hey everyone - I wanted to share a quick update on playlist changes coming next week. I’m happy to report that a Slayer playlist is officially locked and loaded for the update next week. Slayer, Fiesta, FFA, and Tactical Slayer (SWAT) will all be added via a services update on Tuesday, Dec. 14 .
As I noted on reddit last week, the team’s original plans for a Slayer playlist included a variety of new variants that weren’t going to be ready in time to deploy before the holiday break. To address player feedback for Slayer in the near term, we’ll be releasing a basic Slayer offering to start and will look to bolster and expand with more variants in a future update.
Next week’s update will also include adjustments to challenges including removing some particularly frustrating mode-specific ones, reducing some requirements for others, making the weekly ultimate challenge less intensive (getting there is tough enough), and adding brand new challenges specific to the new playlists. Personally I’m eager to check out a new challenge category that’s based on accumulating player score (a small initial step towards ‘performance based XP’). We’ll have some more details to share on Halo Waypoint next week.
Lastly, on a semi-related note - please know that the team is aware of and actively investigating reports of intermittent hiccups affecting some players in BTB over the last few days. Additionally, the team is continuing to review Ranked matchmaking and player feedback around potential anomalies.
Thank you to everyone who has shared constructive feedback and filed support tickets for issues you’re running into! More to come. Have a great weekend!
Looking forward to this Slayer playlist, since it will help lessen the amount of people in BTB ignoring the objectives for kill based Challenges. Really hoping for an Infection playlist before Season 2 comes in 6 months.
I would like to echo some of the other responses here saying thank you for the communication! It’s so good to see that we are being heard and that there’s work being done.
Sitting and wondering “what’s next?” is the worst. So thanks again for the communication and the hard work y’all are doing! Keep it up, and Happy Holidays!
Great start. Would like to see social getting the MCC style options to choose which modes to include in search. Also Infection, Grifball, VIP, etc.
Would also like to see some changes to ranked. A 2v2 slayer playlist and an FFA playlist would be a great start.
It should be setup more like Halo 5s ranked imo, to start with have a FFA playlist, 2v2 Slayer, 4v4 Slayer, 4v4 OBJ modes (Oddball, Strongholds, CtF, King of the Hill).
In the future also consider ranked SWAT, 1v1 (this could be slayer or limited life round based), Elimination, etc.
The ranking system should be rebalanced a bit. Winning the game AND performing well should get you a lot of points. Winning the game but playing badly should get you a small amount of progression.
Losing but playing well should lose you only a very small amount of points and in some cases even allow you to gain a small amount of points. Losing and playing badly should lose you a large amount of points.
Winning should be the priority though, and the way its currently balanced doesnt make that seem like the case.
There should also be some system in place to protect you if you or one of your teammates disconnects mid game due to the amount of crashing thats happening. If a teammate disconnects mid game you should probably only lose a small amount of points even if you get beaten badly. If you disconnect you should lose a small amount of points AND add the option to join back into the game if its still ongoing.
Finally I think the lack of a Champ rank is a bit disapponting. In Halo 5 it separated the best from a lower level Onyx and was something for the top players to chase after to stand out. It was an incentive to get better at the top level AND kept good players playing.
Guessing these are all unranked playlists?
Well, it’s a start. Glad to see the team is keeping a finger on the pulse. Not sure how effectively this will sustain players though, this shaky start has disheartened a lot of people. Fingers crossed.
Well, hey that’s a lot more than most companies i’ve seen doing, great job 343 i hope this’ll bring some more trust in the company back from players… You’ve definitly changed my view a bit with this post.
But why not just call it SWAT? Why call it Tactical Slayer? This isn’t Call of Duty. By the way, are you going to do something about the armor unlocks? I really want my ODST helmet.
