Quinn was a lead weapons designer after Halo 5 and the lead sandbox designer during those "two years" of traditional halo design if that's the case. I don't think he was in charge of the hero shooter prototype.
Halo Infinite Season 2 Roadmap - May 3rd to Nov 7th
- Thread starter Outlaw Torn
- Start date
I think you are right, it's looking like Tim Longo is who was pushing it which lines up with his departure in 2019.
All of that might be true, I am not here to defend 343, all I can do is just empathize with them. My initial comment was just an observation that no studio can currently meet the expectations people have on Halo.
I get why people are upset, and I am not trying to make up thread ghosts or put words in anyones mouths. My comments were more about the overall picture of all Halo threads since release. There are obviously issues at 343 that we don't know about(or maybe we do), but much of the Halo community just expects too much given the track record.
These are just people, doing the best they can and reading all the comments over the past months is sad at times. I wonder if a Halo game can ever live up to the communities's expectations.
I get that as a developer you might not want to be boxed into making the same game or a very similar game over and over…but maybe don't take a job at the studio that was created specifically with that in mind?
It's one thing if you started working at a company known for going in different directions every project but 343 was created solely to make Halo games. You should know what you're signing up for.
It's one thing if you started working at a company known for going in different directions every project but 343 was created solely to make Halo games. You should know what you're signing up for.
People should not be surprised that 343i prototyped a mode that ultimately got cut, that's just what designing a game entails. That's the process. Framing that as wasting time and getting upset over it is the reason why devs don't like to communicate with players. You can be unhappy with their cadence as it currently exists, but it is silly to be upset that they tried something that didn't pan out years ago.
343's entire history is taking the Halo property and copying trends.
Halo 4 was a straight COD clone
Halo 5 followed up on what Titanfall did with advanced movement which is where both Halo and COD went.
Halo Infinite was prototyping Overwatch.
I'm not surprised they did it, it's their M.O.
Maybe lead designers should realize they are wrong and just do what's best for the franchise 🤷 They could've had a F2P Halo game out in 2018 if they immediately went for the classic Halo gameplay that everyone was telling them to do since 2012. Not doing that is the definition of wasting time. There was no reason not to!
Yes, professional game developers are wrong, and internet randos are right. That's definitely it. Seeing whether or not current trends works in the context of an older franchise is not a waste of time, it's important to actually do that work instead of presupposing that it doesn't work. It seems like hero shooter Halo ultimately didn't work, and now 343i has some hard data to point to for why that is, and they probably got a lot of valuable insight from that process. Even as a hobbyist developer, doing shit you think is probably not going to work out is an important part of the process of making a game. Labeling that as wasting time is, at best, uninformed.
343 presupposed the Halo 3 gameplay wouldn't work in 2012 which is why they made Halo 4, then Halo 5, then had any idea to keep it up in prototyping.
It was never proven classic Halo was a bad idea to follow up on and I would say the "internet randos" were 100% correct for the past 10 years. Developers were wrong, it happens, and this goes beyond the hero shooter phase of development.
Nah, Halo 5 is miles better than Halo 3 IMO. Switching the HCS back to Halo 3 killed the viewership and scene pretty much instantly.
I don't see how you're in a position to speak specifically for what the creative leads at 343i were thinking in 2012, or really at any time. You're assuming they thought classic Halo was bad, when it's just as likely they wanted to try something new after the series had largely been the same for over a decade. And the internet randos were wrong, because just doing classic Halo, as we have seen, is not some silver bullet that fixes every problem. People on the internet know when they don't like something, that doesn't mean their diagnosis for why something is bad is correct. Developers can be wrong or produce something that doesn't work, but experimenting is never wrong.
Jason Schreier confirms the hero shooter mode.Reddit - Dive into anything
www.reddit.com
This explains... a lot
It was hard looking at Infinites MP and making sense of how content light it was, but if a ton of development time was spent on a game style that was utterly different I could see why most of the work and maps didn't cary over. Really wish they wouldn't have done that -- im fine for spin off Halo titles doing things like that (or modes within the game) but I don't understand why they would have went that direction over classic Halo first.
Assuming the work they did was good maybe they can find a way to put it to use outside the core Infinite experience.
The thing is that they've finally delivered what Halo fans were expecting. A modernized Halo that still feels like Halo. And from what I can tell the fast majority is absolutely happy and satisfied with the actual game they delivered.
All the additional expectations are 100% because of promises 343 made themselves. Starting with the promise of it being a GAAS and the Halo platform for the coming 10 years. And all the other promises they've made and almost immediately broke. That isn't on the fans whatsoever. The studio keeps making promises they can't deliver, and often time can't even deliver on the adjusted timeline. That is 100% on 343.
Some pretty accurate list of prominent promises they've failed to deliver on:
just remembered the Spartan in a wheelchair slideshow slide that Kevin Franklin and Josh Holmes did... the fuck.
Yeah, people kept insisting that they were gonna finally get on track with Season 2 and this ain't it. I wouldn't actually have a huge problem with them deciding that Forge and Co-Op need time despite their comments and promises if they could just ya know, support the Multiplayer with more than 1 new map in a year's time. Like, I'll take a bunch of ports from old Halos at this point, you've got a compelling base gameplay system there, but when you launched with 7 base maps and can't even match a single season of live services games in a year's time and can only add one 4 v 4 map and one Big Team Battle map (and it's not like those base 7 were all fantastic, a couple are pretty rough), you're begging for people to leave your game. I don't like to bring up COD because of Activision Blizzard's horrendous crunch culture to achieve its deadlines (and the massive amount of abuse and corporate cronyism), but come on a Season of COD would at times add 3 standard maps alongside maps for other modes and in a year's time-span, the entire life cycle of a COD and huge chunks of prior Halo's life spans, you're releasing 1 standard map and 1 Big Team Battle map come on.
With vague promises of Forge in Beta, Campaign Co-Op targeted, no mention of adding weapons to the weapon pool, and just a handful of modes for this season after Season 1 brought almost nothing to the table? Dear god, this game should have never launched in 2021 and it looks like it might not have even been ready for Holiday 2022.
I feel like anyone expecting a Campaign expansion alongside the major stuff being realized are really setting themselves up for disappointment with 343's track record.
Edit: I also do not think a Battle Royale mode is going to save Halo Infinite at this point, battle royales have become common place AND the most successful ones are incredibly reliant on constant events and a consistent content flow. Why would Halo Infinite suddenly have resolved content production problems with a much more difficult to manage battle royale? Like, sure, it's supposedly a thing and being made by another team... but that makes 343 look even worse that they're not like trying to pull some great big mode out to support the game. And if you have a Campaign expansion you're working on that is sucking ALL your resources out of the MP environment, I would hope Microsoft would realize the value of just letting 343 talk about that now when the community as is finding lower and lower depths to despair to.
With vague promises of Forge in Beta, Campaign Co-Op targeted, no mention of adding weapons to the weapon pool, and just a handful of modes for this season after Season 1 brought almost nothing to the table? Dear god, this game should have never launched in 2021 and it looks like it might not have even been ready for Holiday 2022.
I feel like anyone expecting a Campaign expansion alongside the major stuff being realized are really setting themselves up for disappointment with 343's track record.
Edit: I also do not think a Battle Royale mode is going to save Halo Infinite at this point, battle royales have become common place AND the most successful ones are incredibly reliant on constant events and a consistent content flow. Why would Halo Infinite suddenly have resolved content production problems with a much more difficult to manage battle royale? Like, sure, it's supposedly a thing and being made by another team... but that makes 343 look even worse that they're not like trying to pull some great big mode out to support the game. And if you have a Campaign expansion you're working on that is sucking ALL your resources out of the MP environment, I would hope Microsoft would realize the value of just letting 343 talk about that now when the community as is finding lower and lower depths to despair to.
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Saw this on metro. It's kinda brutal...
metro.co.uk
Halo Infinite is dead and 343 Industries killed it - Reader’s Feature
A reader is frustrated with the lack of updates for Halo Infinite and insists that 343 Industries should never be allowed to make another game.
metro.co.uk
Brutal but mostly honest. This is the common opinion of many Halo fans in this forum and in general.Saw this on metro. It's kinda brutal...
Halo Infinite is dead and 343 Industries killed it - Reader’s Feature
A reader is frustrated with the lack of updates for Halo Infinite and insists that 343 Industries should never be allowed to make another game.
I feel like we should have recognized the problems when they first became apparent. I defended Halo and Battlefield to a lesser extent. Based on nostalgia more so than it's current/launch state.
Which is weird because had it been any other ip and studio I probably wouldn't have side stepped the red flags.
If this was 2012 between the support this game is getting and a mediocre TV show, I've watched the first 3 episodes and just couldn't watch anymore, Microsoft would be in a bad spot. They've diversified their portfolio enough however that even if Halo hits a rough patch I can't imagine it effecting their bottom line too bad.
Think currently Halo is a high reward, low risk product from Microsoft. If the BR is successful, they can have one of the largest games out. The name recognition helps the game a lot. However if Halo just never recovered, they would be more than fine especially with Call of Duty coming into their lineup in the near future. If this was the One era, I would be a lot more worried for Xbox/Microsoft with Halo like this.
Through the power of hindsight, they were wrong to try what they wanted. I mean most in the community knew that as it was happening but some people just wouldn't admit it.
You can't make the argument that somehow the gameplay doesn't have an impact or was the only issue. Halo Infinite is doing bad now entirely due to the lack of content.
Halo Infinite is the most bare bones release for the franchise and 6 months out which is another issue 343 has. Not launching the games with the content that is expected to be there day 1. Halo Infinite will barely be approaching the Xbox 360 standard in Month 12.
Co-op, Firefight, and Forge, with a proper progression system and Halo 3/Reach era file share are all things Infinite lacks. 343 were screwing up nearly every aspect of the games, not just the gameplay.
The issues Halo has had since 343 took over are very easy to note and all came up with Halo Infinite. Some of them got fixed, others crashed and burned.
I say this with all due respect but this type of thinking is part of the reason why Halo is in the predicament it's in.
Instead of caring about a multi-billion dollar corporation's bottom line, we need to make sure they deliver on the ip.
Oh I'm not saying this as an excuse just what higher ups could be thinking internally.
I want you to re-read this sentence and understand just how ridiculous a sentiment this is. "Trying to do what they want" is the basic premise of any creative endeavor, and insinuating that a game developer was wrong to experiment with a gameplay mode, while the game was in development, is fucking stupid.
Well, I didn't make this argument...so 🤷. I said that hewing to old Halo wasn't a silver bullet, as in, they need to do more than simply re-create how Halo played around 3/Reach for Infinite to be successful.
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It's impressively tone deaf that they think that the solution to all the problems they are facing is to announce more dates that they won't hit.
2 new maps total for an entire season. Welp, that's ridiculous.
Late August 'target' for Co-op? Obviously not going to hit that, or they wouldn't have said 'late' or 'target.'
Late September 'target' for Forge? Sorry, 'Forge beta'? Obviously not going to hit that either.
What a joke. Maybe they could include it in Season 3 and we could pay for it? Would they give it to us then?
FFS. It's such a shitshow I can't even believe it.
All we (I) wanted to do was play co-op campaign with a friend. And we're maybe going to get that in what... October?
2 new maps total for an entire season. Welp, that's ridiculous.
Late August 'target' for Co-op? Obviously not going to hit that, or they wouldn't have said 'late' or 'target.'
Late September 'target' for Forge? Sorry, 'Forge beta'? Obviously not going to hit that either.
What a joke. Maybe they could include it in Season 3 and we could pay for it? Would they give it to us then?
FFS. It's such a shitshow I can't even believe it.
All we (I) wanted to do was play co-op campaign with a friend. And we're maybe going to get that in what... October?
Classic halo fixes the "market doesn't like wild departures from to core formula" problem, but it of course it isn't a silver bullet for the "woeful lack of content, poor netcode and an aggressively oppressive progression system that incentivizes quitting/throwing" problem.
It's really annoying when every attempt to honor classic halo is marred by extreme qualitative issues that massively detract from the user experience- and then people are like "see, classic halo just doesn't draw people in", when the reality is, empty, broken games don't retain players, even if the core is attractive.
In 2012, 343 took the absolute wrong approach to continuing the franchise. They should not have been looking to revolutionize it. The existing formula had millions of fans ready to return to play an updated version of that formula, day in and day out. Instead they got a middling COD clone with Halo paint- so they left all left to play actual COD, a franchise that the handlers evolved over that same decade rather than attempt to revolutionize. The internet randos were absolutely right.
When your live service game is releasing content at a slower rate than Halo 2, you must have a busted content pipeline.
I'm sure people at 343 are working hard and I wouldn't want them to crunch or over work themselves but there has to be a production problem somewhere.
I'm sure people at 343 are working hard and I wouldn't want them to crunch or over work themselves but there has to be a production problem somewhere.
I really can't imagine the higherups at MS are all too happy about this. The population is evaporating (yet again) and 343 pretty much squandered the largest population and perfect storm scenario (BF and CoD both fucking it up) they have ever had for their launch. Season 2 isn't gonna retain jack to be honest, 2 maps and it will feel old and stale in a week or so again. The rumored BR might be the revival the game sorely needs, but eh.. I am kinda over it. They butchered the campaign and left MP to die. I am back to playing Battlefront 2 as my go-to again and having a blast, still can't fathom why EA left that one to die either.
Well, looking at the past few years and some big AAA franchises ...
Game should have launched with Forge, with tons of user content being added into the official rotation on matchmaking.
Mentioned it before but it's obvious to see where a lot of the fan criticism comes from. Halo is considered *THE* Xbox Flagship game. So when it feels like the mascot of the platform isn't getting the love/support it should have, that's going to draw a lot of ire. That coupled with everything that happened with Halo 4 & 5 (could include MCC as well) and you're left with a fanbase that's tired of waiting and giving the benefit of the doubt.
I think this is definitely the dominant opinion of those left with an interest in the game. While personally I typically dislike Forge maps, they would have at least helped mask the content sparsity by providing a continuous stream of variations of maps not as heavily reliant on 343's pipeline.
It's arguably the most important feature for player retention.
It's wild that they keep failing without any kind of shakeup
Developers making bad decisions does not necessarily make the randos right. People are good at knowing that something is wrong or not working, but they are usually terrible at knowing what the specific problem is/a potential fix for that problem.
343i developers aren't calling their engine/tools "tech bankrupcty" for no reason and Jason Schreier reconfirmed 343i issues yesterday:
Like I said, the management fucked up massively for not switching to UE4. It would have aliviated the issue of 18 month contractors at least somewhat, but instead they had to learn their propriaty tools during that time and you can see that they couldn't get much done due to this.
Honestly what is going on over at 343? The sheer slowness of meaningful updates to the game, or any tangible progress towards basic modes and features that should have been in the game at launch, is bewildering. And it's such a shame because the gameplay is so good, especially in multiplayer, but clearly people are running out of patience with the game and developers at this point, the player numbers don't lie.
It's Xbox's biggest IP and one of their biggest studios, a studio who have only one job: make Halo games. Six years in development, most of which was apparently spent on an engine that ended up being highly unimpressive even by 7th Gen standards, a decent campaign but missing core modes and nowhere near enough map/mode variety in MP, plus broken/exploitative customization and progression systems. They need a huge, huge shakeup. And it's making me nervous about how Microsoft are going to manage Bethesda as well now.
Yep. I just don't understand how it can be excused, personally. This is by far and away their biggest game franchise, one of the biggest in all of gaming, and they have an enormous, well-funded studio who only make Halo games. For it to launch as it did wasn't ideal, but at least the core of the MP and campaign were great, but nearly six months later and every core missing feature has been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back, and a lot of us are sitting around wondering 'well if you delayed those features, where's the thing you were presumably working on instead and wanted to deliver now?'
It's Xbox's biggest IP and one of their biggest studios, a studio who have only one job: make Halo games. Six years in development, most of which was apparently spent on an engine that ended up being highly unimpressive even by 7th Gen standards, a decent campaign but missing core modes and nowhere near enough map/mode variety in MP, plus broken/exploitative customization and progression systems. They need a huge, huge shakeup. And it's making me nervous about how Microsoft are going to manage Bethesda as well now.
Yep. I just don't understand how it can be excused, personally. This is by far and away their biggest game franchise, one of the biggest in all of gaming, and they have an enormous, well-funded studio who only make Halo games. For it to launch as it did wasn't ideal, but at least the core of the MP and campaign were great, but nearly six months later and every core missing feature has been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back, and a lot of us are sitting around wondering 'well if you delayed those features, where's the thing you were presumably working on instead and wanted to deliver now?'
I was pretty optimistic that 343 would have come out by now saying I know this road map implies that only 2 maps are coming for 6 months but it says subject to change for a reason or something along those lines. If 2 maps is really all that's coming for season 2 they better have a Halo Infinite relaunch trailer that shows off Season 3 with Forge, Certain Affinity BR and a new progression system during the summer event. If season 3 doesn't come out blowing away expectations Halo Infinite is dead.
The more time goes on, the more dead it looks. It all seems so horribly mismanaged.
When co-op finally rolls around I hope we play as our multiplayer Spartans for players 2-4, the roadmap graphic shows multiple Chiefs but I'm not going to read into that too much. Also when they introduce new weapons into the game they should add new encounters into the campaign to earn them. I enjoyed Infinite's campaign but it felt a bit lacking in terms of content for an open world game. Would be awesome if they added new Forerunner dungeons (with more visual variety than the base game) where we could fight through them to earn the classic shotty and what not. The game also lacks meaningful vehicle encounters so that's a place they could add too that war ravaged area is a perfect place to drop a scarab...