Here's my Infinite feedback, sorry I'm late!

Games Halo Infinite
1

Intro
I’m a longtime Halo fan and player and run a Halo player improvement program. I spend a lot of time in both the comp and social sides of the game. I was stoked to be invited to the flight last weekend. I didn’t receive a survey, but I thought I’d post my thoughts here anyways since I had them.

Out-of-game UI, Customization
Overall, my impressions of the main menu UI were lukewarm. It was hard to truly take it in with the many unfinished elements. I liked the interactive background that pans with mouse movement, but I wonder how that would work on console. It also panned even if a popup was open and you were moving around. Also, when you’re loading into a match, it’d be cool if we had a legit loading screen or got to shoot in the armoury or shoot bots while it searched. That in addition to just being able to customize armor and stuff if one wants, as well. Here’s to hoping the three black dots go away and the H5 black screen doesn’t return.

The customization definitely has potential and I like that they’ve expressed how invested they are in player expression, but I am worried about the -Yoink- they mentioned about certain combinations being limited in some form or fashion. I just want a -Yoink- ton of options for different areas of the body and different colors and a good UI to browse them in. Maybe we can take a step up from the age old armor system where we have to highlight an armor piece to see how it looks and maybe we can get an image preview of the item in the menu? So it’s easier to browse through a bunch of non descript names?

Also, I hope the emblem system for the flight wasn’t a precursor of what’s to come with the emblem system in Infinite fully. I like the way emblem customization has worked until now and also LOVE nameplates in MCC. I hope we can continue to enjoy them.

Battlepass
Prior to the flight, I was optimistic about the battlepass system at a high level. They said they’d do it MCC style and that passes won’t expire so people who get into the game late can get stuff from the earlier passes from before they started playing. That’ll be great.

While I was dually excited for their announcement that there would be a “Battlepass 0” where we can earn stuff in the flight that we’d get to keep when Infinite comes out. I was stoked! I love to unlock things, earn XP, etc. etc. However… Like many others, I wasn’t close to finishing it because you couldn’t earn XP and progress by playing… Only by completing challenges… of which there was a couple per day… During a 3 day flight… You see the issue here. I saw a lot of people asking about this all weekend to no satisfactory response, and I’ve since seen a lot of people mention this on Reddit. Despite being pretty busy this weekend with the short notice, I tried really hard to balance time home with my family with playing and netted 15-20 hours and only got halfway through it! Needed more challenges, but moving forward, XP HAS to be a part of the equation here.

If the battlepasses allow you to unlock things the same way it works in MCC, I’d recommend that they add other options to accrue season points besides challenges. For every amount of XP you earn (could even be a wider margin, doesn’t have to be quick) it’d be cool if you earned one. In MCC if I earned one for every 500k or 1mil even, I’d like that a lot.

In-game UI (Not including outlines and stuff)
In-game UI is… rough. Love the shield and the shield sound. The radar’s new ‘tilted’ design is alright, I didn’t get to think about it much. But having the score in the bottom middle of the screen and everything else jammed in the bottom right is gross. I can’t see all of the grenades and equipment I’m carrying and if I wanted to switch, it brings up a sub menu or something and asks me to switch from that menu mid match? It’s a lot to ask for, esp with the lesser number of buttons on a controller, it seems. I’d like a more typical UI where I can see everything I need in all of the corners of the screen where I’m used to it. I think it also objectively seems the best, in my opinion.
I can’t mute people from the scoreboard in the flight, which is unfortunate. I wasn’t opening the scoreboard too much since I was mostly playing with bots, though.
The post game screen where it would tell me how my stats compare to my usual is pretty cool. It’d be nice if that was on a seasonal basis, overall basis, or I could otherwise reset when it’s reading the stats from.

Why do some guys randomly show up dead at the start of games? I like the opening stances for customization, but I’m not sure how I feel about the victory screen power pose.

Sound Design
Things sound really good. A lot of iconic halo sounds. A couple things need cleaning up, but the shield recharge sound, the needler reload, etc. sound awesome. The classic Halo theme at the menu was sweet. Seeing more iconic stuff as well as new stuff would be good, as we had good stuff in the last couple Halos but just not enough of the original stuff to combo with it, imo.

Weapon Training
Weapon training is sick. I like the diff difficulty levels and being able to “3-star” things. The bots move well at the higher difficulties. I loved seeing how the bots are positioned uniquely for certain weapons like for the snipes (behind cover, heads only) and for the rockets (where they’d cross paths and group up a lot to try and let you play smart to really run the score up. This will be nice for people to mess around with, especially new folks or for new weapons. It’d be cool if you could extend this to an octagon with one bot on instant respawn, or if you could have some greater level of control of how the bots move.

Bots
Speaking of Bots, YAY BOTS IN HALO! I’ve been asking for this for over a decade. They’ve been in Gears for a long time (much better implemented there than Black Ops 1 back in the day, imo) and they’ve always been welcomed there by me. Having bots of different difficulty levels is great for new players, someone chilling and not wanting to play pvp for real, for experienced players experimenting with strats, for warming up, and also for matchmaking games where someone quits out. Having a bot take someone’s place is a LOT better than just playing 3v4 in most cases.

In the flight, they did act funny at times, though. I didn’t get to try the recruit bots, but the Spartan bots didn’t feel that different from the ODST bots from what I could tell. They also all swarmed the same spot every game. Also, they seemed to randomly get confused sometimes, either stopping entirely (343-Tashi.exe has stopped responding) or getting confused when you chuck a grenade past them. They shoot and nade well, which is cool. Seeing them play more realistically for power-ups, power weapons, and taking map control better at the higher difficulties would be great.

2

Maps
The maps were good, overall. I think Recharge played really well. Bazaar would be neater if the sky barrier was removed so you could use the grapple hook more creatively on that map. Could do a soft kill barrier above the roofs or something. That extra layer of verticality would be very cool. Re Live Fire or whatever the practice training facility map was… It was okay. I think that it would be a LOT more fun if it had a more open structure to it. Imagine the nest, tower, and house edges of the map all being the same, but the GIANT walls in the middle of the map being removed and there being more openness to the map. In my head, that FEELS like it would be a LOT of fun. I think there’s a lot of potential there. I don’t know that the current setup is great for the full release though, it just feels like a lot of hallways.

Weapons
AR feels sick, but probably a bit OP. I don’t know that the headshot multiplier has to be eliminated, but maybe reduced or maybe the overall damage could be reduced some.
Sidekick is great, in my opinion. Perfect assuming the starting comp weapon is supposed to be a BR.

BR feels a little easy to use from my limited experience with it. The starting comp weapon being too easy to use is a problem because it makes kids think they’re way better than they are because they can shoot an easy gun :slight_smile: Needs more experimentation, all seriousness. I’m not sure on this one.

Commando was cool. Hard to use, but shredded at times. Neat.

Needler was sick, although I couldn’t tell really when someone was hitting me with it. Everything else was neat and I thought it played well.

Pulse carbine is actually better than people give it credit for. If you use it at range, it’s better overall. Also works decent as a shield -Yoink!- a la noob combo. Doesn’t work well close range, which is fine if that’s not its intended use.

Plasma pistol could be fine. If they intended it to be stronger, it needs to be stronger. If they feel good about where it is and intentionally made it it’s current strength, then I’m good with it. I also like that it can actually kill someone now in a few shots if their shields are popped.

Ravager was cool, but the second effect was broken after the first day for some reason. Need more time with this one. I saw someone mention it’d be cool if the quick fire also had brute shot esque physics to it so you can use it to jump like we did with the brute shot in H3. That would be sick if they’re not bringing the brute shot back.

Skewer is cool. Def needs to pin bodies to walls or the floor. I like the skill requirement of leading it and accounting for some drop. That’ll be real fun in big team.

Snipe felt off to me when scoped in (controller on PC). I saw a lot of people mention this. We’ll see, but overall it sounded and looks nice. Feels good to shoot, I think. Needed more time with it.

Grav hammer is cool. Windup maybe a SMIDGE long, although I don’t need it to be as quick as it used to be. Physics need fixing, though.

Grenades
Frags, stickies, and SPIKES! Love that spikes are back. They play differently from frags and stickies, so I feel like they have a unique place in the sandbox. Frags don’t bounce as much as I’d expect or want them to, though. This may need tweaking. I would like to be able to hold each type and not just two, though. The UI in this current state makes switching between them and intelligent decision making with them a pain in the -Yoink-, though. Also, am I the only one who feels like they were able to throw consecutive nades fast as -Yoink-?

Equipment
OS and Camo are good for now and I don’t mind them being picked up at the moment, although it will take getting used to. I tested it and you can pick up OS and Camo if you already have one in use. If you use two OSes, it just goes back to the usual OS amount of shield. If you use two camos, I didn’t test it, but I saw someone mention it stacks? Not sure about that. Would need testing, assuming it doesn’t change. I also don’t know if the trails show if you already have an OS or Camo in-use. You should have a trail for the OS, but maybe not for the camo if the person is still camo’d. If they shoot the trail should show up the same amount they show up.

Grapplehook is sick. Not sure if it maybe needs a bit more range or not? I like how quick you can fire it again if you miss with it. Should it deal damage if you hit someone with it? The drop walls are okay. I didn’t get to use them too much. I mostly used them on accident because I accidentally switched something out for them or something. Radar scanner things are cool enough, too. Not sure about their place in comp, what balancing would need to go into them, or if you should continue to be able to stick them to people.

Cool that you can shoot and destroy them (and destroy drop walls in pieces).

How sick would it be if you could shoot someone’s grapple line to keep them from finishing a grapple?

Settings
Spartan chatter’s too loose for me. Sounds like the way Marines (or even ODSTs) may communicate, but I don’t like it for spartans. Tighter comms with the actual map callouts would be preferred. Part of the benefit of the spartan chatter in H5 was that they could call out for people who didn’t know the callouts in solo queue, or otherwise weren’t using their mics. Them calling out “on my x” or “over yonder” is just a pain the -Yoink- that definitely negatively impacts the experience. I’ll turn it off if it doesn’t improve.
Personal AI is cool, although I couldn’t find one I totally jive with yet. Vergil, please! Also, voice previews in the menu would be amazing.

High FOV is cool. I was playing with it low because I was worried about performance (I was only getting 50 something FPS to start with), but I moved it up to 120 and it wasn’t a problem at all. Actually, I felt like the game was playing a little clumsy/slow but when I moved it up to 120 it felt beautiful. I definitely recommend people move the FOV up and give it a shot. Although, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to do weird things to my reticle or not.

I kept dropping my weapon by accident. Had to unbind it.

The outlines… mmm. As currently implemented, it’s rough. They either aren’t visible at a distance (I can see the spartan before I can ID them as a foe immediately) or are visible at a distance too soon (before I would just see the spartan model). They implemented them in the name of armor customization, but really ALL I SEE is the outline. In RvB, I see the entire spartan model. But with outlines, I feel like I don’t really see anything inside of it. I get the move in theory, but I don’t think it’s working quite so well yet. I would like the option to do RvB no outline if we want to or to do teammates are the only people outlined, or the enemies are the only people outlined. I also don’t know for comp if certain colors will be deemed as the most visible, which I think would be unfortunate. It’s also difficult for me to tell when someone’s shields pop/are popped.

Also, if we’re going to be changing the colors of the outlines to whatever and some people will be doing it because of legit color restrictions, shouldn’t they also be able to change the shield color? If blue is best for them, I imagine that’s hard to see on top of the radar.

Friendly Fire
Friendly fire was off for the flight, but I expect to see this back on for at least comp, but I would like it back on for all modes like usual. Iconic Halo.

3

Physics
Teammate collision needs to return. Grav hammer physics need fixing. Nade physics are off. Melees sometimes send people flying.

Clamber
Seems a little wonky so far, def not as grabby as H5. But I like that there’s a lot of ledges at crouch jump height so you don’t need clamber if you know what you’re doing/well positioned. The main benefit of clamber, historically in my opinion, is that you can jump out from underneath a ledge and clamber it, something that can’t be replicated with crouch jumping alone. Need to find some spots like this to totally justify its place in Infinite.

Sliding
Super sliding probably needs a nerf. I don’t expect them to keep this at launch. Also, your vision clips through your own body when you slide in the flight.

Sprint, Radar
I like how Sprint is implemented in Infinite. Slower, shoot out of it (no more complaints about how you can’t shoot all the time), and walking not showing up on radar gives incentive to not sprint. I don’t have a problem with the radar change since we’re hot off of H5’s radar which ended up the same way for comp. If they wanted to change it for social, I wouldn’t hate it, though.

Mnk & Controller in Comp
I just hope these are balanced well. They have aim assist for mnk and controller, I suspect it’s so they can balance both over time easier. They built the game with this in mind, so I’m optimistic they’ll find the right balance. Hopefully there aren’t too many functions that more buttons would be useful on the controller than there are.

Widescreen support and comp balance
I know they’re putting mad ultrawide support into Infinite, but how does this (if at all) affect comp? Does someone who has an ultrawide have a competitive advantage over someone who doesn’t? How severe is it? What do we play on on LAN (probably normal monitors, but still)?

Overall Flight Experience
Giving feedback and filling out a ticket is harder than it should’ve been, imo. A QR code on the main menu to get to the support ticket or to otherwise provide feedback would’ve gone a LOOOOONG way, I think. They should look to streamline the feedback process moving forward.

Looking Ahead
I hope theater kicks -Yoink-, forge is present at launch, that the academy is actually helpful to new players, and that all the gametypes people want to be there are there (and maybe some cool new ones).

Misc.
Weapon dupe glitch was weird. Two people could pick up rockets at once, but if one person shoots the rockets then the other person only has one shot in theirs, too. It’s like they’re sharing a single rocket launcher. This and the other things above, as well as what’s been pointed out by others, will need addressing.