There was never a plan to change anything before the Beta launched.
343 said they “will look into things”. What this actually means is they are looking for ways around what they are doing, still playing the childish games as most companies do nowadays. Mainly so they can still milk the players that don’t mind throwing money at the shop. This also means it’s going to take some time to figure out how to manipulate them players so they feel “they are getting a deal”. Man has gaming gone to crap these days.
It seems every few years we go through a stage that is somehow worse than the one before. Season passes started it, paying in advance for content you don’t know anything about which most of the time leads to you just getting 1 good dlc and the rest just half thrown together to pad out the pass like watch dogs 1. Then we went through the loot box phase, drop a few bucks for a virtual gamble on some random skins or emotes like Overwatch or Halo 5. Now we are in the screw loot boxes just give us 20 bucks for what you want phase.
Speaking of season passes as you said, paying and not knowing what we get. It’s why I stopped buying season in Destiny. All the seasons are cheap copy-and-paste work that offers nothing in terms of content, it’s just lazy work.
After playing in the open world knowing how depressing it actually is because of the lack of effort. I don’t see myself buying any DLC for it at all if what they released is the work going into that content.
As someone who played paladins for years I agree. The game started fair and had chests you could buy for a dollar or 2 which quickly evolved into battle passes that were an absurd grind or you could just drop 20 bucks and unlock the skins “that will never come back again” safe to say I retired because I couldn’t even eat them things while I enjoyed the game unless I literally played 10 hours a day
Like I wrote last week in the thread complaining about the cost of the HAZOP armor, the reality is there are far too many people out there who are willing to just spend the money. I saw a lot of people rocking HAZOP last week in QP and BTB. A LOT. Either they’re oblivious to the complaints about cost or they know about them but just don’t care.
343 has given the “We’re listening…” spiel straight from the PR playbook but it’s unlikely they will change anything. Those of us complaining are, by 343 and Microsoft’s reckoning, a vocal minority. What will most likely happen is they won’t do anything until they notice sales begin to slow as attrition causes people to leave the game and those like us who refuse to pay these prices are still around. Then, and only then, will they release a statement saying they’ve evaluated the prices and reduced the cost. Because then, they’ll need to try to monetize those of us who remain.
Don’t fall for it. It’s the sketchy monetization playbook.
Yeah I agree with you. Im sure they will just ride the wave and blame coding or ui issues for why they can’t lower the prices, at least until money stops coming in. Then they can lower the prices hoping people will buy stuff again now that it’s cheaper.
The biggest issue faced by the consumer is the utter denial about what’s driving these costs. Consumers keep comparing Infinite to other games within the Halo franchise, acting as if they exist in vacuum. 343i is comparing its mtx shop and prices to its competitors. From the perspective of the former, nothing will ever make this ok other than just giving everyone all the things for free (in their already 100% free MP game). From the perspective of the latter, Infinite’s price structure isn’t out of bounds with what its competitors have been doing, and doing successfully. Hard to find common ground when one side is being unrealistic about the circumstances.
The Halo community continues to hurt its efforts to change things by whining like this is some uniquely egregious practice that 343i is doing here. This has been slowly becoming and industry practice for a few years now. At least they had the good graces to do what they’re doing in a FTP game and not sell you the entire game, and then do the same thing. I understand “no one asked for this”, but that argument has no place in an adult conversation about things that cost money. Comparing a FTP multiplayer experience to what was done 6 or more years ago in a full-priced title will not get you anywhere, it’s apples to oranges.
Time would better spent offering constructive feedback regarding how to add more value to what’s in the shop than just consistently demanding it be removed or prices heavily reduced. Shop is never gonna go away, and while prices MAY reduce, they’re not going to do so in any major fashion as long as the player base keeps up. Best form of protest would simply be to play the game (provided you enjoy doing so), keep feedback coming, and don’t spend a dime. If they see play interest in the actual game, but reduced numbers in mtx transactions they’ll have to react, they’re not stupid.
343i has already announced major changes to their 2nd round of Tenrai, and if those changes are positively received there is fair reason to assume there may be similar changes made to the season 2 pass content rollout. The game is quite literally right out of the gate, changes are not gonna happen fast.
Yawn go spend 30 bucks for your Cat ears and iron man colors. You keep mentioning competition when I’m pretty sure I’m playing halo. Just because one company is charging absurd prices for cosmetics doesn’t mean you should too.
Edit: “ Mcdonalds is a 66 year old franchise, why can’t I still get a hamburger for $.05? Couldn’t be because things get more expensive over time could it? “ oh god ur one of these people defending the player being punished due to the company making awful financial decisions with almost nothing to show for gameplay wise.
That this was your takeaway from my post shows you either don’t read, didn’t understand what you read, or you’re every ounce the child that keeps drowning solid feedback on these boards with useless whining. I don’t advocate spending on ridiculous mtx, at all. Point of fact I’m pretty sure I said “Best form of protest would simply be to play the game (provided you enjoy doing so), keep feedback and don’t spend a dime**.” But hey, that would have required reading.
Companies make decisions based off of market competition all the time. There are actual professions that pay very well to study market trends; what works and what doesn’t, and much of that data will come from competitors. You’re arguing some sense of principles while 343i is making decisions based off of results. In Q3 of 2021 Activision reported 1.2 billion in revenue from mtx across its active game roster. 1.2 billion in 3 months. The market doesn’t just simply bear this practice, it actively participates in it, and that volume of money isn’t just coming from the “whales” everyone likes to blame its prevalence on. You or anyone trying to insuate that Halo should be better than this is effectively asking them to leave money on the table, and you have zero bargaining position to do so because at the end of the day people will keep playing Halo because it’s Halo and cosmetics mtx doesn’t impede them from doing so.
What are you out to prove here? Pulling this reply out of its context (which was in response to some idiot trying to maintain that because Halo has done something for nearly 20 years they should somehow continue to do that thing indefinitely at the same price) and then making up some hackneyed attack on me about defending players being punished blah blah? It’s a free game kiddo, pure and simple. There are issues, feedback should continue to happen, but it needs to be realistic or it’ll just bury solid arguments for what 343i could do differently. There have been some really good suggestions made on these boards about how 343i could (and for the sake of its own longevity, should) modify things to be more consumer friendly and not lose their potential profits, and it gets buried under a daily overdose of “there isn’t enough free stuff in my free game”, and it’s annoying.
A large part of presenting a strong argument is knowing where the opposing side is coming from, and in this case the opposing side (343i) is coming from a position of “years of market data have shown mtx lucrative”. A couple hundred people on a web forum aren’t going to overturn thise numbers, and the really is most people are just here to play Halo, not run a fashion show.
I keep telling people it’s gotten worse from Halo 5s reqs and they hear the name Halo 5 and gasp and run away thinking I’m talking about something else but in reality in trying to show people how much of a scam this is from ALL angles. No matter which way you cut it, even the people who enjoy the game are asking something. It’s bad and people don’t want to admit it
Please stop typing articles to say the dumbest stuff. You’re living in a fairy tale world where you act is if just because I don’t buy some cosmetics 343 will magically fix all issues.
Players are spending hundreds already on cosmetics, their is literally NO reason for them to change anything and you keep wasting your time typing up 18 paragraph essays trying to sound smart on a halo forum. Just l knock it off.
If you can’t refute without having to make it a long winded rant for the most simple thoughts then just don’t bother. I’m sick of reading your peer reviewed doctoral studies on why you think 10 dollar cat ears are good for halo. Move on!
defending the player being punished due to the company making awful financial decisions with almost nothing to show for gameplay wise.