I’ll keep this short since it’s a topic that’s been discussed thoroughly
Now that everybody has access to the game, it’s painfully clear that coatings are not a progression in customization but instead a regression,
if I want the colour [colour name here] I have two options, either I have to unlock it through the battle pass or I have to pay for it, and I have to hope that 343 make the colour-scheme I have used for over a decade, that is not preferable to what we had before and this new system exists purely to monetize customization.
Curation is not a reasonable replacement for what we had before, being free-to-play isn’t a blanket excuse to remove features we freely had access to before.
Its just astounding how they thought taking away player choice was somehow aiding player expression. Now I’m forced to hope that 343 decides to make a coating that I actually want to apply (to a specific core mind you which is just ridiculous) .
Apart form armor kits, thats also pretty wack. Plus bots can equip armor pieces that players can’t, Emiles shoulder with the knife can only be equipped if you’re wearing the kit (which you can’t modify), meanwhile bots can have both the left and right shoulder with Emiles knife.
I would have been ok with it as an addition to the customisation instead of a replacement. But I feel like I’ll be using plain purple forever because there is no coating I want.
I would be more okay with armor coatings if we could change the color of the different parts. Like let the coating be the design on the armor and then we pick what colors we want for the parts of the design. Just seems like the most reasonable fix.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an interface to give players access to customizing the “coating” color wheel theirselves has already been devoloped, but was bypassed for this monetization scheme.
It would just be better overall if we had the default colour changing options we’ve had for decades and have coatings as a premium customization option, make them as flashy as you wish to promote monetization just don’t take away what we had before.
Right, they said coatings would lead to more diversity but so far I’ve only ever seen the default 8 or so colour schemes over and over so everyone looks near identical.
It will soon get worse too. Have anyone checked out the samurai armor? It only has 2 shaders that work with it. And the armor is way more unique than anything we can get right now so you bet everyone will equip it. So enjoy everyone looking like the same red-ish brown samurai
Even disregarding that we’d all prefer the old color system to coatings, the coatings have some other issues.
They’re tied to cores.
All the Esports Armor Kits. People are buying them thinking they’re getting coatings, but since it’s a whole Armor Kit, it’s all or nothing. It’s a default spartan with the team’s colors and emblems.
Over the past few years game companies have followed this trend of taking away great features and replacing them with basic features or nothing. I hoped that 343 would take the fantastic foundation that Halo has built over the years and make it even better, but instead the went backwards like most other companies.
All 343 had to do was give us Spartan customization 4.0 which allowed for customization of each armor separate armor piece with specific colors or patterns and custom color options. Let players completely customize and build emblems and allow placement of emblems on different parts of armor. Have a Commendation system that rewards specific emblems or medals that can be equipped to Spartan armor to show off achievements. They could have done so much to make Halo stand out from the crowd, but all they did was copy other games system to an extent. It feels like A Halo Fortnite crossover or something.
I miss being able to color your emblem the way you wanted too! I feel like being able to pick your own armor and emblem color is like peak customization without being behind a grind or paywall. I know the gameplay is the most important but if we are taking this from a ‘players’ first mentality, players should be able to atleast customize their spartan out of the box like in old games to have some individually.
I’ve said it before - Coatings can co-exist with a color system. For goodness sake, you need to spend $20 for the color white that you can only use on certain cores…
That’s another huge issue. It’s one thing to have armor coatings, it’s another to separate which ones you can use based on what armor you want to wear.
Agreed. Have a Primary/Secondary “generic” coating, then have “premium” coatings that have the patterns or 3+ color combos. You give old fans the color settings they’re used to, while still having plenty of room to essentially sell us paint.