Leveling/Season System (Feedback/Questions)

Games Halo Infinite
1

My current understanding of Infinites Level/BP System

  • To gain experience you have to complete challenges which include (daily, weekly, and season challenges) - These challenges can vary from getting kills in certain modes, capturing objectives, kills with certain weapons, assists, etc. - The experience gained from these challenges then goes to your current season and lets you level up the season pass and gain unlocks that range from armor pieces, coatings, challenge swaps, etc. - And inside each season there will be both premium and free unlocks. - Just completing matches and getting kills and winning will not gain any experience whether its fighting real players or bots. - As new seasons arrive every 3 months you get a new range of items to unlock from completing challenges. - With the challenges there will be XP boosts which will boost the amount of xp gained from challenges completed during a specific time. And there will also be challenge swaps to swap challenges that you don’t want to do. And you can pay to unlock tiers in the season. Some problems with this:

  • Finishing a whole season before the next one will result with completing challenges and earning xp that will just go to waste. - Running out of challenges can get rid of motivation to play anymore since you won’t be leveling up your battle pass. - Certain challenges can encourage playstyles that could affect the sandbox - No ranking outside of season pass to level up like Halo 5’s Spartan Rank system or MCCs ranking system. (not competitive) - Can make leveling up slow for people who want to just grind it out. And with this I propose a few questions:

  • When we are a few seasons in and there are multiple battle passes for you to go buy, including the current one, how does your experience get distributed? - If there is a system where we like prioritize a season that we want to progress through, what will then happen if we “complete a season for the free unlocks” and then buy the season. Will we gain all the premium unlocks or will we have to restart from the beginning? - (for 343) With challenges being the only thing leveling up the season pass, are you guys using this to make sure people don’t finish the season within a few days? by controlling the amount of xp given out over the season, this could theoretically happen. And pressure people into buying tiers in the season Personally if they aren’t going to give XP for completing matches I think using the season point system from MCC would work way better. Because with the season point system you could unlock the points with challenges and use those for whatever season you want to unlock. Or if a ranking system gets introduced like MCC’s/5, have Season XP and Rank XP, where challenges will give both and completing matches will just give Rank XP.

Anyways, I’m really excited for the game in December so I hope some changes are made on all of this feedback.
[If I made any mistakes or you’d like to leave any feedback feel free to reply to this post]

2

That’s a good post.

I think the main recurring issue I’m seeing is a lack of elaboration. The info we’re getting is great, but some of it creates concern because it isn’t quite fully articulated, leading people to run off at a tangent.

The Battle Pass, XP progression thing is a good example and you’ve laid out the possibilities very well.

My initial reaction to Challenge only progress was very negative. I don’t like it, even though I’ll still happily enjoy MP with or without progression.

But, I am in agreement with what I think you’re saying: it doesn’t appear (from the Flight, or other info) that progression is a linear, permanent rank thing. It’s just the Battlepass, and is probably best thought of as supplementary: you’re not upgrading your character or unlocking on a career path, but instead, unlocking a specific card of rewards, like a reward card for a cafe, or to some extent, MCC.

Given that, I understand to some extent the lack of match based XP: it’s not depriving you of progress, it’s just that challenges are a reward path that is somewhat optional.

It’s interesting, and quite different in a way, and you’ve raised some excellent questions on how it works. I think 343 would do well to write a blog on the BP and answer a lot of your questions - put the whole thing in black and white so there was no need for the speculation.

I think there will be a lot of folks who just want a career progression track, and while I get that, you only have to look at Destiny, to see how difficult it is to run a career progression for a decade or more. Most games cap out at level 60 or similar, and from there it’s all inflation.

It’s doable, but having slept, I can see why 343 might keep very, very clear of that.

So thank you for your excellent post. You articulated a lot of what I was thinking, but would have totally mangled :joy:

3

“They need to make money somehow”.
Haven’t seen that thrown around lately.

I suspect the reason Battlepass progression is challenges only, hinge on two things. The battlepasses being perpetual, and monetization.

Allowing battlepasses the never expires somewhat removes the FOMO aspect of “seasons”, especially when you can purchase older ones.

Now, as with any progression system, especially in monetized games and rewards, grind is turned up a little to incentivize purchasing for real money. Putting challenges as the only means to progress in a battlepass is a way to halt player progression, to controll it. You’re doing these awesome things and is rewarded for it with progression. You feel content untill most challenges are done, and now you want more rewards.
Enter, purchasing Battlepass levels, which I’ve understood is a thing you can do in Infinite.

They don’t want anyone to progress too fast through the battlepass, it should be rewarding, but just about the right amount of annoying for you to start spending money.

Furthermore, they’ve designed it to be this way, something we view as negative. It’s entirely possible for them to change it, and if they do, it’s seen as a positive, and they win at that.
It’s a win-win for them.

“They need to make money somehow”

4

> 2535471817105277;1:
> And with this I propose a few questions: - When we are a few seasons in and there are multiple battle passes for you to go buy, including the current one, how does your experience get distributed? - If there is a system where we like prioritize a season that we want to progress through, what will then happen if we “complete a season for the free unlocks” and then buy the season. Will we gain all the premium unlocks or will we have to restart from the beginning? - (for 343) With challenges being the only thing leveling up the season pass, are you guys using this to make sure people don’t finish the season within a few days? by controlling the amount of xp given out over the season, this could theoretically happen. And pressure people into buying tiers in the season

Nice constructive post and those are rare on this topic :wink:

343 already stated that you can choose which BP to activate when multiple are available. In other games if you later buy the premium part of a free track it will give you the rewards up to the level you currently are, since 343 is using a tier system it’s very probable this will be the case.

Concerning the “what can I progress to if I maxed my BP?” regards; There probably is still some player level/rank as a a baseline that increases with games played but I guess the main thing is to just have fun and get better at the game. Seasonal things are catered to both the casual and hardcore player so some of us will go a lot faster then others and will have to wait for the new season (not unlike current MCC).

Dicussing the BP and shop choices I’d rather take the “player first” approach and came to this:

So what’s player first:

  1. battle pass track is clear and gives a good overview of what you get
  2. Available credits are always visible and having credits gives young players a way to put some money on the game without having a creditcard
  3. Shop items give a good visualisation of what you buy
  4. being able to buy battle pass levels gives players a way to keep up when they can’t play for a while or anything life throws your way
  5. 20 tiers are great to be able to bound sets/themes to a battle pass

What is not player first:

  1. the Credits are not close to actual cost representation (assumption). Seeing some weapon coatings cost 700 Cr i don’t think they will either cost $7 or $0,70. Make the Cr represent the actual investment (or at least make it relatable)
  2. “premium” cosmetics unlocked by completing the weekly quests is FOMO if you can’t play that week
  3. Battle pass items are unlocked in order so you can’t choose what you want to unlock with your levels
  4. The current exp systems bound to quests does not help the casual player. f.e. if you only play 2 times a week you miss out on 5 daily quests and hard to judge if you need those to complete the pass
  5. The current exp system bound to quests restricts player in their freedom to play the game (taking into account that the rerolls are not free)
  6. The current exp system bound to quests does not reward hardcore gamers. Playing more or better gives the player no progress satisfaction of sort.
  7. Monetising the use of colours. I get that expression is the model to finance the game but using the colour that you are fond off is really feels like a baseright and not something you need to pay for.

my 2 cents =)

5

I absolutely need to put this out there: If Halo Infinite does not have a traditional leveling system for XP and player levels, I will not play it. That would instantly destroy my desire to play the multiplayer. These days, there are so many friggin’ games out there. Multiplayer gaming is such a hideously oversaturated field that if you want a multiplayer game for the long term, especially like what Infinite is aiming for, you need that carrot on the stick. You need a good leveling system. As terrible as Call of Duty is now, the one thing they mastered back in the day was fun progression. The amount of challenges and ways to earn XP for the insane number of levels was so good. It was one of the main reasons I played those games back then, the great progression.

If Infinite for whatever reason only uses challenges to advance the battle pass like Gears 5, whatever, I can live with that I guess, (Why you wouldn’t just use the MCC system is beyond me), but if there is no regular XP for a standard leveling system at all, then count me out. That would be such a brain dead move and so out of touch. So many other games have taken the route of ruining progression, like Overwatch, Rogue Company and others, making it to where your actions give you nothing back. Infinite needs to avoid this mistake. Give us a good leveling system alongside this battle pass stuff.

If all Infinite will provide for progression is a paid battle pass, then I’m not gonna bother.

I’m not going to lie, 343 has really been giving me another bad impression lately with not having a basic feature at launch and their sheer lack of explanation for things like this. I want to be excited for Infinite, I really do, but this is making it difficult.