The whole system is bunk because 343 butchered in favor of the F2P model which requires them to squeeze players for money some way somehow.
Gotta sell challenge swaps. How? Make challenges annoying/too hard and force players to want to swap them. Or limit them to only 3-4 active challenges, slowing their progress.
Can’t go giving out items for free, so the commendation system was scrapped. A long-form challenge system that can keep players entertained for years and allows for harder challenges (like get a killionaire) because there is no time limit.
Gotta sell XP boosts. How? Make xp gain super low and limit it to challenge completion (emphasizing the challenges even more). I mean, we had to BEG them for a per-match XP system and that took a year just for a beta, basically. Fill the BP with filler garbage (more boosts and swaps, splitting shoulders between 2 tiers, and emblems between 4) so it feels like it takes longer for you to get an actual item you want.
But the biggest issue is that reworking the whole system might be too much for 343 so they have to settle for patching up this junk they designed.
I seriously can’t understand why people care SO MUCH about challenges and progression. Back in H2 we played thousands of games on guest accounts with absolutely zero form of progression, no stat tracking, not even a skill rank. The game itself was good enough to keep people playing without dangling a carrot in front of their face. Dozens of posts about this, almost daily, yet no one talking about the horrible aim feel compared to any of the mcc titles.
That’s Halo 2. A game from 2004. As much as I love Halo 2, the entire industry moved far off from that. Halo 3, Reach, 4 and 5 all had a progression system. Modern multiplayer games have a progression system. Using Halo 2 as an example isn’t a good one anymore. Halo Infinite has really, really regressed on modern features.
The player base is so low at this point that they’re ensuring everyone who bothers to play will get these items.
Basically the top 2 coveted REACH shoulders are the Emile ones (with the curved blade) and the commando shoulders. People have been wanting these items since 2021 and now that they’re finally acquirable, if 343 made it super difficult to unlock them, the community would lose their minds.
I don’t understand the whole, “it’s too easy” stance. They could’ve charged for this stuff. This 10 tier pass is actually the first one that doesn’t have any filler bs… each level is something good. Being this close to the end of the season (also with other games launching and destiny dlc about to drop), 343 know that mak8ng it too time consuming or difficult is too much currently. Why not just enjoy the easy unlocks? With a game that’s basically done and at the end of its life cycle, might as well just enjoy the free/easy stuff.
I think this is mostly because they have quite a few players like myself: we are HUGE Halo fans, we played the campaign, we haven’t been enjoying the multiplayer that much, but because we like the lore and the armor we come back to complete events and fill out those passes.
If the challenges would actually take a lot of me playing this week, I wouldn’t play at all. Desync is so bad right now, I prefer not to play at all. But since I can hop in and quickly unlock a few things that should have been unlocked on launch (why are we paying to unlock Halo Reach armor for a 3rd time?) I just do that and quickly knock them out. Personally I prefer it this way. Then again, I’d prefer that they actually update the campaign…
I feel 343 over corrected with the challenge rework. Fixing the bad challenges was a good thing. But lowering the amount neeeded from 20 to 10 was an over correction. It should have stayed at 20.
Personally, I like the challenges being fairly easy. People have lives outside of playing Halo and people also have other games they enjoy playing too. (I’ve been regularly playing Hunt Showdown with some buddies for a while now). Having it setup like this encourages someone to jump in and play for maybe an hour or so a day with a little bit of their free time and having it feel fairly rewarding. If you just got off a 10 hour shift and only have maybe an hour and a half of gaming time and you see the challenges are likely gonna take you 15-20 hours to finish for the whole week, you might just say “this doesn’t feel rewarding, I’m gonna have to spend my entire free time for gaming this week playing Infinite to unlock all that, but I have some other games I really wanted to play too. I would’ve spent some of my time in Halo to get those unlocks, but my buddies really wanted to play COD this weekend and I’d rather spend my time playing with them rather than play Halo matchmaking by myself or with the handful of people I can convince to play with me this weekend.” It feels more respectful of your time while also encouraging you to spend a bit of it on Halo.
I know this was sorta rhetorical, but I wanted to use it to point out that paying for the Mark V(b) would have been fine if they didn’t cut up the Mark VII to drip-feed back to us at a premium.
Like, if they had just kept the Mark VII as something you needed to buy the Campaign to earn unlocks on, be it through commendations, achievements, or a free Season 0 pass, charging for new and older sets would not have been the controversial mess it was.
Pretty much and tbh, i an glad they arent attached to the forge showcase playlist. As much as i love the maps in rotation there, the sbmm has screwed me and friends in getting paired against super sweat fests. Im hoping week 2 of the event might be more calm since people probably wrapped up the event pass in week 1 so maybe there will be more chill matches.
Yeah I frequently end up having games where I’m put up against people that are definitely above my pay grade. I think that usually comes down to the fact that I do really well in fiesta frequently going +10 or more. Which is why I usually stay in fiesta because it’s really hard for them to try and actually properly balance matchmaking with that one considering all the weapons are RNG.
343 should look at Overwatch 2. Great daily, weekly, seasonal challenges. AND Overwatch has awesome event challenges. Infinite challenges are lame and usually no fun. Get 3 kills with the pulse rifle… great.
The challenges are easy they only reason I have stopped is because it’s taking me 30+ minutes just to find a game in anything. It really speaks volumes when the player base falls like this doesn’t it.
To be honest I will give the new update a try in 16ish days? But if the population dose not improve I will just switch to halo mcc. I really hate how excited I was for this game now every time I look at it I get a bad taste in my mouth and non of my friends want to join me on it.
Why can’t 343 stop making cosmetics FOMO? They should make all cosmetics given a permanent chance to have them. Especially Reach armor that was free and unlimited chance of getting them in the original games. 343, please LISTEN. No FOMO armor cosmetics PLEASE!
Ill admit knocked it out in a couple hours was very surprised how fast I blew threw it now I just gotta wait a little for more content last weekly I did was the Wedgewood spriggan and thats only because im starving for mark V coatings.