Hello and welcome!
With the Infinite flight closed and me basically longing to play it, I figured it was best to write down my feedback for 343i. I also never got that email 343i said they would send out to some people. I’m guessing I wasn’t on the list. So, I will relay my official feedback of the recent Technical Preview here on Waypoint.
To start, this game is not perfect. Nor is it the worst Halo game in existence. Not sure where this divide came from. However, I do find Halo Infinite to be a very good Halo game. The movement, gunplay, and feel of the game is absolutely fantastic. However, I do have some issues along with some notable praises. So we’ll start with my criticisms and move on to my praises.
Note; there will be multiple posts from me since I have a lot of feedback and not enough room. Don’t worry, I will state when the topic is finished. There’s a TL;DR.
Criticisms**:**
- Motion TrackerThis became a lot more prevalent when PvP was unlocked on Sunday. For context; in every single Halo game, the motion tracker would track the movement of Spartans depending on their speed and if they were shooting. From Halo CE all the way to Halo 5. In Halo Infinite, you are only tracked on the motion tracker when you are sprinting and firing.
What is the point of crouching then? Sprinting barely goes faster than your base movement speed, and it unlocks several momentum options for you via sliding. What crouching used to do was make you slower and quieter while preventing you from appearing on enemy motion trackers. This would allow you to sneak up on an unsuspecting enemy and get the jump on them.
However, in Halo Infinite, you can move without crouching and not appear on enemy motion trackers. You cannot hear enemy Spartans moving about. What is the actual point of crouching then? There are only cons; you move slower, you can be taken out of position, and you will lose the gunfight if you are surprised. You can walk normally and receive the old pros of crouching like not appearing on radar, while still being able to fight back should you be surprised.
The new strategy can simply become everyone running together in a giant blob and staying completely invisible to radar and human ears. You stumble upon an enemy, eliminate him quickly, then quietly move along at a near same pace as the enemy sprinting. The only way to properly resolve this is to bring back the old motion tracker. Raising sprint speed would ruin the maps, and reducing radar size would give the same problems Halo 5 currently experiences with its radar.
All of the movement abilities must compliment and hamper the motion tracker since this Halo is definitely a slower-paced game similar to Halo 3. Skill comes from your aim and not your twitch reactions, which this radar will inevitably do as people need to constantly use their own eyes instead of the eyes in the back of our heads. Crouching should hide you from the motion tracker but reduce your speed. The base movement speed should keep your gun up and allow you to fight back. Sprinting should unlock the increased momentum options. This also nets the problem of wondering whether the radar size is too small (I do not understand why we are dropping radar size from 25m to 18m or 20m) or just right. Allow us to test the radar as it’s supposed to be so we can see whether the reduced range works or not.
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Reloading Sound DesignThe reloading for the guns feels incredibly off. Reloading the sidekick, after hearing a hail of beautiful sounding gunfire, sounds like the ding of an opened cash register. Or a glass bottle being tapped by a fingernail. There is almost zero weight to the reloading of the guns.
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The Battle PassMy biggest issue with regards to the Battle Pass was that I could not unlock everything through normal gameplay. I had to complete daily/weekly challenges to gain EXP without paying for tier boosting. Not being able to properly level up the Battle Pass with normal gameplay was a heavy turn-off from playing Infinite at one point early in the Flight. Since there was only one map, I was wanting to try and level up to get the Ghost Grey coating. I am sad to say I never achieved that coating. I could never reach it despite my boosting, doing all the challenges, and playing near religiously.
If this type of BP system makes its way into the final launch, I can bet people will fall off because they cannot see progress being made on their Battle Pass when they do a single slayer match.
- Armour CoatingsI’m conflicted with armour coatings. On one hand, yes! Yes! completely to the different textures that the armours can achieve. That is an amazing idea. Keep going down that path. In fact, I would encourage that along with providing the option to give players custom colours that they can choose. 343i’s statement, “We want the Spartan to represent the player as much as possible.” - Christopher Blohm, is not represented by the removal of colours. Colours have been an integral part of Halo’s player expression for literally every single Halo until this one. Colours should not be forced upon an armour coating.
Now, I understand some promotional pieces have these coatings. I say keep them 100%. In fact, add colours to coatings that are not promotional in nature. Cadet Orange, Gray, Red, Green, Blue. You can easily combine all of these down into a single armour coating; Cadet. Then you can have further options to choose which colour. This brings back the old player expression. You can also do this with other armour coatings, having different types of colours that would change the look of the coating. That’s a potential middle point to bring back player expression while also keeping promotional coatings.
- Red vs BlueI had some pretty big difficulties with regards to distinguishing my teammates and even the enemy team. First off, I could not see service tags or Gamertags on players. I could not. I could not figure out who was who. And for some strange reason, the fireteam colour was broken as well? So I could not for the life of me figure out which blue guy was on my team. So I’d sometimes steal something, or walk in front of someone and get stuck, and not realize I might’ve screwed my fireteam over. Please push service tags/gamertags on the top of player’s heads on your team. I want to actually know who’s who. These outlines also make it very difficult to understand when an opponent is cracked or not. I had a tough time understanding that.