343 Head of Design Says Team Will Work on Halo Infinite Multiplayer Progression This Week - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 29 November 2021 / 897 Views
The free-to-play multiplayer for Halo Infinite launched a few weeks early on November 15 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Xbox and Halo: Combat Evolved. The game has faced some criticism for how slow the Battle Pass progression is, not enough customization, monetization that is excessive, and more.
343 Industries head of design Jerry Hook tweeted over the weekend he is still playing Halo Infinite while on vacation and he understands everyone's complaints with the progression in the Battle Pass. The multiplayer team will be working on it this week as it is at the top if his list of things that need fixing.
"Yes I am still playing Halo and feeling everyone’s pain on progression," said Hook. "We are back at it next week and this will be top of my list with the team."
Halo Infinite free-to-play multiplayer is now available on the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, while the campaign will release on December 8.
Yes I am still playing Halo and feeling everyone’s pain on progression. We are back at it next week and this will be top of my list with the team.
— jerry hook (@hookscourt) November 28, 2021
Been traveling so slow to respond - but please know the constructive feedback is being heard loud and clear. Changes will take time and our priority this week is giving the team a much deserved break for the holiday after a long final stretch. Thank you for understanding. 🙏
— Brian Jarrard (@ske7ch) November 24, 2021
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Did he not go through ANY play tests to see how awful the progression system is?!?
I dont think its to do with if they played it. The system is designed around long term numbers. They expect gamers to invest 1000s of hours in it. They didnt expect the gamers not to like it.
From what I've heard from people who were in the earliest closed alpha flighting they did a year ago, people were complaining about the progression system even then. Apparently an early poll done on the flighting forums had 95% of respondents saying they hated the progression, and yet 343's multiplayer team went a whole year after that without fixing it, and only now that the game is in open beta and everyone is mad at them are they finally looking into fixing it.
It definitely seems like somebody high up at 343 or MS had $ in their eyes and completely disregarded feedback on progression so that they could release a F2P game with 95% of customization options locked behind either paid battlepass tracks or the in-game store. Only now that they realize that there will be a mass player exodus on launch if they don't fix the progression are they finally going to do something about it.
Hopefully we get some noteworthy changes in both the near future and the long term. Reducing the ridiculous store pricing by at least 50-60%, adding more cosmetics to the free battlepass tracks, adding slow in-game credit earning so that cash shop stuff no longer requires real money, a separate lifetime progression system with it's own rewards, faster XP earning either through an XP for medal system or a match score to XP conversion system, making it so that unlocking a color or armor piece makes that color or armor piece available on all armor cores instead of only one one armor core, etc.
I get wanting to have some fun things to unlock. Personally, I'd enjoy it more with a progression system like Reach had, but at the end of the day you play games to have fun, not primarily to look cooler than the next guy, and this game is definitely fun to me!
Everyone needs to keep in mind that there is nothing but cosmetics tied to progression. There is no need to spend any money at all to be the best Halo player on planet Earth. The only thing leveling up does for you is get you color palettes and accessories for your player that you don't even see during gameplay because it's in the first person perspective.
I think concerns about the battle pass system have been significantly overblown. It's definitely not perfect, but I don't think it's terrible. I think if they give a 50 XP for completion of a match, 25 XP to every player on the winning side, and maybe some small number of XP tied to objective completions within the match, that will take care of most of the legitimate concerns.
I think the underlying problem here is that Halo players are not used to a free-to-play monetization system. They are all designed to soak players for money, because only a small percentage of players will spend. Those players must subsidize everyone else. People are constantly complaining about the monetization system of every free to play title. The difference with Halo is that there's a long, storied history that doesn't include this kind of monetization. But, Halo Infinite has taken a different route than previous installments. So, it is necessarily going to take some time for people to get used to it.
Honestly I’ve zoned out of the progression at this point (mostly I don’t seem to be able to unlock anything without paying for it).
What I do wish they’d do is make a dedicated Slayer playlist as I get sick of the Objective gametypes, which are more frequent do to there being more of them.
The BP progression is astonishingly bad in this game. It makes COD Warzone seem like it's practically just giving stuff away compare to what Halo is doing.
Also at the very least give winners a decent bonus for winning. Otherwise people wont bother trying to win but instead focus on challenges.
I don't think it's as bad as some in the community feel that it is.
At this point though big PR losses have come in quick succession during the thanksgiving week.
They definitely have some work to do. The monetization in the game is horrendous.
