Despite fans enjoying Halo Infinite’s multiplayer gameplay, Halo's Battle Pass challenges are causing players to leave matches en masse, creating empty lobbies for those wishing to play. The newest installment in the Halo franchise has been split into two parts: its multiplayer component being a free-to-play model that launched earlier in November, and its paid campaign mode expected to release on December 8.
As the first free-to-play title for the beloved franchise, the multiplayer mode of Halo Infinite quickly soared to new heights, breaking Xbox Game Studios’ records to become the most successful title for the developer on the Steam platform. While the game was praised for its gameplay, many fans have taken issue with its Battle Pass, which has been heavily criticized for its progression system and its push towards microtransactions for cosmetics. Recently, one fan calculated that Halo Infinite’s Season 1 microtransactions totalled over $1000 for all of its cosmetics.
As reported by Dexerto, Halo Infinite’s Battle Pass challenges have led many players to leave matches, leading to completely empty lobbies, a problem that was highlighted in a video by Reddit user Shaun-On-Toast. Shaun-On-Toast’s video shows almost all of the player’s teammates and opponents leaving the match shortly after loading into a Capture The Flag game. This is due to the fact that, in order to complete some of the challenges in the Battle Pass, players must use certain weapons, vehicles or even play a specific game mode. However, as the game currently does not allow players to select the specific mode they wish to play, fans are forced to queue into a randomly selected mode via the Quick Play, Ranked Arena, Big Team Battle, or Bot Bootcamp playlists.
perhaps making it impossible to choose your game mode and forcing people to pay modes to level up was a bad idea? from halo
See the post on Reddit here.
The Battle Pass progression and Halo Infinite’s weekly challenges continue to be criticized by fans, with developers at 343 Industries recently stating that adjustments to the system are now its top priority. Currently, the random element to game modes greatly hinders progression on Battle Pass challenges, and as a result, many players have opted to simply leave lobbies and re-queue if the game mode or map is not the map they require. Redditors commented to express their frustration at being unable to pick the match they want to play, with many stating that they are forced to leave matches to find the mode they require if they want to progress through their Battle Pass within a reasonable time.
For Halo fans who may not have a lot of time to play the game, the random element to being able to complete the game’s challenges can be understandably frustrating. As 343 has previously adjusted Halo Infinite’s daily challenge progression XP rate due to player feedback, there will hopefully be more adjustments to come in order to fix the problems quickly.
Halo Infinite will launch on December 8, 2021, for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Halo Infinite's multiplayer mode is available now.
Source: Shaun-On-Toast/Reddit (via Dexerto)