> At launch, Halo Infinite will feature one primary progression path for players which is tied to a seasonal Battle Pass.
I’ve seen several Tweets, including some that have a few hundred likes, complaining about how 343 has doubled down on Halo Infinite’s progression system being tied to a battle pass (I’m not talking about the challenge system here—strictly the BP itself). The general community seems to have a fairly negative view on this, so I guess I’m kinda going against the popular opinion. With that being said, though, I don’t think the battle pass is as bad as y’all are making it out to be. Most modern AAA games use one as a primary progression method. While some offer other rank systems, BPs have become an extremely popular mechanic in the gaming industry. So what’s wrong with Halo using one? The player is still ranking up in Infinite, but simply through levels tied to battle pass tiers. I personally feel like this is a non-issue that people are blowing up for no solid reason. There’s (arguably) a lot of things 343 is doing wrong with Infinite, but I just don’t think its BP is one of them. If we’re talking about challenges being the only way to rank up, then that’s a whole separate issue. Where XP goes after being earned doesn’t seem like the problem to me.
Any thoughts? I’m open to balancing my view on this through other opinions, as long as they’re respectful arguments.
If I have learned something throughout my life, it is that seeing a tweet with hundreds of MGs does not mean anything. In the end, those who like BP will not be seen complaining about it, and those who do not like it will see them making a lot of noise to get noticed.
I agree with you mostly. I think the linear progression systems we’ve gotten before were fine for a few months, and then progression starts to become so slow that it’s essentially a waste of time. I know people want to show off how much they’ve played the game, but really people aren’t all that interested. Just deck out your Spartan in a cool coating and armour set people can drool over instead of a meaningless icon next to your gamertag. If Halo infinite really is going to be a 10 year platform, there’s no feasible way to include a linear ranking system that will last for the lifetime of the game. The BP mixed with extra events gives you a reason to keep coming back, rather than just grinding out millions of XP for a couple of extra dashes on your service rank.
I’m not bothered either, really. My only gripe was with how the challenges would work as an XP system, and now that I know that it can take up to 18 hours to complete every single daily challenge in a day? I will be reserving my final judgment for launch.
I am bothered by it, but ill wait until I have played it for a few months before I judge it. It’s easy to judge a game the first time you play it. We should all wait and see how it goes. Remember halo 4? Let’s see how happy we are with said unlocks, and how long things take us.
My first reaction was to be annoyed, because it seems like a huge grind. But then I remembered what someone else mentioned, once you rank up pretty high in a linear progression system, you really arent progressing much at all anyway. So I’m definitely not excited for the system, it seems boring, but it’s not going to deter me from playing.
You would be surprised how little the general gaming community actually cares. Twitter isnt the majority, this forum isnt the majority. A majority of gamers dont take part in these discussions.
I think since it’s a 10 year game, a traditional XP ranking system would be hard to balance. I personally do not care much for XP ranks. They are just an indicator to time spent playing, and it’s not even really that. If we look at halo 5, someone who plays warzone firefight for the same amount of time compared to someone who plays arena will have a higher xp rank.
Overall I’m not bothered because I feel they never offered anything rewarding. They would usually be tied to certain items like a helmet unlock at rank 50 or something. Now that there is a battlepass, the XP ranks will mean even less.
To me the battle pass progression system sounds a lot like the way Apex Legends works in regards to their BP progression. I don’t really hear a lot of people complain about leveling up Apex’s battle pass so its interesting to see the response to Halo’s iteration of it. Yes Apex has a normal leveling system as well, but all that really gives you is a loot box every other level and some of the currency used to unlock champions. Since Halo doesn’t have loot boxes then the only other things they can give you for leveling up would be discrete predetermined armor drops, coatings, or emblems. Realistically they would want to save the best stuff for the Battle Pass and the in game store, and even then they would only have so many things to give out with a normal leveling system so after a certain level reached you kind of run out of stuff to get. I guess there’s a case to be made that some people want to get a high level just to have one. If we look back to Halo 5 being rank 100 compared to rank 5 didn’t really mean a whole lot except that the level 100 had a lot more time spent in the game playing. You could argue that having more time spent in the game means you’re better, but that isn’t always the case. I could be level 100 but if a pro gamer was only level 2 because they just started the game they would still be miles better than me.
I personally don’t like Battle Passes, their bland and uninteresting and so many games have them.
Halo back in the day had a much more unique way of unlocking armor. Like in Halo 3 where you had to unlock specific challenges to get armor. To get EOD you had to complete the entire campaign on legendary, to get Security you had to get one thousand gamerscore in Halo 3.
Reach did a good job at this too with the daily and weekly challenge system, as well as the ranking system which in my opinion is the best in all of Halo. Ranking up in Reach was extremely difficult, but finally getting to that rank so you could unlock that helmet that you REALLY wanted was one of the best feelings in the world. It wasn’t so hard that you wanted to rip your hair out either. Bungie made it fair with the weekly challenges which gave a LOT of credits.
They may not have been perfect, but I’d take those over a battle pass any day.