There are a lot of things that Infinite does amazingly well, from impressively good bots to tight combat to well-designed maps to the return of the Halo rat. Here is a list of the things that I think could be improved based on my experience with the flight. Does anyone else have thoughts on these points?
UI
○ The 3-dot loading screen is uninteresting. A loading animation similar to the ones from Halo CE through Halo 4 should be added. However, I imagine that the 3 dots were a placeholder anyway.
○ I found that I rarely used the info in the bottom right of the HUD since the icons are small and packed together in a position that requires diverting attention entirely from gameplay. Players should have the option to 1) enable a visual ammo counter as from past games and 2) move grenades / ammo / equipment HUD tiles to the top left / right or wherever is most comfortable for them.
○ Player outlines are meant to allow players to show off their armor coatings, but I can rarely tell what an opponent’s armor or coating looks like unless I am very close to them. In addition, the outline system allows players to gain a slight competitive advantage by having blue or red armor. I noticed a number of streamers second-guess whether a player was an enemy when they had blue armor but a red outline. This split-second hesitation probably gives blue / red armor wearers a few percent increase in 1v1 win rate if they are on the inverse team.
Weapons
○ The gravity hammer lacks “gravity.” It needs ragdoll effects + better visual and audio “boom.” Scenery objects and players should be affected by its use.
○ The pulse carbine’s appearance reads like a close-range weapon (a la the storm or plasma rifle), but it functions far better at range. 343 should add some design language or an audio snippet in the academy to clue players in to this.
○ The sniper scope does not feel right – the lack of zooming animations can be confusing, and you can get knocked out of scope for no reason sometimes.
○ The sniper can’t get more than an overkill on its own due to its long reload time, unlike past games. This seems harmful for montages / pro play.
○ Pressing YY to exit the sniper scope feels cumbersome + slow compared to previous games. This also seems harmful for pros.
Other
○ Players phase through each other, which doesn’t allow for collision-based staples of Halo multiplayer like player stacks, double jumping, and butterfly jumping.
○ While “Combat Evolved” grenade explosions can send weapons sailing, player physics don’t seem to be affected by them. Grenade jumping and the physics interactions that go with it are an important part of Halo’s arena sandbox. Leaving them out feels like a missed opportunity.