It's hard to argue with the decision to make Halo Infinite's multiplayer a free-to-play experience and it's even harder to argue with the decision to launch the Halo Infinite Multiplayer a little earlier than the Campaign in Beta. Halo Infinite's Multiplayer experience is a polished experience with a great amount of content for a game at launch - and it's fun to play, most importantly. However, there are issues with the Multiplayer progression systems in Halo Infinite.
It's simply too slow and doesn't encourage long periods of gameplay. Taking to Twitter earlier today, 343 Industries' Community Manager John Junyszek has described the next set of changes coming to the levelling and XP systems in Halo Infinite. However, they don't sound like they're going to fix the levelling issues a whole lot...
PROGRESSION UPDATE - What's actually changing?
Following an evaluation of the current in-game Challenge and Reward system, 343 Industries has opted to increase the initial Match XP payout with the following values:
- First Game - 300 XP
- Second Game - 200 XP
- Game Three - 200 XP
- Game Four - 100 XP
- Game Five - 100 XP
- Game Six - 100 XP
- Game Seven and Beyond - 50 XP
You can check out Junyszek's small thread on these changes below:
These values are going to equate to one Battle Pass level's worth of XP for six games a day.
Although no specific confirmation was given that the changes above were coming today, they're being talked about as though they're coming today - or very soon, at least. So, we should see all of the above reflected in-game soon.
This is good, but it isn't perfect. It helps Halo Infinite players get an initial pay-off sooner, seeing a level pop up after six games. However, the significant drop in Match XP after this point is going to make longer sessions feel largely unproductive, still. There's also still no mention of any bonus XP for winning a match. Slayer or not, it looks like Halo Infinite is still about the kills for the time being.
We know Halo Infinite is still in Beta, but any game with a Battle Pass system is going to have an increased demand of levelling options from its player base. Without the ability to filter specific game modes in Halo Infinite's multiplayer playlists, the Challenges are often hit-or-miss and can't be relied on for a steady source of additional XP.