So I was reading this month’s GameInformer cover feature and as much as I honestly dislike the changes, I gave them as much positive thought as I could, The one feature that struck a cord was the new Spartan Ops, more importantly; How 343 goes to impede the progress of the story until the next week to make the player feel that the game is growing, when in reality it sounds like they are locking away content from the disk.
A quote from the magazine: “The Spartan Ops season is part of what you get with the package when you buy Halo 4.” Says a Holmes. To me it sounds like the game comes with loads of content for Co-op and its Multiplayer side story, but you can’t have any until the next week, In my eyes it seems as a way to force the players interested to stay on the game. Be it the story or the “new” content. In case of the story, Modders will obviously get a hold of the locked content ahead, Not needing to wait to play it and spoiling the story for others. Which could also bring similar scandals like Mass Effect 3 Character DLC that already had files in the game.
I’m guessing these episodic content packs will be unlocked by way of server-side update or unlikely on title updates and the feature didn’t give any mention of a way for offline players to unlock such hidden content so by taking away Firefight and giving poor support to its replacement, They are letting offline, single and in the case the feature is only for paying members, Silver players in the dust.
In short, I think it would be a smarter approach to have all the Spartan Ops unlocked from the start, Only limited by the players progress to the story. A game looks better when it was loads of fun from the start, not a few dozes every often.
Maybe the locked content in the disc is on a timer, which is set to unlock itself every week? Im pretty sure Offline players wont be left out and this was addressed in the Sparkast.
Spartan Ops will play a major role as the Anti-Used games trust, if you buy the game, Spartan Ops “kind of pass”, the life time content will be there, but one time use only.
From a developers point of view its not smarter to release all the content at once. Keeps players coming back to there game. Also im fairly certain they probably wont have all the Spartan ops Content done by Launch.
The only timer offline players could get is a playtime timer or by date. Both can be easy exploited by letting your console on over night and changing the day, and again, modders will get a hold of the content at their wish.
They said it was DLC, from what I’ve heard. I doubt the modder thing would be a problem if that was the case. Also, are you sure they weren’t referring to the first episode of the season that is locked on the disk?
Read the magazine and looked a few sites, so far it sounds like everything is in disk, Hearing now that it might be used as an online pass kind of deal, Only the new copies getting it, If so I’m not buying it, Even tho I never planned on it.
> From a developers point of view its not smarter to release all the content at once. Keeps players coming back to there game. Also im fairly certain they probably wont have all the Spartan ops Content done by Launch.
Like said a few times on the magazine and OP, All the content is coming on the disk, Not as DLC, So they would be done.
> So I was reading this month’s GameInformer cover feature and as much as I honestly dislike the changes, I gave them as much positive thought as I could, The one feature that struck a cord was the new Spartan Ops, more importantly; How 343 goes to impede the progress of the story until the next week to make the player feel that the game is growing, when in reality it sounds like they are locking away content from the disk.
That’s not what’s happening, the content is being made by certain affinity, they’re not pulling one of those “scrap this map from the disc and release it as DLC” things.
> I assume that the Spartan Ops “pass” will work similarly to the Catwoman DLC for Arkham City.
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> Offline unlocking for missions might be related to Spartan Points.
The spartan ops missions are FREE. FREE. FREE. FREE. FREE. FREE. Who ever told you about a pass is greatly mistaken…or an idiot.
I think the first few missions might be on the disc, but not all of them since it would be a waste of space. Rather, have the users download the info from live whenever a new episode is available, as “free” DLC.
im a little confused are we downloading the missions from Xbox live, or are they on the disc and are just locked until a certain time. If we have to download the missions which will most likely be 800mb-1.5gb then i just might go back to bungie made halo games