I’ve seen many game franchises get milked and seen their loyal fanbases get shown the middle finger for years now. Assassins creed; filled with so much poorly made bloat that they add pay to win mechanics to alleviate this. Star Wars battlefront 2s botched campaign and gambling system. Call of Duty being copy and pasted year after year with a new setting. Halo 5s marketing near COMPLETELY lying to you. I’d expect after six years of development time for the developers to be proud of this game that they’ve made; that they’d be honest and kind to the fans that have loyal since either Xbox launched, or sometime after that. The fans that have given them chance after chance to deliver on a solid experience with everything packed in just as they promised. And did they do just that? As everyone was expecting them to do? Of course they didn’t. Vidoc after vidoc and confidently spoken promise after promise; was it all a ploy to get people’s hopes up? In one specific vidoc, a dev mentioned be able to have your own, fully customizable Spartan. No amount customization or gameplay would be able to be alleviated via the store. If you like this helmet? Put it on. If you like this shoulder pad? Put it on? This accessory even? Put in on. They said that they would create this with a “…Player first mentality…” as I type this, it is like this now: Like this color for your assault rifle? Buy it for ten dollars, then put it on. Like this helmet? See, it’s in the store for twenty dollars right now. Let me take you there. Like these security shoulder pads you had in halo reach? They’re not in the battle pass that is themed around Reach armor; they’re available in a fifteen dollar bundle. Now I can’t mention the store without bringing the challenge system up, so what are the issues with this that many have? Many many difficult challenges are within the same pool as a few trivial challenges. Don’t want to get an outrageous ten kills with a severely undertuned and bugged Ravager? Use one of your few challenge swaps. But maybe because it’s bugged and quite honestly the worst weapon in multiplayer at the moment, let’s use another example. Destroy three enemy choppers. Not only are the choppers not guaranteed to spawn in a match, it has to be enemy commandeered. An ally could get the last shot in, or you could simply never have a situation where an enemy fights for and wins the fight for the chopper, since they most commonly spawn via pelican. Another challenge in this pool is complete three big team battle matches. Simple enough right? Don’t want a hard challenge? Use a swap. Out of swaps? Play near twenty matches (if you’re out of challenges and boosts) to get one, IF your next tier includes one that is. Want to bypass this egregious and predatory system? Simply go and buy some swaps or a few dollars to unlock a BP tier at the store. XP boosts are very much in the same likeness as they expire while you’re waiting for a match or simply not playing. This is to, again, get you to buy more of them in the store since they run out so quickly. Sixty minutes is nothing to sneeze at but it could’ve simply been “Boost enabled for x number of matches before expiration.” This is by far the worst system they could have implemented and I genuinely feel like I’m getting fleeced for my money every frustrating second I spend trying to play and progress in multiplayer. And that is the most depressing thing to admit for a Halo game that we have been patiently waiting for, for six whole years. The gameplay is beyond polished but the matchmaking system? Ohhh the matchmaking system is so horrible and when combined with the challenge system, quite literally makes you leave matches if you have a boost enabled. I will admit that I have played upwards of thirty matches this past week, and three have been strongholds matches. How 343 could’ve messed a matchmaking system like this up after developing MCC is beyond my comprehension. Same goes for the modes and maps; do they really think that people will be satisfied with not being able to choose what mode you play and most of the core modes of halo being gone until events roll around? Fiesta tied to the Yorai event, swat likely being tied to Tactical ops, you get the picture. When people can recreate the themed gamemodes that were crafted for MCC events in Infinite, I really start to question the tgough process of these developers. Like this Thanksgiving MCC had FOUR whole Halo 3 ffa modes, and Infinite with its Yorai event bringing a core game mode back from previous titles for a week and week only. Speaking of the free infinite event going on right now, why were armor, effects, accessories, etc shown off in promotional adverts if you literally cannot earn them in any way whatsoever?? Fifteen dollars for a belt accessory, by the way. This entire game, with these systems, objectively feels like a weak cash grab, and makes me wish Bungie never sold the series to such soulless corpos. Two games in a row they try to copy trends and lie to your face, and now it’s happening all over again. Can’t believe some fans will stick with a game just because of a title and will throw the fact that the developers ONLY want your money, will lie to your face, and then try to cover it up by deleting the videos they posted with the broken promises they made within. A decade of feedback and they still managed to make matchmaking the most unsatisfying and frustrating experiences on the market. How do you work on a game for six whole years and underdeliver in every single category other than the gameplay itself? Not to mention something as simple as Co-op being a main reason for the game to be delayed only to have it pushed back a full year. I was planning on playing Infinites campaign with my friend who got me in to Halo CE on his OG Xbox when I was six. Was fine with sticking it out for a few months, so I could play it with him, but not going to stick it out for an entire year. I don’t want to stick it out for this game at all and simply “play it because it’s fun” or “playing until it gets better” as so many game today do; Launch barebones, set the bar as low as possible, and then start adding stuff already developed a year in advance as free dlc. To anyone saying “Oh it’s just a beta” is huffing an insane amount of copium as they have said multiple times that what we got early is what was planned for initial release. Doesn’t mean they can’t add anything, but with eleven days from official release, I sincerely doubt we’re getting anything more as this is a cut copy of every beta to release in the past four years, acting as a lousy server test. This game will launch with the lowest amount of maps and gamemodes out of ANY main halo title; ever. As a life long Halo fan, I can’t bring myself to play this. Nor buy the campaign. Neither will I give another penny to 343 until they act and SHOW that they give a damn about the community behind this series. I feel tired talking about it, and it is downright saddening to see such a well done series fall into disarray and seen as a money making utility like this.
hahah I really wanted to read this but could you please like use paragraphs or something a little more organized.
I read it despite the lack of paragraphs but I can honestly say I wouldn’t bother. More of the same.
Feel like I have to comment though on the complaint about picking the game modes, they boggle my mind. It absolutely kills variety because you get so many people searching one thing you cant truly experience random any more. On MCC if you tick every box you always play same games and same gametypes 95% of the time.
Then if you search something less popular it is almost impossible to get a game, then if you do the skill and connection matchmaking are pants. Same reason why the vote system sucks because everyone votes for the same maps over and over. Playing Reach and having to play nothing but Uncaged and Hemorrhage for 4 hours was boring.
I agree Quickplay should be split into slayer and objective but beyond that sometimes having a tiny bit less choice is better for the health of the game and to stop it being so repetitive.