That’s only season 1.
It’s exactly what I was expecting. A new core is nice.
They don’t want to overwork themselves. They will take their time for Coop and Forge and they are absolutely right in doing so.
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2 new maps, no infection…
lol
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I guess only after 1 year or 2 Halo Infinite will have all the features. Probably.
Sadly their priority zero initiative is the only thing that’s not disappointing about this road map. Only 2 maps for the next season and co-op not making the May 3rd date just sucks and there’s no way to spin it otherwise. All the talk about the leaked map list and how they were supposedly far along in development was nonsense. The MP needs content and 2 maps in 8 months is not enough.
Everything surrounding Infinite launching unfinished, to the lack of MP content, missing features that have been standard for multiple entries, and horrible progression system are all reasons why I’ve become less and less of a fan of GaaS/Games as a platform/live game models. It almost always leads to unfinished games launching with the promise of it being fixed or improved later with little to no sign of any studio learning from the dozens of examples that came before. It’s an absolute shit business model and I really wish companies would stop adopting it.
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There are dozens of successful GaaS games in the industry. :shrug:
Totally agree, never said they can’t be successful. I’m more so speaking about the impact on both the consumer and development team. Outside of the Division 2, I can’t think of a single GaaS game that didn’t launch unfinished, lacking in content, or both. Not saying more don’t exist but if it’s difficult at all to think of games that don’t follow this trend, that’s not a good thing. On top of that, the business model requires studios to have an engine, tools, and enough manpower to support a content pipeline that’s frequent enough to hold interest and drive MTX sales.
I’m just not a fan of unfinished games with the promise that things will get better eventually and live service games suffer most from this practice because so many are tolerant of it on faith in these companies alone.
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Sooner forge comes the better, 2 new maps in that space of time is just not good
Well when fordge does come later it’s gonna breath some new life into the game. Something to look forward to but they should of still had it sooner
Next time any of you guys are about to say you get the impact the pandemic has had, or that you know that MS is trying to be better with their empoyees and not rush them and you understand that too…stop and think “wait, do I?”
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I’m thinking that maybe 343 is understaffed for running a live service game? With the no crunch (good thing!) policy etc, they might just not have enough people.
How many people work on Destiny?
Season 1 was specifically stated to be longer than normal, which was supposed to be 3 months. If they haven’t outright said Season 2 is also 6 months, then it’s assumed to be 3.
You could ask that question to 343 4 years from now and they’d still say “no”. Because they’ll be continuing to add content. As for fans being disappointed, the brutal truth is that there will be very vocal fans who will never be satisfied. No matter what 343 does or releases. That’s the nature of online fandoms, especially so for Halo.
Regarding the map count, do we really want a massive influx of maps all the time? Two maps per season as a baseline sounds pretty good to me. The absolute last thing I want is for Arena to be bloated with like 20 maps this time next year. MP does need more content, but I don’t think a bunch of new maps is the way to go there. PvE modes, variant maps, etc are the better option imo. And we do still have that game mode that CA has been working on.
As for Co-Op not making Season 1, we knew this months ago. When they decoupled it from the season release, that meant it was going to be coming afterwards. Tbh I’m happy that Forge will be coming at launch of Season 3. I was internally thinking it might have been delayed through to next year, glad to be wrong there.
GAAS games… The reason I don’t mind their method is because the previous methods were so much worse. I never want to be locked out of new maps because I couldn’t spend the 20 bucks at the time. That sucked back then and it would suck today too. Then the next method was lootboxes, and we all know how those go.
Something something too many cooks. I’m not sure if simply throwing more money or people at things is the way to go.
What will be really telling is the gap between season 2 and 3 imo. If it’s truly only 3 months, then I think they’ve started to find their groove.
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I think it’s some of that but also that the people who would have been working on season 1 and season 2 content were pushing like hell to get the game out in release.
It’s possible they have enough to sustain, but we’re just seeing another pipeline issue.
As a big fan of the current maps, one thing I hope is that they keep this bar of quality for every new map. Which isn’t easy imo, as these maps are designed to the tiniest things. Also need to keep in mind that new arena maps will eventually be added into the esports rotation, so they need to be basically perfect.
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Yeah, I gotta imagine the time from conception to release of a high quality map is closer to 9 months than the 3 of a season.
Durations totally pulled out of my @$$ but I’m just imagining going from conceptual to implementation to play testing and iterations of that.
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It’s definitely not three months, that’s for sure. Though I don’t think it would be quite as high as 9 either.
Though as with you, these numbers are pulled from nowhere lol, so who the heck knows.
A lot of the negativity is surrounded in a lack of content.
It makes me think that if they just focused on Forge over everything else, and the ability to feature these map/mode creations, that it’ll buy them all the time in the world for all the rest.
At that point players will have an incredible amount of content to chew through. YouTubers will be talking with the latest map that people came up with and the coolest modes and weapon mods. They won’t even have time to complain about anything, heh.
With Season 2 bringing two maps and likely a handful of skins to unlock through season progression, it doesn’t really compare to what Forge could bring. It will seem paltry in comparison.
If there’s anything going to generate buzz and get people to check out the game on Twitch, it’ll be Forge and the resulting content over everything else.
343 wouldn’t need to really worry about content release cadence when players are doing all the heavy lifting in that regard. They just have to make sure that cool maps and modes are featured.
While four player co-op sounds incredible, I don’t think it’s something that’s going to get millions of players to keep playing or bring in new players.
This is my opinion and it’s an opinion that puts a preference on maps and modes over skins and story. I might be in the minority.
But it is what it is and I can appreciate that it will take some time because it sounds incredibly ambitious. The fact that it allows for scripting makes it more comparable to a game development engine than a mere level tweaking tool that it started out as.
My point is that once it comes out that it will solve 95% of the complaints. And maybe that’s worth getting all hands on deck for.
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Yes, maybe that is not always the solution but if efficiency per employee is lower due to no crunch and Covid, perhaps in this case more people might actually help. Maybe they need a “The Initiative boost” with more support studios?
I agree with you that Forge will be an absolute game changer. I just don’t think rushing it out would do them any favours. At this point the best thing imo is to make sure Forge is the absolute best it can be. That requires months of flighting, testing, network, and UI work.
I’m not sure how much they could speed up the development by moving something like the map design teams over.
Either way though, I think this Forge will be one for the books. I’m curious if we’ll see it at E3.
I agree. Beefing up their teams will probably be required at one point.
I do think there’s a bit of a war for talent right now though in game dev, so it may not be as easy as it seems. Quantic Dreams had that report recently about their recruitment not going well, possibly leading to an even bigger delay.
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Yeah, that goes for all the delayed things, they need to be really good and polished so it’s better to take whatever time is required to get it right.
Indeed, that’s why I was thinking perhaps contracting entire studios is more viable and faster. I can start to see why Activision put so many of their own on CoD hehe.