343 just killed off the possibility of geofiltering, essentially forcing the people in low population regions to have to deal with being connected to servers on other contintents. And what did 343 do to make the experience of those people less bad? Nothing.
Halo 3, in 2007, had an option to not connect to high ping lobbies, and so did Reach in 2010. MCC eventually got an update that allowed for the players to select to what servers they wanted to get connected to. And now Infinite, with it’s big amazing engine that can do anything, 6 years of development and however many millions of dollars invested into it… Doesn’t even have a basic Ping filter.
And not only is it embarrasing for 343, but it’s activelly screwing over pretty much every player outside of North America or Europe. Yes, I did geofiltering, not because I wanted to screw over players in ranked by increasing their ping but because before that it was nearly impossible for me to connect to a game with less than 200ms, and that was the same reason many other people were geofiltering. And now 343 managed to kill off geofiltering, but did they do anything to deal with the reason people were geofiltering? No.
And this priority system 343 implemented to help players from low pop regions? It doesn’t work, I’m still getting connected almost only to servers in another continent, having to deal with upwards of 400ms of ping.
I don’t know if this is incompetence, engine limitations or because their unfinished UI can’t handle it. This is not enough. This is a premium product, made by a subsidiary of one of the biggest corporations in the entire world and it’s still playing catch up to features present in a 15 year old game.