I’ve completed every challenge in the beta so far and I’ve ayes a decent amount of the game (both solo-queue and with friends) and I have to say the challenges are terrible and make the game actively less fun to play. Especially when you only have one or two left for the week. “Oh, I need 3 CTF wins or 10 shotgun kills or whatever - nothing else matters, I’ll just keep re-queuing until the Halo gods grant me with my random conditions”.
There needs to at very least be an XP reward for a match win so you’re incentivized to try to win. Outside of ranked, wins mean absolutely nothing, so there’s no point.
The weekly challenge should be active from day one so you can always make progress. As it is now, as we near the end of the week, every player is going for the same challenge at the same time, so the game becomes less fun. Another side-issue with weekly challenges is after you’re done, there’s no reason to keep playing until the weekly reset. 50xp per game and no win XP isn’t worth it. Having a separate match win XP bonus would make a huge difference.
There needs to be more swaps. Or just get rid of swaps/randomized challenges and just let us pick the challenges (similar to Destiny’s bounty system). That way people are rewarded for playing the game the way they want to au and aren’t forced into playing what they don’t (or forced to spend money to swap challenges and have fun).
Or, there could be larger, more passive challenges to work towards (with tiers). Like get 100, 500, 1000 kills with each gun (and wins in each game type) each with an XP bonus or a unique cosmetic reward tied to the challenges. These challenges would always be active and you wouldn’t have to actively try to comete them to clear your challenges. The more you play, the more you’d passively complete and be rewarded for just sticking with the game.
Before I was actively trying to complete the challenges, I thought people were just complaining, but after going through the weekly challenges myself, I get it. It is a huge problem. The challenges take the fun away and incentivize selfish play instead of completing objectives and trying to win. It actively de-incentivizes playing the objective if you don’t have challenges associated since you’re wasting your time and winning means nothing.
The battle pass and slowly drip feeding mostly useless/boring cosmetics is a different problem that I’m far less worried/passionate about. The challenges being the only way to progress and being un-fun is the real problem that needs to be addressed.
I’ve been playing Halo for 20 years. I’ve been playing fps games with progression/challenges/cosmetics/etc for as long as they’ve existed and this is the worst implementation I can rember seeing. Maybe these are just the ramblings of an aging gamer saying “back in my day, progression was fun!”, but this rant is truly how I feel and after playing with several different friends, they all feel the same way, so I’m sure we aren’t alone.