Reading through some of the topics I have seen some concerns about the battle pass, the game being free to play, unlocking items and some misinterpretation and misinformation. In this topic I will talk about how other popular games use the F2P model and what we are likely to see in Halo Infinite.
There are four confirmed ways to unlock items, and it appears there will be no crossover in how to unlock customisations. This means if something is in the battle pass, it cannot be obtained via the other 3 methods and vice versa.
- Battle Pass
- Store
- Playing the game
- Events
Battle Pass
The battle pass will need to be purchased, although I do think it would be nice that people who buy the campaign disc/digital get the first one free. There will also be a number of free items in the battle pass that anyone can unlock just by playing. This will mean that every player, even those that haven’t spent a penny will get new content every battle pass. If players want to pay to skip the battle pass and unlock the content in it then they can. There is no real benefit to this except for having some customisation options earlier than other people. You get the exact same content. Unlocking things in a battle pass usually has zero skill attached to it and relies more upon time played. They will probably try to make it so the average player finishes it within about 80% of the season. By average player I mean someone who plays it an average amount, the battle pass is not about skill or achievement. Keeps you invested until the next one drops.
What about the second battle pass? You do have to buy every individual battle pass. Don’t worry, that isn’t as scary as it seems if you don’t want to spend lots of money. It is unconfirmed how this will work in Infinite, but in every AAA title game that uses a battle pass currently, you unlock currency via the battle pass. Typically the currency will work out to the total value of a battle pass plus some spare change. For instance, let’s say the battle pass costs 700cP. Most games that use this system will give you 1000cP for example, so if you save it and don’t spend it on the store, you can use 700cP on the next battle pass and have 300cP left over to do what you want with it. Over the course of say 3-4 battle passes you may have enough to buy a few items or a nice bundle with your spare change. You have only paid for one battle pass, but in turn will get every future battle pass effectively for free and some content from the store. Of course you can also use the cP from the battle pass on the store and just buy the next battle pass with regular old money. I personally like to do the saving strategy and only ever have to buy one battle pass and use the cP from the first to fund each one thereafter.
Store
The store will have refreshable items on rotation. They may have some items that change daily, or weekly or it could be 48-72 hours. It would be unlikely for items to be in the store for more than one week, but it is a possibility. These items are unique as if you don’t buy them, you may not know when they are going to come back up again. This is a way in which companies can generate a decent regular revenue stream as people sometimes want to buy something in case it doesn’t come up again soon. Having more clarity of the likelihood of items coming back up and when would be useful to help people make more informed purchases, but is unlikely this will be done as no other existing system does. There is also a chance that everything in the store is purchasable at any time, and it will only have featured items in the store, but anything that has come up can be gotten at any time in a separate menu. That’s how Call of Duty does it and is a better system than Fortnite for example as it eliminates the fear of missing out (FOMO) purchase.
The store will likely have a lot of items that you will never own. This is because it is unlikely you will be able to generate anywhere near enough cP naturally to buy everything, all the time. While you may think this is unfair, to put it into perspective, Fortnite has 800 different character skins to choose from. The idea isn’t to own them all. The idea is to have enough variety that everyone has something that they want and like. Halo may be similar and have hundreds upon hundreds of different options. You may want to own them all, but please realise this number wouldn’t exist without the F2P model. They aren’t putting content behind a pay wall with this as much as they are providing extra content that would otherwise be unavailable. For context, Halo 3 had 12 armour sets for Spartans. We will be getting way more content because of this, but that does come at a price.
Playing the game
There hasn’t been any clarification on this yet, so this may not be a unique way to unlock armour. I believe this must refer to the idea of having campaign challenges or multiplayer challenges that if achieved will grant specific armour sets/skins/customisation options. Potentially you can unlock skins for guns for X amount of kills, unlocking achievements, beating the game on legendary etc etc. This armour will be earned by your determination, and no-one will be able to buy that. 343 have alluded a lot of items come under this bracket which is great news.
Events
Fracture events are a cool way for us to unlock customisation options as these are free. They are most likely going to be timed events and will hopefully have some interesting playlists, gametypes or other ways of introducing them and unlocking them. They have confirmed that nothing will be locked out forever, but as it refers to an event I am wondering if potentially they are unlocked through certain timeframes each year or the event will be in circulation. For instance if the Yoroi Samurai event had challenges related to the energy sword and a sword gametype to play to unlock it, that could come up in a month or two as a rotating playlist and give players the option to unlock the armour then. None of this is confirmed, this is all speculation as to how other games handle these types of events. Potentially once the event has been live, that set could be unlocked at any time by completing the prerequisites/challenges offered. No-one will be able to buy these skins.
Events are great as this will probably mean fresh content whether that be new maps, special in game happenings or some interesting playlists. This will definitely be the home to some interesting armour sets via the fracture events.
I hope reading through this some of you understand a bit more about the road Halo is heading down. This is definitely going to mean we get the most amount of Halo content we have ever gotten before, for free.