Why Cross-Core needs to happen - A response to a YouTube vid against the idea

Games Halo Infinite
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#1

So I just watched a video by a halo YouTuber that I’m already on the fence about, where he essentially tried to paint the idea of Cross-Core customisation as a negative for Infinite.

For reference, the 4 Cons he presented were;
A) Cores become irrelevant,
B) Everyone looking like a ‘mush’ Spartan,
C) More work for 343,
D) Clipping issues.

To be quite frank, I find these to be so baseless that it’s strengthened my views to push the idea of Cross-Core as a needed update for the future of the game.

As a response to these points;

A) Cores still remain relevant, as there’s nothing stopping you from decking yourself out in full ‘core canon’ items. It simply allows others more freedom in how they want to build their look. If anything it allows you to have preset ‘favourite’ builds that you can flip between on the fly inbetween matches without having to do a full rebuild.

B) Sure, you’re going to get some odd looking Spartans on the battlefield. But is it not already odd seeing an ancient yet futuristic looking samurai dressed in red, white and blue running around? How is a standard Mark VII with a sword around his waist or an oriental helmet any more odd?
(If I’m being honest, I find it’s verging more into personal preference, and a “I don’t want to see X in my game” mindset, which is it’s own topic.)

C) We’ve seen Bots going Cross-Core since launch, so the ‘work’ involved is already mostly there as far as in-game is concerned. It’s mostly just UI adjustments to have items visible for the customisation menu. I’m no Dev, but I’m guessing that’s the lesser end of the work stick than the in-game adjustments needed to make this happen.

And D) I already see clipping when my Spartan crosses his arms at the start of the match, so calling it a potential issue is moot, as we already have it with core-locked Spartans. And unless 343 come out with very specific items, I don’t see this as becoming more of an issue down the line than it already is.

But what does a future without Cross-Core look like?
Well that really depends on what 343 choose to do as we move forward, and how they handle the BP.

Per-Season Fracture Cores aside, if we get a new canon-core each season, I see 2 (kinda 3) possibilities; either we leave old season cores in the dust, or we have to start sharing our 100 unlocks across more an more cores.
The 3rd option is that certain cores go into a kind of hiatus for a season or more and then come back later.
Or maybe there’s a 4th option, by which once we’ve gotten 5 or 6 cores, they stop giving us new cores and just move forward with one of the above options of sharing or hiatusing them.

Personally I’m not keen on any of the above futures for core-locked customisation.
I’m not one to buy much from the store, but I can see potential backlash from players who have paid money for Vb items, only to find out that the Vb will be ‘discontinued’ or rarely updated in the future.

It’s hard to say how things will shape out with us not knowing what 343’s plans are moving forward, but everything I’ve read, seen and experienced leads me to believe a future without Cross-Core is a net negative for the game as we move forward.

…thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

29 Likes
#2

I agree all the points do fall flat. And to add to your point about A. It’s not like they need to make everything crosscore. Like, I get why a lot of kneepads are core locked, as they’re built into the boots. I get why the wristguards are core locked, because they’re built into the wrist armor. Even with crosscore a MK VII Spartan is still gonna look Mark VII, having a Recon helmet wouldn’t change that anymore than having a MK V helmet (which MK VII is getting even without crosscore).

As for B I’d add the question, has the YouTuber played MCC recently? Look at how goofy you can make your Halo 3 Spartan. So yoinking goofy. But it’s okay, because hardly anyone does. Why would most people choose to look like clowns?

To add to C, the Waypoint glitch also further supports this post. You can equip literally any armor piece on any core. And yeah, you’re right the UI adjustments should be easy. Heck, look at the HCS coatings. They’re available for all cores. The mechanics are already there.

Furthering your clipping issue. The swords on Yoroi clip without any animations. Like, they just clip all the time. It’s unavoidable.

I too am not keen on any of the potentials that could come up if items aren’t crosscore. It already feels awful when half the store doesn’t apply to my favorite core MK V [B], throw in 10 more cores and I’d expect maybe once a year we’d see new items for MK V [B], if that. Yuck!

9 Likes
#3

In my opinion the the items that should absolutely be cross core are:

  • Helmets: The neck separates them from the rest of the armor, so clipping isn’t an issue. Also Yoroi follows the design language of the Mk. VII and the Mk. VII follows the design language of the the Mk. V [B]. In other words, the helmets would not look out of place on the other 2 cores.
  • Visors: Absolutely nothing is preventing cross core visors. They are a part of the helmet.
  • Shoulders: I think this should be at the discretion of 343. Some shoulder would look fine, but other may look too big or too small or clip or whatever. That said, I think cross-core shoulders would work great with prosthesis.
  • Utility: Same as shoulders. Some could work, like the sword belts, but thigh knife would look ridiculous on Yoroi because of the skirt-kilt thing.
  • Wrist

Edit: Forget to mention coatings. Colors should ABSOLUTELY be cross core. It’s already been proven too.

Things that probably wouldn’t work:

  • Chest: The chest of Yoroi is much flatter compared to Mk.VII and Mk. V [B], so it’s attachment would clip horribly. And on the flip side, attachments from the other cores would be floating on Yoroi.
  • Knees: They’re too integrated into the armor. Would probably look strange.
  • Gloves: Same as knees.
6 Likes
#4

The gloves seem to look just fine using the waypoint glitch. Because of the separation from the test of the undersuit the wristguards provides it doesn’t seem to clash too bad. But I’m general I agree with what you’re saying. You’re definitely right about chests clipping, here’s Bear Temple on MK V [B]:

(h)ttps://i.ibb.co/w77qBSM/Screenshot-20220107-235546-Halo-Waypoint.jpg

Yikes!

Delete the parentheses on the link.

1 Like
#5

You might be right about the gloves. I don’t even know what glove customization looks like because I don’t have any on the Mk. VII.

4 Likes
#6

Im down, I would also like to be able to put one more than one customisation to vehicles and weapons.

1 Like
#7

Clipping is my biggest issue with it. Little clips here and there are ok, they’re to be expected, but overt clipping ruins the function of showing off the piece you want to show off.

The Yoroi chest pieces as an example clip deep into the both MK cores which really doesn’t look good. Likewise the MK V chest pieces either overtly clip into the shoulders and/or chest, or in the case of Jorge’s chest piece hover unconnected on top of the chest and shoulders of the Yoroi model.

It’s pretty clear from a design perspective the MK VII takes heavy inspiration from the MK V, and from some testing nearly all of the pieces are completely interchangeable without issue. I would rather have limited (to various degrees depending on cores and pieces) cross-core compatibility than full blown cross-core access personally.

3 Likes
#8

I think limited is what they would do, and would be the easiest to implement in terms of UI (probably). Right now there are some coatings on two cores only. Shouldn’t be too hard to enable it for other types of objects.

1 Like
#9

The cores could just become saved armour combinations for easy swapping.
It’s down to players if they look like “mush”
It’s not more work at all. AI already do this.
It’s another one for players choice if they want clipping or not.

If anything, maybe keep the non-canon event armours as seperate if it bothers people too much, but besides that and the problem of a few coatings are the same in each core and people have paid for some, there’s literally no other downsides to cross-core.

I’ve been wanting pink for my mk5b but it wasn’t available. I may have got it if it was cross-core.

3 Likes
#10

Cores could still be used for Elites and other unique characters.

Ideally, they would remove the current armor cores, make armor more modular, combine the armor pieces into a single core, and add more in-depth customization.
Let people choose different arms, waists, chests, boots and legs, instead of just attachments, and let attachment positions be adjusted (location, rotate, tilt and scale) within a certain range.

I think this should be something separate from armor cores.

4 Likes
#11

The Ability is already in the game, the bits having them and the waypoint glitch, I doubt are both glitches but rather the game showing you what is allowable yet restricted to us. Almost as if the devs forgot to code the waypoint app properly to fully restrict cross core to the players. Metaphorically they forgot to close the door all the way.

The sole reason for such restrictive customization is to dime and nickel you in every possible way.

For example they locked Coatings to each core why?
So they could do exactly what they are doing with basic colors like Scarlet wake red. Rename them, rebundle them and re sell you the same color but for a different core.

They are doing it for vehicles too. The promo coatings, some of them are universal, so that’s in the code. But for the most part the vehicle and weapon coatings,especially the purchased coatings, are locked to one specific item. Again so they can resell you Like green for this other weapon and other weapon.

I think we have a total of 8 weapons we can apply coatings too. The idea is why sell you Orange once for all weapons or vehicles when they can sell you that same color 8 times.

Now emblems omg emblems. 343 could have easily made it to where you get an emblem and it’s Universal. Winter contingency that star emblem once unlocked it was Universal, so again it’s in the code.

But what did they do, they took 1 emblem and split it into catigories, of Armor, weapon, Vehicle, Nameplate… Sometimes backdrop if they extra lazy.

Now they have 2000 credit bundles with 1 armor affect and essentially the same emblem 4 times.

This means that if they wanted to, the next season pass could be layered with winning the same emblem 4 to 5 times. Yup 343 could waste 4 to 5 Teirs of content with what I call Emblem padding.

They can pad the Battlepass with the same Coating as well.

343 was setting up The BP and rewards to simply be padded with XP/Challenge swaps/repeated emblems/Coatings.

On paper it looks like more but in reality your unlocking duplicates, except unlike COD or other games of you unlock a duplicate you get some credit back. In Halo your just sold the idea your still getting more.

I cought on to their little plan right from the start. And alot of us I’m sure you as well did too.

Ots like they forgot that the main playerbase is in their late twenties to mod thirties now. And we are advising the younger fans of this stuff.

4 Likes
#12

These are all non issues.

5 Likes
#13

Fair enough. But like the OP said

It turns into gatekeeping. If you don’t feel like those items would look good crosscore, you have the option not to. But if stuff is crosscore, you will see what works and doesn’t work but you still have the option to customize

2 Likes
#14

A) not really. Cores can act as the base of ur spartan. Cant have those pointy shoes on a Mrk 7 XD
B) refer to halo 3 on MCC. You can literally run as a spartan with a 3 faced helm, chest armor with fur, normal katana on the back, and spike gloves (and thats me being tamed). Yeah it sucks that it aint lore accurate, but i mean we got OwO ears XD
C) work is work. No work = no good game
D) put on shoulders on your samari armor. Clipping galore. Or put on the bag thing you get from the Winter contingency. Clipping galore. Unless the clipping is atrocious as in the helmet is smooshed lower than itd supposed to be, or the knees are too far back…who cares?

1 Like
#15

Absolutely. I don’t care what people wanna wear, I was just stating what the logic probably was behind cores: Vastly different armor types might not look very good in certain combinations. If players want to look like a bad glitch, that’s not my problem.

2 Likes
#16

Oh absolutely. There’s some combinations I would never use probably (like the Samurai helmet with Jorge’s chest piece) I don’t think that would look good.

#17

This function is easy to implement and even has been done.
It’s only because they want to take more money out of the player’s wallet that the player can’t use .
343i is getting greedy.

2 Likes
#18

It’s not just clipping. It’s also floating. Most of the chest attachments for Mark V[b] and Mark VII would float over the chest of someone wearing Yoroi or Mark VI (which let’s face it, is coming). Meanwhile the utility attachments for Yoroi would float over the waists of anyone wearing V[b] or VII. These armor attachment types are plainly incompatible with eachother.

Clipping would more occur with Yoroi chest attachments on V[b] or VII. As they would phase right through their pronounced V shaped chests.

I think a lot of the arguments for it come specifically with how compatible Mark V[b] and Mark VII pieces would be with eachother, since those two cores share their silhouette down to a T. I wouldn’t be surprised if cross-core armor was originally going to happen before 343 realized they won’t be able to bring back something like Mark VI and still have it be compatible with pieces from those cores.

#19

Listen man, I just want to put cat ears on my Yoroi core.

Mild joking aside, yes, I do agree Cross-Core needs to happen. Not only to extend the life of old cores, but to give new ones more options as well. Some items might not work cross core like chest attachments and kneepads, but armor coatings, helmets, helmet attachments, visors, and shoulders should be cross-core, non negotiable. I’ll go even further and say coatings should be universal period. You should be able to put it on anything and everything.

1 Like
#20

No…Cross cores don’t work in real life. You can’t just stick a component into something and expect it to work seamlessly.

343’s search for Immersion strikes again.