So I feel a lot of people dislike it but don’t really have a reason to that always makes sense. At this point the REQ System gives players good weapons and armors, that’s it. It does nothing for your in game reputation besides some weapon and vehicle kills, big deal.
I think a lot of players don’t prefer it because they have the option to shove the money in their bank accounts into the game, but also can get them weapons and armors by just earning the REQ points in games, which frustrates them at having both options and seeing other people waste money when they don’t need to. In this case it’s a matter of their choice of how they wish to spend money. I don’t see microtransactions as ruining the game franchise or Halo in any way, it’s personally a choice if you want to utilize your money for a bunch of weapons and armors, or do you want to take a more nostalgic approach and earn everything all by yourself? Plus, when you look at another players K/D and rank, you’ll be able to determine who got those weapons and armors legitimately and those who got them with their money. With that in mind, if you are someone who earned it all by grinding and playing Warzone and Arena, you can praise yourself for taking the long route and gradually progressing to get to where you are now, while the other players can gloat about getting stuff the easy way and not doing anything memorable in the long run. Those people will get tired of the game while those who play to earn will have more fun and feel more accomplished when they finally have every REQ item by grinding for them in matchmaking.
When you think about it, it’s still just like Halo: Reach, you’re not going to unlock absolutely everything until you are a very very high rank in game, that is if you play to earn instead of buy. In Reach beside the Inheritor’s haunted Pilot helmet, and some campaign unlocks for Lengendary, you unlocked everything when you had about 3,500,000 or so Cr and had a rank of Mythic or Nova, or something like that. I played Reach for 3 years before getting to that point, as having a life gets in the way of that progression, so I didn’t have long sessions to earn Cr. At least that’s how long it took for me, and that’s when people could farm in Grifball or what have you. So when playing Halo 5 Guardians, if you still play the game the long route, you’re not gonna be unlocking absolutely everything in the REQ system until you’re a high rank player, even if the armors are random you receive in silver packs and bronze packs. Until you’re a rank 100 or more, you’ll be using bronze and silver packs, especially with new content added every other month. I think about this as for the majority of players who haven’t got a DMR until they were a rank 80 or higher.
I think as you reach that high rank, it’s gonna feel like Halo: Reach more, because you have gone through getting all the lower tier items and weapons, and now the big rank earns the Gold REQ items and armors. I think it’s more of a matter of concept as to why people like and dislike them, but when you look at it from a perspective of a player who earns things legitimately, it makes a bit more of a difference. I play to earn, I bought some of the promotional REQ things like the original Arena REQ that came out at launch, mostly because I wasn’t familiar with using the system yet, and I’d buy another for having the option to get the 343I MA5D, but there’s those armors in there that I rather see myself get through ranking up through match after match.