21 at 2.69 or 10,000 rp for 1 gold,1.79 or 5,000 rp for 1 silver, and no monetary price, or 1250 rp for bronze. You get about 1.5k rp per completed game of halo arena (about 8 minutes) Warzone earned rp can vary greatly around 2 to 4k if you have a 12 man team to steamroll, or you are solo as well as win / loss.

Halo infinite better double its campagn missions comparatively to prior titles, seeing it is a 60 dollar campaign, we should see mid 20s of campaign missions out of the box if it in fact did double in value and not just price, unless halo infinite’s campagn pack is just fluffed up with the microtransaction battlepass for free.

Is it worth it to you guys as players, to increase the price per map for dlc, at the benefit of having cosmetics locked behind a pass or season system? How can you say it isn’t fomo when clearly chased items are locked behind the battlepass. Can anybody confirm to me 100% that ALL items may be earned through gameplay?

2

They never claimed that 100% of items could be gotten through gameplay. They were very upfront about some cosmetic items being free and some being paid. The reason it isn’t FOMO is because there is no time limit on the premium battlepass. You can buy it whenever you want and unlock it as slow as you want. If you don’t have money to get it during season 1, you can still get it during season 3 or 4 or whenever. The benefit of cosmetic microtransactions is that they don’t affect the actual game experience. While there is more monetization, it’s also more optional. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change how the game plays whether you look like a samurai or whether you look like something else.

This “price per map” argument is a bad way to put it. People can put in as little or as much money as they want to infinite and still benefit from additional maps. You can pay $0 and still play any new maps that come later and also look like a badass samurai. You won’t have as many different armors or coatings if you do that, but your core gameplay experience will not be any different. Infinite’s battlepass system is probably the most pro consumer monetization among modern games.

3

> 2533274817408735;2:
> They never claimed that 100% of items could be gotten through gameplay. They were very upfront about some cosmetic items being free and some being paid. The reason it isn’t FOMO is because there is no time limit on the premium battlepass. You can buy it whenever you want and unlock it as slow as you want. If you don’t have money to get it during season 1, you can still get it during season 3 or 4 or whenever. The benefit of cosmetic microtransactions is that they don’t affect the actual game experience. While there is more monetization, it’s also more optional. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change how the game plays whether you look like a samurai or whether you look like something else.
>
> This “price per map” argument is a bad way to put it. People can put in as little or as much money as they want to infinite and still benefit from additional maps. You can pay $0 and still play any new maps that come later and also look like a badass samurai. You won’t have as many different armors or coatings if you do that, but your core gameplay experience will not be any different. Infinite’s battlepass system is probably the most pro consumer monetization among modern games.

that is your opinion, I clearly laid out how value is harder to dicern when you can say its free with a monetary system mixed in. There is a clear trend of cosmetics becoming a larger focus with a decrease in maps per dollar spent, no amount of disagreement changes this.

4

How about wait and see the first few Seasons before jumping into conclusions?

You can be in contact with Wall Street analysts to calculate the influx per map and revenue inflation since the late 60’s all you want, but this is not a scientific logarithm. They literally changed their entire monetization system, from loot boxes to a player-friendly battle pass and in-game rewards.

There is no FOMO cause you can buy all past battle passes at your convenience and complete them at your own pace without them being taken away from you, something no other company does and other communities such as Destiny, Warzone or Apex are asking for since the announcement. But yeah, let’s keep complaining.

5

> 2535451986813028;4:
> How about wait and see the first few Seasons before jumping into conclusions?
>
> You can be in contact with Wall Street analysts to calculate the influx per map and revenue inflation since the late 60’s all you want, but this is not a scientific logarithm. They literally changed their entire monetization system, from loot boxes to a player-friendly battle pass and in-game rewards.
>
> There is no FOMO cause you can buy all past battle passes at your convenience and complete them at your own pace without them being taken away from you, something no other company does and other communities such as Destiny, Warzone or Apex are asking for since the announcement. But yeah, let’s keep complaining.

It is not my problem that you took my post as a complaint, I laid out how pricing has been trending related to maps and customization. Obviously we don’t know it all yet, but don’t get all upset because I posted some facts about pricing with halo’s prior titles and dlc.

6

> 2533274855864618;5:
> > 2535451986813028;4:
> > How about wait and see the first few Seasons before jumping into conclusions?
> >
> > You can be in contact with Wall Street analysts to calculate the influx per map and revenue inflation since the late 60’s all you want, but this is not a scientific logarithm. They literally changed their entire monetization system, from loot boxes to a player-friendly battle pass and in-game rewards.
> >
> > There is no FOMO cause you can buy all past battle passes at your convenience and complete them at your own pace without them being taken away from you, something no other company does and other communities such as Destiny, Warzone or Apex are asking for since the announcement. But yeah, let’s keep complaining.
>
> It is not my problem that you took my post as a complaint, I laid out how pricing has been trending related to maps and customization. Obviously we don’t know it all yet, but don’t get all upset because I posted some facts about pricing with halo’s prior titles and dlc.

The tone of your post seems more like a direct accusation than a genuine question. Even more so when we find ourselves in a situation where we do not know most of the information.

7

Multiplayer is free, all day long. There’s no ambiguity there. No one is going to pay for any maps. The only things you can buy is the Campaign, and cosmetics for Multiplayer (through the Battle Pass, for now). If you don’t want to apy for a Battle Pass, then you aren’t forced to. I haven’t spent a penny in Apex Legends, and haven’t at all had my gameplay hindered for it – the bit that matters.

It’s unlikely that every single item can be unlocked for free, else what’s the point in paying for a Battle Pass? I guess you could say it just lets you unlock the items quicker, but as of yet, we don’t know what quantity of the cosmetic options are exclusive to the Battle Pass. I’ve said in another topic that being able to unlock everything by simply playing the game is a possibility that loot-boxes allow which Battle Passes don’t. However, loot-boxes also cause those unlocks to be random, so each item means much less. I didn’t get a DMR until about Lv 70 in Halo 5. With the Battle Pass, you have to progress through it to unlock items – meaning that items at the end of the Pass have greater value than those at the start. There’s pros and cons to each. However, neither is an improvement over the system Reach had, which was exclusively based on player interaction with the game. It let you get everything for free, and items held more value depending on the amount of time played to unlock and purchase them, given that they were tied to credits and rank.

Unfortunately, a system akin to the one Reach had isn’t on the table, in this current market, and this Battle Pass model does seem to be the best one out there, simply by not locking players out from previous seasons. I just hope there’s at least a decent array of items you can unlock for free, so there’s some diversity in Spartan appearance for players that don’t wish to pay.

Given the price of the Campaign, I too hope it’s a decent size and duration. For $60, it’s now soley in competition with story-based games, which you expect a certain amount from. If the first Battle Pass is included in that purchase, then that’d be appreciated.

8

> 2533274855864618;5:
> > 2535451986813028;4:
> > How about wait and see the first few Seasons before jumping into conclusions?
> >
> > You can be in contact with Wall Street analysts to calculate the influx per map and revenue inflation since the late 60’s all you want, but this is not a scientific logarithm. They literally changed their entire monetization system, from loot boxes to a player-friendly battle pass and in-game rewards.
> >
> > There is no FOMO cause you can buy all past battle passes at your convenience and complete them at your own pace without them being taken away from you, something no other company does and other communities such as Destiny, Warzone or Apex are asking for since the announcement. But yeah, let’s keep complaining.
>
> It is not my problem that you took my post as a complaint, I laid out how pricing has been trending related to maps and customization. Obviously we don’t know it all yet, but don’t get all upset because I posted some facts about pricing with halo’s prior titles and dlc.

I don’t really see a cost analysis on the amount of work & technology that went into each title, yet alone anything other than your one static value of map cost. I don’t know what point you’re trying to make but things in the real world are based around more things than just one perspective.

To look a the work that spans over a decade(nearly two) made by multiple studios & say, “…seeing it is a 60 dollar campaign, we should see mid 20s of campaign missions out of the box…” is beyond me. There’s no explanation of inflation, no details on anything technical.

Clearly we are going to NEED to wait & see, but they’ve already promised a Battle Pass to start with, earnable armors, & a store for some extra content to support the free platform. As far as Campaign goes, I get it 60$… STEEP… but like, if they told you Multiplayer was included you wouldn’t be complaining… orr… “be concerned” would you?

TL;DR : Think of it this way, you’re still spending 60$ cause you love Halo, you get it all! ALSO all your friends who don’t like Halo won’t have to buy into the game… they’ll be right there having fun earning content, FOR FREE JUST LIKE YOU. :slight_smile:

9

> 2533274817408735;2:
> They never claimed that 100% of items could be gotten through gameplay. They were very upfront about some cosmetic items being free and some being paid. The reason it isn’t FOMO is because there is no time limit on the premium battlepass. You can buy it whenever you want and unlock it as slow as you want. If you don’t have money to get it during season 1, you can still get it during season 3 or 4 or whenever. The benefit of cosmetic microtransactions is that they don’t affect the actual game experience. While there is more monetization, it’s also more optional. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change how the game plays whether you look like a samurai or whether you look like something else.
>
> This “price per map” argument is a bad way to put it. People can put in as little or as much money as they want to infinite and still benefit from additional maps. You can pay $0 and still play any new maps that come later and also look like a badass samurai. You won’t have as many different armors or coatings if you do that, but your core gameplay experience will not be any different. Infinite’s battlepass system is probably the most pro consumer monetization among modern games.

Pretty sure they said a lot of it could be attained through events and challenges and other ways and not just buying them.

10

So long as maps and any gameplay affecting elements are not being sold I guess I’m okay with it. While I don’t like battle passes, these battle passes are confirmed to never expire which is a massive plus and part of the reason I hate battle passes to begin with. We will have to wait and see what the finer detailers are, but I’m optimistic given they do not expire. Whether there will be a free track that’s slower to level, all items unlockable through the free track, and reasonable price for the battle pass is yet to be determined.

I hope maps will not be sold as it’ll once again split the player base between the base game content and DLC content. I don’t know about you guys but I remember buying map packs only to never be able to use them because no one else had bought those maps. There’s also the issue of not being able to use maps forged on DLC maps as not everyone will have the DLC. Seeing as the campaign will be 60 - 70$, along with selling cosmetics and battle passes I don’t think they need to monetize any further.

I can’t stress this one point enough though, I really appreciate that the battle passes do not expire. There’s nothing I hate more than being forced to play a game because there’s a time gate on something and once the time gate seals X item is gone forever. Time gates make playing a game feel like a job, and only while in the short term it’ll increase player numbers the game will suffer from player drop offs as it’s making players that were taking a break burnout even further.

11

> Halo infinite better double its campagn missions comparatively to prior titles, seeing it is a 60 dollar campaign,

Many campaign/story games don’t have multiplayer now a days and are still $60. The price of games also hasn’t gone up at all the past several years despite inflation and 343’s method of dealing with that, much like other companies, is to make the multiplayer free with paid elements. Which honestly is great because 343’s way of doing so doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay, though I am annoyed with the removal of the coloring system still.
Also, the quality of those missions may very. If they’re high quality, fun missions, with a lot of technical effort put into them; that’s worth just as much, if not more, than 20+ poorly made or mediocre missions. I can’t speak to the quality of the games missions because I haven’t played the game yet.

> Is it worth it to you guys as players, to increase the price per map for dlc

If this means map packs then no, I’ve always hated map packs. If this means increasing the price of the game and removing the f2p aspect of the multiplayer in favor of maps, still no. F2p multiplayer will grow the player base which is really important for Halo right now, plus you don’t need a ton of multiplayer maps as long as the ones you have are good which was the real problem with halo 5. The number of maps wasn’t the issue, it’s the quality and I don’t think changing the games price will change that because those were decisions that were made for gameplay and aesthetic related reasons.

Personally I loved the addition of several forge maps because it gives a ton more options for forgers, and half the time forge maps are what I’m playing because I like the random custom games that are associated with them. If 343 were to increase the amount of visual options for building pieces in forge then forgers can solve the low number of maps by themselves, and Halo 5 came pretty close to solving that issue but there were a handful of technical limitations in forge in that title, despite it easily being the best in the series in terms of options and freedom. While we haven’t seen much regarding Infinite’s forge, I have reason to believe 343 is putting a lot of work into making it better. the reasons I believe this are:

  • Every forge has been better than the previous game’s forge mainly because more and more options and items are added with each title. If this trend continues, Infinite’s will be better. - They confirmed the addition of an undo button, and if you’ve ever built a forge map or prefab with any kind of symmetry, you’ll understand why being able to undo a mistake without deleting the whole building or spending the next hour shifting little pieces around is useful. Plus, this tells me that 343 is actively trying to follow the trend of adding features to forge. - Halo Infinite is really big. That’s basically the whole appeal they keep trying to push on us. It’s also very sandbox focused. Now, if there aren’t too many technical limitations like in Halo 5 aren’t an issue (like the physics bar or the many bugs), then those too aspects of the game could mean a lot for the freedom forgers will have. More space for building and a large number of new elements towards the sandbox and how it functions will lead to entirely new kinds of forge maps and game modes because most players are interested in seeing how far they can push what they have.
    And since the multiplayer being f2p will increase the player base, this will also mean more potential forgers and an increase in player made maps, which again, solves the low map count issue. There are a surprising amount of people that make really good maps so quality isn’t a concern in that area for me.

> at the benefit of having cosmetics locked behind a pass or season system?

They already confirmed that there will be plenty of cosmetics that aren’t locked behind the battle pass.

> How can you say it isn’t fomo when clearly chased items are locked behind the battlepass.

Because the battle pass doesn’t expire like other games, it functions like MCC’s season passes.

> Can anybody confirm to me 100% that ALL items may be earned through gameplay?

If by gameplay you mean you have to put in effort to get it, 343 stated in their last vidoc that cosmetics are earned through progression and challenges, that includes the battle pass because a battle pass involves progression. The only difference is that the battle pass isn’t free. However, they’ve also stated in the same vidoc that there’ll be plenty of free methods for earning different cosmetics, so if by gameplay you meant you don’t have to pay for it then no, no one can confirm that because 343 specifically stated otherwise. The battle pass items can only be earned via the battle pass because the developers didn’t want players who bought the pass to feel cheated when other players earned the same exact armor set through some store or something. A lot of people were mad that Helioskrill was in the req packs despite it initially being a challenge item and that’s what 343 is trying to avoid by making sure that battle pass items remain battle pass items.