Halo Infinite is gearing up for its biggest update yet next week - with the release of co-op campaign, Forge mode, and a lot of multiplayer updates.
In yet another new blog over on Halo Waypoint, 343 senior community manager John Junyszek has provided a thorough breakdown of some of the finer adjustments and balance changes to the game's sandbox experience.
These adjustments are based on community feedback, and even more updates and tuning changes will be released beyond the Winter Update based on the "data" 343 is seeing in the community.
Weapons
343 is making adjustments to a bunch of weapons:
- Plasma Pistol - damage increased of the base shot
- Pulse Carbine - updated tracking at shorter range reduced tracking at longer range
- VK78 Commando - increased effectiveness up close
- BR75 - reduced effectiveness at range from the hip, raised skill ceiling on landing "final kill shot"
- Frag Grenade - slightly increased detonation time by 0.2 seconds
- Disruptor - Increased magazine ammo count from 10 to 12
Other:
- Snap Slide - where you sprint, jump and slide on a slope such as a ramp, quickly change directions to "snap", and then receive a huge boost/leap.
“snap sliding” allows players to make jumps that could truly break the game flow. Tuning details: Fixed a physics bug that allowed “snap sliding”
Some more balance adjustments coming in the future include the following:
- Drop Shot (or weapon drop) - Will be in time with the speed of just swapping weapons
- Thruster - Will no longer be as good in 1v1 engagements
- Weapon respawn timers will be reduced and "how many of each weapon can be on the map at any given time" in Ranked Arena
- Energy Sword:
"Right now, if both players are no shields and they melee each other, the player with the Energy Sword will survive with a sliver of health. This upcoming update will update the melee logic so both players trade melees and die, which should help prevent the Energy Sword from just tearing through teams without trading."
Beyond weapon adjustments, 343 will be looking to improve mouse and keyboard inputs, as well as the overall PC experience
PC Version improvements
- Red Reticle for online play will be trialled
- Scroll wheel improvements when swapping weapons
- Walking at a slower speed (without having to crouch) will be added to PC
- These inputs will carry over to mouse and keyboard on Xbox
Networking "Desync" improvements
More improvements will be made to this area of the game, some changes are coming in the next few updates. 343 also mentions how there's "more work" to do on this, and there'll be a "steady flow" of improvements in future updates.
- Ghost melees
Sandbox Team Dev Note: Hitting a player and seeing them walk away unscathed, or worse, hitting you back and killing you, is extremely frustrating. We focused on this one due to how un-fun it can be, but we’re happy to say that we’re testing some improvements for a few different bugs that were resulting in melee registration issues.
- Blank Shots
Sandbox Team Dev Note: We mentioned it a bit above, but the fake reload issue is one reason contributing to why players could have blank shots. We know there are other instances of shots not counting aside from fake reloads, and we’ll be going after those too, but we’re happy to be bringing this out first.
- Vehicle Desync
Sandbox Team Dev Note: Since we’ve seen that players are more likely to experience full desyncs when operating a vehicle than moving around as a Spartan, we set our sights on crushing bugs in this space. You can expect some targeted vehicle desync improvements in the next update.