On April 7th you tweeted that you have the feeling that if the weekly reward is good, you weaponize FOMO and if it is a bad there is no incentive for people to play. https://twitter.com/Unyshek/status/1512101944734584838 That is 100% correct! You asked what a good middle ground is, but there is none. The system of the ultimate weekly reward is just a bad system. Because it does 2 things wrong:
It does indeed weaponize FOMO, which is not a player first approach. Something 343 promised not to do.
Once you completed the weekly ultimate reward, a big incentive to play is gone. Unless there is still a battle pass you need to complete or a weekly event. Sorry, but people want to feel some sort of progression. Either through climbing in rank, or unlocking stuff. And ideally both.
Ideally, the challenge system goes away. Because it is well known that people start to play games focusing on those challenges instead of playing good or trying to win. In this ânewâ system People earn credits by playing games. With those credits you can either buy cosmetics (like in REACH) or you can buy packs with random cosmetics (like in Halo 5).
But if you donât want to throw away the challenge system completely hereâs what you guys should do: Make a big loot pool of letâs say 100 awesome cosmetics. People get challenges and after 10 or 15 completed challenges, they get a random drop from that loot pool. Sorry, but the 25 challenges + a weekly challenge like it is now is just very, very stingy. After they received an item from that loot pool they get 10 â 15 new challenges and can try to get those . If they want they can earn multiple rewards a week. Also, people get 4 free challenge swaps a week. Hiding those behind a paywall is just very, very wrong.
This ânewâ challenge system solves 2 things:
It removes FOMO from the weekly challenges.
After people completed the weekly challenges, there is still an incentive to play.
Now it is important to monitor that loot pool of 100 cosmetics and add new cosmetics to that loot pool every few weeks/months.
Or you say weekly is FOMO or you say itâs an incentive to play. You canât have both.
Plus: you all seem to play only for unlocking something and not because you like halo or the game in general.
How can something that is FOMO not be an incentive to play? If anything FOMO is forcing you to play THAT WEEK, because after that itâs gone forever. A HUGE INCENTIVE to play.
You say I donât like Halo, but only cosmetics. WTF?
Remove XP challenge system as the sole progression system.
Remove ultimate weekly rewards.
Implement an actual progression system worthy of the name (ie career) alongside BP.
Implement daily and weekly challenges with varying degrees of difficulty that earn increasing value XP depending on difficultly and duration.
Implement season and career challenges with varying degrees of difficulty that earn increasing value XP and cosmetic rewards depending on difficultly and duration.
Implement XP rewards based on games played, performance and medals.
Weekly or not, if u like Halo why would you care about weekly stuff? If you only play cuz you âfear to miss outâ on some random background and not because you like arena/competitive or BTB: you play for cosmetics and not HALO.
Donât bother respond, we got what kind of player you are.
Oh this is classic, âdonât respond, because I might not like your answerâ. We all see how well Halo Infinite is doing right now. You should apply for a job there, you will fit right in.
I still think MCCâs The Exchange is an excellent way for players to âcatch upâ, along with a Token system after the player maxes their BP.
Say the player maxed BP at Lv. 100. All the Xp they earn now just goes into nowhere, so why not channel each post 100 level up into earning Tokens. Take these Tokens, buy stuff you missed in The Exchange.
1 Token = Emblems and Backdrops
2 Token = Coatings and Trinkets
5 Token = Armor pieces
2 birds with one stone:
Helps introduce a system that eliminates FOMO
Helps players utilize XP after BP is maxed, increasing time spent playing the game.
Iâll like a Challenge revamp together with this to make the game actually comfortable to play, and not a chore.
Tbf I play regardless of rewards, but I do play more when thereâs a weekly I want.
But I donât see this as weaponized fomo. Itâs just incentive to play more than I otherwise would.
Tuesdays I can hop into Waypoint to see what this weekâs grind is. If the reward is worth the grind than this week is a Infinite heavy week. If not, than I have some MCC achievements to catch up on.
I could care less if Iâm âunlockingâ something, I just want the customization.
Also, it is kind of hard to like Halo because there is basically nothing there to play.
Keep on shilling
I donât really like the lootbox type of thing.
I think it would be better as a âchallenge BPâ (like the MCC BP, each tier has 10 levels, you can choose which levels you want to get first, but must get all 10 levels to advance to the next tier)
All of the items are lined up in a BP, each level costs like 5k XP or something.
New weeks add more content to the end of the BP.
And each season has its own BP.
FOMO, fear of missing out; there are people who play because of the fear of missing out, just as there are people who are inclined to spend more money on things that are âlimited editionâ. I think itâs a tad silly in regards for motivation to play to begin with, but there are of course completionist, exclusivity seekers, and people who play only because they like being rewaded, and there were effective systems in place for the latter in Halo 3, Reach, and 5.
That last reason also contributes to many peoples ire with the current system as it is a downgrade overall, mostly becuase there are no more accolades rewarding items, and the now there is a timer. Granted, 1 week to unlock 1 item is generous, but the item is usually trash (subjective), and not everyone has as much free time as me.
But thatâs getting off topic, TL;DR - FOMO can be used as an incentive to play (or buy) something, theyâre not mutually exclusive, LTM events/rewards being a great example.
Itâs nice to be rewaded when you accomplish something (Halo 3, 5) or to have something to work towards (Halo Reach).
But you are correct in the sense that people should be playing the game, because they enjoy the game to begin, not because they have a carrot dangled in front of them.
I think a big part of the lack of interest after hitting a weekly reward is the âburnoutâ people have for the game after doing what it takes to hit all of the weekly challenges.
Most of the weekly challenges make players play the game in ways they donât want to play it naturally. By the time theyâve accomplished the weekly the game has felt like a chore at that point and they are eager for a break.
At least thatâs what the weekly reward experience does to me. Canât speak for everyone
Maybe if they actually had more free customization, I would feel less desperate for each little weekly piece they dripfeed us? If you miss either a weekly or an event, BAM, that customization is gone for a very long time or even forever. Am I not allowed to enjoy the process of customizing my Spartan in addition to other aspects of Halo?
Making a permanently weekly item shop where every week if you complete all challenges you get a token to unlock an item would significantly reduce FOMO and still provide additional incentives to play as an example (inspired by the MCCâs system.)
The weekly reward itself is both incentive to play and fear of missing a reward I may want later. I literally play halo right now just to get the weekly reward, if itâs any good, or to play with some friends that might be on.
Given that micro transactions are likely to never leave this game, how would you recommend this is incorporated into the system you described? - actually interested in your thoughts -
Side note: I also think they missed an opportunity to fix the system (as a whole) by limiting the amount of credits that are obtainable in S2 bp. I think if theyâd made this uncapped and tied to matches, it couldâve been a big first step in the right direction (likely where things will go down the road at some point) and wouldâve bought 343 a ton of goodwill with the community and âbroader audienceâ.
For starters, I must say that I despise micro transactions and Iâve been against this for years as I could see this is the way gaming would end upâŚand so it has proven to be. With that being said, they arenât going any where now that games developers know they can get away with fleecing their customers and release incomplete games.
Anyways to answer your questionâŚnone of my suggestions would actually impact upon how micro transactions are implemented in Halo Infinite. If they remove the broken challenge system (which is the sole progression system in this game) then they still have at least 3 micro transaction revenue streams:
Battle Pass (per season)
Store (interface needs to be completely overhauled, a catalogue of items at reasonable prices and updated regularly with innovative designs, exclusives and desirable items)
Downloaded content (would never be popular but campaign add ons and map packs are value added items, and this kind of paid for DLC has been done before in Halo and other titles)
Additional items: career XP boosts, weapon XP boosts, BP XP boots, BP level skips
The key part in all of this is having quality content available in all aspects of the game to keep players engaged. If they build the strong foundations for the game with career progression with quality content in the Battle Pass and challenges then it creates players engagement which increases desire to buy in to the game and desirable content in the store. All parts of the game should tie in to each other and this is very much missing at the momentâŚit looks and feels incomplete and disjointed because the basic foundations of the game havenât been laid properly.
