Right there with you: played every mainline Halo game’s first campaign run in co-op, so releasing Infinite without co-op is a key feature removal. This is unfortunately the unavoidable result of them (1) cutting 2/3 of the game that had been in development from 2015 to 2019 (4 yrs), (2) trying to remake as much of the cut game as they could from 2019 to 2021 (2 yrs), then (3) deciding what to prioritize at release (the revenue-generating items: freemium shop with trailing revenue, then retail release of campaign with one-time purchase revenue).
My friend and I have no choice but to accept it. We had our copies ready for pickup from Best Buy and have just returned them instead.
I will never forget how I and my twin brother were hyped for halo 5 release. Only for 343 to announce shortly before launch that there will be no splitscreen in the game. This happened after they had announced that there will be splitscreen, then they announced there will only be 2 player splitscreen and then bam. Was honestly a kick in the gut and neither of us had played halo 5 campaign till today. And yeah, try playing halo mcc halo 2 anniversary maps in multiplayer in splitscreen for example. You won’t even get 30 fps on the original Xbox and I am sure they haven’t done anything about that
Exactly! And I seriously don’t understand. Like okay, MCC basically had to be rebuilt from the ground-up after its bad release. I get that. I consider MCC 2014 and MCC 2018 as two different releases. The 2019-2020 stuff was more of a re-launch with PC. But its like even after essentially rebuilding the whole title, they still couldn’t get co-op to work right? Then with the PC port, more nothing on co-op? Why can’t my pc play with my GF’s Xbox?
Is it my PC hardware? I’m on a 1080p monitor with 60hz, I’m effectively just more stable than an Xbox One for the same quality output.
Is it keyboard and mouse vs controller? I still have my Xbox One S controller.
Is it how PC and Xbox communicate with each other messing with mission and enemy scripting? You guys took the time to add firefight and rebuild ODST firefight to add extra modes. You couldn’t have used what you learned there for the campaigns? You didn’t give Spartan Ops the same love either. You know, the co-op mode you guys made to replace firefight then abandoned…
But you guys want to turn MCC into a testing bed for Halo Infinite as well as help market the game! So, why didn’t you guys do campaign crossplay when Infinite’s campaign is what you’re trying to sell?!
I wasn’t going to get the campaign, but last night somone gave me a gift card, not that I needed it but I thought for a bit, do I really want to use it for this seeing how very poorly handled this game has been released in many aspects of it, and I mean many that it’s not funny at all that 343 found this game as is acceptable.
No, it wasn’t acceptable at all. (IMO) it was about shoving a product out the door due to a dumb contract 343 couldn’t hold their end up of the bargain. Guess what, they don’t suffer as much as we do and that is the actual problem when it comes to experiencing the game. We pay for a product to be sold as a (complete game ) and Infinite is far from ever even being that.
I’m tired of companies half-assing games making promises to fix things later. We pay them very well to do their job as a developer, whether it be through a shop or buying the game, that is a fact. Not pay them to sell a game in pieces and call it good.
In reality, gaming companies need to hold up their end of the bargain when selling their product to their customers, no exceptions, and enough of the BS excuses like the CM actually gave the was from the top. What makes it worse is all the naive people on this forum, just accepting whatever is thrown at them and praising a company for doing a -Yoink!- job, posting the ( poor me syndrome ] when it comes to 343. It’s business people first and foremost always.
Before anyone replies to me, know that I’m referring to upper management that needs to get their act together. I feel for the devs that do the actual work. Can anyone of you imagine how much content was scraped and how many things were changed becase of upper management that put all that stress on the devs?
Get your act together 343, enough is enough with the BS excuses, it’s 2021, and you had Microsoft at your request.
That’s just it. Its 2021. We have a system where we can improve games. Originally this was supposed to make good games better over time. Add onto them and such. Now its exploited to finish games later to keep the executive’s bottom line. I don’t think we can go back to a game being a complete experience at launch. However this shouldn’t mean a game shouldn’t do the bare minimum on launch. And right now, 343 hasn’t done the bare minimum.
It also doesn’t help that all the “feedback” they are replying to, is never on Waypoint. Its always on Twitter or Reddit. And it always dodges the question. The term “feigning incompetence” keeps coming up and I feel like that sums the situation up. Instead of openly acknowledging that “hey we made mistakes” or “You’re right, this is unfinished” its “We didn’t know this would be the reaction.” How? Did the entire team get tunnel vision? Are you not allowed to say what’s actually wrong? Could you guys go step by step, like you did before the beta and during MCC and say
Feedback: This
Solution/explanation: This
Except for base game features? Is that what we should expect in January when the promised news drop comes?
I know the devs are trying their best, but man this feigning incompetence is tiring.
This right here is a huge problem, dodging questions, not wanting to take responsibility for their own actions. Yet they expect us just to be happy with whatever they release…
Communication is an important thing and when it’s a one-way street, it doesn’t work worth a damn. It’s like the playlist they are adding next week. Why should it take the community to push sorta speak just from them to do right by their player base?
That seems to be where the problem actually is with a lot of companies these days. Waiting to see what they can get away with until they can’t ignore it anymore.
A good point of comparison of good communty interaction is ID Software and how they handled Doom Eternal.
Shortly after release they had soundtrack issues between the company and Mick Gordon, so they made an extensive post about what happened and that not everyone made the best decision at the time. And later when the Super Gore Nest master level released and it was literally broken, they didn’t say “we’re working on it” and went radio silent, they acknowledged that they messed up, gave a rough timeframe, and apologized. Then when it finally got fixed they made a list of the changes they had to make in order to get the level working at 100%.
Or like Doom Eternal’s Invasion mode. That was a delayed multiplayer mode where players could enter your single player game as demons and try to mess up your run. That got delayed into oblivion. At this point it is as good as canceled. BUT to make up for it, they made horde mode in its place.
And then the streams. It isn’t just a play weekend. The community manager and creative director set up regular stream times where the creative director played his own game (on a controller on I might add) to show anyone can get into the game. And that even he will want to tweak some things just like the community does. Then in the streams they went into detail over what went into the game, what mistakes were made in the campaign as they play. Literally the “longer the icon of sin is on earth, the stronger he will become” meme came from the devs straight up forgetting to take out the test lines from the level and no one caught it until the game launched. But they don’t want to remove it because the fans said its fine right there in chat.
No other AAA company has that kind of transparency. It seemed like the past year with MCC 343 was trying to do that, but the past month has shown that 343 either can’t or simply won’t go into what is going on. Honestly, I’d love to see Ske7ch and Staten share a desk and play the campaign, either in-turns or splitscreen, just to share what happened during development level-per-level and situation-by-situation, but I doubt that because they seem to avoid any sort of objective negatives with the game.
You would think that with the weapon pads but you can only summon one vehicle per pad, so flying a group over to a new area not possible, or even look the firs vehicle you get in game is a two seater, so the other two walk, the first banished vehicles you come across so you all can have transportation are single seaters, you are forced to have 1 maybe two vehicles at best for the first few hours of play all the power weapon drops are a single weapon. so basically until the who group gets the spiderman perks you are all walking. and honestly the most upsetting thing i noticed is that the upgraded guns you get from the lockers you cant get ammo for, i will run a whole mission weapon droping a shotgun or pistol with one bullet just so i have a possibility of using it, even though you can scoop up a -Yoink!- ton of reg ammo, why did they decide to split the ammo types, this is just a dumb idea. you want to carry that hard light gun you work so hard to get nope no way to refill it, hell you cant even get ammo for the needler from any of the ammo depos, its not shock, its not plasma, its not kenetic, its not hardlight, and its not super weapon. how the he’ll did they miss that… only gun in game you can not get ammo for.
This game now 4months after release still doesn’t have CO-OP, there bread and butter, what there game is know for. . . it has about 5-6 min of cortana, and 70 hours of Navi from the ocarina of time “listen”… UGGHHHhhhh… at this point let the community fix your game allow it to be modded, in a few weeks ill pay some guy in his basement in the Ukraine to patch all the errors you could not. that he does on his off time while fighting for freedom.
343 is and embarrassment, where is there so called road map? Where is the accountability. We’re not asking for free -Yoink!- were asking for out $60.00 at the min game. Where is it???
I’m not one to defend 343 for the sake of it and have been plenty vocal about issues I’ve seen with the game, but I’m trying to cut them a little slack where co-op is concerned. Everything you mentioned about previous games and their history with co-op is 100% spot on but Infinite feels like a whole other technical-level beast compared to them considering the open world nature of it.
It definitely sucks that it’s being delayed so much, not saying it doesn’t, but based on my, admittedly very limited, knowledge of developing games, it can’t be easy getting 4 player co-op to work when you have to account for previous gen hardware.
Do I think it would’ve been better to have it right at launch? Absolutely, no question about it. But I can kind of understand why it would be causing them so many problems to get right. I can’t think of too many open world games that offer co-op on this scale and there’s probably a reason for that. Granted, I just woke up so there might be a ton of obvious ones I’m overlooking.
Ultimately I wish we had it now, but it may end up being worth the wait. Riding around zeta halo with 3 of your buddies in a warthog or posting two with snipers on the cliffs overlooking the tower while you and one other Spartan charge the front gate does sound like even more fun than what single player offered.
Besides, for me personally, they can take their time because I’m trying to beat Elden Ring before co-op drops and with how many times I’ve died just getting past the first handful of bosses, I’m going to be a while.
It’s too late for co-op, not even sure how co-op would work in Infinite since it’s open world so I’m sure that’s the biggest battle for 343i. The campaign should of been delayed until co-op was ready.