"If it's too good, people say we're weaponizing FOMO and forcing them to play. If it's seen as not good enough, people say there's no reason to play." ~Uny

Games Halo Infinite
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61

I completely agree with you.

It defies sense, sadly so many of the decisions about Halo Infinite make no sense, even to the people working on the game themselves like the UI that can’t deal with adding new playlists when they knew that at some point they would need to add new playlists or the live service model without having anywhere near the content in the pipeline to support it.

It honestly feels like everyone in 343 are working in complete isolation from everyone else there, they seem to have no clue what anyone else is doing, they aren’t on the same page with things, nothing feels joined up or planned for.

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The fact that they’re asking this while looking down upon a host of successful rewards systems (including the one they made themselves in MCC!) is kind of sad. Nobody is arguing against “weekly challenge reward FOMO.” It’s obvious it’s meant to entice players to come in and play more during the week, it’s up to the player to decide whether or not the item is worth grinding for.

Just make it decent cosmetic items. Visors, chest pieces, shoulder pad SETS (Not just the right or left ones), etc. I feel like the time sink into getting them right now is fairly reasonable, it’s just the rewards.

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63

Um…yeah, I am.

It is quite possibly one of the worst features to come to the gaming industry and I absolutely despise it.

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64

???

You quoted me and then proceeded to say what I already said.

They admitted that full customization in the same way as previous games may not be possible.

Cross-core for now will ONLY work for canon. Yoroi armor for example isn’t canon, so as of this moment don’t expect to be able to mix and match Yoroi with Mark V (B) or Mark VII.

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False, coatings/visors will work across all cores, helmets/chest attachments will be cannon core only for right now

And seeing as I already said this, you have should probably working on your reading skills

66

Personally I agree with GusTank04 here.

Look I get that a bit of FOMO helps drive player activity but I want to feel like I am able to unlock everything, even if some of it is hard or takes a long time, to have something that is only available to earn for a week makes Halo Infinite feel like a second job.

I either have to decide to commit my life to Halo or accept that I will never be able to earn everything I might want. That doesn’t feel like a good choice, that feels like picking the lesser of two evils and it’s only a choice I have to make because of the system 343 have employed.

I’m not saying I want everything handed to me, I’m good with earning stuff, I like earning stuff, I just don’t want to be in the position of having to play Halo Infinite for 12 hours a week every single week for the entire lifespan of the game or never being able to unlock things I might want.

Again I get why 343 do it, it’s to make people play the game and keep coming back because they need those player numbers but in the good old days a developer made you come back to a game by providing an enjoyable game, not relying on psychological tricks like FOMO.

Let me pick from the selection of items what I want to earn progress towards then make me do 20 challenges to unlock it or tie them to unique career challenges (once you get your 500th headshot you get a special visor or something). Just let me earn the items in my own time.

67

Here’s the thing.

I think FOMO CAN be good, but in a healthy way.

If events are temporary, then you feel like," Oh, I have to play or I’m not gonna get those cosmetics."

If they are permanent however, and you just make the cosmetics harder to obtain after the event (increase the price per level or throw them at the end of the BP, which, for a 3 month season, would make them harder to get.
I also think battlepasses should take longer to grind since they are permanent, but that’s just me.

But like I was saying, if they are permanent and simply harder to get after the event, it’s not," Oh, I have to jump in or I’ll miss out."
It is," Oh, that looks cool, I’ll hop in and get the new stuff, but I don’t NEED to get it all, because I can hop in at any other time and continue working towards them."

Still a little bit of FOMO with the “I want to get stuff before others” but also not as vicious.

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Literally, it’s not hard at all.

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69

I mean… boohoo? Sorry for a rude reply, and usually I’m one to argue against FOMO and mtx in general, but I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with weekly item rewards. Maybe they could reduce the grind a little (though I don’t think you need to play too much to do the challenges rn) but it’s fine. It helps keep players with shorter attention spans interested which is sadly necessary now, and provides fun rewards for those who play the game more often. It isn’t that big of a deal not having literally every single item in the game and if missing a few items or visor colors here and there really hurts your experience that bad you’re not getting enough enjoyment out of the gameplay. Why should 343 pander to more casual fans to that extent anyways? You wanna keep the people who sink more of their gaming time and money into Halo anyways.

Halo Infinite just lacks content right now on all fronts, so missing one decent item on the weekly rewards feels worst when you have so few battlepass and free items to use otherwise.

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I don’t think you’re coming across as rude, I’m perfectly happy to have a conversation with someone where we disagree on things.

I accept that you don’t see it as an issue but I don’t think you’ve put together a solid argument as to how allowing people to choose what they want to earn progress towards unlocking would be detrimental to the player base.

The current system is designed to force players to do what 343 wants them to do when 343 wants them to do it. It makes it harder for players to get the content they want. It is designed solely for the benefit of 343 not the players.

A player choice based system allows players to pick what they want to earn progress towards unlocking. This allows them to progress at their own rate (slower for those with less time and quicker with less/no caps for those with more time). It gives every player the opportunity to unlock the content they want whilst still ensuring they do something to actually ‘earn it’. This benefits the players and by making players happier should also benefit 343.

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71

Banners are poor rewards anyways because the games UI doesn’t have a proper pre-game lobby to display them in.

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I really think this comment in regards to “weaponizing fomo” and “not good enough” really doesn’t even pinpoint the issues that have plagued this game since launch. It’s almost blaming the community for putting this guy between a rock and a hard place, only this issue that this guy puts out doesn’t even exist. I mean, I’ve never once heard anyone say a reward was too good. In addition, it doesn’t address the simple fact that the rewards system , progression, and challenges all have very fundamental problems and it has nothing to do with user sentiment. For example, if a challenge forces you to play a specific game that you can’t pick and is up to chance whether you play that specific game or not like oddball or something, that is literally forcing people to play a bunch of games they don’t want to participate in just to complete a challenge. Once again, that has nothing to do with FOMO. It is a basic shortcoming of the foundation of the game. But I REALLY don’t like how this guy in a way blamed users for the shortcomings of the product. And FOMO is not a big deal. It’s literally a sales tactic in use across all industries.

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73

Aaaaaaaaand youre the reason everything sucks now

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The fact of the matter is that having rewards that disappear after a week go against their advertising and is verifiably illegal. Secondly, basing the entirety of progression on gameplay altering challenges makes it so that, if I don’t have much time to play, I have to play it the way the challenges tell me if I also happen to want to progress the battle pass I PAID MONEY FOR. They can’t seem to fathom the issues that underly their entire player experience. The game isn’t fun enough to make it so that I’d only ever play just for the game. If that were the case, I’d play about 20 games and never touch it again.

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75

Yay. Old threads. I still want to say this:

“…people say we’re weaponizing FOMO…”

343i is weaponizing FOMO. I understand that in context this part is about people using a specific part of the system that they say 343i is pushing FOMO with, but the system as a whole is clearly designed to use FOMO to entice players to play. Furthermore the whole system also tries to get players to play on a weekly basis. That tactic exists for the purpose of getting players into a habit.

Honesty about why a company does what it does is important. 343i is better off if it is honest about why some things are the way they are.

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I didn’t say I like the tactic. Just that it is in play everywhere you look. You can’t expect it to not exist just because it’s a part of your game. What are you going to whine about next, that the burger joint down the street ended their sale on 2 for 1 burgers this week? The problem isn’t me pointing out that this exists, the problem is people that don’t like the practice yet still eventually spend their money on the system. If you don’t like the practice, don’t support it by buying into the process. So the problem further compounds when people complain about it, but still end up willingly spending money on it.

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Are you saying 170 for the week if you play everyday? That would be very nice, very nice indeed.

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The whole premise is wrong,
FOMO, short for “Fear Of Missing Out”, is a new anxiety issue. People in general want to be part of a community, partake in activities and discuss what’s happening, this is where FOMO gets involved. The participants generally do not want to miss out on anything because they feel they’re left behind and, as the phrasing literally say, they miss out on things. No, the world won’t end, but it’s still something which can affect a person if they’re very involved. Social Media is where it started, gaming is where it got, practically monetized.

Taking an item, and dangling it in front of us, for a limited time behind gameplay grind, is FOMO, regardless of the quality of the item. If it’s poor quality, it means you’ve just failed to make a proper reward for your FOMO schemes.

Not only this, but “there’s no reason to play” is a form of criticism of the quality of the game.
If people aren’t having fun enough to play, if the quality of the reward is poor, then the game is in poor condition. Think about it, what does that say about the game when people aren’t motivated to play it when rewards for playing isn’t good enough. This is even two-fold, good rewards make people burn themselves out on the game, and take breaks when the item isn’t good, which showcase a poorly made Challenge system. No game should burn the players out through chores. I don’t find the challenges very complementary of the game.

Now he’s asking for a middle ground between apples and oranges.
FOMO isn’t the same as reward quality.
You can’t draw a middle ground there.

They need to admit they’re using FOMO through limited timed items behind 21 challenges.
Then we need to think about options to that system which isn’t about FOMO.
Item quality is an entirely different discussion.

Now, I’ve suggested it before, but, this is my view of it.
Make weekly challenges the same as the Battlepasses.
Never expiring collections of challenges to complete in order to unlock an item.
That means, you could select a previous week’s item, and then complete challenges for that item until you unlock it. Progress saved if you jump to another item.

We’d have FOMO entirely removed, new players wanting to catch up would get all the opportunity in the world to catch up both in Battlepasses as well as previous items. People who don’t play as much, or only sporadically would be allowed to choose what they do etc.

That’s what I’d present to i343, but I seriously doubt they’d consider it.

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79

I’d take a set number of credits for the ultimate reward. I figure credits are something that people wouldn’t mind missing out on and also free up the live team, so they don’t have to come out with a new visor color every other week

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80

I’d even make it simpler. Just have the weekly challenge set, once that is complete it rewards a token or “season point”. That token can be spent in a pool of weekly rewards whether current or from the past. So if you miss a week or something you can go back and try again.(See: MCC Exchange). Bu the best part is that 343 wouldn’t be giving things away at any faster of a rate. Players would still be limited to 1 item per week.

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