Do you feel like Armor holds no value anymore?

Evil Idol wrote:

I 100% agree with OP, there is nothing special about armor or any cosmetics other than 343i saying it's special. Pretty much OP's entire post was why I loved Halo 3, on top of how amazing the gameplay was. I still can't believe that 343i gave everyone Recon for free after they took control of the servers. The VIDMASTERs were supposed to be more than just Gamerscore.

Redstone wrote:

Think back to the days of Halo 3 and Reach. Remember in Halo 3 how you had to do something to unlock armor? I remember seeing the Hayabusa armor in a lobby once and thinking "Holy crap, how do I get that cool armor?". I busted my -Yoink- trying to get all the skulls (Screw you IWBHYD skull) and it was fun as hell to collecting all of them, especially the ones I tried to find before googling for help and finding some plain-text IGN guide on the locations. Once I collected the whole set, I felt like I had accomplished something. I put time into something and I got something cool out of it. I'll never forget the time spent trying to play on Legendary through the whole campaign to get the EOD helmet. I wore that awesome helment for weeks with pride. I remember finally getting to 750 Gamerscore to unlock the Security shoulders. That took a lot of effort for me. Then, the ultimate prize (or so I thought). Getting that last 250 gamerscore. God damn, some of those last few achievements were difficult to get. The par score for Cortana was my last because that level creeped me out when I was younger. I finally got 1000/1000 gamerscore. I got the Katana. I was grinning ear to ear. I had probably only ever seen 25-ish other players with it before. The feeling of accomplishing something that took time and effort was great. I still look back fondly on it. Don't even get me started on how much of a blast it was trying to get all those Vidmaster Achievements for Recon armor. Nothing says fun like 4 hours of laughs, tension and excitement with mates trying to plow through that last mission in Ghosts, or the feeling of sitting on the edge of my seat trying to get that Vidmaster Endure achievement. That took me about 5 attempts because of those random disconnects towards the end of the match.

Halo Reach wasn't quote the same, but there was still a decent feeling of accomplishment. You still had to push yourself to play well enough to level up and unlock those armor pieces. Not quite as varied as Halo 3, but still fun in its own way. I'd still see someone with something like the EVA [C] helmet in a lobby and think "thats cool as hell".

Halo 5 seems to have none of that for me. I saw that unicorn-looking helmet at the end of a match yesterday and just though "thats unusual". I had such a neutral reaction to it. For some reason, that reaction got my mind working. Why wasn't I caring more? Why did it feel so "meh"? I started to think and I realised a few things.

One thing I realised is that this dude/dudette got it from a random Req Pack. They got it completely randomly. He/she did nothing but get lucky. They did nothing specific of significance to get it. They probably bought a Req Pack with points you get for just playing, or with real money, and happened to be favored by the Random Number Generator and got a cool helmet. Thats it. They didn't really accomplish anything extraordinary challenging or difficult to get it. They just got lucky. It doesn't matter if it was their first Req Pack or their 100th Req Pack. They got it randomly without doing anything special.

The other thing I realised is that there was nothing I could do to unlock that helmet. There was no adventure of trying to find out how to get it and then attempting to do what would have needed to be done. All I could do is buy Req Packs and hope to get lucky. Nothing else. Even if I did get it, so what? I just got lucky. I didn't accomplish anything significantly challenging.

Do you feel like this? Do you have any thoughts on it? It feels to me like a part of the Halo experience is missing because of how armor is handled. I know aren't and can't change how it works at this point, and I know they are likely not going to ever go back to a system similar to the old ones for future Halos.

TL;DR: Unlocking in armor in Halo 3/Reach had a sense of accomplishment for me. Unlocking armor in Halo 5 doesn't. It feels to me like it has no value. How do you feel about it.

I'd suggest taking the time to read the whole thing and not just the tldr. It will give you a better idea of what I'm talking about whether you've played past Halo games or not. I've probably also left out a few points I wanted to make. My mind tends to race when I write out long posts.

Redstone wrote:

JOLTLORD wrote:

I like this system better, it encourages variety. In halo 3 and even in Reach everyone just went for the same armours.

Do you not find that all of the armor in this game just kind of blends in? None if it has any real significance. You don't often take any notice of it. You just look at a dude armor for a second and think "cool." and nothing else of it.

IamSaoirse wrote:

I fully agree. I feel no sense of reward in this game. They gave us nothing for any of the achievements, and made no armor unlockable without REQ points unless you spent real money. I mean even tying some of the armor unlocks to purchase such as buying and watching Nightfall.

The whole system was intentional though. They don't want people to work towards it nearly as much as they want people to spend real money on REQ packs hoping for a legendary.

Microtransactions.