Deeper discussion on this is in the “Bring Back Blood” thread, but this has never been the visual presentation of Halo. And while Halo has been mostly rated M, that means little and less (also let’s be real, none of us should have played Halo back in the day, if Ratings meant anything).
This completely defeats the purpose of even having customization.
Because being squeamish to that degree is a legit phobia, that could actually prevent someone from deciding to play the game, not liking an armor piece because it’s ugly to you personally, is a personal problem, not a phobia, or anything serious.
Do you know about OCD? Not how it’s usually referred to in media, but the actual disorder. I certainly hope you’re not dismissing OCD as “a personal problem, not a phobia, or anything serious.” As I said, it’s not just that they’re ugly, it’s that they actually could cause me a lot of anxiety. And yes, if the armors bothered me enough it could easily prevent me from deciding to play the game.
How did you cope with the last 20 years of Halo? Serious question. 343i didn’t invent customization.
Well, for one thing, I’ve only been playing Halo frequently since earlier this year. And none of the customizations really bothered me before the new Fractures or whatever stuff, except for that one Reach helmet with the skull in it, but you can’t really see that unless you’re up close. All the other customizations were basically just sensible permutations of MJOLNIR armor. Nothing that would cause anxiety.
Are you referring to the disorder that causes compulsory behaviors (e.g. closing a door three times in succession before it’s “closed”) or obsessive behaviors that are symptomatic to OCD such as germaphobia and an obsession with cleanliness?
Although yes, if certain designs cause you anxiety it’s probably best to just avoid that media entirely. It’s not such a pervasive issue to where a super specific toggle is needed when the solution is simple avoidance.
Yes. Germaphobia and obsession with cleanliness are stereotypical elements of OCD that the media like to portray, but hardly all that it would entail. The root of OCD is frequent intrusive unwanted thoughts that cause intense anxiety, and compulsions that are done in order to reduce the anxiety. You mentioned closing a door several times, that’s a good example. Another would be someone feeling a minor bump while driving to work, then becoming convinced that they ran someone over and having to drive back and check that there aren’t any bodies in the road. Religious people might feel the need to pray compulsively and excessively because of the bad thoughts they had. Unwanted, intrusive violent thoughts of harming loved ones is another common symptom. Imagine not being able to handle a knife without the thought popping into your head of stabbing your nearest loved one.
Avoidance is actually a form of compulsion and very frequent, as is seeking reassurance from loved ones–“Did I lock the door? Did I run someone over? Is something terrible going to happen because I had this thought, or saw this thing?” Turning off customization would actually be a form of avoidance for me, something that’s discouraged because it feeds into the OCD. But if it’s between that and not playing the game at all, I’d rather have the toggle. It’s not really super specific either, there are lots of other reasons to want such a toggle, like if you don’t like the outlandish customizations for reducing immersion.
then why do you play violent video games anyway? Why not just play something that doesn’t (for the lack of a better word) trigger you?
There is a third option, because the toggle seems excessively unhealthy to your situation. Especially because there is no toggle for real life, and I’m guessing skulls are your trigger - skulls are very common elsewhere, not just Halo. The general advice for when OCD begins to affect your quality of life - which this would - is to seek medical help. I would focus more on that, rather than - as you put it - giving in to the avoidance and exasperating your OCD.
I mean maybe we’re playing different games, but Halo CE certainly had plenty of blood and floody gore. 2, 3, and Reach followed suit.
As for the customization, I would argue that having “non-canon” armors completely defeats the point of a military science fiction game. It seems ironic to argue that that these armors should be included so that people who like them can customize their playing experience, while also saying that people who dislike them shouldn’t be able to customize their own playing experience by toggling them off.
There was blood, but not tons of blood and gore. Not even with the Flood. Blood and gore is not a central theme or necessity to Halo, unlike games such as DOOM and Mortal Kombat. Halo doesn’t need to be Rated Mature and be “full of blood and gore”.
Hayabusa, armor effects (flaming helmets, confetti death effects, storm clouds, pestilence clouds), goofy gametypes, emblems, color customizations… The Fractures armors are absolutely not an issue - especially since they are designated clearly as non-canon - nor do they break the “point of a military sci-fi game” any worse than anything else that’s been included since Halo 3.
The violence in Halo isn’t usually bad enough to bother me, except for when the Flood is involved. Halo is the only M-rated game that I play, since besides the Flood it’s more T-rated than M anyway.
Skulls aren’t the trigger, they’re just a trigger.
Sound advice, and I already am on medication. Unfortunately, for me, medication doesn’t get rid of the problem, only takes the edge off. And I haven’t found counseling to be incredibly helpful, and it also costs money.
Boy, how I wish there were toggles for stuff like that in real life. For instance, I could just toggle off the constant booming bass I hear from the parking lot every day instead of having to wear noise-cancelling headphones all day.
How can you be against more player choice ?
Giving an option to disable sprint will allow classic players to make playlists or custom maps that feel more like classic Halo (and may make equipments even more useful) while letting others play the normal game.
I like blood in Halo, especially CE, but I totally understand if someone wants to disable it. Some people might be uncomfortable with that. And it may be necessary for release in certain countries anyway.
Boss health bars are boring design that totally go against the intra-diegetic HUD that Halo always had. Hunters and H3 Brutes had armor that broke during combat, and Elite’s shields flashed when disabled.
The reason Halo MCC has a toggle for armor customisation is because new stuff was added that wasn’t in the original games. And it seems that Halo Infinite will have some non-canon elements like cat ears for helmets which may ruin the immersion of some people who love Halo’s classic aesthetic.
Toggles can only be positive on the long term.
It’s called immersion. We don’t want to be remembered that we’re are playing a game, we want to feel like we’re living an adventure.
It’s one of the reasons Halo uses intra-diegetic HUD.
So true. 343 would never have to add HUD customisation if they just used a Halo HUD instead of the same one used bay every single generic FPS.
The common kick back, yet as we’re seeing “more player choice” leads to burdens on development well beyond choice options that are provided (i.e. customization). To counter, how can you be against more player representation, and seeing what other people enjoy? Why hinder their digital representation by blinding yourself to it? No one customizes their character in a space like this to display to only themselves.
wtf is that? Did you just make that word up?
Yes but if you love classic Halo you don’t want some stupid toggle, you want the game designed fundamentally around no sprint. They attempted a ‘classic’ halo playlist in Halo 5 and it really didn’t scratch that itch because all the maps and weapons were designed with advanced movement abilities in mind.
according to canon its all just a simulation… so don’t really see it breaking immersion then.
Cat ears are going to be so much worse than a huge katana on your back…
Because music toggles/music volume sliders have been industry-standard for decades.
Asking 343i to add blood (on similar levels to Halo CE and 2, to my understanding) back in and then telling them “It’s ok, you can make a toggle for people who don’t like the blood” is asking them to do a lot of work to create optional stuff that can completely change the tone/feel of the game. It’s like in shows where someone tells the person moving furniture/etc. “A liiiitle bit more to the right” and then after they finish moving it the person goes “Actually I liked it when it was halfway across the room the other way” but going one step further and saying “also install a hydraulic lift system that I or anybody else can use to move it back to that spot if we want.”
Asking for 343i to have boss health bars as a toggle would impact the flow and feel of a boss fight for the people who want to turn it off. One of the arguments I’ve seen is “Good games design boss fights so you can tell without a health bar” and that’s not really true. Even in Doom Eternal, where enemies showed visual indication of taking damage, the bosses had health bars.
Asking them to make cosmetics a toggle is asking them to basically turn off the one of the core ways they plan to make money to fund future content for Halo. It would drastically change the way that multiplayer looks, and if someone streams the game on Twitch to a lot of viewers with cosmetics off but they don’t tell the viewers that, then people could get a false representation of what the game normally looks like. We’ve already seen console warrior trolls trying to stir crap up by showing that 343 didn’t crunch the devs to implement trivial hyper realistic fruit physics. If there was a cosmetics toggle, you know that these guys will use that and go “Wow, look at all these generic Spartans, Xbox made the game a money-grubbing grind and nobody has any cool stuff yet” alongside the several 
emojis that they love to use.
Let the devs make the game they want to make. If their decisions do not gel with you to the point of such high levels of consternation, then there are plenty of other games to play.
Incidentally, the ESRB doesn’t agree. The Legend of Zelda games show Link stabbing and slicing lots of things dead, but the majority are rated E10+ because they don’t show blood. Most view Fortnite as acceptable for kids, since even though you’re shooting people, there’s no blood or gore whatsoever. And adding absurd amounts of blood is a surefire way to get an M rating. The only reason Reach was rated M was precedent and the amount of blood. There’s no gore in Reach at all.