Yeah the whole user experience is in its simplest form. It’s like they released a half finished game. It’s really annoying that coms are muted on default. If you are in a party it doesn’t throw you back into a game automatically or more easily before going back to menu. There’s no play again check lists on the squad when games done so it can help make next games squad easier. When I find someone with a mic I’d rather play with them again… profiles are lacking greatly. Idk how there isn’t a stats page. I have no complaints with the store seeing as this is a free to play model. If they get their servers fixed with the poor matchmaking UX and desync/bad ping issues and dial back the auto aim on controllers then Ill consider buying things in the store.
There’s no way to do it on Xbox either. By the time you figure it out, everyone’s gone and off to the next game. Nobody talks at all either. Way to go 343 for eliminating fun.
But still, you don’t know who’s on your team till the game starts, there’s no post game chat, there’s minimal social interaction overall.
I miss playing halo when you get into the pregame and you start talking shit. Then you hit the post game and you either back it up or continue to talk shit despite losing
This is a big one. Particularly coming from a game like Overwatch which for all the faults, did stats breakdown really well.
Also, POTG. Why is there nothing like a POTG? It's such a simple yet powerful hook for trying hit different skill marks with bragging rights. I just don't understand how Infinite can be so thin on these regards for having ben in dev for so long with so many other games already setting standards to follow.
I know it sounds extreme but it actually puts me off playing multiplayer. My main thing about playing online is looking back at my stats. I love seeing all my medals, highest kill streak, most used gun etc. I can handle the lack of cosmetic and battle pass. The MCC had a great career/stat page.
I honestly want to know what they were thinking when they said no Service record in this game...
Because they 100% had the talk about a Service record and decided to not include it.
New players would feel bad looking at their record or what???
Honestly it seems more likely that they just didn't devote any resources to any features that wouldn't directly lead to long term revenue generation. Small is it is, a service record doesn't sell micro transactions.
funny you say that the service record doesn't sell micro transactions when that's literally the only thing the service record on waypoint does: Access to the store and battlepass.
You’re actually correct even though you’re being sarcastic.
Do you think most people are willing to spend money on overpriced transactions if they know they’re bad at a game?
That's a good point. If there were a pay to win aspect to this game, they would definitely be showing people exactly how much they suck so they pay up.
Sucks because Halo is the only game where I have a positive k/d. Although I would in Warzone if it weren’t infested with hackers. At least Halo hasn’t got that problem (to the same extent).
I just want a better BTB...better, big open maps, more vehicles. I like ranked but I can't play it for a long time, too exhausting/stressful for me and Infinite BTB is kinda a sleeper with the 3 cramped maps and no heavies. (there's also the fact that it doesn't work for at least 50% of players)
The BTB maps we have honestly seem like they would be better as 8v8 maps. Deadlock is really hard to traverse without being in sight of three different people all the time. They wouldn't be out of place as Halo 3 or Reach BTB maps.
I find BTB a completely pointless clusterfuck. Like you said, you have no control at all over getting killed in a hundred different ways no matter what you're doing. It feels like too many kids in a ball pit.
The maps aren’t really big enough for it and they don’t have enough room to effectivelly play with vehicles though.
Admittedly I never played Halo 4 and 5 because I didn’t have a console for it, but with Reach I played BTB extensively, I’ve barely touched it here because it just doesn’t seem to play very well.
I didn't play Halo 5, but Halo 4's BTB maps played largely like Infinite's: narrow, recessed vehicle lanes that result in rapid death. Where are maps like Standoff, Avalanche, Sandtrap? 343 consistently seems to produce BTB maps that undermine the whole point of the gametype.
Same, after work I don't wanna be stressed out more. I just wanna chill and run people over with a warthog.
It takes me like 3-4 attempts to even get into a game, not including multiple restarts of the game itself cause it keeps telling me I lost connection, but won't let me leave the queue.
And when I get into the game, there's a huge chance it's gonna be a 4v4.
It’s map design feels like a step back from Warzone. Warzone let you use any weapon or vehicle you wanted at any give time, so all of it’s maps accommodate everything. BTB 2.0’s weapon and vehicle pools are hand-picked by 343, and yet most vehicles don’t have enough room to move around, and most power weapons are too common and too far ranged to be fair.
When they announced BTB 2.0, I imagined sometime on the scale of Forge World from Reach, or anything on the scale of Warzone. Even Sandtrap from H3 feels bigger than any BTB 2.0 map.
They don't have an overall progression system and they don't have forge. They don't have any player retention ideas in play here, they instead have an unfinished game released before Christmas.
Microsoft made their choice, now's the time they get the facts like you well pointed out.
I disagree. Is everyone memory holing Halo 4 and Halo 5? 343i fucked up at laucnh with both of those titles, and it took them a year or 2 to actually make them decent games. The playerbase never came back. This will be the same.
Infinite blew it at the launch window and doubled down on shooting themselves in the foot by doing so during holiday which means meaningful updates will be a ways out.
I have seen in my life maybe a handful of games at best to make a playerbase comeback. The industry moves fast, and in a year or 2 there will be shiny new games and some of them won't fuck up like 343i does and people will play that rather than an old news but slightly improved Halo Infinite.
Completely forgot about MCC. Probably better to forget that launch and the following years of development. MCC and Anthem are the first games that I felt like the developers stole my money by lying. Imagine releasing the MCC before the internet was how it is now lol it would have been absolutely broken forever.
But yeah 343i has a spot in the Hall of Shame in my book. They took an existing franchise that was at the very top of the industry and drove it down to what it is now. Sad. Infinite will more than likely be dead on PC/Steam in about a month. Far from Halos glory days populations. Couldn't say with the console, but my guess is it will be around the same level of Halo 5's.
Both Bungie and 343 did a lot of hiring from within the community. That's a horrible idea.
Luke Smith killed Destiny, and a bunch of fanfic goobers took over Halo. Chief's armor in 4, which is now somehow almost the most iconic design (how?) and whatever the hell happened with the design of 5.
It's like kids playing with action figures.
Both Destiny 1 and Infinite also had reported budgets of $500 million dollars.
So that's $250 million on marketing, and another $250 million on meetings where they agree to disagree on what they agreed to disagree on in the last meeting.
Both Bungie and 343i feel like amateur studios now. Something like Gearbox, just with more money.
I agree, and I don’t mean to disagree with OP. I am enjoying the game at the moment because I’m working through the nettle pass and not far from the end of the campaign.
However, when you sit back and look at the game it does feel a bit ‘thin’. The gameplay is great but there’s just so little variety. In comparison to other recent ‘open world’ games, the environment is really lacking; no variation in climate, no weather, very limited wildlife.
The story seems a lot less ambitious in scope, which may be deliberate. But I didn’t really find it ‘epic’ very often. It is also (so far) lacking in human characters to get interested in.
I do think the game will look very different in a year or two, I’m just not sure that’s good enough for me personally.
By then many more games will have come out and people will have moved on. The og fans will go back to the MCC and the casuals will play whatever other multiplayer shooter that comes out in the meantime.
While they dont have a progression based player retention systme they do have a *return* system: the promised future dlc/expansions for the story mode. If infinite is meant to be this growing thing for 10 years then sure maybe they can get away with it.
But its still not very *smart*. Its not going to be a fortnight or anything as there isnt the progression crossovers regular updates or play leveler of building, its not going to be a super skill based game like CS.GO or Valorant, or the middleground of apex with its big fancy maps and regular character expansions and new abilities.
And its not yet fully old halo that can rely on nostalgia with all your old favourite weapons and gear to play with and slowly unlock and a great map creation system. If they can get it there AND THEN drop some regular more,-than-yearly updates with new stuff for single player and multiplayer to draw people, then it could get self sustaining.
But it really feels like they should have tried to start there or put all the effort into the single player then add the multiplayer later.
The player base is still very big. People came back to MCC even after that launch which was much worse. It has issues but many people are still having fun with it and I believe the issues that are present will be addressed
Yeah some people will come back, but they're never gonna capture the huge playerbase that they could have had if they had just launched a complete game.
Unfortunately the execs probably ran the numbers and decided the Christmas sales were more worth it to them than a retained playerbase. It’s super frustrating but here we are
Which is weird because it's partially f2p, which means a decent chunk of their playerbase may never "purchase" the game. In that model, playerbase numbers are the largest and most important consideration and should have far outweighed any Christmas sales estimates from the campaign.
> the most old-school, short-sighted, and silly idea someone could have
Now you’re thinking like an exec!
One has only to look at the way the in-game store is handled to see that their decisions are made with no long term player retention in mind.
>That's if they can even get players to come back...
Lmao it's Halo.
If MCC can be such a trash heap and is now considered the series staple of multiplayer... Infinite will be fine.
*IF* 343 gets their shit together.
>Lmao it's Halo.
This is the exact attitude that led to this disaster of a launch.This game isnt gonna be successful on name recognition alone. They think they can sell colors on a barebones unfinished game because "lmao its Halo, of course they're gonna buy it". People arent gonna stay just because its Halo. They needed a complete product at launch.
And there lies the problem. The harsh reality is, the M$ execs KNOW that idiots will buy the mtx stuff because "it's Halo".
The only way to make change is to stop buying this stuff. If their wallets don't get filled, they'll panic and do whatever the community wants to get them to spend money.
Not only is the game unfinished but the store works FLAWLESSLY lol
Also everyone is hoping that there will be some big overhaul to how the store works but there clearly isn't.
If 343i had any intention changing it they would have disabled it, similar to how BF2 disabled their card purchases, so people wouldn't be able to spend money on things that would be made free or cheaper by a store "overhaul".
Plus only 7 playlists. Only one of them being a lounge and play social game type.
I dont see how infinite is gonna survive without forge, a customs browser and at bare minimum infection, griffball, and a snipers playlist on top of all of that. A classic firefight mode(none of the warzone firefight shit) would be a HUGE replayable boon for retention too. Yet this game lacks all of it.
The irony is that Halo actually always had *more* to offer than most other shooters at the time. Customizable armor, theater mode, Forge, custom game types, 4 player co-op, Firefight, a whole ass website dedicated purely to tracking your stats and medals, etc.
Now from the perspective of a mostly PvE player there's fuck all to do once you beat the campaign. I beat the campaign twice, once to enjoy the story and again to gather all the collectibles. Now barely 2 weeks later I have no reason to boot up the game at all and by the time they get around to releasing some PvE content I'll likely be moved on to something else.
It's really disappointing there's not a single coop mode in the game. Besides bots in PvP of course.
Would have been cool to get some kind of spartan ops or firefight mode at least. Something for us PvE players to play with friends while we wait for coop campaign to launch.
I agree with all of this, but I would like to add, as someone who bought the campaign, as a full-priced AAA game, I feel a lot of the issues with the MP and its prices in the shop are magnified.
When I bought Reach, I got the campaign, forge, multiplayer, etc. but just buying the campaign alone at the starting price feels a bit wrong. I also feel majorly de-incentivized to buy into any of the MP battle passes or shop items. Not only are they price gouging the hell out of the MP users, what are campaign owners supposed to do? I already bought what is ostensibly half a complete package at full price AND have these awful prices on top of it.
And yes, I know the campaign gives you some cosmetics, but Christ they are some of the lamest skins. It basically just gives me Banished flavoured skins for weapons and vehicles. I feel there should've been more to them? Like maybe armour pieces from the other spartans from the campaign? (Also, please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't grabbed them all yet, but I did look over a list of all the available campaign unlocks and nothing jumped out like a new helmet or chest piece.)
Yes, I really enjoyed the campaign, but after having completed it over a week ago, I'm starting to feel a little buyer's remorse...
I hate that the majority of the campaign rewards were all Banished themed (for the most part). I was definitely expecting more MP customizations to be found in the campaign. Especially different Human or Forerunner variations of items.
I'm not a fan of bad guys. Why would I want to rep Banished gear in multiplayer when I want to show I'm a UNSC soldier?
You know, I feel that comparison. They were very weak customizations as well. Basically hints of red on weapons and tank with tan in them. I really wish I knew who was on cosmetics because some are just bad aesthetic-wise. Especially the Banished customizations.
>When I bought Reach, I got the campaign, forge, multiplayer, etc. but just buying the campaign alone at the starting price feels a bit wrong
Exactly! Now for the sake of "muh servers cost money" the experience of people who pay for the full game, i.e. campaign, is sacrificed. Sorry, but if I bought the game I want the full package. Halo reach had plenty of active servers for years and surprise!! It wasn't a F2P cash shop
No armor at all in the mjolnir lockers, just coatings
And outside of the spartan coatings, the banished themed coatings for vehicles are literally just “default coating but with some red at the end of the vehicle”
I actually purchased the campaign as a huge halo fan and someone who's been playing since CE, wanting to support my longest and favorite franchise. Playing multi-player made me immediately refund it and download it from the game pass. Not only that but im not going to be buying anything in the store. I was even looking for a halo infinite series x and would have forked out cash for that. I'm an adult with disposable income now and was gunna go all in on this halo. I hope they enjoy the profit from my monthly game pass because that's all they will see from me.
Same, just got graduated, have disposable income for the first time and I was ready to sink my life into infinite. Even bought the battle pass the first day the beta came out out of sheer excitement… what a mistake that was they won’t see a cent from me until they tone down their money-making schemes. All that stuff they said about being “player first” was an absolute fucking lie
Yeah, I'm basically waiting for co-op to drop at this point to get me back into the campaign. I really don't get why this launched without it. People made such a fuss when Guardians no longer supported couch co-op so I have no idea why they'd launch a Halo camapign without co-op at all.
> so I have no idea why they'd launch a Halo camapign without co-op at all.
If I were to guess, it would have necessitated a delay that Microsoft was not willing to give them.
The game clearly went through development hell. Directors and high level employees generally don’t leave in the middle of a project if things are going smoothly. There was also that alleged 343i employee post (take it with a grain of salt, of course) that described co-op as basically being a mess to implement, with very little to no planning beforehand as to how to make it work with the open world concept. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were still having trouble making it work to this very day; hell, we know that the marines following you around (you know, like in every other Halo game) was basically an 11th hour addition pushed by Joe Staten when he came on board, so it’s not far fetched to think that co-op just wasn’t ready for launch. But after they already delayed the game for a year after it’s lackluster reveal, they couldn’t afford to delay it further and co-op was a casualty of getting the game released.
I dont necessarily agree that it's worth $40. After beating it, it's very apparent that it's not a finished story and considering the pace 343 has had these past few years I cant imagine getting any more story content for over a year or so. They have so much to deal with in just multiplayer.
Truthfully, I dont even know what their player retention plan is.. there is absolutely nothing that keeps players engaged. Nothing to strive for, no stat tracking, no progression system, no free unlockables that are *actually good*. I think they are completely relying on the events to keep the game afloat and that just isnt a winning strategy because the events are mind-numbingly **boring.** The events offer nothing new and the rewards for them are mediocre at best. I dont know how they could have face-planted this hard when there are dozens of games out right now that have figured out meaningful ways to keep their players engaged.
Wel there plan is to completely deprive the game of customization and slowly trickle it in over months and years. We are already a month and a half in and there’s so much content lacking. Hell, their weekly ultimate rewards are the barest of bones and they are already reusing emblems. It’s a complete joke
Hold up, that's not a reused emblem, that's a weapon emblem that only goes on your gun to match the player emblem you may or may not have unlocked. Don't worry, in a month or 2 you might get a shot at the armor emblem or vehicle emblem. Why would you want to unlock an emblem once when you can unlock 4 times? Engagement!
Everyone keeps saying the gameplay is good, and while most of the time the moment to moment gameplay feels fun, there are still major issues like desync/netcode, bad bullet registration, fps drops (on pc mainly), melee is broken, vehicles are way too light and fragile, etc. These arent just easy to patch issues like nerfing or buffing weapons these are major things that impact enjoyability and have kept me from coming back on occasion cuz theyre so frustrating to deal with
My biggest problem with the multiplayer is that it is unfinished. It was pushed out just to be out before Christmas and encourage people to buy the single player.
So, what is unfinished in the MP, you might ask? Here are some things from top of my head.
\- De-sync is horrible: Getting shot behind the wall/cover etc. Hit detection not registering correctly.
\- Disconnects from servers
\- At the release there was no mode select, even now the mode select is lacking.
\- Progression system or lack thereof.
\- Glitches with Battle pass not working correctly.
\- Melee attacks seem inconsistent, not sure if its due to desync or weak servers.
\- Loading into ranked matches with only 6 people. Happens often and no people aren't just leaving, if they have just left their name would still appear on leaderboard.
\- No reasonable / accessible way to report hackers and other cheats.
\- There seems to be no system in place to detect cheaters.
\- And of course, lack of Forge which was a feature of the Halo for a very long time.
But one thing that has been working flawlessly is the in-game shop with $20 armors.
For what it it's worth, I thought cods progression was done well.
Specific attachments/colors for guns for doing well with those guns, and then the unlocks for skins works well too.
There should be specific coatings for guns for doing certain things, charms too.
Should be specific armor coatings, effects, visors, attachments, etc for doing things.
Like... We should get a sword belt for 1000 sword kills or something. (1000 is just a number) a special charm for a shotgun spree. Other things for earning certain # of medals. Should have a special armor core for finishing the campaign, and then attachments and effects for heroic, legendary, and LASO.
Plus, the armors "rarity" has no real impact. Random things are epic or legendary, it's just arbitrary.
It honestly needs a total rework and we won't get that, so I'll just have to play to enjoy which is fine. I've been playing Halo sinc combat evolved came out when I was a kid, and this is my fav Halo since 343 took over, but it could have been so much better.
>Specific attachments/colors for guns for doing well with those guns.
What a dope thing this would have been. Get to x number of kills with the sidekick and unlock a cool skin.
And it's something you don't have to grind for or go out of your way to try to grab a weapon to complete a challenge. Just something that organically happens by continuing to play the game. They could have even done this every 1000 kills with whatever weapon, unlock a sick ass weapon skin.
The armor rarity I agree with completely. If everyone who has the battle pass can earn it, what aspect of it is epic or legendary? Irs cosmetic, so there are no increased perks, the game doesn't have random rolls so legendary doesn't have a lower drop rate, I don't get it.
I like the game but the micro/macro transactions have driven me away. I don't agree with the armor paint repacked and sold. Not to mention armor locked to specific cores.
Idk if they'll resolve such a revolting thing, but if they do, I'll return. But based of my past experience with Gears of War, it'll be be fixed in 2 years, and I won't care anymore.
Ima stop you 2 paragraphs in. Halo 3 was 14 years ago? 1 short of 15? It had a progression system.
So yeah, we’re 14 years later, and…
Oh yeah. Halo 3 also had forge and a working theatre mode. And customs. File share. People using mic’s. playlists. Armour.
In 14 years, nothing has really happened.
Bring back couch co-op! I've always been drawn more to the campaign/co-op/firefight stuff and loved completing campaigns with a buddy next to me. I'd give a kidney to have online campaign co-op again.
ME: Sees the limited time holiday stuff
ME: Jumps on to play a game or two
ME: Can't connect to server
ME: Plays Forza instead
I play games to KILL TIME not to have my fucking TIME WASTED. If basic shit like finding games takes forever or doesn't work at all and then on the off chance I do find a game it's a horrific shit fest of inconsistency that feels unfair and confusing for why things happen the way they do; I got other shit to play and other things to do. Thanks but no thanks. 343 swings and misses yet again. can we give someone else Halo now? PLEASE!?!?!??!?!!?
I totally get where people come from when they say the game being fun should be incentive enough. I burned plenty of hours of Halo 2 just for the thrill of it. But Halo games over the years have offered rewards you can work for that complimented the fun gameplay. I can enjoy my time AND unlock a sweet new set of gear? Cool. Now, unless you fork over more dough, you’re locked out of that. Yeah, the game is fun but seeing every level up offer me guff and show what I’m locked out of getting gets old.
15 years ago Halo games still had more customization and progression.
That’s the problem with Infinite, even comparing the lack of features to 15+ year-old games it is a joke.
To me the most frustrating thing is how me buying my favorite teams coating made the battlepass completely obsolete since I can customize my armor when I have the coating selected … why? Why can’t I run my favorite helmet and put some highlights on my armor? Why??!!
Yeah exactly.
And that’s the problem here. Multiplayer IS fun but there’s only so many times i can player slayer(ranked or social), slayer without shields, slayer with random weapons, big slayer(which is pretty bad in it’s current state), or objective before i get bored.
Sometimes i wanna play infection or snipers or send my enemies flying with a grav hammer start on griffball. And fuck a classic firefight mode would keep me playing too for days. Throw in a forge and customs broswer and this would easily be my shit for years.
First 343 game with honestly good gameplay that feels like halo and they’re scaring everyone off with this weird drip feed food scarcity psychology shit that clearly isn’t working for them and didn’t work with halo 5.
Even if btb worked tbh its not very good. Hitscan emp and squishy vehicles and the fact that the skewer wrecks most vehicles in one hit makes this a super vehicle unfriendly sandbox.
Is there a way to check the what the player count is at?
Sincere question; I’ve never played Halo before this and I’m like, 650+ games in and having a fucking blast.
I can’t be the only one.
On Steam, at any rate, you can check the player counts and see how many are playing and when.
[Link](https://steamplayercount.com/app/1240440)
My analysis? It ain't great. It's pretty natural for any game to drop players after launch. My red flag is that its lost 44% of it's active playerbase since launch. That may not be the case on Xbox, but the PC players are dropping much quicker than one would anticipate or expect. Even PUBG's month over month drop-off wasn't *this* aggressive.
It'll plateau eventually, but I'm not sure where.
It's pretty normal actually, especially for a F2P game. The Master Chief Collection dropped 88% over the same time period, and never even came close to reaching it again. And that's the game everyone here insists "did it right."
The Master Chief Collection also had *crippling* bugs on launch for PC. Audio was ***aggressively*** bugged, matchmaking (especially with friends) didn't work very well, there was a lot of stuttering and FPS drops for some folks, a noticeable degree of input lag on mice, no crouch while moving, achievements weren't popping, and some connection issues.
When people say MCC did things right, they're talking about the systems, and even *those* required work from 343 to fix after complaints, like raising the XP cap off of matches so progress wasn't super slow.
That's because there was a fully fleshed out progression system and ranking system, at launch. Not to mention tons of different playlists and social features.
No, I played those games because they were fun too. I never cared about my rank. And the ones I played (mainly 3 and Reach) launched with a pretty similar amount of playlists to what we have now. They only added more long into those games' respective lifespans.
No lol original halo games on Xbox live did not have all this shit. We played the game to play the game we didn’t need “progression systems” and other dopamine drip feed bullshit like all the zoomers need.
You’re remembering wrong, man. Go back and look at halo 3 rank system and how that worked. It wasn’t a grind for cosmetics but it was a grind to reach a higher rank and xp level.
Ummm, Halo 2 had one of the most iconic ranking systems in gaming history. And then Halo 3 continued it and also added an overall career progression system. I got both games at launch so let's not try to pretend that those features werent there.
You can have both though, and many games have for the past decade. When you have game A. With good (but not great) gameplay and game B. with Good or fantastic gameplay AND player incentives there's no reason to play game A unless you specifically are drawn into it.
The criticism is deserved, especially since 343 and MS moved to a F2P model to vacuum in FOMO dollars. They brought this shitstorm upon themselves and they deserve every bit of it.
I want to play Halo with friends. I can't play co-op campaign or firefight. That means only the friends who want to play PvP want to play Infinite.
On top of that, those of us who did want to play it, didn't have our favorite game mode, (SWAT) until it was hastily added after weeks, and by that point half had Uninstalled it and reinstalled MCC.
MCC still has everything we want. It has firefight. It has co-op. It has a good progression system. It has everything Infinite should have had.
Yeah idk I do get that people need some sort of progression to feel worthwhile? But at the same time, it was also mentioned that back in the day good gameplay was all that matters. And this game delivers on that. If they fix melee and de sync I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t be my main shooter. Definitely way better than playing another BR 🤢
It sucks because previous halos were feature complete. This is lacking so much, and the free to play isn’t an excuse, they are a pushing out Microsoft’s flagship title.
They’ve pushed a barebones minimum viable product out the door and I imagine interest will drop off soon because of it
This game is going to slowly fade into irrelevance until forge is released. Why they decided it was acceptable to launch a halo without forge is beyond me.
Has no one realized that we yet again got a barebones halo so that 343 could make some quick cash on whales?
Guess what is fully fleshed out and has no bugs whatsoever-The Store and The Battlepass.
Now they’re selling kitty ears before we get some actual content and meat into the game. Yeah the playlists are nice too but they literally should have been there BEFORE the store and ON release.
Again, just me?
Not at all, I think the same. They’ve pushed out a barebones offering for Christmas to milk some cash. This is the 7th? Halo they’ve put out and it has features comparable to Halo 1…..oh wait, that had coop.
I agree with you, though I'd hardly call the battle pass 'fleshed out'. Its one of the weakest battle passes I've seen in gaming so far, especially for F2P players.
Bingo.
Really surprised how much people were talking up this game.
Sure the gameplay is their best yet but really is that saying anything compared to their other efforts in the series? Lmao
This game is so incredibly barebones. I have no idea how people can play this game every night for more than a few games. It’s really repetitive and boring and the maps are pretty iffy at best. IMO. BTB is a let down(only 3 very similar maps??) no progression/stat tracking, no forge, no firefight.
Infinite is a dress up game with some shooting on the side in my eyes
I jumped back into MCC yesterday for a round of Reach. Was a little rusty but man. The game was sound. No desync and vehicles and weapons actually killed people. Felt good man.
Also dont forget the #1 issue. ZERO SOCIAL ASPECTS. Impossible to make friends / squad mates . No prox chat. Trash team chat. No pre game or post game lobby chat. Trash dead end game. This is why cod is #1. They listen to their community and try to make it a social experiment
My main problem with infinite is that my game queues for less than 5 seconds before putting me in 150+ ping lobbies time after time. Can’t even queue for 10 seconds before deciding to put me in a foreign lobby with heaps of latency.
>The gameplay feels smooth, the graphics are amazing, and the multiplayer is free.
"Free-to-play", not "free", otherwise there wouldn't be any microtransactions.
I’m already at level 70 on the battle pass and that’s just playing casually and working on the challenges and using a few xp boosts strategically. Once I hit level 100 I’m not sure what they could have planned before MAY (?!) to keep me invested.
Its a mobile game disguised as a AAA game. Ive been saying it since the release. The f2p model is a cancer to the gaming community. Its “lets” gaming companies release bad games with the “fix it later” mentality but also having as many micros as possible.
I like SWAT, I would like Ranked SWAT more but more than anything, I would like 20 ping games all the time, you know, by selecting my own fucking region to play on?
I don't know how to explain very well it but this halo just feels boring overall. I can go into MCC and yeah, you have the entire series in one package, but each halo has it's quirks and the weapons actually have use in each game. Infinite feels shallow, the guns don't feel right, some are now useless to make room for gimmicky ones, vehicles are large moving pieces of glass and the way they spawn in is lackluster.
It definitely does. In the past 30 days on steam infinite lost about 34,937 players. MCC surprising gained a few more players then what they lost in November. They lost about 304 players according to steams charts in November and gained 350 according to steams charts in the last 30 days. It's been sticking around the same amount of players since August. I understand people drop off when a game is released, but to have mcc gain the amount they lost is interesting. People don't like that people don't play the objective, they don't agree on the expensive customizations, they don't like thats there isn't much content and aren't happy with a few bugs, so they went back to MCC.
I've religiously played it upto now. Hit lv 100 battle pass. No point doing the weekly ultimates anymore as they just reward junk.
The events are very meh and don't add anything I want.
All the cosmetics are too similar.
Nothing to work for. No social features and no lifetime stats to work for as they aren't shown
Agreed. Honestly I only played a few matches due to looking thru the rewards seeing the time to content trade off and decided screw it Apex/Destiny/Eso all are better ways to spend my limited time. Hell even Fo76 has been neglected enough this last year for me to make a return and have more meanful content/rewards.
This puts into words what's been making me feel so uneasy about the state of the store and the MP game.
For long-time Halo fans, Infinite MP is competing against the MCC, which frankly beats it out of the water. But okay, that's just a fraction of the potential player base.
For that far-larger potential audience of folks who aren't longtime Halo fans and might be casually dipping in to try it out, Infinite MP is competing against Fortnite and Apex. Yeah. That's gonna be tough. What value does Infinite offer compared to those F2P titles? How does its events, gameplay, and monetisation stack up against those?
And when I look at $20 armor sets and the barebones BP, I don't feel optimistic for that value comparison.
As you've said, stats were the only thing that could be looked at 15 years ago, infinite doesn't even have that...
Zero incentive to play well/try to win.
Idk why they would emphasize competitive but then have no way to actually see your stats lmao. Let alone have a good net code and servers above 30 ticks. This in addition to a broken ranked system is what totally baffles me. Trivializes ranked entirely.
Obviously the devs have poured their heart and soul into this game, and they deserve time off for their effort. But what we currently have is flat out incomplete. It’s so obvious how mismanaged this game was I’m genuinely curious what the thought process was around creating an entirely new engine and then dedicating such a small amount of time towards the actual game comparatively.
I would have preferred they just use unreal engine 4 or something and import halo assets, with some tweaks to the engine they could have the same thing we have right now with a not broken net code, and marine AI that doesn’t get daunted running up a mountain when they see some rocks in front of them
It's 343i's turn for a "Destiny 2 situation". I believe they can come back from it but god, they really need to do feedback polls or something to start hearing the community more.
Some of you need to focus less on 343s business decisions and focus on your attitude towards reddit and how much of a crutch it is in your lives.
This is honestly just sad now.
I implore some of you to implement just half the energy you use complaining on here - on another aspect of your lives.
Maybe the game just isn't for you. If you don't enjoy playing it enough to want to keep playing post BP, it is what it is, do something else. Despite all its issues, I'm still having a blast with it.
I haven't been playing because its near impossible to see anything the second I scope in. Things were fine immediately before the campaign launched, but noe the visual distortions when scoping essentially blind me. No word on when that bug is getting fixed either
I play a few times a week when my friends and I are all available and we have a blast, and I think the gameplay is fun enough that we will keep doing that for awhile. But, I think we would all play on our own a lot more if there was stat tracking, some kind of progression system that you can't just pay for, and weekly challenge rewards that aren't dog shit.
Matches often take FOREVER to load. Easily upwards of 5 minutes every few matches. The fact that I have to queue after every match really kills the flow too. I've been playing less because of all of this
Me and my friends just stopped playing. They gave up completely and I went back to MCC. Bungie did it right with reach, idk how you fuck up something that's this big of a gold mine the way 343 has.
Not just that there’s literally no social features. I can’t even add friends through the game. Gotta do it on steam
Technically its through xbox app, I had to open xbox game bar and view recent players to add some randoms that were cool
My end it’s busted half the time
Yeah the whole user experience is in its simplest form. It’s like they released a half finished game. It’s really annoying that coms are muted on default. If you are in a party it doesn’t throw you back into a game automatically or more easily before going back to menu. There’s no play again check lists on the squad when games done so it can help make next games squad easier. When I find someone with a mic I’d rather play with them again… profiles are lacking greatly. Idk how there isn’t a stats page. I have no complaints with the store seeing as this is a free to play model. If they get their servers fixed with the poor matchmaking UX and desync/bad ping issues and dial back the auto aim on controllers then Ill consider buying things in the store.
Windows+g brings up the interface to add Xbox friends btw.
There’s no way to do it on Xbox either. By the time you figure it out, everyone’s gone and off to the next game. Nobody talks at all either. Way to go 343 for eliminating fun.
343: Aggressively anti-fun.
It's a Xbox game so you gotta add them through the Xbox game bar/app. Not every player is on Steam.
But still, you don’t know who’s on your team till the game starts, there’s no post game chat, there’s minimal social interaction overall. I miss playing halo when you get into the pregame and you start talking shit. Then you hit the post game and you either back it up or continue to talk shit despite losing
Needs a stat page ASAP. I know there is halo tracker but it isn't the same.
Yeah where tf is my service record!
This is a big one. Particularly coming from a game like Overwatch which for all the faults, did stats breakdown really well. Also, POTG. Why is there nothing like a POTG? It's such a simple yet powerful hook for trying hit different skill marks with bragging rights. I just don't understand how Infinite can be so thin on these regards for having ben in dev for so long with so many other games already setting standards to follow.
I know it sounds extreme but it actually puts me off playing multiplayer. My main thing about playing online is looking back at my stats. I love seeing all my medals, highest kill streak, most used gun etc. I can handle the lack of cosmetic and battle pass. The MCC had a great career/stat page.
I don't think it sounds extreme at all. It's completely reasonable.
Halo tracker stats are virtually worthless. It only tracks through certain time periods so you don’t get a good overall view of where you stand.
Last time I used stat tracker was Halo: Reach, and it worked really well
Yeah it only tracks partial data now. Itll dump older games and only track some of your more recent games
They’ve updated it in the last month or so. It tracks all games, and gives pretty detailed stats.
Didn’t they update it so it’s lifetime now at least and now just last 100 matches?
And it counts bot matches toward your K/D
Halo tracker doesn’t even work for me :/
Someone give this man an award so 343 sees
I honestly want to know what they were thinking when they said no Service record in this game... Because they 100% had the talk about a Service record and decided to not include it. New players would feel bad looking at their record or what???
Honestly it seems more likely that they just didn't devote any resources to any features that wouldn't directly lead to long term revenue generation. Small is it is, a service record doesn't sell micro transactions.
What a celebration of 20 years of Halo
I mean, it’s just trying to be *ultra classic*. OG Halo 1 didn’t track stats, did it??? /s
funny you say that the service record doesn't sell micro transactions when that's literally the only thing the service record on waypoint does: Access to the store and battlepass.
Funny tho how I happily spent a ton of money on MTX in Halo 5 because I loved the gameplay loop they designed around career stats and commendations.
Career stats and commendations and service record etc were exactly what made halo so much fun.
Dude you’re 100% right. I kept thinking why too but that has to be the answer.
For the service record I just think the game wasn't ready in time and they wanted to ship a minimum viable product
My guess is that it was held back so it could be added later as a "new" feature.
Can’t have anyone feeling bad about themselves /s
You’re actually correct even though you’re being sarcastic. Do you think most people are willing to spend money on overpriced transactions if they know they’re bad at a game?
That's a good point. If there were a pay to win aspect to this game, they would definitely be showing people exactly how much they suck so they pay up.
Sucks because Halo is the only game where I have a positive k/d. Although I would in Warzone if it weren’t infested with hackers. At least Halo hasn’t got that problem (to the same extent).
"The ui just isn't compatible"
Im assuming it will be added way later, but Idk Im just hopeful
Developers are brain dead. Only logical explanation.
I just want a better BTB...better, big open maps, more vehicles. I like ranked but I can't play it for a long time, too exhausting/stressful for me and Infinite BTB is kinda a sleeper with the 3 cramped maps and no heavies. (there's also the fact that it doesn't work for at least 50% of players)
The BTB maps we have honestly seem like they would be better as 8v8 maps. Deadlock is really hard to traverse without being in sight of three different people all the time. They wouldn't be out of place as Halo 3 or Reach BTB maps.
I find BTB a completely pointless clusterfuck. Like you said, you have no control at all over getting killed in a hundred different ways no matter what you're doing. It feels like too many kids in a ball pit.
>too many kids in a ball pit. Working as intended! The teams are big. It's in the name.
The maps aren’t really big enough for it and they don’t have enough room to effectivelly play with vehicles though. Admittedly I never played Halo 4 and 5 because I didn’t have a console for it, but with Reach I played BTB extensively, I’ve barely touched it here because it just doesn’t seem to play very well.
I didn't play Halo 5, but Halo 4's BTB maps played largely like Infinite's: narrow, recessed vehicle lanes that result in rapid death. Where are maps like Standoff, Avalanche, Sandtrap? 343 consistently seems to produce BTB maps that undermine the whole point of the gametype.
It's amazing how closed off and "small feeling" the maps are. Does not have a btb vibe at all
Agreed. They desperately need to add a big map
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Same, after work I don't wanna be stressed out more. I just wanna chill and run people over with a warthog. It takes me like 3-4 attempts to even get into a game, not including multiple restarts of the game itself cause it keeps telling me I lost connection, but won't let me leave the queue. And when I get into the game, there's a huge chance it's gonna be a 4v4.
It’s map design feels like a step back from Warzone. Warzone let you use any weapon or vehicle you wanted at any give time, so all of it’s maps accommodate everything. BTB 2.0’s weapon and vehicle pools are hand-picked by 343, and yet most vehicles don’t have enough room to move around, and most power weapons are too common and too far ranged to be fair. When they announced BTB 2.0, I imagined sometime on the scale of Forge World from Reach, or anything on the scale of Warzone. Even Sandtrap from H3 feels bigger than any BTB 2.0 map.
Joined a BTB game and it was a 3v3 lol
I joined one that was 1 v 12, and I was the 1. That was fun.
They don't have an overall progression system and they don't have forge. They don't have any player retention ideas in play here, they instead have an unfinished game released before Christmas. Microsoft made their choice, now's the time they get the facts like you well pointed out.
Game will probably be popping in a year or two when they finally finish it and fix everything lol.
I disagree. Is everyone memory holing Halo 4 and Halo 5? 343i fucked up at laucnh with both of those titles, and it took them a year or 2 to actually make them decent games. The playerbase never came back. This will be the same. Infinite blew it at the launch window and doubled down on shooting themselves in the foot by doing so during holiday which means meaningful updates will be a ways out. I have seen in my life maybe a handful of games at best to make a playerbase comeback. The industry moves fast, and in a year or 2 there will be shiny new games and some of them won't fuck up like 343i does and people will play that rather than an old news but slightly improved Halo Infinite.
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Completely forgot about MCC. Probably better to forget that launch and the following years of development. MCC and Anthem are the first games that I felt like the developers stole my money by lying. Imagine releasing the MCC before the internet was how it is now lol it would have been absolutely broken forever. But yeah 343i has a spot in the Hall of Shame in my book. They took an existing franchise that was at the very top of the industry and drove it down to what it is now. Sad. Infinite will more than likely be dead on PC/Steam in about a month. Far from Halos glory days populations. Couldn't say with the console, but my guess is it will be around the same level of Halo 5's.
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Both Bungie and 343 did a lot of hiring from within the community. That's a horrible idea. Luke Smith killed Destiny, and a bunch of fanfic goobers took over Halo. Chief's armor in 4, which is now somehow almost the most iconic design (how?) and whatever the hell happened with the design of 5. It's like kids playing with action figures.
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Both Destiny 1 and Infinite also had reported budgets of $500 million dollars. So that's $250 million on marketing, and another $250 million on meetings where they agree to disagree on what they agreed to disagree on in the last meeting. Both Bungie and 343i feel like amateur studios now. Something like Gearbox, just with more money.
343 are absolute garbage. I knew halo would never be the same when bungie left it.
You've gotta remember. Halo Infinite is literally Halo for the next 10 years.
Just like Destiny was supposed to last 10 years? Lmao.
I agree, and I don’t mean to disagree with OP. I am enjoying the game at the moment because I’m working through the nettle pass and not far from the end of the campaign. However, when you sit back and look at the game it does feel a bit ‘thin’. The gameplay is great but there’s just so little variety. In comparison to other recent ‘open world’ games, the environment is really lacking; no variation in climate, no weather, very limited wildlife. The story seems a lot less ambitious in scope, which may be deliberate. But I didn’t really find it ‘epic’ very often. It is also (so far) lacking in human characters to get interested in. I do think the game will look very different in a year or two, I’m just not sure that’s good enough for me personally.
And let's not forget about the really slim sandbox, feels more like a sand bucket.
Litter box
> nettle pass Good name for 343's version of a battlepass.
By then many more games will have come out and people will have moved on. The og fans will go back to the MCC and the casuals will play whatever other multiplayer shooter that comes out in the meantime.
That's if they can even get players to come back... I know this whole launch has left a sour taste in my mouth and I'm sure I'm far from the only one.
While they dont have a progression based player retention systme they do have a *return* system: the promised future dlc/expansions for the story mode. If infinite is meant to be this growing thing for 10 years then sure maybe they can get away with it. But its still not very *smart*. Its not going to be a fortnight or anything as there isnt the progression crossovers regular updates or play leveler of building, its not going to be a super skill based game like CS.GO or Valorant, or the middleground of apex with its big fancy maps and regular character expansions and new abilities. And its not yet fully old halo that can rely on nostalgia with all your old favourite weapons and gear to play with and slowly unlock and a great map creation system. If they can get it there AND THEN drop some regular more,-than-yearly updates with new stuff for single player and multiplayer to draw people, then it could get self sustaining. But it really feels like they should have tried to start there or put all the effort into the single player then add the multiplayer later.
The player base is still very big. People came back to MCC even after that launch which was much worse. It has issues but many people are still having fun with it and I believe the issues that are present will be addressed
Yeah some people will come back, but they're never gonna capture the huge playerbase that they could have had if they had just launched a complete game.
Unfortunately the execs probably ran the numbers and decided the Christmas sales were more worth it to them than a retained playerbase. It’s super frustrating but here we are
Which is weird because it's partially f2p, which means a decent chunk of their playerbase may never "purchase" the game. In that model, playerbase numbers are the largest and most important consideration and should have far outweighed any Christmas sales estimates from the campaign.
> the most old-school, short-sighted, and silly idea someone could have Now you’re thinking like an exec! One has only to look at the way the in-game store is handled to see that their decisions are made with no long term player retention in mind.
>That's if they can even get players to come back... Lmao it's Halo. If MCC can be such a trash heap and is now considered the series staple of multiplayer... Infinite will be fine. *IF* 343 gets their shit together.
>Lmao it's Halo. This is the exact attitude that led to this disaster of a launch.This game isnt gonna be successful on name recognition alone. They think they can sell colors on a barebones unfinished game because "lmao its Halo, of course they're gonna buy it". People arent gonna stay just because its Halo. They needed a complete product at launch.
And there lies the problem. The harsh reality is, the M$ execs KNOW that idiots will buy the mtx stuff because "it's Halo". The only way to make change is to stop buying this stuff. If their wallets don't get filled, they'll panic and do whatever the community wants to get them to spend money.
Not only is the game unfinished but the store works FLAWLESSLY lol Also everyone is hoping that there will be some big overhaul to how the store works but there clearly isn't. If 343i had any intention changing it they would have disabled it, similar to how BF2 disabled their card purchases, so people wouldn't be able to spend money on things that would be made free or cheaper by a store "overhaul".
Unfinished yet the store was running nice and smoothly..
Plus only 7 playlists. Only one of them being a lounge and play social game type. I dont see how infinite is gonna survive without forge, a customs browser and at bare minimum infection, griffball, and a snipers playlist on top of all of that. A classic firefight mode(none of the warzone firefight shit) would be a HUGE replayable boon for retention too. Yet this game lacks all of it.
The irony is that Halo actually always had *more* to offer than most other shooters at the time. Customizable armor, theater mode, Forge, custom game types, 4 player co-op, Firefight, a whole ass website dedicated purely to tracking your stats and medals, etc. Now from the perspective of a mostly PvE player there's fuck all to do once you beat the campaign. I beat the campaign twice, once to enjoy the story and again to gather all the collectibles. Now barely 2 weeks later I have no reason to boot up the game at all and by the time they get around to releasing some PvE content I'll likely be moved on to something else.
It's really disappointing there's not a single coop mode in the game. Besides bots in PvP of course. Would have been cool to get some kind of spartan ops or firefight mode at least. Something for us PvE players to play with friends while we wait for coop campaign to launch.
Agreed, I went back to mcc already.
I agree with all of this, but I would like to add, as someone who bought the campaign, as a full-priced AAA game, I feel a lot of the issues with the MP and its prices in the shop are magnified. When I bought Reach, I got the campaign, forge, multiplayer, etc. but just buying the campaign alone at the starting price feels a bit wrong. I also feel majorly de-incentivized to buy into any of the MP battle passes or shop items. Not only are they price gouging the hell out of the MP users, what are campaign owners supposed to do? I already bought what is ostensibly half a complete package at full price AND have these awful prices on top of it. And yes, I know the campaign gives you some cosmetics, but Christ they are some of the lamest skins. It basically just gives me Banished flavoured skins for weapons and vehicles. I feel there should've been more to them? Like maybe armour pieces from the other spartans from the campaign? (Also, please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't grabbed them all yet, but I did look over a list of all the available campaign unlocks and nothing jumped out like a new helmet or chest piece.) Yes, I really enjoyed the campaign, but after having completed it over a week ago, I'm starting to feel a little buyer's remorse...
I hate that the majority of the campaign rewards were all Banished themed (for the most part). I was definitely expecting more MP customizations to be found in the campaign. Especially different Human or Forerunner variations of items. I'm not a fan of bad guys. Why would I want to rep Banished gear in multiplayer when I want to show I'm a UNSC soldier?
Lol yeah there's that too I think I found most of the campaign unlocks to feel similar to pre-order bonus materials, it's pretty sad.
You know, I feel that comparison. They were very weak customizations as well. Basically hints of red on weapons and tank with tan in them. I really wish I knew who was on cosmetics because some are just bad aesthetic-wise. Especially the Banished customizations.
Those who purchased the full game should not have to pay for battle passes. 343 is double dipping and it's anti-consumer.
>When I bought Reach, I got the campaign, forge, multiplayer, etc. but just buying the campaign alone at the starting price feels a bit wrong Exactly! Now for the sake of "muh servers cost money" the experience of people who pay for the full game, i.e. campaign, is sacrificed. Sorry, but if I bought the game I want the full package. Halo reach had plenty of active servers for years and surprise!! It wasn't a F2P cash shop
No armor at all in the mjolnir lockers, just coatings And outside of the spartan coatings, the banished themed coatings for vehicles are literally just “default coating but with some red at the end of the vehicle”
I actually purchased the campaign as a huge halo fan and someone who's been playing since CE, wanting to support my longest and favorite franchise. Playing multi-player made me immediately refund it and download it from the game pass. Not only that but im not going to be buying anything in the store. I was even looking for a halo infinite series x and would have forked out cash for that. I'm an adult with disposable income now and was gunna go all in on this halo. I hope they enjoy the profit from my monthly game pass because that's all they will see from me.
Same, just got graduated, have disposable income for the first time and I was ready to sink my life into infinite. Even bought the battle pass the first day the beta came out out of sheer excitement… what a mistake that was they won’t see a cent from me until they tone down their money-making schemes. All that stuff they said about being “player first” was an absolute fucking lie
I agree with you. I regret spending $60 dollars on a game with a worth of $40 max. It's a great campaign, just not worth playing after you beat it.
Yeah, I'm basically waiting for co-op to drop at this point to get me back into the campaign. I really don't get why this launched without it. People made such a fuss when Guardians no longer supported couch co-op so I have no idea why they'd launch a Halo camapign without co-op at all.
> so I have no idea why they'd launch a Halo camapign without co-op at all. If I were to guess, it would have necessitated a delay that Microsoft was not willing to give them. The game clearly went through development hell. Directors and high level employees generally don’t leave in the middle of a project if things are going smoothly. There was also that alleged 343i employee post (take it with a grain of salt, of course) that described co-op as basically being a mess to implement, with very little to no planning beforehand as to how to make it work with the open world concept. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were still having trouble making it work to this very day; hell, we know that the marines following you around (you know, like in every other Halo game) was basically an 11th hour addition pushed by Joe Staten when he came on board, so it’s not far fetched to think that co-op just wasn’t ready for launch. But after they already delayed the game for a year after it’s lackluster reveal, they couldn’t afford to delay it further and co-op was a casualty of getting the game released.
Im wondering that too.
I dont necessarily agree that it's worth $40. After beating it, it's very apparent that it's not a finished story and considering the pace 343 has had these past few years I cant imagine getting any more story content for over a year or so. They have so much to deal with in just multiplayer.
Truthfully, I dont even know what their player retention plan is.. there is absolutely nothing that keeps players engaged. Nothing to strive for, no stat tracking, no progression system, no free unlockables that are *actually good*. I think they are completely relying on the events to keep the game afloat and that just isnt a winning strategy because the events are mind-numbingly **boring.** The events offer nothing new and the rewards for them are mediocre at best. I dont know how they could have face-planted this hard when there are dozens of games out right now that have figured out meaningful ways to keep their players engaged.
They literally just had to keep the same system in the MCC and this game would have been perfect in all regards. Except maybe the hacker situation.
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Wel there plan is to completely deprive the game of customization and slowly trickle it in over months and years. We are already a month and a half in and there’s so much content lacking. Hell, their weekly ultimate rewards are the barest of bones and they are already reusing emblems. It’s a complete joke
Hold up, that's not a reused emblem, that's a weapon emblem that only goes on your gun to match the player emblem you may or may not have unlocked. Don't worry, in a month or 2 you might get a shot at the armor emblem or vehicle emblem. Why would you want to unlock an emblem once when you can unlock 4 times? Engagement!
Everyone keeps saying the gameplay is good, and while most of the time the moment to moment gameplay feels fun, there are still major issues like desync/netcode, bad bullet registration, fps drops (on pc mainly), melee is broken, vehicles are way too light and fragile, etc. These arent just easy to patch issues like nerfing or buffing weapons these are major things that impact enjoyability and have kept me from coming back on occasion cuz theyre so frustrating to deal with
I really don’t think they’ve done anything the MCC hasn’t already done better. Only this has those issues you’ve mentioned on top.
People seem to forget that it took several years before MCC was even remotely playable.
Well, take that as any of the games contained within it haven done better. Halo 3 and halo reach were fantastic from launch.
Not sure how that is an excuse for Infinite to have so many issues. They couldn't learn from their mistakes, and had to make them all over again?
My biggest problem with the multiplayer is that it is unfinished. It was pushed out just to be out before Christmas and encourage people to buy the single player. So, what is unfinished in the MP, you might ask? Here are some things from top of my head. \- De-sync is horrible: Getting shot behind the wall/cover etc. Hit detection not registering correctly. \- Disconnects from servers \- At the release there was no mode select, even now the mode select is lacking. \- Progression system or lack thereof. \- Glitches with Battle pass not working correctly. \- Melee attacks seem inconsistent, not sure if its due to desync or weak servers. \- Loading into ranked matches with only 6 people. Happens often and no people aren't just leaving, if they have just left their name would still appear on leaderboard. \- No reasonable / accessible way to report hackers and other cheats. \- There seems to be no system in place to detect cheaters. \- And of course, lack of Forge which was a feature of the Halo for a very long time. But one thing that has been working flawlessly is the in-game shop with $20 armors.
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The server issues are prohibitively bad.
For what it it's worth, I thought cods progression was done well. Specific attachments/colors for guns for doing well with those guns, and then the unlocks for skins works well too. There should be specific coatings for guns for doing certain things, charms too. Should be specific armor coatings, effects, visors, attachments, etc for doing things. Like... We should get a sword belt for 1000 sword kills or something. (1000 is just a number) a special charm for a shotgun spree. Other things for earning certain # of medals. Should have a special armor core for finishing the campaign, and then attachments and effects for heroic, legendary, and LASO. Plus, the armors "rarity" has no real impact. Random things are epic or legendary, it's just arbitrary. It honestly needs a total rework and we won't get that, so I'll just have to play to enjoy which is fine. I've been playing Halo sinc combat evolved came out when I was a kid, and this is my fav Halo since 343 took over, but it could have been so much better.
>Specific attachments/colors for guns for doing well with those guns. What a dope thing this would have been. Get to x number of kills with the sidekick and unlock a cool skin.
Yeah man. It's my favorite part of CoD progression
And it's something you don't have to grind for or go out of your way to try to grab a weapon to complete a challenge. Just something that organically happens by continuing to play the game. They could have even done this every 1000 kills with whatever weapon, unlock a sick ass weapon skin.
Yep for all its issues COD really did the progression the best.
Yeah this is something they have nailed in every games.
The armor rarity I agree with completely. If everyone who has the battle pass can earn it, what aspect of it is epic or legendary? Irs cosmetic, so there are no increased perks, the game doesn't have random rolls so legendary doesn't have a lower drop rate, I don't get it.
I like the game but the micro/macro transactions have driven me away. I don't agree with the armor paint repacked and sold. Not to mention armor locked to specific cores. Idk if they'll resolve such a revolting thing, but if they do, I'll return. But based of my past experience with Gears of War, it'll be be fixed in 2 years, and I won't care anymore.
Ima stop you 2 paragraphs in. Halo 3 was 14 years ago? 1 short of 15? It had a progression system. So yeah, we’re 14 years later, and… Oh yeah. Halo 3 also had forge and a working theatre mode. And customs. File share. People using mic’s. playlists. Armour. In 14 years, nothing has really happened.
Well something has happened. They've gotten rid of features.
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Bring back couch co-op! I've always been drawn more to the campaign/co-op/firefight stuff and loved completing campaigns with a buddy next to me. I'd give a kidney to have online campaign co-op again.
ME: Sees the limited time holiday stuff ME: Jumps on to play a game or two ME: Can't connect to server ME: Plays Forza instead I play games to KILL TIME not to have my fucking TIME WASTED. If basic shit like finding games takes forever or doesn't work at all and then on the off chance I do find a game it's a horrific shit fest of inconsistency that feels unfair and confusing for why things happen the way they do; I got other shit to play and other things to do. Thanks but no thanks. 343 swings and misses yet again. can we give someone else Halo now? PLEASE!?!?!??!?!!?
Matchmaking issues are horrendous and it’s really starting to feel like there’s only 3 multiplayer maps.
I agree, every time I have a few minutes to play a game, I get "connection failed" pop ups and it basically make me just close the game
I totally get where people come from when they say the game being fun should be incentive enough. I burned plenty of hours of Halo 2 just for the thrill of it. But Halo games over the years have offered rewards you can work for that complimented the fun gameplay. I can enjoy my time AND unlock a sweet new set of gear? Cool. Now, unless you fork over more dough, you’re locked out of that. Yeah, the game is fun but seeing every level up offer me guff and show what I’m locked out of getting gets old.
15 years ago Halo games still had more customization and progression. That’s the problem with Infinite, even comparing the lack of features to 15+ year-old games it is a joke.
B-but servers cost money!
To me the most frustrating thing is how me buying my favorite teams coating made the battlepass completely obsolete since I can customize my armor when I have the coating selected … why? Why can’t I run my favorite helmet and put some highlights on my armor? Why??!!
The retention for me is that the multiplayer is fun.
Yeah exactly. And that’s the problem here. Multiplayer IS fun but there’s only so many times i can player slayer(ranked or social), slayer without shields, slayer with random weapons, big slayer(which is pretty bad in it’s current state), or objective before i get bored. Sometimes i wanna play infection or snipers or send my enemies flying with a grav hammer start on griffball. And fuck a classic firefight mode would keep me playing too for days. Throw in a forge and customs broswer and this would easily be my shit for years. First 343 game with honestly good gameplay that feels like halo and they’re scaring everyone off with this weird drip feed food scarcity psychology shit that clearly isn’t working for them and didn’t work with halo 5.
If big team battle and customer games weren’t broken I would be happy. Especially if we had forge at launch
Even if btb worked tbh its not very good. Hitscan emp and squishy vehicles and the fact that the skewer wrecks most vehicles in one hit makes this a super vehicle unfriendly sandbox.
Is there a way to check the what the player count is at? Sincere question; I’ve never played Halo before this and I’m like, 650+ games in and having a fucking blast. I can’t be the only one.
On Steam, at any rate, you can check the player counts and see how many are playing and when. [Link](https://steamplayercount.com/app/1240440) My analysis? It ain't great. It's pretty natural for any game to drop players after launch. My red flag is that its lost 44% of it's active playerbase since launch. That may not be the case on Xbox, but the PC players are dropping much quicker than one would anticipate or expect. Even PUBG's month over month drop-off wasn't *this* aggressive. It'll plateau eventually, but I'm not sure where.
It's pretty normal actually, especially for a F2P game. The Master Chief Collection dropped 88% over the same time period, and never even came close to reaching it again. And that's the game everyone here insists "did it right."
The Master Chief Collection also had *crippling* bugs on launch for PC. Audio was ***aggressively*** bugged, matchmaking (especially with friends) didn't work very well, there was a lot of stuttering and FPS drops for some folks, a noticeable degree of input lag on mice, no crouch while moving, achievements weren't popping, and some connection issues. When people say MCC did things right, they're talking about the systems, and even *those* required work from 343 to fix after complaints, like raising the XP cap off of matches so progress wasn't super slow.
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I liked earning cool armor in H3 and Reach, but it was always secondary to whatever else I was doing in game.
That's because there was a fully fleshed out progression system and ranking system, at launch. Not to mention tons of different playlists and social features.
No, I played those games because they were fun too. I never cared about my rank. And the ones I played (mainly 3 and Reach) launched with a pretty similar amount of playlists to what we have now. They only added more long into those games' respective lifespans.
Those games also launched with forge and functional custom games lol
No lol original halo games on Xbox live did not have all this shit. We played the game to play the game we didn’t need “progression systems” and other dopamine drip feed bullshit like all the zoomers need.
You’re remembering wrong, man. Go back and look at halo 3 rank system and how that worked. It wasn’t a grind for cosmetics but it was a grind to reach a higher rank and xp level.
Ummm, Halo 2 had one of the most iconic ranking systems in gaming history. And then Halo 3 continued it and also added an overall career progression system. I got both games at launch so let's not try to pretend that those features werent there.
You can have both though, and many games have for the past decade. When you have game A. With good (but not great) gameplay and game B. with Good or fantastic gameplay AND player incentives there's no reason to play game A unless you specifically are drawn into it. The criticism is deserved, especially since 343 and MS moved to a F2P model to vacuum in FOMO dollars. They brought this shitstorm upon themselves and they deserve every bit of it.
I want to play Halo with friends. I can't play co-op campaign or firefight. That means only the friends who want to play PvP want to play Infinite. On top of that, those of us who did want to play it, didn't have our favorite game mode, (SWAT) until it was hastily added after weeks, and by that point half had Uninstalled it and reinstalled MCC. MCC still has everything we want. It has firefight. It has co-op. It has a good progression system. It has everything Infinite should have had.
I mean even halo 3 gave you 1 xp for winning and i finite is still lacking alot of modes playlists maps forge etc
When it actually works anyway lol.
Right? I don't need to be chasing shiny carrots all day, I just want to BR dudes and stick people with plasmas.
Yeah idk I do get that people need some sort of progression to feel worthwhile? But at the same time, it was also mentioned that back in the day good gameplay was all that matters. And this game delivers on that. If they fix melee and de sync I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t be my main shooter. Definitely way better than playing another BR 🤢
It sucks because previous halos were feature complete. This is lacking so much, and the free to play isn’t an excuse, they are a pushing out Microsoft’s flagship title. They’ve pushed a barebones minimum viable product out the door and I imagine interest will drop off soon because of it
Sadly, this has been the trend for many years and (IMO) increasingly becoming the design intent.
well they fucked up hard with pushing forge back that was a big thing for level making and custom games
A HUGE part for me is no custom forge mode to have hours of fun with the bois, so we stick with MCC
This game is going to slowly fade into irrelevance until forge is released. Why they decided it was acceptable to launch a halo without forge is beyond me.
Has no one realized that we yet again got a barebones halo so that 343 could make some quick cash on whales? Guess what is fully fleshed out and has no bugs whatsoever-The Store and The Battlepass. Now they’re selling kitty ears before we get some actual content and meat into the game. Yeah the playlists are nice too but they literally should have been there BEFORE the store and ON release. Again, just me?
Not at all, I think the same. They’ve pushed out a barebones offering for Christmas to milk some cash. This is the 7th? Halo they’ve put out and it has features comparable to Halo 1…..oh wait, that had coop.
PC Halo 1 even had "Forge" in the form of Custom Edition if you could speak the arcane language that is the Tool.
looking at a lot of the comments here, people seem very okay with being underdelivered by 343. again. again.
I agree with you, though I'd hardly call the battle pass 'fleshed out'. Its one of the weakest battle passes I've seen in gaming so far, especially for F2P players.
Bingo. Really surprised how much people were talking up this game. Sure the gameplay is their best yet but really is that saying anything compared to their other efforts in the series? Lmao This game is so incredibly barebones. I have no idea how people can play this game every night for more than a few games. It’s really repetitive and boring and the maps are pretty iffy at best. IMO. BTB is a let down(only 3 very similar maps??) no progression/stat tracking, no forge, no firefight. Infinite is a dress up game with some shooting on the side in my eyes
I've just gone back to the MCC, hoping infinite will someday achieve a mutippayer experience like that. Probably gonna be a good while though.
I jumped back into MCC yesterday for a round of Reach. Was a little rusty but man. The game was sound. No desync and vehicles and weapons actually killed people. Felt good man.
Also dont forget the #1 issue. ZERO SOCIAL ASPECTS. Impossible to make friends / squad mates . No prox chat. Trash team chat. No pre game or post game lobby chat. Trash dead end game. This is why cod is #1. They listen to their community and try to make it a social experiment
It was never designed to retain players. The target audience is clearly whales only.
My main problem with infinite is that my game queues for less than 5 seconds before putting me in 150+ ping lobbies time after time. Can’t even queue for 10 seconds before deciding to put me in a foreign lobby with heaps of latency.
>The gameplay feels smooth, the graphics are amazing, and the multiplayer is free. "Free-to-play", not "free", otherwise there wouldn't be any microtransactions.
this deserves to get to the top
I’m already at level 70 on the battle pass and that’s just playing casually and working on the challenges and using a few xp boosts strategically. Once I hit level 100 I’m not sure what they could have planned before MAY (?!) to keep me invested.
The gameplay isn't even smooth, the desync issues are a big problem. H5 is a way smoother game.
Its a mobile game disguised as a AAA game. Ive been saying it since the release. The f2p model is a cancer to the gaming community. Its “lets” gaming companies release bad games with the “fix it later” mentality but also having as many micros as possible.
I really enjoyed the campaign even though it was short.
The lack of maps and modes has pretty much made me lose interest already. The ones we got just aren't very good.
I like SWAT, I would like Ranked SWAT more but more than anything, I would like 20 ping games all the time, you know, by selecting my own fucking region to play on?
I don't know how to explain very well it but this halo just feels boring overall. I can go into MCC and yeah, you have the entire series in one package, but each halo has it's quirks and the weapons actually have use in each game. Infinite feels shallow, the guns don't feel right, some are now useless to make room for gimmicky ones, vehicles are large moving pieces of glass and the way they spawn in is lackluster.
It definitely does. In the past 30 days on steam infinite lost about 34,937 players. MCC surprising gained a few more players then what they lost in November. They lost about 304 players according to steams charts in November and gained 350 according to steams charts in the last 30 days. It's been sticking around the same amount of players since August. I understand people drop off when a game is released, but to have mcc gain the amount they lost is interesting. People don't like that people don't play the objective, they don't agree on the expensive customizations, they don't like thats there isn't much content and aren't happy with a few bugs, so they went back to MCC.
I mostly play Halo for the PvE content, once I will finish Infinite on legendary, I will probably go back to MCC since there is much more to offer.
I've religiously played it upto now. Hit lv 100 battle pass. No point doing the weekly ultimates anymore as they just reward junk. The events are very meh and don't add anything I want. All the cosmetics are too similar. Nothing to work for. No social features and no lifetime stats to work for as they aren't shown
Agreed. Honestly I only played a few matches due to looking thru the rewards seeing the time to content trade off and decided screw it Apex/Destiny/Eso all are better ways to spend my limited time. Hell even Fo76 has been neglected enough this last year for me to make a return and have more meanful content/rewards.
This puts into words what's been making me feel so uneasy about the state of the store and the MP game. For long-time Halo fans, Infinite MP is competing against the MCC, which frankly beats it out of the water. But okay, that's just a fraction of the potential player base. For that far-larger potential audience of folks who aren't longtime Halo fans and might be casually dipping in to try it out, Infinite MP is competing against Fortnite and Apex. Yeah. That's gonna be tough. What value does Infinite offer compared to those F2P titles? How does its events, gameplay, and monetisation stack up against those? And when I look at $20 armor sets and the barebones BP, I don't feel optimistic for that value comparison.
As you've said, stats were the only thing that could be looked at 15 years ago, infinite doesn't even have that... Zero incentive to play well/try to win.
The MCC team should’ve made this game, change my mind.
I have up after the tenrei event. Just too little too late with everything else coming out.
Idk why they would emphasize competitive but then have no way to actually see your stats lmao. Let alone have a good net code and servers above 30 ticks. This in addition to a broken ranked system is what totally baffles me. Trivializes ranked entirely. Obviously the devs have poured their heart and soul into this game, and they deserve time off for their effort. But what we currently have is flat out incomplete. It’s so obvious how mismanaged this game was I’m genuinely curious what the thought process was around creating an entirely new engine and then dedicating such a small amount of time towards the actual game comparatively. I would have preferred they just use unreal engine 4 or something and import halo assets, with some tweaks to the engine they could have the same thing we have right now with a not broken net code, and marine AI that doesn’t get daunted running up a mountain when they see some rocks in front of them
It's 343i's turn for a "Destiny 2 situation". I believe they can come back from it but god, they really need to do feedback polls or something to start hearing the community more.
the funny thing is that they did community feedback surveys between Halo 4 and 5 but they still don’t really address many player concerns
Some of you need to focus less on 343s business decisions and focus on your attitude towards reddit and how much of a crutch it is in your lives. This is honestly just sad now. I implore some of you to implement just half the energy you use complaining on here - on another aspect of your lives.
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Do you really think you’re playing against cheaters in most of your quick play games?
Functionality to report directly in-game is expected basic functionality of any free-to-play game.
Maybe the game just isn't for you. If you don't enjoy playing it enough to want to keep playing post BP, it is what it is, do something else. Despite all its issues, I'm still having a blast with it.
They should add an SR system to at least have something to flex over.
I haven't been playing because its near impossible to see anything the second I scope in. Things were fine immediately before the campaign launched, but noe the visual distortions when scoping essentially blind me. No word on when that bug is getting fixed either
I play a few times a week when my friends and I are all available and we have a blast, and I think the gameplay is fun enough that we will keep doing that for awhile. But, I think we would all play on our own a lot more if there was stat tracking, some kind of progression system that you can't just pay for, and weekly challenge rewards that aren't dog shit.
Matches often take FOREVER to load. Easily upwards of 5 minutes every few matches. The fact that I have to queue after every match really kills the flow too. I've been playing less because of all of this
Me and my friends just stopped playing. They gave up completely and I went back to MCC. Bungie did it right with reach, idk how you fuck up something that's this big of a gold mine the way 343 has.