Haven't Heard A Good Argument Against MTX Spartan Points

Games Halo: The Master Chief Collection
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343i is a corporation. Their mentality is and always has been profit first. This is a principle of basic economics. I don’t care about the slogan that their marketing team put out.

Disanalogous. Halo MCC isn’t a game that exists in a vacuum. There are a million other shooters out there eager to out perform Halo MCC. When I bring up the grocery store analogy I’m purely talking about conspicuous consumption. Are you anti-conspicuous consumption?

This doesn’t give me any reason to believe that there will be an increase in artificial scarcity for SPs.

No one has given me a reason why I should consider the ability to purchase SPs as a more predatory form of monetization than I would a product like makeup or nail-polish. It’s a vanity purchase and you don’t like that it’s being optionally sold to you. Just say that, but don’t call the practice predatory. Loot-boxes are predatory because they emulate gambling and prey on people with addiction and impulse control. Literal diseases classified by the DSM. Conspicuous consumption is ubiquitous.

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They are addressing this exactly by allowing players to earn SPs by ranking up through Tour 11, that’s up to 329 additional SPs on top of the challenge system. I find these solutions perfectly acceptable. If the current system for grinding SPs is something I find acceptable, why should I take issue with the optional ability to purchase them?

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Glad you asked. A move like this can be considered something such as “testing the waters.” Just to see how much they can get away with.

This “purchasable SP” move is 343 trying to “start small.” MCC was never supposed to be a title whose purpose was to generate endless revenue like a typical live service game. It’s there so we can have fun playing all the classic Halo titles.

It’s all one big trick designed to exploit the player into taking shortcuts. Like how Infinite’s challenges are bad on purpose to encourage players into buying challenge swaps.

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Don’t care. Every company everywhere is always trying to find more ways to increase revenue. Attributing some sneaky maliciousness to a basic trait of capitalism doesn’t do anything for me. I am always under the assumption that 343 is trying to make more money.

MCC was never supposed to have Halo Reach or Halo 3 ODST in it either, but look at where we are! The purpose of MCC may not have initially been to be a live service, but whatever MCC was intended to be back in 2014 has been abandoned for years now. The game was never meant to come to PC either, but do you want to know why every single one of those changes since launch that I listed were done? To make money. They aren’t your friend. They aren’t a charity. They are a corporation. Corporations exist to make a profit. Letting you have fun playing all the classic Halo titles is just a way for them to make a profit.

Just to be clear I’m not attributing any sort of moral prescription to anything here. I’m just saying that this is a very direct description of what 343 does and why.

It’s a business practice to exploit the player into spending money. There’s nothing tricky about this.

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Sounds kind of like all you’re doing is making excuses for them. I’m seen plenty of good reasons why many of us have said MT are bad and all you seem to be doing is stating why a company couldn’t careless and acting like management is ‘ok’ and reasonable.

Of course there’s plenty of reasons for why MT is bad for Halo and it’s painfully obvious based on their track record and you have shown zero evidence to counter this. All you’re doing really is just deflecting by acting like there’s always something more ‘evil’…

Come to think of it you have given zero good arguments on why you’re defending it. You act like people are saying there a charity which is false and many us have invested 20+ years into this business. Poor business decision’s is what can kill any game and ignoring customer feedback is not a good idea and any dev will tell you the same. Profit wouldn’t exist if the demand wasn’t there.

Halo Infinite is a good example of why ‘greed’ and ignoring feedback is a bad decision. If the consumer is ignored then they gain less profit and less people playing means they fail to meet targets because ‘free’ advertising becomes less common which leads to bad press which is bad for business.

Also tricking people into spending more money is a ‘business practice’…and yet it is still a manipulative trick regardless of how it’s wrapped up.

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I heavily disagree with the mindset that we should accept this kind of practice because of 343’s corporate status. We’re consumers. We have a right to demand a decent product.

I don’t care for the way you’re trying to present this as some necessity for them. There are plenty of ways to make money without having to siphon money out of the consumer in the form of microtransactions.

In fact, they’ve been making money from MCC. It’s a title where you can play every classic Halo title, from CE to 4, in one place. That’s a no brainer. Granted, it’s had its rocky start, but it’s received so many major updates over the years.

Money should be churning out.

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I haven’t excused them for doing anything I see as particularly harmful.

I’m stating why I don’t think anyone’s reasoning is good. I’ve seen one half-decent argument in this whole thread. I think players should care less about the proposed MTX system. It changes nothing materially.

I haven’t heard a good reason for why MTX is bad for Halo MCC as it has been proposed.

I’ve given my reasoning for my position in response to every single argument in this thread. Maybe my reasoning isn’t good enough for you. That’s fine. I don’t care what you want. I care about what I want and I’m willing to listen to people when they tell me why I shouldn’t want what I want. I’m fully engaged in this discussion here.

WRONG, I’m deflecting by indicating that the proposed system to monetize SPs doesn’t meet my threshold for substantial harm.

Yes I have. I’ve said multiple times in this topic that I’m willing to spend some money to skip the grind. The same grind that I find perfectly acceptable from a player standpoint. I have more good reasons too. I like it when MCC is shown to be profitable to 343i and Microsoft shareholders because that justifies more resources to be directed at maintaining MCC.

I think the people upset about the proposed system to monetize SPs are catastrophizing. I don’t sincerely believe implementing the ability to purchase SPs will harm the IP more than the increased long-term support will help it.

Customers are morons. They’re also not a monolith. I don’t care how vocal the anti-MTX crowd is. There will always be casual players and fans that do not give a damn about MTX in a game like MCC.

I’m not actually convinced. There was a lot of evidence that internally the decision to cater more towards the fans of classic Halo, art style, equipment, mobility, sandbox, may have contributed to all those development setbacks. Maybe if instead of external pressures pushing the team to make a conventional Halo game, they had just gone through with their plans of making a hero shooter, there wouldn’t have been such a bad reception to the quality of the game and the live service.

All this just to say, I think the reasons for Halo Infinite’s shortcomings seem nuanced and complicated.

This is called constructing the people. You’re saying that you know what the consumer is saying. You know what the consumer wants, and it so conveniently ties in with what you want. Neither of us knows what everyone wants. We know what some people might want, and we know that these people are either a large group or a small vocal group.

All business practices are a product of coercion, or as you said, manipulation. Everything. Capitalism is a naturally coercive system. I need a demonstration of harm being done.

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Nah, he loves me. I see his name when I hover my cursor over the little heart. No need to be mean just because you’re jealous, baby chicken.

I don’t disagree with that though. I don’t care what you want regardless of what decision 343i makes.

I’m not sure how I ever presented this as some sort of necessity for them. I’ve only ever stated what I want and what I care about. Granted, I do care about 343i making a profit from MCC as a way to justify to shareholders that resources be directed towards updates and maintaining MCC. I do not see that as a necessity.

I never said there aren’t other ways to make money. I feel like you’re shadowboxing with an imagined person that believes in a caricature of what I believe.

This means nothing to me. Yes, they’ve made money from MCC… and they’re trying to make more money! Nothing about the way they’re trying to make more money impacts me negatively. On one hand I could purchase SPs to skip the grind, on the other hand I could not do that and just do the grind that has been there for a few years now, improved even. Nothing in the game is being gated behind this. Nothing that I already had access to is being taken away.

Doesn’t matter. Shareholders will never settle for, “We’re making money.” They always want, “We’re making MORE money.” So either we do something about this whole capitalism thing or we accept that it’s a system built around exponential growth in a finite world and live with it.

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The introduction of mtxs as 343 have presented will create a conflict of interest. It encourages 343 to make the grind to unlock everything longer and more cumbersome to pressure players to buy points. They effectively make the demand for micro transactions by throttling the supply (weekly cap of Spartan points) and inflation (all exchange items are significantly more expensive). Assuming companies will always act on the greediest impulse this situation is guaranteed to get worse. The grind as it stands is already over a year which I don’t consider acceptable at all. The addition of SPs for every level is nice, but is still subject to change and doesn’t reduce the total time significantly. The situation is analogous to a monopoly, but of course this is simply a video game.

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This is what I mean by presenting this as a necessity. What are they trying to implement microtransactions for when they’re already making money with MCC as it is?

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Neither of those paragraphs contradict the other. There is no necessity for 343i to gain more profit from MCC with Infinite being their primary source of income. They are making money. They want, not need, to make more money.

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You’re missing the point. Okay. What is your end goal here?

Is it to rile up the community? It’s just every post you’ve made seems slightly controversial if not completely antagonistic.

I mean, I’m sitting here telling you that this “pay to get SP” crap is a conflict of interest and you respond with “they need to make money.”

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I’m nailing the point. My end goal is to non-stop nail it.

I’m a very controversial and antagonistic person. It’s what happens when you mix massive intellect with unstoppable confidence.

I never once said it was a need. I said that corporations exist to make money. This is irrefutable. I also said that they want to make more money than they are already making. While I cannot substantiate this directly, I think the way 343i has trended supports this idea. Nowhere in there have I said 343i NEEDS to make more money. I even acknowledge that the proposed monetization system is unpopular among a lot of people.

Keep up.

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Can’t make money on MTX when your community is pissed off enough to leave you high and dry.

This is what companies don’t understand, sure MTX will rake in cash for a few months, but in the long run it just kills the game faster and ensures players don’t come back because there’s nothing to earn or anything earned is invalidated by the mere existence of MTX, case and point: Helioskrill.

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How about we focus on getting 343 to sort out the real issues in the game first, before even bothering to consider MTX?

The game Still has terrible balance and AFK issues, yet they don’t seem to care about doing anything to mitigate these issues, or actually making the game more fun to play. They’re having a great time making new cosmetics through, which is definitely important for enjoyment /s

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At this point its clear you haven’t heard a good argument because you were never listening.

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It’s called overconfidence and it’s not a great thing to have.

You’re not listening to the people around you who have gone through such experiences with microtransactions and understand the harm they can do.

If you really need an example of it, look at Battlefront 2. Do you see how terrible that game was up until a few years ago? That’s one of the games that got EA its infamous reputation.

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No such thing.

You people keep saying I’m not listening. I’ve literally replied to just about everyone who made an argument. You just don’t like the fact that I disagree with you.

This is like the seventh time someone has pointed to a LOOT BOX based MTX system to compared it to a system where you make a flat purchase. These two are incomparable. It’s so incredibly dishonest to keep gesturing to loot boxes for why the proposed MCC MTX are bad.

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You’re just ignoring my argument. That’s literally all you’ve been doing.

You haven’t made a single coherent point. Nothing you’ve said makes any kind of sense.

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I have so many extra points, that it makes this thread, a funny read.

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