Yesterday, we highlighted that Halo Infinite fans were getting up in arms about the game's expensive new cosmetics and their lack of inclusion in the Battle Pass, and 343 Industries has responded to some of those complaints.
In a special Holiday 2021 Community Stream, Head of Design Jerry Hook explained that the team wanted to look at making improvements to the store, stating that "we think we can do some things better for our players":
"We want to look at our store... We think we can do some things better for our players and better for the game experience that helps push that edge a little bit. And so we're just taking a look at that, pretty much across the board."
"Taking a look at the bundles, what feels valuable and what doesn't feel valuable, what experiments we can put in there to see what people like and what people don't like. We need to make sure that we're able to at least pay for the continuation of the multiplayer game on a regular basis, and that's what these models help us do."
Jerry went on to highlight that customisation in general is "top of mind" for the team, and the return of the Tenrai event in January will see some major improvements, including more content and less challenge swaps and XP boosts:
"We've pulled back a bunch of new gear so that when Tenrai comes back in January, you're going to see a lot of changes to the event structure that we have. One, you're going to see less swaps and XP, and you're going to see more actual content. Content being, you know, shoulders, coatings, gear pieces. Two, we're going to replace pieces that were mistakenly put in the store, so they'll only be available within the Tenrai event itself."
"The team's done a really good job of trying to say, 'how can we make these [events] more fulfilling so there's more free content, more earnable content for players just playing the game, so their time is being very respected that they're committing to Halo... So, you'll see that coming up."
Ultimately, it sounds like 343 Industries is putting a lot of focus into trying to right these wrongs for multiplayer fans, and hopefully the changes will go a long way towards appeasing those who have been left disappointed thus far.
What are your thoughts on Jerry Hook's comments? Let us know down below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 23
Honestly I feel they've sacrificed a lot to go F2P here. All the things they offer in the store used to be free and without the same level of grind. Hopefully this will be fixed properly.
More so I really HOPE this isn't the template of future MS titles on Game Pass. i.e. gimp the base game and sell MTX, DLC and more to make up the numbers. Else "Day 1 on Game Pass" is lessened considerably. That isn't the future I want.
I kind of understand, but then again, they are on cosmetics. You don't need to buy them to play. And it is 1st person shooter, most of the time you don't even see your own character. BUT, I think that they could sell more of these, if they were cheaper. 20€ for armour set is ridiculous. They would make more money if they sell them cheaper.
But then again, they are cosmetics.
I think that it was a very smart decision to make this game free-to-play and remember that players no longer need Gold nor Game Pass Ultimate to play free-to-play games online. Microsoft is testing the Fortnite waters and the online included for free-to-play games policy that both Sony and Nintendo have (as awful as Nintendo's online is). To have the best console of the generation (Series X) and the decent and affordable Series S in addition to a great game like Halo Infinite Multiplayer for free makes sense to boost Xbox popularity a bit more. As I said on the other thread (I was late):
It's a free-to-play shooter like many others. The cosmetics are supposed to fund the development that the game required, the future updates since this game will last a whole generation (or more) and make profit for the publisher (Microsoft, in this case). I will probably get a thing or two like I'd do in games that I enjoy and spend time playing, e.g., Sea of Thieves (not free-to-play) and Fortnite. I think that the developers deserve at least a single purchase if you enjoy their game. Then there are digital collectors for things that they don't really own because they're digital and that they don't even see if it's a first-person-view game. If they have money and want to do it, great but if I had a child I'd tell him no, no, you're either getting the battle pass or a set or two and keep my credit card safe because I'd never spoil my child 😂.
@Justifier
I think really the main thing I would like to see is that they stop selling pieces of armor sets you obtain in the battle pass in the store. It’s kind of infuriating that they would sell the HAZOP set for $20, but you can only get the core to use it in the battle pass. Or giving you an almost full set in the battle pass but then selling the shoulders in the store. Also, I want to see less challenge swaps in the battle pass. Challenge swaps only exist to make the grind (a grind they’ve manufactured) less grindy, and they aren’t even good at that.
All that being said, it’s a really great game and I hope they make the necessary changes to customization because unfortunately a lot of people don’t find playing games “worth it” unless they’re earning cosmetics.
If they want to charge for a battlepass, fine, but every piece of armor should be on it. Not this, oh hey, unlock a core through battlepass you paid for, just to have to pay separately for any armor bits.
This is just about the most ham-fisted, microtrans model to date.
I still don’t care about cosmetics. Have a blast with the game without paying a cent. Or even looking at the cosmetics in the store.
It's kind of satisfying killing people with HCS skins as my standard chief
@BlueOcean All in all I agree that going F2P was sensible and the right call. It just galls to see things that were once included now be sold piecemeal AND for outrageous prices.
$18 for an armour... $8 for a blue tint to the paint... over $1000 to get them all, and they're just getting started... really?
Much easier to accept when it's a new IP/series than something you used to get as part of the $60 game.
It’s good that they are listening and providing wry valuable updates and also giving us time frames while looking out for their developers. I personally think it’s just cosmetics and pay what you want for them. It doesn’t affect gameplay and the gameplay for multi and single player is really amazing. You can only wear one load out at a time too. Just have fun and the cosmetics shouldn’t have a value on your entertainment. This is a way for them to pay for the development and for the game to thrive and succeed and for them to release further content.
I'm honestly tired of all this rumble about halo comestics. Let me help everyone that is either confused or in denial.
Starters 343i are garbage. They do not care about you. They do not care about the halo fans. They NEVER did. 343i are incredibly poorly run and out of touch with any and everything. Next up Microsoft and 343i went free to play ONLY because they believe there is MORE MONEY to be made going this way versus packaging multiplayer with the game.
Both are chasing that fortnite money. Fortnite prints money on cosmetics alone. That is the endgame business model behind halo infinite multiplayer.
End of story. You're welcome.
Halo Infinite is already funded through Game Pass and the sale of the full price campaign.
I am inclined to believe that the money made from cosmetics is going to fund more cosmetics to sell you, adding in the features that use to come standard, and golden toilets (or whatever it is the rich spend their money on).
@Phostachio "because unfortunately a lot of people don’t find playing games 'worth it' unless they’re earning cosmetics".
Very interesting point. It should be about the game itself.
@Justifier @themightyant I agree and I think that if the prices were lower they'd earn more money but digital cosmetic merchandising is not something that I find as outrageous as something like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a $€70/£60 game that requires an additional huge amount of money just to get all the additional fighters (not skins). Fighters are the only gameplay elements in a fighting game. This is a consideration as a player, not from a business point of view. Fortnite is more profitable than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate but I dislike the SSBU business model more. Fortnite also has a paid campaign so I think that Halo Infinite is totally inspired by the Fortnite business model.
@awp69 So much this. Technically that's how most people play these games. That's why player counts are huge and the whales are the whales, it's like the 10% of players this stuff matters to and everyone else thinks "oh cool, free games!" It's also why it's ethically questionable, like casinos, because it's very specifically targeting a small percentage of the population with a very exploitable mental attribute and milking them for all the money they can to pay for everyone else and make massive profits. Back in the days of traveling salesmen, they'd be able to identify these easy marks and milk them blind. Now it's done on a planetary scale from data analysis.
@Phostachio "unfortunately a lot of people don’t find playing games “worth it” unless they’re earning cosmetics."
I know you're right, and yet I still can't and never will understand that mentality.To me cosmetics in games seems like such a worthless waste of time. In solo games I usually just stick with the default skins all game long, and generally find them to be the best, most fitting design for the characters anyway. It's the iconic image of the character and how their designers intended them to be, with the exception of end-game armor that both has max stats and looks coolest (Ezio's master assassin armor, etc. But that's intended to be a part of character evolution, and not random unrelated cosmetics. Master Chief is Master Chief with his assigned Mjolnir armor. He's not a storm trooper or a Witcher character, or a Teletubby, or a methane cleanup crew trooper...why would I pay money to make him go out of character? ) I pretty much ignore any cosmetics when I earn them and just defaults for everything... In Halo campaign I go after the cosmetics because they're another activity on the map and are fun egg hunts to locate the beeping crate hidden away, but otherwise I just think "oh, cosmetics"....I'll never even know what they are, I can't be bothered to even look. They improve nothing about the game in any way.
I'm just glad someone else loves wasting money so the companies don't decide to lock away gameplay behind paywalls. But dang people are weird....
@themightyant FWIW, I think that is the future of big multiplayer titles on GP. But I also think that's the future of ALL big multiplayer titles regardless of GP. IF you look at the field, most of the big multiplayer games, they're either F2P, gimped, and loaded with mtx/grind/cooldowns, or they're full RRP, gimped, and loaded with mtx/grind/cooldowns.
I'm more worried about the DLC, and, much as I adore FH5, the FH5 model of releasing the game on GP and then selling the rest of the game in pieces. Seeing one of the houses in FH5 at a ridiculous amount of 1.5M credits or something with a note at the bottom saying it's free if you buy the VIP pass..... that's troubling. (Then again the 2M credit one isn't free with DLC, and the free house doesn't offer important perks so it's mostly only important for trophy hunters, which is another mentality I don't understand even slightly.) Otoh, FH is a bad example because it's always been slightly predatory, even before GP existed, and actually has come DOWN in price to get the whole bundle in the post-GP era.
But yeah, if MS goes down the casino route to playing games due to GP, the value proposition of GP vs Sony $70 games will start to close the gap a lot. OTOH, you can't tell me Jim Ryan won't start going the same route even inside full $70 games the moment he knows he can get away with it and doesn't already have RRP+MTX vending machines among those "25 new games" in development. So far I don't see GP doing that outside multiplayer and FH, and considering most of their big announced games are pretty much solo RPGs, I think it should probably be safe, except for Starfield, where Bethesda is the inventor of Horse Armor and "canvas" bags.
Halo, they've been doing mostly ok with because it doesn't seem to have any gated P2W content, it looks like it's really all just cosmetics designed to milk whales for unlimited money. Anyone into vanity plates should just rock the stock green spartan 117 armor as a show of "sticking it to the man"
I wouldn't be surprised at all to see FM8 be an F2P game though. FM7 was already deep into the GaaS path, and 8 would be a perfect fit for the F2P model. $70 games start looking cheap next to $2500 games.
@BlueOcean I honestly didn't know that Fortnite has a campaign at all, paid or otherwise!
@NEStalgia Yep, Save the World. I agree with you that some people are vulnerable and that's the negative thing about this kind of DLC. The worst thing I've seen is Nintendo Badge Arcade that features a cute bunny that tries to persuade children to buy credits. I'm pretty sure that it would be illegal now, in EU at least.
I'd just like them to say weather or not they're going to make crossplay optional
@BlueOcean Yeah, Badge Arcade was sketchy even when it was new, and I noticed they didn't try to continue that. In fairness, I think that kind of thing is a bit more normalized in Japan what with the real arcades and the UFO grabbers etc. But having to put actual coins into a box is still less insidious than a direct CC link.
@NEStalgia I'm your friend! Would you please put your credit card details right here? You are over 18, right? Yes, you are. You look so good today! No joke, he flattered players like that.
@themightyant They are lucky the gameplay is just so damn good and the campaign is excellent, i feel if the MP was meh and the campaign poor it would have killed the game.
@BlueOcean I have issues myself with how Nintendo sells Smash, i think it needs a MK11 Ultimate type version as going in new would cost you well over a £100 for everything however though i don't have an issue with the fighters costing because well i bet its cost Nintendo a lot to get these characters and music for the game, Sora for instance wasn't just a quick phone call to Disney and SE and done. In a game what launched with over 70 characters, countless stages and enough music to last you well over 24 hours i fail to see an issue with charging for DLC characters.
Personally, I don’t really care if they fix it. I’ll play either way. That said, if you get the battle pass in Fortnite, it feels like a ridiculously good bargain. Tons of fun new skins, gliders, and enough v-bucks to get the next battle pass if you want. Usually ever 10 levels has something really cool to unlock. With halo, there isn’t really a tier that’s exciting to get to, and it feels like they are nickel and diming you to death.
They want to charge you for each time you press the reload button.
Paid for cosmetics in a FPS?
People want that?
Crazy .
Tap here to load 23 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...