Here’s the community stream.
Quality of Life
Joseph Staten, Head of Creative at 343 Industries, talked about the team’s goals and priorities going into Season 2.
Head of Creative Joseph Staten: Shipping Season 2 and then it’s going after things that are keeping the player experience from being great in our game right now. This really gets to quality of life, which I think we’ll get into some details about specifically. So, hitting those issues that when you play the game impact your experience in a negative way. We want to make sure that we’re prioritizing that work before we go after you know more content.
It’s become common for games to launch with problems and Halo Infinite is no exception. These quality of life issues that Staten is referring to mainly pertain to bugs, network problems, and game design flaws. Hence, the goals for Season 2 more than anything else are improving the players’ “quality of life,” so that they can experience the content that the game currently has to offer without hindrances.
Halo Infinite’s new Arena map Catalyst.
This is consistent with what most developers do when they experience post-launch problems. A recent example is Cyberpunk 2077 by CD PROJEKT RED. It launched with game breaking bugs and the development team had to go back in and fix it. Hopefully 343 Industries will successfully address Halo Infinite’s quality of life issues with the launch of Season 2.
Forge
Many fans were disappointed that Forge was not included at launch, so they were excited to experiment with it in Season 2. Then they saw it labeled as “Forge Open Beta” on the roadmap and got concerned because that makes the feature sound incomplete. Staten clarified what this Forge Open Beta is.
Head of Creative Joseph Staten: So, when we say Beta it is the full feature set for launch for forge. Like, this is not a stripped-down version, this is not a some features turned off, some features not. We’ve been flighting Forge for quite some time and so what people would experience in this Open Beta is the Forge toolset.
Halo Infinite Season 2 Roadmap.
So, fans will be relieved to hear that they will have all the Forge features to experiment with in Season 2. It’s also great that the “King of the Hill” gametype will be added in Season 2 because that’s a very common gametype to use in Forge.
This leads to a big question, when will Halo Infinite receive a convenient way to play fan made Forge maps like the Halo MCC Custom Game Browser? The whole point of making Forge maps is to play them, so how and when are fans going to be able to do that? Maybe 343 Industries will provide details about that soon.
Customization
Community Manager John Junyszek sat down with Head of Design Jerry Hook to talk about the exp system and challenges.
Head of Design Jerry Hook: Are they hitting our goals, and can we put pressure on our content to be able to get the right content for players, that they actually value?
Halo Infinite’s new Big Team Battle Map Breaker.
Many fans have found the high-reward challenges too difficult and have been dissatisfied with the rewards they get for leveling up. Hook hopes to reconcile those things with Season 2 by making sure the challenges are doable and making the cooler rewards more common.
Later on, they showed some of the new customization options that Season 2 has to offer. Many fans will be disappointed to hear that the Color Coatings are not going away. Players still won’t be able to choose the individual colors of their armor. Season 2 will add more palettes to choose from, but this is still a big letdown for fans that have a clear vision for what they want their Spartan to look like.
A Forerunner bridge and door.
Free Pass Will Not Persist
Furthermore, Community Director Brian Jarrard had more news that many fans will be disappointed by.
Community Director Brian Jarrard: We want to be really clear that the Free Pass, so if you’ve never purchased a Season 1 Battle Pass and you’ve just been unlocking the free tracks, that will not persist. And this may be a surprise to some folks, so we wanted to be upfront and make sure that we were clear about that. So, starting next week with the launch of Lone Wolves if you own the Premium Pass it will persist. You can still switch back and forth exactly like you just saw in that segment with Jerry and Junyszek, but the Free Pass will not persist.
Lone Wolves returning to other Spartans injured.
So, there won’t be any “free tracks” starting with the launch of Season 2 on May 3rd. This could mean that 343 Industries hasn’t met their goal for Premium Pass sales. Also, even with the Pass players still don’t have much autonomy over what colors they wear.
That concludes this roundup of the Halo Infinite Season 2: Lone Wolves Stream. Thus far, Halo Infinite’s reception has been mediocre, and fans still have mixed feelings going into Season 2.
