First of all, as a long time Halo fan, the core gameplay is extremely fun and very, well… Halo. However this is all of the issues I see with Halo Infinite in descending order of importance to the game’s longevity. I have gathered points from the community and my friends as well as my own thoughts from the play time I’ve had so far.
- XP progression
We all know XP and battle pass progression needs to be worked on. Here’s how specifically.- XP for kills, medals, playing objective, game completions, and wins.
- Without this in place players are simply ignoring the objective in place of trying to complete challenges, because that’s really all that matters right now.
- Challenges should be an extra bonus to per match XP as a way to speed up progression beyond performing well during a match.
- 343 Industries previously said they don’t want progression through the battle pass to become a second job. But as is that is exactly what it’s become to anyone who wants to be able to complete a pass before the next comes out. Yes they don’t expire but this should be a feature for people who can only play a couple hours a week. Then again with it taking 80+ hours to complete a pass, this group of people will never be able to get most of the things in any battle pass.
- XP for kills, medals, playing objective, game completions, and wins.
- Playlists
As a core aspect of Halo from the start, playlists allow players to choose what game mode they want to
spend their time playing.- Quickplay
- Quickplay is all encompassing for all 4v4 game modes. This should be removed and replaced with the traditional system of individual game mode playlists.
- Players now will queue up for quickplay trying to play a specific game mode only to be put into a completely different mode (think of how different Oddball is to Slayer). This will cause players to leave before the game starts, giving that team bots and putting them at a disadvantage.
- While bots are a very welcome addition to the game to fill in player slots, they should not have to put into games so often.
- Increase radar range across all modes to match the range in competitive. Lower range on non ranked modes not only makes less sense, but also makes the radar in general inconsistent and difficult to read when going from ranked to non ranked.
- Ranked
- There needs to be a way to de-rank. Halo 3 did it right with 2 points for wins and -1 for losses.
- Right now everyone will get to max rank with nothing stopping them, taking away the whole point of having a ranked system in the first place.
- There needs to be a way to de-rank. Halo 3 did it right with 2 points for wins and -1 for losses.
- Map voting and general pre-game lobbies notably are missing.
- Missing Playlists
- FFA, SWAT, Team Snipers, King of The Kill, and other casual playlists like GriffBall, Firefight and Infection are all missing.
- CTF and Oddball
- Flag and ball carriers are put in a terrible position now with the lack of offensive abilities.
- The ball carrier should always have a one hit kill especially with their movement being so slowed.
- If the flag carrier doesn’t have a flagnum equivalent then they should have slightly increased melee speed or just a one hit melee kill with the flag.
- The non one hit kill on the Oddball is arguably more important with how important that aspect is to the community favorite game mode GriffBall.
- Flag and ball carriers are put in a terrible position now with the lack of offensive abilities.
- Theater
- Currently theater mode is completely out of the way put into sub menus. This needs to be brought out to the main menus as I had no idea theater mode was even in the game until I had to look it up.
- Camera should lock onto your POV when opening the replay and stay locked to your POV of choice.
- When opening theater mode you start on a different player than yourself and have to scroll through to find your POV.
- When dying the camera will switch to a random different player meaning you have to find your
POV again. - Rewinding through the timeline will switch your camera to whoever’s POV you were previously on at that point. The camera should be locked to the player you last selected not the player you selected on that point in the timeline.
- Camera replay needs to be more in sync with where the player was looking. Currently the reticle will be completely off target and the player will get the kill which obviously will ruin any high skill clip someone might want to share.
- BTB
- Heavy vehicles need to spawn sooner as in most games they just aren’t present.
- Players in a fireteam will have a high chance of not having fireteam name tag colors on their friends but instead on randoms. This is not major but very odd and would be a nice fix for QOL.
- BR starts might improve the gameplay and give players a better chance at fighting off air vehicles and power weapons across the map. Again this is not major but I have seen a few people mentioning frustration with BTB AR starts with it’s closer range compared to the larger maps.
- Quickplay
- Credits
Credits are the premium currency for Infinite with the shop having rotating offers of cosmetics.- Credits cost too much to buy with real world money. $200 for all of the current offers in the shop excluding HCS armor coatings is too much. Especially keeping in mind there will be new offers next week.
- Credits should be gained through challenges and battle pass level progression.
- Right now credits feel non player friendly and predatory to get players to buy the cosmetics with absolutely no way to earn them through playing the game.
- Customization
Currently customization as a whole is in a decently good spot, but the addition of armor cores has
introduced new challenges for developers. However right now customization has never been this divided
among itself.- Armor coatings
- Currently armor coatings are locked behind specific armor cores. This puts them in an even further spot from where previous Halo games were with custom colors.
- I’m not sure why this choice would be made as I don’t have eyes behind the scenes, but with my experience as a 3D artist and as a fan of Destiny with a similar shader system… I believe this was due to poor planning on behalf of programmers and artists at 343i. In Destiny there are sections applied to armor that the shaders will see and apply colors depending on the value given to that part of the armor. This should be a similar system to how armor coatings work and would allow for coatings to be applied across armor cores.
- General armor pieces.
- Chest pieces right now are all grey and unaffected by armor coatings. This should definitely be changed as the pieces not only don’t look like a part of the armor, but cover up part of the armor coatings when they could add more variety to them. Some pieces might stay grey or black, but pieces like the ODST and Georges chest should 100% take coatings.
- To a similar point as armor coatings, I don’t see why we can’t put the shoulders and helmets etc. from one armor core set on another armor core. (aside from possibly chest pieces since armor cores like Mark VI chest pieces have such drastically different shapes.
- There should be points on the armor where the customization pieces will snap on to in order to apply them to the armor. If this is already implemented there should be no issue applying shoulders, knees, gloves, and helmets.
- Armor cores (extended)
- With the “Fractures” armor coatings being non cannon alternate universe Halo armor options it may make sense for their armor to be completely self contained with no cross over from other cores, however there should still be cross over of armor coatings across any and all armor cores.
- Premium armor kits (such as HCS kits) should add the armor coating to your inventory to apply to any armor of your choice instead of being locked to the kit. In time people will want to use their own armor and largely stop using the kits.
- The body types should deform the armor and not just the under suit as it has with any previous Halo title. Right now it just looks awkward and has little to no impact on how your spartan actually looks.
- Armor coatings
- Optimization
- Opening and using menus is extremely slow on my set up with an i7 CPU and an RTX 2060 GPU. This issue wasn’t present during the flights I took part in. When in a game it seems to run smoothly.