'Halo Infinite': Fun to Play, But Newer Gamers Complain Its Rewards System Is Slow (msn.com) 27
"For Halo fans who only care about multiplayer, 'Halo Infinite' is a free-to-play game," writes the Washington Post. "But improbably, it's messing up the free-to-play part."
[I]ts progression system has been widely criticized for being too slow. You can only advance...and earn rewards by completing specific objectives for a few hundred experience points. Nothing else counts toward your progress besides a morsel of experience points earned just by playing a match, win or lose. Many of these challenges distract from the objective of winning matches, like when players are asked to use certain weapons or vehicles to get a kill. And since the current playlist system means you can't choose what game type you'll play, oftentimes you'll see people running around using less-than-viable guns instead of, say, capturing the flag in a game of Capture the Flag...
Progression by itself is a tricky balancing act for developer 343 Industries, a studio that has never released a free-to-play game before. The issue is exacerbated by separating rewards out to be used only for specific armor sets. So for example, if you earn a blue color coating for armor, it's applicable to only one type of armor. Currently, there are samurai-themed items on sale in the digital shop, including a sword belt for $15. The value of the sword is significantly lowered once you realize it can only be used along with the armor set unlocked by playing the event. There's a surprising lack of cosmetic interoperability: If you want to wear the sword belt on your Mark VII armor, you're out of luck. "Infinite" restricts armor customization to specific "core" armor sets, like the Mark VII or Mark V. Anything samurai-related can only be attached to the samurai armor set.
If all of that sounds confusing, it is, and it's one of the main reasons the game's monetization needs a rethink. Regardless of your opinion on the value of cosmetic-only rewards, 343 Industries had years of industry research to fall back on to implement these features better, communicate them more clearly and understand how challenge-only progression might divide the player base between people who focus only on completing challenges and those who'd rather work toward the objectives of a match.
All this criticism comes with a big caveat: The core gameplay of "Halo Infinite" has received almost universal praise. The game is undeniably fun for almost anyone who touches it. But the fun turns to frustration if players don't feel sufficiently rewarded for the experience. Therein lies the great divide in the Halo audience. Longtime Halo players like myself play the games because, well, they feel fun to play; "Halo Infinite" succeeds on those merits. But players who are accustomed to earning cosmetic rewards in free-to-play games feel cheated when those rewards don't come fast enough. That's just how multiplayer games work these days....
"Halo Infinite" was very nearly a home run, but 343 Industries is struggling coming to grips with the free-to-play reality, and the audience is left confused and frustrated because of it.
Progression by itself is a tricky balancing act for developer 343 Industries, a studio that has never released a free-to-play game before. The issue is exacerbated by separating rewards out to be used only for specific armor sets. So for example, if you earn a blue color coating for armor, it's applicable to only one type of armor. Currently, there are samurai-themed items on sale in the digital shop, including a sword belt for $15. The value of the sword is significantly lowered once you realize it can only be used along with the armor set unlocked by playing the event. There's a surprising lack of cosmetic interoperability: If you want to wear the sword belt on your Mark VII armor, you're out of luck. "Infinite" restricts armor customization to specific "core" armor sets, like the Mark VII or Mark V. Anything samurai-related can only be attached to the samurai armor set.
If all of that sounds confusing, it is, and it's one of the main reasons the game's monetization needs a rethink. Regardless of your opinion on the value of cosmetic-only rewards, 343 Industries had years of industry research to fall back on to implement these features better, communicate them more clearly and understand how challenge-only progression might divide the player base between people who focus only on completing challenges and those who'd rather work toward the objectives of a match.
All this criticism comes with a big caveat: The core gameplay of "Halo Infinite" has received almost universal praise. The game is undeniably fun for almost anyone who touches it. But the fun turns to frustration if players don't feel sufficiently rewarded for the experience. Therein lies the great divide in the Halo audience. Longtime Halo players like myself play the games because, well, they feel fun to play; "Halo Infinite" succeeds on those merits. But players who are accustomed to earning cosmetic rewards in free-to-play games feel cheated when those rewards don't come fast enough. That's just how multiplayer games work these days....
"Halo Infinite" was very nearly a home run, but 343 Industries is struggling coming to grips with the free-to-play reality, and the audience is left confused and frustrated because of it.
What good is good core gameplay? (Score:2)
When nobody actually plays the game and instead just jumps through ridiculous hoops?
In case you think you never encountered this, you did. At least if you ever played some kind of multiplayer game. It's like an achievement hunt that never ends. You know the kind. Where people do some pointless wall humping or cliff jumping that serve no purpose other than finally having some bizarre "achievement". But at least that bullshit doesn't last. At some point, everyone got it and people return to playing the game.
T
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Progression and achievements can exist in a FPS, but they must not hurt the core gameplay loop. And the same applies to these "rewards". An achievement or reward based on "Kill X enemies on map Y" or "Prevent the capture of a point" make sense, because they are part of the core gameplay loop. Achievements akin to "jump from the highest cliff that you can only reach by spending almost all the time you're on the map climbing up on it" don't. They can get even more ridiculous and hurt the game even more if the
It's a test (Score:1)
To see how well you will fit into the New World Order. Points given for performing certain tasks, regardless of whether any goals are actually achieved. Your superiors will track the metrics critical to overall performance, as they see them. Your in-game score will be added to (or subtracted from) your social credit score to determine your place in society.
So you didn't realize that all this on-line gaming is just a method to condition the plebes and test them for their eventual position in the hierarchy?
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Not just slow, but bad rewards (Score:3)
If you compare Halo to a successful online game with a battle pass and XP, consider Fortnite v Halo. Battle pass and experience and levels are new to Halo and were added in after the gameplay had been long established, not when creating the concept. Maybe it just doesn't belong in Halo.
Over 1/4 of the rewards you pay to have access to in Halo Infinite are one-use items that disappear after you use them, and only exist to help in earning experience to level you up more. In other games such as Fortnite, such bonuses are given out to reward participation, including playing with friends or building community content. This benefits the health of the game for all and encourages constructive behavior.
The rest of the rewards are tiny bits and bobs that may not have a noticeable visual difference, both in combat because scanner highlights obscure the design of the other players, and in your own view of you character since you mostly only ever see your forearms.
You get XP only from completing specified quests, but not for in-game actions. Rewarding experimentation would open gamers up to checking out what the world has to offer. But to be honest, there wouldn't be that much to reward.
In a Fortnite for example, you can harvest materials, craft items and weapons, upgrade weapons, find and deploy items that can be used for a tactical advantage, collect a currency to quickly obtain weapons and health at a high price, find campfires and use wood to light it and replenish health, there is fishing, upgrading vehicles, enemy mobs on the map you can tangle with and steal from, or turn them on your enemies, there are NPCs to get extra quests from which are themselves entertaining...
There is a lot more to do than killing each other so there is a lot more to reward.
Halo has different goals in mind, such as a focus on combat and tactics built upon a limited range of options in a smaller area so there is a specific focus on skirmishes.
I believe that maybe they want to turn Halo into something it is not, and a battle pass only detracts from this.
I didn't get any reward when I finished SMB TLL (Score:2)
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Re:I didn't get any reward when I finished SMB TLL (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't really get that either. I guess we're both old farts that grew up with games that you played because you wanted to play a game.
That doesn't seem to be the case with games today anymore. Games today are played because you want to reach some sort of goal. And that goal isn't to beat the game, but rather to get something from the game. The comparison with doggy treats isn't so far off. You do what the game wants you to do, then you get to roll over and get your belly rubbed and you get your treat, and after that you're expected to do the same again for another treat.
I dunno, but back when I started playing, playing the game already was the reward. When did games become so boring, tedious and unfun that you need to dangle a carrot at the end of it to get people to play them?
What is really the reward... (Score:3)
This line from the summary bothered me a bit:
But the fun turns to frustration if players don't feel sufficiently rewarded for the experience.
I've always felt like the "reward" for the experience of playing, was having played.
So if the gameplay of Halo Infinite is good, that should be reward enough and anything else you can get just a nice bonus. If that were not the case in a game, if the core gameplay without extra rewards was at all frustrating, then I wouldn't play it.
On a side note I do hope they aren't letting you buy a $15 Samurai item unless you actually own the armor it's compatible with.
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I'm with you on that. Things like skins aren't even rewards to me - I consider them junk, similar to achievements. They just don't add any value to a game whatsoever. If it were a new character model then that may be worth unlocking. The problem I see with Halo is that small armor adjustments are barely noticeable because they all look so similar. To me this means that they aren't worth trying to get, let alone buy.
I'm guessing that Halo won't allow the mis-matching because it has made characters too random
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The problem I see with Halo is that small armor adjustments are barely noticeable because they all look so similar.
I totally agree with that, especially in a faster paced game like Halo. Any changes you make to portions of the armor only, who is even going to see that? Hardly worth bothering with for me...
Re: Free to Play isn't free (Score:4, Insightful)
"Free to Play" has ruined a lot of the gaming experience. Not the free part, the mechanic that comes with it.
Game designers used to make the game as fun as possible for the people playing it. Now they try make you spend as much as possible. That is the design goal. Doesn't matter if it's fun.
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Indeed.
F2P (Free 2 Play), especially on mobile, has turned into a shitty hurry-up-and-wait [baekdal.com] gaming. It completely disrespects the gamer's time. Excessive "grind fests" can be expected -- more so with F2P MMORPGs. i.e. "Korean Grindfests" [google.com] combined with P2W (Pay to Win) garbage. e.g. BDO (Black Desert Online).
F2P games usually have a dual currency where one of them you pay real money to get -- diamonds, coins, etc. In 2014 "Whales", were 15% of the players [vox.com] make up 50% of the profits, is a common symptom. In
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But all of the things that previously made Halo multiplayer are still there and still free, and there is no penalty for ignoring the paid content.
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Despicable game design in my eyes that teaches a distorted view on reward systems, where 'good gameplay' isn't good enough. But it combines well with another despicable method that's frequently used in game -- operant conditioning or more commonly known as the Skinner Box.
So that's where we are, where we old farts may not swall
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Good gameplay isn't just not enough. It is no longer a requirement. This is supposed to replace it.
Making a game that is actually good is not easy. And it's a bit of a hit-and-miss. You may create a game that is engaging, but you may also end up with something that looks awesome on paper but just isn't that great when finally playing it. By turning the game into a skinner box, you avoid this risk. Because people will play it for the doggy treat. Because playing the game is no longer the reward, the reward c
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However there's another big approach to avoid taking risks, while gameplay itself might be rather poor.
From my perspective, that other way to avoid risk is to make the game very story heavy, pretty much like an interactive movie.
For the principles that are important here there's already an established entertainment industry for this where you can rely on expertise and talen
This concerns satisfaction w/ an optional purchase (Score:2)
"I've always felt like the "reward" for the experience of playing, was having played."
That is how Halo Infinite is.
However, you can pay to participate in an extra program where leveling up unlocks extra customization for your character's looks. It isn't mandatory, but for the people who enjoy that and want to buy into this program, they are not feeling rewarded for the extra purchase.
It was good (Score:2)
I installed it and played it for a few hours each day for about three days and then it got boring. The load times seemed extremely long and there just didn't seem like there was anything to hook me into. Maybe I'm not the target audience but the game loop just seemed to grew thin rather quickly. It's cool that it's a free game and there are other technical aspects of the game that I really love and appreciate such as the availability of an off-line LAN feature. To be able to play this game off line in a LAN
Dont be an apologist for bad progression (Score:1)
If this game came out with the lack of customisation as it is at the low levels, then there would be an issue. Compare it to the venerable quake 3 arena, no progression but at least you could customise your skins.
And on this arena combat - how good is it really? I mean it seems to me as though its overly smoothed out with generally inaccurate weapons with wide spreads and respawning gear that is very effective.
I'd put other modern area shooters well
This sounds awesome (Score:2)
Let's see if I've understood the "complaint" properly...
1. The core gameplay of "Halo Infinite" has received almost universal praise. The game is undeniably fun for almost anyone who touches it.
2. Players who are accustomed to earning cosmetic rewards in free-to-play games feel cheated when those rewards don't come fast enough
3. Over 1/4 of the rewards you pay to have access to in Halo Infinite are one-use items that disappear after you use them
This sounds awesome!!! Spending money doesn't bring you lasting
"newer" gamer ? (Score:2)
just look at what bungie did (Score:1)
Progression? Earn? (Score:1)