Disclaimer: This post will not touch on actual gameplay mechanics or network issues as the problems there are obvious with obvious solutions, or too debated within the community to have an answer.
Let’s get right into it.
Customization
Minimal changes:
- Stop treating identical items like they are different pieces. Mirrored shoulders, coatings, and emblems are the most notorious issues.
- Armor should be transferable across cores.
Suggested additional changes:
- Allow players to utilize different coatings on different pieces of armor. That already goes a long way in customizing colors. However, it is not a necessary change.
- Offer at a minimum a basic 2-color system, with shaders being more unique colors, materials, and patterns.
- Bring back the old Emblem system.
- Allow players to create their own Armor Kit presets
Optimal changes:
- Revamp how coatings work. Allow players to create their own coating presets, using purchasable and unlockable color pallets, material pallets, and pattern pallets. Limitations on customization should be only what the slipspace engine can handle.
Challenges and Progression
Minimal changes:
- Reward players for playing well. Change the per-game XP to reflect performance. Suggested values: +50xp/match, +25xp/win, +1%xp/score (or a similar system based on medals). This can be in addition to reduced rewards incentivizing playing every day (the first few matches of the day, like the current setup).
- Incorporate the above system into a standard, non-battle-pass progression system. (Obviously this is already a work in progress, but it should come with its own unlocks and should not have any means of progressing faster through monetization EXCEPT via challenges)
- Challenges that rely on luck need to go. Luck of getting the right gametype, the right map, which loads out the right weapon, or relies on others doing well, or others doing poorly. These sort of challenges are fine for permanent challenges that are being worked on constantly, but not for weeklies where everyone is rushing to make sure they don’t miss out on the weekly Ultimate Challenge.
Optimal changes:
- Weekly Ultimate Challenge becomes unlocked permanently after being unlocked, and can be completed at any time.
- Any “missed” Ultimate Challenges become available for purchase in the store for, say, 100 credits. If a player failed to unlock the Weekly Ultimate but played that week, that Weekly Ultimate challenge is unlocked for them to attempt after the end of the week.
- Allow players - at least Premium players - to work on all weekly challenges simultaneously. This allows them to complete the challenges in a way that is naturally healthier for gameplay throughout the week, only rushing to complete the harder ones in the end.
Matchmaking
Minimal changes:
- The current playlists in progress of being added.
Optimal changes:
- Match Composer. Instead of forcing everyone to play everything on a playlist, allow everyone to select which gametypes (and maps) they want to queue for. This simultaneously keeps playlists healthy and allows players to easily play what they want or need. Challenges can be modified accordingly.
Monetization
Minimal changes:
- Everything that is added to the store is there permanently. Exceptions may include Event items, but they need to cycle back in any time the Event returns.
- Allow players to buy individual items, or the bundles as “sale deals”.
Optimal changes:
- Instead of Challenge Swaps, Challenge Skips - allow players to bypass difficult challenges rather than choose another RNG challenge. The important weekly challenge is the Ultimate. The point of Challenge Swaps isn’t to level up faster, it’s to unlock the weekly ultimate (or else people would just buy levels for the same as a couple challenge swaps and XP boosters cost).
- Allow players to create their OWN bundles to get a “deal” on a set of items (but a less perfect deal than a curated set).
- Slash prices by about 75%.
- Refund players their non-BP-spent credits and move all pre-Infinite armor into the basic progression system, or a Part 2 Reach Battlepass. All store items should be new items, not items that have existed for years.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: this seems very consumer friendly and not very 343i friendly. However, that is not the case.
- Players are a lot more likely to spend a LITTLE money on microtransactions many times than on what they perceive to be a big cost a single time. $20 is big money.
- Refunding players their credits doesn’t lose any money. It’s all in-game currency. They can spend it or not spend it but the money is already spent.
- Incorporating this armor into a second battlepass, rather than individually in the store, is a LOT more likely to get it purchased. Many more people will spend $10 or even $20 on a second battlepass that delivers the content they expected to have.
This will all make 343i a LOT more money in the meantime.
Pipe Dream
This one is a harder sell, but it stands to make an absolute monstrous amount of money for this game.
Allow players to purchase their own storefront and sell fan-made content in the game.
Create a set of rules, such as size limitations that models have to follow, art has to be family friendly and cannot be copyrighted or too similar to any 343i created asset. Verify that everything that goes on a storefront is allowable.
Sell storefronts for, say, $1000. $1000 to sell your 343i-approved merch within Halo. Take 50% of the profits. You’ll be making money coming and going, fans will be THRILLED. I won’t spend $20 on a set of armor for this game but to create my own stuff and put it in my favorite series? You bet I would absolutely spend that $1k.
The community-driven aspect would make 343i sooo much money - for free. No development costs, except to set up the store system, and no overhead aside from approving assets. You want your game to survive for 10 years? This will do it. And the fans would eat it up.