Strangely, Halo Infinite Won't Give You XP For Just Playing Matches

Players such as myself (who are basically rubbish) are doomed. Of course this does this does depend on what form the challenges take, have they given any examples of what the challenges will look like?

I welcome the experimentation, personally. Let's let them try some stuff out before we pass judgment on it. There's too many armchair game designers out there.

Maybe that's easy for me to say. I just don't care about cosmetic unlocks or battle passes. I play games because they're fun to play. Getting "rewarded" with customization items has never done anything for me.

If I am able to change the challenges I have no problem with this.

@robe Me too. Most of the XP I get when I play multiplayer games is the taking part XP. Hopefully this new system doesn't put us rubbish players off playing multiplayer. The good players need some cannon fodder.

Obviously we haven’t seen all the available challenges but I personally would rather play to win a match as opposed to keep trying to find a certain gun and get kills with it. So I doubt I’d be ranking up much if that’s the style of challenges.

Without seeing the challenges we cannot pass judgement. For all we know 343 have devised a clever set of challenges that encourage the player to get better at the game rather than just rewards for turning up.

This does kind of suck in many ways for those of us like me who are rubbish at FPS games but still want to play them, however they might also have played a lot of Titanfall and stolen their ideas for making sure rubbish players feel valued.

Wow, I didn't find it to be a real problem when I tested the game out. I also don't play online multiplayer religiously.

Then again, I couldn't care less about cosmetics.

As someone that only has a very casual interest in the multiplayer aspect of Halo, this is exceptionally bad news. I say this because it means that as my ability in the playing multiplayer is virtually non-existent, that should I want to jump in a game and get my standard 1-45 kill ratio (with the one kill being how many kills I get!), then without per-match XP, I won't be progressing at all, and that would serve to further diminish my interest in playing multiplayer.

This kind of rewards system will really result in rewarding only those that excel at the game...

@Fiendish-Beaver That is my main concern as well. Sure, we can't judge this too much until we know what the lists will be, but it still should concern people who will only casually play the multiplayer rather than ones who will play it for hours a day. You could say ranking doesn't matter as much then, but casual players will likely always be stuck at "1" (or close to it) since they likely won't be on enough to complete very many challenges.

@RadioHedgeFund @robe @LocalPenguin Regarding the Challenges.
I played the BETA and in that the Weekly Challenges were things that were specific to weapons/kill types/number of kills. The Daily Challenge (that would refresh instantly after completing it) was as simple as "Play 1 Match" -> "Play 2 Matches" -> "Play 3 Matches" etc.
Also after completing all Weekly Challenges, it unlocked a special challenge called "Platinum Warrior" which unlocked an exclusive Armour coating, for me the Challenge was simply "Kill 50 Spartans". I'm pretty sure (not certain) this was the same task for everyone but it was still simple regardless.

@Ocat As for changing challenges, yes, you can do this. There are 2 "consumable" items, 1 being the XP Tokens that double the XP gained from Challenges for 30 minutes and the other being a Challenge Reroll token (forgot it's actual name) both of these can be bought in the store together in large and affordable bundles (depending on the cost of the in-game currency) but they are also given out as a reward in the Battlepass pretty often, also as the cheapest item from the store, these are likely to be the item that is given out the most often for free (events, celebrations etc).

I personally don't have a problem with this system but can see why some others will (though it really isn't as bad as people are making it out to be). I would like to see the return of H5/MCC Spartan ranks, basic xp system with a single reward at the end.

As for the article. The information I just put came from me playing the BETA, yes. But there's tons of videos online for it and as a journalistic company, you should really do better to provide full and well detailed information when writing, not just jumping on a band-wagon because it's the general consensus on the internet (by a lot of people who also have not played nor looked up the BETA details).

Developments like this make me lean even more heavily toward playing with/against bots (a feature that I hope gets expanded into EVERY corner of the multiplayer for those who prefer it). Online multiplayer can be woefully unbalanced as it is, and since my taste has shifted more toward Turn-based Strategy and JRPGs, I've never exactly been one of those players who carries my entire team in Halo; to put it VERY mildly. This feels like the devs messed with something that wasn't broken, which IMHO is ill-advised for a flagship game that's already been delayed more than a year past the console's launch and still is releasing without many core features. Time will tell if the results require "fixes" to keep lesser players from giving up and forgetting about this one.

This is absolutely horrible, WTF are you doing 343?

They can limit the amount of XP by merely playing the matches, and thus encourage players to do the challenges. But no XP at all is a very hardcore decision, esp when they decided to make MP free for everyone.

@StevenDTM I appreciate the info you've given from the beta, and while the challenge/reward system may change between the beta and retail versions of the game, I completely agree with your assessment of the article. PureXbox/NintendoLife articles are often light on the detail, an article like the one above is begging for some analysis of what is known from the beta and even some speculation on what be changed.

This is what The Coalition did with Gears 5 and I really hated it lol. I never finished any of their battle passes because it was just too much of a hassle doing their stupid challenges. This is very disappointing.

Whatever morons idea was this needs to be fired ASAP

I don't think I mind this, but not an online player, so I suppose I shouldn't comment...
Mind you, maybe I'm NOT an online player BECAUSE of the traditional xp per match setup, and this new arrangement will be BETTER for me, especially the info @StevenDTM gave

As someone with limited free time, I just want to play the game and have fun.
I don't want to have to spend my limited time grinding specific challenges and taking the fun out of the experience.

@blinx01 i get your point, but maybe this is to stop limited time player (like me!) from having to grind lots of matches just to get XP?
Get XP in short bursts is what I'm thinking

I wish there was no XP at all. Just a ranked mode, that's all you need.

If your leveling goes off your battle pass rank then just having it done through challenges makes sense. Should be unlockables through just playing the matches as well but I'm fine with no XP. Hopefully challenges can be beaten with just playing against bots.

I'm sure you'll be able to pay to skip the grinding

Seems like a perfect choice to me.

The whole "Ahh gotta keep giving people stuff to play a game" is nothing more than a tool to keep people playing something bad.

Hell, on MCC I'll will up with dozens of unlock point because I couldn't care less.

I'm 100% for this choice.

I do not play MP. Yet was invited to the Infinite beta. I had no idea what I was doing and yet thoroughly enjoyed the "free" battlepass and ranking up by doing the challenges. Honestly, I didn't even think of it that way when I was playing. I was simply being asked to do stuff, so I did stuff. One of my favorites was the melee from behind. They had a quirky name for it, like "Ninja-something". It helped me progress in the battlepass and unlock gear that I didn't see on other players. It seems the ability to look unique will exist within the game.

The idea of unlocking certain armours for completing certain tasks would be great.

But of course, this is not that. This is just another battlepass system.

Also, these had me rolling;

"no per-match xp at launch" because nothing else is coming at launch either.

"an xp system is a basic function present in almost every online game ever made. There's no reason for that not to be present" because when you've courted a crowd that can't fathom a video game without indentical features and mechanics (not now sprint), of course you can't break from the norm.

Think this is totally fine, takes out some of the dopamine thrill of progression but it's all for make believe importance. Just wanna have a good K/D and have some fun online. Unlocking armor, skins and stuff will be cool too. Happy to have a little less gamification of every aspect of being in the game.

They might be doing this to push people to purchase what they want through microtransactions instead of grinding for what they want

@Shoeblazer I agree with this. Let’s see it play out first, and if it is bad, then fans can voice their dissatisfaction. I’m sure 343 will adjust if necessary.

PS- Senor Cardgage… nice.

Personally i think the idea is a car crash. You can have all those challenges in there, as fortnite and many other games have illustrated, but to not reward the grind of playing each match, especially for less gifted players really sucks. …. oddly it contradicts their whole messaging too, they’ve been pushing this ‘your spartan your way’ kind of vibe, even down to stating in their reveal earlier this year that you’ll choose your own AI etc….. but this is a bit more ‘Your spartan….but you gotta play it this way ‘ kinda thing going on

Playing the tech preview this took me out of my comfort zone. I played plenty without advancing… decided to see why and made it a calling to finish the challenges. When the TP wrapped I was out of challenges. It was a bit weird, I usually play a bit lazily in WZ, in the game mode “plunder”, just to advance a little when my squad is out and about… my K/D:R is diminishingly low so eh, who gives… but in HI:TP the challenges rekindled something, I had more fun and even against the Spartan grade bots I averaged 3–7KDR. Not that it matter against real opponents, they were easy to predict, but I think this is fine. I’ve stressed about getting all the cosmetics in WZ, but I think once you’ve been part of a HI season everything in it is unlockable later on? As long as they find a good mix of easy and hard challenges, I welcome this.

Man how fast people complain.
Just wait till all is finished.
Cant wait to play this game.