Agreed completely plus however many characters
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Thanks for taking the time to read it, and the compliment.
It took a while to type up, I wish it was shorter, but I couldn’t even fit all the issues into it haha.
Depends how you define ‘core gameplay’. According to 343, dressing up your little dolly is core gameplay.
I really like the game but I’m finding myself playing it less and less already. Not really having control over the game mode, the lack of maps, and the constant afk/quitting teammates really are having a large negative impact on my experience.
True, but the player count is still dropping each day and hasn’t reached a stable point yet.
I’m worried 343 will take a year to actually fix any of the obvious problems, by which point we’ll be seeing Halo 4 / MCC numbers of 20k peak daily concurrent players.
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There is way too much missing content from this game, and the list is huge for them to even think it’s acceptable to be releasing a game as Barbone as it will be.
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I think similar things about what 343 has done here. They had a slam dunk easy win and they have the appearance of being happy to throw it all away by acting with complete hubris (or incompetence?) and ignoring clear feedback about major problems from their community.
The game isn’t on the deathbed for me, but I’m someone who is probably always going to pick a Halo game up on Friday night and play. If Infinite winds up getting boring or so badly mismanaged that I don’t want to play it, I’ll just be back on MCC.
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I dont think it will drop so low honestly.
I wonder how many players have crashes for example.
This alone will make you quit since you are losing a lot of ranking point & get leaver ban sooner or later.
As a pre launch it did extremly well. If it will retain even 1/3 in long run I would call it a massive success.
Still this “barebone” game offers more than COD or BF imho
I can definetly see issues with the game, but the gameplay and fun factor outweighs it for me.
BF and COD failed in this regard. I rather play BF one or V than 2042. COD I rather play MW2019 than CW or VG…
But I am not going back to MCC from infinite. As a new player I see infinite as much better gameplay wise. More smooth or how to call it. But MCC campaigns I might play more for sure to try legendary 
I think the core Halo fanbase will carry it as ever but I don’t think that fanbase will meaningfully grow compared to usual, suffering a similar drop off to that of Halo 5, probably with slightly higher numbers overall thanks to f2p & PC.
I might be alone in this opinion but deep down I wonder if it’s a complete myth that core gameplay or anything pro circuit related has any barings on the longevity of 5, simply because I know most people I played halo with over the years never cared about any of that stuff.
What did make an enormous difference was fun & community, and the majority of that relied upon the being a huge amount of gamemodes and custom tools at launch. Reach was the height of Halo for them not because of a tight balance in team slayer or perfect shooting mechanics (esp with bloom & armor lock lol). Reach was the peak because it had a coop campaign where we played as us, with challenges to keep us playing it and eastereggs to find, along with infection, invasion, eventually grifball & action sack in the multiplayer. It had forgeworld where we could mess around with the sandbox, and probably the most active forge & customs community ever. Back then, we could message dozens of people and get a 16 man customs lobby together in minutes! Indeed, that game was even how I met those friends, who have been gaming together ever since as well as meeting irl.
Nah, core gameplay won’t bring any of that back. Maybe if 343i update the game VERY quickly to add that stuff they can salvage it, especially with it being f2p they might have a lil bit more leeway with the timing. But my instinct is that missing all of this at launch is gonna mean people simply never get hooked on the community aspect of Halo, and infinite will fade into insignificance like 5 did.
It…depends.
The whole idea here is, we have seen this before, twice now, with Halo 4 and 5.
Halo 4, everyone was excited but what we got was…Halo slapped with a call of duty system and mario kart eqse killstreak system. No one asked or that, wanted that, or enjoyed that. While a system like that could work in a PvE setting like Spartan ops or firefight, it was just uncalled and unessessary for how Halo had been up to that point. We expected the whole arena style for the aspects of timing, map knowledge, weapon and vehicle control to be paramount. Instead, combat was dictated by loadouts and mario kart elements that even if you did good, you could get a measly needler while they got an incineration cannon. Loudouts became redundant too, everyone could get a plasma pistol, no vehicles could even leave spawn. Only precision weapons and a boltshot were every class. It was just, utterly bad design all around.
The gameplay itself? Yes it was very functional, it worked, it had vareity, weapons were solid and the forerunner weapons had some good elements too. But this was all drowned out in a sea of just, utterly bad trend chasing aspects. We wanted to play Halo, not call of duty, theres a reason why even with the MCC, people dont get into these modes.
Eventually, Halo 4 did get a classic style playlist, with even starts and spawns and weapon tuning. However…by that time, like 6 or so months after, people just left, no one cared.
Halo 5?
Halo 5, actually got one thing right in that regard, it did involve classic even starts. It did have more of a solid basis by which people could play. But…when it launched it was bare bones, many modes were not yet in, and despite a better balance, it was better than 4, but that is more along the lines of, they just removed the loadouts, not fix every other issue.
Warzone…was just not good. The entirety of weapons and vehicles, with such variety, that could only be obtained via the req packs only to lose them in mere moments after 1 death…thats such a waste. And these varient weapons and vehicles, they were not even options to fool around with in the forge editor. Some like the prophets bane sword, was a staple in its own arena over the regular sword which was nice, but we wanted those options at the start.
Warzone firefight was better in terms of, usage for these weapons and vehicles, but to just keep playing a mode to stay…impactful in a mode you need a tank more or less in late game to even help against a warden or super wratih…it got old.
Many playlists people enjoyed just came in and out too much as well, stuff would stick around only to vanish. Halo 5 offered variety but also just couldnt seem to contend with itself over its gameplay vision and map design.
Not to mention all the inheriant abilities. While Infinite scaled these back, Halo 5, all those other powers, sprints, slide, clamber, thruster, hover, ground pound. It was all fun in some cases, but it also felt…bloated
You needed to somehow have a controller with more options or really sink that time in to hardwire all these other traits to your mind. Skill was rewarding but it could really be unusual to remember how other actions could chain.
I think infinite did one thing right, we have a more simplistic element to our base abilities with slide, clamber and sprint with the others just being the ability to mark, AI scan, and just drop weapons.
Halo 5 was again, better than 4 in terms of just not having the loadouts, but 5 basically had the same issue.
“It took time to get better”
And once again, the population just shrunk because of those same options. It took…frnakly too much time. By the time forge was a fully functional and let us use the variant weapons and vehicles, most had left.
The difference with infinite and the others?
4 was mauled on release because of really bad design choices.
5 was better in some aspects but the REQ system killed it for many on how warzone worked and others just got bored.
Infinites biggest issues, have been said a miliion times by now, but the battlepass+store and the lack of even being able to play the modes we want.
Its not ideal and to some fans, they have been down this road before and in most cases, 343 should have known, they shouldnt make the same mistake. But here we are.
And its amazing how an industry, thats had to go through this same song and dance time and time again, tries pushing out these same ideas thinking it will work, but isnt it funny how the modern age of info works? Doing the stuff that drives people away and having it backfire…its not going to help anyone in the end.
I mean good grief, look at EA, BF5 was a mess because they ran their mouths, the sales suffered. Their head at the time had to step down. BF2042 was supposed to fix this, then they produce one of the outright worst games in shooter history, it was so bad, another head had to step down and their own in game shop was closed down because of this disaster. And the funny thing is, they seriously thought it would work? They honestly thought it would succeed? We have history to learn from, VERY RECENT HISTORY.
Thats the funny thing with illusions, they dont work as well after the first time.
343 can fix this, but it seems like infinite could be regulated to that same fate as 4 and 5 sadly…just a niche shooter that could have been far better than it turned out.
It’s a shame because the game is solid but I feel like they’re not listening to us after all these years. If worst comes to worst I’ll just go back to MCC.
Inb4 waaa whiny zoomer doesn’t get his way
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Game will be dead in a month. You answered both questions, 343s core gameplay is a result of bad decision making and ignoring feedback.