Yeah this whole thing doesn’t make any sense and 343 is being extremely vague. It’s scaring me but if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that we don’t want colors locked behind microtransactions of any sort. Halo Infinite going F2P was a horrible idea plain and simple. Horrible. Nobody asked for it, nobody expected it. It’s honestly pathetic to see that Halo has gone down this route.
I agree, we need more information and really armor colors shouldn’t ever be locked behind anything be it paywalls, challenges, or level progression. That’s just ridiculous. If they wanna make special camos or something like that ok maybe they can put that behind challenges or even paid for a small price if they really want to since the game is going F2P but basic colors should not be locked. Not pre ordering the game now like I was gonna. Not even buying it day one. If they put in a predatory micro transaction system like in Halo 5 I am not buying it. At all. I’ll stay on MCC.
343 we want classic color customization! No crazy microtransactions!
I’m honestly surprised that more people didn’t see this coming. Free to play multiplayer means heavy monetization; they have to make money somehow. Still, that doesn’t make this a good decision. Keep making your voices heard and hope that 343 listens and implements a hybrid system like this.
> 2533274888352703;127:
> I’m honestly surprised that more people didn’t see this coming. Free to play multiplayer means heavy monetization; they have to make money somehow. Just keep making your voice heard and hope that 343 listens and implements a hybrid system like this.
I agree entirely, with multilayer being free to play and the game being released on Game Pass they need to make a stream of revenue somehow. That’s inherently obvious.
Xbox & 343i are a business after all…
Considering 343i have said there won’t be RANDOM loot boxes in the game I would assume that in game purchases will be directly for items you know you want. That’s fine by me as long as these types of things can be earned through regular progression too.
I don’t think this is as bad as everyone is making it out to be, at least so far. Though I do understand the upset.
huh… they are moving fairly quickly to double down on this…
https://twitter.com/Unyshek/status/1319827589205094400
Though quite a bit of that doesn’t really add up…
- “It has allowed us to go into greater detail and variation with Armor color, materials, patterns, etc.” - — They don’t need to be combined in such a way. People being able to choose a different pattern or material should be separate from a person’s color choice. - “We love this idea [of a hybrid system], but colors and materials are designed and built into each specific coating.” - — If that is true, that is some poor design. A material (/ specular map) should be able to be applied separately from colors picked. If they somehow have them so intertwined that it has to be this way, then there’s something really wrong.While in the grand scheme of things, a person’s color choice is minor, this more speaks on some long-standing issues that people have had with 343 unfortunately. I’ve been trying to give 343 some slack as a lot of what has happened with the MCC has been positive (excluding their bizarre choice of requiring r20 in a dull playlist just to get a skin), this doesn’t bode well for other areas that are ripe for easy monetization.
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Right. I’m posting in this one too because I want my voice and disdain counted.
Firstly: Mods, 343, whoever: locking the previous thread was a massively stupid idea. Regardless of the intention be it good or bad in the current environment and given 343’s attitude of “we know you guys won’t like this but we’re gonna do it anyway” it looks bad from whatever angle and is really, really, really stupid. No matter the intention behind the action was it’s going to come off as you trying to force people to quiet down and accept it or censor people. That was a terrible idea. You guys seem to be on a roll with that lately.
Secondly: a Summary of my thoughts from before so they’re present here too: Was willing to stand up for 343 and give them a chance but they’ve proven they’re not listening to players. Shaders bad, decision bad, two colours good, keep two colours and implement shaderss as alternative skins. You still have time to fix this, stop trying to fix things that aren’t broken.
Thirdly: an additional thought so this isn’t just reposting what I said before. I have been seeing more and more people saying that if Infinite messes up they’re ditching halo. More than 4, more than 5. 343 if you alienate your fanbase much further you’re not going to have one left, and free-to-play microtransactions will only take you so far. If you’re not careful your next big ‘ten year plan’ could end up being a ten month plan instead. It’s a weird comparison but look at Club Penguin. It got closed down for a new version with ‘new features’ and the new version died in less than a year. That could be Infinite if you aren’t careful.
If I sound salty it’s because I am. I wanted to give you guys a chance and thought you were making steps, turns out those steps were straight towards a really large pile of dog excrement.
AliasComrade made some really decent points. You could still have the armor coatings. They’re just separate from the two-color customization for the MP Spartans. I don’t even think anyone would care to make an armor coating of my Spartan’s colors. My Reach Spartan is lavender and yellow. It looks nicer than it sounds but have you ever SEEN a lavender and yellow Spartan anywhere?
But I must agree with him. You mustn’t censor people. If you literally silence your own community you’re betraying them and taking away their voice. Player feedback is so incredibly important, especially for long-time fans. Like Comrade I’ve seen a lot of people give up on Halo. Would anyone really bother buying this game if they knew Halo Infinite was just another bad, overhyped game? That way you can only hope for the one odd Youtube video called “Halo Infinite is terrible” to utterly tear it apart.
I’ve mentioned this before but my friend trusted you. He said that 343 was learning. Even after a really disappointing venture with Halo 4 he was going to give you a chance. You have done a lot of damage, but there is time to fix it!
Either way, to the fans of Halo: it’s good to keep up the pressure and remember not to just insult them, and make sure to address the right team that is actually responsible. You guys are doing a good job! I’m with you!
> 2533274818083354;129:
> huh… they are moving fairly quickly to double down on this…
> https://twitter.com/Unyshek/status/1319827589205094400Though quite a bit of that doesn’t really add up…
> - “It has allowed us to go into greater detail and variation with Armor color, materials, patterns, etc.” - — They don’t need to be combined in such a way. People being able to choose a different pattern or material should be separate from a person’s color choice. - “We love this idea [of a hybrid system], but colors and materials are designed and built into each specific coating.” - — If that is true, that is some poor design. A material (/ specular map) should be able to be applied separately from colors picked. If they somehow have them so intertwined that it has to be this way, then there’s something really wrong.While in the grand scheme of things, a person’s color choice is minor, this more speaks on some long-standing issues that people have had with 343 unfortunately. I’ve been trying to give 343 some slack as a lot of what has happened with the MCC has been positive (excluding their bizarre choice of requiring r20 in a dull playlist just to get a skin), this doesn’t bode well for other areas that are ripe for easy monetization.
“it has allowed us to go into greater detail and variation with Armor color, materials, patterns, etc.”
That’s the thing. Why can’t WE have the ability to go into greater detail? Why can’t WE play around with seven layers of colors?
“You are going to look great in Halo Infinite.”
‘Great’ by 343i’s standards. ‘Great’ because we can only pick from what 343i has determined we can wear. What reason, other than greedy monetization, should 343i get to determine how we look?
Coating could’ve been a great step forward, with it giving players the ability to change where their primary, secondary, and tertiary colors lie. But the 343i Monkey’s Paw just can’t swing a bit in our favor without swinging away from it, too.
The way they described makes it seem like you can have an armour coating that is fresh new paint out of the factory, or old beat up pealing paint, or maybe some sort of other carbon material, pretty much it would be different textures and materials in different states of wear. (which personally i think sounds great, and i like that far more then the H5 skins of just random paint designs, it is very not military looking for what is supposed to be a mean, green, fighting machine. (i mean also H5 armour was shiny and bubbly and stuff making it more like a power ranger suit then a military piece of equipment imo, so that did not help either)) But so far the armour pieces them selves, from what i have seen in infinite look great, the master chiefs armour looks great although personally i think i would have it a little bit more towards an olive drab colour. What I do not understand is why each coating is locked set colour, unless they absolutely had to bake the colour into the texture for some technical reason, but I find that hard to believe because for decades games could have textures that greyscale and then you just change the colour applied to them, heck i have even seen a game that has multiple simple textures you cant see so the game knows where to apply different colours on different parts of the object instead of just one colour change over the entire textures object. (this game was made in 1998) so I find it hard to believe its for a technical reason.
I really really hope they go real in-depth on how this works on a technical level, similar to how the MCC team has been going in depth into some of the challenges they have faced.
I know my questions are as follows:
- On day one, will there be a wide verity of basic armour coatings available that are just plain and simply the different primary colours? for example, if I want my MP spartan to be blue or white or green, can I do that day one?
- Because primary and secondary colours are gone, does that mean if I wanted my spartan to be white with red accents, will that be something I have to unlock? or … pay for :S?
- What is this 7 layer system you speak of? the first thing I thought of was colour, texture, material, wear & tear, damage, luminosity, reflectivity, (I think ideally you would want to be matte all the time as light reflecting off armour can give away you position, shiny armour is dumb in a military setting), etc…? are these the layers? what are the layers?
- Whats going on with team colour?! this is perhaps the biggest one for me, I really liked how halo had really simple red team, blue team, green team, etc.
On a side note, I hope nobody at 343 takes this reaction from the community badly, I think a lot of people are on edge right now simply because of how long infinite has been in development, some of the design choices we seen in the game play demo where… different… (but there where a lot of great things to (but also a lot of not so great, but that’s just an opinion at the end of the day)). And you gotta realise, people love Halo for what Halo is. And they are scared of it going the route of other games in the genre. They want it to remain distinctly Halo, I have heard a lot of people calling these armour coatings destiny 2 like, which although made by Bungie, at the end of the day, is not Halo. I also think people still remember how Superior Halo Reach was in terms of spartan customisation and armour progression compared to any other Halo game, so you have big shoes to fill and H4 and H5 did not quite do it.
Also on a side note, I really hope playable elites have the same level of customisation this time… if we get playable elites at all (I really really hope we do because I will forever and always be an elite, I don’t give a -Yoink- if my hit box for my head is bigger, that’s my handicap to choose)
They wanna sell shaders.
I honestly would respect them saying, “Hey the MP, most important part of a Halo game, is free. Maps and modes and weapons will be free. Content don’t grow on trees, we need to make money.” It wouldn’t excuse removing a series expectation like color options, but I’ll take that over the bizarre spin that removing player choice is somehow a trade up to greater expression. That is the most glaring of all this, and a huge red flag into their studio culture.
> 2533274888352703;127:
> I’m honestly surprised that more people didn’t see this coming. Free to play multiplayer means heavy monetization; they have to make money somehow. Still, that doesn’t make this a good decision. Keep making your voices heard and hope that 343 listens and implements a hybrid system like this.
Agreed if its not the colour/shading system it could’ve been something much more perverse like the battlefront 2 debacle it had at launch . I would love for them to adopt the anthem customisation that is something that would’ve fit perfectly.
> 2533274818083354;129:
> huh… they are moving fairly quickly to double down on this…
> https://twitter.com/Unyshek/status/1319827589205094400Though quite a bit of that doesn’t really add up…
> - “It has allowed us to go into greater detail and variation with Armor color, materials, patterns, etc.” - — They don’t need to be combined in such a way. People being able to choose a different pattern or material should be separate from a person’s color choice. - “We love this idea [of a hybrid system], but colors and materials are designed and built into each specific coating.” - — If that is true, that is some poor design. A material (/ specular map) should be able to be applied separately from colors picked. If they somehow have them so intertwined that it has to be this way, then there’s something really wrong.While in the grand scheme of things, a person’s color choice is minor, this more speaks on some long-standing issues that people have had with 343 unfortunately. I’ve been trying to give 343 some slack as a lot of what has happened with the MCC has been positive (excluding their bizarre choice of requiring r20 in a dull playlist just to get a skin), this doesn’t bode well for other areas that are ripe for easy monetization.
If this is the direction they want to go in, then I’m glad I’ve kept “Halo 6” at arms length all this time since Halo 5’s release. He says it was “a tough call”, I say; why was yet another feature being removed/restricted even considered?
Their decision shows they’re OK with further stripping out the most basic and oldest of customization features for the sake of predatory monetization practices. In this 7-layer shader, I see no reason to bake the colour layer(s), unless it causes performance issues which if THAT’s the case, we’re on the 8th/9th console generation/modern PC using a brand new engine they purpose built for Halo Infinite, how can something as simple as a base colour layer be causing performance issues?
Until they unrestrict something as simple as Primary Secondary and Tertiary colour selection, just like how it is any other FPS Halo game, I am not interested in where 343 are taking the franchise, not even Campaign, because ever since 2014, it has been nothing but disaster after disaster with a franchise I love, but I can’t contribute to it being further corrupted out of corporate greed, because I love it.
After we finally got to the Halo 4 flight, the last release of MCC, all the healing and hope that the executives are now seeing what makes a successful Halo game, they’ve undone it all in a single announcement, tucked away at the bottom of a massive multi-game news post and in the face of unanimous backlash are seriously opting for the classic tried and failed approach of; the removal of features is a good thing because it’s being replaced with a restrictive monetization model.
I think we’re… finished.
Honestly if it was just vehicle and weapon skins I don’t think people would be as angry as most modern FPS’ do that(heck even MCC does that). But it’s the fact the colors are locked into the coating, I mean seriously you have a 7 layer system and decide to not only go for a more expensive option rather than have 7 colorable areas(still hoping the visor isn’t one since the red alert has a black visor while Monarch has gold, seriously if you think the colors are making people mad now hooo boy I think you’ll have killed Infinite for even more people if that happens to be the case) is absolutely insane, you’re hoping that enough of your mindless(even casuals have a limit)fans buy enough of this AND are hoping this can last for TEN YEARS?! I think the team currently fixing MCC needs to come in and give some advice cause it seems they at least care enough to add more things and bring back old scrapped content.
> 2533274818733838;136:
> > 2533274818083354;129:
> > huh… they are moving fairly quickly to double down on this…
> > https://twitter.com/Unyshek/status/1319827589205094400Though quite a bit of that doesn’t really add up…
> > - “It has allowed us to go into greater detail and variation with Armor color, materials, patterns, etc.” - — They don’t need to be combined in such a way. People being able to choose a different pattern or material should be separate from a person’s color choice. - “We love this idea [of a hybrid system], but colors and materials are designed and built into each specific coating.” - — If that is true, that is some poor design. A material (/ specular map) should be able to be applied separately from colors picked. If they somehow have them so intertwined that it has to be this way, then there’s something really wrong.While in the grand scheme of things, a person’s color choice is minor, this more speaks on some long-standing issues that people have had with 343 unfortunately. I’ve been trying to give 343 some slack as a lot of what has happened with the MCC has been positive (excluding their bizarre choice of requiring r20 in a dull playlist just to get a skin), this doesn’t bode well for other areas that are ripe for easy monetization.
>
> If this is the direction they want to go in, then I’m glad I’ve kept “Halo 6” at arms length all this time since Halo 5’s release. He says it was “a tough call”, I say; why was yet another feature being removed/restricted even considered?
>
> Their decision shows they’re OK with further stripping out the most basic and oldest of customization features for the sake of predatory monetization practices. In this 7-layer shader, I see no reason to bake the colour layer(s), unless it causes performance issues which if THAT’s the case, we’re on the 8th/9th console generation/modern PC using a brand new engine they purpose built for Halo Infinite, how can something as simple as a base colour layer be causing performance issues?
>
> Until they unrestrict something as simple as Primary Secondary and Tertiary colour selection, just like how it is any other FPS Halo game, I am not interested in where 343 are taking the franchise, not even Campaign, because ever since 2014, it has been nothing but disaster after disaster with a franchise I love, but I can’t contribute to it being further corrupted out of corporate greed, because I love it.
>
> After we finally got to the Halo 4 flight, the last release of MCC, all the healing and hope that the executives are now seeing what makes a successful Halo game, they’ve undone it all in a single announcement, tucked away at the bottom of a massive multi-game news post and in the face of unanimous backlash are seriously opting for the classic tried and failed approach of; the removal of features is a good thing because it’s being replaced with a restrictive monetization model.
>
> I think we’re… finished.
I honestly feel sorry for the people who worked hard on fixing MCC only to have all the good will they generated undone by their company’s greed. Even more upsetting is that IF MCC is any indication, they’ll probably assign another team to fix all the mistakes they’re currently making and put all the pressure on them rather than fix it now.
A deeper explanation would be great. But personally I think the backlash has been unreasonable, considering we have a limited understanding of how coatings work, how you obtain them, and what big a deal all of it is in practice.
I think the whining about it being there before and not being there now is kinda redonk though. Sometimes games change things up and do something different in sequels, and sometimes this leads to greater depth or works better for new systems in place.
Furthermore a lot of the same people complaining about not being able to change their two colors, complained that fun skins were added to the MCC. So obviously there’s no real basis to their complaining and they really just like X thing a certain way because “that’s the way it’s always been!”
Edit: Oh yeah and, nevermind we spend like most of the time either as solid red or solid blue in multi, lmao.
> - We love this idea [of a hybrid system], but colors and materials are designed and built into each specific coating.
I am pretty sure that their coating-creation-pipeline is set up so that artists can individually select texture maps, combine them with colors and save the whole package as a coating asset. So yeah, now colors are baked into the coating assets but not necessarily into the used maps.
In fact it would be very painful, useless, time and memory consuming for artists to bake colors into textures/maps everytime they need to create a variation for a coating, because they would need to create a new texture just to change a single color.
And if the artists can then easily change color, then it would be trivial to expose this functionality for the player too.
I’m trying really hard but I don’t even understand how this makes sense from a development point of view. Now - I want to qualify this with saying I’m not a game dev and my understanding on this is incredibly limited. However hear me out:
From what I understand, regular armour colour systems sort of start out white and have a colour layer added on top. This scales really well, because you make one set of white armour, and a colour overlay or a set of colour overlays which can be applied to it. If you want to add more armour you just add another white armour model, and another colour overlay(s), and you’re done. Having skins for individual armour pieces doesn’t really change the maths on this much because your just adding a couple extra colour overlays to a single armour piece.
If you have baked in coloured armour textures, then every time you want to add an armour piece or a new colour scheme, you have to add a baked texture for every single possible combination of armor + shader for every piece, which is such a gargantuan amount of work that scales so poorly, it’d be nonsensical if this was how the system worked.
Realistically, they probably have a system where as they said, there are 7 layers of materials / colours which can be set and are then applied as an overlay to the model. You see this in games such as Destiny & Anthem. However the big difference between the system in those two games is that in Destiny, you have preset shaders with specific material and colour schemes which makes it an absolute nightmare to get a look that you want because the chances of having a set colour & material combination you want to use is incredibly unlikely, as well as 90% of the good looking colours being super rare, where as the common ones look terrible.
Where as in Anthem, you have control over each of those different colour and material layers, allowing you to fine tune your look to your heart’s content. You can unlock colours, textures & materials but once you do, you can apply them in any combination of other colours and materials you like, providing millions of potential combinations and opportunities to customise your character.
So why on earth would they go to the Destiny route? one reason alone - artificial grind and restriction of the availability of nice things. If all the customisation options at the start of the game are incredibly limited and bad looking it forces you to grind just so you can stand to even look at your character, and that’s before you bring microtransactions and promotions into the equation.
This is a horrible move. It could easily be rectified at the start by just giving us the normal colour system as a default and adding specific skins on top of the default options. Or even better, if you’ve made all these textures & materials then just allow us to mix and match them like Anthem does. But in it’s current iteration, the way it has been explained in the blog post, it’s an awful system that is incredibly restrictive and everybody in this community have a right to complain about it.
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> 2533274965195707;122:
> I hope 343 sees how much of an backwards idea this is and try’s to correct it to the best of their ability before launch.
Well, considering that they moved us to a different thread in what looks like an attempt to contain the spread of dislike towards this new coating system, I don’t have much hope.
> 2535438636443468;142:
> > 2533274965195707;122:
> > I hope 343 sees how much of an backwards idea this is and try’s to correct it to the best of their ability before launch.
>
> Well, considering that they moved us to a different thread in what looks like an attempt to contain the spread of dislike towards this new coating system, I don’t have much hope.
Its more likely they don’t care. 343 is massively egotistical, and they went into Halo 4 thinking they were going to make a better Halo game on their first try than any of Bungie’s Halo games.
What we’ve got to do, is vote with our wallets and our time. Don’t play Halo Infinite. Don’t purchase Battle Passes. Don’t purchase Armor Coatings if they’re avaliable. Don’t purchase branded food items. All 343 and Microsoft really care about, is money.
> 2535438636443468;142:
> > 2533274965195707;122:
> > I hope 343 sees how much of an backwards idea this is and try’s to correct it to the best of their ability before launch.
>
> Well, considering that they moved us to a different thread in what looks like an attempt to contain the spread of dislike towards this new coating system, I don’t have much hope.
Monitors have little to no interaction directly with 343. They are enforcing a set of rules that every online forum follows including maintaining civility and keeping the forum tidy to allow easy navigation among various topics. The thread that blew up was actually an old thread for the first couple of pages and then it was bumped when the update dropped.
Basically their actions represent the integrity of the forum rather than the sentiment of 343.