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Games Halo Infinite
1

Just throwing my two cents out there…
For the most part, I really enjoyed playing. The game handles smoothly, there weren’t many bugs identified, and its generally fun to play.

  • Too much loading - Loading to get into the game, loading to sign in, loading to start the networking, loading the networking, loading the intro, loading the map… way too many load screens. This needs optimising. - Hit registration - This feels both good, and cheap. Bullet-sponging wasn’t enjoyable in the days of Halo 2 and Halo 3, there are a lot better technologies available today and a lot better internet connections in the world to ensure this doesn’t happen, but even playing with bots results in a lot of bullet-sponging. Aside from this single negative, I feel like the hit-reg system is really nice - its especially nice when you get that no-scope headshot. - Damage confirmations - I’m not 100% sure if grenades should come with hit-markers, especially when you’re bouncing them around corners etc. If you can’t see the player being damaged, it shouldn’t tell you that you’ve hit them unless they’ve died. - Power Weapon/Item Announcements - This shouldn’t be in the game, at least in ranked anyway. Part of the skill is knowing when/where a power weapon will spawn, and that’s what contributes to the skill curve. Knowledge is power - Don’t take knowledge away. - Red vs Blue - I really, really don’t understand this bit. Why are players running around in Purple/White/Red etc colours when they’re on the Blue team? In my first game, I was blue team, and our whole team were in Grey armour, except for one, in White. The enemy team “Red” team, were all in Blue. This made it very difficult to determine who was friend/foe. This isn’t traditional Halo, and honestly, this needs reverting. - Pixelated screen bleed - I don’t get this in any other game (and my GPU is brand new) but in Halo Infinite, I get these purple/pink boxes everywhere on load screens / scoreboards like graphic tearing. Not sure what the cause is. - Limited Display options - I play on a 6900XT and have a Samsung SuperUltrawide monitor (5120x1440). I only play on max resolution for cinematic games like RDR2. For competitive shooters, I play on a segment of my screen (central) at 3840x1440 and use ‘Windows Borderless Gaming’ to remove the frames of the game. This works in every other game, even New World which is also in Beta, but Halo Infinite crashes as soon as the game is full-screened borderless. Please either add support for Windows Borderless Gaming, or add the option natively in game to go Windowed Borderless at a specific resolution anchored in the centre of the screen. - Join in progress - I joined one game in progress that had already started, and as a result the sound bugged out. I don’t know if this occurs frequently or not as I’ve only JIP’d one game, but nearly all audio was muted save for the odd sound effects. - Map sizes - I feel like most maps are too small. Map control was easily established by one, or two, players, and the other two or three players could easily free-roam and spawn kill. This shouldn’t be happening in a Halo game. The maps should require at least three players to maintain map control and dominance. - Scoreboards - One of the key things in Halo was at the end of the game, you could see how well you did, reviewing your stats - Kills, assists, deaths, grenade kills, melee kills, weapon kills, power weapon kills etc etc. and comparing them to other players. This isn’t possible anymore, even though there is a simplified version during the game. The odd choice of removing this post-match I’m assuming is because you don’t want competitive players to be ‘toxic’ towards casual players - and if this is the reason, then you should simply remove ranked play altogether and advertise it as the casual game you want it to be.
    Statistics and analysis help players to improve, especially in a ranked environment - seeing how YOU stack up against others at this rank helps you understand where YOUR peak is. Blizzard’s Overwatch tried this casual strategy of not revealing stats to other players, and honestly its created an even more toxic environment because people can’t see other people’s contributions which in turn starts arguments based on simply who picks what hero.
    Bottom line for this one; _put the scoreboard back!_And that’s about it.
    While there are 10 negative points here that I’d like to see improvement on, that doesn’t mean to say my experience of the game is negative. I’ve played a limited number of games, and I’ve enjoyed them, but as it stands I’m not interested in customising a spartan, or playing through a battlepass because I don’t know what that’s going to look like in the end-game when it’s released.
2

All good points. I like discussing stuff so I went and provided my thoughts on your critiques (which are generally all valid and im glad you listed them all). None of this is done will ill intent or argumentative. Its all for fun discussion.

  • optimization is one of the last things done and the UI for how you load into things is not indicative of how it functions in the main game given how everything is segmented off. I wouldnt worry too much - what do you mean by sponginess? You think it takes to long to kill? - nade hit markers wont be in competative so I personally dont find it that big of deal (currently) - knowledge is power, but isnt this also giving everyone the knowledge? I agree with you on ranked, but find no issue with it being present for social modes - Some things got to change, and they went for a customization focused game. Lot of people, myself included, were always disappointed that you never really see your customization in game besides free for all. This fixes that and provides more value in coatings which can be earned and bought. I can see why many dont like it, but we also have to remember, not everything needs to stay traditional - thats prob more in relation to optimization and graphical bugs. There are a bunch here and given its not a polished build, I wouldnt read to much into it currently - again, mainly an optimization thing though I am pretty sure many MS games lack a specific fullscreen option (cant remember if its borderless or not). Not sure why and I overall agree whatever setting I cant remember the name of is, should be there. - Thats a bug, it happens outside of JIP as well though not as often - Halo has functioned like that for awhile. You only need 1-2 players to establish map control while the rest roam. That being said, also note we are playing against bots so how maps flow and combat flows with them is not indicative of how it will play in a live pvp environment. Most of the play currently is pretty mindless. As for size, it feels pretty on par with some of the smaller maps of h3 llike gaurdian or lockout. Do I think any are as good as them? idk, I will have to play pvp on them to know. live fire is my least fav personally. - you can see all that info and in many cases, provides more info than we ever had in the past. That being said, its not as up front as it was in prior games but it is def there.
3

> 2533274840624875;2:
> All good points. I like discussing stuff so I went and provided my thoughts on your critiques (which are generally all valid and im glad you listed them all). None of this is done will ill intent or argumentative. Its all for fun discussion.
> - optimization is one of the last things done and the UI for how you load into things is not indicative of how it functions in the main game given how everything is segmented off. I wouldnt worry too much - what do you mean by sponginess? You think it takes to long to kill? - nade hit markers wont be in competative so I personally dont find it that big of deal (currently) - knowledge is power, but isnt this also giving everyone the knowledge? I agree with you on ranked, but find no issue with it being present for social modes - Some things got to change, and they went for a customization focused game. Lot of people, myself included, were always disappointed that you never really see your customization in game besides free for all. This fixes that and provides more value in coatings which can be earned and bought. I can see why many dont like it, but we also have to remember, not everything needs to stay traditional - thats prob more in relation to optimization and graphical bugs. There are a bunch here and given its not a polished build, I wouldnt read to much into it currently - again, mainly an optimization thing though I am pretty sure many MS games lack a specific fullscreen option (cant remember if its borderless or not). Not sure why and I overall agree whatever setting I cant remember the name of is, should be there. - Thats a bug, it happens outside of JIP as well though not as often - Halo has functioned like that for awhile. You only need 1-2 players to establish map control while the rest roam. That being said, also note we are playing against bots so how maps flow and combat flows with them is not indicative of how it will play in a live pvp environment. Most of the play currently is pretty mindless. As for size, it feels pretty on par with some of the smaller maps of h3 llike gaurdian or lockout. Do I think any are as good as them? idk, I will have to play pvp on them to know. live fire is my least fav personally. - you can see all that info and in many cases, provides more info than we ever had in the past. That being said, its not as up front as it was in prior games but it is def there.

Cool… well here’s my responses.

  1. Kill times were very ranged, even when using the same weapons from the same range. Old school halo, seeing someone’s shield pop and then taking 3-4 more bursts was spongey. In infinite, you can pop their shield and empty an entire pistol magazine into them and not get the kill.

  2. If everyone has the “knowledge”, then nobody benefits from it. Advantage should be earned, not freely gained.

  3. I simply disagree. The base colour should be the team colour, at the very least in competitive modes - which is ultimately what the game should be, as it always was.

  4. It’s still a poor map design and likely why their games post Halo 3 have been really poor from a competitive scene, even with gaming in general becoming vastly more popular, the concurrent player limit back on Halo 3 used to be over 1 million players, where as now, you’re lucky to see more than 100,000 playing.

  5. I couldn’t find it anywhere on the post-screen. Only kills vs deaths, that’s it. None of it in a comparable format.

4

> 2533274803834534;3:
> > 2533274840624875;2:
> > All good points. I like discussing stuff so I went and provided my thoughts on your critiques (which are generally all valid and im glad you listed them all). None of this is done will ill intent or argumentative. Its all for fun discussion.
> > - optimization is one of the last things done and the UI for how you load into things is not indicative of how it functions in the main game given how everything is segmented off. I wouldnt worry too much - what do you mean by sponginess? You think it takes to long to kill? - nade hit markers wont be in competative so I personally dont find it that big of deal (currently) - knowledge is power, but isnt this also giving everyone the knowledge? I agree with you on ranked, but find no issue with it being present for social modes - Some things got to change, and they went for a customization focused game. Lot of people, myself included, were always disappointed that you never really see your customization in game besides free for all. This fixes that and provides more value in coatings which can be earned and bought. I can see why many dont like it, but we also have to remember, not everything needs to stay traditional - thats prob more in relation to optimization and graphical bugs. There are a bunch here and given its not a polished build, I wouldnt read to much into it currently - again, mainly an optimization thing though I am pretty sure many MS games lack a specific fullscreen option (cant remember if its borderless or not). Not sure why and I overall agree whatever setting I cant remember the name of is, should be there. - Thats a bug, it happens outside of JIP as well though not as often - Halo has functioned like that for awhile. You only need 1-2 players to establish map control while the rest roam. That being said, also note we are playing against bots so how maps flow and combat flows with them is not indicative of how it will play in a live pvp environment. Most of the play currently is pretty mindless. As for size, it feels pretty on par with some of the smaller maps of h3 llike gaurdian or lockout. Do I think any are as good as them? idk, I will have to play pvp on them to know. live fire is my least fav personally. - you can see all that info and in many cases, provides more info than we ever had in the past. That being said, its not as up front as it was in prior games but it is def there.
>
> Cool… well here’s my responses.
>
> 2. Kill times were very ranged, even when using the same weapons from the same range. Old school halo, seeing someone’s shield pop and then taking 3-4 more bursts was spongey. In infinite, you can pop their shield and empty an entire pistol magazine into them and not get the kill.
>
> 4. If everyone has the “knowledge”, then nobody benefits from it. Advantage should be earned, not freely gained.
>
> 5. I simply disagree. The base colour should be the team colour, at the very least in competitive modes - which is ultimately what the game should be, as it always was.
>
> 9. It’s still a poor map design and likely why their games post Halo 3 have been really poor from a competitive scene, even with gaming in general becoming vastly more popular, the concurrent player limit back on Halo 3 used to be over 1 million players, where as now, you’re lucky to see more than 100,000 playing.
>
> 10. I couldn’t find it anywhere on the post-screen. Only kills vs deaths, that’s it. None of it in a comparable format.

  1. Thats def not true. The sidekick kills in 7 shots (6 to beak the shield and 1 to the head) if the last round is a head shot and is a 9 shot if its body (so 3 to the body). Its a 12 shot mag which means if you have less then 3 shots after breaking shields and body shots, then those rounds missed the target. Infinite does not have strong bullet mag and even pretty weak aim assist for controller, which makes it hard to hit. Based on a lot of numbers, infinties ttk sits close to h3 with some weapons killing slightly quicker (br body shot for example kills quicker in infinite then it did in h3). Def ok if you dont like the ttk though

  2. Not necessarily. Having the knowledge does not mean you know how to act on it. Knowing a power weapon is spawning does not mean you know the best way to get there and or the best use of it on the map. Its not given you all the knowledge needed and gives players more info to learn from. If they know timers, they can then start learning everything else (routes, coontrol points, sightlines etc)

  3. Thats fine you prefer red v blue. I do as well to some extent. I am just merely saying the reasoning behind it. You can still not like it. Also, halo also was not always a competative mode. I mean, ce-3 were pretty goofy and became competative by happenstance. We should not try to force competative features in all areads of halo. Also, H5 was prob one of the most competative of the bunch, its pro scene just was ran poorly and the overall opinion of the game was so poor, it never went anywhere. Not saying it was a good halo game, but it def was one of the most competative.

  4. You can dislike the map overall, thats fine. However, we shouldnt be acting how players function now is any different to how they functioned in h3. Pros and competative play do essentially the same flows for dominating maps and your complaints with how people are playing the maps are essentially complaints with competative halo flow. I am also not sure what h3 pop has anything to do with anything. H3 can never happen again. No game will reach that high consistently. Why? Not because of the games themselves, but because of the market and how much is being produced. COD, BF, overwatch, valerant, fortnight, destiny 2 etc, all are series that pull or will pull big numbers. Big shooters are lucky to break 400k now. Not because of their quality, but because of player retention. There is just a ton of major offerings with really low barriers for entry.

  5. Ya, it was super hidden. You had to view prior game states to view the board and you could go through all the stats. I don’t really hold that to anything currently though and much of the UI seemed stitched together just for the flight.

5

> 2533274840624875;4:
> > 2533274803834534;3:
> > > 2533274840624875;2:
> > > All good points. I like discussing stuff so I went and provided my thoughts on your critiques (which are generally all valid and im glad you listed them all). None of this is done will ill intent or argumentative. Its all for fun discussion.
> > > - optimization is one of the last things done and the UI for how you load into things is not indicative of how it functions in the main game given how everything is segmented off. I wouldnt worry too much - what do you mean by sponginess? You think it takes to long to kill? - nade hit markers wont be in competative so I personally dont find it that big of deal (currently) - knowledge is power, but isnt this also giving everyone the knowledge? I agree with you on ranked, but find no issue with it being present for social modes - Some things got to change, and they went for a customization focused game. Lot of people, myself included, were always disappointed that you never really see your customization in game besides free for all. This fixes that and provides more value in coatings which can be earned and bought. I can see why many dont like it, but we also have to remember, not everything needs to stay traditional - thats prob more in relation to optimization and graphical bugs. There are a bunch here and given its not a polished build, I wouldnt read to much into it currently - again, mainly an optimization thing though I am pretty sure many MS games lack a specific fullscreen option (cant remember if its borderless or not). Not sure why and I overall agree whatever setting I cant remember the name of is, should be there. - Thats a bug, it happens outside of JIP as well though not as often - Halo has functioned like that for awhile. You only need 1-2 players to establish map control while the rest roam. That being said, also note we are playing against bots so how maps flow and combat flows with them is not indicative of how it will play in a live pvp environment. Most of the play currently is pretty mindless. As for size, it feels pretty on par with some of the smaller maps of h3 llike gaurdian or lockout. Do I think any are as good as them? idk, I will have to play pvp on them to know. live fire is my least fav personally. - you can see all that info and in many cases, provides more info than we ever had in the past. That being said, its not as up front as it was in prior games but it is def there.
> >
> > Cool… well here’s my responses.
> >
> > 2. Kill times were very ranged, even when using the same weapons from the same range. Old school halo, seeing someone’s shield pop and then taking 3-4 more bursts was spongey. In infinite, you can pop their shield and empty an entire pistol magazine into them and not get the kill.
> >
> > 4. If everyone has the “knowledge”, then nobody benefits from it. Advantage should be earned, not freely gained.
> >
> > 5. I simply disagree. The base colour should be the team colour, at the very least in competitive modes - which is ultimately what the game should be, as it always was.
> >
> > 9. It’s still a poor map design and likely why their games post Halo 3 have been really poor from a competitive scene, even with gaming in general becoming vastly more popular, the concurrent player limit back on Halo 3 used to be over 1 million players, where as now, you’re lucky to see more than 100,000 playing.
> >
> > 10. I couldn’t find it anywhere on the post-screen. Only kills vs deaths, that’s it. None of it in a comparable format.
>
> 2. Thats def not true. The sidekick kills in 7 shots (6 to beak the shield and 1 to the head) if the last round is a head shot and is a 9 shot if its body (so 3 to the body). Its a 12 shot mag which means if you have less then 3 shots after breaking shields and body shots, then those rounds missed the target. Infinite does not have strong bullet mag and even pretty weak aim assist for controller, which makes it hard to hit. Based on a lot of numbers, infinties ttk sits close to h3 with some weapons killing slightly quicker (br body shot for example kills quicker in infinite then it did in h3). Def ok if you dont like the ttk though
>
> 4. Not necessarily. Having the knowledge does not mean you know how to act on it. Knowing a power weapon is spawning does not mean you know the best way to get there and or the best use of it on the map. Its not given you all the knowledge needed and gives players more info to learn from. If they know timers, they can then start learning everything else (routes, coontrol points, sightlines etc)
>
> 5. Thats fine you prefer red v blue. I do as well to some extent. I am just merely saying the reasoning behind it. You can still not like it. Also, halo also was not always a competative mode. I mean, ce-3 were pretty goofy and became competative by happenstance. We should not try to force competative features in all areads of halo. Also, H5 was prob one of the most competative of the bunch, its pro scene just was ran poorly and the overall opinion of the game was so poor, it never went anywhere. Not saying it was a good halo game, but it def was one of the most competative.
>
> 9. You can dislike the map overall, thats fine. However, we shouldnt be acting how players function now is any different to how they functioned in h3. Pros and competative play do essentially the same flows for dominating maps and your complaints with how people are playing the maps are essentially complaints with competative halo flow. I am also not sure what h3 pop has anything to do with anything. H3 can never happen again. No game will reach that high consistently. Why? Not because of the games themselves, but because of the market and how much is being produced. COD, BF, overwatch, valerant, fortnight, destiny 2 etc, all are series that pull or will pull big numbers. Big shooters are lucky to break 400k now. Not because of their quality, but because of player retention. There is just a ton of major offerings with really low barriers for entry.
>
> 10. Ya, it was super hidden. You had to view prior game states to view the board and you could go through all the stats. I don’t really hold that to anything currently though and much of the UI seemed stitched together just for the flight.

  1. Like I said, this was a problem in Halo 3 with bullet sponging… I know what should kill a player, but it doesn’t always occur. I had two scenarios where every bullet of the pistol hit the body of a bot (at least hitmarkers were displayed), and they still survived after the entire magazine.

  2. Again, I disagree. Modern-day development of video games is being destroyed by catering to casual players - this is a prime example of this. It’s a constant downward trend that’s been occurring for the last 10-15 years. Spoon-feeding information to every player detracts from the overall experience. If everyone is told a weapon is spawning, all the focus is on there, rather than a smart and knowledgeable player thinking “Hey, it’s been almost three minutes since the Rocket Launcher spawned, I’ll head over there now and get it as soon as it drops to surprise the enemy team”.

6

> 2533274840624875;4:
> > 2533274803834534;3:
> > > 2533274840624875;2:
> > > 9. You can dislike the map overall, thats fine. However, we shouldnt be acting how players function now is any different to how they functioned in h3. Pros and competative play do essentially the same flows for dominating maps and your complaints with how people are playing the maps are essentially complaints with competative halo flow. I am also not sure what h3 pop has anything to do with anything. H3 can never happen again. No game will reach that high consistently. Why? Not because of the games themselves, but because of the market and how much is being produced. COD, BF, overwatch, valerant, fortnight, destiny 2 etc, all are series that pull or will pull big numbers. Big shooters are lucky to break 400k now. Not because of their quality, but because of player retention. There is just a ton of major offerings with really low barriers for entry.

I had to split this into its own message due to character limit…

  1. It is exactly to do with quality of games (see above). There are very few games these days that hold interest because they’re well designed games… nearly all games are designed to cater towards casual players - players that only play for 30-60 minutes a sitting, and play once or twice a week. Designing games based on that, and ignoring your player-base that spends 8+ hours playing the game in one sitting, and plays seven days a week is an illogical step - but all developers do that these days because they’d rather get more money producing something that bores people after 40 hours than produce a great game that can be played for years.
    You mentioned Overwatch there; that game had potential. It had a good player-base, and they subtracted a lot from the game to make it appeasing to casual players. The casual players then play ranked, get placed where they shouldn’t, complain they feel they’re better than they are, when they regularly demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge, and thus create a toxic environment because they can’t see a scoreboard either (which goes onto point 10 about not being able to see the proper detailed stats) so they learn nothing. This ultimately killed the game - that and terrible decisions about making new characters more and more overpowered which completely disrupted the balance of the game - and again, this was literally just to appease the casual players.

So, to conclude on this point; making maps easily controllable by one or two players, in a four-person team game, is a ridiculously bad design decision because it means casual players can progress through ranks while being terrible at the game if they’re just given one or two players on their team that know how to play the game. This is not Halo gameplay - it never has been. There were no maps in Halo 3 that permitted one or two players to control a whole map - even your examples of Blackout and Guardian didn’t promote this - Guardian for example required players at Gold, Blue Window, and Camo and then this would spawn the opposition players at either bottom-mid, Green, Elbow or S-Tower; the most common spawn there would either be Elbow (based on distance) or Green (if Elbow was occupied by two players and S-Tower had fire/grenades going off on it). That’s three people, for very limited control depending on circumstance. In the flight, I found all I had to do was hold middle high ground, and move from edge to edge spawn-killing the bots… that’s just me, while my team run around the map like headless chickens. I only played five games, got four steaktaculars, and finished with an average KD ratio of about 3.75~ - ultimately, this is just bad map design for a game that should be the next competitive game of the decade.

EDIT:
I should add, I was an insane Original Trilogy Halo fan. I put in thousands of hours on each game, and played each game for 2-3 years each.
I was severely let down by Reach and its desire to try and imitate Call of Duty by adding Sprint, weapon bloom, recoil etc when it was never a part of the franchise… but the positives of Reach was it’s forge mode being expanded and that made the game playable for its custom game content.

After that, Halo 4 wasn’t that interesting and the multiplayer was really poor. Halo 5, I enjoyed Breakout, but that was it. So, for Halo Infinite, I expect them to fix their mistakes from all their previous games as 343 Industries, and make a traditional Halo experience - something they’ve been promising for over a decade and have failed at every opportunity to provide.