Should the REQ system be continued

Games Halo 5: Guardians
64

> 2533274834881503;55:
> Halo 5 is one of the only games I’ve seen get micro-transactions right.
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> They’re completely optional in the sense that everything you can buy, you can just as easily get from simply playing the game. And the more you play, the less that matters – meaning that the only people who really see a serious benefit from them are more casual players who just don’t have the time for that.
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> This provides a motivation boost to play for both the casual, as they feel they have an advantage, as well as the more hardcore players because they feel that simply grinding gives them even more of an advantage (which it actually does in this case).
> And for anyone in between, it’s a boost too because their existence means that nobody has to pay for DLC maps anymore, and the player base doesn’t get split between DLC & non-DLC owners.
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> This is the complete opposite of every main aspect that normally makes people hate micro-transactions.
> Normally, micro-transactions means that at the hardcore level, non-paid players simply can’t keep up, due to things like bonus experience in games where level matters.
> And normally, the micro-transactions are pretty useless unless you’re already invested into the game, which means that newer players don’t get much out of them.
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> This is how microtransactions should be done. This style of benefit is what makes the game better for being in.
> Halo 5 messed up on a lot of things, but micro-transactions are not one of them.
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> > 2533274834066497;7:
> > No, it didn’t help get us a full game at launch did it.
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> This is the rub & where they botched everything: executive decisions should not be based around the micro-transactions.
> This is where they completely dropped the ball with Halo 5, as they pushed the game out the door as fast as possible without actually finishing it.
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> Lack of theatre, forge, splitscreen, gametypes & BTB… and in the case of BTB, that wasn’t just that it wasn’t finished, it was obviously an active, conscious decision to remove it in order to increase micro-transaction sales.
> Even though they got the system correct, they ruined the game’s launch & the entirety of the game’s long-term player base due to bad decisions that were associated with it.
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> As for the REQ system in general, I feel like customisation like armour should be separate and done more in a Reach style.
> There’s just so much extra stuff crammed into the game that half of them never get used anyway and it dilutes the excitement of opening a pack.
> Instead of being excited at the chance to unlock something new & fun, you’re already expecting to get another boring generic armor that looks exactly the same as 200 other boring generic armors.
> It would also be nice to see more achievement-based armors where certain really nice ones are tied to completion like vidmasters or something like Reaching level 50 in a playlist.
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> > 2535465002418082;52:
> > > 2535434454479381;36:
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> > We all know this to be true, it’s the reason I only play Halo 5 for about an hour day. I get my login pack, my wz daily win packs, and finish it up with a 10k rp grind and open a gold pack. Needless to say I’m just killing time for bwc Halo at this point, I spend most of my time on other games such as ARK, Mario Maker, and my Pokemon Sapphire randomizer. The problem is -Yoink!- thinks every decision they make is brilliant, and I’ll give them credit some of their ideas are ingenius, but MTs in Halo was not one of them. The profits only went to the HCS and NOT in maintaining Halo 5 post launch, hence why we still have day 1 bugs in the game. I’m so tired of being angry at Halo everytime I play it, at least with CE-4 you could just kinda chill, relax, and still have a good time.
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> > 2535473635314008;37:
> > Yes. I absolutely think the req system should stay. But…
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> > The money pooled from the warzone community should not go to funding hcs. Period. It should go to quality updates and content. I don’t know anything about what it costs to make a game or a part of it. But we know from the events and some of the prize pools that over 3 million dollars went to hcs players. Just the players. 3 is the minimum, it’s probably way over that. So does 3-4 + million dollars in revenue get us a high quality halo 5 btb, up to the standards to halo 3? I don’t know. But I would love to see that money go back to the community. Not to salty pro players.
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> The entire budget planning was a disaster, even as far as HCS is concerned.
> They put all this money into the “marketable” idea that the prize pool is $1mil but yet they didn’t put any of that towards actual promotion.
> Sure they could say that there was a $1mil tournament but nobody knew about it…
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> And if you did know about it, all you could say is, “man, that money could have done so much more.”
> The production of the tournaments is garbage. No secondary stream, constant downtime, audio/video has been messed up every single time, the venues were poorly planned, the ‘point system’ was poorly planned, the seating and brackets were poorly planned and the settings have not only been poorly planned, but a complete detriment to the success of the game.
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> All this money towards a large prize pool and how much better off are we today?
> Well now they can’t even afford a prize pool because they put none of that money into actually improving the game, so now nobody wants to play and they don’t get any microtransactions anyway.
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> We also ended up in this weird situation where 343 ignores everything the pros say, yet the waypoint community is convinced that the game is catered towards pros.
> Conversely, 343 ignores everything that waypoint & casuals say, so the competitive players think it’s catered towards noobs.
> The reality is, 343 just doesn’t care about what anyone thinks, they do whatever they want and have this egocentric idea that they alone know what’s best.
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> Microsoft went overboard with their idea of “let’s hire people who hate Halo so that they can fix the things that people don’t like.”
> Instead of ending up with a team that fixes the shortcomings, they ended up with a team that just doesn’t care about the game, has zero passion for making it better and can’t wait for the clock to hit 5pm so they can go home at the end of the day.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I personally am waiting for that exact moment when Halo 5 dies, which I assume will be the day the Classic games become Bwc, H3, ODST, CEA, and even H4. And when the OG Xbox games come to bwc I see CE and H2 also taking what’s left of the OG Halo fans from Halo 5.

65

No req system please, you never earn any armour , it is all chance and luck. Having stuff like emblems in the req system is straight up stupid. Overall just get rid of it, I’ve seen tons of people criticise it and virtually no one praise it.

66

> 2533274904158628;6:
> Are you asking if it should be continued in future Halo games? I’m gonna say no, and here’s why:
> - The req system gives 343 an incentive to go for quantity over quality when designing armor and other things. This would still be true even if they added some armor that’s unlockable from achievements/commendations. - This is just speculation, so feel free to disagree with this point, but it seems to me like Warzone is the reason why we don’t have BTB Heavies in Halo 5. So that’s another thing I blame the req system for. - The req leveling system within Warzone causes lopsided blowout matches due to a snowball effect, in which one team gets ahead a little bit at the beginning, and uses that advantage to get even more ahead, and so on. This is only solved with the addition of Warzone Turbo. - This is an important point: the req system is very unfriendly to new players, because any Warzone mode is not so fun when you don’t have any reqs. - Not only is it generally unfun to play Warzone without any reqs to call in, but new players without many reqs can also drag their teams down and cause losses in higher difficulties of Warzone Firefight, no matter their skill. Please note that I am not blaming them for this.No amount of changes or adjustments will solve these core issues with the req system, and it’s not worth all of these problems, in my opinion.

I think the Halo REQ system is one of the better microtransaction systems in a game I still think no microtransactions should be present in a 60 dollar game. Have the armor behind in-game credits like in Reach and have the maps behind a pay wall. But then you have to be sure that the maps will be worth the money but you are also guaranteed a sum of cash for your work. Its a win-win.

67

> 2533274867203371;1:
> Let me know what you guys think about the REQ system. I actually think it is is amazing but needs some changes.

It needs a lot of changes. 343 needs to accept the fact there are people who only play arena like games and that there are people that only play warzone games.

So it would be wise to have cosmetic REQ packs and Warzone REQ packs.

Also, the amount of REQ points you get for different games is skewed.

And in Halo 5 there is hardly any need to level up besides bragging rights. What do you get from getting ranked up? The best you can get is an emblem and some weapons/vehicles. Nothing you can’t get from REQ packs.

68

> 2533274818084099;66:
> I think the Halo REQ system is one of the better microtransaction systems in a game I still think no microtransactions should be present in a 60 dollar game.

Yeah, I think I agree. You’ll note that I never directly mentioned microtransactions in my post. As long as they don’t make the game pay to win, I don’t particularly care whether a game I play has microtransactions in it. My reasons for strongly disliking the req system have more to do with the indirect effects of Halo 5’s microtransactions. Specifically, the way that the req system influences 343’s decisionmaking. Consider this chain of events:

  • Stuff that comes from req packs helps players have more fun in Warzone - Those req packs can be purchased for real money in the form of microtransactions - Because they want to make money, 343 now has an incentive to get players to play Warzone, because more players playing Warzone means a higher chance of more people purchasing req packs with real money - Since 343 has a financial incentive to get people playing Warzone, which is a mode with large teams, large maps and lots of powerful weapons and vehicles, they therefore have an incentive to de-emphasize the other, non-Warzone game mode with large teams, large maps and lots of powerful weapons and vehicles (i.e. BTB) because it’s in their best interest to funnel the population into the one that they can make more money fromWhether or not this downplaying of BTB in favor of Warzone has actually taken place for these reasons is up for debate, but even if it hasn’t, the incentive still remains for them to prioritize Warzone at the expense of other similar game modes. So basically, that was a longer explanation of the second point I made in my post that you quoted.

Here’s another one for you to consider: if it weren’t for the req system and its microtransactions, would 343 have released the Helioskrill armor into the req pool, a decision that received strong backlash from people who earned it via the MCC achievement? To be honest, it seems to me like this incentive to make microtransaction money from the req system has skewed 343’s perception of what “exclusive” means, a little bit.

See what I’m getting at? It’s not the microtransactions themselves, it’s how they motivate 343 to do certain things. It’s how they mess with their priorities. This is my biggest reason for wanting the req system to go away forever. And most people in this thread who support the req system aren’t addressing these concerns at all.

Another thing I didn’t mention in my post is RNG unlocks. I’m seeing a lot of people in this thread seeming to conflate the req system with RNG unlocks, but that’s only one part of what the req system is. Even if all the customization options were unlocked from achievements, or commendations, or purchasing with in-game credits like in Halo Reach, or some combination of those, you could still have a req system for single-use reqs in Warzone and their certifications (certifications are a dumb idea, by the way). And as long as req packs are available for real money, then the other problems I mentioned would still remain. Removing RNG unlocks would only solve the first problem I talked about in my post, and half-removing them wouldn’t solve it at all.

> 2533274818084099;66:
> Have the armor behind in-game credits like in Reach and have the maps behind a pay wall. But then you have to be sure that the maps will be worth the money but you are also guaranteed a sum of cash for your work. Its a win-win.

Unfortunately I don’t think the idea of paid map packs is a better solution, because of how they split the playerbase.

69

I dislike the req system as a means of unlocking armor in halo 5, however, my opinion could be swayed if it was implemented to include full armor customization and was less randomized. Like more of a point system where I can buy armor etc. with my reqs. Also, I loathe micro transactions but they aren’t going anywhere so meh.

70

I kinda like halo 4’s system for unlocks and commendations etc wonder what it would be like if H5 had that system

71

Yes but keep in Microtransactions so people can buy their choice of Armor, Helmets, and Emblems.

72

So, the general sentiment is that the REQ system needs to go.

73

> 2535450981578803;53:
> Yes and no, I said this in the Halo thread at Spacebattles so I’ll just copy and paste my thoughts from there to here:
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> “If it were up to me I’d do something like this with the REQ System since it seems we are coming upon the REQ discussion again.
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> Use it to unlock armors, weapons for modes with a load out like warzone, weapon skins, and VISRS. all while being also earnable, like Get 500 AR Kills for the WARRIOR set. or 50 Assassinations for VENATOR, or 75 kills using a wasp to get the STINGER set, or beat a campaign level on Legendary for some cool -Yoink- armor or find a skull or something for like a glowing VISR or something. All save the last being able to be purchased like as Reach’s Credit system, while retaining the “I have to beat the campaign on legendary for that armor and can’t purchase it with my REQ Points.”
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> Permanent Unlockables would include
> Helmet
> Chest
> Gauntlets
> Grieves
> VISR
> Undersuits (GEN2 standard, GEN1, And other Undersuits we see in halo 5’s campaign and maybe new undersuit designs)
> Weapons (Like ARs, BRs, DMRs, SMGs, and Magnums for WZFF, or WZ Standard and WZ assault and not Arena)
> Weapon Skins
> Armor Skins (Like VENATOR Cestus, VENATOR Retiarus, VENATOR Thraex all as skins and not as Armor unlocks that saturate the REQ Packs like Mongeese)
> Armor Permutations (like in reach, how you could alter a helmet with little cosmetic gizmos)
> HUD (Like actually change the HUD design like in Halo 5’s Campaign every character IIRC has a different HUD)
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> and then have a part of it be specifically for Single Use REQ Weapons for Warzone (A SAW or Rocket Launcher for example) and it’s sub-modes. and compartmentalize it into Weapons, Vehicles and Boosts specifically, and the occasional Certification and XP/REQ Point booster sprinkled in all of them appropriately. (Only Weapon Certifications in Weapon Packs for example)”

You sir, are a genius, personally I like how halo 4 did armor customization best since your commedations gave you armor. But this is way better and I really believe this is the best option, leave the skins and all unnecessary stuff to the REQ system. Earned specific gear from campaign and commendations so gamers can grind for what THEY want.

74

For me I’d be okay with keeping the REQ system for H6 as long as they were broken out into specific categories. Separating weapon/vehicles certifications from armor and other cosmetics like:

  • WZ REQs (weapons/vehicles/loadouts/abilities) - Personalization REQs (armor/helmet/emblems/weapon skins).
75

I think is one of the best implementations of the loot crate system that I´ve seen so far. Although the unlocks are random, you can´t get duplicates, so you feel you are progressing and eventually you´ll get everything. Not like the call of duty supply drop system where you will probably never unlock everything, I even doubt it´s possible.
I think it may have some areas where it can be improved but I don´t see why it shouldn´t return. If micro transactions weren´t in the game we probably wouldn´t have free DLC therefore the community would split as to keep the game alive you pretty much need DLCs. I definitely prefer this and have free DLC to have to pay and have the community split, as long as the system is balanced and not pay to win.

76

No, GOD NO!, no…

Just kidding, I do like the REQ’s in halo 5 but yeah the major issue is the microtransactions, even though the “Myth of the week” (or whatever it’s called) those tryhard players can still buy them VIA the stores of xbox.

My recommendation is just have the current req MINUS the Microtransactions for the weapons while armor wise should be like reaches way, allowing you to buy the armor you find most interesting.

77

I like the REQ system but there could be some improvements

78

Straight up nope.

79

Nope, nope, nope…

80

I could care less either way, to be honest with you. Halo 5’s system is one of the better ones I’ve seen, I know a lot of people share that sentiment. If it does come back, I’ll just accept it. Even if I wanted it gone, I know for a fact that there is nothing I can do to get it removed because of profit reasons. So…deal with it? I don’t know.

81

I think that in order for the REQ system to improve it should ditch single use Warzone cards, and that Halo 6 should ditch Warzone altogether. Put the focus that that game mode got and put it back into BTB. The way that the Warzone/Arena split worked in Halo 5 made the game feel a lot smaller than it actually is because there is little to no overlap. Make BTB bigger and better, don’t just abandon it. A.I. in multiplayer was a cool idea, it didn’t work though. Make BTB 24, or maybe even 32 players, and have those maps be the Forge pallets. Intertwine everything. It’s the best way to make a game feel truly big in a way that people feel like they get to utilize everything.

REQ packs can serve as a part of the customization system, but I think that earning parts of your customization is important as a status symbol, and something that Halo 5 is seriously lacking. This is an older idea, but one that I still think would work really well. Base armor sets should be earned, and the various armor skins, stances, visors, weapon skins, emblem nameplates (you should be able to make your own emblems again, it was dumb that they removed that feature.) should all be received through the REQ system. The REQ system should basically just copy the Lootbox system from Overwatch. Everything about that system works and is simple and doesn’t add a lot of unnecessary complexity. It is the best microtransaction system current IMO. The one thing that I would keep from Halo 5 though is EXP Boosts. I’d stop having so may different variants, and just have one though.

So basically the REQ pool would be armor skins (and I’d split the armor customization up again, have shoulders, arms, chest, helmet…), stances, nameplates, visors, assassinations, EXP boosts, and weapon skins (and I’d have less weapons that have skins. Ideally, with the removal of Warzone that I talked about earlier, only AR, BR, and Magnum would get skins, as they would be the only starting weapons that are in base game types. I want the ability to choose between starting with BR or AR in base game modes. Magnum is always the secondary, and you don’t start with any Grenades. Custom games would still allow you to do whatever you want.). That would still be a huge REQ pool, and there being duplicates would make it technically even bigger.

82

I hate the REQ system. I really tried to like H5 but in the end there were just too many things about this Halo that made the game not very much fun to play. The REQ system was near the top of the list for me but certainly not the only thing I hated.

Warzone is just an un-fun mess in my humble opinion. I hated it from the start, tried my best to like it but I can honestly say I’ve never really had fun playing it. It’s sole existence was to facilitate micro-transactions, whoo hoo super fun man! They’ve been trying to fix this mode since the game launched. Fixing it is like trying to tune the engine on a car that you designed with square wheels. I gave up on it long ago.

Warzone is also the reason BTB got the shaft. No professional maps, small community made forge maps. It was all just kind of an afterthought and as a person who liked BTB I was pretty disappointed.

Like I said, there are a number of other things I don’t love about Halo 5, I don’t have a lot of hope for the series going forward.

83

> 2533274800772611;81:
> I think that in order for the REQ system to improve it should ditch single use Warzone cards, and that Halo 6 should ditch Warzone altogether. Put the focus that that game mode got and put it back into BTB. The way that the Warzone/Arena split worked in Halo 5 made the game feel a lot smaller than it actually is because there is little to no overlap. Make BTB bigger and better, don’t just abandon it. A.I. in multiplayer was a cool idea, it didn’t work though. Make BTB 24, or maybe even 32 players, and have those maps be the Forge pallets. Intertwine everything. It’s the best way to make a game feel truly big in a way that people feel like they get to utilize everything.
>
> REQ packs can serve as a part of the customization system, butI think that earning parts of your customization is important as a status symbol, and something that Halo 5 is seriously lacking. This is an older idea, but one that I still think would work really well. Base armor sets should be earned, and the various armor skins, stances, visors, weapon skins, emblem nameplates (you should be able to make your own emblems again, it was dumb that they removed that feature.) should all be received through the REQ system. The REQ system should basically just copy the Lootbox system from Overwatch. Everything about that system works and is simple and doesn’t add a lot of unnecessary complexity. It is the best microtransaction system current IMO. The one thing that I would keep from Halo 5 though is EXP Boosts. I’d stop having so may different variants, and just have one though.
>
> So basically the REQ pool would be armor skins (and I’d split the armor customization up again, have shoulders, arms, chest, helmet…), stances, nameplates, visors, assassinations, EXP boosts, and weapon skins (and I’d have less weapons that have skins. Ideally, with the removal of Warzone that I talked about earlier, only AR, BR, and Magnum would get skins, as they would be the only starting weapons that are in base game types. I want the ability to choose between starting with BR or AR in base game modes. Magnum is always the secondary, and you don’t start with any Grenades. Custom games would still allow you to do whatever you want.). That would still be a huge REQ pool, and there being duplicates would make it technically even bigger.

I agree about ditching Warzone all together!