So I’ve collected all my thoughts and feedback on the game thus far, and I thought I’d post it in the hope that whatever sentiment analysis 343 is doing picks it up, and hopefully it makes some small difference in improving the game going forward. I’ve grouped my thoughts into what I hope are appropriate headings, and tried my best to note down all my thoughts, positive and negative. Postive thoughts are marked with a +, and negative with a -; I also have a handful of neutral comments in here with no marking at all. I’ve played on PC, from Australia, if that matters to any of you.
Graphics and Art
- +Great!
- +Everything looks so good, Halo has never looked better.
- Some of the multiplayer maps are visually kind of… off? On Aquarius I sometimes get turned around and can’t tell where I am by visuals alone. Same for Streets. It’s like the whole map is too similar. They need more landmarks, or visual differentiation between areas.
- -Couple of graphics options are a bit lacking on PC. I want to turn depth of field completely OFF. I hate it. It makes me feel like I’m having a stroke.
- -I need a seperate select option for energy shields, seperate from the friend or foe system. I have trouble telling shield status with the current system.
- How is friend or foe going to work when you add multi-team? You are going to add multi-team, right? Right?
Gameplay
- +All the weapons look and feel fantastic. There’s a couple of weapons that I feel could use a little tweak or two, but the core of the sandbox (AR, BR, Pistol, Sniper, Rockets) feels incredibly solid.
- (Maybe take another look at the Hydra, Bulldog, and Ravager, please.)
- +Small changes to Oddball have turned it into one of my favourite gametypes
- +Already had some of the most intense-pulse pounding games I have ever had in a Halo game.
- -The removal of player collision was the wrong call. The frustration I have felt from its absence has far and away outweighed any annoyances I ever had at its inclusion.
- -Melee feels really wonky right now. Probably related to player collision. Never been more frustrated by the melee in a halo game.
- -We are really really lacking in gamemodes right now. Where is FFA? Multi-team? Infection? SWAT? King of the Hill? I feel like we’re playing with the absolute bare minimum right now and it sucks. I hope you haven’t held stuff back just to drip feed it to us later.
Maps
- +Most of the maps feel really good. I love Recharge, Live Fire, Bazaar, Behemoth, Deadlock, and Fragmentation
- -Launch Site. I never have fun on this map, even when I’m winning I hate every moment of it. I swear I die a little inside everytime 1 flag CTF comes up for this map.
- -Without Forge, it really really stings that we only have like 10 maps. The game was delayed a whole year from its initial planned release, and there’s only 10 maps and no forge. Are you holding stuff back to drip feed it to us later? This really sucks.
Matchmaking
- +Matching making is so quick! Is this what its like to have a high population?
- Sometimes too quick, actually. and cancelling the search takes too long.
- -I’m consistently put into matches where my ping sits at 160+. This is borderline unplayable. It feels so bad getting instakilled, shot around corners, having a huge delay on my bullets registering. I’d much rather wait 10 minutes then be put into a match with greater than 80 ping. The game desperately needs a region select.
- -Where is the match composer? It was the best part of the MCC and its absence is keenly felt. I don’t want to play CTF anymore 343. Please stop making me play CTF.
- Currently, the ‘boop. boop. booooop’ sound effect plays when you start a search, but I really feel like it should play when you’re about to transfer into a game instead. It’d be nice to have it play when you’re alt-tabbed too, so you know to tab back in.
Customisation
- +Prosthetics! So cool.
- +I have never seen a more handsome spread of armour options in a Halo game. All of this aromour looks so great!
- +Really digging the variety of options on offer. Breaking up armour effects into multiple slots is so cool, and I can’t wait to see what people start rocking when stuff starts getting released.
- +Personal AI are cool and I look forward to what comes of it in the future.
- -The superintendant AI does not sound like the superintedant. Not even close.
- -No cross core customisation. I can understand this for the fracture cores, like Yoroi, but the fact that the Mark V armour pieces are incompatible with the Mark VII core and vice versa is so beyond scummy. I feel completely cheated.
- -Coatings being restricted to single cores. WTF? Seriously, WTF? Catch me never ever spending money on coatings if this isn’t changed.
- -Coatings have not lived up to what you promised. Not even close.
- -Absolutely abysmal starting selection for customisation. 1 Core, 1 Helmet, 1 set of shoulders. Everyone looks the same. An extra free helmet and pair of shoulderpads would have gone a very long way to giving people a way to actually personalise their spartan. At the moment the only variety you seem to get is in how many limbs people decide to replace with a prosthetic. If the goal was to let players express themselves and identify with their spartan from day 1, the system failed.
- -Armour kits. At first I thought: ‘Cool! Its a big bulk unlock so you get all the pieces to cosplay as a noble team member’ but then I realised that you didn’t actually unlock the pieces, just the entire set. You can’t mix and match. To be clear, I hate this with a passion.
Battle pass / Progression
- +It’s cool that the battle passes never expire. No FOMO!
- -Except not really, because there’s FOMO -Yoink!- everywhere. In the weekly ultimate challenges. In the limited time events. In the store rotations. Everywhere you look there’s some sort of FOMO.
- -I really don’t understand how you can go from the progression system in the MCC to this. I snap purchased the battle pass purely from the goodwill and trust you built up with your execution of the MCC seasons, and I regret it.
- -Challenges are a problem, but the bigger problem is that they are the only way to make any significant progress. There are no commendations you can work towards across multiple games like in Halo Reach. There are no over-arching seasonal challenges like in the MCC that you can grind out over time. As far as I can tell no progress for playing campaign (but hopefully that’s not the case) There are no rewards for winning games, or playing well. The only thing you can do to progress is grind out weekly challenges, which appear to have been made intentionally terrible to entice people to use swaps. I hate this system. I won’t be buying another battle pass if this doesn’t get a massive overhaul.
- -The battle pass feels so anemic in content. I feel like I could’ve unlocked more customisations in like two hours of playing Halo reach on Xbox 360 than I could grinding for two weeks on this battle pass.
-This is the Halo Reach Battle Pass, but it feels like it doesn’t even contain a tenth of the customisation options that reach had. Where’s HAZOP? EOD? Operator? Pilot? GUNGNIR? - -I remember in an Inside Infinite article from Dec 2020 (which I can’t find anymore. I hope its just misplaced, but if you’ve deleted it that’s mega scummy.) that there would be loads of content to unlock for free and with the battle pass, and that only some premium sets would be available in the store. I feel like its the complete opposite of that, with a tonne of content restricted to the store, and only some available to unlock through the pass/ for free.
- -This seriously might be the least enticing battlepass I have ever seen. Fortnite, CoD, and Dota all have better battle-passes.
So yeah, that’s it. I might edit in other things as they occur to me in the future. Overall, I like the core gameplay, but I feel really let down by a lot of other stuff. 343 built up a lot of trust from me thanks to MCC, I was under the impression that MCC was a testbed for the kind of changes and progression systems they’d be implementing in infinite and I was getting excited for it, but I feel as if they have betrayed that now.
I’m really looking forward to campaign. But I’m not terribly excited about the future of multiplayer right now. The game really needs Forge, and more gamemodes, and an overhauled economy.