Something Fundamentally Sweaty

Games Halo Infinite
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There is something fundamentally sweaty about the gameplay itself. And, I’m afraid it’s much deeper than just technical debt issues. There were some high level decisions made already that have seeped into the sweaty feel of the game itself. This is true whether you play against bots on easy difficulty, or tryhards in ranked.

From the skating animations, and the jarring sound design, to the overly symmetric or widely open maps, or E-Sports playground map designs to the minimalistic weapon sandbox, or the lack of engaging game modes… every 4v4 results in a sweaty gameplay experience.

It’s a very unrewarding game on top of that. There’s beautiful artwork and sound definition and a lot of attention to weapon TTK, but at what cost? The game play itself?

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i think i have a pretty similar feeling of infinite, to me it feels like so much that we’ve seen and experienced from the previous games was given up so they could get their “perfect” gameplay.

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Literal base systems on which the gameplay is built have disregarded the core tenants of the prevailing philosophy that halo was established with.
Thats why everyone whose worried about the engine and not the engineers are in my opinion missing the big picture.
Very different beast to the games I cut my teeth on for sure and the direction is antithetical to my enjoyment of the franchise over all.
Some great ideas in infinite and loads of good ideas from another type of players perspective.
But I am certainly not being catered to in a way that feels substantial enough.
Still the bones of a great game but it aint my kind of halo.

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The 4 vs 4 format in upon itself is probably the biggest reason people feel like they’re having to push themselves to get better to have fun. The less players per team, the bigger the impact it is when one of your teammates is under preforming and forcing the rest to have to work harder in order to compete.

This is why I generally stick to Big Team Battle game modes. Because it’s much easier to play more casually with more players per team.

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It’s. The. TTK.

It’s so goddam low that if you miss shot you’re finished. And forget about taking down 2 players at once. There’s no weapon variety, not really when every fight is AR, BR or Sidekick. Tons of long sightlines and long ranged guns + hit markers make it difficult to move recharge shields. Someone’s always looking at you. Strafing has no inertia, so it some player are basically ghosts.

Then throw desync into the cauldron.

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Multi-team… 3v3v3… perfect solution!

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I played a bit of MCC this week, first time in ages. There is just something about the gameplay that just feels so much more relaxed. When I was dying I didn’t get anywhere near as annoyed as I do in infinite.

I think a big part of it is the speed of movement in infinite and the sliding. When people are flying around the map at 100 miles an hour and when you are constantly stuck in difficult lobbies due to sbmm there is just no other outcome. The game is a sweaty game at its core, made sweatier by aggressive sbmm in everything but quick play.

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I think that could be better said towards Battlefield, tbh.

At least different Halo games have different intensities to them, even if they result from bickering within the community. Other games may not have that luxury, or so it seems.

Are there things they could’ve done like they did in Halo 4? Yes.

Should double XP be rarer and acquired without paying for credits? Yes.

Would Firefight make me happier when implemented? Yes.

It’s been about 9-10 months, I have most of the multiplayer achievements (except for one pertaining to the Shock Rifle), and I haven’t regretted my time. However, I suggested on Twitter that there should be a beginner playlist so higher-rank players aren’t giving lower-rank players a disadvantage. Otherwise, it’s a MW2-style moshpit where the players don’t care for balance because they want to win.

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i feel like halo has usually up’d the intensity each game. the issue for me is infinite feels toned downed way too much and i can sort of understand why, 5 was a lot to handle, it makes sense they’d want to take a step back but i think 343 stepped back too far and went a completely different direction, and for what reason? i think that what this post is trying to say, they gave up so much for the sake of a balanced multiplayer, but i think there’s ever more they gave up for other stupid reasons.

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Halo has from the very beginning been a fundamentally sweaty and competitive game. Bungie literally designed the core mechanics that way, and it’s not surprising that Infinite - the game the most builds upon and reinforces those mechanics since Halo 3 (and even more than H3 to be honest) feels more intense. 343 has done a fairly good job of capturing that feeling while still retaining some of the chaos that set Halo apart in the past.

Just because you or others spent most of your time in the community-designed or custom less-sweaty modes doesn’t mean the game wasn’t sweaty; it only means you were specifically playing it in a non-sweaty way and setting that had no relevance or relation to the regular gameplay.

It’s not even the sweatiest popular modern game. Siege and Valorant are two examples of games with way sweatier base game designs yet no one is going “Man, these games sure are sweaty.”

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I feel like this is bait, but let’s quickly go over it.

No, Halo has never been a fundamentally sweaty and competitive game. I can’t stress this enough, it has NEVER been that. From its inception Bungie has stated it was supposed to be a fun party game shooter. It was designed around playing splitscreen with your friends and having fun.

There were certain players who enjoyed a more competitive experience, however they changed the rules in the game for this. Look at Smash Bros for example, it’s a fun party platform fighter game, however the competitive community in that removed items and stages which they didn’t believe were competitively viable.

343i’s Halo has completely misunderstood what Halo’s about, and it appears you have too. If Halo were to go back to making a fun party game shooter like in Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST and in Halo: Reach, then the community would be thriving and there would be players wanting to get competitive in the game.

Making the game competitive from the start basically means it will always be sweaty to an extent and ultimately remove the casual elements. Less casual elements mean less players playing the game. Less players means less people getting interested in the competitive scene.

You’re welcome to join a party with me and debate this further, however there are multiple video’s online explaining this which range from long term players to Bungie employees themselves. I’d also like to state that you can still have fun playing Halo Infinite, but there’s a reason why Halo Infinite is a dying game. People start playing because of the multiplayer and campaign, but stay because of the multiple communities in the game.

Machinema, Grifball, Cosmetics, Clans, RP’s, Customs, Forge, PvE, Socials, infection.
These are communities currently being abandoned in Halo Infinite for the competitive community.

I believe DayZ had a very interesting situation like this where the main DayZ mod had 3 communities within it. One of those communities was the Vanilla community, and they made a DayZ game for them, however that one game abandoned those two communities. The vanilla community was the smallest out of the three, and so DayZ the standalone game died.

Strangely enough, PUBG was made for one of the other communities and we know how big that game got. If 343i made a fun social game first, every community would benefit. Alas, for 12 years now 343i have misunderstood Halo, and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.

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The sweat is in the settings. I believe people will abuse anything they get their hands on. If you give an inch they take a mile. Everything in the settings has optimized to peak effective/efficiency. For example, on paper the tactical reload and empty reload might have a 0.5 second difference but the average play wouldn’t notice in game. There are a lot of examples. The clamber speed to first shot vs jump crouch and shoot. Multiple grenades can be tossed as fast as melees. Reaching max sprint in order to slide is as fast as you can click the buttons. Everything is so tight there is no strategy anymore it’s just attack always with everything, or you just get run down. Highground means little to nothing. Power potions are limited. Arena maps used to have vehicles.

I quote Syndrome from the Incredibles, ‘When everyone is super, then no one will be.’ This is true for all modern gaming.

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They had the same issue with 5, really way too much focus on the comp side for a game that’s supposed to cater to both social/casual and competitive play. There’s a lot of money in E-sports now, so I get why they try, Halo just isn’t the game for it since a lot of people on the casual and custom games side will suffer, and they make up a good portion of the playerbase.

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I agree they spend too much energy on ‘competitive’ halo. There is more than one or two types of gamers.

There is the Sweaties that are ruthless and only play for the kills even during objective matches.

The Rankers that what to prove their worth with a high rank/KD.

Objective players that are both aggressive or sneaky.

There is Drivers, Snipers, Flag runners, and Hill cappers.

I have seen Fiesta players that are sweatie’s as well as casual.

So players like chaos and others control. Many like a bit of both. 343 needs to understand the broad audience they already have before reaching for more.

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