After playing > 10 hours, here are the things that stuck out to me as issues with the sandbox balance, from my comfortable perspective as an armchair developer:
- The melee lunge range feels way too short.
- The grenade arc always sends grenades lower than I’d like them to go. I guess it’s fine if that’s how 343 wants grenades to be thrown, but it’s another case of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Past Halos (excluding ODST) had a better grenade arc imo.
- The commando nerf was overkill, and now it is too weak. 343 has said they don’t want to get rid of the bloom, but I think it really needs to be toned down, since the bloom on the commando is frustrating.
- The AR needs a nerf, it is way too powerful. I don’t think it should be not only viable but the preferred weapon of choice for medium to even long range encounters.
- The sniper rifle is still frustrating to use. 343 said that the non-scoped random bloom was present in other Halo games as their defense for why they put it in this one, without conceding the obvious fact that while it might have been a feature in other Halo games, it was never this bad. Aiming with it is simply annoying, and I think it would benefit from some greater aim-assist, bullet magnetism, auto-aim, whatever.
- The heatwave is useless. In the vertical firing mode, I fired at someone at point blank range and every particle it fires hit the enemy player, and they did not die. It is way outclassed by the bulldog, so having them occupy the same spawn point on many maps is very disappointing. It needs a damage buff imo.
- The sidekick is a very inconsistent weapon. Why is it inconsistent? If you land all your shots, which is difficult, and also relies on random luck due to bloom, you can laser people with it at close to medium range, but the majority of the time aiming with it is unforgiving and it then becomes a pea-shooter. There isn’t a middle ground where you can rely on it to perform decently; it either kills extremely fast or does negligible damage. This is frustrating design.
- The drop wall is absolutely useless. 343 keeps defending it and says that it is acting as they intended, and that players should try using it preemptively instead of during combat. Well I’ve tried using it preemptively, and I’ve seen people use it preemptively, and it is a useless waste of equipment. Almost the moment it gets thrown down, someone pulls out a sidekick and fires one shot at the base of it and it disappears immediately. I tried using it during a long range encounter so I could come out of cover to fire, and as soon as I dropped it down, my long range opponent used his AR to completely strip all of the shields on it. The EMP grenade makes the drop wall vanish in an instant, and most grenades will destroy it, but at least bounce off of it. It is useless; I’ve tried playing with it the way 343 said we should play with it, and it is still a miserable piece of equipment.
- Bots to fill empty spots in matchmade games should be ODST level at least. Having a Marine level bot on your team is a liability.
- Please add player collision back in.
- Even after the banshee buff, it’s weapons are still too weak, particularly its main cannons.
- The disruptor pistol is too weak against players, and not worth dropping the sidekick for.
- In general the TTK feels too low compared to what I’m used to in a Halo game. My personal favorite multiplayer suite is Halo 2, which had the lowest TTK. Infinite just feels like you die too easily from range. This would probably be fixed by nerfing the AR and fixing the sidekick.
- The BR feels great.
- Weapons I haven’t mentioned I either haven’t played with enough to have a strong opinion about or I like how they feel and function.
- The motion tracker range should be increased, and not just in BTB.
Other Feedback:
- We need a match composer
- In the short term, before we get a match composer, I would ask that 343 adjust the frequency that certain modes show up in matchmaking. My experience has been that I play Total Control 90% of the time I play BTB, and Strongholds + Oddball 90% of the time I play Arena, and I am sick of those modes beyond belief. Just lower their frequency please! Or give us a choice!
- For weapon pods in BTB, there needs to be some kind of marker on them. Half the time my personal AI says weapons are inbound, I miss it, because if you don’t see it falling down, you most likely won’t be able to find it.
- Please fix the custom games bugs ASAP; they are seriously frustrating! I’m not submitting a bug report for the multitude of bugs I’ve run into since they are mostly in the known issues list; I just hope they get fixed in the short term.
- Let us fill a lobby with bots for custom games please. Get rid of the artificial limit of 8.
Those are my thoughts. Thank you for reading, and if we all keep voicing our opinions, hopefully Infinite will change for the better.