Hello 343 and Community!
tl;dr //
-Halo Infinite got some good bones
-Add Player Collision to Ranked
-Equipment should affect teammates in Ranked
-Needler Projectiles & Energy Sword need visual updates
-Medals need overhaul to classic art style
-Drivable Forklifts
Begin rant;
I’ve been a Halo fan since I could walk and was third in line for H3 at midnight at my local Gamestop. (Still have the town news article on it lamented at home for my 15seconds of fame featuring my 13year old mugshot with a quote on finishing the fight. Feels slightly odd getting a delivery update instead these days but it’s where we are today).
I want to start off by saying the core experience is awesome. The gunplay/equipment loop is snappy, accurate and fun. Best “feeling” FPS y’all have shipped I’d go out on a limb to say and am very eager for what the future holds with Infinite. Also excited to jump into the campaign tomorrow as well!
That being said I would like to take some time to give some feedback in two primary areas: Physics & Visuals.
On the physics front I would like to focus on Player Collision.
Removing teammates collision reduces the skill gap ceiling while raising the floor.
Bumping into teammates makes the people I’m playing with feel like real people and not just bots. No player collision removes a massive layer of gameplay immersion in favor for CoD-style lobby starts. Not worth the trade off imo.
Especially in a ranked soloQ competitive environment. With team friendly fire is turned on, I’m constantly hitting teammates with grenades and doing damage to them because they ghost through me during my throw animation.
Players no longer have to respect teammate positioning and can clip thru them to trade shots or shields.
Leads to toxic gameplay as a result.
Player collision turned on forces players to respect/acknowledge teammate positioning and play off of it as a result. This raises the skill cap ceiling as players have to coordinate positioning to some degree / two players cannot hold the same angle at such a low risk.
In a playlist that doesn’t have radar, seeing the teammates behind you about to move through you is impossible to have the trigger discipline necessary to avoid. (I’m not advocating for adding radar to ranked, only for teammate collision in ranked)
Player collision increases anticipated consistency of outcomes per input. Sniper standing in the back lines should have to worry about hitting teammates in front of them without a player ghosting into their shot thru their body from behind.
I swear I’ve shot more people in the back by accident in this halo than any previously… More than happy to link clips on clips of accidental grenade sticks in the back, accidental sniper shots reducing their shields, a br burst in their back as they walk into my line of fire, etc…
Player collision been in every Halo.
I can understand removing it from casual play and big team battle but for the competitive arena I don’t see the previous justification given being valid and I see it as a design choice to cut a corner.
Jumping on heads used to be a bit of fun too… I find it odd I can hit and runover/betray a teammate with any vehicle but my character walks right thru them…
This is my rant on Player Collision. I think we all know the enemy collision is buggy / not functioning properly so this isn’t a post about fixing a bug. It’s a post about a feature that was removed.
In the same regard though, my next piece of feedback for Physics is in regard to equipment. The Repulsor and other equipment such as the grapple should interact with teammates as well for ranked.
Teammates should have the same collision properties when grappling as enemies. Repulsor “friendly fire” can be quite toxic in social/btb i could definitely see that, however in ranked playlists, there is this entire aspect of team dynamics which could be implemented for higher skill ceilings between teams.
Teammate repulsor jumps or grapples up to a teammates could be really cool to see in pro play where they typically make the most out of all sandbox tools. It would also remove the teammate bait to mind the gap off the ledge which feel a bit cheap when the blast doesnt also cause a team kill competitively, but your grenades & bullets would… just seems like something which could add an awesome cool layer without being a detriment to the overall loop.
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Visual Fidelity problems
I want to start off by saying here the team made a gorgeous game. Holy goodness the textures and objects look GOOD. It is a pleasure to look around the maps created, none more than streets for me right now. That map is perfection to me. Love love love the amount of nature and animal life I see. Wish the slipspace deer make a comeback somewheres tho! (campaign maybe? I havent played it yet)
For the constructive feedback, I believe the Needler projectiles are visually too small. At least in comparison to what appears on top of the gun, what is fired is quite minuscule. Adding an extra glow layer wrapped around the projectiles would go a long way without having to increase the physical size although I would opt for slightly larger physical needles in general fired. Just something for the team to consider. I imagine this has a big impact on hitboxes and isn’t a simple or easy fix whatsoever here…
Additionally, the energy sword appears very flat and two dimensional. I hope to see better visual effects and an updated model in the future for this iconic weapon.
Lastly I think we all can agree that the medals leave something to be desired. The decision to move away from red versus blue was cited as accessibility reasoning and allowed for more customization to show through in gameplay… with that being said I do not understand the decision to move to color coordinating medals it goes completely opposite decision to move away from color schemes. After a certain point, the medals became sterilized. I don’t like looking at my scorecard after to see the cool things I did and the fun looking visuals I would be rewarded with. Locking everything to a color, albeit slightly arbitrarily since some of the categories don’t lineup, makes them all look bland and causes me to never look at them. Seems like a development corner cut rather than decision to be an improvement. I know no one said let’s make these medals look as boring as possible but on the same hand someone could’ve said let’s not put as much effort into them as we need to another areas. The first update done a while back goes a long way but a lot more customization needs to go into the Medals. New ones like the pancake are great but they should look like pancakes and be golden brown. Not strictly tied to a dual chromatic scheme. From the grave should be a ghost but that wouldn’t fit in your color schemes so you remade it a gravestone…
Thank you for your time if you made it this far! I would love to see a stack of two spartans (one standing on the other’s head) get boosted over a wall with a repulsor for a game-winning play and a nice medal which looks nothing like any of the others. I think these changes would go a long way in adding back some of the “fun” elements which are slowly being sterilized from the franchise (RIP Drivable Forklifts).
best regards,
George