Thing is, I don’t see many people complaining that the gameplay of the game itself is bad. Outside of some tweaks to mechanics (radar range, aim assist, etc) I see excitement or at least approval of how the game itself plays.
The big frustration is that they went forward with a significantly flawed progression system despite feedback from the tech test and we lost a ton of player customization freedom despite their claims about “wanting players to be able to express themselves” and “not wanting the game to be chore.” There are also baffling decisions like locking armor coating and visor colors to individual cores that are clearly made not in the interest of “player expression” but to milk as much money as they can get away with.
I agree most of the time was spent developing the engine, and that does somewhat absolve them of potential content shortages. This makes sense in terms of the lack of forge, campaign coop, potential limited maps or gamemodes etc., they just need time to flesh those out.
However, things like the progression system, f2p, mtx & the customization/ armor core/ coating systems are not directly related to content shortages or short development time / budget because the issues people have with them are with their core design philosophy and deliberate choices made in their implementation.
Also tbf I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that time on the engine wasn’t well spent because the gameplay is great. Not perfect, some balance tweaking & settings could be adjusted to improve things for sure, but pretty good and very fun. Campaign also looks amazing from what we’ve seen so can’t wait to try that.
Anyways yeah, point taken but it doesn’t absolve them of all criticism.
Don’t confuse critical feedback with ‘hating the game’. People wouldn’t be on here posting if they didn’t love Halo. 343i has done amazing work, hands down. Love them. Doesn’t mean various things aren’t just wrong right now which we hope will be fixed by launch. We’re hoping to make Halo a better game instead of uselessly head nodding along with it’s very first iteration.
We are being kind. Most negative posts have been about the awful BattlePass. Most people are praising the game for it’s gameplay, and I am too. In an age where we have several FPS games that already have better BattlePass / Season passes, the criticism is definitely warranted for what 343 put out for it’s BattlePass.
Why would I be grateful for a game that for the most part I don’t like? 343 deserves what they earn, the only thing they’ve done for this franchise that earns them any respect from me is porting MCC to PC and continuing to support it.
Developers are not entitled to praise because it was hard work to make their game, it’s going to be judged based on its merits alone and that’s all there is to it.