Odds are this is the system you are all stuck with. I use the royal “you” since I have long abandoned Infinite, a week of playing it taught me one thing, and one thing only: This is just Halo 5 again but even worse somehow.
343 makes a terrible monetization system NOBODY ASKED FOR. The HALO FANS wanted it removed, 343 mocked them and ignored them. Halo 5 died off as soon as the 360 games became backwards compatible.
Halo 5 had as long of a lifespan as it did because it was an old game by the time the backwards compatible games came out.
Infinite however, doesn’t have that luxury, 9 months of no forge, most likely unplayable custom games at launch, and a microtransaction system so blatantly predatory it’d make EA blush with jealousy, 343 have forgotten one key factor in all this: The fans WILL leave Infinite for MCC if they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly, which the Halo fanbase in this instance HAS been treated unfairly.
343 used a lot of, as another user posted, doublespeak, everything they claimed Infinite would be, turned out to be marketing lies to build hype, just like Halo 5. Personally the armor is actually the LEAST angering thing 343 has done with Infinite. The lies are definitely in the top 3. The others being the premium currency 343 promised wouldn’t be in the game and then putting the majority of the “Free” fracture event items into the monetized shop effectively paywalling them.
Sorry 343, but I’m not defending you on this one. I’ll stand by you with H4, MCC, and even H5, but not here, this is a line too far crossed.
the unfortunate reality is that the MINORITY (whales) are spending the most. this is who these monetisation models are designed to target. and they are extremely profitable.
Because for many players character customization is a key part of the gameplay. There are many players who would willingly take on a handicap for the sake of what their character looks like, in the Darksouls community this is called Fashion-souls, Here in Halo they tend to be Dinos. The players that choose to play elites even though they’re larger, easier to hit, and easier to kill. A large percentage of Halo players are, at least partially, that type of player, even if they wouldn’t go as hard into it as the elite players.
Yes, it really is. Do some research and take a look at the real world situations of anywhere it exists. Also, stop replying and dragging this off-topic.
@TheOneAndOnlyDC Nope, do the work, learn to think more critically. You’re wrong, fundamentally. And how about taking your own advice, I’m not giving you the satisfaction, especially when you took this off-topic first, and have ignored any chance to bring it back. Now stop telling me what I have already told YOU like some child.
Keep up the armor criticism
Sad truth. One can only hope the feedback that’s been given convinces the right people at 343 to make more than just a minuscule change and say “look we fixed it”.
This and just working towards armors that you want, whether the pieces are locked behind certain achievements, or like in Reach where you earn based on playtime (faster with skill).
Hoping cross-core customization is coming soon! There are other issues with customization of course but I think that unrestricting armor cores would be a HUGE positive change
From the opinion of a person who has worked as a hobbyist 3D artist who’s studied game design and worked on projects as a tech artist for a film company studying and practicing this crap for years on my own time for fun at this point since I’m working for a banking software company now since said gaming industry is unstable and terrifying, but competing Argument from authority fallacies aside… (I’m not trying to @ you Blizzarus in particular but your post was a perfect segway to rebuke this mindset and show my points, plus good bit o’ sarcasm.)
Apart from the main armor core which is redoing a whole character, a member of their art team whether it be a texture artist or a tech artist could get several of these armor pieces from reach updated in a day at a decent pace and one at a slow pace/with a more complicated piece. From the look of things its a matter of getting the uv map adjusted appropriately and textures re-projected if their workflow with this coating system is in any way related to basic pbr principles as I expect it is(If its not that explains the cross core coatings not being a thing in which case they have some incompetent designers on the team who decided this). Given the fact that the base meshes are likely an exact rip from previous titles plus a few additions for some minor details and they likely had higher resolution textures from the in game cinematics and armor customization screens to begin with (given literally identical fidelity in MCC and likely had access to the high-poly versions of the models the Normal and AO textures were generated from). And re-rigging SOLID ARMOR PIECES takes literally minutes. Zero out the origin point of the object position the piece, pick a bone and set the weight of it to 100%. Done.
So, let me get this straight, you can vaguely justify half of this $1000 microtransaction driven store as well as their battle pass is worth minimal effort from reused assets that would take 800 man hours of work at most to update:
My estimate is 8 hour days for 1 armor piece times 100 days (from about 85 unique Solid armor pieces from Reach and allowing extra for the time on updating the “core”, assuming some days where multiple pieces were done, and some for testing)
That’s $18,132 dollars of the budget with the industry average of artists $22.67 an hour, and likely less if they offloaded this to new hires or outsourcing.
If 36 people buy all the reach armor bundles they have planned and the battle pass then they’ve made up their budget on UPDATING REUSED ASSETS alone.
Just try and justify that isn’t in any way shady or scummy. Rather than the ~ 2000 minimum required from premium passes alone covering it should give those who buy it an opportunity to unlock said reused assets they’ve likely already paid / played for in other games too to be the baseline of making money back for the other aspects of the development and then turning a profit. Not to mention the campaign itself or future armor additions already part of the rumored multimillion dollar budget everyone keeps quoting to make back from microtransactions for additions they already have partially created but haven’t showed off or wasn’t datamined because it wasn’t in the current builds.
I’m less gun-ho about the “BRING BACK FREE PROGRESSION BASED ARMOR…” “Blah! is Halo since Halo 3…” and “Halo always had Blah!” mindset, because I’m sorry that doesn’t work with FTP, but come on guys… This reach armor rehash and breaking it up to bait 500 dollars out of your pocket for nostalgia rather than $10 (or even $20 if they did a “heroes of reach 2” or some BS to make up for this mistake) is absolute hog wash. And if you genuinely 100% think that’s all fine after reading this gtfo of this conversation. You are either a whale, a kid with rich parents, or diluted by god awful business practices in this avenue of the industry.
Keep up the distraction from other far more pressings issues that are actually affecting the gameplay and gameplay experience of this title!
Who needs attention drawn to crashes, inability to rejoin matches, audio blind spot bugs, poorly optimized servers, and the lack of anti-cheat when we’re forcing 343 to let us grind out the game’s completely optional progression system our way!
You’re post was a little hard to follow, but after reading it a couple times, I understand what you’re getting, I hope.
Anyway, my concern is that there isn’t any evidence of them making any major changes until at least Season 2. And they almost definitely won’t do anything until after the first of the year. They actually stated that they made Season 1 six months long so they can take a break during the holidays, and then focus on making Season 2 the bread and butter.
Excuse us for calling out an equally valid component of this PRODUCT to its producer and trying to keep alive negotiations for the only aspect of their costs for said PRODUCT being absolute BS where as your concern is a thing that has no bearing on the actual profits for of said product apart from engagement. Sorry some of us want to not totally mooch off of the team for this “free” experience, yet not get totally scammed by it, and still have that fun too for the things your worried about. Yeah, “Power to the players.” I want bugs and poor game design to be fixed too. Don’t be narrow sighted. The cosmetics are just as pressing an issue with the game and the only one that directly contributes to the longevity of it because guess what… Its a business and needs profits or else the game dies and your gameplay concerns mean nothing. Not to be too corny, but its just as much “Power to the payers”.
Fair points, for sure, and as far as the amount of work for the artists to get the 3d modeling, textures, etc. converted over I absolutely agree. I do think what 343 did here is foolish if not downright wrong, and I really do hope and expect they’ll change it given time. I think you’re right that it won’t be an expensive change, either.
My point in my comment above was that, while not an expensive or necessarily “difficult” change, it still does take more work than just “flipping a switch” (which is what the post I was replying to suggested). A lot of people seem to have the impression that changes like this in games are as simple as going into some setting and, as the post said, “flipping a switch.” As someone who does both development and QA work, it is never that simple, even for the simplest of changes.
They have to do testing; they have to see how the armor behaves in-game, from far distances or during certain animation, in various poses, during the intro and outro cinematic, etc. and that involves a whole lot of testing, for every edge case, every possibility, for item that is changed. I don’t think that will take months or anything, but it does take significantly more than two seconds to “flip a switch.” Even as you explained, some artistry work has to be done, which would take more than “flipping a switch.”
So, in short, yes I do agree with everything you said, but I don’t think that actually changes the truth and validity of my own point.
No yeah, definitely and totally agree. And thank you for looking into my point, like I was implying just not letting your point lead to someone making the conclusion of “they can’t do it automatically so its fine what they have been doing” and sorry for making fun of us both with the leading with “I have x experience” bit. My brand of humor. Also true there might be a bit of a factor I missed to run through a series of tests to verify the rig and textures worked as expected in tandem.
Either way I’m urgent and vocal for this because I foresee them letting this go, trying to address it later and having some logistical mess with refunding with blowback or failing to address it well and the seething in the community turning to outrage. I want this game to do well. But yeah, this is ridiculous.
Also side note: stumbled onto one of the artist’s portfolio from the art team with bungie back in reach days a few hours ago and they talked about having higher resolution normal maps and their high-poly versions of the assets they had to “dumb down” and project to various low poly/low resolution levels for LOD rendering and to even work in some cases on the xbox360. So they definitely have access to the higher detail assets. I’m almost convinced of my assessment now of the workflow, apart from someone ripping the infinite and reach assets and comparing the models in maya/blender or someone from 343 proving they remodeled it or did something crazy inefficient like that.
Its okay to be wrong bro, but to keep on trying tk act like your not?
Dont you tire of being ratio’d?
I recommend you stop ironing out the wrinkles in your brain.
Halo has always had customization
The sheer amount of money companies make on it and the amount of player backlash to infinite’s design proof it matters to a lot of people and they feel it is very important.
You dont need to understand game design to tell what games and progression systems aren’t fun just like you dont need to be a chef to tell a meal is bad.
So we’ll keep complaining about the things we dont like. Telling players NOT to give feedback on a topic YOU don’t care about isn’t gunna make this game anybetter.
TL;DR: You’re not just wrong, you’re stupid. Jog on bro
Halo infinite armor customization is very restricted and the all the items available in the shop are low quality and are really boring they all look the same and are overpriced I will buy something if it is actually cool but so far I have seen barely anything that interests me and even if it’s all for more money its not working because I’m not buying and the reason I quit Fortnite was because all they care about is money and don’t give a crap about the fan base and it makes me want to quit halo infinite
I don’t think it worked. 343i successfully weaponized FOMO against the playerbase and are making money off of the only working part of the game. The shop.
Not really sure what this dude was talking about but…
The community despised the “coating” system from the beginning when it was announced. Lots of reddit threads about how bad it sounds.
What does “Halo community thought they knew better than 343 is what killed Halo” have to do with the developers making the game like CoD and Fortnite? All that statement shows is that 343 listened to none of the Halo community and just said to us “pi$$ off, we will make what we want to make more money, and you WILL play and enjoy it because it is Halo.”