I have a problem, do you?

Games Halo Infinite
1

Im a massive halo fan, or at least i was.

Traded in my Ps2 years ago after trying Halo on the new xbox console. I was instantly hooked. I spent an enormous amount of time exploring every nook and cranny. I got into the books and the extended lore. I spent an age hooking up my xbox to software called xbconnect to play LAN games over the internet.

Halo 2 came along and was genre defining. I spent thousands of hours playing every day. This game was absolute gold.

Halo 3 came out a few years later and perfected what was already an incredible experience online.

Halo Reach although it was pretty good, i didnt really get that into.

Halo 4 came along and well lets face it, it was a joke. An epic failure. It was the wish version of call of duty with little or no redeeming features at all.

Halo 5. I played briefly but lets face it, there were hundreds of better FPS games out by this point.

Halo Infinite came out and on the surface it seemed like a return to its roots. then it turned out it was a broken mess of high ping servers and desync making the game an absolute dice roll instead of a matter of skill determining if you win or lose with over restrictive sbmm.
The blatant lies running up to its release is insane. From the lies about content to customisation. Its as if they genuinely believed they wouldnt be found out within minutes of launching the game. They took us for idiots and like gullible consumers we lapped it up like a cat with a saucer of milk.

Now 6 months in, after thousands of complaints and feedback, nothing has changed. If anything, the game is actually in a worse state now than what was offered back in November. As usual, 343 will put out word salads explaining why their decisions were correct and doing mental gymnastics to blame the issues on their userbase.

I have come to the conclusion that i have a problem. Its 100% on me and i cant blame 343 at all anymore. I feel like a schmuck that has to touch the electric fence multiple times expecting not to get shocked this time.

Every now and again, ill fire up infinite and expect it to be different. This time it wont put me in a server that’s not even in my continent… this time getting behind cover will save my life… perhaps ill be able to use blue on my new core… maybe this weeks challenge wont be a recycled emblem for the third time, maybe this weeks challenges will be fun.

The answer never changes though. Its always the same broken pile of laggy, desynced bugs.

Tomorrow wont be any different. Next month probably wont either. Next year? The year after? Probably not.

Today, was a break through though. As usual i loaded up, tried a game of ranked and was put in a 140 ping server as expected. I got killed around a corner, well in cover as usual but today instead of getting frustrated i just alt f4’d it. Why should i spend any time on such a broken piece of software when there are numerous titles that actually work and dont just frustrate the player.

Today i realised i have a problem. I continuously believe bare faced liars. ive fallen victim to my own hope that this time will be different, this time 343 wont fail. Except its all 343 have known, its all they have ever done. Expecting anything else is like expecting a fish to grow legs and walk upright on dry land. Pure insanity.

Im not a halo fan anymore. Im a fan of what halo used to be.

18 Likes
2

Nah, I don’t have a problem because my problem was solved the day infinite released.

Halo is dead, and 343 killed it.

13 Likes
3

Well said and I ended up in the same spot. I have Uninstalled the game, and not out of rage, but because I came to the realization that this game is not for me, and whether I like it or not, that’s the way it is. I continue to view forums and news articles to see if things ever change, but like you said, I’m a fan of what Halo was.

I know many liked the new campaign and open world format, but just didn’t. Few open world games are able to make the open world experience feel fun and lived in, and Infinite is no exception. The open world is fun to traverse at first, but then it gets really repetitive and it’s really empty. Add in the fact that mission select and campaign co-op don’t exist and you have the most underwhelming campaign experience of the franchise in my opinion.

The story is also extremely lacking. Very shallow, very disconnected from the story of Halo 5, which I understand was on purpose, but still leaves fans thinking WTF happened? I think the soft campaign reboot was a mistake as you limited your self on how you start this story due to ties to H5, instead of clean break and try something different. Because let’s be honest, they still didn’t really tie up the H5 story but they are almost certainly never going back to it so they may as well have just completly abandoned it.

As for MP, I am not a fan of the F2P model and being Nickel and Dimed to death for armor, so I can just keep playing MCC. Again, 343 have decided to go in a direction with Infinite that I’m not a fan of, so I have bowed out.

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4

I don’t understand the belief that some had that Infinite was really going to be such a night and day redemption statement for Halo after 343i has spent a decade polarizing fans of this series with release after contraversial release.

I think I’m being consistent with my takes leading up to the release of this game when I say I never expected it to singlehandedly “save” or “fix” Halo. Realistically, I just wanted to be an improvement on H4-5, both of which I strongly disliked. I didn’t think 343i was capable of making a Halo game that resonated with me on the level of H3 with Infinite, because they’ve literally never even come close to doing that the entire time they’ve been in charge of Halo.

Personally, I’m not surprised that Infinite has a lot of glaring issues. I’m actually surprised that there are some really quality and compelling things present here, despite those flaws. The core gameplay and campaign are much better than I had hoped they would be, which puts Infinite squarely at the top of my favorite 343 Halo game list by ten miles.

Yeah, Infinite is limping along in somewhat pathetic shape right now, plagued by tons of issues that affect so many aspects of the game such as poor campaign replayability, inconsistent and shallow matchmaking, and botched live service and player engagement systems. Not at all pretty.

But if you were expecting Infinite to suddenly be the game that instantaneously fixed 343i’s streak of releasing massively polarizing and bafflingly unpolished Halo games? That would unfortunately be an unrealistic expectations issue on your part. Infinite is likely at least a few years away from being a truly awesome Halo game, but I’m happily surprised to say that I think it realistically can achieve that status eventually, with enough fixes and additions over time.

Feels good to even be in this good of shape after the past six years where I honestly feared that “Halo 6” would somehow be a game I disliked even more than its predacessors.

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5

I never sold/traded my ps2 back in the day so I’m all good…

Plus most my games are 21 ping.

My only issue is I play about 5 games a months

Due to lack of content/modes/progression

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6

It feels like Halo MCC is more Infinite than Halo Infinite rn

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Please don’t force yourself to play a game you don’t like. If you don’t like it, you don’t.

Play something you do like and come back once Infinite shapes up

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8

I do not have a problem with a Free to play system in place. The purpose of the game is to generate profits. There will be changes that come from 343i just like the massive one that came into Halo: MCC this week. The game style changes and it’s okay to walk away from a game. I specifically only play Infinite when my friends are on. The solo experience is definitely not the same.

9

This is why I’ve never “quit” playing Old School Runescape, I’ve only taken a break. :upside_down_face:

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all that 343 knows is releasing games in horrid states. 4 was okay, sure… but that was cod, cod that died faster than vanguard. h5 on laucn was pathetic, mcc on launch was saddness… so 343 made infinite f2p to excuse their horid launch once again. it being f2p is nothing more than an excuse, 343 is just THAT incompetent and they know it. they just dont care to proporly improve
don’t support infinite, and i’d say, let this game franchise die, and let the company behind it die too. i hoped not to say that, halo is good… but at this point, i just want this cow that’s being milked dead be put to rest. microsoft and the higherups don’t desurve any praise after 5 years of development and 5+years to improve and learn what the community wants… they just went the money route with no care if 343 is actually making a good game to launch as the FACE OF XBOX… money first at moneysoft

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I just play MCC if I ever felt Infinite doesn’t do it for me. MCC is so much fun.

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12

your thoughts touch my heart, i am a Halo fun since 2001, i have played all versions, i can guarantee you i am frustrated too when i watch and play the latest Halo infinite game. I live in Italy, Sicily, Sicily, telephone services with Internet are excellent only in large cities, in my country i have a connection with ping 40, or at least i think it is 40 speed tests say this, when i play halo the ping indicator shows me 60-65 but … but … i keep dying around the corners, when I shoot first a magazine is not enough, but I can guarantee you that when the game came out the first 3 weeks I was a killer everything was fine and I had no problems.I immediately thought of a connection problem instead I realized that it is only a problem of an unsynchronized game server and how much the 343 now takes us all for idiots

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13

This is going to come across real blunt. But I don’t mean offense because I’,m basically in the same shows as you. But here it is ok…

“Oh look another- I’m a long term halo fan that’s done with 343i and Halo Infinite post”

A while back, the heads at 343i said they wanted to make halo appear to a broader audience. Hence having a TV show that’s doing its own thing- regardless of established lore (the creators say they didn’t play the games, nor read the books). Infinite was slated to release with a battle royal mode- but the “fanbase” pressured 343i into putting that idea on the back burner. But now, almost 6 months after launch- Certain Affinity have come out basically revaling thats sort of what they have been working on.

If the game had launched with a battle royal, all the bugs and issues 343i are now dealing with would have been less obvious as the majority of the new players would be into the Battle Royal mode and not be touching ranked or standard slayer etc. However they (343i) caved to the pressure of people like us and now probably hate us for it.

Basically what im saying is being echoed by every youtuber or content creator out there who have stuck by halo just like you have- and thats the issue. 343i don’t care about us anymore- fact is we are the minority. For every 1 youtuber or person on the forums making a “i quit” article. Another 10 casuals are throwing money at them to make their spartan look like Iron man or have Cat Ears.

The hardcore, die hard fanbase no longer matter, because they can make more money and increase longtivity of the game by appealing to a broader community. And unfortunately this is the future of halo.
We just don’t matter anymore.

1 Like
14

There are lot of self described fans of Halo, so long as we’re only talking about the early early and not the later half of the extended lore. To which I’d ask, are you really a fan or were you once a fan and now no longer?

I have noticed what you describe among many regulars here, but I do not make such distinctions. I am a Halo fan, full stop.

But glhf to you, I hope you find your next forever home.

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15

Here’s my thing: I don’t expect anything of 343i, so when they do something right, it’s cool to me.

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16

If Microsoft wants to make any money out of halo in the future they need to shut 343 for good first and hand the IP to a studio that actually cares about it.
Until that happens, i consider halo dead in the water

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17

I love MCC, the team working on MCC know what the player wants like 90% of the time and they have new content and stuff to do every other week, it’s amazing.

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18

Ive agreed im out halo used to be the game to play hours of endless fun somrtimes repeating but rarely outside of game modes and maps the experience was different each day and i used to look forward to halo releases. It died for me around 4 i n.v put wayyy too many hours into reach to say i wasnt a fan but i had put almost the same amount of hours into 3 (was grounded a lot back then not so much once reach came out) 4 was just an over zealous cod love story from a group of devs who thought halo needed to go the cod route to stay relevent but ended up being what killed it. Halo 2 was just the defining factor for what we know multiplayer as today an amazing game on its own but came with a huge defining element for videogames as a whole. This game didnt need to copy success, it had its own but the :clown_face:’s at 343 didnt recognize that. Halo infinite was filled with broken promises. I havent seen a game this hated since no mans sky and im sure everyone remembers how abismal that game was. And guess what they fixed their game like 343 promises but by the time the promises were made good on, it was already far too late for them to come back to even being somewhat relevent. I find halo going the exact same route unless this game faces a hard revamp in the next few months we’re approaching that deadline where players will fall off and not come back 6 months is a long time for nothing to change

Thats the bigger issue right a battle royal mode is where a game goes to die just look at cod. Both releases after their ever buggy as can be cheating fanbase release of warzone. Thats what halo would become with a battleroyal. Sure appeals to a larger base of battle royal followers so all those kids playing fortnite… thats what we’re trying to appeal to, the kids who let micro transactions work who dont complain about it as they didnt experience good complete games where dlc didnt even exist yet. I remember people -Yoink!- about dlc being charged for and the argument being inflation. Yet now we have that in some games and microtransactions in all games now. Cool for the people who want to buy cosmetics and dances not cool when the dev throws some pay to win or pay for convenience bs in there. 343 is hauling the worst of both worlds. $10 for a helmet? Really… or how about the xp boosts thats pay for convenience aka grind less. Its not that they dont care about us because without us they cant care about their pockets more by pushing out things they believe people want and not things that the community has stated they want.

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19

Well, that suck but that’s the problem many franchises are experiencing today (starwars, startrek, lotr, etc)
343i have never released a proper product to begin with, there is no reason why they would start now

  • Halo CE anniversary was the epitome of what’s wrong with today remasters
  • Halo 4 was a call of duty clone
  • The 2014 Halo tv series was bad at best
  • MCC had one of the worst launch in gaming history
  • Halo 5 was a titanfall clone with esports in mind and introduced microtransactions
  • HW2 still have horrendous multiplayer crashes to this day
  • Halo Infinite is a rushed game trying to sell you the color red for 10 bucks
  • The 2022 Halo tv series in an insult to the franchise as a whole

Halo future is grim, and it will remain unless the franchise is handed to a more competent studio or if there is important changes within 343i management (which will never happen considering the job reviews for the company and the nepotism that is apparently going on). We gave our feedback and it did not make a difference, so its just better to enjoy the little that is left before moving on. There are tons of other sci-fi universe out there you can experience or you can even make your own thing. Hell i even started to create my own sci-fi universe and I’m planning on releasing a book in the next year or two to come. So yeh, that’s sucks but we did what we could, might be time to consider spending our energy on something else that count :confused:

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Halo CANNOT die because of the incompetence of a single developer!!! Halo 1 through 3 were massive highlights of my twenties. Halo can be saved for good, but it’s current developer needs everyone except Joseph Staten replaced or to die off.