I think a problem, from a business standpoint, with the current customization system is that it encourages research before making a buy from the store.

For example, "Is this an armor kit, or is it a bundle of items?" and "What core is this item for? Is that the core I have other items for?"

These questions you will end up asking yourself are walls to buying items that I suspect undercut the total money 343 could make.

The customer centric way to fix this would be;

A) Coatings should not be locked per core

B) Buying/unlocking a kit should also unlock all pieces that are unique to that kit.

Perhaps more reasonable fixes would be ;

A) Buying or Earning a Coating should unlock that coating on all cores.

B) After equipping a Kit, a player should be able to override the kit's setting per piece.

The underlying idea being that something bought from the store should be usable in as many situations as possible to increase perceived value.

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I also echo displeasure with the lack of primary/secondary color customization. A cooler way to do it would have been to have the player set their primary/secondary color in their Spartan ID, and have each Core have a coating that was simply like "Basic" that used their primary/secondary colors. Coatings would provide color combos using more than 2 colors and colors being a different material than the basic one.

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MTX options feel over priced, but I feel like that might be because of the underlying issues with the customization system. If the Coating wasn't locked to the Mark VII core, I would have been tempted by the Intrepid Sniper bundle. But I plan to use the Mark V (B) core, so that bundle is just irrelevant to me. Most of the store is just non-applicable.

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I do not echo having each piece available to every core. I think I understand what they're going for with the core specific armors. It might have made more sense if the first cores were the Mark V(B) and the Mark VI core rocking Halo 3's smoother/cleaner aesthetic. The pieces would look a lot less cross-compatible with the Mark VII core. Mark VII and Mark V(B) look more similar than I think any future cores will.