The moment you connect to XBL with Reach - even to check for a Title Update, you’re boned as far as earning credits thereafter. Even if you stick to playing offline, once you’ve logged in, your credits get capped ridiculously low. Bungie didn’t put in a system to determine if you’re playing offline.
Instead of detecting if someone is playing, you know, in MATCHMAKING, anyone connecting to check for a title update gets screwed.
The system is flawed, and really needs corrected.
The only way I was able to make up for simply checking for a TU was to play some Gruntpocalypse and farm commendations during that Free Gold weekend (Though the campaign commendations while solo-online, as otherwise, only 1k credits and… yeah). I’m not too keen on playing with other players, especially with the horribly flawed system Bungie added on top of the credit screw. That, and I haven’t bothered to renew my Gold subscription, and I’m not too keen on that, either. Sure, only $60 for a year, but it’s all dependant upon me having $60 to throw into the subscription at any given time. And the monthly and tri-monthly subs are that much more expensive. ($120 and $80 per year, without price hikes and tax).
I like the campaign, but it pays out poor credits after you’ve brought commendations to Silver - only way to earn credits from that after Silver, is to go to Campaign Matchmaking (what I’ve heard, anyway). Honestly, to keep people playing the campaign, increase the credit payout for those who’ve connected to Live for a title update, or to track their achievements being earned, no fun for people to see some piece of armor they want, and they can’t get it because of the jacked over credit payout. And for a lot of people, even though they play because they like the game, continuing to play because they want the credits for a piece of armor is just another thing to keep them, you know, interested. But those that don’t play matchmaking (or can’t, due to lack of a gold subscription), can’t get anywhere.
Honestly, I understand they did it to prevent exploitation of the system, but you know what. It isn’t all that good to go and screw everyone over, either because they checked for a title update, wanted to track their achievement earnings with the time-stamp, or were chatting with a friend over XBL while playing.
TL;DR:
Bungie screwed the pooch.
If 343i has anything that actually needs fixed, it’s this. Especially for all OFFLINE play, or even pseudo-online; “Oh, you’re playing campaign while connected? Here’s some more credits for you beyond commendations!”