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Halo Infinite
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Technical Preview Outcomes
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Our goal is to provide transparent follow-up to share the team's response and perspective so players understand what to expect. While some of these feedback topics do have implications involving actual bugs, it's not the intent of this blog to address issues reported via the Halo Insider Support site. Overall, most of the more common and egregious bugs reported during the Technical Preview either already were – or have since – been addressed and we're excited to see many of these improvements roll out in our next public preview. In particular, we know there were a few pain points regarding Halo Waypoint messages and the Xbox Insider app on console at the start and teams have been working on improving these areas before our next flight.
Before we jump into the specific outcomes for key feedback it's important to note where we are on this journey together. Season One for Halo Infinite's free-to-play Multiplayer is launching on December 8 and as you've heard, the team is currently in "shut down mode" focused on bug squashing and polishing. In general, we have three possible outcomes for a given piece of feedback – the item has already been addressed, the item will be investigated and addressed later as possible, or the item in question is behaving as intended and no change is warranted. As you'll read below, the vast majority of outcomes for the Tech Preview feedback falls into one of the first two categories with really only one or two items falling into the bucket of "working as intended." This means that overall, the team's goals and ambitions largely align with those of our players in terms of areas we'd like to see improved or expanded. As we kick off this service and the next chapter of our journey together in a few months, it's important to remind everyone that from our perspective, launch is only the beginning! We can't act on everything everyone wants as quickly as everyone would like but we're committed and eager to improve and evolve the game together over time.
Now, without further ado, let's dive into the key player feedback themes from the Tech Preview and responses from applicable teams around the studio. We're going to tackle this alphabetically by team, starting with our colleagues working on Accessibility.
ACCESSIBILITY
- Positive: Friend or Foe Outlines
- Positive: Full Controller and Keyboard & Mouse remapping
- Feedback: Desire for an auto-sprint option
- Feedback: Desire to alter the colors of the Damage System Color and Mark System
ACCESSIBILITY TEAM RESPONSE
The Friend and Foe (IFF) system's outlines are a key component of making Halo multiplayer more accessible. As iconic as the Red vs Blue system is, players with colorblindness were always left at a disadvantage in previous titles. We're pleased to see this feature helped so many players out during the Tech Preview. The Sandbox team should have more to share about IFF further below!
While we believe that full controller and keyboard/mouse remapping is great for all players to allow for more player choice and customization, we're specifically excited about how these settings allow players with disabilities to remove barriers that previously existed with a limited set of control schemes. We wanted this title to be fully compatible with the Adaptive controller on Xbox as well.
We're really excited to involve our community in working on improving accessibility. Two pieces of feedback we saw from the flight were to add a "auto-sprint" option so that players don't have to hold the thumbstick forward, which can be difficult and even painful when sprinting longer distances. The other feedback item was to have the colors of the "Damage System Color" and marks from the Mark System have their own color options in settings similar to the IFF colors. We agree and we love these suggestions, and although we won't be able to get them in for launch, we're already tracking them for future accessibility additions post-launch.
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AUDIO
MUSIC
- Positive: Players loved both menu and Multiplayer music
AUDIO TEAM RESPONSE
We literally love to hear this. We're bringing a fresh style approach for our Multiplayer Modes on Infinite by combining Halo melodies with the post rock genre. We're very pleased to hear that our community loves this new approach, and we can't wait for you to hear even more (yes, there is a lot more) of what is in store for both Campaign and Multiplayer Modes.
IN-GAME AUDIO
- Positive: Weapons sounded powerful and really added to the experience
- Feedback: Players wanted the Needler's audio to sound more "crystalized"
- Feedback: Granular controls of each in-game voice (Personal AI, Spartan Chatter, Multiplayer Announcer)
AUDIO TEAM RESPONSE
The Audio Team has spent a lot of time to deliver impactful gun sounds in a clear soundscape to make the combat experience more fun and immersive, so we're very excited to find many words like "impactful," "satisfying," or "crisp." We also brought back some of the classic Halo sounds such as Shield recharge and Plasma Pistol Charge, and we're glad that many players enjoyed it.
On the other hand, we did see some players pointing out that a couple of the weapons feel like they are too far from the legacy sounds. Some players wanted more of a "crystallized" and "glassy" feel on the Needler for example. Thank you for the honest and constructive feedback, we are continuing to iterate on the sound design for the Needler and Plasma Pistol (Primary Fire) along with enhancing the Gravity Hammer sound now. We're preparing to deliver "in-progress version" of these new sounds for next public flight, so we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these updates in the next round.
Players also expressed interest in having more granular controls for what sounds they hear in-game, especially when it comes to the various in-game voices. We won't get that granularity until after launch, but we and the Multiplayer Team agree with exposing this option to the player. They'll have a little more to say about this in their section below as well.
Needler render courtesy of the upcoming Halo Encyclopedia [Click here to get the image in 4K]
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LIVE
BATTLE PASS & CHALLENGES
- Positive: Players are still enjoying the idea of a permanent Battle Pass
- Feedback: Are Challenges the only way to progress?
- Feedback: Double XP Boost timer counting down while in menus
LIVE TEAM RESPONSE
During the Tech Preview we wanted to test the functionality of our Battle Pass, which leverages our Challenge system’s services. This Battle Pass was not a full Season Battle Pass but rather a much smaller one designed specifically for this flight. From a technical perspective, we discovered that there was a misconfiguration in our Challenge offering, which eventually prevented new Challenges from popping up to players after they completed others. This was not intended and should be addressed before the next flight.
From a player feedback perspective, we heard the requests to earn XP per-match outside of Challenges as well as to have XP Boost timers only count down while in a match. One of the items that wasn’t fully there in the Tech Preview was our Daily Challenge model that provides Challenges along the lines of “Play X Number of Games” that will repeat throughout the day. These Challenges are replaced after completion and provide a regular XP drop for your Battle Pass just for playing matches and having fun during your sessions with Halo Infinite. The Weekly Challenges are where you will see your more specific challenges that you might recognize from other games; for example, “Get 10 kills with a Battle Rifle.” There is significantly greater depth with the Weekly Challenges than you saw in the Tech Preview that we will go through in the future.
As for the XP boost timers counting down while out of a match, we will be looking at improving this experience post launch.
Progression is an area that we will continue to improve and grow over time, and we’ll have even more to share here later this month.
MULTIPLAYER
BOTS & BOT ARENA
- Positive: Bots were intelligent, fun, and challenging
- Positive: Bot Arena is a safe environment to learn. Very helpful for learning the layout and flow of maps
- Feedback: Bots were too accurate when shooting weapons and throwing grenades
- Feedback: Bots all went the same way to start, could get confused while moving on the map, and didn't use equipment enough
- Feedback: Spartan Bots weren't much better than ODST Bots and players wanted them to be difficult
MULTIPLAYER TEAM RESPONSE
The reception to Bots was amazing and almost overwhelming. We were so happy to see our bot combatants land so well with the community, but we recognize there are elements we can make even better.
We'll be toning back those perfectly placed grenade bounces at lower difficulty levels because they were more accurate than we'd like. We're also looking into tweaking the gunfire accuracy a little bit, but not too far to avoid making Bots too easy (especially when a fourth, less challenging "Recruit" difficulty already exists, but wasn't in the Tech Preview).
Players also noted that Bot behavior was not always in line with their expectations in a couple of areas. A common issue people were running into were the initial routes bots were taking off of spawn. While this led to some amazing clips of the bot teams getting wiped early, this was something we knew about going into the flight and we already have some extra logic in the works to help break them up a bit more and perform more like a squad of players would.
We also heard feedback of players wishing the Bots were more effective with equipment. This will be an ongoing area of improvements for them. Replicating all the bonkers behaviors players are capable of pulling off with the equipment is a nearly impossible but we'll continue improving how they replicate player actions with the tools in the sandbox.
Another note was that Bots could get "confused" and stop moving mid-combat. These bugs happen for a wide variety of reasons and is something we are continuing to improve as we push to release. We've resolved a lot of the big ones and will continue to iron out other issues with their movement as they arise. They'll only get better over time!
Lastly, we've heard the desire to have Bots that are even more difficult than our Spartan Bots. There were definitely some tuning off with Spartan Bots that made them underperform, but they are still meant to be training partners – not esports pros. While teaching players is our primary goal of Bots, it would be fair to say in the future we want some bots that are maybe less sparing partners and more fight night contenders.
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WEAPON DRILLS
- Positive: Provided a great environment for learning weapons
- Positive: Players had fun and enjoyed sharing their Weapon Drill scores
- Feedback: Desire to teach alt-fire modes more clearly
- Feedback: Some wanted a way swap between Weapon Drills more easily
- Feedback: Some players wanted untimed Weapon Drills
- Feedback: Many Players wanted Equipment and Movement Drills
MULTIPLAYER TEAM RESPONSE
Weapon Drills, similar to Bots, were a new addition to the multiplayer experience for this game. It was cool to see the community engaging with the feature; learning the toys and pushing their skills.
Improved teaching about alt-fire modes? Yup, we agree. We are going to be doing a pass on the information in the quick tips to better explain the elements of the different weapons in each drill. Post-launch we are already investigating options to better explain the nuances of each weapon in the drills.
Swapping between different weapons is something we plan on working with our UXUI team post launch to find ways to reduce friction there. There's also another Academy feature called Training Mode that will be in our next flight that will let players quickly swap their loadouts (via in-game menu) that will provide another avenue for players to be able to experiment with weapons (and more) while fighting bots in maps.
Untimed Weapon Drills? Yep, already slated in our post-release list.
Drills for Equipment & Movement? Post-launch we are plotting various drills for a lot of other mechanics such as grenades, melee weapons, equipment, and vehicles. Basically, we want drills to let players test everything in the sandbox.
It's reassuring to hear the community enjoyed Weapon Drills so much that they wanted more of just about every aspect of them. Rest assured, we'll continue to deliver that "more" here during the lifetime of the game.
COMBAT SENSOR (RADAR)
- Feedback: Some liked the Combat Sensor, though most found it confusing
- Feedback: Some wanted height indicators as well
MULTIPLAYER TEAM RESPONSE
The Combat Sensor, or radar, that sits in the bottom left of your HUD followed a different set of rules than previous Halo titles. It only displayed enemies when they were sprinting or shooting, which was more in line with Halo 5's "Threat Tracker." We knew that this implementation was going to feel different, maybe even a little contentious, and that's why we wanted to get feedback on it as soon as possible in the Tech Preview.
While some appreciated the new approach, we found that most players missed the old properties in these social matches. We've updated the Combat Sensor to feel more like the "Motion Tracker" of old, which shows all movement besides crouch-walking, and should have that ready for folks to test in the next flight. Be sure to keep an eye on it and let us know how it plays!
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![[Click here to get the image in 4K]](https://content.halocdn.com/media/Default/BlogPost/InsideInfinite-July2021/4k_haloinfinite_fretspartan_01_watermarked-8e6a8b71ce5c458b97e8b73057e167eb.png){kind=link}
PERSONAL AI
- Positive: People loved having their own Personal AI for the first time
- Positive: People loved customizing their Personal AI
- Feedback: Desire for more customization options (separate voice from body, more shapes, more voices, more colors)
- Feedback: Desire to preview a Personal AI's voice and personality in the lobby
- Feedback: Desire to increase the variety of their lines
- Feedback: Desire to control how much the Personal AI talks (including turn them off)
MULTIPLAYER TEAM RESPONSE
When the Tech Preview launched and everyone started sharing their Personal AI, it was a blast to see which one everyone picked. We love them all and it was great to see the different personalities resonating with each of you.
As the flight progressed throughout the weekend though, we started to see themes and feedback emerge about their current implementation. Luckily, most of the feedback centered on a desire to have more control and customization of the Personal AI experience.
In terms of more customization, we're looking to support different models for the Personal AI as well as different customization options to make them more personalized from the core shapes such as hats, props, etc. We also plan to continue to expand the roster of AI over time and have a few in for launch that the world hasn't seen yet.
We agree that previewing a Personal AI's voice and personality before you take them on the battlefield just makes sense. Fortunately, we've already been working on this, and it should be in our next flighting build so be sure to test it out in the lobby beforehand!
There was also feedback around the same lines popping up repeatedly, and we agree. After the Tech Preview, we looked at the frequency of Personal AI lines (as well as Spartan Chatter lines like "Over Yonder!") and have already made adjustments to reduce how often they are repeated. This work should be reflected in the next flight. We're also interested in adding additional line variants for each AI post-launch to keep their lines from becoming too repetitive.
Lastly, players expressed an interest in controlling how often their Personal AI spoke and what kind of information they spoke about. This isn't something we'd be able to do for launch, but we'd like to give more control to players over the frequency of flavor lines as well as increase/decrease informational lines, such as weapon pickup lines. This has a lot of benefit for players wanting more to help make the game more accessible to them or even to just turn different types of feedback off all up.
MEDALS
- Positive: New medal events such as Ninja, 360, and Bank Shot were loved
- Positive: Players loved that certain medals get called out in the event feed
- Feedback: Many players were worried about the size, placement, and art style of the medals
MULTIPLAYER & UXUI TEAM RESPONSE
We were glad to hear that the Medal events, especially the ones that get called out in the event feed, were received so well. However, we can't talk about Medals and not acknowledge the feedback and chatter about the overall appearance of them in the game. A lot of the focus was the size, placement, and overall art style. We agree that there is more work to be done here and we'll be going after what we can before launch.
We are also doing a revision now that preserves our difficulty tiering (colors) and iconography, but nudges the visual treatment towards a more classic Halo skeuomorphic Medal design. You may not see these new "metal-fied" Medals in the next flight, but we're pushing to get them in for launch.
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SANDBOX
FRIEND OR FOE RECOGNITION (PLAYER OUTLINES)
- Pro: Accessibility and customization options
- Feedback: Impacted shield (and Overshield) readability
- Feedback: Desire for more options, including the ability to turn them off
- Feedback: Desire to have an opponent's gamertag appear above their head
SANDBOX TEAM RESPONSE
Going into the Tech Preview we really wanted to get feedback on our Friend or Foe (IFF) system, so we were happy to hear everyone's thoughts online and in our surveys. Considering this was one of our larger changes in the game, we were delighted to hear that the increased accessibility and player expression landed as well as it did. It wasn't perfect though, and we know it.
We've already made significant FX changes to better communicate the health of a target. You should always know if you're fighting a player who has an Overshield, full shields, weakened shields, or broken shields. You'll be able to see these improvements in our next flight.
As for more options, such as turning outlines off entirely, we'll need to explore how realistic this is given our timelines for launch. We're always in favor of providing more options to our players, but it's very likely we won't be able to provide this until after launch.
A common note was to have player's Gamertag's appear above their head when looking at them. We completely agree and can confirm that names weren't showing up due to a bug. A few of you noticed that we had an option to display Gamertag or Service Tag in game, but it just wasn't working in this build. This fix may or may not make it into our next flight, but it will be in for launch.
AIMING
- Feedback: Performance impacting aim
- Feedback: Some felt the default sensitivity was too low
- Feedback: Desire for Axial deadzone controls
- Note: Confusion around zoom/smart scope
SANDBOX TEAM RESPONSE
Aiming, similar to IFF, was another area we really wanted to dive into with the Tech Preview. While we know performance in this build wasn't great and impacted aiming, we still received tons of valuable input from all you. The data and feedback from the Tech Preview has directly informed decisions and improvements we've made to aiming.
First, we've increased the default sensitivities for both M&K and controller players, including while zoomed in on weapons with 5x scopes and above. Second, we have since exposed Axial Deadzones controls in the settings. You should see these improvements, as well as performance increases, in the next flight.
A last note here was that there was confusion around the zoom function on weapons without scopes. Many of you were curious if it changed a weapon's aiming traits or increased its effectiveness at range, similar to Halo 5's Smart Scope. That is not the case for unscoped weapons in Halo Infinite. Similar to many previous Halo titles, scoped weapons will have benefits due to their scopes but unscoped weapons will perform the same regardless of its zoom state. Players will see a decrease in FOV, but no there is no underlying change to these weapons when zoomed in.
WEAPONS
- Positive: Overall weapon balance felt great
- Positive: Ability to drop weapons is appreciated
- Feedback: S7 Sniper & Skewer were difficult to use
- Split Feedback: Hammer feels too strong but also too slow
SANDBOX TEAM RESPONSE
The positive reception of the overall weapon balance was great to see. We will continue to tune the weapons throughout the lifetime of the game and this work is never really "done." We were also happy to see so many of you enjoyed having the ability to drop/toss a weapon to a teammate without needing to find a weapon to swap out for first.
The two weapons we saw the most chatter about were the S7 Sniper and Skewer, with a focus on how difficult it was to aim while scoped in. The performance and aiming improvements mentioned above should help here, but we'll also be tuning some of the aiming on the S7 Sniper for this next flight and look forward to hearing your feedback on it.
Lastly, we saw the Gravity Hammer get a lot of attention on Recharge. Some players enjoyed that it had its own unique role in the sandbox and "wasn't just another Sword," but others felt the change made it too slow. Overall, the feedback for this weapon was split down the middle between it being too effective and not effective enough. As a result, we don't plan on making any major changes, but we'll continue to monitor it.
MOVEMENT
- Positive: Sprint's balance was positively received
- Split Feedback: Players wanted it to feel smoother movement, and less warping
- Note: Screenshake was too much, even when turned off in settings
SANDBOX TEAM RESPONSE
Movement, with Sprint in particular, has been a hot topic in Halo for quite some time now. In Halo Infinite we took a different approach to balancing it. We're happy that the current speed and balance is playing well, but rest assured we'll always be keeping a close eye on movement.
While we did see some players say the movement was smooth, there were also some players that noted that it felt clunky. We've seen this feedback come in due to the movement itself or as a result of warping during online matches. We're constantly improving our network model to reduce warping, and we'll continue to monitor this feedback as that work continues.
And, for the players who noticed that screenshake was present even after setting it to "0," don't worry – that was a bug. It should be smooth sailing in the next flighting build.
EQUIPMENT
- Positive: Grappleshot was loved by all
- Feedback: Drop Wall felt too slow and too weak
SANDBOX TEAM RESPONSE
We're thrilled to hear players are enjoying our take on equipment in Halo Infinite so far. We saw incredible Grappleshot plays during the Tech Preview weekend and we can't wait to see what you're able to pull off in the next one.
One consistent piece of feedback we saw around equipment was that many players felt the Drop Wall wasn't effective enough given its current tuning. The intent behind this delay was to make it a piece of equipment that we use proactively when preparing for engagements, rather than reactive once a fight has already broken out. We also didn't want to make it too durable, causing players to always win when they used a Drop Wall in a fight. It's meant to cause a slight "wrinkle" in the fight, not manufacture a full stop in the combat loop.
That said, we have reduced the Drop Wall's deployment time. We're taking a closer look at the durability, but want to assess how the faster deployment impacts gameplay before committing to increasing the health of its panels just yet. This update should be reflected in the next flight, so please keep an eye out for it and let us know what you think.
[Click here to get the image in 4K]
![[Click here to get the image in 4K]](https://content.halocdn.com/media/Default/community/blogs/hi_equipment_drop_wall_concept_art_4k-766df5ddfd50464580cab2d8261a1826.png){kind=link}
UXUI
HUD
- Positive: HUD clean/streamline approach was appreciated
- Feedback: Some felt the weapon cradle was small
- Feedback: Inability to see second grenade type
- Feedback: Some would like HUD customization options
UXUI TEAM RESPONSE
Feedback around the HUD was interesting to read. Some players loved the new streamlined look, some wanted a more classic design, but most seemed not to mind as long as it was doing its job.
We agree that the weapon cradle in the bottom right of your screen did seem a little small. We will be exploring improvements to help make sure it is more legible at a glance post-launch.
There was also good feedback about not being able to see your secondary grenade type. The team agrees that this information is extremely valuable, especially in the heat of battle. This UI change will land in a future update.
Anytime we change things in Halo, there are always some players who want the option to keep things the way they used to be. The HUD is no different. This feedback was expected, we saw tons of fan mock-ups, and we agree with providing more HUD customization options down the road. It's not something we can pursue for launch, but it is something we're interested in continuing to evolve over the lifetime of the game.
MENUS
- Positive: Overall presentation received positive feedback
- Feedback: Scrolling in customization
- Feedback: Customization items were difficult to equip
UXUI TEAM RESPONSE
It was great to see people sharing pictures of their Spartans hanging out by the Pelican while waiting in the lobby. It was also good to see players navigating the entire game, without limitation, while searching for matches.
That said, we did notice that there was plenty of feedback around the Customization menu in particular. We saw a desire to have vertical navigation or a grid layout similar to Halo 5 instead of horizontal scrolling. We also had many players call out that the flow to ‘equip' customization elements was not as smooth as they would have liked.
There were some bugs impacting these menus, such as "equip" not always equipping items, but we recognize there's room for improvement in the overall Customization presentation. While the current layout will be what you see at launch, it will continuously evolve with each season.
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Thank you again to everyone who participated and took time to share feedback during Halo Infinite's first Multiplayer Technical Preview!
Partnering with Halo Insiders to playtest and gather feedback is a critical part of our development process that began in the early days of the Master Chief Collection updates and will continue even beyond the launch of Halo Infinite. For more insights into Halo Infinite flighting and Multiplayer, be sure to check out our Inside Infinite blog series.
If you want to join us for our next Halo Infinite flight, which will feature 4v4 Arena and Big Team Battle, be sure to register for the Halo Insider program! And, if you're already registered, it never hurts to quickly double check your profile to ensure everything is complete and verified – remember you can update your preferences and/or opt-out out any time.
As a reminder, Halo Infinite multiplayer is free to play on Xbox and PC and we just opened up pre-orders for our most expansive Campaign yet. You can play them both later this year when they launch on December 8, 2021.
Thanks for reading and we hope to see you in our next multiplayer preview!
Inside Infinite – August 2021
This month you’re joining us fresh off the heels of Gamescom, where we had the opportunity to reveal our launch date of December 8, 2021, along with the Xbox Series X – Halo Infinite Limited Edition Bundle, the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – Halo Infinite Limited Edition, and of course - our Multiplayer Season 1 Cinematic Intro, where you'll meet Spartan Commander Agryna:
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This time around we’ve got a lot to cover, thanks to the Multiplayer and Bots Teams. But, we’d be remiss if we didn’t kick off the blog with a quick word on the most recent Technical Preview, directly from the folks you heard talk to it on the stream.
If this is your first time checking out an Inside Infinite, we’re glad to have you! And, when you get the time, we’d highly recommend checking out our previous editions, to hear directly from the teams building the next chapter of Halo:
- December 2020 – Art, Graphics, and Live
- January 2021 – Sandbox
- February 2021 – Campaign
- March 2021 – Audio
- April 2021 – PC
- June 2021 – Live and Waypoint vNext
- July 2021 – Flighting
Now, it’s time to dive on in. First up, we’ll hear from the folks that introduced you to the Tech Preview during our overview stream, then the Multiplayer Team chats with us in-depth for their goals when designing Halo Infinite, and after that you’ll hear from the Bots Team to learn all about their process, and why their creations can throw grenades so well.
Now, without further ado...
TECH PREVIEW REVIEW
A scant few weeks back, from Thursday July 29th to August 2nd, Halo Insiders jumped onto the very first publicly available servers for Halo Infinite as a part of the Technical Preview – a chance for us to kick the tires of our backend systems, and a chance for you to put Halo Infinite through its paces. To preface the entire event, we ran a live stream that provided all the finer details of what was in the build, showed you some live gameplay across Xbox One and Xbox Series X – and, of course, a chance to hear from some of the folks that are working on the game itself. For those that missed the full stream, it can be viewed right here:
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You all took the assignment very seriously and piled in to help us out, by slaying as many Bots as you possibly could. For those that are hungry for an after-action report, here’s a look back at the carnage:
A quick rundown of the carnage from the Halo Infinite Tech Preview. [To download the above image in full res, click here.]
Sam Hanshaw, Jerry Hook, and Tom French all sat down with us on-stream to talk through some of what they were most excited for during the Tech Preview – speaking to flighting, overall design, and multiplayer respectively. We were able revisit them here on the tail end of the preview, to hear a bit more about what excited them the most, what caught them off-guard, and any other tidbits that they were interested in circling back on:
With this being the first public flight for Halo Infinite, how did it go from your perspective as a Producer for the Live Team? What caught you off guard or surprised you?
Sam Hanshaw, Live Team Producer: Maybe an unpopular answer but the biggest successes for me were the problems we hit while delivering this flight. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who experienced problems during the flight and stuck with it, with special appreciation for the folks who submitted support tickets to highlight bugs they found
I know a lot of people had problems connecting to matches, and we were surprised that some people couldn’t play matches at all. But that’s why we flight, y’all out there who joined us brought so many new hardware configurations to our testing, new network conditions, and of course the simple scale of testing that we needed. The biggest things we worry about aren’t the things that happen to 5% of players, we can usually find and address those issues. The worst are the ones that happen to one player in one thousand. So that’s why we invited hundreds of thousands of you to play, and I’m thrilled that you showed up and helped us find those one in one thousand bugs.
From your perspective as Head of Design and someone working closely with the Live and Customization Teams, what’s your take on our first Tech Preview? How’d it go, and were there any particular surprises or unexpected outcomes?
Jerry Hook, Head of Design: It was great to hear and see the excitement over our first taste of customization content being shown in the Technical Preview. The love for our prosthetics, the investments for players to customize their Spartan’s look, and our new Personal AI systems seem to have landed very positively with our players. It is always great to hear a call for more at this early stage of the game, even before we release. Also, I saw lots of love for being able to earn items outside the Battle Pass, since earned gear is not just focused on one track or activity. We did have some issues however with our challenge system in the Tech Preview, so I want to make sure to clarify some of those details:
- First off, I want to correct my own language when discussing the Battle Pass all-up. In our live stream I stated that the Battle Pass system will always have free and paid rewards available at each tier, this statement is incorrect for our launch Battle Pass. Our goal is to still provide great value to players for their time spent playing Halo, whether they choose to go the premium route by purchasing the Battle Pass, or by unlocking the incremental Battle Pass items that are available for free. So, while there isn't a free reward at every tier, there will be numerous free rewards to acquire across the entirety of a season's Battle Pass. (And yes, we are still allowing you keep your Battle Passes once the season is over – they will not expire.)
- Our challenge system had some issues in the preview that hit a few players and prevented forward progress on their Battle Pass. Our first issue was that we failed to cull the challenge decks of challenges that could not be completed with Bot-only matches. This caused players to get blocked behind these challenges and is not our intent for launch.
- We also missed some tuning for our daily challenges that caused them to not to refresh. This also caused players to get blocked as they would run out of daily challenges.
- Lastly, we just wanted everyone to remember that for the Technical Preview we had expedited XP earn rates to help players get through the pass in the short window for the preview.
Having now seen a huge pool of players dive in and kick the tires of the Tech Preview, what are your thoughts as the Multiplayer Associate Creative Director? Did anything happen that surprised you? Anything that hasn’t happened within the walls of a 343 playtest lab?
Tom French, Multiplayer Associate Creative Director: I definitely saw players do some crazy things with the Equipment (particularly the Grappleshot) that I’d yet to see in our playtests! It’s one of the joys about building a game where the core is so centered around a sandbox that empowers a lot of player creativity like ours. I think giving players first “hands-on-stick” time against Bots reduced some of the pressure of fighting players in Arena and let everyone experiment with the inputs a lot. Our Sandbox Team has done an amazing job building a suite of mechanics that lets players express themselves and our job as the Multiplayer Team is to build modes, maps, and systems that facilitate ways of drawing players together to create interesting conflicts. It’s going to be fascinating to see all the ways people will use all the toys we give them to play with at launch and see what they do when we introduce new ones into the mix to change things up over the life of Infinite!
Thank you, Sam, Tom, and Jerry for jumping back in to chat with us one more time! And to those of you that want to make sure you’re on board next time we’re prepare to flight – ensure that your Halo Insider profile fully filled out, you’re opted in to communications, and that you have your DxDiag uploaded (if you’re on PC). Then, we’ll reach out once we’ve got something new on the way.
BETTER TOGETHER
Now that you’ve had a chance to see (and for some of you, to play) an early look at Halo Infinite’s multiplayer, it’s time to hear a bit more from the team building the backbone behind every experience in Halo Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer experience. Back during our multiplayer reveal we chatted with a few of these folks in the Halo Infinite Multiplayer Overview, but now seems like a fitting time to circle back and chat with them once more.
A Spartan with the VK78 Commando. [To download the above image in full res, click here.]
Hello there, Multiplayer Team! Who are you and what do you do here at 343 Industries?
Tom French, Multiplayer Associate Creative Director: Yo! I’m Tom French. I’m responsible for overseeing our Multiplayer Design Team and shepherding the Multiplayer vision of Halo Infinite.
Andrew Witts, Lead Multiplayer Designer: Hey, everyone! My name is Andrew Witts and I am the Lead Multiplayer Designer on Halo Infinite. My team and I work on things like Game Modes and systems such as Personal AI, the Mark System, Item Spawners, Medals, and more!
Cayle George, Lead Multiplayer Level Designer: My name is Cayle George and I wrangle all things maps for Multiplayer. Our talented Level Designers and I are responsible for creating all the exciting levels and combat arenas in Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer experience.
Alex Bean, Multiplayer Designer: Hey all, my name is Alex Bean. I’m a Multiplayer Designer working on features including Personal AI, Item Spawners, Death Cam/Spectate, Match Flow, the Mark System, and Medals. I also had a hand in designing a few maps.
Patrick Wren, Senior Multiplayer Designer: Hello everyone! My name is Patrick Wren and I am a Senior Multiplayer Designer working on the voice-over systems and partnering with Alex on Personal AI. I have also been designing in-map systems like the Pelican Delivery System.
David Ellis, Senior Multiplayer Designer: Hi everyone! I’m David Ellis, and I am a Senior Multiplayer Designer on Halo Infinite. I’m focused on helping delivery the Academy suite of features which includes our Tutorial, Weapon Drills and Training Mode.
Sara Stern, Multiplayer Bots Designer: I’m Sara Stern and I’m a Multiplayer Designer working on Halo Infinite. I’m primarily focused on developing the multiplayer Bots, although I’ve also worked on the Tutorial for the Academy.
When approaching Halo Infinite’s multiplayer, what were some of your most crucial design pillars?
Tom French: There were three Multiplayer wide pillars we established early in development that still hold really true to what we are today:
- The Player Spartan is Halo Canon – We want players to feel invested in their Spartans and part of that is making them be part of the bigger Halo universe. This led to the world wanting to feel more grounded to reduce “game-y-ness” without compromising gameplay.
- Extensibility at the Core – Modes, systems, and everything we built for Infinite to be modular and expandable over the lifespan of the game. This enables us to recontextualize parts of one game mode quickly to stand-up new mode prototypes for future Seasons. The long-term benefit is this also helps us extend this beyond our internal team and into our community development tools by exposing these various components through Forge and Custom Games settings to empower the community to build more content that feels more “real” alongside things built by our team at 343.
- Always Onboarding – Playing online is intimidating for many and difficult to master. It was important for us to develop an evergreen onramp of features into online play that we refer to the Academy. Starting with the Tutorial, players start their journey; joining the ranks as a Halo Spartan to learn the basic mechanics. Through additional features like Weapon Drills, Training Mode, and the Players vs. Bot playlist, players always have fun and “safe” ways to practice and explore Infinite before they’re ready to jump in boot-first into matchmaking.
The design pillars for Arena are:
- Fair Starts – Players start the match as equals with balanced gameplay mechanics.
- The Lone Wolf Survives but the Pack Thrives – Players can achieve individually through skill expression, but the team with better coordination, communication, and reactivity will seize the most victories.
- Mastery = Mechanical Depth + Tactical Decision-making – A match with two teams of equal skill should be determined by the team’s tactical decision making as the game mode’s state is altered by player action.
- Game Mode Clarity – The modes in Halo Infinite’s Arena communicate their game states efficiently and urgently to bolster the tactical decision-making required for a player’s path to mastery over the Arena experience.
- Power is Earned and Impermanent – Scavenging pushes teams to contest the acquisition of items within the Halo sandbox. Any item that can be earned can also be taken away through combat resolution, positioning, and tactical actions.
An exterior view of Live Fire, a map for Halo Infinite. [To download the above image in full res, click here.]
It’s been a few weeks since the Halo Infinite Tech Preview closed its proverbial doors. What’s been on your plate since that weekend of testing concluded?
Tom French: There hasn’t really been any time to stop, we’re always thinking about the next target ahead of us on the road to launching Infinite. The next big thing is getting our upcoming preview dialed in and buttoned up for players to dig into; grinding down all the little details we can to make sure the game delivers on the gameplay we’ve been working on all this time. It’s equal parts exciting, terrifying, and exhausting all at once!
Andrew Witts: I’ve mainly been going through all the data that we’ve received from all our feedback channels. The team has been spending a lot of time celebrating the positive ‘heartbeats’ on some features and coming up with solutions to some of the improvement areas we’ve identified based on player feedback.
Since then, the world has really had a chance to sink its teeth into every single frame of the gameplay they’ve come across. Did the community pick up on anything that surprised you?
Andrew Witts: I’m surprised at how fast the community found all the Halo references we put into the experience so far. (There’s more!) I also really enjoyed the players’ reactions to the more flavorful lines from the Personal AI that play when players do something particularly awesome.
Patrick Wren: I was really surprised by how evenly distributed each Personal AI was a favorite to someone. While I enjoy them all for different reasons, I had no idea how much each one would resonate, but it was great to see them all get love.
Alex Bean: I had a blast watching the community happen upon new Medals. We put a lot of work into a suite of Medals that would complement the game’s sandbox by telling the player, “Yes, you just did that!” It was great to see players discovering Medals that highlighted new mechanics (“Off the Rack”, “Deadly Catch”) as well as classic maneuvers (“Ninja”, “360”).
With the Spartan Academy and Bots being core features of Halo Infinite, how does that play into your multiplayer design philosophy? Does this open up any new opportunities?
David Ellis: From day one a core axiom we’ve used for the Academy was to “Give players a safe space to learn how to Halo.” After 20 years there’s a lot of institutional knowledge in the franchise that, for more experienced players, is second nature and doesn’t require a second thought. We’re focused on ensuring all the modes, tools, etc., we create will allow any players – regardless of experience – to hone their Halo skills. We were gratified to see the community response to the slice of Weapon Drills in the recent Tech Preview and can’t wait till players get the opportunity to explore more facets of the Academy in the future.
Sara Stern: We don’t see playing against Bots as a separate experience from multiplayer, but rather a tool we can use to allow more people to have fun playing the game. We spent a lot of time working on making the Bot experience feel like playing against players, so that the skills you practice against Bots are skills you can use in regular matchmaking. Sometimes you also just want a little more control over how your multiplayer experience goes: if you’re new and trying to get the basics down, or an experienced player who had a long day and doesn’t want to fully lean forward, Bots are there to give you more options for how you play multiplayer.
Tom French: Bots originally started with the desire to give players something “safe” to learn against and backfill players in matches. They’re a core component to our Academy feature suite to support an “evergreen” way to onboard players into our gameplay. The Academy and playing our game modes is really just the beginning of what will be possible with them. Their presence affords us new tools to explore new game modes and UGC experiences not possible in previous Halo games.
When creating a cross-platform experience like Halo Infinite’s multiplayer, what are some of the biggest design considerations/design challenges? Or, balance challenges?
Andrew Witts: Being cross-platform is super exciting for us in general. A particular challenge that we faced on the MP Team was around readability for new players in general. We looked at a lot of legacy designs and we tried to both modernize them as well as make them more accessible to new players without losing too much of their feel. An example of this is in our game mode design. For modes, we tried to add an additional level of clarity about what players should do off the rip with Personal AI “kick-off” lines that describe the mode in a concise manner. We’ve also added mode-specific scoreboards to many of our game modes in order to better explain game mode states to newcomers. This is the first time Halo has made completely unique scoreboards for modes and we’re excited to get some feedback on how they are functioning for our players when they see them in upcoming flights.
The MA40 Assault Rifle from Halo Infinite. [To download the above image in full res, click here.]
Expanding on the tried-and-true Halo experience seems like a mighty challenge to overcome. When looking at things like Personal AI, how do you add extra things into the margins without encroaching on the existing multiplayer formula?
Alex Bean: We looked for opportunities to take existing features and give them a big “Halo” coat of paint. An example of this is with Personal AI. Halo 5 had a voice in your head that talked about incoming Power Weapons and players have always captured zones in modes like Strongholds by standing in them. But this is Halo, and you’re a Spartan! Instead, a Personal AI is now delivering that information and “hacking” zones, giving players their own Master Chief/Cortana dynamic within multiplayer. Another example is our approach to the camera in MP. Now at match start or when you die, the camera transitions to and from your helmet instead of simply cutting, just as it does in the Halo Infinite campaign. And when you spectate a teammate driving a Warthog, you’ll see the camera mounted to the vehicle much like a cutscene from Halo: Reach.
We also wanted to take mechanics that were hidden knowledge or skills and surface them to the greater player base. Inspired by the dynamic weapon racks featured in the original Halo 2 teaser (and later in the game’s opening mission), all items (weapons, grenades, etc.) now spawn from physical objects in the world, marking the location of the spawn and informing players of their remaining respawn time. Instead of only being able to call out “3 enemies, Top Mid” via voice chat, players can now Mark those enemies and communicate the same information.
Patrick Wren: When looking to expand the Halo experience, I look at how things can really punctuate what is already there. Like Alex said, the Personal AI was the desire to get that buddy informational experience that you get with Cortana in the Campaign. When talking about what that would look like and where the current state of the story is, the “Dumb AI” made a lot of sense to be the way to mass produce with Spartans and not be influenced by Cortana. It was important for us to give players a variety to choose from to dial in their Halo experience.
Player feedback is a critical element of our process – and, during the Tech Preview we had a solid amount of it. What are some of the bigger items the Multiplayer Team is working on now as a result of that?
Andrew Witts: One area of focus for me lately has been on analyzing player sentiment around what we’ve been calling the “Combat Sensor” or as everyone has been calling it, “Radar”. We knew that the implementation we had for the Tech Preview was going to feel different, maybe even a little contentious, which is why we wanted to get feedback on it as soon as possible. We’ve heard all the feedback and we have a new iteration that will be in the next preview which will be more in-line with players’ expectations.
Alex Bean: There was a healthy mixture of known bugs going into the flight and new surprises – the Match Intro camera operator had many 1,000 lbs. Spartans tumble in their direction. We’re actively trying to polish up those Match Flow issues. And while our Medal animations weren’t playing correctly in the Tech Preview, sentiment on Medal visuals has been heard and our UI team is investigating addressing some of that feedback. Lastly, it was helpful to see what resonated most with our players to inform areas of growth as we look beyond launch.
Patrick Wren: The feedback on the VO systems was greatly appreciated. You try and tune as much as you can in development, but there is nothing like seeing it in the wild to get the clear picture.
The biggest pain point we saw were some lines and events repeating more than expected for both Spartans and Personal AI. Spartans in particular really wanted to make sure you looked “Over Yonder.” We identified the biggest pain points and added a buffer so that the same events aren’t commented on over and over.
For Personal AI, the biggest request we saw was the ability to preview their voices. Good news, we have already had that for a bit and is primed and ready to go the next time you all get your hands on the game.
David Ellis: For Weapons Drills we’ve already added and adjusted a few items which should improve the experience for everyone. We heard you loud and clear (cough… Bulldog 3) and tweaked target ranges in a few drills so they don’t tread outside the intended range for too long. We also saw some opportunities to improve readability with targets and introduce new target behaviors so be on the lookout for those in the future.
Sara Stern: We identified a number of Bot behaviors we wanted to improve coming out of the Technical Preview, but two areas of focus for us have been rebalancing our difficulty tuning and improving how well Bots prioritize contesting powerful weapons on map. The difference between Spartan and ODST Bots should feel like a significant increase in difficulty, which wasn’t a target we hit in the Technical Preview build. They also ran in a pack to all try and get the same weapon at once – we're exploring solutions for getting them to spread out and search for weapon pickups without competing with one another.
What are some of your favorite parts of Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer? Anything that’s caught you off guard, personally?
Tom French: I love how the game feels classic and modern at the same time. In a way it’s the fantasy of what you remember playing back in the day. You pick up the controller and the gameplay feels like getting to know an old friend again; they’ve changed and grown but the core of who they are is still there. The gameplay is very much indexing on classic Halo tropes of fair starts and map control, but with new twists and enhancements to make it feel more modern. You can Scan to find weapon locations, you can Mark enemies, weapons, etc., for teammates, and the world of the Player Spartan feels more cohesive in the larger Halo universe.
Andrew Witts: I have a lot of favorite things in Halo MP! I think what I’m most happy with is how everything feels authentically Halo. We spent a lot of time trying to really hone our features to meet player expectations not just in terms of their output gameplay-wise but also fantasy-wise. Everything must own up to the razor of “Is this Halo enough?” Using this razor helped us not only differentiate what makes Halo MP different from other free to play games but also own up to what our existing player-base expects from us.
David Ellis: I would regret it if I didn’t take this opportunity to give a shout out to the team responsible for bringing our vehicles to life in Halo Infinite. Nothing is more quintessentially Halo to me, than battling across of map when a buddy skids to a stop alongside and honks their horn for you to jump into their Warthog. There’s no way to predict the outcome in most Halo skirmishes, but if you’re in a Warthog there’s a very good chance cheers and/or laughter will ensue.
Patrick Wren: I love how we built our systems so we can really fine-tune and expand each experience. We can have a very tightly tuned competitive experience and have a much more dynamic experience in BTB. It makes me excited for the future and what the community does with these systems in Custom Games.
A Spartan goes into battle with the MA40 in Live Fire, a map for Halo Infinite. [To download the above image in full res, click here.]
Alex Bean: I’m surprised how good it feels to move and shoot in the game. The Sandbox Team made some great enhancements to how smooth and responsive the controls feel while preserving a Halo feel. And the weapons are a ton of fun – all my favorites are brand new for Infinite. Getting a “Perfect” with the VK78 Commando or nailing the “one, two, DEAD” firing cadence of the Mangler is immensely satisfying.
Thank you so much to the Multiplayer Team for taking some time to sit with us and talk through everything from design pillars, to what you enjoyed most from the Tech Preview! If you’re reading all of this and wish you could get in on the fun – worry not, it’s not too late! Sign-up to be a Halo Insider today, get your profile fully filled out, and if you’re on PC make sure you’ve got your DxDiag uploaded.
Up next, we get to hang out with Sara a bit more – along with a few more of her teammates over on the Bots Team, who recently had their hard work go head-to-head with Halo Insiders over the course of the Tech Preview weekend.
BOT WATCH
During our recent Tech Preview for Halo Infinite, the Bots took center stage. Over the course of the weekend players went toe-to-toe with Marine, ODST, and Spartan Bots – all of whom were busy putting players through the paces and landing some next-level grenades.
We had the chance to sit down with the Bots Team to hear more about their goals when they set out to make Bots in the first place, their process for how they’re able to build sentience from the ground-up – and, some of what excited them the most when they saw their hard work put on display against hundreds of thousands of Halo Insiders.
Hello there, Bots Team! It’s your turn to rock the mic - who are you, and what do you do here at 343 Industries?
Brie Chin-Deyerle, Senior Lead Gameplay Engineer (she/her): Hi! I’m Brie, my pronouns are she/her, and I’m a Senior Gameplay Engineer with the Multiplayer Team. I’m currently the engineering lead for Academy and Bots, so a lot of my days are spent adding features, fixing bugs, and helping the team do their best work.
Sara Stern, Multiplayer Bots Designer (she/her): I’m Sara Stern and I’m a Multiplayer Designer. I’m primarily focused on developing the multiplayer Bots, although I’ve also worked on the Tutorial for the Academy.
Ilana Franklin, Gameplay Engineer (she/her): I’m Ilana Franklin. I’m a Gameplay Engineer on the Multiplayer Team, and I spend most of my time on Bots.
Hollis Lehv, Gameplay Engineer (she/her): I’m Hollis Lehv, and I am a Gameplay Engineer on the Multiplayer Team at 343. I have been working mostly on Bots!
To read the rest of this article, please continue to Halo Waypoint.
Start Your Spartan Journey on Dec. 8
We’re thankful that so many of you have joined us on this journey. Whether you just peeked your head into Halo Waypoint to take a look, or you’re a full-fledged Halo Insider that helped us test Halo Infinite during the technical preview, we couldn’t be more humbled. That’s why today we’re thrilled to announce that Halo Infinite will release on December 8, 2021 for Xbox and PC.
To help welcome you into the ranks, our very own Spartan Commander Agryna is here to set the stage:
[previewyoutube="lOthvD1rMbQ;full"]
Of course, that’s not all we’re up to this week! For the hardware inclined among you, we’ve got some brand-new tools for you to check out. Both of these will start shipping out on Halo’s 20th Anniversary, November 15th – and are available for pre-order right now (sold separately):
- Xbox Series X – Halo Infinite Limited Edition Bundle
- Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – Halo Infinite Limited Edition
Now, dive into the full details below and prepare to request some days off. Prost!
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
The coming months are going to be busy for all of us here at 343 as we march towards our December 8th launch. There’s still lots to be done before we arrive in the cold clutches of December, but we couldn’t be more excited to share it with each and every one of you.
If you’re as thrilled as we are, feel free to check out these locations to pre-order the Halo Infinite Campaign, so you can join us on day one:
THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT FOR THE JOB
A Spartan’s equipment is just as important as their skills – which is why we’re doing our part to make sure you’re fully equipped and ready to ship out. To help celebrate Halo’s 20th Anniversary, we’re proud to unveil two items made in collaboration with our friends over at Xbox: The Xbox Series X – Halo Infinite Limited Edition Bundle, and the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – Halo Infinite Limited Edition.
Both of these items are up for pre-order today, so be sure to check your favorite retailer for more details! They will subsequently launch on the very same day of the year Halo: CE did – November 15th, 2021. Do note that each of these will be sold separately and supplies will be limited.
XBOX SERIES X – HALO INFINITE LIMITED EDITION BUNDLE
As we kick off Gamescom 2021, we’re proud to unveil the Xbox Series X – Halo Infinite Limited Edition Bundle, which will go up for pre-order today! Featuring a Limited Edition Xbox Series X console, a Limited Edition Xbox Series X Controller, and Halo Infinite (downloadable after system set-up), you’ll be fully prepared to confront the most ruthless foe the Master Chief has ever faced. Featuring a design imprinted with stars as seen from the surface of the Zeta Halo, a Cortana blue vent, and iridium gold accents around dark metallic paneling, your armory will be off to a solid start with this at its center.
To pre-order now, head right over here to the Microsoft Store.
XBOX ELITE WIRELESS CONTROLLER SERIES 2 – HALO INFINITE LIMITED EDITION
Already have an Xbox Series X? Are you a controller collection completionist? Just looking for a new set of thumbsticks to take with you to Zeta Halo? We’ve got you covered.
The brand-new Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – Halo Infinite Limited Edition, featuring a battle-scarred Mjolnir-themed design from team Xbox will be a welcome addition to any Spartan’s arsenal. With a look that’ll have you right at home with the UNSC, and an in-game weapon charm of the controller itself, you’ll be well on your way to having all the right equipment to battle the Banished.
To pre-order, be sure to head right over here to the Microsoft Store.
GAMESCOM AND BEYOND
If you’re as excited about Halo Infinite as we are, do yourself a favor and sign-up to be a Halo Insider! By fully filling out your profile, opting-in to communications, and uploading your DxDiag if you’re on PC, you’ll have the chance to participate in hands-on any upcoming multiplayer previews ahead of launch.
Thanks for joining us. We’re thrilled to be marching side-by-side on our way to December. And as always, be sure to join us over on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for all of the latest Halo Infinite updates right as they happen.
TECH PREVIEW OVERVIEW
And as a reminder, while our plan is to get as many people into the tech preview as we possibly can, not every single Halo Insider will receive an invite. If you don’t get in this time around, don’t despair! We still need to grow the scale of these tests in time on the road to launch, so your opportunities are far from over.
An interior look of Bazaar. [For the full-res image, click here.]
Regardless, if you’re on the hunt for the nitty gritty details of this upcoming tech preview you’ve come to the right place. Just below you can find the following:
- Dates and times during which the tech preview will be up and running
- A rundown of content you can find in the tech preview
- Details around where you can deliver tech preview feedback
- Info on how you can reach out to our Support team, if needed
- If you're a content creator, streamer, or a player who wants to share gameplay footage of the tech preview, you absolutely can! Go nuts.
- Check out the latest Inside Infinite, which provides a deep dive into our flighting process, our goals, approach, and much more: Read our latest Inside Infinite!
- Note that while the tech preview is live, you’ll always have the ability to matchmake! But, if you’re unsure of when to play, please join us during the following scheduled play times:
- Thursday, July 29: Tech preview is officially live! Go wild, Spartans.
- Friday, July 30 Scheduled Play Times: 12-2 PM PT, 7-9 PM PT
- Saturday, July 31 Scheduled Play Times: 12-2 PM PT, 7-9 PM PT
- Sunday, August 1 Scheduled Play Times: 12-2 PM PT, 7-9 PM PT
- Monday, August 2: Tech preview closes at 10 AM PT
- Thursday, July 29: Tech preview is officially live! Go wild, Spartans.
- Available Content: Bot Slayer, Weapon Drills, Waypoint vNext
- Support and Feedback: Halo Support’s Insider site will be available for players to use all weekend. Those that make it into the tech preview will have access to new links that will only be available to invitees – please check your forthcoming email and/or Waypoint message for the appropriate links!
[previewyoutube="Oxs05bjCzkU;full"]
TECH PREVIEW GOALS
Halo Infinite is the most ambitious title we’ve ever made, and we’re thrilled about this new entry into the Halo universe. This weekend we’re thankful that so many of you have signed up to help us test what’s in the build – and, perhaps more importantly, what’s behind it.
This weekend we’ve got a few main focuses for this preview:
- To test the services behind the game at scale
- Gather tons of real-world data about PC hardware configurations
- To collect your feedback!
KNOWN ISSUES AND HALO SUPPORT
This tech preview is a small slice of the game that’s designed around our specific scale-testing needs. There are bugs – some big, some small – and while most are covered in the Known Issues list, others will surely surface for the first time thanks to your help testing at this scale. For context, this tech preview build is a couple of months behind where the ‘main’ build is so there’s already been lots of bug fixing and polish that won’t be reflected here.
Here are a few of the issues we’re aware of in this build:
- AMD players should make sure the AMD Graphics Driver is version 21.6.1 or later. Earlier versions are not compatible with this version of the game and may result in significant performance and/or stability issues.
- We have a pesky bug related to Matchmaking that can result in a player being unable to join into a session, timing out, and then returning to the main menu. When this occurs, the match will proceed but you might be missing a player from your game for a brief period until another player joins-in-progress.
- We’re aware of and tracking a few different crash scenarios though the overall average failure rate is well below our targets. We’re particularly interested in getting more crash logs from a wider breadth of platforms as stability work continues internally.
- Various situations can cause stuttering, de-sync, warping, and other abnormal behavior.
- Occasionally, player scores will not appear during the victory screen at the end of the match and/or the post-game carnage report may not load after some matches.
- Rarely, a player may begin a match unable to see their own weapon and have reduced audio.
- Rarely, a player’s melee attack may not register as expected.
- Sometimes after pressing A at the title screen, Challenges, Customization, and Commerce screens take a while to appear on the main menu.
The Insider Support site is also home to your platform’s installation instructions (Xbox/Steam), a list of the included content and play sessions, as well as a handy FAQ. If you’re not seeing flight-related articles on the Insider Support site, please make sure you’re signed in with the Xbox Live account that was invited to the tech preview.
Please note that the Halo Support team is unable to change your invited platform or assist with code redemption issues.
CONTENT INCLUDED IN THIS TECH PREVIEW
BOT SLAYER
At the very center of this tech preview will be the Bot Slayer playlists which feature 4 players squaring off against 4 Bots on one of three possible maps (Live Fire, Bazaar, and Recharge). Please note that while players can team up online, splitscreen is not supported in this build.
With bots being a brand-new addition to Halo, we’re excited to get a chance to let you go toe-to-toe with our state-of-the-art spar partners. Bots also utilize our dedicated servers in a different way than standard matchmade games so it’s extra critical we get large-scale, real-world testing to help ensure a smooth launch this holiday.
We’re going to kick things off with the lowest skill level of Bots on a single map to help everyone get acclimated and ease into the experience. If the community can collectively help us hit our daily engagement goals over the course of the flight, we’ll increase the Bots' skill and add more maps. The more bots you slay, the more the experience will evolve! They’ll get more deadly with each update – so, dive in early and often to make sure you’ve got a handle on what skills they’re bringing to the battlefield.
Be sure to drop in each day to play and do your part to slay some bots, unlock more content, and help us gather data! And keep an eye on @Halo each day for updates to the available matchmaking content. We’re also going to be shouting out the top Bot Slayer, the player with the most daily wins, and the team who can win the fastest each day and looking to award these heroes a special nameplate when the game launches this holiday.
Show us your clips! If you pull off incredible feats or wacky shenanigans, please share your clip with us on Twitter using #InfinitePlays – we can’t wait to see the medals and magical moments that await.
SOCIAL ARENA (CONDITIONAL)
If we’re able to hit our target engagement and testing goals for the Bot Slayer before the flight concludes, we’re looking to enable a brief opportunity for some good old fashion 4v4 Social Arena Slayer. If we hit this phase, expect it to land sometime in the final stretch of the flight (i.e. Sunday evening) and expect there to be a few potential hiccups with your experience.
Specifically, we know that in some cases players will end up in a bad state as a session is forming and after a brief delay, will be kicked back to the main menu. As a result, the game itself will start as 4v3 which is certainly a less than desired experience all-around. However, as a technical preview, getting additional scale data around this problem, across a breadth of hardware, can be invaluable to the team as they work to solve this issue. Based on our prior private flights, we can generally expect that on average, a match will start with a full 4v4 approx. 60% of the time while the other 40% involves a 4v3 start with the final player joining-in-progress within a minute.
We’d love to get some additional testing and data to help the team, but we really want to ensure players understand the experience and potential hiccups before jumping in. Tech preview participants should stay tuned to @Halo and the in-game news feed to know if and when Social Arena gets enabled.
WEAPON DRILLS
Interested in locking in your aim? Are you certain your skills with the Commando surpass that of all your friends? Now you can prove it. In this tech preview you can put your skills to the test with the following subset of Weapon Drills:
- MA40 AR
- BR75
- MK50 Sidekick
- CQS48 Bulldog
- Needler
- VK78 Commando
- S7 Sniper
- Plasma Pistol
- Pulse Carbine
- Ravager
- Heatwave
- Skewer
BATTLE PASS AND MENU UI
In the upcoming tech preview, we’re going to be granting Halo Insiders a set amount of in-game credits (cR) so that they can dig in with a very trimmed-down version of our first Battle Pass. (Worry not, we’re saving plenty of content for launch.) As a reminder, none of the items unlocked over the course of tech previews will carry over to the game’s release later this year. Everything should be considered work-in-progress and not indicative of the final shipping systems including the cost of customization pieces in the store, the order in which they’re unlocked in the Pass, the XP granted by challenges, and more.
The key focus here will be to test out if the systems that dictate when you unlock and equip items are working correctly. So, keep an eye out for anything that doesn’t work how you would expect and let us know. We’re going to have our ears open for your feedback!
WAYPOINT VNEXT
If you read through the June 2021 edition of Inside Infinite you know big things are in store for Halo Waypoint. And, as a part of the upcoming tech preview, you’re going to have a chance to see it all first-hand! And perhaps the coolest part? You don’t even need to be in the flight to check it out.
Halo Waypoint’s new version (which we affectionately refer to as “Waypoint vNext”) is going to launch on web for your standard browsing experience, along with iOS and Android in app form. If you’re joining us for tech previews, then you’ll be able to use this same experience to edit and update your Spartan in Halo Infinite. If you’re not in the tech preview but are still interested in checking it out – feel free to! Everything will work for MCC and Halo 5 as well.
Introducing Fret, a Personalized AI. [For the full-res image, click here.]
FEEDBACK
We can’t wait to hear your feedback! In addition to the surveys we’ll be sending out to a portion of Halo Insiders on Monday, August 2nd, we’ll also have dedicated feedback threads ready and waiting for you over on Halo Waypoint and Steam. Notably, these links are currently live - but, the threads themselves will not unlock until the tech preview has gone live.
Bot Slayer Feedback: Waypoint | Steam
Weapon Drill Feedback: Waypoint | Steam
UI Feedback (Battle Pass, Challenges, and Store): Waypoint | Steam
PC Feedback: Waypoint | Steam
Xbox Feedback: Waypoint | Steam
We know our Insiders will have a LOT of feedback and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts. However, we also want to be upfront and acknowledge that as we’re actively working on closing out the game and readying for launch, there’s only so much feedback the team can truly act on between now and then. Some feedback could be addressed now, others could be addressed post-launch, and some feedback might go against the team’s intent - either way, we’ll be sure to share the overall outcomes in a transparent manner once the flight dust has settled.
SEATS IN THE FULL UPRIGHT POSITION
The road to Halo Infinite’s launch is paved by the hard work of teams here at 343 as well as the participation of our Halo Insiders. From the very first whiteboard scribbles all the way up to this week’s test, we’re thrilled to have such a passionate and driven community with us for this journey.
And, if all this tech preview talk has gotten you interested in flighting, it’s not too late to join us in the future! By signing up to be a Halo Insider, verifying your email address, opting into communications, and uploading your DxDiag (if you’re on PC), you’ll be officially added to our list.
In the meantime, stay tuned to @Halo on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for all the updates as they happen.
Inside Infinite – July 2021
We have done quite a few Inside Infinite blogs already this year, and we highly encourage you to check them out if you’d like to learn more about our development process.
- Sandbox – January 2021
- Campaign – February 2021
- Audio – March 2021
- PC – April 2021
- Live & Waypoint – June 2021
These articles are made to help bring you closer to our studio’s process, share our goals for the game, and present new aspects of Halo Infinite in a unique way. Before we get into the core of this Inside Infinite, if you’d like a chance to participate in any Halo Infinite technical previews, you’ll need to have a verified Halo Insider account.
Halo Insider
- Register for Halo Insider using your Gamertag
- Verify your email by clicking on the confirmation email sent to your Preferred email address in your Halo Insider profile
- Opt-in for communications by selecting “I would like information, tips, and offers about the Halo franchise.” – You’ll need to verify your email and check this box, otherwise we won’t be able to send you flighting emails
- Opt-in for flighting on the platforms of your choice (console and/or PC). To be considered for PC flighting, upload your DxDiag and connect your personal Steam account
Please note that registering as a Halo Insider doesn’t guarantee access to technical previews or pre-release hands-on gameplay tests (“flights”). The number of Insiders being invited, and the criteria by which these Insiders are selected, will vary given the specific scope and goals for a flight. For the tech preview, we have concurrency targets tied to our overall goals that will inform how many total Insiders should be invited. Within that pool of players, our first priority will be ensuring we have a broad distribution of platforms (Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and different PC configurations) and then we will look at overall tenure in the program, prioritizing our longest standing Insiders, until we've allocated every invitation.
We’re excited by the outpouring of support and interest across the community, and the Halo Insider database has grown considerably, which is great news as we eventually look to stress our services and systems at an even greater scale. However, this also means that not every eligible Halo Insider is going to get an invitation – particularly early on as we are deliberately taking a “walk before we run” approach. Our goal is to offer additional technical preview opportunities ahead of launch with increases in scope for content and participants. So, if you don’t receive an invitation this time, we ask that you please hang in there – future opportunities are on the horizon.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into the depths of what it takes to create and more importantly, support and operate, a flight for a game like Halo Infinite.
COME FLY AWAY WITH US
Before embarking on any game development journey, our teams spend time identifying the needs of our games and players, establishing measurable goals and milestones to ensure we’re meeting those needs, and planning how best to verify that we are, in fact, meeting those targets. Practically every aspect of game development is vetted and planned this thoroughly before it can become a reality.
Over the last few years, this same process was instrumental in the journey to update and improve Halo: The Master Chief Collection and then bring it all to PC. This same flighting model and partnering with Halo Insiders has been a cornerstone of MCC’s ongoing seasonal updates as well. It’s safe to say that without the support and partnership with Halo Insiders and a robust flighting program, all of the goodness that’s happened with MCC wouldn’t have been possible.
Now, applying that process to Halo Infinite, we had goals to robustly test our game and core services at a large scale and allow players to provide feedback on the game before launch. Next, we focused in on outlining how to measure progress toward these goals. A hypothetical example of would be, “we want to have a matchmaking success rate of 100%.” That’s a great goal to have, but then the real work begins building systems that can reliably measure whether we are hitting these goals or not. In the matchmaking success rate example, this means adding code to the game client or our online services that can monitor and report when matches are made successfully and, more importantly, when they fail.
Since our larger goals were dependent on what happened when players went hands-on with the game, we knew involving Halo Insiders for a technical preview would be the best call. Hosting a large scale flight with Halo Insiders will give our team plenty of gameplay data to determine whether or not our online systems (matchmaking, challenges, etc.) are working as intended. It also gives us an opportunity to gather – and measure – feedback from all kinds of players, from all over the world.
Now that we’ve talked about the ‘why’ behind hosting technical previews with Halo Insiders, let’s take a closer look at what a “technical preview” really means and the specific goals the team is working towards.
TECHNICAL PREVIEWS, FLIGHTS, AND BETAS
What’s in a name? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Different games across the industry, and even Halo games over the years, have had all sorts of pre-launch hands-on releases and tests that carry various official labels. Terms like “alpha” and “beta” often convey a certain expectation around polish and stability, breadth, marketing implications, and more. We’re further along than what would be truly considered an “alpha” but also not really at a level of overall completeness some expect in a “beta.”
We are specifically calling this a “technical preview” because we feel it best represents the goals we have, the build itself, and the experience that Insiders will have. As you’ll read below, our key driver and goal is truly technical in nature – we are looking to push our systems and services at a larger scale than we’ve been able to thus far as an important step towards ensuring we are as ready as possible when the flood gates fully open at launch this holiday. Feedback and other insights are certainly valuable, but first and foremost we are testing and stressing the technical side of Halo Infinite.
We also want to be very up front and transparent about the fact that we will certainly have some bumps and rough edges in this build. Our teams have been working hard to ensure that the build and experience is such that it can deliver on our goals, but this is very much still work-in-progress, and we expect some hiccups of varying degrees over the course of the technical preview. For further context, this technical preview is a couple months behind where the development team and ‘main’ game build currently is given the process and time it takes to go through all the gates and steps before releasing to the public.
All of our key known issues will be listed so participants will have a better understanding of what to expect and what to look out for. Of course, gathering support tickets on brand new issues is also immensely helpful at this scale – despite our team’s best efforts, nothing can truly substitute for true real-world large-scale testing, and we’re sure to find some new areas of opportunity over the course of the preview.
And lastly, we’ve already mentioned this a few times in the blog, but the word “flighting” is fairly new in a lot of circles so when you hear us mention a “flight” – we are simply referring to a work-in-progress, hands-on release on the road to launch. Flighting is the process by which pre-release builds are put out into the wild to pursue specific goals, review data and outcomes, iterate, and repeat – all with the overarching goal of delivering the best shipping experience come launch time.
With that nomenclature and expectation-setting out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the key goals the 343 Industries team has for the Halo Infinite technical preview.
TEST THE GAME AND OUR CORE SERVICES AT SCALE
We want to make sure the game and all of its supporting services are operating as expected, especially under the larger-scale pressure of a technical preview. By flighting the game to Halo Insiders, we’re going to see players uncover quirks in our online services, find whacky new bugs in the game and menus, and so much more. The beautiful part of this process is that it’s all intentional – discovering these issues, small or major, months ahead of launch is the entire point of flighting. We want to find these now so that we can address as many of them as we can ahead of launch.
Let’s take a look at some of the areas we’ll be monitoring during the upcoming technical preview.
GAME & SERVICES PERFORMANCE FOCUS AREAS
- Stability: How stable is the game across various hardware specs and platforms? Is the game freezing or crashing at a certain time or on specific hardware? Getting a large-scale sampling of real-world hardware profiles is something we can only really accomplish via a large flight of this nature and as we launch on PC for the first time, this is a critical focus for the team.
- Online Services: Can all our interconnected online services function well at an immense scale? This is our largest bucket since it includes so many intertwined services that need to function in perfect harmony. Matchmaking, server scaling, playlists serving the proper content, challenges, stats (Post Game Carnage Report), Battle Pass progression & Store functionality, armor customization, partying up with friends, etc.
- Halo Insider/Waypoint vNext: Can our Halo Insider communication systems and flighting tools function at scale? How do the Waypoint vNext app (iOS & Android) and web experiences feel and function as extensions of the game?
MEASURING GAME PERFORMANCE
Our team has already put in the hard work developing the tools to measure and collect information about nearly every scenario imaginable, such as game crashes or matchmaking failures, so technical previews will give us a unique opportunity to compare our internal data to what we see show up in the wild. Measuring the game’s stability and performance, especially at scale, is an integral part of a game’s journey to launch.
Now, let’s hear from members of the Halo Infinite team to see what they’re monitoring and how they’re measuring it during our upcoming technical previews.
What are you/your team monitoring during flights?
- Sam Hanshaw – Producer, Live Team: We’re always looking at the rates of matchmaking success and the availability of our servers, after all it’s hard for people to playtest the game if they’re unable to play matches. We also keep an eye on how many matches are getting played to completion, and we receive data about how many people crash while playing.
- Brian Dunn – Multiplayer Test Lead & Brian Hughes – Live Test Lead: The test team monitors a large number of specific areas over the course of a flight. First, we are watching for overall crashes and stability. We analyze this data on a per-platform basis and identify specific things like most frequent crashes and differentiate between known and new crash instances. We use a metrics such as “MTTF” (Mean Time to Fail) or “crashes per 1,000 hours of gameplay” as a way of quantifying overall stability.
Next, we are also closely monitoring the overall quality of matchmaking which includes reliability, load times, and skill matching. In addition, the performance of our dedicated servers, performance of the game itself (particularly across different PC configurations) and our overall netcode quality are all under scrutiny. And with Halo Infinite's greater emphasis on player customization, we’re going to be paying close attention to progression, challenges, and which customization items people are unlocking and using.
Lastly, we partner with the Halo Support team to review tickets and bug reports to cross-reference against our telemetry and to help understand real-world player impact and scope of an issue. We also lurk in the Halo Waypoint forums, Reddit, Twitch, and social to keep an eye out for anecdotal reports. - Nate Jones – Engineering Lead, Services Lifecycle Team: If everything’s going well, I’m able to play some matches during a flight and I’m not glued to logs/monitoring. I keep the lobby service dashboards up to the side during the flight (watching backend service performance health, dedicated server usage, number of players connected, matchmaking ticket success rates, etc), and I’ll occasionally get pulled into a mid-flight investigation and have to dig into the logs. Most of my (and my team’s) flight monitoring takes place after the flight ends. Our normal post-flight plan is to thoroughly look over the lobby and skill service logs for errors, warnings, or ‘weird stuff’; that’s on top of any deeper dives into specific experiments we were running during a flight.
- Jeff Guy – Producer, PC Team: I’m going to be monitoring Brian Dunn for cheating because he wipes the floor with me every time I play against him in a match. I’m only half joking. :P
We've built a TON of different player-controlled settings into Halo Infinite, as well as support for a vast array of player hardware and peripherals. The PC team will be monitoring how the game holds up across that matrix of player choices. We’ll be looking for things like drops in framerate and crashes that happen with specific hardware configurations. We’ll be combining that information with their graphics settings and peripherals – how many people are rocking ultrawide setups, who is pushing 4K or 8K resolution, who is playing with unlocked framerate versus locked at 144, what custom key bindings are players choosing, etc? Ensuring our PC players can play Infinite the way they want is everything to us, and we’ll be closely watching for any problems when they do.
How do you/your team measure that information?
- Sam Hanshaw: We have a general release health dashboard that displays information on matchmaking errors, and any crashes that are happening. There is also a wealth of information in the server logs that the team can dig into during investigations to figure out what broke and when. We also have a great support team who are capturing bug reports and support ticket submissions, these are what we’ll dive into after each flight is completed to get a picture of the experience through player observations of bugs. The information we get from those tickets is valuable for helping us track down the issue, and also for knowing how many individual people an issue is bothering, and how often it’s bothering each of them.
- Brian Dunn & Brian Hughes: We have a robust suite of tools and systems that feeds critical information into our team for real time and reactive monitoring. Any time a player crashes, a system called “Watson” uploads a detailed crash report which feeds into our internal crash reporting website, “Ticket Track.” Like Nate and the Services Team, we also use Kusto which helps us understand the data we’re receiving and converts it into something useful for reporting purposes. Speaking of reports, we use Power BI reports for any of the data we need to visualize and then all of this feeds into our Azure DevOps database for bug tracking. Our team uses data from all of these sources to get an understanding of the quality of the flight, and ensure we're making the right improvements for current and future flights.
- Nate Jones: We use Kusto (Azure Data Explorer) for most of our ad-hoc data analysis; I spent a lot of time writing queries that join service, dedicated server, and client telemetry events together to figure stuff out. We have a bunch of pre-built graphs and dashboards using an internal Microsoft system called Geneva. We’ve also got a few internal tools (bespoke websites). One’s called “lobby logs”; it’s like a mini search engine for the Halo lobby service that can trace a player’s parties/matches and correlate their sessions with the other players/parties involved in the matchmaking process or eventual game session.
- Jeff Guy: We have a lot of tools and telemetry already set up to capture a lot of this data, even at scale. When someone crashes, for example, the game will automatically upload a crash report to us. Our team can then look at the details of each specific crash or use that information to spot a pattern that could indicate a larger problem. In terms of players’ settings, we’ll get telemetry data when players save their key binds and video settings, since a good portion of that information is saved in our online services. We can even check to see if a player’s framerate drops during a session. Gathering the full picture of all the different settings and variables enables us to quickly narrow down our investigations and fix issues fast.
What do you/your team consider a success?
- Sam Hanshaw: We want players to be able to consistently play matches of Halo Infinite. The more matches they can play, the more issues they can find for us to deal with. Every new issue players are able to find that we were not is a success for me. Anything that gets found during flighting is something that’s found before the game launches, resulting in a better game for everyone when we release.
I know I’ve talked about problems a lot, but overall, we also consider a flight a success when we see people having fun playing the game. In the studio we’ll be in the flight with you, and while we’ve got a ton of information we need to gather to make this game the best it can be at launch, we’re also looking forward to playing alongside you and opening a dialogue about our road to launch. To everyone who is going to participate in our upcoming flights I want to say thank you for helping us make this game better! - Brian Dunn and Brian Hughes: Success for us is when we're able to meet or exceed our internal targets, while not having too many big surprises. You always learn something new when so many people play your game for the first time, but hopefully there's nothing completely unexpected. We’ll be looking specifically at our matchmaking quality real world results vs. our targets as well as our crash counts and rates actuals vs. what we anticipated. We also hope to see player feedback and data coming in that aligns with our own internal expectations for overall quality at this stage of the project.
- Nate Jones: Selfishly, one hallmark of success is when nobody needed to activate my team’s on-call process and phone someone for mid-flight engineering support 😊.
At a high level, success is getting usable data from the flight. Good news is great, but bad news is still valuable. We’re always looking at general health (CPU/mem/bandwidth, matchmaking speed and quality, etc) and we’ll have general quality/performance targets, but any given flight also has specific experiments we’re running. For example, during an internal flight in April, we did some explicit tests around how our pool of dedicated servers would fallback/failover to secondary pool(s) if we run low on machines. That April test was technically a failure (we didn’t see the expected players using the secondary server pool), but we narrowed the issue down to a bug in an external team’s system, and they were able to find/fix the problem from our flight data. - Jeff Guy: Creating a first-class PC game is all about embracing player identity and all the awesome diversity that comes with it. PC players build their gaming rigs to reflect the way they want to play, and we are making sure Halo Infinite honors that. The challenge of course is that supporting such a diverse array of hardware and software creates a lot of ways for things to break.
Our team considers flights a success if we're able to find issues that we might not have seen if we didn’t put the game in the hands of our players early. This is critical to ensuring every PC player within our min-spec has an awesome experience on day one. Also, we’d love to see which custom key bindings players use...or better yet, see players choose to use the default key bindings because that would mean we chose them well. :)
We appreciate you taking the time to share your insights and expertise with our community today. It’s reassuring to know that the issues they may encounter during flighting are usually seen by the team, and there’s rarely a need to wonder, “Is 343 seeing this?!” since you have built the tools to do exactly that. We'll let you get back to preparing for the technical preview now, thank you again!
PLAYER FEEDBACK
Gathering input from our players during a technical preview is critical to our success at launch and beyond. The sooner we receive feedback, the sooner we can plan and action on that feedback. On that note, we want to clarify that with this technical preview we are entering the next step in what’s been a multi-year process and journey where the team has been regularly getting critical feedback via user research and private flights. Naturally, the scale of the technical preview is greater than anything we’ve done to date – and that brings unique value and opportunities to capture even more perspectives – but just know that community feedback has been at the core of development since the very beginning. And, it will continue to remain a critical pillar going forward beyond launch.
Now, let’s take a look at what areas of the game we’ll specifically be focusing on for feedback during the technical preview.
[H2]FEEDBACK FOCUS AREAS
- Core gameplay: We want to know how you feel about the core combat experience. How do you feel about player movement, weapon balance, equipment, etc.? How fun is it to engage in a battle in Halo Infinite?
- Maps & modes: How did you feel about the design and flow of the maps? Are the maps and mode both fun and fair?
- Academy’s Weapon Drills: Did Weapon Drills give you a good understanding of how a weapon functions? How fun were the various Weapon Drills?
- Menu & Battle Pass UI: How intuitive was the menu navigation? Were you able to understand your progression through the Battle Pass? Were you able to find and equip customization items easily?
MEASURING FEEDBACK
While it is critical, player feedback can be a bit of a nebulous cloud of forum posts, tweets, and YouTube videos - which can make it hard to measure in some cases. Luckily, we have a two-pronged approach to gather this information, measure it, and then share it with the team. The two prongs in this case are the Xbox User Research team and the 343 Community Team.
The Xbox UR team gathers measurable, quantifiable data through surveys that will be sent out at the end of a flight. These surveys ask detailed questions that drive deep into the core of a player’s experience in a flight – and turn that experience into measurable data. Since we have survey data from the entire history of Halo, they help us compare our current scores to the best scores from across all games. We can also compare scores from different times (or flights) of the game to see how specific aspects are progressing over time. They put together some of the most helpful reports we can read, and it’s all coming straight from what you – the players – are saying about the game.
The Community Team dives into the amorphous realm of online interactions mentioned above. We set up focused feedback threads here on the Waypoint forums, listen to players on Twitter, check the Halo subreddit multiple times a day, watch videos and streams from Halo players, etc. We take all those posts and videos, and distill their messages into positive, neutral, and negative themes. When doing so, it isn’t just about volume though – anyone can send a lot of tweets. Our team focuses on the severity (how much does it affect an individual) and scope (how many players), when reporting on these themes.
More often than not, even though we use different ways to collect player feedback, the Xbox User Research and 343 Community teams see similar themes emerge. These two inputs help the team compare Halo Infinite’s current state with its own previous scores, previous Halo titles, as well as the development team and player expectations. Using these comparisons, we can recognize which areas need improvement, which areas are performing as expected, and which are exceeding targets. After reviewing this feedback, we identify opportunities and prioritize the areas we want to go after.
TRANSPARENCY
It’s important to note that while we are going to be listening closely, there will be some feedback that we can act on before launch, some feedback we’ll have to fit into the game’s roadmap, and additional feedback we won’t or cannot take action on. That said, we will communicate what will and won’t be changing in the game as a result of the technical preview – and why.
As part of this commitment to transparency, the team will meet to go over hot topics and common pieces of player feedback that emerged during the flights, which we call “themes.” After reviewing these themes, the team will spend time investigating, figuring out if they agree and want to act on it, and when in the schedule we can take action on them. Again, there will be things we can’t act on before launch this holiday – and that’s okay – we plan on supporting Halo Infinite for years to come and this feedback will all be captured to help inform future priorities.
Once we’ve done the due diligence on our side, we then work on putting together an “outcomes” report that outlines our plans for each and every one of those key feedback themes. From there, we’ll work to surface that information to you, our players, likely through a post here on Halo Waypoint.
BUGS & ISSUES
When it comes to bugs and issues specifically, we ask Halo Insiders to utilize the Halo Support (aka.ms/HaloSupport) site to file a ticket. When the technical preview goes live, everyone who is invited will receive an email and Waypoint message that includes some important links to known issue documentation along with where and how to file a support ticket. To help keep everything tidy, a special section of the Halo Support site is created exclusively for Insiders who are invited to a current active flight. This helps us ensure that tickets are only coming in from players who are actually participating in the flight and it keeps flight tickets fully separate from retail tickets (particularly in the case of MCC). As always, we ask that you read the known issues list first, so you have context for issues the team is already aware of and thus don’t require a support ticket. Anything a player encounters that’s not on that list is incredibly valuable to the team and we thank you in advance for taking the time to submit these tickets!
[H1]UPCOMING TECHNICAL PREVIEW
Now, with the foundation of flighting set, let’s talk about the content and goals of our first upcoming technical preview, which will focus on Bots and a slice of the new Academy experience.
This technical preview is intentionally focused on these specific areas to help us gather some scale data as we bring these new experiences to Halo for the first time. As we look further ahead, we plan for future flights to expand into more content including traditional PVP Arena and Big Team Battle.
With this and our higher-level feedback goals noted up above, we land on the following specific focal points. With this in mind, the focus areas for our technical preview are:
- Arena gameplay vs. Bots
- Arena Maps
- Academy’s Weapon Drills
- Menu & Battle Pass UI
- New Waypoint experiences on web, iOS, and Android
To gather specific feedback on these areas, our first flight will contain the following content and experiences.
BOT ARENA
Halo Infinite is the franchise’s first foray into the world of multiplayer Bots. To provide a totally new multiplayer experience for players and to gather feedback on Bot behavior and online performance, we’ll be debuting the Bot Arena playlist, which puts 4 players against 4 Bots on Arena maps.
For this technical preview, the Bot Arena experience will feature Slayer across three maps in this build:
- Bot Slayer on Bazaar, Recharge, and Live Fire
To keep players on their toes and keep the experience engaging, we’re planning for a daily content offering that will evolve over the course of the flight based on the overall engagement of participants. We’re going to intentionally start things off slow to help everyone get acclimated but as the community gets up to speed and slays copious amount of Bots our goal is to crank things up to provide greater challenge and variety.
Bot Arena is a great place to familiarize yourself with Halo Infinite’s gameplay and maps in a stress-free environment. The Bots still have their quirks, which is why we’re flighting them, but they certainly aren’t pushovers. Be prepared.
For more info, including information on Academy Drills, the Waypoint App, words from Joseph Staten himself, and more, be sure to check out the rest on Halo Waypoint!
HALO INFINITE MULTIPLAYER REVEAL
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In the days ahead we’ve got even more in store for you with additional insights and details coming from folks across the studio. Here’s a look at what’s on tap:
- “The Great Journey So Far” – Available Today – Visit Xbox Wire to hear from Halo Infinite’s Head of Creative, Joseph Staten.
- 343 Industries Halo Infinite Multiplayer Overview – Monday, 6/14 – More gameplay and insights from the team, debuts at 8AM PT on YouTube.com/Halo.
- Halo Infinite Mark VII Spartan Cosplay Guide – Tuesday, 6/15 – Everything you need to know to create your own real life Spartan armor - here on Halo Waypoint.
- Canon Fodder – Wednesday, 6/16 – 343 lore master GrimBrother One dives into the fiction behind multiplayer maps, vehicles, armor, and more.
- Inside Infinite – Thursday, 6/24 – Our monthly blog series returns with a closer look at the future of Halo Waypoint and the work the team is doing to extend your Halo Infinite experience and we’ll catch up with members of the Live team to talk player engagement and customization.
And, just in case you missed it earlier today, make sure to check out the entire Halo Infinite segment from the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase over at Xbox’s YouTube page. Our primary focus in on our multiplayer reveal, but you don’t want to miss the latest look at the campaign shared by Joseph Staten!
We’ll update this blog throughout the week with links and new info as it becomes available. And of course, make sure to follow @Halo on twitter to stay up to date. Until then, read on to learn more about the multiplayer side of Halo Infinite.
QUINTESSENTIAL HALO
For nearly twenty years, Halo multiplayer has been defined by sandbox-focused emergent gameplay that offers players a wide array of weapons, vehicles, and toys in the name of competition and good fun. With Halo Infinite, the team at 343 Industries is embracing the franchise’s legacy while imbuing it with new modern twists to lean into the series’ strengths while simultaneously laying a foundation on which to grow and further evolve in the months and years beyond launch.
In addition to returning favorites and brand-new weapons, Halo Infinite’s sandbox is punctuated by the addition of Halo 3-esque equipment – game-changing limited-use abilities that players will scavenge for during a match. In today’s trailer you’ll catch the first glimpse of two additional pieces of equipment: the Threat Sensor is an area-of-effect support device that periodically pulses and illuminates enemy players within it’s radius while the aptly named Repulsor can be used to deflect projectiles and anything else that gets in the way. Whether it’s zipping across a map to gain the high ground using a Grappleshot or digging in your defenses with a Drop Wall, equipment brings new strategic and tactical options to Halo Infinite’s frenetic multiplayer combat with more additions to come in future seasonal updates.
Vehicles have always been a pivotal part of Halo’s sandbox and Infinite will include an assortment of tried-and-true UNSC classics in addition to Banished-inspired favorites – many of which now support customization. From strafing runs in a Banshee to fireteam incursions in the new Razorback to the satisfying splatter of the Chopper, the UNSC's garage is well equipped for intense Spartan training skirmishes.
A NEW GENERATION, BUILT TO FIGHT
After nearly 20 years of Spartan combat and experience to contend with, we know the Halo multiplayer arena can sometimes be a daunting experience. To help address this, a key pillar for Halo Infinite is to be the most approachable and welcoming entry in the series to date. To help ensure all Spartans meet the UNSC's high bar and have the skills necessary to succeed on the battlefield, we're excited to introduce the all-new Academy. Under the mentorship of Spartan Commander Laurette, the Academy offers players the opportunity to hone their skills and get better acclimated with the armaments and environments of Halo Infinite. Recruits will be able to dial-in their marksmanship skills at the target range or jump right into customizable training skirmishes and square off against AI-controlled bots. Training Mode lets you configure specific loadouts, deploy opponent bots of various skill levels, and practice on your own terms. Bots can also be configured in Custom Games to tailor the experience and even in fill-in roster spots for MIA fireteam members.
With new training options, bots to spar against, skill-based-matchmaking, and improved systems that deliver better communication of key info to players during a match, we’re excited to welcome Spartans of all skill levels and help you battle your way to the top each season.
MODES, MAPS, AND MORE
At the core of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer offering is the Arena, which once again pits two teams of four Spartans against each other in a variety of new and returning modes. Halo’s Arena has and continues to be defined by fair starts and teams working closely to control key areas of a map while utilizing the sandbox in the most impactful manner. Scavenging also remains a key component – players will strategically work together to acquire newly spawned weapons off a rack or take down an opponent to loot their equipment and use it against them. Remember your Academy training, jump into battle, and revel in the accolades of legendary multiplayer announcer Jeff Steitzer.
When Halo Infinite releases this holiday, it will also usher in the long-awaited return of Big Team Battle. This classic series stalwart is back, but bigger and better than ever, supporting 24 players on large vehicle-friendly maps tapping into the full extent of the sandbox. BTB is the epitome of the Halo experience and the ultimate Spartan battle fantasy with Pelicans swooping in to deploy fresh vehicles, weapon ordnance dropping from the sky, and tactical updates from Commander Laurette. Big Team Battle is the wild, raucous, fun social experience that cranks everything up to 11 and we’ll be sharing more details later this summer.
In addition to Ranked and Social matchmaking playlists, players will also experience limited-time seasonal events with special rewards on the line. Console and PC players will play together via crossplay while support for cross-progression means you can move freely from one platform to the other and keep working on your Spartan’s journey. Xbox Series X owners will also enjoy up to 120FPS on supported hardware and PC players will have a wide variety of configurable settings spanning framerate to graphics to key binds and more. Of course, online isn’t the only way to enjoy multiplayer – Halo Infinite will also support splitscreen on Xbox and LAN play via a PC local server.
Today's reveal trailer offers glimpses of a few of the new Arena maps, and one Big Team Battle map, you'll be able to jump into later this year. We’ll have additional fictional details for these maps coming as part of the Canon Fodder blog landing on Wednesday. Expect to hear more about maps, and modes, further along on the road to launch.
EXPRESS YOURSELF
A key component of the new Halo Infinite multiplayer experience is your personal Spartan that’s meant to grow and evolve month after month, season after season. Players will have more options than ever before to customize your Spartan and make it uniquely yours. Each season will feature a new assortment of customization pieces and components that can be earned via gameplay, challenges, events, and purchase. We’ve said this before, but it bears saying again - there will be no loot boxes or elements of chance if you decide to purchase an optional customization item. And, of course, all of Halo Infinite’s Spartan customization elements are purely cosmetic and have no impact to gameplay.
The Armor Hall offers more per-piece customization options than any prior Halo game including everything from helmets to visors to gloves to shoulder pads and more. Customization doesn’t stop at armor – you’ll be able to earn and apply coatings to weapons and vehicles, too. And that helpful and humorous voice you hear in the trailer? It's one of example of the new Personal AI that you'll be able to equip during multiplayer matches (they also help capture objectives, as pictured below). And, the final game will include even more ways to customize your Spartan than what we’re showing today – there are a few surprises left to share.
To fully support our goals for expanded player expression in Halo Infinite the team has designed a new “friend and foe” system for multiplayer games. At a high level, this functions as an “outline” system that uses different colors to denote friends and foes. These colors are configurable for accessibility purposes and whatever colors you assign will match your scoreboard, team bases, and team flags. This isn’t depicted in the reveal trailer, due to its more cinematic nature, but we’ll have more details to share down the road (and Halo Insiders will be able to check it out first-hand during technical previews later this summer).
ARE YOU READY?
Back when we first announced Halo Infinite, we talked about the importance the community would play in development – and beyond – via Halo Insider “flighting” (pre-release technical previews) and feedback. We’ve seen firsthand the good that comes from empowering and partnering with our community to get pre-release gameplay feedback and feature input which has been instrumental on our Halo: The Master Chief Collection journey over the past several years.
While our schedule shifted due to a pandemic and development timelines, our commitment to our community has not. Later this summer, we still plan for limited pre-release technical previews with Halo Insiders to help us stress test and improve the game on the road to launch. We’ll have a lot more details to share as we get closer but, in the meantime, make sure you’re registered with the Halo Insider program if you’d like an opportunity to potentially participate in future flights. It’s quick, easy, and you’re free to opt in or out at any time, but please make sure your profile is up to complete and you’ve got a verified email on file or we won’t be able to contact you when the time comes. Spartan Laurette asked, “Are you ready?”– don’t let her down – make sure you are!
Player feedback and community partnership will be even more critical in the weeks and months following release. When we say that launch is just the beginning, we mean just that – in addition to new features, content, and experiences we will be working closely with the player community to shape and evolve the game together via feedback and future flights/technical previews.
THANK YOU
We know it’s been a long time coming but we’re excited to finally pull back the curtain and talk more about the multiplayer side of Halo Infinite. We also know there will be questions and a need for more info so don’t worry – that’s exactly what we’re going to provide in the days, weeks, and months ahead. We’ve still got work to do to wrap up development but we’re committed to continuing to bring the Halo community along on the road to launch.
Creating and shipping any game is a huge undertaking but to do so amidst a global pandemic when the team has been separated and working from home for over 15 months is challenging at an unprecedented scale. As we work towards release later this year, we’re grateful for the continued support and understanding from the Halo community – thank you. We also want to extend a major shout out to the teams across 343 Industries, and our partners, who have continued to overcome adversity and give their all to make a special Halo game we hope you will enjoy for years to come.
We know the expectations and stakes are high and we may not get everything exactly to everyone’s liking on day one, but as a live service we’re committed to partnering with players to evolve the game together. With a free-to-play service supporting crossplay on Xbox and PC, along with a more inviting new player experience, we’re rolling out the red carpet for more players than ever before to jump in and share in this universe and these experiences we’ve all come to know and love for nearly twenty years. We’re as eager and excited as you are to begin the next chapter of this journey together this holiday.
Make sure your Halo Insider profile is up to snuff, Spartans – we’ll be counting on you when the time comes.
- The 343 Industries Team
ADDITIONAL READING
If you're looking for even more information about Halo Infinite, check out these blogs to learn more about the development team and their work on Halo Infinite.
- Inside Infinite - April 2021: Crossplay, super ultrawide, triple keybinds, and so much more – Halo Infinite on PC is being built from the ground up with the platform's strengths in mind. Read about the team's vision and what PC players can expect in our latest Inside Infinite.
- Inside Infinite - March 2021: Join the 343 Audio Team and go behind the scenes to learn about their vision and process for bringing the soundscape of Halo Infinite to life in this month's edition of Inside Infinite.
- Inside Infinite - February 2021: Hear from members of the Halo Infinite team about the work they're doing to bring Zeta Halo to life and check out some updated looks at the progress that's been made since last year's campaign demo.
- Inside Infinite - January 2021: 343's Sandbox Team talks about their vision, approach, and work on Halo Infinite's sandbox.
Halo Infinite will also usher in the next chapter of Halo esports - read more about the HCS team's plans in the Designing the Halo Esports Ecosystem blog series:
- April 2021: Sponsors - why are they important and how do they fit into Halo esports?
- March 2021: Viewership is critical to the success of the Halo esports program, how are we driving growth?
- February 2021: Learn about the role tournament operators will play in the Halo esports ecosystem.
- January 2021: The HCS team shares their mission, goals, and overall approach to Halo Infinite esports.