BTB was fun in both slayer and CTF, but the other mode was just pain having games last a minuet at most. I think BR or Commando starts would be nice in the full game. The vehicles are super fun (its the main thing I love in BTB and Halo multiplayer) but the new skewer and the new damage system makes them feel like paper, the skewer make using vehicles pointless (its like the Spartan laser where is made the vehicle part of the sand box completely unusable when someone has one). The pelican drops are cool and a nice idea, but it made using better vehicles rare, I only got to use the wasp once and the ghost a few times but never got to use the scorpion or banshee.
Loot caves are a fun addition, but I notice most people will just ignore them, I feel this is because they may not have known about them so maybe making sure the player knows they are a thing could help. Weapon place was really nice and with the full game should feel better with more weapon diversity. Equipment was fun and I didn’t feel like there was too much or not enough.
I only had 2 noticeable bugs one where the sentinel remains were jet back for every match (maybe due to having graphics set to low) and the other was after a random amount of time the game would start only loading LOD models and crash once that match ended.
TLDR:
Slayer and CTF fun, Total Control was terrible.
Vehicles fun but weak.
Weapon placement is good, loot caves cool but seem overlooked by most players.
Sentinel remains were jet back for every match
Crashes after random amount of time.
Positives
•I love how vehicles are brought into the battlefield and how players have to fight over the vehicles. It felt intense seeing both sides firing at each other while the vehicle was caught in the crossfire
•All players spawn in with the assault rifle and sidekick. The reason why I brought this up is because in previous games, most common game modes makes the spartan spawn with a dmr/battle rifle and a assault rifle. Because of this, the game slows down because everyone goes to fight from a distance with a battle rifle or dmr. Now that players spawn with mid to close range weapons, the battles feel engaging because of it.
•From playing xbox, by pressing down on the D pad, I get this visor mode that allows the player to see weapon and grenade spawn locations and empty vehicles through walls. That has saved me on a few occasions such as capture the flag where I try to find a vehicle for the friendly flag carrier
•The weapon caves is a system in BTB that I actually never thought of before in a Halo game. I love the high risk high reward idea that came with the weapon caves
Complaints
•Since people have been complaining about the lack of aim assists, aiming with the sidearm was a struggle to use as I’ll try to aim at the enemy player only for aim assist to not be present and missed my shots
•In BTB in the game mode where the players have to take control over three zones to win was a double edged sword. As it was a fun game mode but there were times where the zone spawns right at where there enemy is and the friendly players don’t have a chance to take the zones, resulting in a loss.
I think my biggest gripe is that after a match there is no showing of the leaderboards I wanna know how everyone did and when it doesn’t show it, it makes it feel like it all didnt really matter who put in the most work. I also think the game should like star wars battlefront 2 does congratulate the best players of the game by showing their Spartans at the end of the match, because its real incentive to do well in a match and I remember in battlefront that always made me wanna do well so everyone can see my character up there. Everything else is great though.
Maybe a gamemode ala “Operations” mode in Battlefield?
It’s like the total control mode, but when a team has all the control points, the actual points move closer to the team that loses the control.
There is like 3-5 positions in the map for the 3 control zones. - The closer to a enemy base the control zones are, the tougher it gets for the attacking team, and, - if all control zones are controlled, the enemy base get attacked and the team that is attacking has a limited number of lives (like 50-100) - If the defending team manages to drain all the enemy life’s before their base is captured, the control zones get pushed back and they have another chance. - If their base is controlled, is game over.Also respawning near your “4 team squadron “ will be great
I’m on an XSX and LG B9 OLED, here are my thoughts
Overall: Gameplay feels amazing, if this flight is any indication, this could become my favorite Halo multiplayer ever. It’s that good. It captures the feel of Halo and IMO is a true modern sequel to Halo 3. As soon as the flight ended, my first thoughts were “what do I do now?” and “2 months is such a long time to wait”. If the campaign is anything close to this kind of quality, this could be a Destiny-level hit, except at a legitimate GOTY quality. Nothing is perfect, so I do have some feedback on some aspects that I think would make the game better, but these are nit-picks to what is already a great experience.
Pros:
I haven’t had any of the input/aiming problems that others have mentioned.
I love that more of the non-power-weapons are actually viable to use. When playing I saw people using the commando, sidekick, BR, AR, etc., and it’s great to see more than just the BR IMO. Some people have said AR might be OP, but I personally don’t think so.
Fragmentation is an amazing map. Both the layout, but also the aesthetic of it. All of the little details, such as the wildlife, the “forerunner cannon” that blasts whenever a team scores on CTF, the dynamic lighting, the mantle of responsibility symbol, it all adds up big time in my opinion, to a next-level experience.
Similar to ^, I’m glad that the AR isn’t impotent anymore, and actually is serviceable as a true general purpose weapon.
It seems like the focus is on having every weapon being equally viable, while also excelling in their own element. If that is the intent, then I’d say that Halo Infinite is excelling fantastically. The Bulldog isn’t a “better” weapon than the AR, but if used in the correct situation it will win every time. Every Halo so far has felt like 90% of the sandbox it completely useless, but so far in infinite it feels like every weapon not only can be dangerous if used correctly, but actually will be the preferred choice of a player in any given situation. I was constantly switching between different weapons based on my situation/role in any given match and I absolutely loved that the sandbox is built such that it made sense to do so.
I love the Bulldog
Total domination is an amazing mode
Small thing, but I love that the motion tracker doesn’t have an altitude indication, it’s just a red dot. This allows for a solid knowledge of the map to allow you to intuit the location of an enemy in a situation where it could be ambiguous. Also simplifies the information available.
Another small thing, but I love that there’s no grenade indicators.
“noob cube” is an amazing addition. The best Halos always had a physics-based chaos element to them and Infinite has that in spades after it was largely missing in Halo 5.
Feedback:
The heavy vehicles deploy too late into the match. By the time one becomes available the game is almost over. Personally I think they should be deployed pretty early into the match, like at the 50 kill mark in slayer, or after the first flag capture in CTF. I played in 6-7 BTB matches and didn’t get a single opportunity to try out any of the later-stage vehicles.
I know it’s been beaten to death, but I do think that medals should be announced in BTB, preferably by Jeff, but if the new announcer does it too I’m fine with that. Sure it adds some audio clutter, but it’s still worth it IMO.
I love having a personal AI, but all of the current options have this kind of “quirky humor” personality that doesn’t quite do it for me. Lumu is my favorite and I like having her, but I’d prefer a less verbose AI. They can be humorous an all, but maybe different kinds of humor. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are lots of different personality types among human beings, from silent to chatty, humorous to stoic, dry humor to slapstick, etc., and as you add more AI options I think they should represent represent a broader spectrum.
I love fragmentation, but I do hope that future maps have a little bit more open space for vehicle play.
I’m glad that there’s no spartan lasers anywhere, but between the new spiker weapon, the shock rifle, dynamo grenades, grapple hooks, etc., it feels like there are more vehicle counters than ever before. Maybe this is by design, and I love that the vehicles have more zip than before to compensate, but a little bit of a health boost for the warthog might be nice. Either that or nerf some of the vehicle counters a bit more.
Motion tracker range should be boosted back to 25m, it’s just not that useful at 18m.
This might just be because it’s an early build, but some of the destroyed vehicles should IMO look a little bit more “destroyed”.
4v4 is missing a guardian/lockout style map, one that’s close quarters with lots of overlaid verticality. I will mention though that Behemoth is an instant classic.
While I haven’t had any aim/input problems, enough people have complained about something being amiss that I think it should be looked into. I don’t think it’s entirely a case of “mad because bad”.
First of all i realy enjoyed BTB with 12v12 and all game modes…
Playing with my friends, some times they was taken off the game and when we tried to play, showed them they were banned. - Fragmentation is awesome… The level design, details and everything else, including Loot Cave. - Things I think would be more interesting in BTB is Skewer/Sniper be available on map only by weapong drop, equipments spawns could be “random” on the spots
through the map. It would bring to the match some “unexpected factor”.
Loot Cave loot could be more random too. - For me shooting with a Sniper seems less powerfull than in previous Halo games and aim looks strangely uncalibrated. - VK Commando is a weapon that I still haven’t seen it’s real value. Technically it is a medium/long range weapon, but it is worse for this purpose than the BR for example, even in close range fire. So why should i choose one during a match?
Assault Rifle need to be less effective in long range fire. It’s ridiculous how anyone can hit a shot with relatively high damage over long distances.In overall the flight was great, fun as Halo MP should be and has a clearly potential to be the best MP in the entire franchise.
I am very pleased to see that the postponement has brought us an incredible game so far…
GREAT JOB 343 and thanks for the opportunity to contribute in some way to the game!
Big team battle felt horrible since it felt like hit reg issues happened more often and framerate was either good or dropping resulting in stutters. Otherwise just general shaders and rendering issues but weren’t all that noticeable. Despite that enjoyed it thouroughly!
Stats screen ISSUE: if you pull up your stats during a game, you won’t be able to shoot or throw grenades until you remove the pop up screen. I find this very frustrating as this severely slows down gameplay for those who just want to see the stats.
Didn’t get into all the vehicles but the Ghost is horrendous. Nowhere near as nimble as it used to be and it looks extremely dated. It’s something I would expect from Halo 1, not halo infinite in 2021. Massive step back on the Ghost. The pistol is another massive step back. It’s horrible and nowhere near the iconic pistols of halos past. Lastly, I could be wrong but it seems like every time an enemy was in my field of vision they were outlined in red and super easy to see. That feels like cheating. Just because someone is in my field of vision doesn’t mean I’ve actually seen them. Destroys sniping from cover. Other than those items the game is very fun.
BTB in infinite is one of my best experiences I have ever had within the franchise! Of course there are flaws with btb but its mosty bugs. One bug in particular is inacurate kill heading (idk what its called but bassicly it’s the message feed in left hand bottom corner that says who killed who). I was standing ontop of a scorpion (not in it) and an enemy used a plama pistol to damage the scorpion. A few seconds later the scorpion exploded and i lost 200 points because the feed said I had betrayed both teammates using a plasma pistol, which i didnt have that whole game. Overall it was awesome and cant wait for the full game
BTB to me has always been a mix of vehicle and on foot combat, you were free to focus on either or and see success, but in Infinite BTB it feels like its mostly centered around on foot combat with much more fleeting vehicle engagements, further constrained by the abundance of new tools to disable or hijack vehicles
Map neutral vehicle spawns are not something I’m enjoying at all, if there is just one scorpion the entire match and everyone knows where its going to be it will get swarmed and destroyed within moments of dropping, its actually adventitious for the leading team to start blowing it up as soon as it spawns for a free kill or 2 and to stop a come back from the other team
I thought I would like the “vehicle explosion timer” thing, I was excited for it on paper but it just leads to more situations where both drivers end up losing, I miss having the chance of getting a killing spree with a very prominently on fire and badly damaged looking vehicle if I’m lucky/played carefully enough, it felt legendary
I’d love to see BTB Heavies added in as its own mode, because honestly its always been my favorite mode in any halo game and what usually keeps me coming back and it gives both sides of the vehicle discussion modes they can enjoy
We really appreciate you guys taking the time to read our feedback here, even the more zealous and long winded posts, your work here is very much appreciated
Pros-
Great map
Gameplay seems balanced
Total Control is really fun and competitive
Moving the flag location after each capture
Timing of vehicle drops
In game music
Loot caves
Cons-
NOT HAVING JEFF ANNOUNCE THE MEDALS!!!
Pulse carbine feels useless on such a large map
Sniper doesn’t have enough ammo
Flag carrier seems to be revealed to easily. In previous games you would only be revealed if the enemy team deals damage or if you drop the flag. In infinite I feel like the carrier is always visible.
I left weapon balancing issues and more in my post on the Arena section, but I did want to comment on BTB specifically for two reasons.
Pelicans drop Banshees/Ghosts?
I truly don’t understand why Pelicans drop Banished vehicles in BTB. I really hope we can have Banished transports drop them, as that would make much more in-universe sense, especially since they’re making all multiplayer Spartans cannon having some continuity there would be fun.
Please bring back the Falcon!!!
I really really really think the Falcon has a large role to play in 12 v 12 PVP. Back in Reach it was awkward because it could house 3 people, and when shot down that was almost half a team out for a couple seconds which can change the tide of the game quite drastically. However, I think this is where the Falcon can shine! Having a powerful aerial vehicle that can transport two gunners would be so fun, and balanced within the sandbox. Weapons like the Skewer and Shock Rifle can take it down which makes it a risky play, but if taken down it is only a quarter of the total team which makes it not a huge risk. It sets it fairly in the “Late game fun” setting.
I mean heck have it spawn in after the Scorpion and maybe be a transport Falcon that can move objectives to really escalate stuff, having Scorpions try to shoot it down or something? And grapple jacking a Falcon while an objective holder was being transported would be nuts! Not to mention the potential it has in custom games.
The Falcon is a vehicle that is near and dear to my heart, having - along with the Warthog - my favorite Halo vehicle design. I think that it has a wonderful space to fill in Infinite BTB, and I know a lot of us Reach kids would be chuffed with its inclusion!
Please let me know what you think about this, would you want to see the Falcon return in Infinite?
> 2533274796310130;35:
> Honestly loving most things so far, but came here specifically to mention that I feel Total Control is a really poorly implemented gametype. The RNG spawns of the zones and the relative speed at which they appear makes it far too easy for one team to win the match effortlessly if they get fortunate spawns. I’ve won one and lost one match of the gametype and both times it was hardly competitive. Both games had times when two of the three capture points would be significantly closer to one team than the other or providing much more cover to pushing from one direction than the other which just snowballed into an easy win.
>
> I’d prefer the game be like Domination where you receive points for having the majority captured, along with the switching, instead of simply capturing all three meaning a won “round”. Either that, or actually make it round based and reset the match after one team captures all three. Both times whenever the new points spawned in the team that just had map control easily took them again, making it an annoyingly brief and frustrating game.
Total control was actually my favorite new game type. I agree that sometimes the zone spawning favors one team over another but some of my best games have been when the enemy team has 2 zones in their spawn with one neutral zone that my team holds. Sure it was inevitable that the enemy would overwhelm our one zone and score a point but we held on to it for over half the game and even managed to distract them and cap a zone in their spawn a couple of times. It’s those hard fought battles where it’s really 12v12 all colliding onto one small zone trying their hardest to cap that make the game type fun. And never have I experienced a game where all the zones are always in the enemy’s spawn. If 2 out of the 3 zones spawn in enemy territory then the next cycle will have 2 zones in friendly spawn or just 3 completely neutral places zones. All this is to say I like the spawns and want them to stay as is.
So far the game runs smoothly, and (if you guys want to read the whole thing lol) and here are my thoughts:
Graphics:
Played on both Xbox One and then recently upgraded to a Series X (which the game looks amazing on). For the xbox one, it will probably be optimized during release but if there is a way to optimize the graphics for the original Xbox as the frame rate at times (especially during capture zone modes) would severely drop and cause a second or two delay to then seeing an animation of me dying without knowing from where or how lol. The frame rate dropped pretty much only when there is a lot going on (people spamming grenades, rockets from banshees, you know how BTB is). Another bug that rarely occurred (oddly enough only in BTB and noticed it on both the Xbox One and Series X) was the player HUD would have a blue light flickering by the top portion/near shield health bar as if the game is registering light fraction of near by objects but there was nothing in front of you. Even after death it did not go away.
Weapons:
The AR seems off. The bloom is very similar to Halo 3, however at times even though multiple shots hit an enemy when hitting them first, an enemy could easily turn out with a pistol (which I’ll talk about soon) and take me out leaving me confused if there was a damage reduction to the point that it is almost better to use a pistol (or picking up other weapons around the map) than the primary weapon you spawn with. I would say the damage of the AR from Halo 5 is definitely a good middle ground to maybe base the infinite AR while keeping the bloom as Halo 3.
As for the pistol, my goodness the Halo CE magnum is back, however I noticed that it drops shields a-lot faster than the AR, and BR which maybe in the skilled hand is expected, but it seems every encounter I had with someone using it I would never win a 1v1 against it.
The bulldog shotgun is underpowered in point blank range, takes about 3 shots to take down a fully shielded person.
Equipment:
The grappling hook is awesome, the physics are crazy in terms of how much speed you can get from angling it in the right direction! Also leads to some pretty epic hi-jacks ;D! The repulsor is extremely situational (it’s like parrying in fighting games) to push people away before they grav-hammer you, deflecting rockets (which I did! But it still got me due to its blast radius lol), and even saving yourself from getting splattered (damn ghosts)!
There is a new spike grenade which is super cool! The design is literally a brute spiker grenade but it has an AOE that does damage-over-time (like the wonder-waffle from COD zombies) and amplifies if you spam two in the same area! However a question I have is if two are near each other, does it also increase the radius? Or is a chain-reaction based shock which is dependent on how many players are near each other to the shock? Another cool feature with the new spike grenade is that it disables vehicles (like the plasma pistol) and does damage to all in the vehicle!
Sadly for myself, thruster packs are no longer a thing in infinite but the pace and movement are just as faced paced!
UI (HUD-specific):
There is a new feature for shield regen when it procs, your screen illuminates green at the bottom of the screen (slightly reaches the middle and disappears by the time it reaches the top of your screen), hopefully 343 adds in the options menu to adjust the brightness of that effect because sometimes its a little overwhelming when in the middle of fire fight. I believe another shield regen mechanic is the ability to regen your shields while sprinting (such as Halo 4) but at the cost of a slightly increased amount of time versus standing/walking. The radar only scans now 18m versus other halos which I believe were 25m so you’re pretty much not going to know if someone is there until its probably too late. The icons (ie ammo count, equipment use count, etc) are actually small enough to where your HUD is not crowded. Also for the outlines for friendlies and enemies they seems toned down from the previous flight (which I was not apart of and only saw clips) which is nice because before it looked like you were mainly focused on highlights of the game rather than actually being aware for people/vehicles. The death marks where friendlies have died, personally, should be a tad bit bigger (their deaths are denoted with an ‘x’).
UI (Customizations screen):
When loading and choosing the color of spartan armor available there is a slight bug when selecting and equipping the desired skin. When trying to equip sometimes it will not let you choose it, nor does the color preview display. A small bug, but can be fixed with restarting the game.
UI (Button Layout):
There is a noticeable difference for button layout options when compared to MCC and Halo 5 where there is less options, but the coolest setting 343 implemented was the custom button layout which essentially lets you bind your buttons to your liking (I personally like the Halo 5 set up with melee being RB and thrusters (Halo 5) /abilities (for reach) / equipment (for infinite) being on LB)!
Bots:
This is a cool feature (being in social playlist or even in your own lobby which is academy) because personally the first PVP match (which was BTB) was absolutely horrendous in terms of being unfamiliar with all the weapons and their uses, new equipment uses, the smoothness of the FPS (notably on the Series X), etc and trying out the bots playlist lets you get familiar with said features! I don’t know if anyone noticed, but when setting bot difficulty to spartan there is no bloom for the AI plus the target acquisition time is less than a second as soon as you spot one, so I made the conclusion that 343 copied and pasted the legendary difficulty from Halo 2 and said good luck xD! Definitely gets you into the groove however when transitioning to PVP after.
Does it look like COD:
I don’t know why people keeping comparing Infinite to COD (YT comment sections, other threads) because it most definitely does not however it is a change from the usual aesthetic of the original trilogy of Halo. I feel like the graphics and mechanics are headed in the right direction though!
Overall:
First, I am grateful I got to play and be invited to the beta (thank you 343). Second, I am grateful 343 is even tackling another Halo game for us to play. Third and finally, I thought the beta was really cool! Familiar yet different, and new aspects mixed with some old! Hopefully I get to play in the next flight T-T
Cheers guys till next time! (Thank you for reading the whole thing if you did lmao)
This was my first time getting to play on The Halo Insider program. All of my time was spent on Big Team Battle, lets just say this was epic!! The excitement and intensity brought back nostalgia from the Halo 2, and Halo 3 days.
One of the issues encountered by a few players in my party were that in the midst of loading the server some players game crashed. This caused them to get a ban for extended periods of time due to the game thinking that they were quitting matches.
Another issue I noticed is with the BR. I dont know if it was just me but it seems like the br is extremely weak at close range and takes about 4-5 bursts to kill someone. It seemed a little weaker in this game in comparison to the ones of the past.
Overall this was extremely fun to play and I hope to catch another flight before release!
Positives:
-Like that pretty much everything from the sandbox is here
-The chaotic feel of BTB is great
-Loot caves are great
-Some of the details like the sentinels, marine camps, and wildlife are great
The pelican dropping off vehicles is a neat idea
Negatives:
-So many things to counter the vehicles such as the dynamo grenades, shock rifle, grappleshot, etc. It makes the vehicles feel not as powerful as they should be
-The amount of vehicles at the start of the game and during the game isn’t that much compared to previous games. Only having one Warthog at the start and periodically getting ghosts throughout the match isn’t as fun.
-Either have the vehicles such as the wasp, banshee, and scorpion spawn way earlier or have them spawn at the start of the match. 90% of the matches these vehicles never spawned in and I never got to use them. That’s part of the BTB experience
-A slight increase to vehicle health to help them preform a bit better. Especially the banshee and wasp, they feel very weak.
-The Banshee bomb needs a huge buff, can’t even get a kill with one banshee bomb even if it’s a direct hit. Same goes for the missiles of the wasp. I should be powerful when using these vehicles.
-Add more fusion coils around the map
-If we are having AR starts. Make the BR the most common weapon on the map.
-Give us the option to have Jeff Steitzer in BTB instead of Commander Agryna. He should NEVER be taken out of any mode in MP. He is just as iconic as Steve Downes
Remove BTB Slayer! Its not fun. BTB is ment for objectives its completely not excited to play. Also stop putting 240fps RTX3090 Mouse and keyboard players with 2013 XBOX ONE 500gb aim drift controller bot players. Its not fun.