It’s clear the player base does not like the current philosophies of the progression system, event and store. Do the devs even care though? What is actually forcing them to be so aggressive with their monetization?
The event challenges being locked behind regular challenges is also a joke, it’s loaded with XP boosts and challenge swaps. What the actual -Yoink!- is 343 thinking here? Whoever is in charge of these systems should definitely step down and let someone else reign it in, because as it stands it’s a total mess. The game is objectively good so far, but these constant screw ups and bad decisions are going to harm the player base rapidly to the point that people are just going to outright avoid the game.
And for -Yoink!- sakes please unlock the different matchmaking options. I do not want to be forced into Oddball/CTF/Oddball/CTF. I just want to play slayer some days. Let me -Yoink!- pick already. You can bust out fiesta, but you can’t separate the playlists??? And where’s Swat/VIP and OG KotH???
What is forcing them? Probably MS. The game was badly mismanaged for years, leading to it being a money hole for a while, and it wouldn’t shock me if MS is trying to recoup that as aggressively as possible. We, the consumers, end up paying the price for their mistakes, instead of this being the complete knock-out-of-the-park that Halo as a series desperately needed. Our personal opinions aside, H4, 5, and the MCC in the broad public perception were not good, so it’s really bizarre that they’d mess it up this bad.
This game is so important to the Xbox ecosystem that I can’t believe it’s a money grab. That makes no business sense long term for Microsoft. The health of the game benefits them much more than some silly MT money. I think it’s just incompetent design decisions.
MS is a company made nearly entirely of incompetent decisions. If it really was a 343 screwup, that’d be really funny, but I somehow doubt it.
Remember, Don Matrick nearly sank Xbox as a whole, and they let that guy run the brand for years. They are very capable of doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do despite unanimous criticism and mockery.
HOPEFULLY they’re thinking holy -Yoink!-, -Yoink!-, -Yoink!-, -Yoink!-, we gotta fix this ASAP.
My GUESS is that they’re thinking “wellp, we knew it was gonna be like this but the corpos made us do it anyway. Hopefully they will pay us to fix it but who knows”
I’d go take a peak at reddit if you haven’t already. Obliterated really is the best way to describe what’s happening regarding the event/progression system.
I did say that the game is objectively good, which it is. It’s exactly how I would like a modern halo to play. With a few caveats that are just personal opinions and unimportant.
I am really enjoying the game. But the progression system is so shockingly awful that it almost ruins the experience. I cannot believe they thought it was even close to acceptable. I feel bad that the gameplay devs are getting lumped in with the abject failure on the progression side.
If the game wasn’t halfway decent to play, I’d probably have uninstalled it by now. And I wouldn’t have lost anything from doing so since I’d never pay for the awful progression/battle pass.
I agree that “obliterated” is a bit too harsh of a term, but my optimism for the game keeps fading.
actuly whats more likley is 343 chose this battlepass system on thier own, but microsft told them how much money they needed to make. It was more than likley up to 343 to come up with the model. This is made even morew likley by the fact that forza, another microsft title, has a great progression system.
source: family member worked at microsft for over 10 years, gave really great insight into how they operate
Outside of Waypoint, the community response has been pretty positive.
Take Steam for example:
The game has mostly positive reviews
They crashed steam downloads with the surprise launch
The Game currently has the third most concurrent players on Steam alone
The Infinite Community page is filled with memes, clips, guides and Easter Eggs.
That’s not to ignore the response here, the progression system is abysmal. Customisation? It is a straight up scam. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem like something that can be fixed overnight. I think it’s fair to keep being vocal until these problems are repaired (although a lot of people could be way more decent about it).
I agree with all of that honestly the challenges and challenge swaps are my only major critique. I’m ok with the store while I do think some prices are maybe a tad high and i find it highly unlikely the $100 is there best seller. the challenges make the least sense long term.
I’m sure they have business people doing the math on pricing, but $20 for an armour set is insane. I feel like they could sell way more if the price was $5.
I don’t need to speak more on progression, but it is easily the worst I’ve ever seen. I would genuinely be happy if they copied Call of Duty for progression, but kept permanent battle passes.
I know it’s just a game and the stakes are way lower, but if I screwed up at my job this badly I would be in jail.
I hope they’re thinking about something, and hopefully it’s along the lines of shame and regret. Social media and the forums are having a crapstorm right now, and content creators are already hopping on to the criticism as well.
But like you said OP, the game is definitely good in its core. There’s soul in this game, but it’s buried armpit-deep in cow manure.
Probably some of the devs agree with the criticism but are not allowed to communicate this, after all they typically don’t make these kind of decisions.
IMO I can’t say it’s the devs, at least not “all of them”. There are people above them that actually make the calls, and can change anything as they see fit. We may not like it, but it’s out of our control.
In reality, it doesn’t matter how many posts are created about this, how many upvotes a post gets, etc… What has taken place has already been set in motion and it’s not changing anytime soon. Yes, awareness is a good thing, but it won’t change anything with a f2p activity that most of the player base does not care about what direction the game is headed, and you will never see the majority of them voicing their opinion on this forum.
Just saying, we are only a very tiny portion of the player base, and right now to this company that money players are throwing at them is way more important than your opinion will ever be.
If it was cheap like $5, I’d be buying pretty much everything. But at $20? It’s really got me asking “yes, that helmet is nice, but is it $20 nice? It comes with a lot of stuff I really won’t ever use.” Meanwhile if it was say, $5, I would have just bought it and that’s that.