343 Industries head of design ‘feels everyone’s pain on progression’
343 Industries head of design has responded to the ongoing discourse around Halo Infinite’s progression, saying on Twitter, “Yes I am still playing Halo and feeling everyone’s pain on progression”.
Jerry Hook’s comment was made amid criticisms aimed at the game’s progression system, which is tied to completing challenges. Players say the system encourages people to play the game to complete the challenges as opposed to anything else.
The game’s current challenge-based XP system means players get better rewards for performing in-game challenges, such as 10 headshots, rather than helping the team complete objectives. This has also resulted in leveling up becoming synonymous with grinding as objectives only give a little XP.
343 Industries’ response
343 Industries has acknowledged the players’ woes over the flawed design of the battle pass progression system.
“Thank you to everyone who has jumped into the #HaloInfinite beta so far! FYI the team is looking at Battle Pass progression and gathering data from yesterday’s sessions and we’ll share updates as we have them,” 343 community director Brian Jarrard said on Twitter.
“More robust updates are going to take time. We greatly appreciate all the support and please keep the feedback coming.”
Hook said that solving the issues would be on “top of my list” after his team returned to the office this week following a holiday break.
Previously, 343 already made some changes but promised to continue improving the game, saying that “more robust” updates are coming later.
It is, however, still unclear what he meant by “more robust” updates. The most likely change is that the devs will add another layer of XP awarded for completing multiplayer objectives.
Same old cheating problem
Even if the issue is resolved, the devs will still have another homework to do — dealing with the rising number of cheaters. Halo Infinite console players have requested an option to opt out of cross-play as many of them are unhappy that cheaters are able to kill them via wallhacks or aimbots.
Halo Infinite currently hosts PC and Xbox users together in quick-play modes and most ranked modes unless PC players play solo or in a pair. Despite disabling cross-play believed to be the solution for console players to eliminate cheater encounters, cheats still exist on Xbox through third-party controllers such as Cronus. The controllers allow players to reduce recoil and increase the effects of aim assist, resulting in them outplaying their opponents most of the time.
Opposing the trend, Halo Infinite does not implement an anti-cheat solution such as Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, or even a custom detection system. 343 Industries, instead, uses a server-side behavior-based system. The system, it said, allows the server to detect cheaters and kick them out of the game.
However, it is clear that the system does not work as promised as cheat providers continue to advertise tools such as aimbots, wallhacks, infinite ammo, infinite abilities, infinite grenades, rapid-fire mods, speed hacks, and other abilities.
