From Credits to Challenges, there's plenty there to get Halo fans excited - not least some intense customisation options.
We caught up with its designer, Luke Smith, to get the full story...
Halo Reach obviously takes a much tighter focus on player progression, character customisation and rewards than any other series entry. Why did you decide this new direction was necessary? From the outset, we wanted to find a way to reward all types of Halo players. 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.
We knew a bunch of things we wanted to improve on after Halo 3: 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.
Did the success of games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare have any influence on the addition of RPG-esque elements? Our Community's reaction to choices made in Halo 3 had a significant influence on our plans for Player Investment in Reach.
First, the Recon Effect. Nearly endless fan clamouring for a long-time unobtainable helmet - became a much bigger deal than we anticipated pre-launch. So big in fact, that our multiplayer designers created a suite of Achievements designed to unlock Recon once they were all completed - A Path to Recon via Halo 3: ODST.
The second big change we're making is overhauling the Ranking system in Halo: Reach. In Halo 3, we combined EXP and Trueskill to give players a global rank. This created a system where players expected to progress, but simply put, Trueskill isn't a progression-driven system - not everyone was going to become a General. Trueskill wants to find the best possible game for you, and that may not lead to progress. We're still using Trueskill in Halo: Reach, but we're using it for what it's best at, finding competitive matches for players of similar skill levels.
In Halo: Reach, earning Credits informs your "Rank." As you generate more and more Credits, your rank will increase and you'll gain access to additional items in the Armory. This Rank is unified across all game modes and is indicative of how much time you've spent in Reach. This creates a singular path for players of all varieties to travel. The further a player has advanced their Rank, the more options they'll have available in the Armoury.
Halo: Reach introduces The Armoury, the hub of the Player Investment ecosystem. The Armoury is the path to Spartan Customization in Reach The Armoury is where players will acquire armour and various accoutrements for their Spartan, it's where they will customize how they'll be depicted in both Multiplayer and Campaign. It's where they'll establish their version of Noble Six.
What was the community telling you it wanted in Reach multiplayer, and how much of your additions were based on fan feedback? Ultimately, we knew that a broader range of our player population wanted attainable and predictable access to these things - and they wanted more than just Recon.
The Halo multiplayer arena's always been a difficult place for a novice player to go and feel successful. Are Credits, Challenges and Commendations your way of opening up Halo Reach to a less hardcore audience? Challenges are a way to keep the Reach experience fresh. Everyday players log in to Reach, we want them to check the Daily Challenges for the day and figure out which of them - or all of them, maybe - they want to complete. The Active Challenges are the same for everyone each day and will reset at some TBD time in the middle of the night BMT (Bungie Mean Time).
The harder Challenges - Weekly Challenges - we want to be the sort of experience that maybe you'll call a friend up to work on together over the course of an evening. Maybe sometimes the Weekly Challenge will ask you to achieve something herculean on your own. The Challenge system is all about giving players something to do when they log in every day, maybe the Challenge system wants you to go do a particular action off of the beaten path in a Campaign mission, maybe the Challenge is as 'simple' as earning 40 assists that day in Multiplayer.
Commendations are persistent, aggregating awards that will level up through gameplay. As Commendation progress is made, players are earning Credits and when Commendations reach milestones - players will receive a significant dump of Credits. Additionally, Commendations are game mode specific - so there will be specific Commendations for Multiplayer Matchmaking and Commendations for Campaign. When viewed on players' Service Records in the shipping game (or on Bungie.net), they'll paint an interesting picture about what kind of player someone is. What types of weapons do you use? What distances do you engage at? Do you help kill enemies? Commendations will answer those questions.
We wanted to improve on cases where players are taking vital roles in games, but not necessarily feeling rewarded for taking on those roles: Imagine a guy who loves to drive. This guy drives his buddies around, he handles that Warthog like an MLG kid handles the Sniper Rifle - the Warthog is his thing. Up until now, there's really been no great way for him to be identified that way - Commendations will be a big part in establishing that identity. We're taking steps to reward the Wheelmen out there everywhere.
Of course, both Challenges and Commendations feed into Credits. Credits are earned across all of our gameplay modes in Reach. In the Multiplayer Beta players are going to be earning Credits for finishing games, winning games and of course for making Commendation progress. We won't be sharing the Challenge system with users in the Beta, and of course, there will be some other interesting ways to earn Credits that we're not talking about just yet.
Do you think previous Halo multiplayer offerings have been geared too heavily towards the hardcore? Up until this point, success in Halo multiplayer has felt pretty binary. Either you win or you lose. Trueskill wants to get players to a competitive match and that means that players will be winning roughly half of their games. The side effect of that is obvious: Players are also losing half of their games. Finding ways to make all of the awesome stuff that players do even when the game outcome doesn't go their way is definitely a big part of Player Investment in Reach.
Our multiplayer's longevity is not lost on us, we're going to continue to do things to enable that - Commendations, Challenges and Credits are ways we can tap into other parts of the game, unify some of these results into a single path and reward players for playing Halo the way they want to play it.
That said, we're not ignoring or suppressing our hardcore base, in Reach. The Arena is an entire playground we're building for them with an all-new style of assessing skill in Slayer.
We fully anticipate a delta in Credit earn per day between a skilled player and a new player. They can both complete the same actions to earn Credits, but the skilled player probably generates more Commendation progress and probably completes Challenges quicker than a new player. They are both travelling down the same path, but the skilled player may advance faster and get the ability to purchase a Helmet quicker.
What kind of player will the daily and weekly Challenges be aimed at? Can you give us an example of what they might be like? Each day players will have a couple of Challenges that are consistent and recurring, things like Kill a bunch of enemies and help kill a bunch of enemies - sometimes maybe we'll direct players to the Campaign for those, sometimes maybe we'll nudge them into Competitive Matchmaking, sometimes maybe we'll just say it doesn't matter where you do it - just do it.
Daily Challenges are really meant to be shorter-session goals. We want players to log in, feel like they have stuff to do and can make some progress toward the next customization element they are interested in. We don't want Daily Challenges to take players too far out of their comfort zone - there wouldn't be a Challenge for earning a "Sniper Spree" in a game, because then you have this horrible side effect of everyone trying to use the Sniper Rifle all day, betraying each other for the Sniper Rifle - it'd be pandemonium. But simply earning "Any Killing Spree" today? Sure, that's a bar we're more comfortable setting for players.
Weekly Challenges are a bit different. We'd like to have a suite of harder Challenges, things reminiscent of some of our Vidmaster Achievements from Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST. The sort of experiences you set out, very deliberately, to complete. After all, you have a week to get it done - we'll make sure some of them take that long to complete and reward players accordingly.
How deep is the Armory character customisation? In which ways can you customise your spartan that aren't just visual? In the Public Beta players will be working with a small slice of what we'll have in the final game. In the beta, players will be customizing their helmets (choosing both the base piece or which variant of that helmet they want to sport) their left and right shoulders and their chests. We've still got color and emblem customization, too.
We're holding back a lot in Armor Customization from the Public Beta, and it's a pretty safe bet that the amount of options players will have at their disposal this fall is significantly greater. And we're not just talking about volume of armor, there'll definitely be some things about the Spartan that players haven't ever gotten to customize before that they will in Reach.
Players won't be configuring or unlocking Armor Abilities in Reach. That wouldn't be a Bungie Halo experience. Our game isn't about what abilities you've unlocked. The outcome and resolution of Halo combat should be about what you chose in the moment, for the moment.
What kind of feedback are you looking forward to seeing from the upcoming multiplayer beta? With respect Player Investment we'll be looking at things like Credit earn rates per minute, per game, per hour and per player. How much time are people playing? What are they doing with that time? What are the outliers for success and failure in the population, are those successful outliers the product of some bad behaviour we don't want to see in the final game? We don't want to wake up in the morning on May 4th and find out that everyone is flipping over Warthogs because that makes it rain Credits.
Are you confident it will be even more popular than that of previous Halo games? Reach is without a doubt Bungie's biggest, most ambitious game yet. It's the feather in a cap we've been making for more than ten years.
This is going to rule, just wish I hadn't traded in my copy of Halo ODST will have to pick up a cheap copy to try out the Beta 'cos this sounds amazing, Bungie are going to take Multi-Player to the next level
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will have to pick up a cheap copy to try out the Beta 'cos this sounds amazing, Bungie are going to take Multi-Player to the next level 
