Halo has always had a special place in my gaming heart. I’ll always remember begging my mom for an Xbox just to play Halo CE. It was legendary how ahead of its time it was. It even aged well over the years. Since Xbox live wasn’t out yet, split screen and campaign was all you could play. That campaign was so good, I could play it over and over again and never get bored. H2, H3 and Reach had the sandbox evolve with more weapons and vehicles and even equipment. Despite some major changes, the overall engine of the game still felt like halo.
Over the years, I haven’t particularly enjoyed the way halo has evolved. Sprint is a major controversy and I’m on the side of it not being in halo. Having said that, Infinite surprised me with how well it incorporated sprint in Halo. In my opinion, H5 wasn’t halo at all. Definitely the worst campaign in the series. I could nitpick all the things I don’t like about modern halo but this post will be way too long. Clamber removing the skill of Halo jumps, loadouts, and hitscan over projectile are just to name a few. I was excited to hear that 343 was “going back to their roots” with Halo Infinite. Bringing in Joe Staten was a great move to help the team out with with campaign and honestly that’s where most of my excitement lies. The core of multiplayer halo has this chess match feel to the game where you had to manage your Spartan’s shields in combination with precise shooting to fend off your enemies.
After playing all 3 flights that have been available so far, I do like the direction Halo is going. However, there are a lot of small yet important details that could be addressed to improve the Halo experience. Most of what I have to say was written in point-form during gameplay. The reason I’m posting it like this is because at the end of the day, it’s my opinion. It would be impossible for 343 to listen to everyone. Halo being such an aged franchise has created a wide range of opinions. I have negatives and positives but my critical opinions are probably not possible to change as they’re very specific and may require change in the base engine of the game. Bare in mind I’m a little sensitive to these things and just want Halo to be amazing again.
Halo 3 is my overall favorite halo.
- The AR feels way too strong. Even at range I’m losing to AR’s with a BR. I think it’s both damage and the range on the gun that’s a little too much. Aim assist is too strong for specific weapons. BR, AR, Pulse Carbine. The standard AR combined with the bots shows how strong the gun is. AR should not rival the BR at range. Add some damage fall off for both the pistol and AR to make precision weapons worth picking up - I’d like to see the grenades be more reactive to different surfaces and to the different shapes of the map. (For example: Throwing a nade on dirt/snow/sand/etc shouldn’t bounce and/or bounce very little, throwing a nade on a rock or anything of awkward shapes should have unique bounces, nades up a set up stairs should bounce off the individual steps awkwardly. It seems its actually a flat ramp and what you’re seeing is a skin of a set of stairs) Perhaps this is big ask as its relating to the engine you’ve built but I thought I’d mention it nonetheless. Refer to Halo 2 and 3 for a visual reprentation of how grenades react to every single crack and polygon on the map. Make the visual aspect of the map be what’s actually there as the sandbox. I’ve seen nades bounce off the sandbags. Nades are very important during a battle and I’d like to see it take a little more skill to place them. - The Radar is too small in my opinion. I think it may be broken as enemies aren’t showing up on the edge of the radar. Regardless, 18m is the same size as halo 5 which I also thought was too small. Enemies are in the same room as you and they’re not on radar. I find myself not even using it. You move faster in this game than in halo 3 therefore you should have a bigger radar. - Fusion coils shouldn’t have aim assist. In the training grounds, AI spartans were running between fusion coils. I could barely aim at them from the hip because of the strong aim assist on the fusion coils in the background. This has never been a thing on previous halo games. - Sniper Rifle first level zoom is too high. Suggestion: 3x or 4x 10x and remove cloudy peripheral vision while scoped. - The Skewer is perfect. Maybe speed up reload time a little bit. Very little aim assist making it take more skill to use and it’s very powerful. Easier to hit your shots at close range but has a slow reload. It has a wonderful balance. - Map design that include jumps which don’t require clamber is a great thing. It furthers the skill gap. Keep this up in further map designs! - (In Arena) Heavy weapons respawn too often. Rockets take too long to ready up and have a very large blast radius. - 1 Flag melee to kill, please. - Look acceleration setting increase to 1-10 instead of 1-5 - Plasma pistol doesn’t EMP vehicles? Despite dynamo grenade and shock rifle being introduced, Plasma pistol should still EMP vehicles. - Taking a page out of Titanfall, I’d like to see sprinting have some acceleration to it, where it takes time to accelerate to your max sprint speed. (ie. 0.5 secs or something short) In turn, this disallows sliding immediately after beginning your sprint. You should have to sprint for a certain amount of time before it lets you slide, in my opinion.I didn’t talk about projectile shooting in my points above. This to me is vital in creating a skill gap in shooters. Battlefield has become of the best shooters in modern gaming because of this. They are one of the few still doing it. Hitscan with aim assists reduce the skill gap making it more friendly to casual gamers to play. This was the issue with Halo 4. Halo 5 also had hitscan but it gave us movement abilities to dodge bullets making the gameplay a lot more twitchy which has never been a part of halo ever. This was where the “chess match” feel of halo got lost. I do feel like that has been revived in Infinite. Even though this was an earlier build of the game, I don’t expect most of what I’ve said to have been addressed.
I hope my opinion sheds some light on the things that could make Halo Infinite even better for all of us. I know I’ll be playing it since it’s in gamepass and the multiplayer is free to play. But mostly because its Halo and there literally isn’t a halo game I haven’t played. See you Spartans on Xbox live!!
Great feedback, I agree with most of your points. Most specifically, I completely agree about the sprint requiring a build up to full speed. It makes sense that it would and does prevent slide spam. I’m assuming you’re in favor of the plasma pistol retaining the EMP from the previous titles? If so, could you provide some context on why it’s needed considering the other weapons/grenades/gadgets which can disable vehicles? Or, if it does retain its EMP effect, would you make any changes to vehicles and/or other EMP’s/disables?
I hate the delay of being able to slide in Apex. If it’s the same as Titanfall, no thank you. Sprint is already so slow in this game and I think there might be a delay in the animation. Ramping up to full speed would feel awful in this build.
I agree with:
-Radar not detecting far enough.
-Rocket launcher taking to long to actually shoot and the blast radius being a bit too generous haha.
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> Great feedback, I agree with most of your points. Most specifically, I completely agree about the spring requiring a build up to full speed. It makes sense that it would and does prevent slide spam. I’m assuming you’re in favor of the plasma pistol retaining the EMP from the previous titles? If so, could you provide some context on why it’s needed considering the other weapons/grenades/gadgets which can disable vehicles? Or, if it does retain its EMP effect, would you make any changes to vehicles and/or other EMP’s/disables?
Considering the grapple hook can jack vehicles, and Dynamo grenades EMP, I can see why they didn’t have the plasma pistol EMP. So it’s just there for noob combo? lol
I would like to see the grapple jack be a two-part jacking where the player has to hold the button to board the vehicle as you get closer via grappling. Right now it seems pretty easy for any casual player to jack your vehicle with the grapple shot. If they did that and buffed the vehicles a little, perhaps bringing back EMP plasma pistol would still be balanced.
Your sentiments are mostly on par with mine, however I think I slightly disagree on a few bullet points
- If they weaken the AR, they need to bring BR starts. It was the reason they strengthened it to begin with, and continue to strengthen it, and will strengthen it to the end of times, haha. I would say the AR does have a skill gap; it definitely benefits good players more than bad. (this coming from a CE M6D or BR starts advocate) - Grenades shouldn’t be too complicated. I actually think it’s too complicated right now. The older Halos felt like Halo because they were simple and easy to predict. Even on Snowbound, you knew how to predict it which was consistent because the terrain was consistent. - Agreed on Radar. But, I’m biased because I have always felt Halo felt better with Radar to prevent getting shot in the back and bring more balanced fights. But, at the same time, I get why the competitive community pushes for No or Limited Radar. (Movement speed makes the problem worse) - Your observation on Fusion Coils are strong. I didn’t even notice this, lmao. Then again, it makes shooting them out easier, but don’t know how I feel about this. - I have problems with the Sniper, but not sure if Zoom was it. You might be right on this. My biggest gripe was how sluggish it was. Halo 2 still, to this day, has the best Sniper, and that game was also the most buggy. - I think it’s good Skewer has long reload since it’s so damaging. But, at the same time, I’m not a fan of making weapons frustrating to use. - Map designed around clamber is bad and still bad. We should be able to turn off Clamber and be fine with map navigation. The jumps should not even be difficult. Maybe have one or two secret places (ie light fixtures) that can be reached by crouch-jump but not required to gain tactical advantage. Good players will use the map to dominate while Bad players are not frustrated trying to move around the map. - I don’t have a strong opinion on Heavy respawn times. I think I need to play the game more on this one. But, I do think the Rocket blast is not right. - 1 Flag melee for a kill should be in every gametype known to man. You’re a dummy if you think otherwise, lmao - I don’t think Look Acceleration is the problem with aiming controls. Much of the issue is the default settings are wrong and setting them is far too complicated LOL - I’m more of a traditionalist, so I’m not sure I support the PP EMP feature which wasn’t in the first Halo. I might like it better if the PP would track the actual players in the Vehicle, which it doesn’t do well either. - Sprint-sliding boosts off of ledges is a neat gimmick to movement, but that’s about it. I think Infinite plays well without Sprint all that jazz. I’m more for not having sprint, but sprint with acceleration is an interesting idea.
> 2760465307323250;5:
> Your sentiments are mostly on par with mine, however I think I slightly disagree on a few bullet points
>
>
> - If they weaken the AR, they need to bring BR starts. It was the reason they strengthened it to begin with, and continue to strengthen it, and will strengthen it to the end of times, haha. I would say the AR does have a skill gap; it definitely benefits good players more than bad. (this coming from a CE M6D or BR starts advocate) - Grenades shouldn’t be too complicated. I actually think it’s too complicated right now. The older Halos felt like Halo because they were simple and easy to predict. Even on Snowbound, you knew how to predict it which was consistent because the terrain was consistent. - Agreed on Radar. But, I’m biased because I have always felt Halo felt better with Radar to prevent getting shot in the back and bring more balanced fights. But, at the same time, I get why the competitive community pushes for No or Limited Radar. (Movement speed makes the problem worse) - Your observation on Fusion Coils are strong. I didn’t even notice this, lmao. Then again, it makes shooting them out easier, but don’t know how I feel about this. - I have problems with the Sniper, but not sure if Zoom was it. You might be right on this. My biggest gripe was how sluggish it was. Halo 2 still, to this day, has the best Sniper, and that game was also the most buggy. - I think it’s good Skewer has long reload since it’s so damaging. But, at the same time, I’m not a fan of making weapons frustrating to use. - Map designed around clamber is bad and still bad. We should be able to turn off Clamber and be fine with map navigation. The jumps should not even be difficult. Maybe have one or two secret places (ie light fixtures) that can be reached by crouch-jump but not required to gain tactical advantage. Good players will use the map to dominate while Bad players are not frustrated trying to move around the map. - I don’t have a strong opinion on Heavy respawn times. I think I need to play the game more on this one. But, I do think the Rocket blast is not right. - 1 Flag melee for a kill should be in every gametype known to man. You’re a dummy if you think otherwise, lmao - I don’t think Look Acceleration is the problem with aiming controls. Much of the issue is the default settings are wrong and setting them is far too complicated LOL - I’m more of a traditionalist, so I’m not sure I support the PP EMP feature which wasn’t in the first Halo. I might like it better if the PP would track the actual players in the Vehicle, which it doesn’t do well either. - Sprint-sliding boosts off of ledges is a neat gimmick to movement, but that’s about it. I think Infinite plays well without Sprint all that jazz. I’m more for not having sprint, but sprint with acceleration is an interesting idea.
They’ll probably add BR starts anyways. But you could be right and they’re going more AR/Pistol start style for every game type like H5. AR is the standard issue weapon for Spartans after all.
I probably came across stronger than intended about the fusion coils lol. I just meant that nothing but your enemies should have aim assist. It’s already bad enough when an enemy strafes in front as you’re having a BR battle.
Overall, I don’t like clamber or sprint in halo but if it’s gonna be there, it’s cool that some jumps where lesser skilled players would clamber, one could still crouch jump to make it.
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> I completely agree about the spring requiring a build up to full speed. It makes sense that it would and does prevent slide spam.
I don’t think slide spam is an issue, you’re directionally locked during the animation making it extremely predictable. you’re better off strafing to avoid fire.
Definitely agree with the Flag, it hasn’t been like this since Halo 2.
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> > 2533274810045423;2:
> > I completely agree about the spring requiring a build up to full speed. It makes sense that it would and does prevent slide spam.
>
> I don’t think slide spam is an issue, you’re directionally locked during the animation making it extremely predictable. you’re better off strafing to avoid fire.
??? If you don’t strafe AND slide to avoid shots or move around, IDK what to tell you. You’re doing it wrong/half right
> 2535410017197749;9:
> > 2533274953195665;7:
> > > 2533274810045423;2:
> > > I completely agree about the spring requiring a build up to full speed. It makes sense that it would and does prevent slide spam.
> >
> > I don’t think slide spam is an issue, you’re directionally locked during the animation making it extremely predictable. you’re better off strafing to avoid fire.
>
> ??? If you don’t strafe AND slide to avoid shots or move around, IDK what to tell you. You’re doing it wrong/half right
activating sprint and slide in the middle of a gunfight? unless youre trying to disengage thats silly. crouch spamming and strafing is more effective especially in infinite where movement acceleration has been turned up
Definitely agree with a lot of this. Radar is too small, for sure, I hope they make it at least 25m again, and I’d even like to see player indicators along the outside border of the radar when they’re within like 30m, or thereabouts. Sprint I agree they did well in this game, and I think if they can fix the slide stuttering and warping it’ll work well. I don’t mind clamber personally, as long the maps are well designed around it which it feels like they are. I definitely agree about the sniper zoom, sticky aim on fusion coils, and the plasma pistol not stunning.
I would also love to see them make grenades harder to bounce. One of my biggest peeves with Halo in general is grenade-spamming. I’ve always preferred players to have only 1 frag; I do that in custom games with LAN parties and it’s way more fun, cause you can actually survive encounters without some random person finishing you with a grenade from a mile away. I think adding some effects based on the texture of the map to make grenades bounce more realistically would be a fantastic way to mitigate grenade spamming too. Good idea.
My only concern about sprint acceleration is that it’s already too hard to survive after winning a battle. It’s Halo, so you’re bound to take damage, but too often you have no chance of getting away when you do. I do like it in Titanfall, but I don’t know that that would work well here. Personally I’d like there to be a greater delay from sprinting to shooting, so it’s not so easy to chase someone down.
One point I’ll disagree on is the AR: the AR feels great to me in this game, because it finally makes the weapon actually useful. I like that picking up weapons is a good idea, but I don’t like the AR to just be useless compared to every other weapon you can find. The AR should kill as fast as ranged weapons, because it has less range. That, in and of itself, is the advantage of the ranged weapon. More range. Having the precision weapons be no stronger or even a little weaker makes the player actually have to use the weapon intelligently; you have to utilize it’s strength, the range, rather than just winning every battle against someone with an AR cause your weapon is just better. It’s okay for power weapons to be just better, but all other weapons should have strengths and weaknesses, so that you have to be smart and use them effectively. An AR and a BR should both be able to beat the other, if the players holding them outmaneuver their opponent to get in a position that favors their weapon. The BR gives you another option that way, instead of a just a flat advantage. This also helps prevent unbreakable weapon control which leads to steamrolls and is super annoying.
> 2535472449751987;11:
> One point I’ll disagree on is the AR: the AR feels great to me in this game, because it finally makes the weapon actually useful. I like that picking up weapons is a good idea, but I don’t like the AR to just be useless compared to every other weapon you can find. The AR should kill as fast as ranged weapons, because it has less range. That, in and of itself, is the advantage of the ranged weapon. More range. Having the precision weapons be no stronger or even a little weaker makes the player actually have to use the weapon intelligently; you have to utilize it’s strength, the range, rather than just winning every battle against someone with an AR cause your weapon is just better. It’s okay for power weapons to be just better, but all other weapons should have strengths and weaknesses, so that you have to be smart and use them effectively. An AR and a BR should both be able to beat the other, if the players holding them outmaneuver their opponent to get in a position that favors their weapon. The BR gives you another option that way, instead of a just a flat advantage. This also helps prevent unbreakable weapon control which leads to steamrolls and is super annoying.
That’s exactly my issue though. The range on the AR allows it to outplay BR’s especially in the arena 4v4 maps. It’s fine the AR shred at close range. But it still seems to rival BR at 50m+
Here’s another thread discussing it more specifically.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/29568daf8cd14083bd1b70a810bf3581/topics/ar-is-too-strong/e8fab184-6de3-41e2-be4c-336923604727/posts?page=1
> 2533274829177297;12:
> > 2535472449751987;11:
> > One point I’ll disagree on is the AR: the AR feels great to me in this game, because it finally makes the weapon actually useful. I like that picking up weapons is a good idea, but I don’t like the AR to just be useless compared to every other weapon you can find. The AR should kill as fast as ranged weapons, because it has less range. That, in and of itself, is the advantage of the ranged weapon. More range. Having the precision weapons be no stronger or even a little weaker makes the player actually have to use the weapon intelligently; you have to utilize it’s strength, the range, rather than just winning every battle against someone with an AR cause your weapon is just better. It’s okay for power weapons to be just better, but all other weapons should have strengths and weaknesses, so that you have to be smart and use them effectively. An AR and a BR should both be able to beat the other, if the players holding them outmaneuver their opponent to get in a position that favors their weapon. The BR gives you another option that way, instead of a just a flat advantage. This also helps prevent unbreakable weapon control which leads to steamrolls and is super annoying.
>
> That’s exactly my issue though. The range on the AR allows it to outplay BR’s especially in the arena 4v4 maps. It’s fine the AR shred at close range. But it still seems to rival BR at 50m+
> Here’s another thread discussing it more specifically.
> https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/29568daf8cd14083bd1b70a810bf3581/topics/ar-is-too-strong/e8fab184-6de3-41e2-be4c-336923604727/posts?page=1
Actually I should have shared this clip to really show how OP the AR is. This guy isn’t even carefully choosing his shots. Literally just spray and praying. Watch how fast the health bar depletes after I lose my shields. My switch to the pistol was very strategic and typical for this type of encounter. There’s almost no reward to use precision weapons against the AR
https://gameclips.io/perfectXzerO/95d91d11-8f6c-4610-bbab-014026d028ef
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> I hate the delay of being able to slide in Apex. If it’s the same as Titanfall, no thank you. Sprint is already so slow in this game and I think there might be a delay in the animation. Ramping up to full speed would feel awful in this build.
>
> I agree with:
> -Radar not detecting far enough.
> -Rocket launcher taking to long to actually shoot and the blast radius being a bit too generous haha.
I have to disagree… the speed of sprint and short slide is the perfect compromise… halo isn’t apex or cod. we shouldn’t be zipping around the map. The momentum mechanics in the game like sprint slide of ledges and ramps allow you already to meta move around the map. a bit too fast for my liking halo is a tactical chess match, not a random sprint slide brawl fest. your positioning and moment are as tactical as your aim and power weapon control.