I’ve put a few hours in now, and many more than that trying to compose my thoughts. While I have many opinions on a variety of features and aspects of the flight, I think I need to comment on the reward system as it stands and means through which you progress through the battlepass. My first instinct when playing was to simply play for the simple pleasure of playing. But at the end of a match or 2 started to notice my “battlepass” progress (and lack there of) distinctly pop up, pointing out that I’ve gone no where. this led me to severely alter my play to focus on completing specific tasks. I don’t think that’s a problem by itself, but when I completed the last of the weekly challenges it was apparent the only way I had to “progress” was the scaling repeating daily task of more and more matches for a pittance of XP that becomes more and more spaced out. I had been having fun exploring new strategies and playing the game, but the majority of my motivation to play seemed to die when my options for meaningful ways to progress evaporated with the end of every other 4 matches showcasing how I’ve not changed my standing at all.
Now I should point out that I recognize I’m not the target audience for this game (the multiplayer at least). My competitive PvP shooter days have been more or less long gone for years now, and talking to my younger friends they assure me what I’ve described is fairly common for modern reward systems especially in the style of live seasonal “content” that the game seems to be aiming at.
I think my suggestion would be something like a separate progression system from the battlepass that maintains throughout seasons that uses your score (or some other imagined metric) from each match to progress. If only to remove the sense of “you have accomplished nothing” at the end of every match after you run out of challenges to progress your battlepass.
I know this suggestion would potentially rob opportunities to sell even more rewards through the store and battlepass, but I feel like some capitulation in this regard might help remove the omnipresent feeling the current state of the game gives of trying to sell you the game in a million different pieces. I recognize the challenge in monetizing creative endeavors and am not attempting to dismiss the game for this approach, but the “free to play” economy is a tricky landscape that can easily lead to predatory places. In my experience the only freemium game that got that balancing act done well was Warframe (admittedly I haven’t played in about 2 years). Having options for people to turn their effort into progress, even bad options, I think leaves a better hook to keep people motivated.