This needs to be changed. This is completely unacceptable

[Vilhelmus_II]

Apparently I am no longer allowed to post links on Waypoint. Tremendous upgrade, really. Go to reddit, read the post that begins with “Microsoft/343 Whoever Made This Choice”

Read this, go to the link, and go through the associated list of items. Realize that the reason the ‘season pass’ feels lackluster and unrewarding (more than half of it is just xp related items), is because they stripped half of it away so that they could sell it again in the cash shop. This explains why certain Noble Team armor pieces and attachments are completely absent from the pass. Some of which were just featured in the store for the cost of the entire season pass (“operator bundle”). This isn’t just double dipping, this is gutting paid content so that they can sell it over and over again. This also goes against their lie that this will be a “player first experience”. It doesn’t feel very player first when you’re ripping off your players. And what about things in the season pass not being available through the shop. Oh, no, sorry, I guess it doesn’t count because you stole it from the season pass. Were you afraid you weren’t going to make enough money from twelve dollar pineapple bundles, and reselling us the colour blue? You had to take things from the battle pass to sell too, because I guess 90% of the items in the game being exclusive to the market place wasn’t enough? This is without precedent.

Not only do you have a season pass that doesn’t reward the game’s currency, like every other f2p game does (Apex, Fortnite, Warzone, etc.), but you even gutted it, cutting content from it. You have worse monetization practices than Activision, literally. You have been outdone by CoD. Hang your heads in shame.

I cannot believe that you thought this was acceptable, or that you just expected to get away with it. Every time, every time I think “this can’t get any worse” it’s revealed that yes, you have already gone about ten degrees worse. I don’t know what else could be revealed that is worse than this, but I do know that somehow, I’m sure you’ve done it.

You have made the foundations for a strong, good Halo game. A Halo game that is genuinely enjoyable, despite being barebones. Yet, you’re ruining the entire experience with this sort of behaviour. This needs to be reverted and fixed, and a full apology issued to the community. Not just a “we’re listening”, no, a full apology.

Fix your game.

[SuperKittyLeia]

If I had to guess 343 didn’t think this was acceptable. At least not the people who designed the original pass. From videos, listening to them talk, seeing the passion that went into this. I think a lot of people are 343 do care about the players. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I had to guess someone higher up say the pass, and thought they could make more money by gutting it, and told 343 they had to. I absolutely could be wrong about this, but my experience tells me it’s usually the devs that care about the players, and usually the Publishers that care about money over all else.

[Rohkeg]

I agree that is probably a very strong possibility of what had happened, but we are getting little to no communication from the team either.

I get it, they have jobs, they love their jobs, they don’t want to p*** off the higher-ups and get fired because they relayed what the consumer is demanding. At the same time, sometimes unity from within and unity from without changes minds very quickly.

Activision-Blizzard right now is in the middle of a huge scandal regarding sexual harassment and assault allegations. They’ve had multiple walk outs and the player base’s wallets are drying up quickly. Many have walked away from the company (spending money-wise, but employees have left too) to force a fix in the environment. They’ve created a list of demands, and slowly are getting the executive level leadership to change policy (or leave entirely. I think 3 or 4 higher ups have already either left or been fired).

It is a long and arduous process, but the teams and product left in the aftermath will be much better. Companies need to make money, and I think we all can agree on that. It is the way in which they are utilizing the methods for making money that the player base isn’t happy with. I’m sure the dev’s weren’t pleased on some of it, but they were really excited about armor cores (one of the most hated features of the customization system) and I can’t imagine anyone who makes games and plays them, would think that is a good idea. Anyone with their finger on the pulse of their player base would go, “Sir/Ma’am, that’s a bad idea. Players like the ability to customize multiple pieces of armor from different sets and put them together. We really should keep that feature so each person can feel like their own, unique Spartan.” Whether or not that was listened to by execs, or if the decision did come from development, we don’t know, but we aren’t happy.