I want to know at what point in development did they decide this game should be free. That would answer a lot of questions on why Halo Infinite is in its current state and help light the direction the franchise is going.
I still cannot tell if going free to play was the right or wrong choice.
But didnāt really add any supporting structure to support the claim, twice.
Ironic that precedent for the state of this title reflects what was released with the then industry standard $60 copy that was Halo 5 
Honestly seeing as to how 343 runs things and how they treated H5, it could have been a b2p multiplayer AND STILL released with barebones content.
No, I blame the revolving-door contractor work model they have adopted which just throws unneeded hiccups into production everytime a contractor is forced to leave.
343 needs to restructured entirely and hire permanent staff to work on their core systems, then talk about contractors for other pieces. If your core system, UI, gameplay is all produced by someone who is gonna leave in 18mths, then how on earth is your live service even gonna function with the flawed work someone made like 2 years ago and left?
Halo 5 launched in a literally worse state in every single way and it was a premium game WITH Microtransactions. Please stop huffing grunt methane.
I mean I paid full price for it, so it wasnāt free for me lolā¦ All my personal problems with the Game, stem from how apparently the fans of Halo have to get shafted, for that short term profit. The campaign story, quite epic though, atleast thereās that I guessā¦ Not 10 years worth of fun, but a good 10 hours 
Halo 5 launched with 10 Arena Maps and 3 warzone maps, launched with Breakout, SWAT, Slayer, FFA, Warzone, Warzone Assault, CTF, and had forge in the first 3 months alongside modes like Assault and Grifball. The game also had forged maps for breakout modes and some arena modes.
After launch we got:
In 3 months Infinite launched with 10 Arena maps and 3 BTB maps, Slayer, CTF, Oddball, and the seed mode. We havenāt seen any forged maps, and modes like Fiesta and Attrition were withheld until a later date for events. We still havenāt seen forge, weāre still missing modes that are expected from a Halo launch, the game shipped without a proper progression system and missing several core features of the game, and what was there is still broken like Theater and Custom Games.
Oh, and youāre paying $60 for a campaign with little-to-no replayability, no co-op, no armor unlocks, and no firefight.
Iām not a fan of Halo 5, and while it certainly launched with barebones content, it got updated incredibly quickly and new content was added much faster than the rate weāve seen with Infinite. At least it launched with some form of Campaign Co-op, and a progression system, and permanent modes.
We shouldnāt be hand-waving away legitimate criticism of a AAA studioās multi-million dollar project just because itās free. The game has cut core features expected of the franchise in the name of going free.
Let me elaborate further on what I mean:
Things like UX/UI designer/coder, Networking programmer, Matchmaking team should stay as long as possible to iron out any fundamental kinks which appear. These guys are your foundation, you canāt rotate these guys out if you want a live service unless you have a weird thing for tech debt and want your game to utterly fall apart 1 year down the road due to what these guys have done and left.
Things which could probably be left to contractors are things like sandbox balancing, designs, storyboarders, animators etc. etc.
The bottom line is, it makes me extremely worried knowing 343 has this 18mth contract thing going on with their vendors and itās already biting us in the butt this soon, how on earth are we gonna live with this for another 9+ years?
I donāt disagree with any of this. I myself canāt remember if this is 100% correct. But the point is, even Halo 5, one of the most hated games in the franchise, had a better launch, and more frequent updates than Infinite. To me, that is really sad. How, after years of development, and community feedback, did 343 release a game far from any Halo fans expectations?
Yeah, tons of the issues lead back to the fact that itās a āfreeā game.
It was just as true the second time you said it.
I disagree, MP being free has nothing to do with the poor decisions the higher-ups made and will continue to make.
A game can be free to play without the concept of the game being destroyed. The huge difference between original Bungie and 343 is that the original Bungie was consistent. 343 keeps thinking they can reinvent the wheel 
For real, so far it looks like 343 is basically purposely holding bag gamemodes to release them as Content to fill out the whole live service.
They went further and took the custom color option stripped that away, put there new version in. And than took the default basic colors, tucked 50 of the 60 we got in Halo 5 I to their paywall box.
There whole plan was to drip feed us things here and their. The game really feels empty and un-creative.
Like The Tenrai event could have been cool. Day 1 they could of had Fiesta and the Tenrai event could have a been a variation of the different Energy swords both from multiplayer and campaign in a swords only fiesta gamemode.
But all they did was slap a small Timegated BP onto fiesta and said yes thatās good enough.
These events donāt really feel amazing, being that they are time gated and drip feeding style things. And remember before the backlash these events were going to be like 60 percent challenge swaps.
Overall they really didnāt execute a live service game very well which leads me to believe that this decision was made towards the end to go free to play live service and they just rushed to put something together
we know now though that this is the model they shall continue to use going forward and itās down to people to ask themselves if they should support that. I canāt personally because itās ruined the franchise for me both in terms of multiplayer and campaign which is now DRM for some bizarre reason. I find that people tend to stay on the sinking ship when really it might be more beneficial that they didnāt for both the franchise and themselves in the long run. If people simply donāt support a product then it simply dies or has to adapt with what folk want from it
At the moment this is not a product for the fans and as such it would send the message that people donāt accept whatās served up to them. Us hanging around like flies to their dirty offerings is sending a very clear message that we are accepting they treat the franchise and fans this way
100% agree with it.
i can understand that free to play formule has the best effect more to get a biger population for the game.
but the bad effectās from the free to play formule are much worse then getting a biger population.
if it was not free to play then we maybe got the same battlepass system more like in MCC more with seasons tokens more.
and maybe also lot more playlistās at the start from the game with more maps.
i was never a fan that it was becoming free to play.
Mismanagement, a non-permanent workforce and internal fighting are essentially working hand-in-hand with a content model that 343i canāt sustain in order to throw wrenches in the studioās plans.
Knowing that, I find the āF2P is causing our problemsā claim to be more of a scapegoat than a reality. Personally, I consider their move towards āF2Pā to have been more of a damage prevention maneuver than a total paradigm shift.
After all, isnāt it a bit strange that they felt a need to call Halo Infinite a ālive serviceā despite offering nothing that this expectation usually entails?
At this point Microsoft should just give halo to activision and let them see what they can do with it. I mean it canāt be any worse than what we have now right?
I bought infinite for the story and all its coop gloryā¦and forge modeā¦but thats what this fall
hell no
i have play the cod gameās from activision for a long time and activision is much worse.
activision is more a blood hound that only careās about making monney and more monney and not care about there playerbase at all look at there last few cod titels how worser it has become with the problems.
and there care more about pay to win more so hell no
And Halo 5 was basically universally hated.
I somewhat agree.
Iāve said for quite awhile now, I would rather pay full price for a finished game than play a free game with everything hidden behind a pay wall.
Iām lucky in the fact that I know the armour that I always use will be available in Season 2ās battlepass. Itās still Ā£16 to customise my Spartan, plus the Ā£30 I spent to play the campaign. Heck, I wouldāve paid full price for the game already and Iāll still have barebones content available to me.
The cheating problem is also pretty insane and easy to do since Xbox players are forced to go against PC players. I also get lagged out of games often due to what I assume are PC players ddosing. Currently waiting out a ban to play the game because I kept getting disconnected at the start of games, or just having the connection fail instantly.
Sometimes I canāt keep myself from clicking that āVIEW 20 HIDDEN REPLIESā and I witness incoherent blabbering like this.