The only thing I could think of is maybe cheaper prices in the store, but that’s about it.
A pretty decent way of going about it is not locking core gameplay content behind a paywall, which they’re already doing pretty well.
It’s one thing to name an example of how other games ‘get it right’, but I’m not familiar with those titles or their monetization systems. How do they work? What do they do differently from Infinite?
Well there’s no doubt that the game is in a rough state, but your stated issues here are with the in game monetization and promotion being ran right now. Let’s stick to those hmm?
Does the completely optional and avoidable nail polish promotion somehow contribute to the game being “hot garbage”?
Some amount of MX’s probably go into a funding bucket to supplement “funded projects”. Funded projects directly correlate to the amount of FTE’s a project gets.
Like my department is supposed to do 40% “Core” work (server patching, bug fixes, changes becau of other teams app changes, etc) and 60% “investment work”. Investment work is anything supporting new app features for is being sponsored by “executive leadership”. (I work in software development, not game development though)
If our team doesn’t hit that 60% investment work (where MX funds likely supplement in context of 343) for 1 or 2 straight years, we’d probably have a team member transferred to another department and our team budget reduced by their salary amount.
That’s not how every IT organization structures its work/ funding, but it’s not an uncommon setup for larger IT orgs like 343.
So yes, your purchases likely do fund the dev team contrary to what some people are saying here (and server costs and HCS prize pools too).
Try allowing player creativity. Some control over the cosmetics so that you can actually express yourself, like nobody else might look the same as you… Ya know, something like that might make a $20 set of armour kinda worth it rather than most of the paintjobs being locked…
Customization has been a thing since H3. It’s core gameplay at this stage. Anything less than what Reach had should be unacceptable. Hell, charge me money for a fuller MP experience but not $20 per skin… I bought Forza ultimate edition. Spent more on that than I will ever spend on Halo Infinite because it’s worth it.
I refuse to believe that the only full time employees at 343 are management and that there’s zero full time individual contributors. In fact, all I had to do was one Linkedin search to confirm this is bogus. There’s a ton of contract work, sure. But acting like there aren’t regular employees at 343 is a bit silly.
These are practically zero. Microsoft happen to have a few servers laying around that they know a thing or 2 about…
But yeah the rest of what you said is an interesting insight but I’m always gonna have questions and concerns. I guess I should just accept defeat. I’m not seeing much reason to keep hoping the game will ever be great.
15 points of customization with individual permutations within those base options isn’t allowing for control over your cosmetics?
This part of your argument has nothing to do with a better monetization system my guy, it’s only your dissatisfaction with the current customization system.
I think a faster rotation of cosmetics might be a better option.
But regardless, give me some functional ideas that would make the monetization system better, you still have yet to explain why other specific games do it better somehow. I’m starting to get the idea you’d rather just complain than find a compromise.
Not Halo 3, Halo CE.
And customization can be removed without compromising the core gameplay experience of what Halo is built on. You take all cosmetics out of a Halo title, and the core gameplay is not impacted in the slightest. Which is what they proved in Infinite.
Halo 3 has almost 27000 colour combinations plus plenty of armours. You dont notice the rest of the armour as much as the helmets and colours and general shape of the body so I only care about what is actually noticeable… and I see clips and all I see is that red white and blue guy, a cat, another cat, iron man, red white and blue guy again, more cats…
Instead of armour coatings they should be armour coating templates. Every player should have the default 30 colours to repaint any armour coating. Every armour coating could come with a new colour, metalic orange, pink army camo, rusty yellow that you can apply to all of your coating templates.
Wouldn’t change anything the amount of monetizing they could do. And it would make the game look less stale.
Nah persoanlly I loved infinites gameplay up until the D-Pad combo mashing frenzy it became towards the end. But that aside, the gameplay, particularly the gunplay is very good. The new aiming control customization is also amazing. But for some reason I have not played Infinite multiplayer at all, not even to try it. It’s almost like a huge part of what I enjoy about it is missing or locked behind a paywall.
pal your missing some basic econicmes here like big time
every company needs to pay for not only its employees but also water elctercuy and the rent on the building their in adn they do. that from the profits of the products people buy like thats economics 101 right there
Halo has made over $6 billion. And it has life left in it. The MS executives arent gonna sit back and let the cash camel dry up… They will however gladly sit back and let the money roll in if people are willing to pay $20 for a single skin.
Edit, thats $6B profit, so after the staff were paid. Aint nobody being supported here, you’re buying them a new private jet.
Didn’t a bunch of important staff quit working there at crucial points of development? It was rumoured that the working atmosphere was like having 5 projects at once and everybody fighting for resources. Sounds like something I’d rather not support, sounds like hell to work there. The staff who love Halo who have poured their hearts into this game deserve to be managed better.
First of all, I addressed your point directly, and I never gave my opinion of abusing contract employees (it’s bad). My point is that there absolutely are regular employees that benefit from the game doing well.
Second, I work in the game industry. So please, kindly shut up. I’m more aware of how crappy our lives are in the game industry than you are (low wages, crappy employment practices, bad work/life balance, and the list goes on)
Does it really matter? I ask because I purchase things because I want them, not because I know the money will go to a good cause or go to a certain individual or anything like that. I’m buying a goods and service as long as I get those goods and services I don’t really care where the money goes after that.
Well if youre purchasing $20 halo skins get ready to keep purchasing $20 halo skins. Get ready for it to become normal and forget about having customization to look forward to in your games if you can’t afford it. I agree but can’t help looking at the bigger picture, what am I paying for really? Continuing to pay $20 for one item, isn’t much of a service. We all know that can be produced as part of a complete package for much much less…