Or it’s players getting themselves excited over things that are not going to happen, then voicing their displeasure and when the things that “are not going to happen” end up not happening like they were meant to happen, even though once again they were not going to happen.
Time after time, thread after thread, reply after reply, I’ve never seen a more consistently abundant and apropos reflection of the “bike fall” meme than among this demographic.
https://imgflip.com/i/6lfgw5
Or it can be abused for this reason as well.
Fan service is best left playing second fiddle to functional quality than it is as the primary selling point of consumer media.
Not that we have that currently of course, but putting sparkles on mud doesn’t make the mud any less dirty, just more eye catching.
How exactly would you chalk this up to “fan service”? It was a functional gameplay mechanic that differentiates players from each other and ties into the established plot as well.
Again dunno if this could be attributed to “fan service” as much as it’s Bungie saying “we want players to show off their Spartans more” as was the reason they added it.
Fan service implies this is a feature requested by fans, while it may have been the case in a “case by case” way, it wasn’t a blanket statement issued collectively by the community as a whole or in some way gained traction.
Fan service is alluding that “Linda” is the second playable Spartan in CEA, when fans created theories “allowing” the canonization of co-op.
They don’t have an excuse as it was never stated to be a feature. You don’t need a reason for not including something that was never going to be included.
It’s like asking someone to explain in detail why they didn’t put diesel in their Toyota Prius, then getting upset because you didn’t like the answer (or lack there of) to a question that didn’t require an answer.
Please stop shoving a stick into the spokes of your happiness bicycle.
I don’t think this is a fair statement. Where did you get the idea that it was not “meant to happen” from? They’ve never officially warned us that it was going to be strictly Chief’s character. We’re not voicing an unrealistic expectation. This is a situation where we’ve told them repeatedly what we want, and they seem to have taken little heed to our feedback, and at best, given us a weak justification as a reply. This is an essential attitude of 343 that’s contributed to much of Infinite’s failure - not taking more seriously player feedback and requests.
Modders have shown that it’s possible to put in multiplayer cosmetics. It’s always been on the table as a choice. They just didn’t choose it. That’s why we’re disappointed. It’s got nothing to do with “what was going to happen”, or “what was not going to happen”.
No one is saying that functionality has to be compromised. In this case, there’s little to no interference with functionality. To borrow your metaphor’s terms - if it’s easy to put sparkles, put them.
This game is little more than a string of disappointments. Hoping for things that are never confirmed, or even hinted at, for that matter, does nothing than more than set ones self up for more disappointment. Consider how well 343 has delivered on confirmed features in the past.
If you are upset about this, do me a favor when you play co-op and experience all the currently unknown disappointments, and ask yourself if the game would be any better/less buggy if resources were taken away from functionality and put on this aesthetic feature. I don’t know now, but I’m pretty sure what the answer will be.
Based on the fact that we haven’t gotten to play as our Spartan since Halo 4’s Spartan Ops, and Halo Reach if you only count campaigns. On top of that, all other games use Master Chief clones (aside from Halo 5 and 3, which use premade characters anyways). Halo CE: canonically Linda, but same model as Chief. Halo 2: Chief and Arby clones. Halo 3: Chief and Arby. Halo 4: Chief clones. Halo Reach: Mini armor of Noble Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine. Halo 5: Pre made characters of; Locke, Linda, Vale, Buck, Fredrick, Chief, Tanaka, and the one girl with the EVA helmet who had basically no dialogue or character in Halo 5 so I forgot who she was since I haven’t read the books.
nevermind I’m blind, Glad to see its 4-player co op.
Considering the parallel timeline stuff they try to tease at the end, having 2-4 Chiefs traversing over Zeta Halo for this Campaign doesn’t feel out of line.
The other thing on my mind is what were people expecting them to do with the additional player characters for cutscenes if players 2-4 were gonna be their respective MP spartan? Blop em in the background of the scenes? A little can go a long way but i just don’t see it for Infinite’s coop. I’m sure they wanna do more cinematic stuff for MP and combine it with Chiefs story down the line but they just arnt there with it.
Players get themselves excited because they want to be excited for cool features and want the quality to go beyond the bare minimum. Halo 3, Halo Reach, arguably Halo 3 ODST (co-op players use Rookie’s model in Flashbacks) and Halo 5 all gave the players different models to play as (and Halo 5 had gameplay features tied to player character). When the features of the current “thing” don’t match or exceed what players have gotten before, disappointment ensues.
This is why when Battlefront 2 EA came out (pushing aside the horrendous micros for a second), there was disappointment that there were so few Heroes for the Clone Wars. Battlefront 2 Classic, even if the Heroes weren’t differentiated in terms of Powers and capability, had a lot of Heroes from across the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan, Anakin, Grevious, Dooku, Jango Fett, Mace Windu, Aalya Secura and other Heroes from Battlefront 2 Classic were missing for a long time in BF2 EA, and even though we knew that DICE was shooting for Heroes to all be unique and couldn’t possibly match the number of Heroes from the classic game, it was still disappointing for long-time fans of the franchise (especially seeing as the only two Prequel Heroes for Battlefront 2 EA on launch were Darth Maul and Yoda, compared to the absolute bevy that
Even in a case like this, the hope isn’t even unrealistic. Prior Halo games have had different playable characters for the co-op mode, and there was a hope that it would be the same here. It wasn’t, and fans aren’t happy.
Marketing is the visual feast for the eyes, and it’s what entices players into the game or product they’re consuming. While the functional components are important, they’re less marketable to consumers. Saying “we have co-op and you can play as your multiplayer spartan” is a much easier sell than “we have co-op.”
This is also assuming the product is fundamentally broken on launch (ala Halo Infinite). I point back to Halo Reach, Halo 3 and Halo 5 all doing this while running on the same engine framework (though who knows how much spaghetti was poured into whatever the Slipspace Engine is).
Because it would have been much easier to have duplicates of the player characters. The Red Elite and Blue Elite from co-op campaign don’t matter at all to Halo 3’s story. You could have cut them out and not much would have been lost, least of all in a game where a giant floating triangle differentiates friend from foe when playing with friends, and anyone who isn’t a Human or Elite = bad guy. This is also why no friendly non-Elite Covenant species show up in Halo 3, and no hostile Elites show up either. It would cause confusion for the fans.
Fan service, at least according to most definitions I can find online, is content designed specifically to appeal to fans. Digging into some of the sources cited on Wikipedia (which are legit if you actually look into the Source citations), a number of sources agree that fan service is “giving fans exactly what they want.”
In Halo 3, players customized their Spartans and made them their own. In order to make your Spartan your own and have that represented more, Bungie found more use-cases for them for the purposes of catering to fans and giving them what they wanted. Now your Spartan is used in all game modes in the game, from Custom Games to Campaign.
It wasn’t at all a necessary feature, nor would its exclusion make a worse game, but it was put in to appeal to the fans. Hence, fan service. We can see fan service in other areas of Halo Reach as well. Did Bungie need to create such an extensive list of armor to acquire and customize your Spartan with? No, but fans liked customizing their multiplayer character in Halo 3, so it was a feature they wanted to expand upon to appeal to fans. To give fans exactly what they wanted. Would the exclusion of Halo Reach’s armor make a worse game? Not from a gameplay standpoint.
And the expectation was based upon prior history in the franchise. It was the same thing with playable Elites. That train has been going since Halo 4, and shows no signs of stopping because, despite the fact that 343 never promises they’ll bring back playable Elites, players still want them and make themselves vocal to try and get them included. And then when they don’t, because 343 has shown borderline contempt for anything that’s not a Spartan, fans get disappointed.
Your post, at least in my opinion, boils down to “be more realistic about your expectations,” and while that’s not bad advice, people get hyped about prospective features and ideas because it would be cool to have them, and it would be nice for the fans. Fan service is about giving fans exactly what they want, and part of giving us what we want, are features like having our multiplayer Spartan in co-op (partially because it’s been done before). It’s totally doable because it’s been done on this engine before and we have fond memories of it from prior games. From a fan service perspective, it sucks that it isn’t happening.
I’m not buying 343’s excuses to not have multiplayer Spartans as campaign coop models. If you wanted a canon experience, you’d play solo. It’s like 343 is stuck in a feedback loop full of logical fallacies. Besides that, mods have shown us that multiplayer Spartans can easily be loaded into campaign with little to no issues. Player 1/party leader: Master Chief. Everyone else: The option of their Multiplayer Spartan or Master Chief. Have only Master chief show up in cutscenes.
I know this isn’t actually that big of a deal because it doesn’t change gameplay, I just don’t get why this is so difficult for 343. They’re the ones trying to push for “player expression” as the excuse for upending and gutting customization so they can overcharge for every little thing, but then we get this response. It makes no sense. At all. The drama this is kicking up really is not the way to make things better, it makes them look greedy and incompetent, justifying the hate directed towards 343.
No official conversation on, or entertaining the topic
Trailer context with Chief as the protagonist
Articles framing this as a continuation of “Chief’s story”
Where did you get the idea that your custom Spartan was destined to be your co-op model?
Reach came out 12 years ago, Halo 4 (Spartan Ops) came out 10 years ago.
Outside of competitive/cooperative multiplayer segments, no plot driven Halo segment outside of Halo Reach/Spartan Ops has given players control of customization of their model.
It’s unrealistic to assume that it was the plan the whole time when nothing official has alluded to the possibility thus far. It’s wishful thinking at best, treating it as anything more is gaslighting yourself into disappointment.
Co-op is what was wanted and what was missing from launch by the broad majority of players.
Customization of your co-op player model was a merely a suggested garnish.
It’s not worth getting upset over a requested spring of parsley when your (late) steak is set in front of you.
As far as I know, there hasn’t even been official acknowledgment of the “iSsUe” either, so once again stop gaslighting yourself.
You’re devoting energy into getting upset over the paint job of a vehicle when the fan belt is screeching, the engine is knocking, and it’s missing two whole wheels while somehow hauling -Yoink!- down the interstate.
Because modders made it happen functionally?
Modders can add Thomas the Tank Engine to Skyrim, clearly Todd Howard has the capacity to entertain my fan fiction universe crossover, it’s always been on the table as a choice.
You’re disappointed because you gaslit yourself into believing it would happen, and it didn’t.
It’s really that simple.
As a matter of fact it does. It entirely revolves around “what was going to happen” and “what was not going to happen”.
Officially we were going to get co-op at some point, and co-op is on its way.
Officially it was stated nowhere that your multiplayer model would be used as the co-op model, and thus custom co-op models are not being added.
But functionality is compromised currently.
I’m not suggesting a custom player model in co-op will bork the game, I’m suggesting the game is borked currently and a custom player model will not fix this.
The Disney princess bandaid might look cute over the stump where your hand was, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s doing absolutely nothing to stymie the blood loss of a freshly missing appendage.
20 freaking years in the making and only one Halo game (arguably the best game) Reach has custom coop players. 343 read the room man. This is a slam dunk no brainer letting ppl play with their own Spartans. How can they still be worse at making a game this old? I’d rather reply Reach again than bother with this.
Considering the MP side and Campaign side feels entirely divorced in development, I didn’t expect them to bring MP Spartans to Campaign at all.
I’m instead more disappointed that our Seasonal Narrative for lonewolves just has us playing Arena, instead of creating special PvE missions for MP Spartans. Like why bother then? Who cares about a story for players to shoot other players in an arena?
Gosh you’re making this more tiring than it has to be. We are not claiming that this is the plan, we are TELLING 343 it will be an excellent feature to HAVE our multiplayer Spartans. I said in my earlier post “we’ve told them repeatedly what we want”.
And the same for this - please don’t assume that I BELIEVED it would happen. If i did, I wouldn’t have made multiple posts trying to get this feedback across.
Do you finally get that difference now? Gosh.
And you DO realise that by voicing our feedback and wants, it has the POTENTIAL to change their choices? Do you get why it’s more HELPFUL to speak about it, than to SHUT down our people who are trying to tell 343 what might be a better choice? You have such a defeatist attitude. “Oh, it was never meant to happen, so i’m not going to do anything about it”.
Dude - it’s not fun speaking to you. I hope you’re not like this all the time, really. For your own sake, and all the other poor souls you’re going to misread and misinterpret.
Right it’s basically the same engine with a new paint job and isn’t capable of handling the task they were given. Like they shot themselves in the foot again
I agree 100%. Armor customization in campaign should have been a core feature after Reach. Chief isn’t married to the Mark VI no matter how iconic it is.
This is due to the Dedicated servers, everyone has to be Master chief because the servers cant let you be host and invite players as spartans.
The game cant simply understand the difference.
I also wonder how this will actually work, will you see your teammates or not or will you just be sharing the screen
That would suck!
