A casual space for casual gamers.
They have bot matches for onboarding, but most online gamers don’t typically want to play with bots. Especially in borked customs or one off playlists.
Battle royale games have a bonus that if you’re having a bad game, you still got to scavenge for a while and you’re instantly dead when things go south so you just start another. The expectation is for you to rarely win so players are happy with okay finishes. You also are spectating your friends when you’re dead, meaning there is chill time. The random rng element means players can do well by being lucky and getting better weapons or by playing conservatively. In Halo, the better team will win. I love that about Halo, but I also see why when this is applied to all playlists it pushes gamers away. Having playlists that promote lesser skilled players doing well could be helpful. Or just less skill focused gametypes, like imagine a gametype where you are just running around a map like Bazaar collecting coins. Lucky Spartans will do better, but skillfull Spartans that have mastered jumps and advanced movement will on average still do better.
I think that’s the big thing with Infinite right now, there’s no chill time. Due to sbmm, if you chill in some games but not others you are going to have a bad time. If you play hardcore in ranked then the system expects a good performance out of you in Quickplay too. You are never spectating friends, the games come thick and fast and it’s all action. If you’re in a bad game, it last for the entire duration, you’re getting panned for 7-10 minutes straight. Makes the game less streamer friendly. Even pros might have an incredibly good game where they go 17-11 k/d and to a casual watcher the game may look rather boring.
I think having more playlists that emphasise less competitive play would be helpful. The octagon is always popular on MCC cgb, just like Shipment is popular on Call of Duty. Players like quick, fast, action filled games, low focus required, drop in drop out. I think an Octagon style, tiny frantic map with limited rule sets would help. Targeting a playlist with 3-5 minute matches ok average. Action Sack of course. Just less serious games. At the moment arguably BTB is the only way to have a much less serious game and even that can be quite competitive lobbies. I chill in BTB a lot though tbf but it’s the only place I can really.
I’d maybe turn off sbmm for one playlist also, like Quickplay. Just to see how trends are when gamers can play one playlist where they don’t have to play to their potential to keep it close. Will more play it or less? Will people dip into it after a few intense games to wind down? I don’t know. But I’d like to give it a try.