Micro-transactions in Halo Xbox One.

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I’ll jump right in and make note that the major current exclusive Xbox One titles have significant amounts of micro-transactions. Forza Motorsport 5 has disc-locked content using micro-transactions to unlock it, along with the token point system. Ryse has micro-transactions for leveling up as well.

Let us also not forget about Halo 4’s micro-transactions, whether it’s for armor (which is considered disc-locked content), or the small map packs that include additional gametypes, something that even Bungie would bring to Halo: Reach to all players for no charge whatsoever.

My best guess would be that Halo Xbox One will almost definitely use micro-transactions, particularly in its ranking system, Armory, and what could possibly be the return of custom loadouts.

My question to you is… would you be okay with micro-transactions in Halo Xbox One?

2

Map packs and Aesthetic things like Skins and Armor are fine, but new Gametypes, Weapons, Vehicles, or other game-changing items, like perks for example, should not be microtransactions

3

Twizzted beat me to it.

4

NOTHING BUT MAP PACKS, in my opinion. I loathe micro-transactions. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

My main opinion on micro-transactions are the following:

They are okay, AS LONG AS, they are not a Pay to Win deal, like say “Pay $5 for a premium sniper rifle”, Skins, armor, emblems, and maps are okay.

Maps do kind of break my main rule, but I don’t get bothered by it because it’s a map that a team of people at 343i or CA put together, and spent months working on it, they deserved to be paid for their work. BUT the pricing on such items need to be reasonable, and fair, over time, they should go down in price, there should be promotions for players who buy them to spend less by buying more. IE like Xbox LIVE subscription. It’s cheaper to buy a year of Xbox LIVE, than it is to buy it one month at a time.

Microsoft should look at other companies that have micro-transactions, and see what they do best, and they should also look at Steam, and how they treat their prices on everything.

two games I play that have micro-transactions is Warframe and Star Trek Online.

Tho Star Trek Online sucks when it comes to most of the newer ships you can only get from micro-transactions, they do excel at letting people earn their in game form of real life money, ZEN, by either exchanging a hard to get large amounts of resource, by surveys, or by being a life time member, and getting free $5 worth of zen every month or so. The Xbox LIVE reward program Microsoft has in place right now is very similar, but is a long ways from being useful in this way.

Warframe kind of sucks for the pricing of it’s microtransactions, but it’s not a pay to win game, it’s free to play, every weapon, every warframe, every single item needed to play the game, can be obtained by playing the game. Things like skins, colors, boosters, and other optional items are all paid for using real life money. Warframe and weapon slots can be paid for using real life money, buying warframe and weapons using real life money gives you a boosted warframe/weapon, and a free slot. But again, you can still obtain everything without any real life money.

Those are two semi good examples of how microtransactions should be done. Will Microsoft’s be done the same way, if not better? Who knows, we can’t say that they’ll screw it up, nor can be say that they’ll rock, and create a system that everyone loves.

6

NO MICROSTRANSACTIONS. Only DLC should cost. Microtransactions are like DLC, but smaller and significantly more numerous. Like Jim Sterling said, full retail games that include free to play elements ruin them. They essentially become “fee to pay” games. $60 so I can constantly get told to buy upgrades and boosters with real money? Come on. Here’s a link to a rather interesting video on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqNuS03k6gI

7

I think a developer should put all the content they can into their game, and support it afterwards with DLC and content they genuinely couldn’t fit in, mainly maps, and a few aesthetic items like armours and skins perhaps.

They shouldn’t do this in reverse, putting in the bare minimum and then selling you parts of the game that are already on the disc, nickel and diming your consumers out of content like that leaves a bitter taste. I feel Bethesda have always handled DLC right.

No pay to win crap goes without saying, I think.

8

I’m fine with mictotransactions as long as it stays within the boundary of aesthetics. It would be great if by having microtransactions in the future, 343 are able to support free DLC. That way the matchmaking community no longer fractures after each DLC release and in general doesn’t once more suffer Halo 4’s DLC “support”.

9

I hate micro-transactions. Buy DLC, earn armor and emblems.

10

Micro-transactions for skins, armor etc sound like a good idea to me but paying for new maps, game types, perks etc isn’t. Having to pay for new game types and maps cause them to be played a lot less often, while buying new perks and weapons just sounds like Pay2Win.

11

Only if they do not impact the playing experience.

Yes to microtransactions for things like armor, player cards, stances, weapon skins, armor skins, emblems, player tags, etc.

No to microtransactions for DLC Maps. Absolutely no. Halo Reach and Halo 4 have proven that $DLC maps do not help the game - each offering only further fragments the population, causing significant issues with matchmaking, playlist options, and search times.

Maps are the lifeblood of Halo multiplayer. No other game puts its maps on a pedestal like Halo does. Why would you deny any maps to players?

Keep the maps free and find other ways of taking our money. We’ll spend it if we have an impetus to keep playing quality games on quality maps…

12

> Only if they do not impact the playing experience.
>
> Yes to microtransactions for things like armor, player cards, stances, weapon skins, armor skins, emblems, player tags, etc.
>
> No to microtransactions for DLC Maps. Absolutely no. Halo Reach and Halo 4 have proven that $DLC maps do not help the game - each offering only further fragments the population, causing significant issues with matchmaking, playlist options, and search times.
>
> Maps are the lifeblood of Halo multiplayer. No other game puts its maps on a pedestal like Halo does. Why would you deny any maps to players?
>
> Keep the maps free and find other ways of taking our money. We’ll spend it if we have an impetus to keep playing quality games on quality maps…

Maps are the lifeblood of Halo.
Game developers make maps for money.
Developers need money to continue to make anything.
If map packs become free, you are essentially saying that we should pay for the small stuff, like armor and what not, but for the nice, juicy DLC, the big stuff like maps, we should get for free.
Explain to me the reasoning behind that.

13

The F2P model applied to $60 games is quite frankly, disgusting. To me, it shows a lack of respect for the consumers/fanbase. What it amounts to is developers arbitrarily and superficially padding their content with needless grind in an effort to tempt players into spending money to save their precious time. It drives development away from optimizing fun to optimizing profit.

If it turned out that microtransactions were heavily integrated with the next Halo game, then that would just instantly kill any chance that I would purchase the next Halo and subsequently, the X1.

  • Basically, if 343 announces a $40 season pass alongside their $60 game, then i am done.
14

I don’t think anyone has an issue with micro transactions unless it hurts players.

I don’t mind paying for a boost to make me better than others players or if someone does it themselves and gets a boost. I don’t mind that but when it comes to I bought the x armor and x weapon now i have x10 life and you can’t kill me…than it gets a little stupid.

Look at ME3. It think the Mp’s version of MicroT’s was done well mainly because players didn’t get hurt by it unless you spent a lot of money and got crap and that was only your fault, but if people have to pay an extra 5 dollars just to be on level with other people thats just being an -Yoink- for putting them in the game, because it forces people to update to something they probably don’t like or want just to survive in the field.

PVE its great
PVP its the worst thing possible, unless you are talking things that a pare purely cosmetic.

15

I aint paying just to use a BR* (insert weapon/perk/whatever) in multiplayer. I’ll pay for a map pack but thats it.

(also never gave that many likes in a row like that.)

16

This thread seriously needs to be a sticky. If anything can kill the Halo series its this. Halo doesn’t need anymore reason for its rapid decline.

17

> This thread seriously needs to be a sticky. If anything can kill the Halo series its this. Halo doesn’t need anymore reason for its rapid decline.

Why does this thread need to sticky? Yes it’s an important topic to discuss, BUT it’s not sticky important.

18

> > This thread seriously needs to be a sticky. If anything can kill the Halo series its this. Halo doesn’t need anymore reason for its rapid decline.
>
> Why does this thread need to sticky? Yes it’s an important topic to discuss, BUT it’s not sticky important.

You can’t be serious. If they put micro transactions in the up and coming Halo to the extent that is plaguing the launch titles, the series will be destroyed. Surely you saw the outcry over the Xbox “DRM” fiasco. If there is enough backlash over the recent micro transaction plague they might not put it in the next Halo.

I’ve been with the series since its inception in 2001, thats over 12 years put into the series. To see it go over something like trying to imitate the farmville-monetization to capitalize and milk the series terrifies me.

19

> You can’t be serious. If they put micro transactions in the up and coming Halo to the extent that is plaguing the launch titles, the series will be destroyed.

Get off your high horse and look at the practical effects of armor DLC (which is what this amounts to for Halo.) Did the blood angels set or salamanders armor destroy Space Marine? What about the Black armor for Section 8 Prejudice? Dye packs in Fable 3? What about Horse Armor? Did that kill Oblivion? No, though the cost-to-product balance may be off for your tastes the general practice is anything but a destroyer of series. It provides additional types of content for us that wouldn’t otherwise be available post-launch and it provides the devs and publishers with another source of income which is especially important now considering the frequency at which we buy used. It’s a beneficial relationships, even if it departs from traditional practices.

> I’ve been with the series since its inception in 2001, thats over 12 years put into the series. To see it go over something like trying to imitate the farmville-monetization to capitalize and milk the series terrifies me.

Why? Let’s be clear, “microtransactions” are simply DLC out of the traditional areas of map packs and expansions. MechAssault had an equivalent (the Raven mech) and that certainly didn’t bring an end to all things good and honorable about the shooter genre. I can’t possibly see any great doom befalling 343 now to more seriously expand outside of Halo 2’s meager DLC offerings.

20

Wow, a lot of misunderstandings of micro-transactions in this thread.

A micro transaction is what it says, it’s a small payment, a very small one, for some sort of DLC. Now, DLC isn’t exclusive to large content, anything you download that you can use is DLC, wether it’s 10 kB or 5 GB. Micro transaction is only a word combination used to describe the low price of the single content.

A micro transaction system doesn’t mean that you need to pay in order to rank up, use a specific weapon and so on. While so seems to be the belief because a lot of games used that specific method, not all games do so.

Planetside 2, the big MMOFPS/RPG game uses micro transactions in that way, you pay real money to unlock weapons. While you are not forced to do so and can still unlock content, it’s a lot faster as I heard you’d need to play some 70 hours or so to be able to unlock a single gun.

However, DotA 2 on the other hand is totally free to play, and it features micro transactions that are purely estethical stuff. It does not feature any sort of buyable ingame advantage. You can buy new couriers, armor, announcer voices, huds, taunts and so on. None of that have any sort of affect on the gameplay. TF2 follows the same principle if I’m not mistaken.

So, micro transactions are only bad if the developer makes it bad. I don’t see a problem with having micro transactions in Halo 5, as long as it’s not on the disc from the start, that would be bad.

However, i343 should take a note from Valve in this regard. Do put in micro transactions, but purely estethical stuff. Then also let the community participate in creating new content as well, and let us vote what to put in and so on. Having a good micro transaction system would enable us to either get free new maps, or atleast cheaper ones.

I could even go so far as to suggest them making Halo 5’s multiplayer free which would go only on microtransactions while the campaign could be a fully fledged game that we pay for. While it’s stretching it, I would have no problems with it.