We’re now two weeks into Halo Infinite MP, while most people agree the gameplay is pretty awesome most of the talk has been about the progression system (rightfully so). In this post i want to highlight pretty much everything else except for the progression system that i feel should be addressed most of which is gameplay, though i will touch lightly on the progression system at the end since Uny just issued a new update on it. Here goes
Buffs/Nerfs/Changes
Weapons
Ravager - Put simply it needs to be buffed back to how it was in flight 1, it’s way too weak now.
Stalker Rifle - Needs a damage buff. I’d love to see a charge or single shot mode added for more damage to make it a proper sniper. Currently the weapon feels in a weird spot like the Focus rifle in Reach where it’s supposed to be a sniper but isn’t really, the Shock rifle feels like more a sniper than the Stalker rifle but the Stalker rifle is the one with the extended scope.
Plasma Pistol - Feels completely useless now, needs a major buff. With the EMP effect gone now (which im ok with) this should be very strong. It should go back to how it was in CE where it does huge single fire damage and the charge shot also does damage. Would also like to see tracking slightly improved.
Commando Rifle - Very small buff, back to how it was in the flights. A slightly bigger mag would also really be nice nut not needed.
Shock Rifle - Mainly would just like to see the projectile radious increased, it’s currently kinda hard to hit anything unless you are pin point accurate especially with the way it works taking a second to drain the entire shot. A very small buff wouldn’t hurt either.
Heatwave - Horizontal mode is horrible now even up close definitely needs a buff. Vertical mode is good leave it alone.
Equipment
Drop wall - Let’s be honest, drop wall is not good it needs buff. Allow it to withstand more damage before breaking apart, id double the damage it can take if it were up to me.
Vehicles
Banshee - Banshee is very weak needs buff, the normal cannons take too long to get kills with and the fuel rod cannon has basically no splash damage so unless you get a direct shot you aren’t getting a kill with it.
Chopper - Cannons are great they don’t need to be touched but i would love to see the chopper ramming be deadly to vehicles again like it was in H3.
Shade Turret - Only real problem here is the Shade Turret doesn’t currently respawn after being destroyed. Shade Turret should respawn same as any other static vehicle spawn especially since people have challenges tied to it and there’s currently only one map that has it.
All Vehicles - All vehicles except for the Scorpion and Wraith would really benefit from a health buff across the board, all vehicle health outside of Scorpion and Wraith seems too weak. The Wasp doesn’t really need a health buff but it wouldn’t hurt to give it a tiny one either.
Bugs
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On the fireteam introduction somtimes spartans will spawn in a different location away from the rest or facing a different direction causing a hard camera shift when it pans to that person.
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When playing Big team you are often not put in the same Fireteam even when searching for a game with a fireteam. Don’t like this at all, when we search for a game with a set squad we expect to be paired with that squad.
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When playing Stockpile sometimes a stockpile stash will spawn inside of a map object like a mountain or an AA turret making it impossible to get to the cores. When this happens it also breaks the game because more cores will not spawn and if both teams have the same score the game will go into sudden death with no timer casuing a endless showdown until one team can go steal all of the other teams cores to force the game to end.
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When being boarded and thrown from your vehicle you will sometimes teleport to a different spot briefly before teleporting back to the spot where you got boarded at.
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Bots in custom games have glitched intro’s where they are holding their weapon while doing the match intro animations. Sometimes a random bot will just be idle in the middle of the other players/bots that are all doing intro cinematic animations as well.
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In custom games there is a map listed The Academy, that just loads up a clean version of Firing Range.
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The UI will sometimes become stuck when playing with people and saying it’s connecting to a server for some but not for others and the party leader is unable to start a game because of this.
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Occasional crashes when coming out of a match back to the menu, when loading into a match and when connecting to a server when matchmaking.
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Pelican landing gear is always down in BTB even when the Pelican is flying, this might not be a bug as much as it is just an oversight but none the less it’s a small detail I’ve noticed and people have pointed out many times, it’s silly when you notice it. It would look much better if the landing gear wasn’t always out.
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Just a lot if theater bugs way too many to list individual but there’s plenty of good videos out there showcasing them all. The theater mode in Infinite actually seems like it’s going built to be good again, i like it, but they need to fix a lot of the issues so it can work properly.
Things that need to be added
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More unlocked armor options by default for everyone but especially for new players/players who don’t spend money. I strongly believe there should be atleast 3 or 4 sets of armor unlocked by default so new players or players not spending money feel like they have some options and don’t have their experience lessened because they can’t express themselves without spending money.
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More unlocked colors by default for everyone but especially for new players/players who don’t spend money.
They got most of the colors in there, it’s a lot better selection than the armors but there’s a couple basic colors missing like Pink, white and Tan. -
Ability to view screen when adjusting weapon offsets and FOV while in game, follow Mcc’s lead here they just added this ability with a recent update and it should come to Infinite as well.
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Continuous matchmaking, again follow Mcc’s lead here one of the first things Mcc did when it got fixed was make it so you don’t have to restart the search after every match. That’s currently how it is with Infinite having to restart search after every match and it is annoying.
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More custom games settings, custom games is very lacking as it is right now in a number of different areas like being limited to only 2 team choices, no random weapon/equipment options, no option for number of equipment usage or cool downs, etc and much more.
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Ability to turn off crossplay completely for console players, this is badly needed right now with the recent outbreak in hackers. Again follow Mcc’s lead here, add a crossplay opt out/Xbox player only option in the settings.
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Add a Battlepass button as an option in the escape/F1/Control Panel munu for a quick way to get to the battlepass screen.
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Add the ability to see the challenge screen in game, again follow Mcc’s lead here.
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Add the ability to have challenge progress notifications, once again follow Mcc’s lead here.
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Add the ability to see more than 4 people in the menu background when you have a fireteam with more than 4 players. There’s a big enough background, when you have 5 or more friends in your lobby you should be able to see them back there too.
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More playlists, there should be basic playlist that have been a staple of every game such as Team slayer, Swat, FFA, Doubles, a rotation weekly playlist and possibly Objectives. Ideally id love for Infinite to have the same system Mcc does with the match composer but the game needs a lot more modes before something like that is really needed.
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Add the ability to text chat to all in the lobby. Again follow Mcc’s lead here, Mcc supports Team/All/Squad in text chat and as far as i can tell Infinite only supports Team text chat.
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Add a 30 second post game lobby where people can talk and see each others gamertags and Spartans before the game starts searching for the next match. This is kind of in addition to what i said above about matchmaking needing to have continuous matchmaking, again just follow Mcc’s lead here.
Things that need to change
This is the big section here and im going to be as constructive with this criticism as possible.
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Heavy vehicles and air vehicles need to have set static spawns in BTB. I know what 343 said in the feedback after the 2nd flight about this but after two weeks of playing in the beta now my opinion is still exactly the same that heavy and air vehicles (Wasp, Banshee, Scorpion, Wraith) do not spawn enough or soon enough for people to get a chance to really use them. The Wasp and Banshee will come in on occasion in a game if it lasts long enough but more times than not the game will end before there’s ever even a chance to see a Scorpio or a Wraith and in the event they do get dropped before the match ends it’s usually right before the end of the match leaving you feeling rushed to use the vehicle if you are even the one who gets it. To make this even worse you can get stuck with a challenge for one of these vehicles which then becomes almost impossible to get. To put this in prospective i play just about everyday and the Fiesta playlist that was just on surprisingly had random vehicle spawns in the maps that were big enough for vehicles and it was the first time through both the test flights and the first week of the beta that iv ever really gotten to use the Scorpion, Wraith and Banshee. It’s because of this i believe each team in BTB should have atleast 1 air vehicle and 1 heavy vehicle spawn at their base that spawn in at the beginning of the match or a couple minutes into it with a timed respawn whenever they get destroyed just like any other vehicle. Currently there is only one map that somewhat does this having a set Wasp spawn on both bases after the first couple minutes of the match, the Wasp also respawns after a few minutes of being blown up, this is how it should be on every map while also doing the same thing for a heavy vehicle. I also think setting the Air and Heavy vehicle spawns to be random would be a good way to mix each match up so you never know if it’s going to be a Banshee/Wasp or Scorpion/Wraith, the game already does something very similar to this with the weapon racks/pads. However if that were to happen I’m not sure where i land on if both teams should get the same random vehicle or not (meaning one side could get a Wraith while the other gets a Scopion etc.) Reguadless of how they go about addressing this i think most everybody agrees it does need to be addressed, the lack of heavy vehicle play in Infinite btb speaks for itself and is very much missed.
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Unlock armor pieces for cross core customization. This is without a doubt the single biggest problem in the game right now and most the entire community agrees this needs to happen. This one change alone will alleviate so many problems the community is feeling with customization and lack there of it especially for the mark 7 core. In my opinion doing this would also alleviate a lot of the problem with the store and it feeling like the only way to get armor for the Mark 7 core. I’m okay with cores staying in the game especially since they have unique leg, feet and prosthetic designs plus i actually like having seperate Spartans to suit up but nobody likes how restricted all the customization is it feels very un-Halo like and completely unnecessary. What makes this even more of a slap in the face is the fact that bots spawn with cross core customization armor, showing that it’s definitely possible. If the honest concern is about certain pieces clipping i think i can speak for everyone when i say we don’t care. As Mcc has proven with all it’s new armor for H3 we don’t care about some clipping, if its am armor with really bad clipping like a giant chest or something that honestly just wont work with other armor because of too much clipping then just lock that specific piece to it’s core but anything that could work should work with whatever core (which is like 99% of the armor currently). This goes for armor coatings as well.
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The map &, gamemode selection UI for customs and probably Forge as well as the theater clip selection UI is just straight up bad and it’s the only part of the game that suffers from this bad UI. The way it is right now (similar to H5) for customs first you have to selelct between 343 maps, bookmarked etc and then when you finally get to the list each option is a giant square that takes up way too more space than is needed which causes a multi page big mess and makes it hard to find the maps, modes or clips we actually want to play. Nobody likes this layout or UI, we didn’t like it in H5 and we don’t like it now, please change it to a simple top to bottom list with a quick picture and description similar to any of the other Halo games before H5. If anything follow your own example with Mcc and do it like that with a left to right easy to navigate list that has a little picture with small squares for each map/mode/clip to choose from. I can’t stress enough how unappealing the current H5 style UI is for selecting maps/modes/clips is. Get rid of the 343 maps/bookmarked section that pops up when you first click on maps/modes and just have it so when you click maps or modes it shows you maps or modes in a easy to scroll small list that doesn’t require multiple pages, like it is on Mcc or any Halo before H5, then if we want to filter stuff by bookmarked, 343 maps etc have a more options button or something within the maps/modes list to do that only if the player wants to do that. I seriously can’t stress enough how unappealing and unnecessarily cluttered the UI for map/mode/clip selection is right now using the H5 style, seriously makes it hard to find what you’re actually looking for ans is completely unappealing.
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The store products and it’s prices are a bit of a mixed bag, i know a lot of people are mad about the way it is and i don’t particularly like it either but i also get this a F2P game and they got to make money, i also know having played a lot of F2P games that Infinites prices comparatively to other F2P games really are not that bad. Personally i think it would benefit the game to cut the pack prices in half especially in the long run, cut the bundles in half to $10 for an armor bundle & $5 for the smaller ones etc. There’s going to be hundreds of armors sets in the future and having them all be $20 will look overkill. Like i said above about armor cores if they would just unlock armor for cross core customization people wouldn’t feel so reliant on the store and then mad at the prices because of it, easing a lot of the problems with both issues.
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When starting to search for a game if you click on any button or menu tab before the 3 second countdown has finished it will cancel the countdown for the search. This is annoying more than anything myself and many of my friends accidentally cancel the search without even realizing it because of this all the time. This should be changed so the only thing that cancels the search is hitting the actual cancel button.
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You should be able to customize armor/profile pieces in the menu while searching for a match. How it is currently the moment you start searching for a match you are locked out of being able to make any changes to your Spartan/profile. This can lead to boring wait times because you’re unable to do anything other than wait for the game to start. You can look at stuff sure but what’s the point if you can’t equip anything and then eventually forget about it all together. Follow Mcc’s lead, allow for customization until the match starts.
And last but not least
-The progression system. Uny released the news the other day and the update went live today to the games challenge system adding much more XP for the first few games and this is once again a great step forward. There’s definitely still more that can be done and even 343 has said and acknowledged as much saying there are bigger changes planned they will just take time, i believe they’re even on record saying they want performance based XP bonuses eventually. All this is good stuff so i see no need to continue beating the drum that is progression, let them take their time to rework it. My guess is come season two we will have a completely revamped progression system but only time will tell.
That’s about all i have for now i may add or remove things to this list depending on if they get fixed or if i experience more issues. Feel free to add your own issues or opinions about the game in the comments even if you agree or disagree with my take on things. Just remember, keep it clean🤙.