Hello all,
I’m not sure where else I can post this, please let me know if I need to fill out a form or post elsewhere.
I unfortunately have a few things that I need to address about the state of Halo Infinite’s recent Tech Demo and also the future of the game. I have a lot of strong points here as I want the game to be perfect for everyone, but I’m starting to lose some faith here. I do have some positives; so not all is doom and gloom 
What was my first experience like this weekend?
Well, recently I just upgraded to an i9 10k series CPU with an RTX 3060 ti. More than capable of playing most games and future proof. My first experience trying to live stream this game on Twitch was very poor. Everytime I would run the game, it would make my PC unusable. This PC has been configured to be Overclocked and can deal with a lot of heavy loads. However it seems to me that this tech demo didn’t like the streaming software I was using, No matter if I ran the game in low settings or high, the stream was jagged, lost a lot of frames and almost unplayable. CPU was fine around 30% using SLOBS and Halo Infinite running, everything else on the PC worked fine, but the game and the software did not work at all for the most part. There were times it was fine, but something the Game and the software didn’t work together and they were struggling.
All my other points I will bullet point so they’re more concise and easier to read.
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This doesn’t seem to be reported on, but I first noticed this on a Twitter post that a creator pointed out, I wanted to make sure that 343 knew this. Not all PC weapons when aiming at an enemy will make the reticule go Red, it stays white. This is more noticeable on weapons such as the Assault Rifle, BR & Sidearm however weapons like the Pulse Carbine, charged up Plasma Pistol all seem to allow this. I’m not sure if this is a distance thing, however I noticed not all weapons give you an indication that you’re within a good distance range to start shooting your weapon. - Speaking of shooting weapons, is it me or do some weapons feel useless now? The sidearm has been tweaked in a way that it feels like an airsoft gun. Playing on PC with a BR and having the issue as above, I found that I sinked a whole mag of BR into an enemies head to then only be noob combo’d - Which btw the tracking on this doesn’t feel great. - The Map Behemoth does simply not work as a 4v4 map. It’s too spacious and would act much better as a 8v8 or BTB type mode. While CTF was fun, the small player count doesn’t make it fun and so easy to be picked off by enemies. This could do with the fact that there isn’t much cover around to hid behind. I found that I was doing better low ground than on the high ground. The vehicles also need to be mirrored or matched. One team can camp Warthog spawn and take anyone out as the new turret seems to not have a cooldown at the compensation of fire rate being reduced. If you can mirror 2 Sniper spawns, you can make sure each time has a hog. Banished Ghost vs Hog doesn’t work well. - Auto Join - This isn’t a feature that I personally like, I can’t imagine that it will change but more often than not, someone will leave the game which is a disadvantage, but will be greated to an AFK player. This isn’t good as then your team is farmed for kills in a Slayer match. - GRENADES EVERYWHERE! - Is it me or that the recent games people have been spamming grenades. Maybe too many times? There is currently a bug that you can spam more grenades than you currently hold. Spike Grenades are useless, Frags take out the entire shield and Plasma just insta kills you with a full shield, the blast radius on that is quite big. - Rubberbanding/Network issues - While I appreciate that this is a Tech Demo, there are going to be issues and faults. The rubberbanding however in these games makes it feel like a P2P game just like the old Halo’s. It does not feel like there is dedicated server support for this, I’m finding myself in front or behind players so they can easily take me out. Or I run down the market and then end up 5 metres back from where I was. - Flag/Objectives Speed/Weight - I felt compared to other objective gamemodes in previous Halo’s this was very slow. While I like the mechanics of clamber and slide with the flag for instance, I felt when you tried to throw the objective to a team mate, it wouldn’t go far or miss ledges when you jump to throw over. Also the movement speed was very slow, so when I would rubberband as stated above, enemies were able to shoot through walls and it still magnetised to me. causing me to die; yet clear from the enemy. - People only Melee! - Unless this is some new Meta I’m not aware about. Gun fights are no longer there. I find myself in more brawls than before and the Melee seems to kill you more often. Melee doesn’t work on a fully charged plasma pistol, I found myself still having to punch twice to kill a player after breaking the shields with the Pistol. - Heatwave is basically useless. Either increase it’s damage and reduce it’s fire rate or just remove it. - UI - Still looks bad horizontal. Menu’s WILL always look better Vertical over horizontal. This is my main issue with games like MCC and why older Halo games look and feel better due to the Verticality of it’s menu. Please change this as well as the size of the icons on screen, everything is too big. This also makes the preview of weapons in the armoury go off screen, move the weapon preview to the middle of the screen, not top centre as it’s hard to view when you’ve got massive icons on screen for the customisation. - My last issue which I can see a lot of people on the steam community is raising is when you go to view the settings, sometimes you’ll see a pink/blue screen tearing blink. Now at first I thought this was my monitor playing up, but it seems like it was happening not just to me, but random players and also my friends who were playing on Xbox. - Still no real way to earn EXP to level up Battlepass or rank. This is a massive no no. It doesn’t encourage me to play or want to grind if I can only level up a certain way. Bring back a simple system to earn exp not just from challenges please.
I mentioned earlier it’s not all doom or gloom?! -
Thank you for making the Needler better! The last tech demo, I wouldn’t pick up the weapon as the super combine was broken and not working. It also sounded mute. You’ve fixed this and I’ve started to make use of it more! - The VK Commando is now my favourite weapon in the arsenal. Fire rate seems better and also hip firing isn’t bad anymore. I disliked it in the last demo and didn’t feel accurate or usable in certain situations. - Driving feels fast and responsive. I’ve been enjoying using the Mongoose and new Banished Ghost, the accuracy of the weapons/damage output feels great! - Medal’s look much better. - AI is still perfect and an idea I wanted since forever #butlrgang_I will finish my feedback in the next post below!_