So my hot take, Microsoft didn’t expect the cash shop revolt. The server issues are being dealt with but the revolt to the cash shop being a bigger public outcry is causing the devs vs corp issues and it’s causing a “whats the biggest issue we must fix?” So it’s basically a miscommunication between the studio and the higher ups. Which results in us hearing silence.
Also some people don’t get back in the office until the 2nd monday of the new year specially with crunch and how the whole pandemic has been…
Have you seen free guy yet? The main Antagonist in that movie is what I feel resembles how the development went for this game. There is a scene where the Programers are telling the guy that they are having trouble porting over all the old skins to the new game… the guy says IDK just don’t put them in than …and the Programers responded with how that was a huge selling point and promise they made to the community… And he responds with I don’t care they will still pay Money for this new game.
They did mention something about the business team, Granted I’m still not sure why it wasn’t even thought of to at the very least let people buy individual items from the bundle.
It feels to me that they really didn’t have an idea as to how to produce great content in a bundle and so opted to force players to buy the whole bundle.
I say this because in Halo 5 we got 60 default colors, all basic colors. But in Halo Infinite we have gotten 10 default colors and they have Been putting the other 50 basic colors in the bundles.
Overall their customization combined with the store Offerings is a Tactic of Filler.
For example the 20 dollar weekly right now is advertised as 5 items. You get the same Emblem 4 times, it’s only be ause they locked the Emblem to very specific catigories that they count it as 4 individual items.
They don’t want to make emblems universal because than they wouldn’t be able to stuff bundles with repeat content.
The customization of locking Visors/ coatings to an Armor core is simply done that way so they could keep reselling you the same content multiple times.
In the department of customization content and store Offerings they either lack creativity or are purposley drip feeding and holding back content. Or a combination of both. That’s where I tend to agree with Sean on the they didn’t actually have much content really planned. And they store was going to be the biggest content department.
They will have to restructure the store to ensure it doesn’t fail.
Being as they withheld 50 of the default colors from Halo 5 from us to inside them in their store shows signs that the store was intended to be 90% of cosmetic content source.
After the Whole Tenrai Event and being publicly called out for Us Ng Challenge swaps and XP boost as filler. We will see how Season 2 will go.
I’m also still waiting on word as to when Is Gamepass Holders are going to get our free cosmetic this month…
I definitely agree that more communication from 343 would be no bad thing.
I’ve seen a lot of posts from people saying to relax about updates and that 343 is committed to Halo Infinite for 10 years or whatnot and that’s great and all but if 343 want me to buy-in to this 10 year plan of theirs then I’d like some information about what that looks like, it’s hard to just ‘have faith’ in businesses that only exist to make as much money as possible, telling us what to expect from them rather than expecting blind faith is a good way of doing things.
I’ve done community management for games companies before and customers really appreciate knowing that they are being heard and getting open and honest communication. “You said so we did” is always well received and when you get things wrong, as everyone does, hold your hands up and say “we tried X this is why, it didn’t work as we expected so this is what we’re going to do to address it”. None of this is rocket science and I have to believe that 343 have the ability to do this.
I agree. And I just can’t believe that there are gaming companies out here dropping hundreds of millions on video games and then rushing the releases lol Can you imagine if they frantically pushed an unfinished Marvel movie out like video game companies do their AAA titles?
the tin foil hat theory is
they’re going to reduce the prices by 50% after like 3 months of purchases as that amount of money would be equivalent to a 60 dollar game.
I think the marketing peeps didn’t grasp that the idea of buying the same logo 3x was going to come off as stupid to people. They forget that a lot of Halo players are in their mid-20s to upper 30s. That means the community understands the value of a dollar in a more critical way. It’s not like robbing teenagers with fornite cosmetics for example where teens have less restriction or critical thought on spending and are more impulsive. To them this may seem fair or okay but to the majority of the audience it’s just a big middle finger.
Also it feels like they just didn’t have enough label ideals which is ridiculous because most people here wouldn’t cry at all if you just ported every logo from every previous game forward and made em rewards for progression.
It’s just like how if you ported maps from the MCC a lot of people would be hyped as opposed to no maps for 6 months. I’m not a graphic designer and I know it’s a whole knew engine but I feel like they could push out a remaster in a months time, with just 3 members of a team.
Possibly, also Fortnite Itself actually allows you to mix and match your cosmetics and items, obviously skins of Chara gets are tied to those characters but everything else is fair game … not to mention the weapon skins are universal you buy one it goes on every freaking weapon even future content.
343 really decided to heavily restrict where you can apply cosmetic for the sale of selling you the same content more than once
They stated they had 750 employees back in 2020. Maybe more or less now, but over 700. They grew from 30 to 750 employees, and here we are. Maybe they need 7500 employees to get the job done.
That really makes you wonder.
Think about Halo CE and how it went from being an RTS game to a third person-esque RTS to FPS on a completely new console.
It took 40 people to do this.
Now you need 700+ people and two studios and still 7 years to release this game as a live service.
Managing 40 people is hard. Managing 700 people must be a pain in the butt if you don‘t know how tox
And i think, that’s where many studios reach their limit.
They voluntarely or involuntarely expand their staff without creating the necessary working and managing environment for it.
You must be an idiot to think that out of the 700 people working for you, everybody gives 100% everyday.
For me the main critique is the restrictive customization.
The ability to buy individual items and mix and match.
I honestly just think they really didn’t have a good plan of how to really fill out that shop and the Battlepass content.
So they decided to limit where you can use your stuff so they could expand on content by recycling previous content such as Coatings and emblems.
Than they planned on those XP boost and challenge swaps to casually fill out the holes.
But for then to lock down coatings down to each weapon, vehicle and Armor core displays they were not ready and willing to let us have universal items as that would reduce the content capability on their end.
Almost like they locked creativity.
I mean I believe people would be spending more money if they knew that all their cosmetics would be able to used on so many different things. Not just one core
Halo Infinite probably won’t be a complete game (with most of the features we used to have from other Halo Titles) until 2024.
It would surprise me if most of the stuff get’s fixed & everything added we demand before 2024. They were not even able to implement the most basic gamemodes without breaking BTB. We have barely any playlists and the biggest one is broken for about a month now.
So, right now, we have about 10% of a complete game (at least this is the number I would consider) and within this small percentage of content there is a lot stuff to fix.
I’m not trying to be pessimistic here, but this is how I feel.