Halo 5 Dev Talks Free DLC, Attracting New Players, and Fair Microtransactions
Pretty interesting interview. Read the article for the remainder of the interview.
There's also this:
Halo 5 Microtransaction Pricing Revealed
More on REQ transactions
I haven't seen this posted or show up in Google search. Lock if old.
After the issues with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, what are you doing to ensure Halo 5 has a smooth roll-out?
Our biggest thing is that Halo 5 is built from the ground up for Xbox One. All the technology is really lined up. There's only one network layer, we're not trying to build three to four different games in one. That's given us a huge advantage. We did our beta almost a year ago now, that gave us a whole bunch of time to stress test our servers and make sure everything was running, and work through some problems.
What did you learn from the Halo 5 beta last year with the subsequent feedback and how has that changed the Arena's multiplayer as a result?
It was kind of crazy to have a beta that early. Normally you have them, and you don't have time to change anything. This time we had tons to change. We changed ground pound, the whole way that entire feature worked. We changed a lot of the little tuners around escapability. Things like thrust, thrust recharge, the way sprint worked. We also changed the map. Several of the maps have completely different sight lines and paths changed directly in result to the beta feedback.
On top of that, we've also taken feedback from a lot of the pros. Like hey, do you have confidence in shoulder charging, do you have confidence in ground pound, do you think we should be keeping these things even if we fix them, are you cool with thrust always on?
You're taking a unique approach to DLC by offering all maps free for the first year--why are you doing this and do you think it will become the norm in the industry?
I certainly hope it becomes the norm!
There's two reasons we're doing this. One, we decided from the get-go that we wanted to make a very big investment in our players. We didn't just want to release a game and hope it worked. We wanted to say okay, this is an investment in our players. So we're revealing two completely different multiplayer experiences. We're going at it big, we're giving them dedicated servers, so it really felt natural, when it came to the DLC question, to put all of our players in one place. With Halo 4, you could have the season pass, DLC 1, DLC 2, DLC 3, and all of a sudden you have six different buckets and players have to make decisions about whether they play new content or with their friends.
We just couldn't solve that in game design. The solution was to put everyone in the same playlist. The benefit of this is it's going to give us better match-making, because there's less buckets people have to filter through, everybody has access to the same content, it's going to give us a lot more focus on when we want to start adding things. So that was the biggest deal for us when we were making that decision.
Pretty interesting interview. Read the article for the remainder of the interview.
There's also this:
Halo 5 Microtransaction Pricing Revealed
Halo 5 REQ Pack/Microtransaction Pricing Details
Bronze:
In-game currency cost: 1250 RP
Real-world money cost: not offered
Silver:
In-game currency cost: 5000 RP
Real-world money cost: $2
Gold:
In-game currency cost: 10,000 RP
Real-world money cost: $3
343 explained that in-game pricing has been set so that players can afford at least one REQ Pack for every other game played. You should expect to earn around 2000 RP for every Warzone game played, meaning it won't take very long to reach Silver or Gold status. In addition, everyone gets 7500 RP to start.
On top of these three REQ Packs, Microsoft will offer a Warzone REQ Bundle, which comes with two "Premium" packs every week for seven weeks (for a total of 14). This bundle is included with the Halo 5 premium bundles, or it can be purchased separately for $25.
"Everything you can get in the REQ system, you can earn whether you spend money or not," he said. "There's no crazy special items that are only going to be reserved for people who spend a lot more money. Also, you get a lot of rewards whether you're playing Arena or Warzone, so you're always going to have a ton of stuff that you'll be able to use. The biggest thing for us the moment we started even talking about this system was that the game has to be balanced. At the end of the day, it's a multiplayer game. It's not a spend-more-to-win game. We wanted to make sure that if you spend a whole ton of money, and you thought you could get five scorpions just because you spent more money, it's not going to work. You're still going to have to earn the right to call these scorpions into the battlefield.
More on REQ transactions
Bronze: Bronze REQ Packs include Common, single use REQs, but is likely to unlock a new permanent REQ (if you haven’t already unlocked all of them).
(UPDATE)Silver: Silver REQ Packs include Common to Rare REQs with the added value of two new permanent REQs (if you haven’t already unlocked all of them).
Gold: Gold REQ Packs contain a large number of REQs ranging from Uncommon to Legendary. Players are guaranteed two new permanent REQs (if you haven’t already unlocked all of them).
To add to this, this site is working now and gives a weapon skin when you watch all the video clips
http://experience-halo-5-guardians.xbox.com
I haven't seen this posted or show up in Google search. Lock if old.