Halo Infinite got off to a great start last year, but there's been a lot of much-talked about disgruntlement from fans in recent months over the lack of communication and meaningful content additions to the game since then.
343 has a Season 1 Outcomes blog coming out soon (update: out now!), but in the meantime, Community Director Brian Jarrard has been taking to Reddit to respond to fans who have been disappointed with the messaging around the game recently.
Here's a bit of what he had to say about all of this:
"We fully acknowledge that we're not truly able to say everything many folks want to hear. We get it and it's a tough spot to be in all around. Season 2 will be a good step but there's a lot of work to do and most of it is going to take more time than most want."
"There are indeed a lot of challenges and constraints. We're certainly not happy to be unable to meet player and community expectations, it's a difficult situation that's going to take the team time to work through. Right now the focus is on S2 and we'll have more to share on that in the coming weeks. Meanwhile a lot of production planning, costing, planning, hiring, etc.. is all happening which doesn't really lend to detailed regular updates."
"We understand the community is simply out of patience and frankly, I think understandably tired of words. We just need some time for the team to get the details sorted and then we can certainly share as much as we can."
As Jarrard mentioned, the focus right now is on the launch of Halo Infinite Season 2, which is scheduled to arrive on May 3rd. The season will feature "a mix of cinematics, story-themed Events, Battle Pass items and more that embody the Lone Wolves theme," along with playlist updates, balance changes, new modes and new maps.
There's still a long way to go for 343 Industries to satisfy the dedicated Halo Infinite fanbase, but here's hoping Season 2 will mark the beginning of a brighter future for the game's multiplayer, complete with fresh and exciting new content.
What are your thoughts on Jarrard's comments? Let us know down below.
[source reddit.com]
Comments 26
I say screw it - Sign Halo off as finished and use the studio to work on something new? Or possibly Halo Infinite plus 1 so they can get the next one out in good time?
I think they highly underestimated the amount of work involved to not only successful launch a popular F2P game, but then the even harder work involved to keep people engaged in it.
I'm not a big fan of halo, but even I can see that ID software would be perfect for the next halo game
I love Halo's campaign but the multiplayer is a piece of .... It's a waste.
It's all good 343 just focus on Season 2. It feels like they and the community are just beating a dead horse at this point. We get it. Some folks aren't happy with where the MP is at. (I'm not one of them but to each their own) 343 has said they plan to detail season 2 soon. Let's all just cool our jets until 343 is ready to talk yeah? I mean season 2 is only about a month away now. Patience folks patience!
@UltimateOtaku91 no please, let id work on their own properties, let them reboot Quake!
We don't need the best FPS devs to be constrained by regenerating health, two-weapon limit and all other crappy restrictions Halo imposed on the genre.
Doom & Quake >>>>>>>>>>>> Halo
If we see any improvements to the challenge system and events in season 2 I’d be happier. I’m getting the feeling that’s a little too much to expect.
How do they need "more time" when their game launched over a year late, and didn't even launch complete? Even Cyberpunk came back together faster than this.
@UltimateOtaku91 I think id can do anything they put their mind to lol, they're way too talented. But you'd upset a lot of people if they had to work on Halo instead of their other beloved franchises. I personally would think it's a waste. I'd rather have them work on their old games that I've never gotten to play.
@clvr you sir, get it. I wanna play a new quake already.
@clvr going from the recent Doom ganes to Halo felt like going backwards 10 years, I dropped Halo pretty quickly but can't wait to play what Id come up woth next
@carlos82 I haven't tried Infinite yet, but I bought the MCC a few months ago, eager To finally play these super well-received and popular games, and came away thoroughly disappointed and utterly bored.
I don't know, the level design is just plain and the firefights uninteresting. I just don't see where that highly regarded "sandbox" is in the campaign.
Conversely, and funnily as I'm not a Multiplayer guy at all, I poured 20 hours in Infinite's MP and had a lot of fun.
Oh it’s no big deal. There’s been plenty of other stuff for me to play as I forget about Halo in 2022
@clvr I'm not a big multiplayer guy so mainly played the campaign of Infinite.
In terms of the other Halo games, they were pretty revolutionary 20 years ago but yeah I don't imagine they'd hold up well to newcomers today, even I found them to drag a bit
On one hand gaming communities are critical of companies for developer crunch time and quality of delivered games.
On the other hand gaming are complaining that game content is not coming fast enough.
The gaming community should be promoting quality and little to no crunch time. They get done when they get done. As long as they meet quality expectations that's all I care about.
Kotaku: Makes dozens of reports of developers and their families going through a crunch and suffering
Gamers: No more!
Game Companies: Games will now take longer to make.
Gamers: Wow!
The only problem with the game is the challenges system are mandatory to level up season pass. those should remain but as extras not as the only way to get XP. It took me almost two monts to complete season pass. lots of grinding. but , and this is the most important part.... I did the grind cause game is super fun to play. shootin fells so good. game engine is amazing.
343 Industries does not appear to have good board members.
I wouldn't say it got off to a great start , it was hyped because it was a big budget game & an established IP & it's free to play
Honestly I find it sad to be think how long we may be waiting for the next proper halo campaign. 😢
@lolwhatno I fully believe that 343 has terrible management at best. But at least crunch enabled these studios to make up for the time they lost due to mismanagement. So when they finally had a direction they could execute it fairly quickly.
Now without crunch, it is a worst of both worlds scenario. They are poorly managed and lack direction but when they finally find the direction they are slow.
@NeoRatt No point in a game meeting quality expectations if it never comes out. ‘They get done when they get done’ is great in theory. But it’s proven at this point you need deadlines to work towards, targets to reach, or nothing gets to finished. Nearly all jobs have deadlines and targets…why should gaming be any different? Just cause people are hyper sensitive on this term ‘crunch’ doesn’t mean there needs to be no management at all - we’re already seeing these studios complain about Microsoft’s ‘hands off approach’.
@lolwhatno Yeah Xbox has terrible management that can’t get games finished and released on time…I have no idea why there was expectation that they could get a live service releasing updates on time when the main game still isn’t finished after nearly half a year out, a year delay and over half a decade of developement…
@NeoRatt for normal games and releases I’m with you. When I’m paying a monthly fee - there needs to be a constant stream of good quality games.
Halo tbh falls outside of this anyway as it’s a FTP. But again people won’t wait they’ll move on.
The issue with both Sub services and FTP you can’t make people wait
@jikflet yeah I agree and having some kind of xp based on match performance is a must!
@Bleachedsmiles
Deadlines assume you know exactly what needs to be done. In making new games and games that are different you don't know everything that needs to be done.
I am not saying there should be no deadlines at all. Everyone works to schedules. But, unless a game is completely generic the schedule needs to be fluent to accommodate discovering issues along the way.
@NeoRatt And that’s where having decent management comes in.
Often you also find in the creative sphere that having restrictions and limits in place in terms of budget (budget = production time) you get more creativity out of people over allowing complete freedom. So out puts don’t necessarily have to result in generic games. That ignores the actual creative talent of the people working on these things.
Again it all comes down to management. Without good management you have less focus and people pulling in different directions and ultimately being directionless. It sounds like that’s what probably happened with Perfect dark recently too.
It just makes more and more sense why Microsoft now don’t just buy studios but buy publishers too…even they must realise they’ve a management problem. It’s just worrying a company like Microsoft hasn’t figure out a way to get on top of it with their own studios yet.
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