Infinite is a fun game, that's why I'm upset!

Games Halo Infinite
21

I don’t think there is any point in 343 moving onto a new game any time soon. 343 has a history now of not really learning from mistakes and have never been able to launch a game with all the standard features one would expect. Is there really a point to them wasting another 6 years creating something that has such a high chance of failure when they can go the MCC route with Infinite?

Having a multiplayer that is more permanent lasting years alongside multiple new campaign dlcs sounds ideal not only for the community but means 343 don’t have to redo everything constantly which seems to be the main thing dragging them down. I mean look at Destiny 2 and the comeback they made from a disastrous launch.

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22

Agreed, agreed. We all love to complain about what’s wrong with it, while it’s not as bad as we say. Well, it’s really bad compared to what it should be, but whatever. Unlike the people you mentioned, my hopes are focused on the revival of Infinite, not the success of another Halo game. Hopefully 343 can turn things around!

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23

This game needs content for sure, but I’m also not going to be invested in this game in any significant way until they address the connectivity issues.

Constant rubber-banding, desync, ghost bullets, melee whiffs, and jitter and so much more has created such an unrewarding gameplay experience.

I don’t want to play a game that feels like I can’t reliably experience the input and gameplay that I’m witnessing on the screen. Noone in my entire clan in D2 will touch this game for those two reasons.

I want this game to do well, but its had almost no significant changes to improve the over-all health besides quick band-aid slaps of playlist tweaks for an entire year. Those playlist changes are the easiest thing for them to do, and those have taken ages each time.

Outlook is not good to me but I’m still hoping Halo pulls through. Hopefully they start to put some stuff in a drop pod and launch it rather than wait, but thats probably too optimistic.

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24

You’re not alone but we are most likely a minority. The reality of people is the majority of them are lazy and don’t care about most things. People don’t want to fix things, they want to replace them. People don’t want to understand how things work, they just want simple solutions (like this absurd idea that firing 343 would somehow save Halo, the problem is corporate people not the people working on the game). People would rather shout down an opinion they don’t like than try and understand it.

Infinite is quite obviously flawed. As time goes on it only becomes more apparent they rushed this thing out the door with no clear story other than they wanted to wrap things up with Cortana. The only real writing went into Chief, the Weapon, and Cortana which were done well. However the background was not done well. Escharum doesn’t act in a way that furthers the success of the Banished, he simply acts as a face for you to go after because they needed a villain. A lot of the characters are wasted potential. They wanted to do an open world. But they didn’t think to make the world living. There is nothing going on in this vast world other than Chief, and when the world revolves around you it isn’t believable or interesting. They wanted a live service multiplayer with no plan on how they would support that.

However I still believe Infinite could be fixed. If the corporate powers that be decided it was worth the risk, worth the investment it could be saved. The campaign can receive expansions and benefit from the live service: more weapons, new events, more characters in the world doing their own thing. The multiplayer could get all the game modes it’s lacking, more maps, playable elites, you name it. But all these things cost money. At the end of the day someone at Microsoft who considers themself an expert on consumer behaviour and financial investment will look at the game and go “well why would I put money into it if it isn’t going to triple my investment?”

The gameplay in Infinite is solid. The core gameplay is fun. The core sandbox is quite good. The art style 10/10. If there was a PVE mode with our custom Spartans I would be having a blast. I think even all the whiny lazy people who are saying “just make the next game” enjoyed the gameplay. However the lack of content, micro transactions, and broken launch drove them away.

Infinite is sad. It could have been a success story, it did a lot to get back on track. It actually felt like a Halo game compared to 4 and 5. It was new but familiar. I want it to succeed. To come back and prove everyone wrong. But I don’t think it will. The reality is, this is not the feedback 343 is seeing. Feedback like “hey if you add playable elites I will come back and play this game” or “here’s how you could improve the FOB system” does not reach them. Fault of theirs they never really made use of the forums. Fault of fans they drowned out any expression of feedback because the majority of comments were useless crying. See it’s not really feedback if you don’t provide the positives, things to improve, or offer solutions to fix something. I says this because most of these people I refer to probably won’t read this far. They saw there was more than one paragraph and thought it was too much work. In this one way 343 is right about fans being “the problem”. Fans aren’t the source of the problem, but they don’t help it at all. The most useful thing that could have saved Halo is if there actually was a community. If there was better communication between the fans and the developers. When Halo Reach launched Bungie had people monitoring the forums and there was changes from the beta to the release. This game didn’t really beta, so there was no “hey we want to sell this what do you think?”. Unfortunately I think free to play killed it. If they were trying to sell the game they would have been more inclined to beta test it before releasing it.

These are but my not so humble opinions. If you managed to read all that and looked at my opinions objectively rather than personally to you; Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoy the Halo Universe, and good day.

25

Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I must say, I agree with all of what you are saying, but I guess I’m less convinced that most of those things are an attempt to keep the rating in check. Rather, just decisions to reduce strain on the engine or less realistic graphics, because “art” or something, I don’t know.

I honestly don’t know, but I doubt the ESRB pays any attention to how long bullet holes and burn marks stick around. I don’t believe social features and interactions are considered (I recall there being a disclaimer about online interactions). I would be surprised if the ‘gritty-ness’ of an announcer played any part; certainly the things said (maybe a reason we lost the “suicide” announcement?).

26

Infinites release was bad timing, when UE5 was almost done and had all the tools to make easy maps. Im pretty sure we will never see a full Forge mode in Halo Infinite if 343 are working on Halo 7 Endless in UE5.

I believe there should have been more conntent in the World Premiere, but they cancelled it in the finale minute.

Its seems like its very hard to implement things in Halo Infinite, maybe their engine is not compatible with modern servers, when you think about it Split space is an old updated engine and most gaming tools are in UE4/5 now.
Making your own engine is really hard work and a bad choice today.

I saw SeanW och Youtube and he said that he heard from multiple sources that Battle Royale is ditched and working progess for Halo 7.

27

I think ESRB might care if people are drawing willies or offensive symbols on the walls, but then again it might be the devs making sure that the game really is T-rated and avoid parents nagging about “toxic” symbols and messages in a chat etc. since we’re now living in an era of overly sensitive loud people.

But it’s not just the ESRB that the company is catering for. They want the game to comply with the Chinese government’s censorship rules (because China is a huge market) - this problem in video games goes back decades ago. Back in the days, 20+ years ago, Bungie had released a global version of Halo CE and a special version for the Chinese market, with added censorship features, and they did the same for the sequels. That special version had childish and less scary graphics for the Flood (some actually looked like naked 3D models without applied textures), when you shot the zombies they’d pop with confetti, there was no blood at all, no limb dismemberment, shooting grunts with shotguns and battle rifles would generate colorful confetti, the dead bodies of allies and enemies would immediately shrink and disappear in a teleport-like manner etc. So now instead of releasing a special version for them, the rest of us have to bear with all that childish stuff.

Many other companies have submitted to the censorship and didn’t take the extra effort to satisfy all their audiences. For example, they’ve ruined the mood and atmosphere in the remake of one of my favorite video games; Final Fantasy 7. So they’ve toned down the scary parts and music, and removed horror elements and blood. They’ve admitted that they did it in order to cater for the Chinese market.

So it seems that nowadays when a company says that they want to be inclusive and target a broader audience, they simply mean that they want to reach more wallets, not that they want to satisfy more audiences. Otherwise a West company should primarily care about Western customers, rather than satisfy Chinese customers regulators, at the expense of the rest of us.

At this point making a good and fun game is not just about being a competent studio making good decisions and handling the technology well, but being a passionate studio with a mission to make the game fun for its audience.

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28

Sisyphus’s progression system.

29

Good stuff here, thanks. I agree with everything you said.

There is one thing that does irk me regarding the “tech tests” or whatever they called them. They were obviously only meant to test the systems and infrastructure of the game (like networking and matchmaking stability). 343 had no intent, and clearly no capability, of responding to the feedback before launch. This is evidenced by the fact that 90% of that feedback has been either swept under the rug or is still claimed to be something for “the long term.” Here we are, almost a year since those flights and still no tangible updates (not only actual updates, but even plans for future updates) on things like career progression, match composer, and desync. Absolutely no acknowledgement of how broken custom games and theater are.

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30

I think frankly games have stopped doing true beta’s. I would think you should run your beta let’s say 4 months before launch, run through the feedback, and then actually work on implementing something’s. Possibly delay your game if you (now the majority of people would get mad because they have no patience, but they’d forget because the finished product would be more polished). I think Infinite’s beta released like a week? Two weeks before launch. It wasn’t a “hey what do you think and what we should change?”. It was more like an early release which at that point it was too late to change.

31

My main issue with H:I is that 343 didn’t seem to learn from their earlier titles. Many of the problems H:I has were already solved in 4, 5, MCC or even Wars 2.

32

Slipspace is just a fancy name for Infinite’s engine. It’s still a heavily modified BLAM!, just like all the other games previously. If anything, the money was wasted on all the content that didn’t make the cut.

Destiny 1 was supposed to be a 10-year plan, but Activision also said there had to be a new Destiny game every… 2 years, I think? This is pretty much why we’ll probably never have a Destiny 3.

34

The progression in Halo 5 was mainly RNG, that system is what kept players staying saying getting cosmetics and warzone items was purely out of luck. What Infinite lacks is motivation. Gameplay alone can keep some players on, as not everyone cares about cosmetics. But as I said, it isn’t about what game does better gameplay, but that every game can have good gameplay. Meaning any game can swoop you from another if it has nothing else to offer.

That is what Infinite is lacking, the essence to continue playing.

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35

Halo 5 had a good beta to launch window. 10 months. Enough time for 343 to actually respond to feedback. It’s not surprising though, that Infinite didn’t do the test flights until just barely before launch. They obviously weren’t prepared for launch, but I’m guessing that Microsoft was holding their feet to the fire on the release date.

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36

Yes, that is one of the big ones, but if that were solved I still don’t think it would be enough to bring any significant portion of players back. If it was done right at launch then we would have more players around, but they aren’t coming back now for just a progression system.

37

Naw going to lie, I have moved on. Not out of protest just the game isn’t made for me, I’m more a social pkaylist PavE player and Halo infinite wasn’t made for that side of the community. Maybe next game. But Halo Infinite is strictly HCS focused and crowdfunding For those tournaments.

38

Most likely. Bungie abandoned Halo in the first place because Microsoft had wanted Halo games to be pumped out like COD. Personally I don’t think any game can been developed well when put under the pressure of corporate overlords who do not understand that quality requires time, instead they merely demand “make me millions”. 343 made some mistakes sure but how much better could Infinite have been if Microsoft had given them time instead of demands?

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40

They are right though…

41

Right in regards to infinite being in a very bad state. All the other crap about “overly sensitivity” is just plain bs.

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Infinite is legendary for casual players and if you are not financially stable enough to enter a pro team for cash prizes, “no one is going to care that you killed ~80 people in a game of oddball… you are a big fish in a little pond, start aiming to play with the sharks you madlad or get out of the paddling pool”. - Spartan 681