Infinite Tech Preview – UI & LIVE

Games Halo Infinite
682

UI in game feels fine, regular menus were pretty annoying, equipping customization options were annoying, as you had to either press F or click the tiny little checkbox on the image. Some default keybinds were really weird, like ALT to switch grenade types, and F to switch weapons.

–PLAYED ON PC WITH KEYBOARD AND MOUSE–

683

While I had a great time playing during the flight, I really struggled with the UI at times.

I found the main menus to be very busy. There was a lot of white text on light coloured or detailed backgrounds, which I found difficult to read. I bumped the font size up but this broke a few parts of the layout, although I understand that’s likely still a work in progress. As others have mentioned, it took me a while to notice the difference between preview and activate in the customisation section.

In game, I found the clarity of information was a step back from Halo 5. I wasn’t sure when weapon/item spawn timers were coming up, and a few times a power up had spawned and I didn’t realise, I think there’s a distance counter there which I mistook for a countdown. With the match score screen, I found it almost impossible to see the white text on the default red and blue team colours. I never truly gained confidence in identifying friend vs foe, if friendly fire had been on, I think I would’ve been unpopular…

684

We need to be able to select our Armor Colors. You can keep Coatings, in terms of patterns on armor, but we need to be able to choose our own colors. Any other way is disappointing and limiting. It’s not okay.

Additionally, not being able to access setting or customization while searching must be fixed. I should be able to do stuff in the background of the game loading.

Also, Battle Pass needs more items.

685

It would be better if you can move the part where you can see your guns, abilities and how much grenades you have because in past games that part was up in the corner left, but now is down corner in the other side

686

Good day.

I think that the UI is fine, and it contains everything you need to know to play, customize your spartan and your weapons and vehicles skins, but there are some many things in the screen that, as a user, it’s easy to lose yourself in the menu because of the amount of options to navigate. The screen of the “message of the day” its too large in the main menu or lobby, that doesn’t allow you to see what other players joined your party. At some point I got confused about where I was navigating on the menus while I was on the store, or the section of the battle pass. My recommendation is to do something more clear and minimalistic with the menus, and something less invasive in the view of the whole interface.

For reference, I was able to play this first flight on an Xbox Series X.
Thank you for your attention.

687

So your in game UI is mostly fine from a functional point of view. I would like to be able to move things like the medals and resize them. Would you please sell me a medal pack styled to look like H2/H3?

The menus before games and especially the post game report are needlessly confusing or just require me to press way too many buttons to perform simple actions. Fewer buttons and a menu for more obscure things that I open by pressing start or something like that would go a LONG way towards fixing it. The post game report needs to just be rolled back to more or less how it looks in MCC with detailed stats available if you press A on a person’s name

688

Battle Pass menu is very good it’s easy to understand how it works, only issue in my case is that every time I unlocked a tier my image of what I earned is not showing so I had to read what I unlocked and see it on my Armor Hall Customization, above that I think challenges are very fun to do, and in a certain point easy they makes the gameplay more entertaining and gives variety, all other menus like the Armor, Weapons and AI ones are very good, bad thing is that in this Preview the part of the Prosthetic is a little glitched cause all parts showed the same robotic part for the extremity instead of just showing the hand for example, for me the menus are very easy to understand so it’s a pretty good work, there were parts when the background glitched a little and show a big grey thing, but nothing you can’t fix for the final game, so for me all of that it’s pretty solid and well worked

689

The game is amazing, UI is okay but it could be better. (I know this is an early build and its not final) here’s some stuff I’d like to see/change:

  • crosshair settings with colors and sizes for each weapon - each weapon should have its own option to hold or toggle to aim (some weapons I prefer hold like the sidekick, other I prefer toggle like BR) - option to hold or press to pick up weapons - there’s no zoom out keybind - outlines, can we have the options to turn off enemy outlines + adjustment to make it thinner or thicker. I prefer having my team outlines on and turn off enemy outlines, looks more appealing and better imo. - option to turn off armor customization and option to turn on Red vs Blue - bigger medals, + I like the new designs but I prefer old colors like in 2,3,reach + please bring back Hail Marry, Extermination and Yonk medals - bottom right in the weapon icon and bullets number should have a clip icon like halo ce, 2 and 3 (easier to have a quick look and see how many bullets left than number) - more HUD adjustments (change the positions of the kill feed, score, radar etc) - not a fan of in game background, I prefer like a digital art with moving stuff in it (like reach and mcc), something like halo ring and the ring is moving - I prefer my name to be on the top right along side my friends / squad with my emblem/nameplate (like reach and mcc) - the battle pass and news box are too big, and both would look better on the bottom right - when you go on multiplayer, having a second page when you press/go right (like reach) that shows your squad and friends list and you can scroll down to see their info and armor and customization would be sick, and that page could have the in game background (the one where you guys chilling next to each other) - in armor hall, the way customization (coatings, helmets, etc…) is presented (the big squares next to each other) not a fan of that, its too big and it hides your character, I think a list on the left size with the options (coatings, helmets, etc…) under each other with a small icons would look better. even when you go inside (coatings, helmets, etc…) each one should be presented different depends on it, armor coatings for example, the square with the colors inside them are too big, I don’t think anyone cares about the square itself, we wanna see how the spartan look in this color, its too big and hides half of your spartan, so coating on left and spartan on the right would look better I think, current way kinda reminds me of Forza. (basically everything should be smaller and we get to see it on the spartan itself as a preview) something like this but better and smaller Imgur: The magic of the Internet - when you start the search, joining a game, respawning. I miss the beep (countdown) sounds, please bring it back - when I kill myself / suicide the announcer doesn’t say Suicide.
  • Halo has one of the best soundtracks of all time, would be cool to have a little music player that have the best soundtracks in the series, and have buttons in menu to skip, forward, pause music. (similar to Rocket League)some of these maybe do not belong in here, and sorry for that.
    thank you all of this amazing job, love the game. you guys made it through this tough times and can’t wait to get my hands on it!
690

The menu UI could definitely be improved. This mockup on Reddit shows what I think would be a much better UI for the menus.

691

Greetings exhausted ones!
I got in to the pc flight and I’m pretty sure this is where I’m suppose to go to give feedback so, here we go!

Menu UI
I’m seeing a lot of, not negativity, but sort of overly critical assessments in my opinion. For me the UI, while not perfect, wasn’t really that bad at all. When playing the game it becomes very clear as to why you went with the direction you went in.

  • Having the custom spartans vibing in the courtyard with all their equipment is an obvious effort to include your spartan in more of the game to make it feel more personal and all that. And I mean “obvious” in the sense that it just makes sense to do so so I think it’s great.
  • I will say that I don’t really know how much I like the customization UI. The horizontal listing of the armor pieces (with pictures of the pieces even though we already see them on the spartan in the same image) and coatings are tough for me because I feel like it obstructs the actual view of the spartan you’re customizing. In reach and Halo 3 you can see the full spartan model no matter which piece is getting customized and you can zoom in and out and rotate them to see all angles of that piece of armor. And it wasn’t a sub menu of the customization sub menu like it is in infinite (referring to the lore tab that just shows the piece without any obstruction). I love the lore tab, but I feel like the aforementioned features should be available in the tab that precedes it, if that makes sense. - The whole “menus inside menus inside menus” thing is a little apparent with this UI, but I don’t know how to approach solving that problem. There is so much more stuff packed into modern games, this included, that its hard to simplify it all down. I think it may benefit from putting all the sub menus of the customization menu in one space instead of having their own screens and all that. So for example, maybe all the customization for “body and AI” should just go in the armor hall. Maybe all of it should just go into “armor hall”, which would make armor hall just one single “customize” tab. Similar to reach with its firefight voices and all that, since I feel firefight voices and ais are more or less similar in basic concept. - The shop is fine, I like that it’s out of the way and in its own tab, I also really like that you can access the battle pass from the customization menu. I think more stuff like that may help with the aforementioned menus problem. - I can’t remember if it did and I’m just dumb, but I don’t remember the battle pass having its own tab, and that is something I would recommend having. - I like that the challenges are accessible straight from the main menu, I feel that’s a big improvement from Reach and MCC. - I like all the music, I think the tracks themselves are very well done. However, some of the menu tracks are pretty intense which does not lend itself, at least in my opinion, to what a halo menu has always been. When I think back to Halo UIs, they always had a sense of, not relaxation, but reprieve. Or stillness. The music was always sweeping and would take its time, making sure to let the menus breathe comfortably instead of feeling like you were gearing up for imminent danger. Which is ironic because that’s what you are doing, but halo always had a thing for juxtaposing the chaos with calm and slow menus to me. Except for Halo Reach, but I was never a huge fan of that menu soundtrack either. - The general feel I would go for if I was making a Halo UI would be the Halo 3 menu. Those sweeping shots of battle zones with little to no combat going on with slow and thoughtful music backing it all behind the blue filter, making it all feel more like a memory than anything else sticks in my mind so vividly, and I do believe you could achieve that sort of thing here. Because I do concede that, while I don’t really mind the current menu, it is a little generic. I know you have to keep the “vibing spartans” scene in there because it would be dumb not to, but maybe you could allocate that to just the multiplayer menus (socials, ranked, custom games, custom games browser, forge, there’s still tons of room for that menu screen). And you could maybe make something a little more sweeping, intimate, thoughtful, slow, more halo esc for the main menu that gives you the campaign, multiplayer, and theater tabs. Less tabs, and more scenery in the main menu, then you can open it up in the multiplayer tab to go to the vibing spartans. I feel the MCC menu is more so in the right direction. I still think that menu is too dark and it focuses on individual pieces of equipment too much but the feel is all there and makes for a great menu!Even though I had a lot to say on how the UI could be improved, I want to make it clear that I don’t think this is a bad menu at all. I like the vibing spartans, I like the music tracks themselves, I like the scenery of the customization tab. It felt easy to get straight into the actual game. The challenges were always easy to access. It was fine, and I think it’s a menu to be proud of. I just think the proposals I and others have made might serve to make the preexisting menu a little more unique, a little more “halo”, and little more memorable when this game reaches its later years.

Gameplay UI There’s a lot less to nitpick here. The game kicks -Yoink-. There’s just a couple things that I would recommend.

  • I think the reticle on the sniper use to be a tad larger, not bad, just something I might have to get used to. - The new ammo counter stuff isn’t bad or anything, but I do feel it’s a little generic. - There’s less screen clutter in this UI than there was in, I wanna say, any halo game that precedes it, and I think that’s great. - If it’s possible, I think it would be beneficial to maybe weaken the intensity of the team color outlines. I know the new system is in place for accessibility reasons and to utilize the custom spartan more, and that’s awesome, but the lines kind of obstruct the spartans in a way that I can’t really tell what they look like anyway. Maybe you could include an “outline thickness” option for the player to make the lines as thick or thin/bright or dull as they want. - In that vain, it might be cool to somewhere down the line reintroduce the red vs blue system as an alternative option to the friend or foe system in the settings menu. - I don’t think the shields need to be the same color as the outlines. The shields look a lot “cheaper” if that’s the right word. But I do really enjoy including the custom team colors into more of the UI. I think it’s a lot of fun to just mess around with the colors and change it up all the time. - There was also a point where I was able to make the team and enemy colors the same color. Pleeeeeaaase DO NOT get rid of that. I loved doing that so much. It made the game so much more intense for me, I had no idea who was coming around the corner so I was just shooting at everyone like a mad man, it was hilarious. Maybe that could just be limited to socials or something. - I like where the reticle’s at, I like where the guns are. I like the shield bar a lot. I LOVE the shield sound. I like that when you pick up someone else’s gun it’s their coating. I like that the equipment, grenades, and ammo counter are so close together so I can get all that information in one glance. It’s pretty cool. Overall this flight just got me more excited to play the whole thing. I’m pretty hyped!
692

In the beginning I was confusing friend from foe due to the fact that the friendlies outline was the same blue color as the enemy player armor. There also were no Gamertags displayed over your fellow team players (though maybe that is for the best). The thin red outline of enemy players would also be near invisible at distance.
So I changed friendly outline to yellow in the settings.
It solved the issue for me - since yellow is neither red nor blue.

693

Cuando trate de entrar no me dejaba, pero tuve que quitarle el cable Ethernet, y me dejo entrar, así me paso con Call Of Duty Black Ops Cold War, de ahí, cuando estabas en otros apartados, no cargaban las imágenes, o el diseño de las armas, en los desafíos algunos no los podía hacer, por el hecho de que no están los otros modos de juego, y el ritmo de subir el pase de batalla es algo lento, aunque los desafíos hacen que avancen algo rápido. En el apartado de poder cambiar el FOV, cuando miras hacia abajo se puede ver algo extraño, ves como el “Interior” del cuerpo del Spartan. Es difícil que para todas las armas tengan sensibilidad y tengas que ajustarlas una por una, pero creo es algo cómodo.

694

I dislike the medals in this game. When it comes to the design of the medals, They are really bland compared to the previous games. I also don’t like how the medals are really small and to the left of the crosshair, I think they should go back to their original position in the other games. I also think that the names of the killing spree medals should be reverted to their original names, (example: Nightmare goes back to Untouchable) however, the Demon medal should stay in, changing it from 40 kills without dying to 50 kills without dying, so that one of the new medals stays in, while also keeping the older spree medals such as Unfrigginbelievable.

695

Overall I found the UI to be just fine in combat, most things were intuitive while playing except perhaps the ability to switch your grenades being tied to the D pad. It was easy enough to find though after going through the controls in options. The ability to use your XP boosts, buy levels, and switch your challenges was pretty buried in the UI and not very intuitive. It took quite some time to find them and really not until the end of the Tech Preview. I’d suggest making these a little easier to find especially if you want players to purchase them in the future.

Finding the challenges was fine, they read easy and overall the main menu UI was fine. Since there was no other general area to talk about this, I’ll talk about the challenges here. There needs to be colossally more of them, or general xp rewarded at end of match just like every other Halo of note. I understand this will be taken as a free to play model going forward, but you cannot hamstring your player base like this. It will force many people to stop playing when the xp runs dry and many more to stop playing all together. It can be an obscenely small number if you wish, making it take a very long time to level without them. 10 xp would be 50 matches per level at the 500 xp market. In order for your xp boosts to have value, I can’t be playing for just a little bit, hit my cap, and then go “oh well, guess there’s no more reason to play today!” There needs to be an ability to gain xp to boost it. Sure people will play with friends and such, but you’re going to make their experience in the long run so much more hollow. The fact that I felt that way just in this Technical Preview is not a good sign. Your gameplay is great so far, but you have customization options, and some semblance of balance between player benefit and profit margins must be struck. Don’t kill your multiplayer and it’s community for a quick buck, something small will go a long way in the hearts of your players.

Generally I think you will set people in a play loop of buy, burst, quit. This had been a huge setback in both Halo 4 & 5, we don’t need another gutted split community after a few months of the game being out. I apologize if this comes off as too negative, I only want to see you succeed at building up a really good title. Halo Infinite is the best looking/playing Halo I’ve seen in a very long time, and I haven’t been this excited to play since the old Bungie days. You’ve got a great thing here, I can tell you’ve worked very hard and it shows. Don’t let it be ruined by your xp caps or shop. As for the shop itself, I’m glad it isn’t intrusive. It was easy to navigate and seemed in good condition. A few hiccups on not loading things in occurred but little else as far as problems. If you guys get this out the door in better condition than this is already in (which is REALLY good despite setbacks , I believe in you!) I wouldn’t mind spending extra money on this or aesthetics.

This is my only majorly negative review of the game so far, you’re on the path to greatness, stay the course! Thanks for the invite, would love to try it out some more for you.

696

Interface, battle pass, challenges and shop.
the interface is a bit confusing, sometimes it took me a while to know how to customize my spartan by leveling up, but it’s very nice :smiley:
The battle pass is very friendly, but leveling up costs very few points, I think it should cost twice as many points for the EXP boosts to be of any use :thinking:
The challenges are great, I wish they could put more in, since it inspires me to keep playing and advance to the level, I also hope they put campaign challenges, I love the story mode and I would be very happy spending more time in the campaign :heart:
the store is just great :metal:t3:

697

Either gamertags or service tags should show up above your allies like in the previous games, keep the ability to see their outline through walls but add the gamertags or service tags so that teammates can communicate more easily.

698

I would definitely like to see names above team mates, I really miss that from Halo 5. I am not sure if it will be added, but its a must have for me. I usually team with my friend and its hard to respond to his callouts when I dont know where he is on the map. Especially since fireteam outline wasnt working this preview. Which is another issue.

699

Game menu
I found the game menus to be a little painful to use, for two reasons:

  • single line horizontal scrolling to select items when customising (skins and armor etc) feels very tedious compared to something like an offset vertical scrolling grid of items that would allow us to see more options with less effort - not being able to switch to “Play”, “Shop”, and “Customise” anywhere in the menus means I have to spam B on my controller to get back to what I want to do which is annoyingI would also prefer to have easier access to aim settings in the settings menu rather than having to scroll down on the controller option to see them - aim settings should be some of the first options to access so that you can tweak them much faster mid game should you need to.

In game HUD
The HUD in game is a little small, particularly the grenade indicator in the bottom right. I would prefer the HUD to be larger. Some changes to the HUD I would make would be

  • Include a HUD scale slider in the settings menu to allow players to scale the HUD to the size that fits their screen best - Allow a HUD colour option in the settings so that we can customise the colour of our HUD to make it more personal (would be very cool)Also the medals could be larger when they pop up, not too obnoxious but they feel a little small and insignificant at the moment. Perhaps if the “feel good” medals (triple kill, overkill, noscope etc) were larger than the others it would feel much nicer when you get them.
700

There should be some type of visual/ audio notification when you unlock something from the season pass or anywhere else really. It just doesn’t feel that great when you unlock something something and later, you’re just kinda like “oh yeah, it’s there”.

701

Hello,

The challenges are decent but I think there needs to be more of them. Also earning exp toward the battlepass for simply playing matches etc and not just for completing challenges.

Not sure if this is a bug or intended but in the area where you apply body types to the spartan/prosthesis, you can’t rotate the character model to see what it looks like. I had this issue when equipping armor as well.

In the matches, I wasn’t a fan of how clunky the spartan felt while running/climbing. I wasn’t having problems with FPS, so it wasn’t a frames issue just more that it kind of felt like you were running in a small mech.

Overall I had a blast playing and I look forward to the future flights!