Is there anyone at 343 that has played a Halo game before? One would think that 343 would have some veteran players/gamers testing and reviewing their products/updates before they’re released to the general public…
Are all of their testers fresh out of middle school and have no prior knowledge of Halo? Who is just “going along with this nonsense”? Why doesn’t anyone at 343 realize they’re not doing the title justice?
I feel like you could grab any 20+ year old Halo player and get them to play a couple games and they would almost immediately tell you that a massive amount of stuff is broken, whack, or just missing altogether.
Games should get more and more refined as time progresses for older, longer running franchises, but that’s not what we’re seeing. . .
I highly doubt it. Which is heartbreaking as a lifelong halo fan.
My Hopium levels have run out with 343, along with their staffing.
TLDR but they apparently hire people that hate the game so probably not?
Pretty sure none of the team that aren’t devs play games period. I would love to lock them in a room to play Halo Infinite with their garbage challenges and see how they like it. Oh, and this is with connection from outside the US.
And to spice things up, we give them a Battlepass too:
1 tier = 1 sip of water
Oh and if they pay 7 dollars, they get a biscuit.
And the biscuit flavour rotates every 24 hours.
343? Being a competent company testing their products before launching them?
Never.
I highly doubt anyone on 343 play Halo, not even as a casual player. But well, you don’t need to be a pro player to be a dev, as long as you know what are you doing… because they do… right?
Ok, anyway. They have the Insider program, and they don’t use it. Free testers and feedback, and they refuse to take it. If Infinite isn’t being a success is because 343 don’t want it to be succesful.
I highly doubt any of them played it for any real amount of time which is sad because I remember back in the day the Bungie employees all gave off the vibe that they were active players
Yeah…they’re the bots in the bot playlist lol
They specialize in Fortnite and copying Warzone’s item shop
To answer OP… no.
One of 343 Industries’ hiring requirements is that you aren’t a fan of the series. They have it this way because they want more creative ideas to flow in… even though their new ideas have only torn the series apart. They also don’t want to chance that a toxic dev might join the design team, disagree with a higher-up’s choice of design, and then input code that would crash the game at launch and delete all materials in protest to what they might perceive as “bad decisions that are being done to ruin the franchise.”
Wait, I was waiting for the punchline, but after reading the post, I can’t be sure. Do you have any concrete proof of this? Or any proof at all?
343i bring back open lobbies & open communication.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/making-i-halo-4-i-a-story-about-triple-a
“We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of ‘X,’” says O’Connor. “But what that really meant was, ‘I feel like this game could be awesome because of ‘Y input’ that I’m going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I’m passionate about proving it.’ So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team.”
Halo has been one of the largest and most beloved franchises in gaming. While the second half of O’Connors quote tries to put a nice spin on it the fact remains that they brought in people who openly disliked aspects of the game, aspects that made it unique and kept people hooked long after release. Instead of going in with the mindset of just adding onto what made the game special, they changed it completely.
The most frustrating part is this:
“It’s during that time you’re questioning yourself: 'How is this going to work, will it be as I envision it in my head?” says Holmes. For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a “very traditional” Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.
343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional. But that first build showed the new team that this amalgamation of different studio cultures could work together and achieve a common goal.
To them, despite the massive fanbase who loved it, Halo’s gameplay was now too “traditional”. Despite early user research showing them that they were going in the right direction, they chose to scrap it and instead put in their vision of what Halo should be.
Sweet lord little 8lb 6oz baby Jesus. I was really hoping you were trying to make a joke. Ffs. No wonder this is more of a dumpster fire than Miami.
343i bring back open lobbies & open communication.
Their goal of “New Ideas” spiraled out of control and into “Halo fans want Halo? Lets sell them not Halo and then do it again!”
Its better at this point to accept the franchise death and move on 
There will never be another great halo game ever like we had in the days, and any fan project that will be carried by the community will be shutdown by Microsoft to prevent competition
June 11th, 2027
Microsoft announces that 343 Industries is closing its doors due to over a decade of ruinous game design.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tells Game Informer that Halo as a franchise is not dying out but instead being transferred to a newly created development studio that is to focus and redouble the efforts at restoring the Halo brand, a new philosophy of design will flourish within the walls of
STUDIO 117
The new Franchise Director of Halo, RamboBambiBamboBingoBongoBoiyo, had this to say when interviewed :
"In hindsight, giving what is essentially a blank check to a bunch of people who know what they are doing in one area and yet are clueless in another department never really works out. 343 Industries made the mistake of hiring people who weren’t players of Halo to begin with. Honestly, how can anyone take that philosophy seriously? ‘We need to make a sequel to an epic story and a video game that already has a pre-established design bible… so let’s change it all?’
It doesn’t make any sense in the slightest! You want a painting, you hire a painter; not a sculptor. You want refined carpentry, you do not commission a pottery artisan. You want a statue of stone, you do not hire a blacksmith. Yes all are forms of art, but each has certain requirements and needs, separate design philosophies entirely. That is essentially what 343 Industries had done for years. They hired people that knew how to make videogames, when they needed to also hire people who knew how Halo itself was and appreciated it.
It boggles my mind why it was such a trend in the 2010s for movies and videogames to suddenly shift their narrative and core design elements in order to garner a few more potential purchases of their product. Halo, Call of Duty, and Dead Space - they all released titles that were drastically changed to be something that they weren’t. Dead Space fans wanted Dead Space 2.5, not Dead Space meets Gears of War. TitanFall came out, and suddenly we had a few CoD games that decided to emulate it. Halo fans want to play Halo games, but 343 decided that for Halo 4 they were going to make it more akin to Call of Duty meets Mass Effect meets Halo meets Generic High-Tech Sci-Fi.
My point is… Halo fans want Halo. Which is why one of the main philosophies of Studio 117 is that we are hiring Halo fans almost exclusively. Halo fans have a respect for the franchise, they want Halo to BE Halo. If you have the talent, knowledge, and the passion; then I urge you to join Studio 117. We will work to reforge the franchise to be once again a hallmark franchise. If it isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it because honestly; you are going to end up causing a dozen or so problems by the end of it. Well, we certainly have something broken… time to break out the tools and gather the necessary parts. We’ve got work to do."
You think it’s going to take a full 5 years before this atrocity is stopped?
343i bring back open lobbies & open communication.
To get the resources allocated and the manpower accrued and the rights transferred over and do it all in secret so that it is a surprise to everyone in the outside world and no members at 343 can sabotage the event? Yeah.