The pandemic or healthy work conditions doesn’t prevent games from releasing in a polished and finished state. Publishers not giving enough time and pushing games out does prevent titles from launching in a finished state. I fully appreciate and respect what the devs have and continue to go through, that doesn’t mean people should automatically be happy with the current state of the game. Expressing disappointment or wishing they went in a different direction is not a contradiction to respecting the impact of covid or the well wishes of the staff. This is a BS attack on the character of anyone who wishes they made different decisions.
Wishing we got more than two maps is not asking for an influx of too much content. Eventually we’ll get to a point where there will be a lot of maps. That won’t be an issue as long as they have systems in place for filtering, voting, etc. Unfortunately their matchmaking/Playlist system is a mess right now, so it’s probably a good thing they don’t have a lot of maps. Why would that even be an issue though? When MCC was announced, did anyone say “whoa that’s too many MP maps, we don’t need all of that”? Regardless, things don’t need to be taken in extremes. I just wish we got more than two maps, not asking why we’re not getting ten new maps.
My disappointment with the co-op isn’t because it’s not launching in season one, like you said, we’ve known about that. It’s over it missing the season two launch. Of course giving it the time needed to launch in a quality state is the right choice. That doesn’t make the delay any less disappointing for people that really want to play co-op.
And I wouldn’t have nearly the issue with GaaS as I do if publishers didn’t take advantage of the good will and faith in gamers by releasing unfinished games. I can’t agree that consistently releasing products not fully cooked is a better business model than some people needing to wait a couple weeks or more to play some new maps. Like anything else that’s wrong with this industry, corporate greed has just ruined the business model for me. There is no perfect approach but I don’t buy the excuses to why this was the best route for 343i to take for Halo.
There’s essentially only 4 maps in ranked. I’ve played 800 matches of ranked. 100’s of matches already on these maps. Ya I want an influx. I want some content for ranked. Needs it desperately. Maps, and more importantly new playlists.
I feel you, though regarding the map count, I think this is because I just really like the current maps. My worry is that if they release too many maps at once, you naturally get some that are worse than others. My hope is that by focusing on only a couple a season, they can playtest the crap out of them and make sure they’re up to snuff. The whole quality vs quantity thing.
And by co-op delay, I meant that their original plan was to release coop with season 2 and forge with season 3. But a few months ago they decoupled co-op with season 2. This was a known quantity for months, so I am a little surprised at so many saying that coop was “delayed again”. Season 1 started in November, so yeah we knew from the start that we weren’t getting co-op with that.
As for the monetization stuff, I’m sure greed/the urge to make as much money as possible was part of it, but has that not always been the case? Map packs weren’t sold out of the goodness of their hearts, and I don’t think I need to say anything about lootboxes.
Four? Streets, Bazar, Aquarius, Livefire, and Recharge. Which one are you discounting?
I think it is some of that but also its their first real GaaS. Everybody wo tips their toes into it struggles mighty at the beginning, be it Rare, Bungie, Ubisoft, …
For sure, I do think it’s a bit strange that every studio has to start at 0 with these things still though. The first ones who pioneered it sure, but this is a known business model by now.
This isn’t a problem that’s happening only now at 343i, they had a ton of trouble during the development of Halo Infinite, these management problems then had an impact on launch and it’s features, then you add Covid on top of it…
They’re just carrying the weight of past issues while having to deal with present and constant ones like Covid.
This will only truly pass once they can “finish” the game with the launch features and fully focus on the GaaS experience.
Knowing it and doing it is not the same. Maybe you know you need at least 500 people to make a GaaS game. Then you have to do it aaaand there comes the pandemic which makes staffing up harder. I also suspect the industry wide aquisition of support studios may play a role in slower than anticipated content roll-out.
I think and hope at the end of the year they will find their groove.
Yeah I know, the problems go deeper. It’s so unfortunate… the PvE is really good and I wish they just focused on that tbh. But that’s me, and my dream of a Destiny-like Halo might stay a dream.
Yes, I really don’t judge their live service much until all the things that was supposed to be there at launch are actually launched. That’s when we will see how the game is as a gaas. Shame though, the gameplay in both SP and MP are superb and the foundation is great. Would have been awesome to see them full steam from the start.
I don’t really understand why people associate what happened to this game with the pandemic, didn’t they show the gameplay just like 3 months after the whole Covid thing started? And it was already a huge mess, and it was supposed to release just few months after that show. Instead, they’ll need around 2 more years (i hope) after the supposed initial release to have co-op and forge ready.
Sure Covid affected the development, but just like with Elden Ring, Horizon:FW or Forza Horizon 5, the real problem doesn’t come from the pandemic.
Not sure if i would say the campaign was full and excelent, knowing what happened in 2019 or early 2020 with the game, i’d say the environment we played on Halo Infinite was probably the first part of the game, and due to the lack of time left until game release they had to enlarge the amount of content, missions and stuff going on there just to have everything ready for launch, that would explain the lack of scripted, epic moments there were, and the game being more about “Go to X encampment, kill enemies and destroy blabla”.
IMO it’s unfortunate that people doesn’t know anything about MS’ future games coming soon, so all the talks are about Halo Infinite nowadays, and 343i needs to be able to “disappear” for 1 to 2 years until the game is a hit, it’s a GaaS, one of my favourite games, Path Of Exile, took 4 years until a very big expansion, to 4x their playerbase.
There’s no hurry, with the right content the game can be huge, they need time and good ideas, but Halo Infinite being the only conversation topic nowadays when we talk about games on Xbox is not good for anyone.
New open area with more variety in environments, new vehicles, weapons, new features like being able to build a base instead of just unlocking stuff and last but not least longer than the first one.
Of course it would take time to build this, but I can wait for quality.
I doubt we’ll see anything that soon, but who knows. I would for sure enjoy classic expansions to the MC campaign, but what I ultimately want is for them to put our Spartans into a PvE-setting like an MMO-lite. That would be soo good. Have three pillar of the platform: The MC saga, the PvE set in whatever the campaign introduces and classic MP for the old schoolers.
