Not recently, no.
Halo Infinite and Halo 3 as launch products are very comfortable yes. I’d personally argue that Infinite offers more as a launch product than H3 did. Obviously H3 now has more content, as I’m sure Infinite will in 15 years 
Hating crunch work culture is fine, but lazy, slow production is not the answer
I would understand if this was an indie or small developer, but 343 is a multi-million, triple A, huge budget game with massive corporate backing
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This is what “The consumer is always right” breeds and boy is it not pretty lol.
I mean your post btw.
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I don’t think it’s impossible to fix. I think 343 is going to struggle to fix the game anytime within the next 2 years if season 1 was/is the precedent.
I also think - to your point - they’re having to walk the line of admitting the catastrophic handling post-release while not painting to dire a picture of them crippling/gimping a 6+ year endeavor with millions of dollars in sunk cost.
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When I would play I’d have sub 30 ping and still experience desync. The Consumer’s internet isn’t always the issue and with how widespread desync is/was I think it’s safe to say ‘Its not me it’s you’ to 343.
It is. Ranked MMR, CSR, or both are tied to performance in unranked games. Players can throw in norms to get easier ranked games. A sweaty tactic to be sure but a valid one none the less. I don’t know what H3 was like but placing no restriction on who Players can duo with rank wise also creates unfair/broken matches. As a final note the fact they had to ‘mid-season reset’ the ranks speaks to itself how broken the system was and to my knowledge they either didn’t make any changes or made opaque changes to the system so we don’t know whats different. It’s also possible they released an article I haven’t read on what changed.
I get no system is perfect and I’m all for iterative improvement but the types of issues Infinite’s ranked system has are things I would have expected would have been caught in design or test.
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Get better Internet??? I was playing UT 99 and MechWarrior 3 on a 56k dial up connection flawlessly in my youth with pings below 50 at all times. We are past the point of "get better Internet"when it comes to actual online gaming matches. This game has serious problems with it’s netcode. That or the sbmm is deliberately screwing people into bad matches.
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Seeing as how 343 chose to go Live service, you would think they would have understood what that can with, how it came with crunch times, and long hours, thus they should have figured out the whole Work life balance issue long before release.
They themselves put themselves in this situation and now are struggling to even be a live service.
And asking the community to wait till they figure themselves out.
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As someone that has always averaged over 50 hours of work a week it’s hard to know what is a reasonable expectation for other people. On the other hand, we don’t dictate work hours as consumers and it’s weird that this discussion is occurring at all. They probably should never have brought this up with the community at all and we should probably just drop it. It’s not helping anyone
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Surgeons can work some insane hours but I’d rather they clock the overtime than stop halfway through an operation. Most office jobs are supposed to be 9 am - 5 pm but of course deadlines and crunch time mean that sometimes doesn’t happen. Pretty sure truckers have some pretty strict hours - mandatory breaks and fines if they’re caught trying to circumvent said hours… not sure about that last one but thats what I’ve heard. Sufficed to say it depends on your field of work.
Note: Surgeons are more than likely salaried but you get the idea.
No, they shouldn’t have. As @Griff1821 says it comes off as though they’re using their employees as human shields to deflect the heat of the multitude of problems and their lethargic response. So while we the Consumers have no official place in dictating the work hours this encounter might help 343i understand the error of trying to cover poor project management with the ‘Think of the children’ tactic.
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Idk what peoples’ damage is but the customer is king attitude seems to have ramped up everywhere and it pisses me off. So yeah, I got a little mad. shrug
So many people would have so much more fun with this game if they took a deep breath and reminded themselves it ain’t that deep. There’s other games out there. And this game will get where it’s going at a pace none of us are able to dictate. So there’s no sense making oneself sick over it. Just my 2c
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It’s probably caused by the fact 343 slammed the fans of the game in one of their interviews calling them the problem or something to that effect. Players tend to get rowdy when they’re called the problem from a company whose handled their Game’s problems poorly from day 1.
Customer’s can influence this if the company is connected to the community in a healthy way. I don’t think they are which is why there’s a lot of tired and agitated people - players want the game to succeed and are frustrated because the repeated failure to execute on the fundamentals.
Yes but there aren’t other modern Halo games. We can abstract the game into a generic FPS arena and say ‘Not happy with Infinite why not X?’ But X is fundamentally different when it comes down to the brass tacks. So yes you’re right there are other games out there just not other modern Halo games.
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And?
We shouldn’t have to be playing the waiting game yet again for the game to be up to standards of previous games like the way this game is being handkee it looks like it will take longer than halo 5 did to get infinite’s content up to previous standards
But the higher ups think otherwise
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Yeah i cant say everyone has a job like this, but if i have a project that is falling behind schedule and the due date is coming up. 1 to 2 weeks prior to the due date i start staying as late as it takes to get back on schedule. it’s called taking pride in your work and having a good work ethic… Can it be a pain in the -Yoink!-, for sure! but it’s worth it to show a quality finished product and not make your company look like it hires a bunch clowns who don’t know what they are doing…
Like the zero priority really comes off as using human shields considering the fact most of the people working on this game are contracted amd dumped once the contract ends so they can save on benefits
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Like if you really cared about the employees you wouldn’t be relying on contractors than dumping them if you really cared you would try and renew the contract
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Like at this point I’m done trying to look for the best I’ve been burned too many times and I’m sick of it and going to call bs when i see it
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I think the pandemic has taught us a lot about crunching!
If during the pandemic you were paid by your government to sit on your -Yoink!- and basically keep out the way - you don’t need to crunch in your job.
If you were some sort of key worker and had to work through the pandemic you need step up and work hard when needed.
Game developers worked from home and only did so to make money for fat cats… not really crunch material.
So I’m happy for developers not to crunch - it’s bad to feed a fat cat.
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Yeah. I’m in medicine and still in the 10+ year training phase of things. An eighty hour week pops up 1-2 times a year. My parents aren’t wealthy professionals but work nearly as many hours as me. So I don’t know what’s normal.
My point is really that “crunch” is this big issue in gaming right now but it exists everywhere in different forms. Bringing halo fans into this solves nothing and appeases no one. Not sure what they were going for when bringing it up in an update. It also isn’t helpful for us to debate their every word and weaponize it against them. so let’s go back to talking about what we want out of forge.
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Utterly unhinged to assume the developers aren’t working. The failure of Halo Infinite lays at the feet of management and Microsoft. Developers are horribly mistreated in the industry and are expected to perform ridiculous hours. Saying, We’re trying to not overwork our people, isn’t making excuses. It’s putting matter-of-factly what the stated goal is.
I just hope they stick to their word. Developers are people. Halo Infinite is a piece of software.
I absolutely understand work management and support eliminating crunch time. Unfortunately this is still the case under 343 despite doing lip service because, they have scapegoated coders and young recently hired devs forced to fix the problems from a new engine entirely, setting them up for failure, and as a result, miscommunication and an unstable work environment.
There is a reason 343 has a negative reputation. Bad reviews from glassdoor. Corrupted work politics, bureaucracy at the worst core. They are using contractors as a scapegoat to get all the unwarranted blame when it falls om upper management. No one here, supports crunch time, at least I hope. It does more than harm than good.
Infinite can’t be saved and I’d rather they accept the losses and Microsoft allows Halo to be a public domain. Having a franchise managed under archaic rule sets i.e. intellectual property laws is just not working. A great example is Sonic. Sonic Team failed so badly delivering a product that Sega allowed indie devs to take over and even make an official game called Sonic Mania. This is what Halo needs right now. Decentralized alternative. Yes there are mods but I believe that devs, deserve pay for making mods from the ground up or new game entirely.
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