This is not a Beta. Stop calling it such

Games Halo Infinite
1

Stop with the beta excuse.

  • We were told, before that all the core modes are in this “beta”.
  • We are playing a “beta” where you pay for content. They are releasing
  • We are getting new modes in rotation and taken out in a “beta”.
  • Attempting to fix content IN A BETA.
  • Now there’s confirmation tweet that a dedicated Slayer playlist won’t be added until AFTER it’s launch day well beyond the holidays. A Halo game multiplayer without, I rep at WITHOUT a Slayer only playlist mode??? Is this a joke?

Oh and no new maps will be added on launch day. To reemphasize that what we have right now, is not a beta. Halo Reachs Beta, was an actual Beta. This is not.

I say this because the “oh it’s a beta, calm down and have faith” excuse has been thrown around at every valid criticism of this game. Now at this point it’s a meme.

8 Likes
2

Nope it’s not a beta. It’s an early release. Don’t know why they decided to call it a beta when it’s the full game. My guess is to side step a lot of criticism because they knew there was going to be issues and from the sounds of it a lot of the battle pass and store issues weren’t directly on the team but more of a Microsoft and Management issue.

4 Likes
3

Don’t worry, people will stop calling it that by Wednesday.

Not sure why it’s triggering so many on here though.

4

It’s annoying people because people are either using it to excuse the game of all of its shortcomings, or they’re holding out false hope that things will all be fixed / changed substantially come December 8th. There is zero evidence about that being the case, and plenty to the contrary.

1 Like
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If you go to the Steam web store, it most certainly says:

Notice: The Halo Infinite multiplayer beta is available now and free to play. Halo Infinite (Campaign) will launch on December 8th at 18:00 UTC.

If you go to the Microsoft Store, it most certainly says:

HALO INFINITE MULTIPLAYER BETA AVAILABLE NOW

While it might not feel like it’s a beta because they are releasing microtransactions and season passes now, it is most certainly a beta.

I get what you’re saying. Betas don’t traditionally do what Halo is doing right now. But it is a beta.

That isn’t to say that I agree with what they’re doing. I think it wasn’t appropriate how they decided to go about microtransactions and I really don’t agree with how they’re pushing these transactions to occur more often because of how monetization has been marketed.

That also isn’t to say I think that magically all the game’s problems will be solved by Dec. 8th. These problems will be here for a while. If anything, this was a test bed to see how people were going to react to the monetization scheme that they had planned.

Perhaps that part of this whole release was the beta.

It truly baffles me how they didn’t even look back to MCC and analyze how players interacted with unlockable content and try to apply what they learned there to this game.

To go even further, it’s amazing how they didn’t even look at how Gears 5’s monetization scheme was criticized just as much or even look at what Call of Duty does and try to learn what did and didn’t work between those two systems. I think it’s a bit narrow-minded to simply ignore your competitors and see what players of those games disliked. Chances are whatever didn’t work there probably wouldn’t work with this game, and vice versa.

I don’t really expect 343 to make the system much better and I don’t expect divine intervention levels of change. If Halo 5 was any indicator, predatory monetization will be here to stay in some capacity. It’ll ultimately be up to each individual player to not give in to it all. That, and making sure we stay vocal about the shortcomings of this system so we can keep pushing to make changes for the better.

Again, there’s no excuse why release will be as anemic as it’s coming out to be, but games in general have gotten to a point where the majority of people who play them are conditioned to accept that games don’t have much to offer on launch and content gradually drips out over time to make it seem like a ton of content has been added after x amount of time. It’s an illusion to make players seem like they have an over abundance of choice when in reality the things that this game may end up with about five months from now, older games shipped with on release.

The pandemic is also hardly an excuse anymore for developers. This isn’t new behavior for any of them.

6

Whatever they want to call it, to me, with the years of experience with the gaming industry, this is the worst “beta” I’ve seen. The pandemic certainly isn’t an excuse because they have the experience with Halo for better or worse. Something as simple as a Slayer only playlist should’ve been a simple sanity check when making a Halo game.

1 Like
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Probably the same reason a lot of games like Splitgate for example call it a beta. Because they want people to know that some core functions may not work properly and would rather find out early before millions of people hop on the game.

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It is absolutely not a beta.