With the next flight for infinite coming soon, we need to think of how best to overwhelm the games servers, find bugs, and test everything to help the game be a success at launch. So with this in mind, our main focus should be mainly to just break the game in as many ways possible. And our secondary focus to just have a ton of fun.
So let’s talk tactics.
In game development, bugs are found by doing the same thing over and over and changing variables.
For example:
Say you’re testing a warthog to look for bugs. You could try throwing sticky grenades on it and getting in it. Exploding it near walls to see if it goes through, try getting in it near a wall and exiting to try to clip out of a map. Basically stuff like that but for all mechanics in the game.
With this in mind, when your testing something try it many times and with different variables to break the game in as many ways possible.
So to get to more of the main points of this post, we need to break infinite so people at launch won’t.
This means when the flight is being released, don’t wait for the hype to go down before installing. If a lot of people do this then the servers could work fine during the flight, but then at launch they could be broken.
Some other things, familiarize yourself with the known issues and when you find one not in that list, submit a ticket. (I know this is a no brainer but its still important) The more bugs that get found are the more that can get fixed.
Aspects of infinite that are likely buggy:
The settings and overall ui is probably going to be buggy still. During the previous flight, many options just didn’t work. So this flight, try every setting to make sure they work, try different combinations of settings to see if that works, try turning settings to extremes like max brightness, sensitivity, stuff that most people won’t do to see if they work, to reiterate try to break the game.
Physics and collisions, these two things in games cause tons of bugs so we need to try to break them too. Ideas of things we could do to break the collisions could include dropping weapons near edges of maps to see if they get through, throwing and equipping weapons with another player in sync, throwing weapons and equipping another weapon at the same time, etc.
Some more physics things, with vehicles in btb, try ramming aerial ones into the ground, use grapple hooks at odd angles on them, have multiple people grapple on them at once, run vehicles into drop walls and other objects, place weapons on the new warthog thing and try to equip them as its falling or while its being flipped after being toppled over. Some other physics and collisions stuff could be stacking a warthog or mongoose on a banshee and then flying and maybe add some grenades to the mix. Just anything you can to overwhelm the game.
Weapons:
Bugs relating to weapons could be bullets not hitting when they should, guns not doing damage, animations not working, weapon duping, etc. Some things you could try to break these systems could include swapping lots of weapons fast and throwing them, trying to do button glitches, reload cancels, etc. I can’t think of too much for this one.
Matchmaking:
Matchmaking is another one of those systems that was kind of broken during the previous flight. So we need to try to break this one too. Some things to make sure to be doing are things like joining and then backing out, turning on and off internet, logging out and back in during load screens, switching settings in menus and then matchmaking. Try inviting people to your party and then kicking them and reinviting them, have open partys for people to join you ingame and then close those and open them.
Platform specific ones:
On base xboxs try changing fovs, screenshake, film grain stuff, etc, to try to see how much they effect performance. Try switching games back and forth, try different modes, create lots of chaos to try to get performance drops.
On xbox series consoles try switching between graphics and performance modes, switch refresh rates, try brightness, screen shake, etc.
On PC try all the graphics settings with different combinations, try different min and max framerates, ultra wide settings, different full screen modes, resolutions, change which monitors the game shows up.
Other things to try:
There seems to be a new “training mode” being added to the next flight. Since this is a new thing, try your hardest to break this one and submit quality feedback. This will be played by new players so we want them to have the best experience.
BTB is also coming to play a lot of that because it is also new. And with vehicles, possibly new weapons, bigger maps, more players, im sure lots of bugs are waiting to be found.
Bot modes are also something I’d like to mention. With there being PvP modes during the whole flight I’m afraid bots will get neglected and I’ve seen many people say they’re going to rarely use them this time. With less people trying out modes with bots, less bugs will be found and people are less likely to leave feedback that could positively effect them. So please still go on the bot modes and balance your playtime to help get this game as smooth and bug free as possible.
Another thing, when you’re mad about something or encounter anything you don’t like, make sure to leave constructive feedback on the forums about it. Don’t just leave angry replys on Twitter and give vague criticisms. The feedback needs to be specific to what you’re having a problem with, why you don’t like it, and what you think should be done to fix or improve it. Leaving vague feedback that doesn’t do these things can confuse devs and make improving the game harder.
Example of good feedback:
“I’m really not a fan of how you have to click like three times to equip one piece of armor. Having so many menus to go through can be confusing and unintuitive. To fix this I’d suggest that we make it like previous games where you just clicked one time to equip something or have a specific button too.”
Example of bad feedback:
“The menus suck, they feel like something made by a 6 year old and are just horrible. Im canceling my pre-order and I’m done with halo”
To clarify why this is bad feedback, it is not specific in why the menus feel bad and is just rude. With this feedback all 343 gets is that the menus aren’t liked, not why they aren’t liked, what specific parts aren’t like, how they should fix them, etc.
So leave good feedback that is specific and clear and don’t just give vague statements.
Wasn’t planning on this being so long but I want people to use this flight to help give as much feedback and find as many bugs as possible.
So in a week or two, break the game, submit tickets and feedback, and have fun!
Thank you 343 for being an amazing team and I’m super excited to play the full game in December.
If you’d like to add anything, criticize anything I said, or say anything feel free to reply below
