Going forward without seasons, if 343 plans to add more customization pieces without the season format they have to reconsider how they distribute these items. The exchange was created to introduce a cycling item set either from previous seasonal challenges or bonus items from the current season. With the 20th anniversary update this was perhaps the longest use of the exchange before items began to repeat, and highlights the issue of releasing a large number of items without a season. If players miss a chance to unlock these armor pieces it could be months before they get the chance to again.
The exchange only works with a small set of items, and as the seasons have gone on, the exchange has become bloated. It could take almost a whole year for someone to unlock everything on the exchange assuming that it will only offer unique items starting today. A majority of these unlocks aren’t even associated with a challenge, why do they have to be time gated?
I predict that going forward that the whole season menu and exchange will be done away with in favor of just unlocking the armor pieces directly from the customization menu, similar to Reach’s armory. It eliminates all the issues of the exchange and solves one of the biggest complaints about the seasonal format. There is so much content to unlock I don’t think anyone will complain about making the seasonal/exchange pieces more accessible.
Maybe I’m wrong, and they will take the simplest solution which is to do nothing, but it doesn’t seem scalable especially to new players.
5 Likes
And this is how it should be. The Exchange (and the current seasonal unlock system) should basically be a store, trading items for seasonal points only. I wouldn’t be opposed to some of the current Exchange items slightly increasing in price either. This way it would still incentivize people to keep playing/doing challenges/earning points, and since everything is always available, people can choose what they want to purchase and what they want to save up for.
I think that the reason they are currently priced the way they are is because you are only offered 3 items a week, and you can only gain so many points per week so it wouldn’t make sense to sell them for a lot of season points as it stands. And having an increase would still make it so that you couldn’t grab everything say in the first few weeks and possibly develop no desire to keep playing.
Current seasonal items in the passes shouldn’t change in price, however I’d like to see the tier system done away with in favor of having everything available at all times so again, people can actually go after what they want and not feel like they need to slog it out for weeks just to get something that’s currently only available in tier 10 for example.
EDIT: why the hell is the word shouldn’t yoinked out?
EDIT EDIT: and the censor was fixed
3 Likes
My issue with it at the moment is whenever they start cycling previous seasonal rewards in, it always seems to be the same items, Buck and Romeo Firefight character variants, golden guns for CE, the mister chief helmet are the main three that I’ve seen pop up a bit (mainly odst characters and golden guns), like can we get more chances for the other items? I know they’ve put more than those in but it’s mainly those items.
They’ve hardly put any of the ranked rewards in other than the Lucky -Yoink!- BR and the Sword and Board attachment (that I can think of there may have been a couple more). Like when are we going to get a chance for some of the Halo 4 ranked weapon skins or the Halo 3 Avalanche sniper skin (I mainly want that one as the game poo pooed me from getting it when I should have), I think it’s been exclusive well long enough especially since Infinite is out now.
Other than that issue I see your point with there being no more seasons. I think after each drop they do, they should add some extra challenges just for season points just to get the bit extra for the people who don’t have much. Either that or adjust how much goes into the exchange each week and for how much.