Full disclosure, this is probably going to be a wall of text. I will do my best to try and… clean it up, but I never use these forums so I’m not privy to the the best formatting methods. Each section is going to have some “headers” to try and help break it up.
The goal with my writing all this up is to just offer up a sensible solution to a core problem people (myself included) seem to have, do the work, but also to help 343 make money off this game.
Infinite as F2P:
Arguably the best decision 343 made was to remove the $60(ish) “barrier of entry” to help keep Halo’s population strong. Doing so, however, basically necessitated an alternative monetization method that other F2P multiplayer games use - the Battle Pass. Since there’s also the campaign, really, Halo Infinite is set to more-or-less replicate Fortnite’s model (yeah, remember how it isn’t just a Battle Royale?). However, with this launch, 343 fell a bit short.
XP Progression: ← The “meat and potatoes” of the idea
I’m not a game developer and the coding I do at work doesn’t involve UI elements, so I’m approaching this from a position of “What would be the easiest for 343 to do?” since they may (or may not) have pigeon-holed themselves into using only XP and Credits as forms of progression/currency. I also want to throw this out there that this is based on the idea that your XP earned applies to one Battle Pass at a time.
Infinite needs some sort of “per game” XP reward to keep people playing. The argument can be made that if people enjoy the game, they don’t need a “reward” to keep playing but just purely from a marketing perspective, 343 should want every possible reason to keep people glued to their game (within healthy reason, obviously). The proposal is pretty simple: use the built-in Score system.
I won’t go into the mechanics of the score system, but you can see your game history for an idea of what you - personally - are getting per game. For now, let’s say you play Team Slayer and get 12 kills and 8 assists. Your score would be 1,600 and most people would consider that a pretty good contribution to the team’s effort to win. My suggestion is reward 5% of a player’s score as XP - in this example, 80 XP. I would suggest adding an extra 300 XP for Victory (or top 50% FFA), 200 XP for a Tie, and 100 XP completion (for a loss) would would be an extra 15, 10, and 5 XP respectively. You would need to play 1,000 games and earn 100 XP per game (a score of 1,700 with a win) to max the Battle Pass.
Adjusting Challenges ← Everything here on is “economy balancing”, so if that doesn’t interest you, bail out lol
Personally, I would suggest just making Daily Challenges “one and done” things that can’t be rerolled and are just “do x thing” in one of three categories each day: no skill requirement, average skill requirement, high skill requirement. The below is an example of three challenges/rewards that follow this method. One challenge that anyone can get by just investing time into the game, one is a challenge that takes time but isn’t tied to relative skill, and one that does require a bit of skill to complete timely.
- Play 5 games of Team Slayer - Rewards 100 XP
- Get 25 Kills in PvP Matches - Rewards 200 XP
- Win 3 PvP Matches in any Playlist - Rewards 300 XP
For Weekly Challenges, these may be a bit more specific and can be a bit more “disruptive” to the game (like use X weapon or equipment) but I think it’s important that since Halo is a team game, they don’t “screw over” the team. Fortnite is able to have challenges like “visit x, y and z in a single game” because the only person you’re “hurting” is yourself. If you give a weekly challenge like “Get X kills with Y weapon”, you’ll end up with people fighting over the weapon, or just not playing until that weapon respawns.
I would much rather see a weekly challenge like “Get 20 Multi-Kill medals” instead of “Get 3 kills in a game with the Sniper Rifle”. Make weekly challenges about long-term progression, not specifics that could disrupt the flow of the game.
I understand that for Weekly Challenges, I’m not even talking about XP values which is the point of this thread and I apologize but I don’t have the numbers of what these challenges are worth since I currently only have one left. Not a great data set for me to throw numbers around from, ya know?
Battle Pass Longevity
Since Infinite isn’t tying Battle Passes to a specific timeframe, my suggestion may result in the pass being completed much faster than 343 would like. My suggestion would just be to simply make it longer. Tiers 1 to 10 require 1,000 XP, Tiers 11 - 20 require 2,000 XP, etc. Really, toy with it all you want based on the “XP economy” of the community.
Battle Pass Rewards ← Changes with the Shop in general, to bring Infinite more in-line with other F2P models
40 of the 66 “free” Battle Pass rewards are Challenge Swaps, with 20 of the total 166 rewards rewards being XP boosts. This means that 60 of the 166 Total Rewards (over one third) are just consumables. Please consider replacing some of these with Credit rewards. Every Battle Pass that I’ve seen includes at least enough “money” to buy the next Battle Pass, which for Infinite is 1,000. Even replacing 10 of the 60 consumable rewards with 100 Credits would be nice. Personally, I’d like to see more (perhaps 20 @ 100 each).
That said, I understand that this would lose 343 money. But for me, personally, I’m looking at the current Zvezda Bundle thinking I don’t want to justify $18 USD for the color scheme (which is what I want). But if I could get 1,000 credits by playing, I would immediately spend the $9 USD for the remaining 1,000 credits. So do you want to hope I spent $18 or $0, or guarantee I spend $9? Wealth by 1,000 tiny purchases.
Final Thoughts
Infinite is the best Multiplayer experience, out of the box, since Halo 3, in my opinion. I could nitpick the weapon balance or the UI but, really, the only stand-out thing for me is that there isn’t that steady dopamine drip from playing. Halo 3’s experience system did that - the constant chase for 5-Star General, or spending an entire Double XP weekend playing so I could have more XP than games played on the service record.
Right now, that “steady dopamine drip” is what’s missing. Per match XP based on the current score system solves that issue completely. For me, anyways.
Edit: A flat 100 XP per match is a good band-aid, which I think is 343’s intent with the recent update.