Hopefully this can make its way up the grapevine and someone at 343 sees it, but not holding my breath.
Since Halo Infinite has come out, I have had a very hard time identifying allies from enemies, even with Outline settings cranked to the maximum. This, coupled with PC specific missing features like Red Reticle as well as PC specific bugs, has caused me to stop playing the game entirely.
The upcoming changes for the Winter Update are looking very good, especially on the PC-front, but I was curious if 343 had any plans to improve Friend or Foe identification of players, as this specific element of Halo Infinite has been very frustrating.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how 343 could improve this element of the game for players like myself?
The good news for you is red reticule is coming back.
As for outlines?
Pick a colour that stands out for you. I tend to find bright yellow (pineapple) the best.
We’ve had plenty of threads complaining that the outlines are too obtrusive and that they make players stand out like sore thumbs. Wanting to tone them down. So I’m not sure which bit is not working for you.
Silly question but you have definitely maxed the opacity and thickness of the outlines? I guess you have when you say maxxed out the settings.
The problem is that allies or enemies can have colors that match either team or enemy colors. My moment of hesitation is because I don’t know if I’m going to waste ammo on an ally, or if I’m going to start shooting an enemy. Part of that is on the lack of RR (which is coming back for PC, finally) part of that is on the Outline system not having the same level of instant threat identification as the old Red and Blue system.
Honestly? In an ideal world, a return to the red vs blue system of old, or something like it, that allows for instant threat identification. I know I’m red, I know they’re blue. It’s a feature that I would almost be willing to pay money for, because a lot of my deaths are attributed to not perceiving enemies at close-range.
Failing that, there’s probably more they can do on the client side for coloration. Titanfall 2 allowed players to pick their colors, but the team had strong, blue lights on and the enemy team had strong, red lights on as well as slightly darker colors. I get that the idea is to push Coatings so that you see a cool one and buy it from the store, but cosmetics should not take priority over gameplay.
I occasionally get a bit trigger happy if a team-mate wears one of the gold coatings. They were very popular a few weeks ago.
But generally I try to know where my team mates are. So it doesn’t happen often.
I get the occasional bit of confusion.
But if it’s happening THAT often… you really need to work on your map awareness.
I get that they could have done the coatings better. But they, on a whole, are really good. And are here to stay.
As much as I have nostalgia for RvB. It’s gone.
The outline system works well. Definitely takes a little bit of a mind set to get used to. But doesn’t take long.
And as many have said - there is an argument you don’t even need that. Maybe just a call sign or arrow over your team mate. You should have enough map awareness to know where your team mates are and just shoot everyone else.
Agree, it would be nice to have the option to use RvB. Yeah the outline system isn’t terrible, but it’s just not the same. I would also argue that it’s not as inviting to new players. RvB had simplicity. It’s was easy telling a friend who’s never played “just shoot the Red people”
Unfortunately, I doubt we’ll ever get it. Just a other example of 343I changing things for no reason If you want to have a new system, fine but still that players use what they’re used to. It would be dirt easy to implement a RvB type setting, or whatever color you want.
A good addition that would be relatively non-intrusive could be an indicator (like a small waypoint) over Allies’ heads. That way players can keep their unique (well, as unique as we can get them) colors, as well as the Outline that shows through terrain and structures, but there’s an additional indicator so that some people won’t waste ammo reaction-firing on allies.
I’d say do what @Darwi said, and check radar more (if you have it). You can even go into practice mode and practice figuring out when to shoot an enemy and when not to shoot a teammate. The radar has the same colors that the outlines do, so set your colors how you want.
The best option for near-instant threat recognition is RvB. Frankly hate this trend in modern gaming that an individuals fashion in a video game matters more than the gameplay itself.
I’d honestly have the OPTIOn of turning red vs blue on and the outlines off. Just go old school if you want.
Just cause it’s new, doesn’t mean it’s better. I feel that the community just wants options in everything. Infinite does that pretty poorly but hopefully will get better in time and the next game they’ll have learned from their mistakes…
I think a big help would be if the overhead friendly markers were larger and brought back the triangle with the service tag. The font is much smaller than previous titles and it definitely doesn’t help with visibility
It is partially map awareness, and I do have the sense of “if teammates are in Area X, then allies will be in Area Y.”
But that’s also not how Halo has worked… Since Halo CE. It basically requires you to re-train your brain to think like Call of Duty where you just spray at anything that moves, which works fine for COD, but less so for Halo where Power Weapons are in play.
I have that moment of hesitation because it’s no longer as simple as “if they’re Red, they’re Dead,” it’s now checking your outlines and seeing who is who based on that. Even worse when outlines just don’t kick on at close-range, and even worse when the Motion Tracker is too short to identify who you’re looking at.
I have my own personal opinions on that, but that’s for a different discussion.
But. Why? Like, what aspect of gameplay does the Coating system bring? While I understand it improves the cosmetic-angle of the game, it negatively impacts gameplay because instant threat recognition just isn’t there.
Valve understood this well for Team Fortress 2, and made it so that there could be absolutely no doubt about who was on which team when it came to coloration, even after waves of cosmetics were released. Halo had this system from CE all the way to Halo 5:G. Titanfall had this system. These complaints don’t end with Halo Infinite either - Battlefield 2042 has similar issues because it abandoned identifiable shapes of enemies in favor of uniformity of Specialists.
I feel like this is a concession for a created problem, however. Halo never had identifiability issues in the past, bar colorblindness, and this system just does not work well for a game where there are neither identifiable silhouettes or classes/characters assigned to a team.
If you want to have a new system, fine but still that players use what they’re used to. It would be dirt easy to implement a RvB type setting, or whatever color you want.