They did outline that they plan to address this and I do think they did the smart thing in addressing certain things in a certain order instead of everything at once.
You mentioned maps no longer being a problem but they were indeed a problem just last October. I’m not kidding I actually started to hate seeing the same few maps every time there was a podcast that talked about Halo or every time it came up on Twitch. But they address that well, with the Winter update 2 new maps, Forge, and now custom games browser.
So I do hope they tackle progression with that level of robustness. I posted a long message here in this thread about how they should have done progression, going beyond the battle pass and having lifetime challenges for people. For example if you get 10,000 splatters with the Warthog, you unlock a Ferrari red skin for the Warthog. Similarly apply lifetime challenges to all weapons and vehicles (solid gold BR for people who have 50,000 headshots).
I’ve been “studying” live service games and noted that these big and small teams that roll out live service games have the challenge of keeping casual players (who play 5 to 10 hours a week) happy with progressing through a battle pass that they paid for… And the hardcore players that play 20 to 40 hours a week happy with the battle pass that they maxed out in 6 days. The best way to do that is to add lifetime challenges. Those hardcore players can unlock the prestigious items demonstrating 10000 sword kills once they finished a battle pass in a week’s time.
My point is that I hope that their solution on program is just as robust as their solution to the map problem. Which is now not a problem but now one of the strengths of this live service.
I don’t play Fortnite as I get discouraged by those gameplay videos showing insane tower building. Regardless, I’m sure Epic does a lot of things right with it. 343i seems hell-bent on making all multiplayer content being canon tied to the story, and as someone who stays mostly up to date with the Halo novels, I can onfidently says no one gives a shit.
Making Infinite an Xbox metaverse platform would be interesting and a way to draw people (back) into the game. With forge, we’ve seen SM64 or Skyrim themed maps and they’re very fun as a backdrop for the Halo combat. Having content that would make fans of other games check out the latest Halo update would be great.
Not there yet to consider it a ‘strength’, but the recent drop with 4 community maps added to matchmaking shows a great promise. Hopefully they further expand on it with new canvas, making dev maps forge-able, adding AI and so on.
Maybe with year 2 anniversary the game will reach the critical mass of content and steady flow of new features where they can confidently relaunch it.
No offence but I would like to see some other developers do something different with HALO. Hopefully once the ABK deal closes we get the COD team do something different with it.
Not bad. If you look at franchises like Mario, Zelda, COD you’ll notice they’ve spread their wings over many genres. It would be nice to see HALO do so as well. I would say give Ubisoft a chance to make a destiny or the division like HALO. This I say cos Ubisoft has over 20,000 devs and are probably the only studio with enough devs to do it.
Im not saying the map sitaution is fixed, far from it, just that I think most people seem to be putting the blame purely on maps or “content” lacking
But to me the problem goes beyond that, they could add every single map from every previous Halo right now and I don’t think it would change Infinite’s situation as much as people think
You are 100% right about those lifetime challenges, I was just thinking about that this morning and it would be an excellent addition, that way when someone finishes a pass they still feel like their effort is still going to something even if it takes an absolute age to finally get there
Right now it’s like oh cool I got 5 double kills, 2 triple kills, a steaktacular and a kill frenzy in a game but it all feels kind of pointless, is there even anywhere to see all the medals you’ve earned in the game if you did want to know?
@strawman You’re both right, I need to reword it to “the map situation has been solved by having a multi-prong approach where 343 official maps are created with both SS level editor and with Forge, as well as now including Forge maps into official playlists.”
Definitely, there needs to be more content in that area, but I think they have a robust solution in place. All it needs now is a bit of time.
A good example on maps not being where they need to be is the lack of BTB maps. But the existing solution could address that with 343 Forge maps along with user created BTB maps entering a playlist with the current solution.
And that’s why I really like the robust solution where we’re not just dependant on 343 making maps in their own level editor. This 3 pronged solution is what I mean by 343 addressing the maps situation well.
Which is why I’m hoping for something more than a simple barebones progression system that only factors in the current season. Hopefully by Season 4/5.
I don’t play FORTNITE as well, but the game as become the definition of success for a multiplayer game as well as a business and source of income for many streamers. The game has become a multibillion-dollar generator.
The metaverse thing I agree with and is more what I was alluding to. The Halo Faithfuls are not enough to sustain this IP in the long run and even with Forge I see many like rebs promoting it, but the views show the interest is just not there. Which is why I think Halo multiplayer would work best as a platform. I doubt even a battle royale is enough at this time.
Personally, I think now would be a good time to have a HALO remake or re-imagined maybe even reboot. Maybe contract Ubisoft to make it as they’ve got tons of developers to spare after canceling 7 projects and with over 20,000 developers.
Today that meta or platform world where so many things, characters, places come together is what’s relevant. In the movies we see it in avengers, justice league. In games we see it in Fortnite, smash bros and more.
Well it’s easy to make such grandiose plans, but ultimately Halo Infinite was limited by its engine and its tools. They shipped a fun minimum viable product at the end of 2021, but one that was duct-taped together and adding or tweaking stuff meant that something else got broken like B2B in December '21… So they had to spend most of 2022 getting the underlying tech in order, before they can start releasing new content and updates at a healthier pace. They’re getting there at least, there’s more reasons to tune in regularly since November then there were before that. And the recent leak shows there’s a ton of content on the way, the game is not getting abandoned at least.
But they won’t invest that much in Halo Infinite now that it’s confirmed they’re switching engines. Infinite is not going to be an ongoing ‘forever’ platform like CS:GO, Fortnite and R6S are. Let’s hope they learned all the correct lessons and the next Halo will ship more polished, more featured and with an actual roadmap immediately after its release lol.
Of course, the plans are grandiose they need to be. the engine switching to me will not solve the problem maybe just add more to it. There is hardly any popular FPS that uses Unreal, so I just don’t have faith in its FPS prowess. in fact, it sounded like the only reason for the shift was to lower cost. I also don’t see 343 doing anything major with HALO. I just don’t think Microsoft has any more confidence in the studio. They will have to earn their place. If you ask me there is the thought that Microsoft might be hoping to move the IP to the COD studios should the get ABK deal and if they need to drop the COD IP.
I would imagine if Microsoft dropped the COD IP but kept the studios, they might just have them work on HALO and get it to COD level as well as maybe work on DOOM. The thing is if HALO is to be relevant again, they would need to do something like that, maybe have 343 collaborate with this teams on remaking or rebooting HALO like Modern warfare.
Microsoft won’t make those studios to drop COD and work on Halo instead lol, much worse ROI.
Switching to UE5 will come with short term pain for long term gains. UE5 comes with a lot of tools in it, it’s already setup to work with industry standard tools so that importing and converting assets is nice and simple and 343i won’t need to dedicate half the studio to make tools instead of the game. There’s a reason many studios with in-house engines (CD-Projekt Red, Crystal Dynamics) switched to UE5 recently , it’s simply getting harder and harder to keep up. Look at the disaster the Luminous Engine in Forspoken turned out to be, the complexity is simply too much for most studios to keep up and you pay dearly for any misstep you make.
And yes, plans need to be grandiose, but for the next game, Infinite is sadly a dead end at this point - even if MS threw all the possible resources at it, chances of completely turning its reputation around and starting to compete for player numbers with your Apexes and CODs of the worlds are rather low. Still, it’s a fun game at its core that I hope to play for years if they deliver the content, 28 maps in development makes me hopeful (though some might get scrapped).
Good points. We look at those other studios and they aren’t slouches. Their engines are fantastic.
When release of this hypothetical new Halo game nears and they need support from fellow studios. Undead Labs, The Coalition, Ninja Theory would all be well versed in UE5 and they aren’t slouches either. The more I think about this the more I see it being the right call.
I’m excited for both Infinite and am willing to wait 3-5 years for the next project, which I’m equally excited for.
It’s just my view I just don’t believe that UE5 will be good for HALO. Also, all the studios you mentioned make third person games not first person. I am not against unreal engine just I think it works best with third person games not first person even their demos are always in third person, but we will see. Also, the notion that internally at Microsoft they were still pondering if it will maintain the feel of HALO is something to consider. The Unreal engine is nice but I would rather Microsoft work on it’s own engines like they have ID TECH now which the COD games are based on. As for giving HALO to the COD devs , I was just saying so that if Xbox decides to sell the COD business as a remedy and keep the studios then HALO would be a good replacement.
I get that Infinite is pretty much done but I would hope they use it as a base and a learning experience to build for the future.