> > I’d wait until they are released first
>
> There’s always a risk this offer may be taken down when maps are released.
>
> On a side note, Bungie’s Map Packs completely altered their games for the better. Foundry…Sandbox…Avalanche…etc
While I 100% agree that there is always a risk the offer will be taken down, so far (from the games I checked anyways,) no one has done so. Plus, if you wait until they all get released and then decide to buy the Season Pass, you would’ve lost months and months worth of time and experience with those maps.
As for Bungie’s Map Packs, while I agree that the Halo 3 Map Packs did great things for Halo 3, I can’t say the same for Reach, because I never bought the 2nd map pack, and quit before Anniversary was released. That makes me really sad too, because one of my favorite maps of all-time is Hang Em High, which I never knew was brought back as High Noon until just a moment ago.
Anywho, regardless of any of that, I personally feel that no, it’s not worth the money, but I know I’m going to buy it anyways. Why? Because unless I want to play the same five maps for the rest of my Halo 4 gaming lifetime, I don’t have any other choice. Think about that: FIVE MAPS. I just went back to Reach’s Playlist of all launch and free additional maps, and there were NINE I enjoyed playing. Add the later-introduced community playlist to that, and theoretically you could have close to 20 maps at your disposal.
But let’s just compare Reach to H4. With Reach, regardless of what I liked or didn’t, there were 13 maps available to choose from, and if I’m not mistaken, ALL of them were available for Team Slayer (although, I didn’t like the bigger maps at all.) Again, just FOUR maps for Halo 4. And I don’t care that some of them were remakes of older classics; they were remade because they were GOOD! But what’s this? When I want to create a custom game for Team Slayer, I see 13 maps?! Sure- Ragnarok has no place in the Team Slayer map pool, but what about the other SEVEN? I’ve never even seen any of them, so I don’t know if I like them or not, BUT THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!!!
Here we are, discussing whether or not to buy a $25 Season Pass, when we have a bunch of other maps, of which I have to assume at least 4 or 5 of are valid Team Slayer maps, that aren’t even part of the Team Slayer playlist!!! Who in their right mind thought that a handful of maps would be good enough? Are they waiting to add them to the playlists, so they can pretend as though their giving us free content? “Check out these new maps that were added to the rotation! They’re totally free! (because they’re included on the disc!)”
Not only do we have a plethora of maps with no access to them, but we’re seriously justifying $10 for three maps. I know that price model isn’t anything new, but I haven’t stopped -Yoinking!- about how greedy (persons/company responsible) are either. This is Halo, and whoever tries to tell me that, from conception to public release, that it will cost them a total of anything even close to $500,000 (how much money they will receive if 50,000 people buy the map pack) in order to create those THREE MAPS, well… I feel sorry for you. The real reason those maps cost so much, is because it’s a way to continue to bring in revenue while the developer continues to support the game, which I’m not entirely sure how I feel about at the moment. Yes people should get paid for their work, but a lot of the post-launch support is (or at least should be) already factored into the total overall development cost.
Or better yet- lets say all three map packs will have three maps, so for $25, you will get 9 maps. Yay! The maps will cost ~$2.78 each instead of ~$3.33 each! But anywho- say EVERYONE gets that discount. That means that we’d all pay $8.34 for the three maps, and a pickup total of 50,000 would still amount to $417,000! I know I’m just pulling a random number of buyers out of thin air, but remember this: EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. that bought the Limited Edition has already prepaid for their Season Pass, and I have to believe that worldwide, at least 50,000 LE’s were sold, meaning that anyone else who has to buy the Map Pack is just even more money on top of that.
Other than stating the obvious, which is that we’ve been overpaying for new Halo maps for about 5 years, my point is this: They need to stop using pricing models based on competitors. Yeah Activision gets away with it, and they’re swimming through the money like Scrooge McDuck, but if you want to take people away from them, then you need to give more for less. You need to give people a reason to consider switching, and you need to reward those who are loyal to you. If that means creating a map pack of 10-15 classic maps, and selling it for $20, then so be it. A. You don’t have to worry about testing or designing the maps, they’re already there for you, B. You know old Halo players are going to come out of the woodworks to buy Halo 4 and this map pack: they’d be maps that are tried and true with plenty of previous data to pull from, and C. You’d be doing something that no one else would even consider doing, and in the process, you’re likely to drastically increase your Halo 4 install base.
WOW. I really wrote a lot all-of-a-sudden, so I’m done; I think you guys can see my point, though. Not only do I think $10 is too much for three maps, but I also feel we don’t have enough maps in the current Xbox Live playlists to justify charging us for additional maps, yet. Give us a solid 9-10 map rotation at no additional cost, and THEN ask us to buy your map packs.
I truly hope this decision wasn’t made by 343i.
