We are dealing with a company that currently has over 30 items in game that can not be used by the player base.
I’m not talking about anything that was in the shop at some point.
I’m talking about the various helmets, shoulder, knee pads and hip attachments that were never in the store but have been locked out for some reason. The custom items for the MK5 (Reach) armor core. That have a description that reads “was available in season 1” but never actually were.
Bots can run around with them in any combination, but sadly the player base can not.
And that is who we are dealing with at the helm for this once great franchise. Just absolutely none sensible decisions that are mind boggling.
They’re dangling the carrot so when they decide to oh so graciously sell it that people are FOMO’d into purchase. Be reasonable here, theres not like there is any possible way to better implement customization into Halo. If there was a good way to do customization in Halo I’m sure they would do it.
I’m pretty sure that they were supposed to be in Season 1, but someone dun goofed and decided that the shop had to have the same bundle of items repeated for four weeks out of the season, rather than letting actually new bundle content show up.
As a result, they are now vaulted until the Shop system gets either reworked to be something better or until they enter rotation again.
I’m unfamiliar with that one. Honestly all armor that isn’t fracture or crazy stuff like radios back packs and cat ears need to stay out of the shop. Visors honestly there should be the base colors to choose from. Silver, black, gold, and legendary orange unlocked in upped bp.
Sell the rest at 200 creds a pop.
Paying for additional sets of armor for cores that belong to the BP; that will be locked away once the season changes becoming a paid core as well, is absurd
Basically Ghost Recon Breakpoint has two shops - Erewhon and Pre-Menu.
Pre-Menu is a shop that you can go in before you load into your save file. The Pre-Menu shop is one that is paid with real IRL money for maybe about 5-10% of the cosmetics in the game.
Then you have the in-game Erewhon shop.
As you explore the world of GR Breakpoint, you can find and earn Skell Credits.
Go to the HUB Town of Erewhon and access the shop to buy cosmetics and such with the Skell Credits.
What I am saying is that Halo Infinite should do something similar, while possibly combining Rainbow Six Siege’s shop mindset to the whole thing.
R6 Siege allows you to buy items with two currencies - Renown you earn from gameplay and R6 Credits you buy with IRL money.
Players can buy items or bundles with either R6 Credits or Renown, with some items being exclusively bought with Renown or R6 Credits.
If Halo Infinite were to do something like this it should be done as follows -
DEDICATED SHOP TABS - A shop page that contains ALL cosmetics that is non-battle pass for each armor core. Then there is also a tab for weapons, vehicles, and personalization (Nameplates, A.I.s, Stances, and Assassinations). For each new season that adds new Armor Cores, there will be new tabs added. If you missed out on Battlepasses because you skipped out on time, their contents will be added to the proper tabs, but at a 50% discount when compared to other items (EVA-C helmet would be like 200credits vs another Gold-Tier helmet that would be possibly 400credits)
WEEKLY SHOP TAB - Bundles of items would be put on a 10-25% discount on the front-page shop-tab. This way players can obtain items at discount when compared to standard prices of bundles or single items available in each tab.
EVENT TAB - Replaces the Weekly Shop Tab when events are live. When the event is finished, players can still buy the items they desire by going to the proper tabs.
CREDITS AND TOKENS - Play the game to earn tokens to unlock items through grinding. Tokens can be awarded also for completing challenges, similar to as in MCC. Pay IRL money to get Credits. You can trade both for items so players can either grind for items or spend IRL money for items. Some items will be grind only, such as what has been featured in Twitch Drops or in Weekly Ultimate Awards. Others might be payment only, such as perhaps 10% of the total cosmetic items available in the game. This way players are satisfied while the profits would still roll in from cash-cow types.
BOOSTER PACKS - You can spend either Credits or Tokens on Boosters to increase your boost of EXP and Tokens awarded for a period of time. Thus, players can ease the grind a bit in order to get items that might cost more tokens.
I made a thread about this exact idea a little less than a month ago I think.
It NEEDS to be reworked this way soon.
Otherwise when we get more Armor Cores, we will have to wait probably three or more months until the items that YOU actually want to obtain are UNAVAILABLE because you would have to cycle through the shop and wait possibly a year to get the exact items you seek.
It will have to.
Otherwise 343 and Microsoft won’t be making as much money as optimally possible because of the fact that, as I mentioned above, players will not be buying stuff because it is not featured in the shop and thus they are not spending money on the cash cow.
The model I proposed serves both players and the company at maximum possible satisfaction for both parties.
Im not saying its a bad idea, but it is clear that there is a tremendous underlying greed that is pervading the shop system. The prices are OUTLANDISH for things are seem for the most part lazily implemented.
And the worst part?
People are buying it.
Almost every match I have I see people rocking the weekly shop items. There is no reason for them to change the system because the majority of the playerbase does not have either the willpower or self respect to resist purchasing a shiny item in the shop they like.
I would love the system to change but unfortunately the Halo community has decided to roll over and take the raw deal that the shop is in Infinite, supporting it with all of its flaws and honestly insulting implementation of prior staples.
Season 1 I had to sit around with 3,000+ credits for about 2 months straight because I already owned all the items in the shop’s rotation for those two months.
A rotating shop like this doesn’t net you anymore money if the people willing to buy the stuff cannot throw more money your way because they have nothing to buy.
It is a shop system that is poorly implemented and should honestly be reevaluated heavily.
The greedy company wants its money.
The players want to get the goods.
The shop system I propose will maximize profits for cash-cow players and maximize satisfaction for both grind players and cash-cow players.
The current featured bundle (at the time of writing) is 1600 Credits. Assuming you had no credits to start, it would cost you two 1000 Halo Credits purchases-- both valued at 9 dollars and 88 cents-- to be able to purchase this bundle. Otherwise, you would have to spend 19 dollars and 88 cents on the 2200 Credits option to be able to purchase this bundle.
(See links 1 and 2 respectively.)
While this is a definite decrease compared to some early bundle prices (see link 3), it’s still generally within the 20 dollar margin-- unless of course, the player has an entirely unpredictable amount of credits left over from previous purchases. With leftover credits, it could very well be within the 10 dollar margin, but the likelihood is more of a big gray area than anything.
But seriously, the shop DEFINITELY needs to stop copying the outdated Fortnite shop model and move on to something more akin to R6 Siege or GR Breakpoint.
They are making money for sure, but not as much as they could if they altered the shop to as I recommended. And by adding in Tokens like with MCC; players would not be as frustrated with the challenge system as they could earn tokens through it and thus grind a currency to get items in the shop; similar to how in Reach we grinded for point credits to get items in Halo Reach.
No, they saw the backlash of Hazop and realized they were gonna get mercifulessly bashed if they sold the items they had because they didn’t put them in the pass and they’re all popular reach pieces.
They are actually unsure if it will earn them enough money and be worth it to sell in shop or how they will manage to get these pieces to Pass 1 owners without breaking the game.