Genuine inquiry. What has going F2P done that has significantly improved the health of Halo as a whole?
As far as I can tell, it has not done a single thing better than a standard game.
So what was the purpose aside the obvious way to milk content for cash?
Feel free to discuss
Feel free to ignore the obnoxious user
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It’s not necessarily the F2P model that hurt it. If done right the game would be thriving.
It’s 343 that put the game on life support.
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It gained a larger install base on launch. That is the entirety of the benefit, and 343 squandered it by not having enough content to keep those players engaged.
In the end, we get all of the drawbacks of F2P, and none of the benefits (I don’t expect season 2 will revive the game in any significant way)
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the worst case has happing what people from few years have told and have see it comming more.
that this formule combo is the worst one ever there is you can do.
F2P + Halo = dooms day for the game.
I think we have to ask ourselves as consumers and say;
Do we want a game to have a start middle and end?
Or one that just carries on expanding?
I feel it’s partly our fault with the position we have put ourselves in.
Fortnite, Warzone, and Destiny 2 are all free and have been boasting millions of real and consistent players for years at this point in time.
Infinite boasting 20 million new accounts which 99% of them have never logged back on after playing the first time.
F2p isn’t the problem, no content at all on a buggy game with zero content is the problem.
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Well first I think it’s important to point out what has directly resulted from the F2P model. I would say that the primary impact has been monetization (in order to compensate from lost revenue from a traditional sale), player attraction (how players get involved with the title compared to traditional P2P models), and the free content available through the model.
Since monetization is exclusively cosmetic in nature, it wouldn’t make sense that this would be the sole reason it’s driving players away even though it’s been mired in controversy since drop.
As for player attraction there’s plenty of evidence that suggests a rather large amount of players were excited and eager to play the title when it went live and actually enjoyed the title at least for a decent amount of time meaning that F2P allowed players to engage with the title without a barrier to entry. Being F2P also allows players to wander back into a title if improvement warrants interest. This is where F2P actually works well compared to a traditional box copy approach.
Although the monetization controversy has been raging since drop, and player numbers have atrophied and stagnated, these two primary resulting factors alone don’t really spell out the reason why F2P is as bad as some people make it sound. Truly the meat and potatoes, the real substantive aspect of the F2P model is the gameplay content.
As for content available through the F2P model, having access to the entire multiplayer gameplay suite is actually a pretty generous move. All the maps, vehicles, weapons, equipment, and game modes works well in tandem with the player attraction aspect of the game as nobody is favored or left out of the core experience of the title.
Where this fumbles hard is in the execution of this content is primarily in the form of playlists, but I would suggest this is more of a secondary factor and not the primary result of the F2P model.
Overall I don’t think the F2P model is to blame for the state of the title. Development mismanagement (delaying a year), playlist/challenge system (rng aspects), bugs/glitches/coding issues, network instability, social implementation (or lack there of), cheater/hacker/botter/exploiters, events, new modes, even seasonal content and updates can all be correlated with P2P titles and aren’t even remotely exclusive to F2P.
When you break down the direct impacts of F2P and see that the major issues holding this game back don’t correlate to them, F2P really becomes the sacrificial lamb for those who want to voice their justified (or unjustified) disapproval of the game’s problems as a whole when the issues pervade much deeper with precedence established through missteps from titles like Halo 4, MCC, and Halo 5.
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You have to consider that content stagnation within playlists is a direct result of creating artificial events.
They were going to limit Fiesta and seemingly Swat as well to only being limited time events, an issue only tied to being F2P. They are still doing it with the Attrition gamemode. Who knows if they are still actively with-holding playlists to limit it to further events? They’ve displayed that they’re willing to throttle content just to act as artificial events.
And the cosmetics irritation is still a substantial issue in the game whether some users care or not. Not personally caring does not eliminate the issue. Most F2P games do cosmetics better than Infinite, by a long shot. Take Destiny 2 for example and you’ll see that F2P players still have much more to chase aesthetically, which still encourages playtime.
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I’d say going F2P has done nothing to help Infinite. It may have single handily helped destroy the Halo IP. Since Halo Infinite came out it killed Halo MCC population then Infinite had the biggest drop in population in Halo industry and now I’m stuck with a game that I want to play with low population and a new game that I’m bored of due to how poorly it’s been handled.
I’ve seen people use F2P to dismiss valid criticism for being ‘free’ and that logic only makes sense to people who never buy the games but I supported the game via the campaign despite being underwhelming. Plus it’s bad enough that 343i have been quiet about not apologizing about lying to us about the progression system.
As for people claiming Destiny isn’t a problem with F2P then there talking nonsense. Destiny’s predatory store and systems are exactly why I completely dropped the series after 1 game. It’s literally why I dropped Halo Infinite within barely 1-2 months and haven’t been interested to going back since then.
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You can make the argument for it, but P2P Halo 4, MCC and Halo 5 have all had playable content tied to updates and events. I really don’t see this as a resulting action of a F2P model as it has easily been done within the P2P Halo titles too (alongside many other unrelated P2P titles). It can also be changed within the system as we have seen with Fiesta and TS, Attrition being the only mode of 3 not to be included as a permanent playlist.
Cosmetic acquisition did cause controversy, and it’s still being discussed at large even now, never suggested that it wasn’t a major talking point. Whether you or I personally believe that it impacts our experience with the game is irrelevant, as a whole it was never a major factor for mass exodus and never has been with player falloff having corresponding events that can been seen quite clearly connected to issues impacting the ability to play or enjoy the game.
I will say that not describing why Destiny 2 does cosmetics better, it does the comparison a disservice. Until Armor Synthesis was introduced last year, cosmetics were either difficult or expensive to obtain, or a grinded out curated set of base armor was inevitably going to be sunset. Shaders were tied to the currency system which caused an uproar for the first couple years, and D1 wasn’t much better with the way it handled its cosmetics. Relatively speaking Destiny has a great cosmetic system now but since 2014 it had been mediocre at best, despite transmog being a talking point since D1.
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The difference being that the nature of the events. Halo Infinite tries to pedal off generic game modes as unique content to keep it ‘live’ even though that should not be the case. I doubt that these game modes would be restricted in normal circumstances. At least if they had any competence about them.
And clearly I’m not talking about the bad, but the better current implementation. If anything you only further prove what a good cosmetic system can do to improve game health and reduce criticism. Theres numerous F2P games that already had the growing pains of bad cosmetic systems so there is no reason for Halo Infinite to have a bad one as well. Halo has been doing cosmetics for too long for it to be this poor
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You know smoking?
Well, Halo was on oxygen and it decided to smoke
I think a simple start, middle, and end would suffice.
You mean 343 did.
Same thing
Well this is why I’m looking at tangible evidence as opposed to speculation. You can speculate that restrictive access to event modes is purposefully a F2P element, but I pointed out that of the 3 event modes that have been introduced only 1 hasn’t been added.
Let’s look at MCC for another example. Every week content is rotated in and out, with some modes being ascribed to special events in the game’s development. Recon Slayer was a limited permanent game mode during ODST’s inclusion on PC, but was taken out and put into limited rotation within the game’s weekly reset. What started out as a mode to mark an event has since been relegated to a chance encounter that players aren’t privy to.
Again you do your argument a disservice by not discussing why Destiny 2 has a good cosmetic system now. Because it had a terrible cosmetic system for years. Even the first rollout of Armor Synthesis was heavily panned for being too grindy.
That being said, something I missed is that Destiny 2’s cosmetic acquisition system is partially tied to its monetization system with it also being partially tied to gameplay currently. Prior to going F2P, it was P2P with these cosmetic options being as expensive as they are now and customization being tied largely to RNG or cash payment. Only after going F2P were ways of acquiring new cosmetics increased, and only until a year ago was transmog fully actually introduced. The cosmetic system wasn’t always a result of the game being F2P, even Destiny 2’s monetization system doesn’t rely entirely on F2P tropes.
So if you can accept that Destiny can change after 7 years of terrible cosmetic mechanics, can’t the same be done for Halo Infinite?
I think thats more with the fact that MCC actually deals with several games worth of content, which I don’t fault them for. Its not a singular individual game, unlike Infinite
I’m not doing it a disservice, because even at its worse it was still better than the current implementation of Infinite. Maybe from your perspective because you want to acknowledge the past, but I’m acknowledging the present environment in which Halo Infinite currently exists in. Halo Infinite doesn’t have to make mistakes for seemingly no reason other than the sake of corporate greed.
Its better now yes, but even at its worst it provided more options than Infinite does now.
But I also shouldn’t have to wait for 7 years for Halo Infinite, especially when it has better previous models to work off of. I promise I won’t wait 7 years for Halo Infinite, many won’t.
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MCC functions as a singular individual game though. You can play 6 individual titles, but it’s all done under the MCC banner.
Regardless it’s a limited time game mode circulation, just done in a P2P flavor instead of a F2P flavor. Which again is why I’m saying that while it might be a bit more prominently telegraphed in F2P Infinite, it’s the same style of mechanic that’s been used in games going back to P2P Halo 3.
Serious question, did you play D1?
Paying actual money for RNG loot boxes that had the potential to acquire cosmetics with RNG stats encouraging players to buy more loot boxes to get potentially obtain the rolls they wanted that expired with the release of the next DLC was better than what Infinite has now?
You have to understand the past to understand the present.
It’s speculation again my guy. It’s kinda difficult to accept the argument that all of Infinite’s shortcomings is all for money when the game has been waning streams of potential revenue for months due to the game’s shortcomings.
Well no, I wouldn’t expect anyone to wait 7 years for changes to a cosmetic system when the game itself is still brimming with non-F2P related issues driving players away like: bugs, network issues, lack of content, poor optimization, limited anticheat, and lack of communication.
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I said D2, now you’re talking about D1. And yes I did but you are also still needlessly diverting. Halo doesn’t have to make repeated mistakes. They’ve had better previous systems than the current one.
Sure man, hyperfixate on some of the least important aspects all you want, I’ll let you have it. Its not even important
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Well I made the distinction of addressing Destiny generally across the franchise as a whole, considering you specifically addressed the point of “7 years” (D2 came out 5 years ago), it was pretty clear you latched onto that too.
I didn’t mean it as a “gotcha”, but unfortunately that’s where we find ourselves.
Not diverting, compounding.
^This is diverting^
And honestly seeing that you didn’t address any of the other points I made, I’d imagine that you’ve run out of counterarguments and/or patience with me.
We can continue if you would like to go back a response and rephrase your arguments and address the more pertinent points, I’m actually enjoying this discussion.
This one, because you want to focus on things that I find ridiculously useless and nonbeneficial to the discussion and I don’t have the mental energy or time to engage in something I find so useless.
You think that in order to compare the modern state of Halo Infinite and the modern state of D2 that we have to also for some reason simultaneously compare it to a game from seven years ago. I find that illogical.
If you want to make D1 comparisons then it should be to the Halo it was existing in the same time frame as, Halo 5.
I’m speaking of its current state. Not past. Its fair to compare it to other games that exist in the current state.
Games are able to learn from other games. Infinite doesn’t need to have growing pains just for the sake of it.
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