Does anyone else think 343i made the progression system this bad on purpose, so that when they make marginal improvements we stop complaining and they have it dialed in exactly where they want it?
Like selling something at more than it’s worth so when you get haggled you come down to the price you really want for it?
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That would be a risky business decision. Generally, when providing a service, intentionally providing poor service is not a winning strategy. If the game releases with so poor a progression system that players don’t stick around, those players won’t necessarily come back even if the system is fixed later.
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Diabolical.
No, there is a combination of the progression being poorly balanced and rewarding, and players slightly overreacting at the rate of progress.
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Yes, there is no way they didn’t foresee this backlash. Any mildly intelligent person could have seen this coming from a mile away.
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This is done mostly on purpose, although poorly implemented - I have written extensively about it in my post:
forums.halowaypoint. com/t/6-reasons-why-we-all-suffer/23594
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That’s actually a pretty standard practice. Companies will introduce the worst version of a system, then slowly dial it back in order to act like they did the community a favor.
It has a specific name I forgot, but I just call it conditioning. Rockstar did this with RDR2 online when it first came out by making Gold basically borderline impossible to earn without spending money. They then slowly rolled out more ways to get Gold for free as the game progressed.
343 is probably going to do the same.
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I doubt it; I think more likely there are execs who wanted this system and the devs are just now able to show them how bad the backlash really is. I think it’ll get much better, just gotta be patient.
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True! They do this to exploit whales first, rack as much of money as possible in first month… As whales shift to another game, they will loose the reigns a little bit… Its unfortunately common exploitative practice.
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It’s a lot tougher to increase the price of something then to decrease it. They had to start with this brutal system so they can bring it down to a level that is more acceptable for both sides.
I don’t think they did anything to sabotage the game. If anything I think they probably misunderstood what players wanted, and by the time we voiced our complaints in the preview it was too late to rework the progression system. I could be wrong, and even if I’m not their intentions don’t make the progression anymore or less fun. But I’d like to think people do things for good reason. Well, at least game developers. Publishers on the other hand…
Of course it was intentional. They’ve received feedback is droves that we didn’t like this progression system since the very first flight, and with how quickly the first “fix” came, it’s clear that they could address it quite easily and just chose not to.
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Exactly, that’s why the only “surprise early access” version of this game was only ever going to be a beta. The “beta” title is the cornerstone of a company’s development narrative: transforms from “we made this > you hated it > we admit we messed up and will correct” into “we proposed doing this in the future final product > you gave us feedback > we eagerly listened and your opinions made a meaningful impact on the future final product > here is the final product that was shaped by you”.
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As far as social psychology goes, they call it the “door-in-the-face” technique. Ask for something egregious up front, and then asking for smaller amounts afterwards doesn’t seem so bad for consumers.
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They included purchasable challenge swaps and 2x exp boosts. When they “tuned” the system to give you 50 exp per game, what they didn’t tell you is that you would have to play 25 games before it makes a difference. That’s around 3+ hours of game play for one level. It’s the same exp you were getting before they made the recent update. In order for it to make any kind of difference you have to use the 2x exp boost for 100 exp per game. What do you think?
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Kind of like making a system intentionally terrible so they could make it a little less terrible later in an attempt to satisfy the customer by making them believe “at least it’s not as bad as before” instead of providing what they’re asking for?
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MANY game companies do this, you create the problem, then sell the solution, why do you think challenge swaps are purchasable in the shop?
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We all saw it coming. We all knew it was a bad idea, and discussed it months ago on the old forums. Evidently they didn’t care or didn’t bother reading, because here we are.
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Yes, because this same strategy has been done already on other F2P games.
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Well, of course they did this on purpose, whoever is responsible for this. This practice is one that is just going keep on repeating for the years to come by in the gaming industry as a whole.
As someone else said, at this point, it’s conditioning. Like now, they probably want players to absolutely despise this system we have here, such that in a way that they become desperate for the solution and they’ll accept that solution, even if it may not be their best interests.
Ever heard of the Problem-Reaction-Solution dialectic?
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Thats exactly it
(Is this enough text 343i)