I have played this game over the last week and I can’t seem to find a place for a casual player like myself. Casual players is what built Halo into what it is today and strict SBMM is what’s been driving it into the ground. 343i seem to have this idea that everyone wants to be an esports pro and to get Halo to be the face of Esports alongside call of duty and games like.
Halo use to be a friendly place for casual gamers where you could play with a few friends and have a laugh but its clear that these memories will forever be a thing of the past. You can tell this from the fact that still to this day there is no playlist for fun game modes like infection or King of the hill and how you perform well in a game and you are punished into playing a sweat fest. I don’t mind loosing a fair game but when its because the servers are stacking the odds in your favour because you done well its complete bulls**t. Also what about people with bad connection due to location or internet speed. It makes it hard for them to find games that don’t lag because the servers match on skill and not connection. Halo will never live up to the hype of Halo 3 again because 343i are trying to turn the game into something it was never supposed to be. Halo is not a game for intense esports.
343i if your reading this (Which most likely your not) is it too much to ask for you to turn down SBMM on casual playlists and just have it heavily implemented on ranked. If the line is blurred between the 2 then what’s the point in ranked in the 1st place? People who play ranked want to improve their skills and be the best they can. People who play casual like myself have had a long day at work and simply wanna relax and have fun. I cant do that if every game I am playing I am getting my -Yoink!- handed to me in a gold frame. Rather than trying to appeal to different communities cant you just be happy with the 1 you have already? Because you’re bleeding Halo fans faster than you can pull people in. Why kill the community that built this game? Just remember without casual Halo players this game isn’t gonna last 10 months let alone 10 years. In which case you won’t sell your overpriced micro-transactions then.
I don’t want SBMM to be removed, I just want it to not be so strict in the casual playlists. Connection should be the priority NOT skill. All the feedback I am seeing from this game so far is SBMM is annoying, BTB doesn’t work, the customisation sucks, Micro-transactions are a rip off, the battle pass is crap and over priced and the core gameplay is good when you can get into a working match that isn’t a mosh pit of cheeks being clapped so hard it hurts. Call of duty is a game built for esports sweats but Halo is not so stop trying to appeal to a community who don’t like the game.
I would actually like the SBMM level to be visible. I’m sure most people are curious where the game thinks each player is, since Infinite has no levelling system. Sometimes when I play with friends, we get dragged into the sweatiest 4v4 matches all night long. I have over 500 matches, but I’m sure that my SBMM can’t be that impressive when friends have maybe 150 matches. I would like to know what my placement is, and whether we get dragged into sweaty matches if only one fireteam member has a good SBMM level or if it’s based on all players in the fireteam
I have a similar feeling. Sometimes I feel like everyone is a gawd-damn pro. Typically, when population gets low, you’re only left with good players. - but I don’t know the state of the population
There are also only hardcore playlists, including Fiesta, cause it feels like an MLG game half the time, lmao
My only social experience right now is my Ranked Platinum in Solo / Controller queue. 
The only thing the removal of SBMM would do is have most matches become stomps for the team with better players. You’re still going to be destroyed by better players on a regular basis with or without SBMM.
Good point. It needs to be 1or2 good players, 1or2 average, and a bad player. Halo has always played best “casually” with mixture of skills.
I’m starting to think desync is related to the sbmm
I agree with the original post here completely. I have been playing halo since 2003 and I have always considered myself pretty decent. This is the first Halo where I have little to no sense of accomplishment because I can not see any improvement. The better I get the harder the matches get for me so it feels like I am doing worse. Very frustrating. The only way I can see how much better I have gotten is if I play with less skilled friends and they bring the average player skill down. Then I do great, but my friends are punished for playing with me because sbmm brings the relative opponent skill up to be higher than theirs. So now I feel like I can’t even play with my friends, which has always been my favorite part of Halo.
Sadly, I have quit playing Halo Infinite for now. Hopefully 343 does come around to lowering the sbmm on the casual game types, but my fingers aren’t crossed. It is very disappointing.
Halo Infinite is totally built for competitive play they’ve admitted it themselves. The casual player base is being punished for the HCS wannabes and the money Microsoft make from the HCS competitions. Bungie have always stated that Halo multiplayer was a party game for fun with friends. When MLG took an interest they had to make the changes to the game to make it esports competitive not Bungie.
If there is one thing 343i are good at its misreading the room, they are not focused on making Halo a fun game for the masses but an ultra competitive sweat fest for the elite.
They made changes for ONE playlist, just to be clear 
AND that is how it should be. Halo 3 got it right with social and ranked. Ranked playlists played like social as in setting wise and weapons and whatnot and the only playlist that was different was the MLG playlist in Ranked. That’s how it should be!! As I’ve said thousands of times, There’s literally tons of people out there That like playing ranked but don’t want to play MLG / HCS settings. Their own data from the playlist population and previous Halo games even shows this. Why they have not done this in Halo Infinite is beyond me… Mind you We could say that for a lot of things with this game unfortunately 
As far as how to casuals view this game, some of my friends that are definitely casual players view this game as not very playable for the most part. And the biggest thing I hear is always When they play with their other friends that are way more skilled they get into matches and are absolutely destroyed. As my casual friends point out, back in Halo 2, 3 days that was never (or very rarely) the case. You could play with friends of higher and lower skill in social matches and still have pretty even games and more importantly fun.
I like that you’ve only quoted part of what i said, if you had contined to read and quote correctly you would have seen that I said MLG had to make the changes to Halo not Bungie. Halo 3 was definitely the most accessible game for both casuals and pro-players with its fantasic line up of both game types and maps.
I honestly believe Halo Infinite will be held back from being a great game by its engine, corporate interference, SBMM and a developer who truly doesn’t understand what Halo is.
I did read your message. I must of misunderstood it. No harm no foul.
It really feels like I’m playing a different game than these whiners are here on the forum. I have fun every time logging into this game, and it’s really not anywhere near as bad as some forum posters make it seem to be.
for me im definitely going to give it my all in mp but the campaign is still just as important and infinite by far has the most boring one of all. i mean it’s really boring in almost every way, probably the most fun thing in the whole game is the grappling hook, but not much else is fun or even feels new. i think the most notably new thing is the covenant/ banisheds use of more human weapons but infinite has a really small arsenal that it feels like they have no choice with them.
Q - “How do casual Halo players play this game?”
A - “Dressed in casual clothes and possibly with a few snacks.”
Also don’t take the game too seriously.
Though there is a ranked playlist, it cannot exist truthfully without proper server stability.
No worries, glad we’re all pulling together to try and make Halo Infinite a more inclusive game.
I don’t think it’s just the matchmaking system that makes the game unwelcoming. The core gameplay and map design is more like Halo 5’s sweatfest. It’s fun in a way, but you grow tired of it quickly and then you want to move on.
I feel that as @SQU1FFY_v2 and @Dead_End_24 have mentioned, there needs to be a great balance similar to Halo 3
Like @Canadianatlas mentioned, the playlist system is very similar to Halo 5; it has been mentioned that Halo Infinite’s playlists have been inspired by both Halo 5 & MCC’s playlists. This would be for how much the engine/game can handle, however (like H5), there is a smaller number of playlists to maintain and balance the population
I personally feel that the playlists we have in Infinite are over saturated, in how there are too many social playlists on rotation; rather than a permanent social playlist such as Action Sack or BTB
For this fix I feel you could integrate the gamemodes in Rumble Pit, Social Slayer and Social Skirmish into one playlist and label it as Action Sack; filtering the less popular gamemodes in all 3 playlists*
I feel like it is definitely possible to create that balance of social and competitive playlists, it is simply a matter of how & then navigating what people want to play; more variety creates less stagnation, too much variety creates too much chaos and not enough integrity or structure
From what I have heard, there are plans to create new ‘community’ map based playlists, as well as a new Action Sack playlist possibly, so I am keeping my eyes and ears open for that too 
Imma be honest, Infinite is completely designed for casuals. Not for skill
Not really, I’d argue it’s quite the opposite - the controls, the odd gamemodes, the shield system, motion tracker, sandbox weapon “balance”, if anything, people who aren’t familiar with Halo and how things work will be utterly confused when playing the game, ultimately abandoning it.
I’m starting to agree. I’m in a lot of lobbies where I struggle to go positive but there’s always some dude on the enemy team who only dies once, if at all, the entire match.
I’m 44 years old with a real job, a relationship, and a house, and I get the feeling that I’m playin against teenagers who do nothing but practice this -Yoink!- all day.