Microsoft Halo Infinite - Information Thread, update (01/15/24): Certain Affinity's battle royale project reportedly cancelled, UE5-based campaign project in development since 2022

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Halo Infinite's head of design promises progression fixes are 'top of the list'

WWW.VG247.COM

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Halo Infinite's head of design “feels everyone’s pain” and will be making sure progression is altered as 343's latest game continues to court controversy.

 

 

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Are you one of the millions of people who picked up Halo Infinite multiplayer since it launched out of the blue a few weeks back? If yes, then you've probably also noticed the frankly glacial pace at which you earn rewards and progress through the game's (now controversial) battle pass.

 

Well, rest assured: developer 343 Industries is working on it. The head of design on Halo Infinite, Jerry Hook, has said he understands the complaints of the community and fixing progression will be at the forefront of development efforts in the weeks ahead.

 

 

[Mercury33]

To be fair the rewards aren’t really great either. So it takes a long time to unlock a pile of meh at the moment haha

[DarkStar189]

I don't even know if I'm going to unlock the armor for that limited time event that's out. I think it ends today and then comes back later. It's only like level 6 I think. I played 2 hours last night and it only gave me 2 challenges that even counted toward the limited event. And the one challenge was "Get 20 assists in Fiesta mode". Which is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. To me, Rocket League has the perfect battle pass set up. You unlock stuff at a consistent pace, and after level 70 they start giving you colored items of stuff you got earlier in the pass. And their limited time events are never really a challenge but they keep you busy.

Halo's set up is so ridiculous that it makes me think they launched knowing it was going to get flak, probably needed more time, but they had to launch the game. 

[Guest]

I don’t pay any attention to leveling and perks. I’m surprised it is such a big deal.

[The def star]

4 hours ago, DarkStar189 said:

I don't even know if I'm going to unlock the armor for that limited time event that's out. I think it ends today and then comes back later. It's only like level 6 I think. I played 2 hours last night and it only gave me 2 challenges that even counted toward the limited event. And the one challenge was "Get 20 assists in Fiesta mode". Which is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. To me, Rocket League has the perfect battle pass set up. You unlock stuff at a consistent pace, and after level 70 they start giving you colored items of stuff you got earlier in the pass. And their limited time events are never really a challenge but they keep you busy.

Halo's set up is so ridiculous that it makes me think they launched knowing it was going to get flak, probably needed more time, but they had to launch the game. 

You can only get to level 6 or 7 right now. They will release more challenges to progress that battle pass in the following weeks. 

[Zaku3]

2 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I don’t pay any attention to leveling and perks. I’m surprised it is such a big deal.

 

Dating yourself there films. In fairness I feel the same way.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

 

Dating yourself there films. In fairness I feel the same way.

No doubt. Definitely feels like something where gaming has passed me by 😂 I don’t mean it as a knock to those who do care, I’m just surprised it is such a big deal as I’ve never even thought about progression for perks in any of these games!

[DarkStar189]

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I don’t pay any attention to leveling and perks. I’m surprised it is such a big deal.

Battle passes shouldn't gather that much attention. It's supposed to be pay $10 for it, and unlock fun stuff along the way. There's a Forbes article saying it would take 200-300 hours to unlock everything right now. That's a ridiculous time commitment for the 90% junk they put in there.

[TheLeon]

I know they can't do it in this era of cosmetics, but I wish they stuck to the classic Red/Blue. Sometimes in the heat of battle I can't always notice whether or not there's a little name floating above someone's head, and I end up wasting shots on a friendly.  

[Keyser_Soze]

2 hours ago, sblfilms said:

No doubt. Definitely feels like something where gaming has passed me by 😂 I don’t mean it as a knock to those who do care, I’m just surprised it is such a big deal as I’ve never even thought about progression for perks in any of these games!

 

Weird that playing the game FOR FREE for fun isn't it's own reward. The extra goodies should just be extra stuff not the reason to play the game.

[Keyser_Soze]

21 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I know they can't do it in this era of cosmetics, but I wish they stuck to the classic Red/Blue. Sometimes in the heat of battle I can't always notice whether or not there's a little name floating above someone's head, and I end up wasting shots on a friendly.  

 

Usually the whole body is outlined in red, that's more than they've done in the past.

[Mercury33]

26 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I know they can't do it in this era of cosmetics, but I wish they stuck to the classic Red/Blue. Sometimes in the heat of battle I can't always notice whether or not there's a little name floating above someone's head, and I end up wasting shots on a friendly.  

Rocket League manages to stick to the Blue/Red thing while still being drenched in awesome cosmetics. Halo could have done it if they wanted to be creative with it. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 hours ago, Zaku3 said:

 

Dating yourself there films. In fairness I feel the same way.

 

2 hours ago, sblfilms said:

No doubt. Definitely feels like something where gaming has passed me by 😂 I don’t mean it as a knock to those who do care, I’m just surprised it is such a big deal as I’ve never even thought about progression for perks in any of these games!

 

The Washington Post published an article today that discussed this EXACT topic!

 

‘Halo Infinite’ progression complaints highlight gaming’s generational divide - The Washington Post

WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

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A huge divide has formed between "Halo Infinite's" monetization scheme and what players, both old and new, expect of the franchise.

 

[legend]

2 hours ago, TheLeon said:

I know they can't do it in this era of cosmetics, but I wish they stuck to the classic Red/Blue. Sometimes in the heat of battle I can't always notice whether or not there's a little name floating above someone's head, and I end up wasting shots on a friendly.  

 

It shows an outline red color over enemies and outline blue color over friendlies by default. However, I agree these are often hard to pick up quickly, and it turns out they have some pretty nice customization options that improve it. You can go to your settings and change what the highlight colors are for friendlies/foes.

 

I used a choice I heard recommended which is setting foes to have the "pineapple" outline (bright yellow color) and allies with a bright purple (I forget the name) and it has made the distinction far easier to pick out quickly. If you're having trouble, I highly recommend playing with those settings.

[JPDunks4]

4 hours ago, DarkStar189 said:

Battle passes shouldn't gather that much attention. It's supposed to be pay $10 for it, and unlock fun stuff along the way. There's a Forbes article saying it would take 200-300 hours to unlock everything right now. That's a ridiculous time commitment for the 90% junk they put in there.

 

If you aren't doing challenges, then it would prob take that long.  If you focus on challenges, its relatively quick, and the event challenges also give you XP towards the Battle Pass too.  I haven't played all that much and hit Lvl 15 I think.  It's a 6 month long battle pass, so I think the complaints about the time of progression is a bit overblow.  The real issue is the challenges themselves, some are just dumb and annoying.  Like you need Capture the Flag wins, but its a luck of the draw to even get into a Capture the Flag match.  Stuff like that is dumb.  Also a lot of the challenges should revolve around kills/assists, and not just kills.  This game is meant to be a team game with team shooting, so assists should be just as valuable as a kill for a challenge.

[JPDunks4]

 

An extra 700xp after first 6 matches per day.  Will definitely help, and another good quick measure to improve the feel of progression.

[TheLeon]

6 hours ago, legend said:

 

It shows an outline red color over enemies and outline blue color over friendlies by default. However, I agree these are often hard to pick up quickly, and it turns out they have some pretty nice customization options that improve it. You can go to your settings and change what the highlight colors are for friendlies/foes.

 

I used a choice I heard recommended which is setting foes to have the "pineapple" outline (bright yellow color) and allies with a bright purple (I forget the name) and it has made the distinction far easier to pick out quickly. If you're having trouble, I highly recommend playing with those settings.

Yeah, I dug into the options last night (there are so many!) and picked colors that stick out a little more. It definitely helps, but when I see someone in all blue, my dumb brain still registers that as an ally first. Then I see the outline when they starting chucking grenades at me. 

[legend]

4 hours ago, TheLeon said:

Yeah, I dug into the options last night (there are so many!) and picked colors that stick out a little more. It definitely helps, but when I see someone in all blue, my dumb brain still registers that as an ally first. Then I see the outline when they starting chucking grenades at me. 

 

Yeah I definitely had problems with that before I changed highlight the colors. I think I'm like 95% good with the highlights I'm using now, but red vs blue armor is definitely something deeply ingrained in my brain from my college years  

[legend]

9 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

 

An extra 700xp after first 6 matches per day.  Will definitely help, and another good quick measure to improve the feel of progression.

 

 

If you play 6 matches a day which is a big time sink, that would still be 100 days to finish a battle pass. A little less from weekly challenges you complete, but that still feels way too long. I'm basically guaranteed to never be able to get upper-level battle pass rewards.

 

 

For the kind of challenges, I hope they also bucket them into being game-type specific and regarding things that actually help you complete the objective. E.g., "Hold the ball for 50 seconds or more"

[The def star]

38 minutes ago, legend said:

 

 

If you play 6 matches a day which is a big time sink, that would still be 100 days to finish a battle pass. A little less from weekly challenges you complete, but that still feels way too long. I'm basically guaranteed to never be able to get upper-level battle pass rewards.

 

 

For the kind of challenges, I hope they also bucket them into being game-type specific and regarding things that actually help you complete the objective. E.g., "Hold the ball for 50 seconds or more"

I think the difference is that with the Halo battle passes is that they don't expire. Once you buy them you can complete them at your own pace. The games been out for about 2 weeks and am at level 28. I have been splitting my time with Forza, MLB The Show 21 and Battlefield. I should hit 100 way before the next battle pass comes out.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I'll say this: I'm far more pleased that a sci-fi shooter has captured the multiplayer "zeitgeist" (at least for the time being) than one of the other real-life "militaristic" ones.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

23 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Halo Infinite's head of design promises progression fixes are 'top of the list'

WWW.VG247.COM

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Halo Infinite's head of design “feels everyone’s pain” and will be making sure progression is altered as 343's latest game continues to court controversy.

 

 

 

 

22 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

To be fair the rewards aren’t really great either. So it takes a long time to unlock a pile of meh at the moment haha

 

17 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I don’t pay any attention to leveling and perks. I’m surprised it is such a big deal.

I think Halo’s problem is it seemed to take a similar approach as CO with the Battle Pass and getting more XP from challenges than actually completing matches. 
 

the problem is COD is constantly giving you that dopamine hit. You rank up, you rank up tour gun, you rank up your sight, you unlock a badge for kills/headshots. All of which makes you feel like you’re moving the needle. And there’s lifetime challenges and milestones that give you XP too. Plus they have a bunch of daily challenges and the weekly challenges. 
 

Halo only has the one thing to progress that takes the longest, the battle pass, with only the one real way of leveling it up, the weekly challenges. The challenges the way they are make the game feel like more of a chore list, where you need to bounce around from playlist to play list and hope RNG gives you the exact Gametype you need. 
 

 

There also just simply isn’t enough to unlock. Too much of the battle pass and event pass are just challenge swap tokens and XP boosts. This game feels like it has both less customization options and less unlockables than Halo Reach. 
 

it really didn’t even need to be mind blowing either. If at account lvl 1 you have no real visual customization options. Then as you lvl up you unlock armor colors, you unlock prosthetic limbs, you unlock emblems, you unlock name backgrounds, weapon skins, etc. The Battle Pass should be adding to what you’re already unlocking, not be the only thing you have to unlock. 

[JPDunks4]

1 minute ago, The def star said:

I think the difference is that with the Halo battle passes is that they don't expire. Once you buy them you can complete them at your own pace. The games been out for about 2 weeks and am at level 28. I have been splitting my time with Forza, MLB The Show 21 and Battlefield. I should hit 100 way before the next battle pass comes out.

 

Yeah, and if this implementation was put in from Day 1, you'd prob be Lvl 35+.  The time to complete the pass shouldn't be much of an issue anymore, even for more casual players.

 

Another quick fix would be, weekly challenges don't expire, and you can go back and complete previous weeks.  Even if they remove the "Ultimate Challenge" and weekly reward, at least leave up the weekly challenges for the XP.  This is a big issue, because if you miss a couple weeks of game time, it leaves you way behind on potential XP gains.  With non expiring Battle Passes it's not as big a deal, but it still creates a feeling of FOMO and feeling like you need to login each week or else you'll miss out on a lot of XP, which they claimed they didn't want.

 

Apex has this issue with its Battle Passes for a lot of seasons.  If you missed a bunch of weeks, it become damn near impossible to finish a battle pass because you'd get easy Battle Pass Levels just from playing daily and weekly.  If you missed a bunch of weeks, making those levels up after the fact with the XP system alone would take an eternity.  You could do every weekly challenge, and still only hit Lvl 60 something, and would rely on all the Daily/Weekly Levels, plus XP gains for the rest.  Luckily they've pretty much corrected this in the past 3 or so seasons.

[JPDunks4]

3 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

There also just simply isn’t enough to unlock. Too much of the battle pass and event pass are just challenge swap tokens and XP boosts. This game feels like it has both less customization options and less unlockables than Halo Reach. 
 

it really didn’t even need to be mind blowing either. If at account lvl 1 you have no real visual customization options. Then as you lvl up you unlock armor colors, you unlock prosthetic limbs, you unlock emblems, you unlock name backgrounds, weapon skins, etc. The Battle Pass should be adding to what you’re already unlocking, not be the only thing you have to unlock. 

 

I'm pretty sure I read that with most of these types of games, launching is priority one for the entire team, even the Live Service team.  Cosmetics, and a bunch of other things typically aren't fully ramped up until after launch.  This seems to have been true of every singe Live Service game like this.  First few seasons, the cosmetics and unlocks are underwhelming, then each season they add more and more, and things vastly improve.

 

I remember the articles about Apex after Season 1, and how the game would be dead because of how lackluster the Battle Pass was, and how player counts were falling off, ect.  Halo, to its credit, at least had an Event, even if its implemented poorly, that has other unlocks on top of the Battle Pass right away.  I think they have a Christmas event coming up too with more cosmetic unlocks.

 

One issue with Halo is the 6 months of Season 1.  That's an eternity in the gaming space, and if they claim they can't make big changes or have any big updates, new maps/modes ect, before Season 2 in May, the game could definitely falter and lose a lot of players before them.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

16 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

 

I'm pretty sure I read that with most of these types of games, launching is priority one for the entire team, even the Live Service team.  Cosmetics, and a bunch of other things typically aren't fully ramped up until after launch.  This seems to have been true of every singe Live Service game like this.  First few seasons, the cosmetics and unlocks are underwhelming, then each season they add more and more, and things vastly improve.

 

I remember the articles about Apex after Season 1, and how the game would be dead because of how lackluster the Battle Pass was, and how player counts were falling off, ect.  Halo, to its credit, at least had an Event, even if its implemented poorly, that has other unlocks on top of the Battle Pass right away.  I think they have a Christmas event coming up too with more cosmetic unlocks.

 

One issue with Halo is the 6 months of Season 1.  That's an eternity in the gaming space, and if they claim they can't make big changes or have any big updates, new maps/modes ect, before Season 2 in May, the game could definitely falter and lose a lot of players before them.

for a new franchise that makes sense. Halo isn’t new. Now maybe they’re having to remake every little thing exclusively for Infinite. But it almost feels like they may have held made a bunch of stuff and held it back for Battle Passes, and most of it on the Premium track. Because it’s not like the armor you can unlock for season 1 are brand new designs. 
 

For example Halo Reach released with 21 different helmets for Spartans, and each helmet had like 2-3 add-on bits to further customize the look. Then there were also chest pieces, shoulders, knee guards, wrists, utilities, visor colors, armor effects, firefight voices, and armors for the Elite characters. 
 

there’s designs and ideas out there that they could have had a big head start with more to unlock than just the battle pass. It’s not like they haven’t had time either. It was 3 years between Halo 3 and Reach, and they also made ODST. It’s been 6 years since Halo 5, and they’ve done nothing else. 
 

Unless the full game comes with a big drop of unlockables and an account progression and rank up system, I think we’re going to see the entire legacy of Halo’s armor variants drip fed to us season over season. Which feels like a cheap and lazy way out. And kind of disappointing. 

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, legend said:

If you play 6 matches a day which is a big time sink

 

Not really. Games go pretty quickly and they are fun and make you want to keep playing. If you don't want to play 6 games of this in one sitting you probably don't enjoy it much.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[legend]

1 hour ago, The def star said:

I think the difference is that with the Halo battle passes is that they don't expire. Once you buy them you can complete them at your own pace. The games been out for about 2 weeks and am at level 28. I have been splitting my time with Forza, MLB The Show 21 and Battlefield. I should hit 100 way before the next battle pass comes out.

 

Then you must be doing a lot of additional weekly challenges, because it's only been 50xp per game until now. Maybe you are getting better challenges than I have, but I usually don't bother with them because they ask me to play modes (e.g.,, fiesta) that I don't won't to play or use weapons I really don't want to use.

 

42 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Not really. Games go pretty quickly and they are fun and make you want to keep playing. If you don't want to play 6 games of this in one sitting you probably don't enjoy it much.

 

Yes really. 6 games under their new system is 1000 xp which is 1 level. If you *average* 6 games per day (that means some days you may play a lot and other times maybe none at all) it will take you on the order of 100 days for a battle pass -- less depending on how often you get points from their weekly challenges. (Actually, it could be worse based on your exact distribution -- compensating for more games on one day instead of multiple days gives you less than spreading out your games across the whole week.)

 

The Bungie Halos are my favorite FPS series of all time and I'm optimistic about this one, but that doesn't mean I can just play Halo all the time.  I'm not in college anymore.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

12 minutes ago, legend said:

Yes really. 6 games under their new system is 1000 xp which is 1 level. If you *average* 6 games per day (that means some days you may play a lot and other times maybe none at all) it will take you on the order of 100 days for a battle pass -- less depending on how often you get points from their weekly challenges.

 

The Bungie Halos are my favorite FPS series of all time and I'm optimistic about this one, but that doesn't mean I can just play Halo all the time.  I'm not in college anymore.

100 days isn’t too bad, definitely better than now, but on its own could be better still. Seasons should normally be around 90 days, and if you do weekly challenges they’re worth 250-500 a pop depending on which ones you do. But I do think they can do better. 
 

One place would be the challenges themselves. Some of these “weekly” challenges should be daily challenges, with weekly challenges being things that might normally take you multiple play sessions to do. Like 150 kills, or 20 games, or 10 minutes of accumulated ball holding time, etc. 

 

You shouldn’t need to feel like you have to play every day and do every weekly challenge to complete a battle pass within its season. Premium Passes being able to last forever shouldn’t exist because it is impossible to complete a pass in a given season unless you’re a super dedicated, hardcore player. 

[Keyser_Soze]

24 minutes ago, legend said:

The Bungie Halos are my favorite FPS series of all time and I'm optimistic about this one, but that doesn't mean I can just play Halo all the time.  I'm not in college anymore.

 

Well if you're not playing all the time battle passes in general aren't for you because you need to dedicate time to doing them. It just so happens this one is different since it stays indefinitely but in general the argument, "You have to play so much" is a moot point for people who don't have time to play so much.

[legend]

31 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

100 days isn’t too bad, definitely better than now, but on its own could be better still. Seasons should normally be around 90 days, and if you do weekly challenges they’re worth 250-500 a pop depending on which ones you do. But I do think they can do better. 
 

One place would be the challenges themselves. Some of these “weekly” challenges should be daily challenges, with weekly challenges being things that might normally take you multiple play sessions to do. Like 150 kills, or 20 games, or 10 minutes of accumulated ball holding time, etc. 

 

You shouldn’t need to feel like you have to play every day and do every weekly challenge to complete a battle pass within its season. Premium Passes being able to last forever shouldn’t exist because it is impossible to complete a pass in a given season unless you’re a super dedicated, hardcore player. 

 

Adding additional daily challenges (that ideally do not detract from playing to win the game) worth more XP would definitely help.

 

25 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Well if you're not playing all the time battle passes in general aren't for you because you need to dedicate time to doing them. It just so happens this one is different since it stays indefinitely but in general the argument, "You have to play so much" is a moot point for people who don't have time to play so much.

 

I disagree! Saying this feature is only for people who are dedicated to playing all the time is an arbitrary restriction that doesn't have to exist and I might even go as far as to say bad game design. Game design is usually meant to be based around continual rewards. A good system would continually reward you for your time, which implicitly means people who are more dedicated simply get a larger sum of rewards.

 

There's also business incentive for that: you want as many people paying for your battlepass as possible, not just the few hardcore who play a bunch every day.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

3 hours ago, legend said:

 

Adding additional daily challenges (that ideally do not detract from playing to win the game) worth more XP would definitely help.

I feel like all challenges in games should encourage proper play. Such as challenges for objective game types that aim a player toward playing the objective, and without encouraging wreck-less play. Like I was not a fan of the challenge for getting a kill as the ball carrier. Sure it can happen organically, but challenges like that encourage people to grab the ball and run at the enemy like an idiot. 
 

Right now, I’m also not a fan of challenges that require kills with a specific weapon, unless it is BR, AR, and Sidekick, as you spawn with those. I don’t need my teammates running around the map looking for bulldog or needler just to complete a challenge and seemingly ignoring all else. 

[legend]

58 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I feel like all challenges in games should encourage proper play. Such as challenges for objective game types that aim a player toward playing the objective, and without encouraging wreck-less play. Like I was not a fan of the challenge for getting a kill as the ball carrier. Sure it can happen organically, but challenges like that encourage people to grab the ball and run at the enemy like an idiot. 
 

Right now, I’m also not a fan of challenges that require kills with a specific weapon, unless it is BR, AR, and Sidekick, as you spawn with those. I don’t need my teammates running around the map looking for bulldog or needler just to complete a challenge and seemingly ignoring all else. 

 

Yeah I completely agree with all that.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

How the ‘Halo Infinite’ campaign changed during the year-long delay - The Washington Post

WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

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Zeta Halo was a lonelier place one year ago, says Joseph Staten, the franchise's original director.

 

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In August 2020, Xbox announced the bad news: “Halo Infinite,” the killer app for the new Xbox Series consoles and the publisher’s Game Pass online subscription service, was going to be delayed to 2021.

 

This decision came after the first gameplay reveal failed to impress players with its surprisingly flat visuals and storytelling. Shortly afterward, Joseph Staten, who wrote the series when he worked for its original developer, Bungie, called up his friend Bonnie Ross, general manager for 343 Industries, Microsoft’s in-house Halo studio that made “Halo Infinite.” Staten’s casual offer to help the “Halo Infinite” team quickly became official, and he returned to the Halo franchise to help steer the project, primarily its single-player campaign, to a better place. The result? “Halo Infinite’s” campaign now feels like an expansion of Halo’s most universally adored campaigns, the same gameplay fans love about the series just at a larger scale.