It should be noted that this “split” between ranked and social is only one challenge. That is, 4 challenges could be earned in both ranked or social (objective medals, headshots, etc) while the other 2 are: “Win Social games” and “Win ranked games”. Meaning if a social player and a ranked player only played their preferred mode, both players would end the week with exactly 5 season points.
This can be looked at in 2 ways:
Both players sacrificed the 6th season point because they refused to play outside of their comfort zone.
Both players could have been rewarded with a 6th point for embracing the full breadth of the game.
Realy? Calling people “entitled” and saying that they are “whining” is not an personal attack? Come on dude.
And as @Windjammer19 pointed out, you (at least at first) by mentioning what you all wanted to remove, you basicly wanted to remove almost every real challenge (something that you actually have to achieve something for) and replace them with more and more playlists ‘challenges’.
You still don’t realize how that simply doesn’t work. Nobody says playlist specific challenges can’t be a thing (like you want to strawman), just that it shouldn’t take up the majority of players playtime (wich it often already does), so that players don’t have time left to play the gamemodes they like. That is the problem
Two other problems are that there will be to many of them (now the playlist specific ones are reguraly already 1/3 or your challenges, and already take up the majority of your time often) and since you wanted to narrow them to only a ‘cumulative score’ (with 3 variants in numbers of score), so it will also get boring, since you will have to complete the same challenge multiple times, but perhaps only with another score or another gametype. That is not good. The other problem is some of those playlists are just not populated (even though there are already a lot of playlists specific challenges for it), even on the highly populated US and EU-regions. Players will therefore be forced in playlist wich often gives them high ping matches.
So to sum it up:
playlist specific challenges should not suck up most of your playtime, that is not healthy for a game. They should be limited in time.
it’s boring, since it gets realy repetative trying to complete the same kind of challenge over and over.
it would force players more often in high ping matches
Meanwhile you are removing challenges that actually challenge players (sprees, multikills, etc., etc.)
In another topic i once posted how to fix the RNG for challenges (it posted it there as a reply to someone who felt he needed to quit matches he didn’t need to get the challenges done in time, so this list was based on a fix for that), i will quote it here:
It is a first set-up, bet here you already have a huge variaty of different challenges, so that the challenges won’t feel repetative, but also so that you could progress on any challenge every time. (the names for the combination of weapons is just the name i used that a site uses that has maps with those combinations on it)
In this list i didn’t include playlist specific challenges, but you could add the “play 5 matches of …” just like it was the case in MCC. But just like in MCC you should limit it to just 1 challenge of that kind per week (or perhaps 1 with 2 matches and 1 with 3 matches).
Agreed! This is my biggest thing. I don’t want to be forced to play modes that I don’t like. If I really don’t like the mode I don’t play it. Simple as that.
Any challenge that makes a player Play a certain game mode or play a certain style in a match (kill so many people from behind, kill somebody people with x gun, etc) should not be in at all! All this does is affect the team and you have these kids like you did in Halo 4 running around with the plasma pistol trying to get kills and that’s all they were focusing on. Absolutely brutal.
I would probably do away with the challenges completely other than having some basic ones like kill x amount of Spartans but make the count really high! And go to a system that unlocks things overtime by exp (Just playing the game) and meeting commendation requirements kind of like Halo 5 had…kind of…but again, make these REALLY high. Maybe every season they tack on another level to weapons and such. So for example, season 1 it’s get 50,000 BR kills get X item. Season 2 it’s get another 50,000 to get another item and so on and so on. If you don’t complete season 1 and season 1 carries over to season 2 so no big deal. So the player is always able to unlock stuff.
Unfortunately in today’s society people can’t just play games anymore because they like it, they have to be rewarded but whatever that’s a whole other topic The goal ultimately should be to keep the player playing the game in general. The current system in my opinion does not do this at all. It makes people not want to play in my opinion. Things need to change and as always their mentality should be “less is more” approach but I know it won’t be cuz that just doesn’t seem to be 343 thing…ugh!
Also, I completely understand playlist preferences. I don’t like Fiesta (though I understand it has value in specific weapon challenges), but besides that, there aren’t any playlists I hate (BTB is my second least favourite though). If you really despise most of the playlists, I don’t know why you’re playing.
Hey @Zozano, I just wanted to say I appreciate the level of effort and thought you put into this post. Admittedly, I have not read all of it. But I liked what I saw. Keep it up.
Thanks! Appreciate it.
There’s a summation towards the end of the initial post which breaks things down quickly.
Besides posting this on Steam, Reddit and Waypoint, do you know how I might get this into the hands of someone at 343?
We know that. The problem is just that this ‘goal’ is not succeeding, because just forcing people to play something they don’t like is simply not how it works. Because of 3 reasons:
because lack of content the challenges are often the only thing people have to have fun in the game (the matches alone are getting boring according to many). But if the challenges also are not fun to do and only feel grindy and boring, it drives people away.
Since the challenges are no fun and the prize is very weak (the last one is partly understandable since 343 wants to sell the better costumizations), people are just making the calculation if it’s worth it for them and most of the time the answer is no. Just look at this forum and how often people are concluding this and saying they aren’t playing Halo this week, but other games.
The kind of challenges are also countra-productive for average and lesser players, since those playlist mostly has higher skilled players. Since the challenge is not “play x amount of matches”, but “get x amount of kills/score” they don’t get a lot of kills/score per match, since it’s so badly balanced. This creates that they don’t see an end to that challenge creates bad experiences on its own. If a player was already okay with playing that playlist from time to time, the chance is those challenges are just creating a situation where that player doesn’t want to play it anymore, because it now is coupled with feelings of frustration and a bad time. It only lessens the willingness of players to play it.
As a consequence of the point above here, it creates an environment where all players are getting annoyed: higher skilled players are getting annoyed of the lesser ones (for ‘throwing’ matches and ruining there chance of winning) and the lesser ones are getting annoyed by the higher ones (for ‘stealing’ all the kills and for not even getting a fighting chance).
In summary: even though 343 might have the goal of populating those playlists with it, it will only generate the opposite result. And not only for those playlists, but also for the entire game. That is why this is just not good for the game.
And you only have to read this forum to see enough evidences of people who are being turned away by it or stopped playing because of it.
This is why a challenge system needs to be fun and not just an abusive system to artificially fill non-popular playlists. It simply doesn’t work that way. Don’t forget that people play games to have fun. It’s not a job they get paid for. So if they don’t have fun, they stop playing and move on to another game.
My suggestion to 343 would also to hire more actual gamers who understand how gaming works and a psychologist who knows how the human brain works, so they can create a system that instead of turning away people, keeps people in the game. The latter is what you want to happen (even for the non-popular playlists), but the first is what is happening now.
So report me lol.
If the mods have a problem, they can refer to the PM I sent them regarding the bug which prevents me from editing my own posts.
Also:
I don’t think it’s has unavoidable as you claim. As it stands right now 343 tasks players with entering certain playlists, but they should just combine them. The big one right now is how “Complete team slayer games” doesn’t track if you play slayer in Quickplay even though they are the same thing. And I think this stems back to 343’s “UI Limitations”. Notice how before a game the announcer says, “Fiesta!”, “Tactical Slayer!”, “Free-for-all!” In earlier Halos, specifically Reach from my experience, the announce would just say “slayer”, because that was the objective, slay enemies. BTB Slayer, SWAT, FFA Slayer and Fiesta are all slayer variants, just with different parameters. Playlist Challenges should instead say:
Win 5 Slayer games (Valid gametypes: Team Slayer, Fiesta, BTB Slayer, FFA Slayer, SWAT, etc).
Definitely worth considering! My fear is that cutting the number of challenges results in doubling up, which isn’t so bad for the player necessarily, but on 343s end, it definitely shortens the weekly player engagement. Its why I wasn’t as hard on the ‘mundane’ challenges, I’m effectively indifferent, I just don’t think its good for 343
If the issue is retaining players for longer periods of time, then they should raise the requirements of challenges. Instead of “Get 20 headshots”, increase it to “Get 50 headshots”. A challenge’s difficulty isn’t just defined by how much technical skill it requires, but also by how long it takes to complete. Getting 50 headshots isn’t hard to do. Getting 50 headshots in 20 minutes might be a little harder. And that time limit factor is a factor that all of Infinite’s challenges have. 1 week. Made even worse by how challenges have to be complete in a certain order. MCC actually has challenges like this (Finish Campaign missions in under 20 minutes). No huff, no fuss, because beyond the time limit, the challenge can be complete in any number of ways:
You play on any difficulty except Easy
You can play any mission from ANY Halo game (except Lone Wolf). You aren’t forced to play a campaign you don’t like. If you want to just blow through the challenge, speedrun some ODST. If you want to be challenged, try to speedrun the Ark or The Library.
You can use any skull except non-scoring skulls like Bandana or the Scarab Gun (meaning you could LASO this if you wanted).
Which I guess brings me to my main point: It might be less important to have a wide variety of challenges than it is to have a wide variety of methods to complete those challenges. Headshots is my favorite example because it can be done with common/easy to use weapons like the BR or magnum, but also can be don with rare power weapons like the Sniper. I find it hilarious that 343 has a challenge that says: “Headshot enemy spartans with a sniper rifle while using a scope in PvP.” This takes so much agency out of the player’s hand it’s insane:
You must use a Sniper Rifle (not a sniper-class rifle, so no Skewer, Shock/Stalker Rifles, even though any one of those is arguably harder to use).
You must be zoomed in (God forbid you get de-scoped and accidentally no-scope them).
You must be in PvP (not really an issue, but still a limitation).
All most of this serves to do is make the challenge less fun and in some aspects punishes the player for performing too well. Got a Ninja? Too flashy for a backsmack. Got killing frenzy? No, you need to die again before 343 can let progress further.
Also 343 doesn’t necessarily need to have 20 challenges + a capstone every week. There’s nothing stopping them (well… the UI is) from having only 5 challenges that have really high requirements.
Also something I forgot to mention is that Halo Reach’s “Invasion” playlist was considered a Ranked playlist in MCC even though Invasion is on of the most casual modes ever conceived. So casuals really didn’t have to play ranked if they didn’t want to.
I would have liked to tweak the Cumulative Player Score requirements to be even higher than my revised version, but the current system must have 20 separate challenges due to the unlock conditions of each event.
I would have actually liked to suggest a tier based progression system. Instead of 10 different challenges assigned to the event, just have one challenge, based on Cumulative Player Score, and give a reward every 7,000 points. This lines up with the revised system regarding expected playtime.
On top of that, obviously the 3 or 4 active challenge gatekeeping is awful, and if we could simply have all challenges available from the start, we could pump each number up to still meet that 8 hour requirement.
All this is beyond a realistic ask though, it would require more than a days worth of effort.
Obviously my biggest gripe with the system as it exists right now, disrupting the flow of any match is cancerous. It’s a competitive shooter, but these challenges don’t make the other team the competition, it makes the challenges the competition, and the other team a mechanism by which to achieve them.
What’s crazy about the gatekeeping is that they’d probably make more money by increasing the premium BP bonus to 5-6 active challenge slots. I haven’t bought the BP, but if I could complete half a dozen challenges at once? I might actually get it.
At the risk of giving 343 any ideas, I would pay for that 4th slot to be permanently unlocked (if they showed any evidence of fixing the game, but right now I won’t even buy S2 battle pass because I refuse to support them.)
The goal ultimately should be to keep the player playing the game in general. The current system in my opinion does not do this at all. It makes people not want to play in my opinion. Things need to change and as always their mentality should be “less is more” approach but I know it won’t be cuz that just doesn’t seem to be 343 thing…ugh!