Hello, this is my second topic on Halo Infinite’s feedback. I’m a long time Halo Fan, and I’ve had a blast testing the Halo Infinite Flight.
I recently made a topic regarding the current state of aiming if you want to read more about why it is so frustrating.
But I’m here to talk about Big Team Battle.
The most important aspect of BTB is that it is fun! It’s a lot of fun to play with friends, but it’s not without core fundamental issues that need to be fixed before launch. Mainly, this iteration of big team battle doesn’t feel big in the least sense. It’s more like a randomized arena with more players. If this is 343’s vision, then I get it, but this could be so much more.
1- Let’s begin with what BTB is about: Vehicles.
There’s simply… no vehicles, there’s no vehicle mayhem, there’s no variety in vehicle combat.
Back in Halo 2 and 3, bases spawned from the get go with so many vehicles, a banshee, a scorpion, or a wraith tank, two warthogs one of which could be a gausshog, mongooses, you name it.
This was great because players could engage in vehicle combat from the beginning, and you would get these exciting duels between a scorpion and two hogs, or a hornet against a ghost. Anybody remembers how satisfying it was to hit a banshee with a wraith mortar round?
This aspect is completely gone from Halo Infinite, because bases have very few vehicles, and then the pelican drop-ship will drop random weak vehicles on timers, so there’s never any sort of variety in vehicle vs vehicle combat. Which leads us to our next point.
2- Pelican drop-ships, and weapon ordnance: Randomness.
By far the most confusing element of BTB is the randomness in the pelican drops and the ordnance drops. I do not like this AT ALL. Currently, it mostly drops Ghosts, and ordnance is so random, but this isn’t just a weighing issue, no, no. This is flawed to the core, let me explain:
I understand that 343 wants BTB to be an almost cinematic experience, but this cannot take precedence over gameplay. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to fix this, without removing these two things altogether.
By simply making vehicles spawn in set locations on a timer, like it has always been before. It is totally OK to have vehicles spawn out of thin air. It’s reliable, it’s predictable, it’s fun and the most important thing: more players can drive more vehicles in a single game. Furthermore, it encourages cooperation and it is BIG.
The problem with the pelican drop is that very few players get rewarded for a seemingly important event. Hence, it is underwhelming.
Then there’s the ordnance drops. Currently, it is so underwhelming, you just come across these things every once in a while, it feels unrewarded, unfair, it is not fun, it’s random. This can also be easily fixed.
Remember the mission Delta Halo back in Halo 2? Remember how cool it was to see a pelican approach and have it drop weapons all over the battlefield? I do remember, and I wish 343 would change the current implementation for the pelican to drop weapons instead of vehicles.
Let me explain why this makes more sense and why it would be better for BTB: as players see the pelican approach, they can follow their trajectory, they know the pelican will be dropping weapons all along the path. So players can rush to the pelican and get rewarded with cool weapons, it also encourages cooperation with players swapping guns or fighting the enemy team for the ordnance.
3- Active fighting time is very low: Starting Weapons.
The respawn time is 5 seconds. In objective game-modes, it’s 10 seconds. You would think that when you get killed, you can get onto the fight right away. This is not true, and even though Halo has never been about mindlessly rushing into the battlefield, the current BTB implementation has less action and fewer battles happening because of a single issue: the starting kit.
BTB has to be a BR start, no question about it. Every argument against it is ridiculous, specially after the fact that there’s A LOT of precision weapons littered all over the map. What this causes is that when you spawn, you will inevitably run towards weapon racks to pick up a BR or a Commando. So in the end everybody has precision weapons anyways.
The difference is that aside from the 5 second respawn time, I have to spend an extra 15 to 30 seconds looking for a precision weapon rack.
This is taking the fun away from BTB, forcing players to enter this loop is not good. Specially if you get killed once you reach a battle zone, you’re forced into that 20 second respawn loop.
4- Hacking is boring and pointless: Loot Caves.
The loot cave was exciting the first couple of times. A few games later and people just ignored them. It takes a lot of time to open and you can’t leave the immediate area, but the worst offender is how there’s nothing inside. A power weapon and a power up.
This is the same problem with the pelican drops, a seemingly big event that leaves more players frustrated and empty-handed. Sometimes the hacking player gets nothing.
This can also be easily fixed: Add a lot more loot inside, maybe even a vehicle. Oh, no, that would be so broken, you might think, but fret not. The way this can be balanced is by notifying ALL players that a hack is taking place.
This increases player engagement, it feels fair and rewarding and worth fighting for, it would be BIG.
These are all my observations regarding BTB. Things I didn’t mention, like maps or game types I don’t have an issue with. And I think 343 did a great job on those regards (except the random flag spawns).
Thanks for reading, please discuss.