Carter’s Commando shoulder, Emile’s helmet attachment, Security shoulder, and Operator shoulder, and Jorge’s Grenadier shoulder were all cut from the battlepass and are likely to be locked to the shop as evidence by the “Reach Operator Pack”. In the mentioned shop bundle which appeared in the shop on December 3rd for $10 contains Emile’s helmet attachment and Operator shoulder which both should have appeared in the battlepass that is suppose to revolve around Noble Team yet we weren’t given all the individual armor pieces of Noble Team to customize.
Yes every game has cut content but cutting a piece of content that should be unlockable with the other similar pieces of content to sell instead for the price of the battlepass is not good “player-first focus” and feels very scummy. I am not accusing any developer of this practice as I have a lot of respect for the team at 343 but I do think a bad corporate higher up decision is the cause of this.
What also seems really odd is that the achievement to complete a battle pass shows that a battlepass should have 120 tiers as evidence by the achievement artwork image having an 120 instead of a 100 but yet the Heroes of Reach battlepass only has a 100 tiers. Is it possible they got told to reduce the number of tiers and to cut specific armors/cosmetics to sell in the shop instead for an increased price? Absolutely! It’s also possible the person who made the achievement artwork was given wrong info so idk!
If this trend continues in the next season and say for example we get the armor of Blue Team in the season 2 battlepass but certain pieces of their armors are still locked to the shop I really have no hope in the customization getting better for the future of this game if we have to rely on armor kits to use 1 single piece of armor without paying the price of another battlepass or twice the price depending on the bundle to buy that individual armor piece.
Overall/TLDR; It’s really disheartening that in the Heroes of Reach battlepass we do not get every single piece of Noble Team’s armor to customize and mix and match between each other and that the only way to use certain pieces currently are by using the non customizable armor kits or by handing over the price of another battlepass to get 1 piece of armor we want for our Spartan character.