My thoughts after 18 hours of gameplay, not counting alpha gameplay.
Overall, the weapon balance feels very solid. A few things feel off to me.
- The new hammer feels awesome and distinct, needs help with environmental effects with gravity.
- Sidekick and AR feel amazingly balanced and good to use.
- Battle Riffle - Feels weird that a perfect BR can lose to an imperfect sidekick. At least, that’s the impression i’ve gotten when i get perfects with the BR. Otherwise, feels good. Too good. I prefer it over the commando at the ranged the commando is supposed to dominate.
- Bulldog - Feels weird. It losses to hammer and sword, and unless you’re at the perfect range gap, losses to AR and sidekick.
- Needler - Never picked it up as I’ve never seen someone do decent with it
- Commando - Feels a lot weaker since the nerf, probably a good thing
- Rockets - Dont get them enough to comment
- Sniper - Way better than the alpha’s. Very very confused what counts as a headshot. I swear I get headshots when I shouldn’t. I keep shooting people in the chest or way to the side of the head and get headshots, maybe my lag though. Honestly, it feels like they have two heads, one that I see on my screen and one that the server thinks, if I hit either, I get a headshot.
- Mangler - 4 shots to kill feels bad, but 3 shots would be pretty strong. Give it a slightly faster fire rate?
- Disrupter - I hate it most of the time, but love it when someone gets a vehicle, only because it reliably spawns.
- Energy Sword - Feels really good. Love that it one shots through overshields as well. Seems to be some edge cases where the reticle is red but you won’t lunge.
- Plasma pistol - Why would I pick it up? The emp is too easy to dodge, and the weapon change time is too long.
- Pulse Carbine - Unless the enemy is at a very specific range, the plasma is too easy to juke
- Stalker Rifle - It feels so bad. I just don’t know why, but I rarely see anyone get kills with it and It feels bad in my own hands as well. Very easy to tag someone once or twice, very very hard to confirm the kill.
- Ravager - Weapon arc feels bad, AOE burn feels too weak. If you stand in it for its full duration and eat the initial blast it should kill.
- Skewer - Very strong, very fun. Don’t think it should one shot any vehicle, its too easy to hit them. That, or it needs a lot more travel time/drop.
- Shock Rfile - Fun gun. Very very useful for disabling air, one of the few things that feels like it can contain a half decent Wasp. Though it can’t kill one.
- Heatwave - I’m so confused and bad
- Sentinel Beam - The kick on this thing is massive, feels great if you can control it. I can’t. Maybe too much kick? Or i’m just bad.
- Cindershot - Haven’t really gotten to play with it. Seems good once you figure it out
- Hydra - Great vs vehicles, terrible vs players. I love seeing them on the map for the sole reason I know the map won’t get dominated by the wasp.
- Melee feels horrible and laggy. I miss when I expect to hit, I hit when I feel I should miss, I can’t tell what the lunge range is, and I have backsmakced people when I’ve punched them in the face. On top of all this, the way the enemy collisions is designed is so ice skatty that if the melee’s don’t kill, most of the time both players lose where the other player went and start spinning in circles.
Vehicle balance
- Ghost - Too beefy and/or the driver is too safe, otherwise feels great.
- Mongoose - Feels very nice.
- Gungoose - The AOE on its shots seems a bit extreme
- Warthog - Overall pretty great. Driving feels a bit too floaty, and I think its chaingun has too fast of TTK. I would make it take 1-2 more bullets. Also, it feels a bit like the sniper rifle in that my bullets seem to curve into people. I have literally killed people around corners. Maybe thats why the TTK feels too fast to me.
- Chopper - Feels weird. It always has to me. Both glad and sad its charge cant crush smaller vehicles in one shot.
- Tank - I like its beef. Feels a bit weak compared to the wraith with how closed in the maps are. Never got to drive one, just gun. I like that the gunner can kill boarders, though they should rest on the side they tried to board from, not always hop to the left side.
- Wraith - OP. With the removal of FF I can kill enemies around the corner by shooting my allies, or just bomb where the flag is without concern. The mortar is too fast, and has too little arch. I barely had to aim up with it. Boost is very very strong anti-boarding. Too strong.
- Banshee - This thing is horrible. You basically have to hit someone directly to kill with the banshee bomb, and the main guns feels worse than the ghosts. I’ve literally ignored one as I ran across the map, it actually hitting me, because I could and didn’t want to waste time shooting it. Overall, every time I’ve gotten one I just use it to splatter people. Its very good at that.
- Wasp - Wayyyy too tough, and then oddly fragile to the skewer. It eats small arms fire way too easily. With some of the odd weapon spawn choices its too common for wasps to survive for most of a battle from a half decent player while racking up tons of kills. I’d say small arms needs to do more, and it shouldn’t be one shot by the skewer. Maybe make the skewer do like 70-80% of its health?
Map Design
- I love the defensive nature of the bases. Its wonderful for team objectives.
- I love the flag changing positions every time its captured.
- Why no vehicle maps? A general lack of vehicles beyond warthogs, made even worse by the challenge system.
- It feels super bad that your team’s pelican drops your vehicles in front of your base. That snowballs the enemy team if your losing, instead of giving you a chance to come back.
- Thank you so much for not spawning players in someone’s reticle, or with their reticle on someone. Got really tired of that with the MCC games. I always feel like I have time to breath before getting into another fight, be it BTB or 4v4.
- A couple of the weapons feel like they need to spawn with more ammo in BTB, specifically the commando and maybe the sniper rifle.
- Lack of unique items in BTB. What i mean by this, is that in many halo reach and halo 3 BTB maps, their where multiple vehicles and multiple special weapons for everyone, to the point where well over half a team could be decked out. Take valhalla for example - 1 banshee, 1 tank, 1 warthog, 1 sniper, 1 energy drain, 1 missile pod. Every person on the team, because the warthog takes 2, can get something special while being uncontested by the other team. Sure, some are better than others, but all of them are distinctly power weapons. For current BTB i’m not sure everyone can even pick one thing up, let alone something that I would consider a power weapon or almost power weapon. Most of the weapons feel like they feel a different role, not that they are a “power weapon”, which I love but feels lacking in BTB.
- No safely spawning ANTI-vehicle in BTB. Using the paragraph above, that map had 3 weapons that could be used in that. The sniper, the energy drain, and the missile pod. Sure, the sniper wasn’t very good that way, but it could be. There are almost no safe anti vehicle spawning weapons. You’re probably wondering why I want this and more vehicles? The only vehicle that feels OP is the Wasp, and I just want some way to deal with the infuriating thing. This will also be needed if more vehicles start spawning.
- Weapon drops in drop pods are very hard to spot, even with the AI scan and your AI calling them out. Also, the inconsistency can be frustrating when you’re begging for a certain power weapon and get something else. The rise of hope and then crash of disappointment feels worse than just not having the chance of it.
- The weapons feel too random. This is mostly a complaint because of the challenge system. Can’t. Get. The. Weapon. I. Need. For. The. Challenge!
Aesthetic
- Love the general aesthetic. Feels halo again.
- Armor colors feel pretty flat a lot of the time. Best example is the max rank halo 5 armor, it looked beautiful in the advertisements. Now it looks flat, and more steel colored than white.
- Love the banished design. Feels so different to the other factions in a good way.
Battle Pass, challenges and character customization
- The battle pass feels cartoonishly greedy. You get so little as a free player, I hope this is changed with the events. Even as a paying customer there seems to be a lack of things, as you get so many challenge swaps (which is bull crap to make you feel better without actually giving you anything of value).
*Edit: The price for most things in the store is laughable. Why would I buy a coating for 20$ when I can buy one of the many awesome indie games I haven’t played, or go eat some fantastic BBQ instead. I could see 10$ for colors, 5$ for big armor items, and 5$ for pairs of smaller armor items like shoulders, so you get both shoulders. - I’ve see some people complain about unlocking such specific armor pieces and no armor sets, but the current method is within my expectations, until I learned about the armor core system. That…yeah, no I get why people are prickly about it. That thing needs some serious rework that other people have said in a far more articulate way than I can.
- The challenge system makes the game directly worse. Myself and many other players go into matches not trying to win, but trying to complete our challenges, and so act like complete idiots. Its too specific. Instead of “Get X kills with stalker rifle” it should be “Get X kills with plasma weapons”. There should be “Get X amount of multi kills”, “Get X amount of killing sprees”, “Score X amount of flags”, “Score X amount of shards”, ect. Something that can be done through pure gametime, and doesn’t require weapon spawn or vehicle spawn RNG to favor you and then you be good enough to use them. Almost every tank I’ve seen spawned gets instantly killed as I see both sides swam it and spam grenades.
- I really really expected more options for new players. Not a whole bunch, but at least 2 options for every type of armor piece unlocked. 2 helmets, 2 chests, 2 visors, ect.
- I think a lot of the really hard challenges could be used elsewhere, perhaps for a special armor to show how dedicated and skilled you are. I’m talking about challenges like “get a headshot with a sniper rifle while in the air” or the like. Not “kill X wraiths”. That one doesn’t take skill, just RNG that one actually spawns and that you somehow get the last hit.
Game modes
- Stockpile is the only game mode I currently dislike, as it feels super snowballs. Core spawns often don’t feel balanced in their spawn, and because their is like…8-10 cores in each spawn, the team with the more favorable spawn snowballs out of control. They easily get the first two points if they can control a favorable point in the middle of the map, something thats not that hard to do. Its not like they are contesting something near the enemy base. I got a few ideas to help with that, separate or combined.
- Balance the spawns better. Not sure that can be a thing with the asymmetry of the maps.
- All cores on the map not scored when a team gets a point disappear. This prevents snowball.
- Instead of spawning all in one clump, they spawn spread out. Maybe all alone, or in groups of 2 or 3 or something.
- Can we get better ques please? And more game modes?
Controller
- The halo Infinite controller settings still feel super bad. The acceleration, even at max, still doesn’t feel instant. The range in each sensitivity feels too small, even with the deadzones set to 3-0-0. I either have to chose being able to be precise even at medium range, or be able to check my corners as I run around and be good at close quarters.
- I have never had this problem with any of the MCC games. Its something to do with Infinite in particular. It feels like they have been unable to recreate the previous Halo games sensitivity settings. It feels like each sensitivity settings, 5, 5.5, 6, ect, instead of having (pulling a number out of my but here] “10” point of difference between minimum turn speed and max turn speed, it has “5” points of it. I think this in particular makes it feel where im fighting glue thats holding my neck in position, until it “snaps” at higher sensitivities and then I can’t control anything.
- If you think its because of the lack of aim assist, I’ve tested against a cement wall in the firing range. It still feels bad to try and look around, and this complaint has nothing to do with aim assist. That’s a separate thing that I honestly haven’t even noticed being less, but I’ve played games with much less aim assist before with a controller and that may be why.
- Its so frustrating that even though I am enjoying several aspects of Infinite, im debating going back to MCC or switching to M&K, even though I hate using M&K as I get way too serious.
Score Screen
*It feels lacking of information. Who killed me the most? What did I kill with? Who did I kill the most? These are all things that are in MCC
*I heard damage taken was added to being tracked for Pro. Why can’t we see that as well?