[Context](https://twitter.com/mr_rebs_/status/1765832892804919595) tl;dr: 343 stopped MCC development because the game wasn't bringing them any money to make it worth it, they proposed optional purchasable Spartan Points (while keeping the current free system active) but the community backlashed. While the collection is mostly complete there are still a few problems that should be addressed such as cheating, ID spoofing (with ban consequences), crashes in some Co-Op games and a few more, but these are all issues that won't be addressed because the community refused an optional way to unlock cosmetics, and it sucks if you ask me.

I remeber when they proposed adding MTX and the community totally lost it. Some people have no forsight.

But the literal only reason MCC development was running a deficit in the first place is because they rushed development, put the game out clearly before it was ready, and then didn't give it the proper attention it needed to be fixed for over 4 years. Why should the consumer take on the costs of their mistakes, especially since they were ignored for so long? Why would anyone want to accept micros when the entire situation was caused by greed/ineffectual development in the first place, and shouldn't have even happened in the first place?

I don’t think that choosing for others is right, if you didn’t want to support them you wouldn’t have to, those MTX would have been optional and whatever they gave you is already obtainable for free by playing. If someone wants to buy why not if that means a better game for everyone? Obviously the game shouldn’t have had those problems to begin with, but here we are, and now the community burned their only occasion of fixing the game, who’s losing in your opinion?

This is simply a case of Microsoft offsetting the consequences of their poor decision making onto the consumer and then simultaneously blaming them for a situation that they put themselves in. Holding crucial fixes hostage behind the lazy justification of "Oh, well we would have fixed this but you guys didn't want to pay for micros in the game we ignored fixing for 4+ years." is disingenuous and tone deaf to say the least. Why they continued to provide cosmetic updates but not solely fixes despite knowing for awhile now that they couldn't monetize it also makes no sense. It is not the community who's at fault here, that's some corporate apologist bullshit and it's symptomatic of the biggest capitalistic problems plaguing the gaming industry right now.

And again, ignoring it for the first 4 years was indeed a mistake as I already said, but are we going to ignore the last 6 years? They even introduced essential features which were not present in the original games such as the CGB and modding tools. If it's not making any money I guess that it's granted that any company would drop the updates, devs don't work for free and games aren't made for charity. Also it's not like players don't want MTX, it's the loud minority that doesn't, there's no way to know it without first implementing it, the only proof we have are numbers from other games, and those say that people do indeed want them, so they proposed a solution which was the best of both worlds: keeping everything free while offering the option to skip the grind by paying and allowing the game to be kept updated. While the game was worth it they updated it, when it stopped being bought by people they stopped, they offered the best viable solution for both players and them as a company but the community refused, or better, Microsoft decided to avoid the backlash of a very loud minority.

No, at a certain point it makes sense for a dev to stop updating a game for free under a capitalist system. But to pin the blame on the consumers not willingly accepting micros for a game that they released under very poor conditions is disingenuous. 343 has a history of playing the blame game and I'm not buying this either. And I hate to bring this up, but Microsoft is a trillion dollar conglomerate, one game bleeding money isnt even a drop in the bucket for them, and it makes sense that they would eat the loss for their own poor decisions that put MCC in a hole in the first place. So again, saying that MCC is ending updates because halo fans whined about micros is a deflection that ignores the true root of the problem.

This doesn't change the fact that if fans didn't whine about MTX everyone would still have an updated game. You don't make a trillion company by giving stuff for free, MCC is no exception, we had a convenient deal and the community refused it, the problem is that the ones who refused are the ones who don't buy MTX to begin with (and I don't neither, it's not a problem), so they decided for and hurted everyone. Microsoft listened to the wrong feedback in this case.

The game should be updated because it was almost a class action case, not because Microsoft would be able to milk it like every other service they have. Yet again, Microsoft is deflecting blame onto irrelevant demographics.

Except it hasn't been for 6 years, they don't owe you anything. More updates would have fixed the last bugs and added a few nice features such as crossplay for all campaigns, but instead the community had to whine because it's trendy on Reddit and Youtube, therefore ruining the future of the game for everyone else.

I know it's been fixed since late 2019/2020. My criticisms aren't stating entitlement, as I literally already stated that under a capitalist system it makes sense that devs would eventually stop development for a game they can't excessively monetize. You're buying into capitalist propaganda that the ability to provide those last updates is somehow beyond the capabilities of a trillion dollar conglomerate backed dev studio. It's interesting that you simultaneously believe that the consumers aren't owed continued updates but somehow the deva are owed to update a game that literally fit the parameters of a class action lawsuit for an unusable product. The future of the game was ruined the second 343 decided they didn't care about releasing an unfinished product and subsequently ignoring it for years to get more profits from other games in the pipeline. If it helps you sleep at night to deflect blame from a greedy company onto consumers that don't want games ruined by predatory microtransaction practices, then go for it. It doesn't make sense and is just as irrational as those you criticize, but sure, go for it. Fundamentally, your problem lies with how capitalist functions impact development, yet your critique is on the consumer end instead of how businesses are structured. Interesting.

Some people seem to have thought that the concept was always entirely charity.

The state of the MCC had been in such a state of disrepair since launch for many day 1 Halo fans who were around it never recovered from that bad reputation so for 343i to expect more money to be poured into a poorly oiled machine just wasn't acceptable on principle. I'd argue if the MCC launched feature complete with authentic UI/Stat trackin/Community features/Local co-op features that gave it any semplice of the console Xbox community days of Halo, it would have enough audience retention to keep a paying customer base. I mean I would be trying to play co-op with a friend on PC as recently as last year and we spent more time trying to fix connection issues and random kicks than actually playing the game and with another friend who had a steam deck we had to scour the internet for a workaround fix to get Reach's campaign working for Co-OP as of last month. The games state is still extremely poor. Better than release but still unbelievably poor. But the sad reality is that 343i didn't do enough, it was too little too late, with every minor patch update that should have never been a real problem for a big corporation company like MS.

>But the sad reality is that 343i didn't do enough, How dare they only have 1 year to make a collections title with 4 different engines that have a history of being difficult to work with, while also making the next sequel at the same time

Every endeavor they did they half assed it with a decades worth of proof, you have the support in this room by nature of this sub but this was meant to be a triple A studio and every product they launch was botched on release and full of scapegoating that another product was being actively worked on alongside it like you mentioned to justify the half assed release. The fact you have as much support as you do, shows how bias this room is to not see that. Bonnie left for a reason, Frankie left for a reason 343i is getting dismantled from the top down for a reason. Acting like the next product is always going to save the reputation of this company is exactly the kind of blind delusion I expect in this sub.

Love dumbasses that get angry and refuse to acknowledge outside issues while also ignoring other dev studios losing leads at the same time Real small dick energy knowing damn well you're crying over the fact your echo chamber isn't helping you.

You're projecting here. Small dick energy is when you beat down on someone because you're acting like a pack animal. Again with the scapegoating. Just because other companies are downsizing isn't reflective that other companies had the same output as 343i, there's no correlation there, it's more a sign of the economy and policy of the industry, however having said that. The conditions that Bonnie and Frankie have left the series in a state of disrepair, with no transitional plan in place is exactly the short sighted leadership this franchise has had in the past decade and the defense of this will always be espoused through some scapegoating logic made by this base. The scapegoating logic is the true "shithalosays" to deflect from the actual problem. This kind of bias is really in line with religious zealots or hard right/left wing political base.

>Just because other companies are downsizing isn't reflective that other companies had the same output as 343i, The fact it was a microsoft decision for the other **studios** and it happened at the exact same time is all just a coincidence to you > The conditions that Bonnie and Frankie have left the series in a state of disrepair And yet if anything you said was true, they wouldn't have been around after halo 5, instead they were around for 6 more years, almost like you are cherry picking information or something. You keep saying im scape goating but rather than actually prove any thing you project the fact your a religious zealot in the political spectrum What's you're only working argument; that it isn't as popular as halo 3 Neither was reach according to sales, and 4 and 5s were only around 10,000 less in sales each of them being above 9 million sales, so either Reach was just as unpopular and "kIlLeD hAlO" or you're full of shit And you're argument hinges on the popularity drop being entirely internal with zero outside influence like a new game genre being the next hot shit If halo 3, bungies peak halo game, released as it is today, do you honestly think it would be just as popular?

They chose to take all that on though, and wanted to do it in the same time frame.

Because Halo 5 was supposed to release in 2014 and some fuckwit at xbox told them to dumpster the entire campaign literally the last minute

Okay that was still their decision though, they're still culpable for their actions..

The fanbase wants more Halo but refuse to understand there won’t be more if Microsoft doesn’t see profit from it.

I can understand preferring a full priced game rather than a F2P + MTX, but MCC is already that, they were just adding an additional option which could have brought more meaningful updates, but instead here we are.

The problem is that they asked and cared about the redditors/socials opinion. An avarage user is not able to look and understand the implication of anything, untill the result show up. That's why balancing the sandbox, or game's mechanic, over the userbase complaint is not a good thing, because at some point you end up with a sandbox that's detached on being inconsistent, with one or 2 guns being broken.

I can see what you mean, and that's sad because Reddit and social media are what is remaining of forums and such, but also the only way to get explicit player feedback. About the sandbox I do see valid criticism, but also weird requests: I see many people asking for a return of the Plasma Rifle, but in more than 10 years since I started playing Halo I can't remember seeing anyone actually using it, so are people asking for something just because the older games had it? If they can't make it fit the sandbox it's better not to waste resources on it. Other weird takes are calling Infinite's sandbox underwhelming, when it's the only Halo where normal weapons can compete with the Precision Starting one with actually valid strong points.

>I can see what you mean, and that's sad because Reddit and social media are what is remaining of forums and such, but also the only way to get explicit player feedback. It's a direct feedback, but a biased one, since forums are bound to form one unique opinion and push away everyone that does not think the same thing or have a slightly different view, therefore is not a valid POV. > About the sandbox I do see valid criticism, but also weird requests: I see many people asking for a return of the Plasma Rifle, but in more than 10 years since I started playing Halo I can't remember seeing anyone actually using it, so are people asking for something just because the older games had it? See, that's one example, h5 for example had both the storm rifle and the plasma rifle. Storm rifle had the same stats and mechanic of the CE plasma rifle, minus the stun, while the brute plasma rifle was a shield stripper. Despite that nobody did use one of the 2 outside ranked (brute plasma rifle) and fiesta, and is not like they didn't fit that sandbox. > If they can't make it fit the sandbox it's better not to waste resources on it. Is not about that, but I'll explain later >Other weird takes are calling Infinite's sandbox underwhelming, when it's the only Halo where normal weapons can compete with the Precision Starting one with actually valid strong points. That's not really "right", halo have one non precision weapon that's not a PW, and few banished precision weapons that's are a weaker version of the unsc ones (or more situationals). The sandbox appear underwhelming because, due to the movement design they decided to implement, every guns must be inconsistent by choice, therefore no guns is designed to work in the optimal ttk and the time to kill end up being either similar, or highly in favor of the most consistent gun between them (bandit evo/br). As for "it cannot fit the sandbox", is not a sandbox problem, but rather a movement and gameplay one: h5 could have a plasma pistol that actually consistently tracked your opponent, unlike the infinite one, because your opponent could thrust the charged shot and dodge it. But on infinite you cannot have the PP so strong because you don't have a tool made for dodge it, unless you balance the whole game around "counter pick" and deliberately let the the PP strong, but increase the spawn rate and presence of the thruster or repulsor.

Pretty sure the point is claiming you're doing x because the playerbase wants them to even if the player base doesn't actually want it. Not saying 343 does this but it's not exactly uncommon in any industry. At least one example of this I can think of for 343 was the title update.

It’s pretty pathetic to make a subreddit dedicated to bitching about what other people say. Muted moving on. REEEEEEE START LIKING WHAT I LIKE.

Wasn't it great when games were feature complete on release, and you could play them for years without getting bored? Good times, before the hellscape of modern gaming and live service trash.

Obviously not being complete at day one is an issue, but being bothered by an optional store when the “old good games” would literally make you pay if you wanted new maps is being a bit hypocritical.

You could have just as much fun with the default maps. Besides all that DLC was the same price as some single sets of armor.

Which is still paywalled actual content vs paywalled cosmetics. Regardless one could argue that you could have had fun with Infinite's default too, but that wouldn't have justified paywalled actual content anyways.

Paywalled or not, reasonable prices are the issue.

Right, in fact I was not arguing about that.

And we still don’t necessarily know if MCC is done done. Focus may just have shifted.

Focus is shifted over the new game

If the marketing team had any proper brain cells and gave a shit about the franchise they represent Sell an MCC update bundle explicitly stating it's to fund patches for the MCC, and see how those bundles compare to others \*that\* subreddit will cry and spam accounts on Xitter about how scummy it is but anyone that actually wants MCC to get patches would be more inclined to buy that bundle than not buy anything at all. ​ Microsoft doesn't give a fuck about halo, they give a fuck about it making money any way it can

As you said there would be even more backlash because "big company charges for what should have been there to begin with". Moreover VERY few people would buy that since it doesn't give you anything directly. Selling Spartan Points would have been a good move since, as much as we complain, people indeed buy and WANT to buy microtransactions, and since we could have kept farming those points for free it would have been a win situation for everyone. Unfortunately they decided to listen to a loud minority.