The Challenges Need a Rework and Here's Why with Quick Maths/Stats

Games Halo Infinite
, , ,
1

This week as always, I sat down to play Halo Infinite only to come across a “Capture 7 flags in CTF” challenge. This is great, I love CTF, but given how common CTF is this will take me forever to complete. What do I mean by this? Well I’ll break it down.

If I decide to complete this challenge in quick play there’s four CTF modes with one of those being 1-flag for a total of 17 gamemodes/matches. If matchmaking is completely random in regards to the match and mode that’s picked, that means you have a 23.5% chance of getting CTF or ~1/4 games should be CTF given a random distribution. At minimum this means this one challenge will require 12 games to get the required CTF matches just to be able to get 7 flag captures, and if you’re unlucky and get 1-flag x3 the most you can get is 6 flag captures.

What about Ranked? There’s 2 CTF modes in 12 total combinations, so you should be seeing CTF 16.7% of the time or ~1/6 matches. Now ranked has a 5 flag cap win, but given the lower probability, this will still take 2 CTF matches which you’ll see over ~12 games again.

Is BTB any better? A bit, but it’s not overly noticable, there’s 3 CTF modes in 12 total combinations for a 25% random distribution or 1/4 games, which again means you still have to complete 12 games scoring 2-3 of the possible 3-flag scores every match.

But what if I don’t score 3 flags every match in a 3-flag capture game and most of us don’t do this? If you capture 2 flags a match you’ll need ~16 games, 1 flag capture a match and you’ll need ~28 matches just for one challange. You can imagine how many games might be needed if you don’t manage to score a flag capture in a given match.

But this all assumes a random distribution? Okay, so I went through my last 70 games (BTB, Ranked, and Quick Play) and I had 20 CTF matches for 28.6%. In that time, I scored 10 CTF captures or 1 capture every second game. The 20th CTF game was where I finished the 7th capture and would have completed this one challange. If each game was 10 minutes long, those 70 games 11 hours and 20 minutes of time. Do we see the problem with challenges like this?

I could go into other challenges, but this one really took me by surprise this week with having to get 7 flag captures.

So, how as a player, do I believe these can be improved?

Have challenges that are similar to those of the MCC, add challenges that have an and/or statement, i.e., Capture 7 flags or accumulate 10,000 points in objective modes. Capture 7 flags or 10 stronghold zones. Remove team slayer from quick play and make it into an objective mode, or at least make the Team Slayer challenges work for slayer in both playlists and not just the Team Slayer one (it’s repetitive).

5 Likes
2

Objective challenges need to just encompass every type of objective for that game type.

For CTF: Capture, Steal, and Return Flags. Prevent enemy flag returns. Kill Carrier or get kills with the flag. Maybe even throw a Driver Assist in there. Players have to do a combination of these 6-7 actions a total of, let’s go with, 15 times. This way you can just play the objective and in any way and progress the challenge instead of having to force yourself to only kill carriers or capture flags. And god forbid you have two people on the same team who need flag caps.

Or the challenge could read: “Accumulate 1,000 match score for CTF objectives.”

Oddball: Hold the ball for an accumulated 5 minutes. Carrier kills worth 5x seconds, Ball Kills worth 10x seconds.

Strongholds: “Capture, attack, defend and secure zones (0/15).”

Attrition: “Eliminate enemies or Revive Teammates (0/10)”, or “Complete an Attrition match with 3 or less deaths.”

Attrition needs to get away from that “use specific weapons” crap. It ends up forcing players not to go for power weapons/forcing them to use guns they don’t like or aren’t good with, costing their team.

And get rid of killjoy challenges. Replace them with “Get Normal/Heroic/Legendary/Mythic medals (0/20).” The challenge would only ask 1 type of medal i.e. Normal. Normals and Heroics would need 20 since those are very easy and common. Legendaries would need 5-10 since there’s very few of them and some can be pretty hard to force. Legendary needs only 1 since they very hard to get except for Ninja.

3 Likes
3

Those are all great challange suggestions!

I don’t think “legendary” medals should be part of the weekly challenges as a lot of players might struggle with those (i.e., I’ve only ever killed an enemy vehicle driver once with a sniper rifle for that specific medal); however, if they included it as a season long challange for a skin reward I think that would make a great incentive.

2 Likes
4

they have to rework it. im so done with those stupid challenge. i like halo, it<s univer etc but i think to switch to somthing else. those challenge are frustrating. period. there is not a single player who is happy and cheers after finishing those challenge. come on, wake up 343.

oh yeah, and to give you an idea. get 5 sticky grenade kill challenge. spend 4 swap. and come back to 5 sticky grenade kill. genious

1 Like
5

Thanks! I stole them from MCC.

You should look up all the medal types on halopedia if you haven’t already. Autopilot Engaged is pretty hard obviously, but the purple medals also include pretty manageable stuff like Combat Evolved, Grand Slam, Boom Block, and Return to Sender. Like I said, Legendaries should be a somewhat low number.

Also if “Nuclear Football” can be done with allies, then this makes this super easy.

In general I just want to see more challenges that promote winning, and don’t always force you into certain modes. Ironically, I think 343 actually based the challenges off of medals, but it was only individual medals and not groups with similar requirements.

1 Like
6

Imo, challenges should not be any more specific than "Play/Win matches, Play/Win (insert PLAYLIST here (not game modes, also exclude ranked)), Get kills, Get kills with (insert damage type/weapon type (no single weapon limits)), Get accumulated score in matches/specified playlist.

Challenges that get too specific, such as the current ones do, force players to play certain ways or gamemodes they dont like. Almost always to the detriment of both their own and their teams enjoyment.

2 Likes
7

The drop shield is so underrated and getting a boomblock medal just feels right.

Infinite really should use a lot of the MCC challanges, they’re fun and easy to complete, and they don’t feel like a constant grind to accomplish anything.

8

I feel like the challenges completion actions were created by people who weren’t part of playing the actual game.

Challenges like “get 3 kills with the pulse carbine” that should honestly be “strip 3 opponents shields with the pulse carbine” just seem like someone at a desk who doesn’t play Halo was told “we need like 300 challenge names and completing actions. Here’s a list of modes and weapons.”

2 Likes
9

I’ve not much to add here other than to say this is one of the most constructive and level-headed conversations I’ve seen on this forum regarding challenges. Anything that I usually contribute to such threads has already been stated here with a lot of original ideas. So I’m just adding my ‘yes’ to these suggestions. Keep up the solid discussion! ^^

4 Likes
10

exactly.

20 chorizos

2 Likes
11

Thanks!

I wanted to really create a thread that was backed with some statistics along with the real-life results to show how some challenges really aren’t working at the moment.

12

These are really good suggestions imo. I think Team Slayer can be fun as a break between quickplay games but more often than not we’re getting 3 slayer games out of 6 quick plays. Also agree with the team slayer challenges should work for any game of team slayer - it doesn’t make sense if you’re playing team player in quick play and it doesn’t count towards the challenge :confused:

good post op

2 Likes
13

Or “Do X damage with the Plasma Pistol/Ravager’s charge shot.”

Funnily enough, this problem is apparent in the firing range, where you’re tasked with killing targets with a plasma pistol… instead of, ya know, noob comboing them.

1 Like
14

Just today I resigned from doing this week’s challenges because of 1 challenge. I do those for fun and to challenge myself because I don’t use the backgrounds and emblems anyway as I have ones I like.

I got however a challenge "collect cumulative 7500 score in tactical slayer’.
Tactical slayer is a mode I suck in getting 2-15-0 scores quite consistently (except for a few lucky matches with good teams against weaker opponents). I hate this mode with passion. I don’t want to spoil everyone else’s fun. After trying 2 or 3 times to get any meaningful score and getting 100-200 points per match, because that’s how much I suck at this mode. I would have to do 30-40 matches in a mode I hate, spoiling fun of others on my team, just to get a puny sticker. I resigned.

The reward isn’t good enough for me to spend swaps I don’t have, much less to pay money to get swaps to use on it. If it was a new accessory, a new armor piece, or something else of worth, maybe I’d consider it, but not with current ‘rewards’.

I think no challenges (with an obvious exception of event ones) should be locked into a single mode, especially mode as specific as the tactical slayer. It’s a mode completely changing gameplay - if someone sucks at a mode they shouldn’t be forced to play it. It’s no fun for the person. It’s no fun for their team. It may or may not be fun for opponents (I personally like a bit of challenge, playing against a much weaker team isn’t much fun). BTW - so looking forward to tactical ops week <_<

15

Agreed, I get that the challenges try and promote playing in different playlists, but as you said not everyone enjoys all types of modes.

In this instance, I think this challange could be improved by having it as “Get x kills with the BR”. Now instead of locking this to tactical slayer, players can complete this in Quick Play, Team Slayer, Ranked, Tactical Slayer, BTB, Fiesta, and any other BR supporting modes.

With that, I think improving the accessibility of challenges improves the experience for all players and that’s something we all win from.

1 Like
16

Yup, I’d like to see the “support” weapon challenges i.e. Ravager, Pulse Carbine, Plasma Pistol, and Distruptor be something like this where it gives the player options

“Get a kill with the Distruptor or stun an enemy vehicle”

“Work as a team and kill an enemy in quick succession with a Ravager, PC, or PP”

2 Likes
17

Swat might improve once they add other types i.e Commando Swat, Swatnums, Mangler Swat, Stalker Rifle Swat. In H5, I found that I hated swatnums, but loved DMR swat, so it may just be the weapon you’re forced to use right now.

@DT_Warrior7733 Since “Get kills with the Battle Rifle” is already a challenge, I’d suggest “Get cumulative score in precision gamemodes”. In this case, a “precision gamemode” would be Swat or Ranked. Now you at least have 2 modes to pick. 3 if BTB gets changed to BR starts at some point.

1 Like
18

Yeah, challenges that actually teach you to use the gun would be nice.

1 Like