It’s not a good situation, but I still think Xb1 should have been dropped from development long before the game launched, so that all dev time goes to the Series consoles and PC instead.
All I can do is wish 343 luck with their next targets because it’s going to be rough.
They were also built on crunch, at least 5 was as they called their development cycle the sprint, just like Halo CE, 2 and 3 that I know of.
Great question, and a totally reasonable one at that, and one I directly have some insight for. 343 is about a third of the size of Bungie, and far more miniscule when compared to the multitude of teams that put out CoD maps, for example - so that’s part of the issue.
That’s been attempted to be addressed, but it’s not as easy as hiring to staff up to the numbers they need - because the onboarding process (learning the proprietary engine, workflows, etc.) takes a fair amount of time; it’s no different than those aforementioned studios sure, but 343i is at an inherent disadvantage because they’re still so small relatively. With the hiring freeze that was in place, it’s temporarily exacerbated the problem, plus contractor conversion politics, etc.
As @PhantomFox said, the staff that’s there is juggling putting out a lot of fires, whilst trying to build additional content and whatnot, while respecting the mental/physical health of their developers (which should be the case universally).
There’s definite blame to be levied at some of the leadership at 343i (some of which are no longer at the studio) but I think there’s some to be levied at the decision makers far higher up who ignored cries for more staff and a greater understanding of what a F2P live service on this scale entails.
Whatever the case may be, the devs on the frontlines and the current leads trying to communicate all of these current priorities definitely don’t deserve vitriol (not levied at you, since I have to be abundantly clear - this is a general statement about how gamers on Twitter/Era engage in discourse with these folks).
I’ve been saying that I hope they do whenever RT or an engine optimization is deployed (think SoD2). Having to stretch resources across such a wide hardware delta has to be rough.
Wait, weren’t they one of the biggest Xbox studios?
600 people (not all of which work on Infinite - about 450) isn’t big compared to Bungie’s 1500, Epic’s 4000+, etc.
All of those studios also use external contractors/studios as well, so before anyone brings up that element for 343i the same is true for just about every AAA studio under the sun (don’t even get me started on Ubisoft).
So 343i was indeed one of the biggest Xbox studios, but it pales in comparison to the staffing that other studios have when they’ve put out similar GaaS titles… many of which had their own share of issues for months after launch. That perspective that 343i is massive (when they’re not) is what I’m responding to.
Tyler Owens had a great thread about the difficulties of AAA development and why these projects really need thousands of devs, that I think should be required reading.
Counter Strike and Valorant are two of the most played online games and more similar to Halo than to Fortnite. Valorant has 7 maps, don’t know about CSGO 
CSGO is a legacy title. Valorant is a Hero Shooter.
Next.
Are you talking about their dev video series called “The Sprint”?
Because that’s in reference to a pretty standard software development cycle, not crunch.
I think it was a little bit if both, but if it was just about their standard cycle than thanks for the correction. Still the crunch that went into building previous Halo games is something that Joe Staten having been part of isn’t likely going to be pushing to get the game into the state people want it to be.
Thanks for the explanation. I had no idea Bungie was that big, holy shit. As for CoD studios, yeah I totally forgot that they got everyone and their mother working on COD. Some of us don’t call some of the studios CoD factories for nothing, lol. Forgot about that.
I would never wish for anyone to be fired, but a change definitely is needed but possibly that has happened already. 343 had the misfortune on top of all the problems that Covid was there as well, that doesn’t help matters either. Hopefully once Forge and co-op are out they can get back to a more consistent and steady output of content for Halo Infinite.
And I bet you know this too, they have seperate teams for campaign and MP for Infinite? I wonder how far away new content for the campaign is. But MP content shouldn’t keep them from doing stuff for campaign if they are seperate teams. So that’s good.
I also kinda wonder if a game like Halo puts more emphasis on balance than a game like Destiny or CoD where (I assume) players are able to use whatever weapons their character has or they’ve paid for.
If so, that’d probably result in significantly more play testing and analysis.
Always happy to provide clarity where I can. They do have different teams for MP vs campaign, for balancing and such.
Also, you said the magic phrase:
Man this is going to far in the hyperbolic and I’m really getting tired of that.
I’d prefer we get some extra Halo - Halo Wars 3, Halo RPG, etc.
Same. But Halo Infinite needs all the help they can get at the moment until they can deliver content at a constant and regular basis.
I agree, but the idea that you can just throw a dev on there - that has no experience with the engine, for starters - like some sort of magic bullet, is a bit off base.
As Tavish touched on, Seasons are near meaningless. They only really serve in progressing story/narrative.
I doubt that Halo players are clamouring for that.
It’s all about content. It’s all about things to play. And that could be dropped in the middle of a season like with all live service games.
With that in mind, we have to wait until November 8th to get that. So that’s quite disappointing and a bit of a wait after the current wait. I don’t think reactions would have been as bad as they’ve been had this date been “September 30th” instead of November 8th.
Maybe I’m in the minority. At this point I don’t care about Progression, Battle Pass rewards, Ranked Play, and official maps used for competitive play…I’m sure there are many that care about that. I don’t want to pretend that these things are unimportant, but rather staying that they are not that important to me.
I just want new maps, new modes, new weapons, and new equipment. All things that Forge will provide.
(All this said, I’m getting more busy anyways and even if Forge came out tomorrow I wouldn’t have the time to engross myself in it even if I wanted to. So even my disappointment is muted due to personal reasons)
But in an age where content creators help build and sustain your audience, the real disappointment is that November 8th date for Forge. After that point most people will be able to wait for Season 3, no problem. That is if you don’t care much for ranked play, progression, MLG maps, etc. Because there’s going to be new weapons, new modes, new maps, and new equipment released daily.
We’re going to have Halo the hero shooter, Halo the Counter-Strike clone, Halo the Fortnite clone, complete recreations of all the MP maps from Halo 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Reach, etc come November/December.
To some extent, Season 3 is going to be a footnote where the real meat and potatoes is Forge.
So I’m not at all freaked out about a Season 3 that comes out in March. Waiting another 2 full months is what I find irksome.
I hope he’s joking ?? Idk, he sounds clueless…I just can’t fathom how you can think about that…
There was an article today or yesterday about the last Prey game and how Bethesda forced Arkane to use that name and how it was seen as super disrespectul…
You can’t change the team like that, it’s not like sports and you pick your devs and think about how they will make a better Halo game…