343 just released an update about Season 2 dubbed “Lone Wolves”. I just wanted to share my thoughts, but also lay out what to realistically expect so people don’t get disappointed because they got their hopes up over something 343 didn’t explicitly say. We don’t want another “Mid-Season Update” fiasco.
Some of the issues on the Hotlist are gaps in the Halo Infinite experience that we only fully understood close to launch and were unable to address at an acceptable quality bar before ship. An example of this kind of “known” Hotlist issue is “Spartan Career” aka score-based player progression.
Thus far, we have prioritized acute, unknown-before-ship issues that have a widespread negative impact on the shipped experience. Some items have been addressed and cleared from the Hotlist (e.g., BTB matchmaking), some have had partial improvements but need more work (e.g., anti-cheat), and others are in active development but not-yet-released (e.g., Spartan Career, Campaign Co-Op, and Forge).
All this means is that a performance-base progression system is coming, but it may not be shipped with the launch of Season 2. So don’t be surprised if we have to wait a while longer.
But it is on its way.
Also they never said if unlockables will be tied to this system, or if they are, what sort of unlockables they will be. They very well could be just a bunch of emblems. Or it could just be a bar with numbers that tick up.
I’m very excited to announce the official name and theme for Season 2, which is… “Lone Wolves." By “theme” we mean a core idea that guides the creation of much, but not all, of a Season’s content.
“…much, but not all,” tells me that the rest of that Reach armor is coming this season, but probably as part of the shop and not the Season 2 Battlepass. I could be wrong, but I would bet on CQB being free.
…dive into Season 2’s story—a mix of cinematics, story-themed Events, Battle Pass items and more that embody the Lone Wolves theme.
But like I said, not all Season content is directly linked to the theme, and a prime example of this is our free Fracture armor core for Season 2. Here’s a concept of that core, and we can’t wait to show you all the customization options for it—and for the free Lone Wolves armor core.
I’ll get to, “story-themed Events” when I get to the new modes. So sit tight.
Sounds like we’re getting 2 new cores. They haven’t said anything about cross-core customization, so don’t expect to put the new armor parts on Mk. 7 for example. Also this likely could be another Yoroi situation where we don’t have access to base colors and are stuck with Grey and Light Grey. And until Yoroi gets a body slider, I wouldn’t expect one on the new cores.
During Season 2, we will also be shipping playlist updates, balance changes, new modes, and maps, specifically, one Arena map named “Catalyst” and one BTB map named “Breaker.” The new modes include “Last Spartan Standing”, a free-for-all elimination mode, as well as another new mode named “Land Grab,” plus the return of an updated, all-time favorite mode, “King of the Hill.”
“Playlist updates” could honestly mean anything, but that could just mean adding KOTH to quickplay and ranked.
“Balance changes” could either mean weapon spawns fixes (hopefully for Behemoth and Launch Site) or Weapon buffs/nerfs (hopefully buffing the Ravager). But this also could just mean they are adding 1m to the radar in FFA or something. Pretty vague.
2 new maps! Although sheer volume of maps won’t fix Infinite’s issues. Hopefully they fixed what’s already here and the lopsided weapon spawns in BTB. That said, just because we’re getting new maps doesn’t mean they’ll be any good. Could be getting Behemoth 2.0 for all I know.
Last Spartan Standing honestly sounds like it’s gonna be S2’s version of Tenrai where it comes back every few weeks over the season. Land Grab sounds like a BTB mode, and they never said if KOTH is coming to 4v4, BTB, Ranked or all three. So keep that in mind.
Also they never mentioned adding more ranked playlists like Ranked SWAT or Ranked FFA.
We’re making great progress on Campaign network co-op. And to be clear, this work has been occurring in parallel to Season 2 work, as has our work on Forge.
But the reality is that it’s going to take more time to land a high-quality, full-featured 4-player network co-op experience in the massive, wide-open world of Halo Infinite . We’re also committed to a great 2-player split-screen co-op experience on all Xbox consoles, from the original Xbox One through Xbox One Series X—and the non-linear, wide-open sections of the Campaign present some big challenges for split-screen that have taken us more time to solve.
All this means that we will not be able to ship Campaign network co-op on May 3rd, at the start of Season 2. But we are still aiming to deliver Campaign network co-op later in Season 2, and we will share a release date for that and for split-screen co-op as soon as we can.
R.I.P.
What I got from this is that Co-op could land on May 4 or July 4. So don’t expect it at launch, don’t expect it soon after launch. But it may get here before S3. I’m just glad that it’s being delayed instead of rushing out a bad co-op experience.
We are also making great progress on Forge. Indeed, we are already flighting Forge to a small group of community creators and working closely with them to ensure that all of you have a terrific experience creating, sharing, browsing, and playing Forge content. In the near term, we will continue to privately flight Forge as we develop it while also planning for public flight(s) later this year. We still have the goal of shipping Forge with Season 3.
Really wish we at least had access to a “ForgeLite” or something. Something that at least let us spawn weapons and vehicles and change weapon spawns, but that’s it. No blocks or anything too crazy.
The last sentence sounds a bit noncommittal, ngl. Like they’re still shooting for S3, but that could change. Maybe I’m just reading into it, but it would be the first thing in this game to get pushed back some more.
Importantly, we’re not just planning to address Hotlist items at the start of Seasons. Similar to Update 1.1.1 that launched a little more than a week ago, we intend to ship fixes, features, and content in more agile ways, during our Seasons.
Nothing explicitly stated here, but this probably just means we’re gonna get more than 1 patch this season.
And speaking of great Seasonal content, our next Season 1 event, “Tactical Ops,” starts next week, so get set for variants on the Tactical Slayer mode along with new, Mark VII core-focused rewards to earn!
And that’s basically it.
Things they didn’t (explicitly) mention:
- Campaign DLC
- Missing campaign content currently not in the game (various unlocks and stances etc apparently in the campaign but unlockable)
- Firefight/PvE Mode
- Cross Core Customization or even just giving base colors to Yoroi and new cores
- Custom Games Fix
- Theatre Fixes
- Shop Adjustments
- Commendations