Bungie has unveiled Player Investment - a 'new addition to the Halo: Reach experience'.
The model 'decouples' Halo 3's Ranking system from Trueskill and rewards players regardless of their preferred 'flavour' of Halo.
"From the outset, we wanted to find a way to reward all types of Halo players," said Luke Smith, player investment designer at Bungie told CVG.
"We've done a great job in the past of catering to the end game, hardcore, super-dedicated player - and we have hundreds of thousands of them still playing our games every day - but we need to do a better job rewarding all types of Halo players. Player Investment in Reach is our way of achieving this goal."
The system includes:
* Credits. The currency for doing cool stuff in Reach. These will not only serve as a source of disposable income - that players will spend on aesthetic customisation - but also as the metric that informs players' Military Rank. As players' Military Ranks increase, they will get access to more customisation elements - and in some cases, customisation regions - in the Armoury.
* Armoury. Bungie calls this 'the in-game representation of the entire Player Rewards ecosystem'. This is the destination where players will come to spend their hard-earned Credits on customising their Identity in Reach. A variety of helmets, shoulders, chests and accessories will be available to spend your hard earned credits on. Your aesthetically customized Spartan will be reflected in both the campaign and competitive multiplayer modes.
* Challenges. One source of Credits in Reach is completing Challenges. Challenges come in two types, Daily and Weekly Challenges. Each day, players will be greeted with a new set of Challenges to complete in Reach. One day a week, players will receive an updated Weekly Challenge - often times with a significant addition to difficulty.
* Commendations. Another source of Credits in Reach is Commendations. Commendations are persistent, super-Medals that are collections of various player actions taken over time. These Commendations are levelled up based on player actions and also award Credits throughout their Progression. When viewed as aggregations of player actions, Commendations provide detailed information on what type of player you are - and what type of player your friend is.
"We knew a bunch of things we wanted to improve on after Halo 3," added Smith. "We knew we wanted a single, unified path for player progression; we knew we wanted that path to encompass all of our gameplay modes; we knew we wanted a massive suite of customization to reinforce players building an identity in Reach; and we knew we wanted that identity to be present in Multiplayer and Campaign alike."
Indeedy they do. I hope all this customization has a real impact on your play style- such as heavy armour allowing you to take more damage but hindering your speed - just to add a little bit more depth to the game. I'm sure I hearda Bungie dev mentioning you can equip your Spartan with mods allowing you to sprint- and of course the Jet packs.
Im afraid the customization is going to be for aesthetic purposes only, although your right in that there will be perks available a la Jepacks, Sprint, Camouflage etc. The style of your Spartan will be the same during both MP and SP and also all cut scenes etc.
If there is a better online shooter this Gen then they are going to have to do soemthing Spectacular to even compete with Reach.
I reckon were going to be playing this for the next few years quite easily!!
In fact im going to do a few rounds of Firefight this weekend in preperation of the Beta, I realy am a Halo Fanboy and I admit it!!!
Im with you there Stone Cold, complete Halo fanboy even at 32 years old lol took time off for the halo 3 beta and im doing the same for this
Their really is no competition for multiplayer features, support and originality for halo's long standing mp prowess. mw2 has matchmaking sure when it works but halo 2 had that on xbox 1! how are bungie so far ahead of the pack in this department?
You'd think by now some other dev would be trying to compete with the stability and feature set of halo's online? And there's loads of people that hate halo but surely cant deny how far ahead of the competition its online is?
Now I have always been a fan of halo since the first one and I always will be. However because there is very little Aus servers in Bungies many servers Ifind it difficult even with ADSL 2 to get a none laggy game because I am always put in games with an American host and continuosly GET LAG KILLED! The only thing I have found better for online connection is either of the modern warefare games. Dont hate me cause I said that.
Halo 3 is still for me the most played on-line game on my 360, nothing else even comes close, in fact, I'm guessing that the only game to change that trend will be Reach...cannot friggin' wait!!!
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