I remember back in the day when halo 2 came out with its first dlc
343 is under Microsoft so itâs not surprising. Bungie handed it over and this is what we get. A half baked skeleton game with drip fed content over the life span of the game.
https://screenrant.com/halo-infinite-developer-343-got-help-from-gears-of-wars-the-coalition/
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> > > snip
> >
> > Does Quake remastered and Doom meet the criteria Halo Infinite is aiming for? And does MCC bring in enough money and player counts for MS to basically use that as a core component of their business with Xbox as a brand?
> >
> > And no, Iâm not defending this business structure. Were it up to me, all intellectual properties would be under open source licenses and would be free for use and adaptation.
>
> lol you keep moving those goal posts. Games canât be successful if they arenât live service->Shooters need to be live service->Need to have microtransactions->Thatâs not the same thing.
>
> Doom Eternal sold as well if not better than Halo 5. It wasnât live service. Modern Warfare was a top seller 2019, 2020 and 2021 and itâs not live service. Hell, Battlefield 4 had a higher player count than Halo 5 despite being several years older and having 3 sequels since then.
>
> You keep making those excuses though.
Youâre talking out of your -Yoink-. Halo 5 made 400 million in a week, it took 9 months for Doom Eternal to get to 450 million.
Yeah, because Fortnite would have been far more successful if it never got updates. Overwatch, Warzone, R6 Siege, CS:GO, Warframe and GTA Online would have been better off never receiving updates and new content.
You donât understand the difference between live service model and unfinished games. And as soon as any game gets any post release content, you will say, âSee, it was unfinished!â So clearly Halo 3 was only half finished when it was released because it had several map packs released after launch.
i actually do hope, that this industry âdiesâ like back in the 80s i believe (?). back then the industry got greedy and pushed out as many games as possible with low quality until the industry collapsed. with the rise of live service games and the focus on microtransactions instead of quality games (looking at you halo infinite, but also anthem, avengers, EA, activision-blizzard and ubisoft in general and to a large degree microsoft as well and probably many more) i can see this happening again. at this point i wouldnât mind, bc at the moment it seems like the only way to get high quality games, finished at launch without the focus on an ingame store, is, when the whole industry collapse (aside from indie-titles)
> 2533274793122050;45:
> i actually do hope, that this industry âdiesâ like back in the 80s i believe (?). back then the industry got greedy and pushed out as many games as possible with low quality until the industry collapsed. with the rise of live service games and the focus on microtransactions instead of quality games (looking at you halo infinite, but also anthem, avengers, EA, activision-blizzard and ubisoft in general and to a large degree microsoft as well and probably many more) i can see this happening again. at this point i wouldnât mind, bc at the moment it seems like the only way to get high quality games, finished at launch without the focus on an ingame store, is, when the whole industry collapse (aside from indie-titles)
Look at games back then compared to games out now. Games back then were a fraction of the content that games are now and exponentially harder to develop. So hard in fact that there are fewer and fewer games that come out at all today than there was 20 years ago and especially 30 years ago. Expectations for each game is to the best thing ever every single time with more content on day one than any the last game and without any reused content. The only games that get greenlit on a major scale are retreads because the investment is so huge itâs not worth the risk on new IP. AAA publishers are only releasing a handful of AAA titles in any given year. The only people pushing out a constant stream of low quality titles are the indie-titles, but Iâd bet good money thatâs not what you meant when you said that.
Fact is old games had less unique content than âhalf-finishedâ games do today. Most of the âlongâ games of old just had artificially ramped up difficulty spikes to force you to replay it endlessly, palette swaps and repeated tilesets. Even Mario 64 only had 18 levels (including the 3 Bowser stages). Itâs easy to say âNew games are bad, my old favorites were better!â but itâs an entirely other thing to look at things objectively realize that if the industry does collapse, youâre still not gonna get what you want, because what you want never actually existed.
I mean, vote with your wallets everyone. Donât buy until the game has the feature sets you require.
The underlying problem though, is that when a game is released, thereâs a lot of fun to be had playing and discussing it with the wider gaming community while itâs new and fresh for a lot of people, myself included. âSeasonal gamingâ if you will. This will drive sales of unfinished games and is something that cannot be avoided. There are enough people willing to accept unfinished games as long as everyone is playing the same unfinished game too 
I get that it is odd that games are more often already released while the amount of content en depth is incomparable to the old days (where even DLC was something unique, like the map packs for halo 2). However this change of business model also has a positive effect for game developers.
At this moment a game is released earlier so the cost for going public is lower in compared to the original required development and timetable. This also means that a part of the development is incentivised by its popularity at release pullling in more investors then originally creating an environment where ultimately games are longer supported and improved.
There have been some bad examples of this ofc lately but no reason to judge live service so harshly. Ultimately making games is a business and developers just canât get investors behind them with the old model of hoping to get a big payout after full dev instead of creating earlier revenue.
> 2533274793122050;45:
> i actually do hope, that this industry âdiesâ like back in the 80s i believe (?). back then the industry got greedy and pushed out as many games as possible with low quality until the industry collapsed. with the rise of live service games and the focus on microtransactions instead of quality games (looking at you halo infinite, but also anthem, avengers, EA, activision-blizzard and ubisoft in general and to a large degree microsoft as well and probably many more) i can see this happening again. at this point i wouldnât mind, bc at the moment it seems like the only way to get high quality games, finished at launch without the focus on an ingame store, is, when the whole industry collapse (aside from indie-titles)
Its interesting looking back at how the landscape has evolved over the last 20 years and the benefits/curses of online gaming.
First we had DLC expansions and map packs.
Then we got Microtransactions and Loot Boxes.
Now everyone is jumping on live service and the Seasonal Pass format.
Hard to say how things will change from here, but It could get to the point where most AAA games are all live service Destiny clones (functionally at least) all trying to one up each other, providing the most content for the smallest effort. Something will give eventually.
> 2533274793006817;46:
> > 2533274793122050;45:
> >
>
> Look at games back then compared to games out now. Games back then were a fraction of the content that games are now and exponentially harder to develop. So hard in fact that there are fewer and fewer games that come out at all today than there was 20 years ago and especially 30 years ago. Expectations for each game is to the best thing ever every single time with more content on day one than any the last game and without any reused content. The only games that get greenlit on a major scale are retreads because the investment is so huge itâs not worth the risk on new IP. AAA publishers are only releasing a handful of AAA titles in any given year. The only people pushing out a constant stream of low quality titles are the indie-titles, but Iâd bet good money thatâs not what you meant when you said that.
>
> Fact is old games had less unique content than âhalf-finishedâ games do today. Most of the âlongâ games of old just had artificially ramped up difficulty spikes to force you to replay it endlessly, palette swaps and repeated tilesets. Even Mario 64 only had 18 levels (including the 3 Bowser stages). Itâs easy to say âNew games are bad, my old favorites were better!â but itâs an entirely other thing to look at things objectively realize that if the industry does collapse, youâre still not gonna get what you want, because what you want never actually existed.
quantity =/= quality
especially looking at todays live service games, where the quantity comes from repeating boring side quests and grinds. i take a well made 4-5 hours single player game with good story and good characters any time over a boring grind-fest live service game. i also take a âlongâ game bc of the difficulty any time over these live service games. at least that would be a challenge and not âworkâ by filling up some bars/numbers. not that i donât think there could be a good live service game, but i havenât seen one yet. and that the âmissingâ content will be delivered âlaterâ is just insulting to me. and i think in a sequel we should expect at least the same amount of content at launch in a game, which was in the predecessors.
and that fewer AAA games get released isnât be bc itâs harder to develop, itâs bc the industry/publishers realized, that people spend a lot of money on worthless MTs. so why risk making a good game, when you can just put out a grindfest with MTs which generates more revenue? itâs not about the game. itâs not about finishing it either, bc if the revenue goal is met, you can still add things, but if not you kind of can just drop the game and release another one with the promise of finishing it âlaterâ. the âexpensiveâ development is just another PR saying like that games didnât get more expensive. to buy the full game at release you now have to buy the special edition or something for 100+ bucks or so (not even talking about the 80 bucks PS5 games)
iâm also not saying, that an old game is better, bc itâs old or nostalgia or what. donât get me wrong. a lot of bad games came out back in the day. the collapse i was referring to came from a huge amount of bad games pushed out, bc every company wanted to make a quick buck with video games and didnât care about the games itself (which reminds me a lot of todays live-service-game industry).
also i didnât mean that indie game = good game. a lot of bad indie games are out there and a lot of them are unfinished or will always stay in early access (which iâm not a fan of) but todays AAA live service games with the promise of adding stuff later are actually not much more then AAA early access games. what i meant with mentioning indie titles is, that they are more likely to try something new and/or deliver a quality experience without just coming after my wallet with MTs. (to be fair, there are a few AAA games that do that as well but it feels like the focus is mainly on MTs)
iâm actually not sure what you mean with âuniqueâ.
to me todays AAA gaming industry seems pretty much more of the same in the design across most titles. but the same can be said about old games. or do you mean within a game?
to the things i want: the âwishâ for the industry collapsing is more or less a âwishâ born out of frustration with the path the industry is heading down. i actually donât believe it will collapse anytime soon and i also see, that a lot of developers would be out of work and thatâs not what i want. i just want games to be finished at launch and that the games are games and not just glorified storefronts.
in my experience, most live service games are filler
fun while youâre waiting for a real game to come out.
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> I remember back in the day when halo 2 came out with its first dlc
That was a completely different industry back in 2004 and DLC wasnât widespread then, also Halo 2 launched with 8 maps!
DLC only became mainstream around the time of Oblivion with Bethesdaâs âhorse armourâ other companies capitalised on that and with that DLC became the norm.
> 2533274866720209;47:
> I mean, vote with your wallets everyone. Donât buy until the game has the feature sets you require.
>
> The underlying problem though, is that when a game is released, thereâs a lot of fun to be had playing and discussing it with the wider gaming community while itâs new and fresh for a lot of people, myself included. âSeasonal gamingâ if you will. This will drive sales of unfinished games and is something that cannot be avoided. There are enough people willing to accept unfinished games as long as everyone is playing the same unfinished game too
A vicious cycle
> 2533274866720209;51:
> in my experience, most live service games are filler
>
> fun while youâre waiting for a real game to come out.
Under no reality or realm of existence or multi universe or pocket dimension should Halo, ever be âfillerâ but thatâs what itâll become post launch if it doesnât get delayed.
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> > 2533274866720209;51:
> > in my experience, most live service games are filler
> >
> > fun while youâre waiting for a real game to come out.
>
> Under no reality or realm of existence or multi universe or pocket dimension should Halo, ever be âfillerâ but thatâs what itâll become post launch if it doesnât get delayed.
mccâs live service elements feel very filler to me, which just feels cursed alongside classic bungie halo gameplay. Skins are just lame imo, but understandable as a free to play business model. Armor customization is the way to go, shame infinite will have skins and preset coatings/armor cores. Hopefully the armor core system is flexible and the color patterns diverse enough that I can find a spartan look that I like.
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> 343 is under Microsoft so itâs not surprising. Bungie handed it over and this is what we get. A half baked skeleton game with drip fed content over the life span of the game.
>
> https://screenrant.com/halo-infinite-developer-343-got-help-from-gears-of-wars-the-coalition/
I actually think ur wrong about MS being the ones to blame. Actually if you look at what ms have been doing recently and how they have got new ips / devs ext, they have said how many times they are hands off. They have let studios do what they want. I think the real issue, and where the problems are coming from is inside 343i. Wasnât it Phil Spencer who came to the decision to delay halo infinite? he came into the office to see how 343i was going after the backlash of the trailer, and was like " no guys this isnât good enough" The fact that MS stepped in to delay the game and say its not good enough, shows the incompetence of 343i at the top. They should be the ones where people look to direct there frustrations and blame, after all there the ones who say things like " coop and forge at release" back in july.
If anything MS need to internally change the management structure of 343i and fix the issues from the core. I guess they already started doing that with the addition to the team with Joseph Staten taking on the lead roll right after the -Yoink- show of E3.
So yeh we can get an idea that 343i pre E3 were having huge issues internally, and MS seem to be the ones to actually step in and try and fix things. If they hadnât we would have a halo infinite release already, with a half baked game that was getting terrible reviews.
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> > 2533274824545186;41:
> > I remember back in the day when halo 2 came out with its first dlc
>
> That was a completely different industry back in 2004 and DLC wasnât widespread then, also Halo 2 launched with 8 maps!
>
> DLC only became mainstream around the time of Oblivion with Bethesdaâs âhorse armourâ other companies capitalised on that and with that DLC became the norm.
Yep but back then devâs cared enough to even give physical ways to get dlc like Halo 2 had the âHalo 2 multiplayer map packâ disc and then Halo 3:Odst included all the Halo 3 multiplayer on a separate disc but sadly these days 343i have not bothered to release a âcompleteâ MCC disc and Iâm sure this wonât be the case with Infinite too.
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> > > > snip
> > >
> > > Does Quake remastered and Doom meet the criteria Halo Infinite is aiming for? And does MCC bring in enough money and player counts for MS to basically use that as a core component of their business with Xbox as a brand?
> > >
> > > And no, Iâm not defending this business structure. Were it up to me, all intellectual properties would be under open source licenses and would be free for use and adaptation.
> >
> > lol you keep moving those goal posts. Games canât be successful if they arenât live service->Shooters need to be live service->Need to have microtransactions->Thatâs not the same thing.
> >
> > Doom Eternal sold as well if not better than Halo 5. It wasnât live service. Modern Warfare was a top seller 2019, 2020 and 2021 and itâs not live service. Hell, Battlefield 4 had a higher player count than Halo 5 despite being several years older and having 3 sequels since then.
> >
> > You keep making those excuses though.
>
> Youâre talking out of your -Yoink-. Halo 5 made 400 million in a week, it took 9 months for Doom Eternal to get to 450 million.
Lol, you picked one single statement out of all of my posts and then claim Iâm full of it. So Battlefield 4 didnât have 3k more players last month than Halo 5 despite being 2 years older and having 3 sequels? Modern Warfare didnât sell $600 million in 3 days and wasnât a top 10 seller for three years straight? Doom Eternal also had a peak of 7500 players on Steam alone yesterday, thus is likely has more than 2x the player count of Halo 5 at present.
Lol get out of here with that nonsense.
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> > > > > > 2533274816232010;22:
> > > > > > > 2533274796763552;16:
> > > > > > > > 2533274829873463;15:
> > > > > > > > snip
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Does Quake remastered and Doom meet the criteria Halo Infinite is aiming for? And does MCC bring in enough money and player counts for MS to basically use that as a core component of their business with Xbox as a brand?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And no, Iâm not defending this business structure. Were it up to me, all intellectual properties would be under open source licenses and would be free for use and adaptation.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > lol you keep moving those goal posts. Games canât be successful if they arenât live service->Shooters need to be live service->Need to have microtransactions->Thatâs not the same thing.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Doom Eternal sold as well if not better than Halo 5. It wasnât live service. Modern Warfare was a top seller 2019, 2020 and 2021 and itâs not live service. Hell, Battlefield 4 had a higher player count than Halo 5 despite being several years older and having 3 sequels since then.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You keep making those excuses though.
> > > > >
> > > > > Iâm not moving goal posts, Iâm asking for examples of games that arenât live services yet match, closely, what we understand Halo as a product, thus proving that Halo, perhaps, wouldnât have to be a live service.
> > > > > You named games which are close to Halo.
> > > > >
> > > > > So hereâs my question to that:
> > > > > Itâs clear a lot of money has been invested in Halo, possibly meaning that itâs pretty close to Xboxâs brand and business needs. If Halo Infinite were like, say, Doom Eternal, just as a single example, would it meet Microsoftâs needs? And could it be sustained over a long period of time on the same numbers and initial sales from single purchases?
> > > >
> > > > Halo Infiniteâs multiplayer is free-to-play. Their only income is from it is through people willing to spend money on cosmetics which are inconsequential to gameplay. Even then, look at Halo 5âs player count. Their plan is a failure before itâs even launched.
> > > >
> > > > Theyâre expecting people to keep playing Halo Infiniteâs multiplayer and to spend money for the next decade, simply because they say itâs live service and there wonât be another Halo title to compete with.
> > > >
> > > > Letâs compare Siege to Halo 5 to three multiplayer shooters: CoD, Battlefield and Siege.
> > > > 1.) Battlefield 4, One and 5 each have a higher player count individually than Halo 5 and nearly 6x as much split between the three.
> > > > 2.) Call of Duty has had 8 releases since 2015 and each individual release has had a higher player count than Halo 5 and sold millions of more copies. In fact, they sold 80 million more copies than Halo 5.
> > > > 3.) Rainbow Six Siege has had a total player count over 70 million, while Halo 5 has had less than 10 million sales.
> > > >
> > > > The point being that two of those franchises donât need to be live service to overwhelmingly sell better than Halo Infinite ever will. The other one shows that live service can be successful depending on the game, however, Halo isnât one of those types of games.
> > > >
> > > > No matter what 343i tries to do with this game, I can guarantee that the player base for Halo Infinite will dissolve to nothing as soon as the next multiplayer shooter comes out.
> > > >
> > > > All 343i has managed to do is split the sales base up, alienate longtime fans of the IP and use the next big hype word of the industry that will soon disappear into the wind. I love Halo, but as far as shooters go itâs a niche fanbase.
> > >
> > > Yes. They want people playing Halo Infinite for 10 years. They want people streaming Halo Infinite for 10 years. They want eSports events for Halo Infinite for 10 years. They want people spending money on Halo Infinite for 10 years.
> > >
> > > How on earth do you achieve that if the game is not a live service?
> > > And what game has achieved that kind of goal without being a live service?
> > >
> > > The games you mentioned are either live services (Siege, Warzone), or have massive amounts of microtransactions.
> > >
> > > My point has been that the type of game that Halo was will struggle to exist in the way that Microsoft needs it to for Xbox as a business. MCC is is your best bet. Itâll struggle to be as popular as other games because it canât have constant updates that keeps players engaged and streamers streaming (this is the world we live in now with games). For Halo to exist as a product, for there to be an expectation and a prediction as to how it will perform and earn money, it needs to consider being a live service.
> > >
> > > The phenomenon that was what Halo was like back then is the equivalent of what live services are to gaming today.
> > >
> > > And I agree with those that say it wasnât right for Halo as we understand it. But they arenât making Halo for Haloâs sake. Theyâre making it make money.
> > > Thatâs it. Halo is being used to fit the need for Microsoft to have an exclusive live service shooter for their platform.
> > >
> > > It sucks. I would like games to be more discreet, focused packages like they were. But thatâs not where the medium is headedâand if it were, weâd have to start really questioning what other things would need to change in order for that to be a thing.
> >
> > Youâve been arguing for this for so long that my only question is, are you a capitalist?
>
> Nope.
Well, thatâs good. Thereâs that at least.
Thought #1,
There are more live service games now than there have ever been. There is a larger gaming audience than there has ever been. Probably not correlated entirely, but Iâd say thereâs a good chance at some sort of relationship there. If people donât like or want live service games, then why are all the top played games throughout the industry all live service?
Thought #2,
When people post "why donât games launch complete anymore? " all I read is âI donât understand how the internet and networking enables modern game developmentâ.