Halo Infinite Mid-Season Update Has Been Slammed: 'Where’s The Content?'
It seems like Halo fans are finally losing patience with 343 Industries after the most recent Halo Infinite developer's blog - which laid out the content to be expected in the mid-season update - was branded as little more than a "hotfix" by players.
It makes bad on 343 Industries' claims that Halo Infinite would be a live-service game, like Fortnite or AApex Legends, with continuous content updates in the shape of new maps, events, and cosmetics. The game has fallen far short of those expectations and has had no major updates in the four months since its launch. Infinite is still missing core features and has more than its fair share of bugs, most notably network issues with many players reporting suffering desync.
None of that is really addressed in the mid-season update, other than mention that "new telemetry" will be added to the game that focuses on "gathering more data around" desync - but no actual fixes are promised for an update expected to release on February 24.
Even though long-awaited improvements to the anti-cheat system are also touted, no concrete details are given, alongside some small stability and performance improvements.
Halo Infinite Fans Left Disappointed With Mid-Season Update
Click to enlarge"So we get ambiguous explanations to 'we are fixing this,' little QOL fixes, and a bigger radar in BTB… Wasn’t this supposed to be a pretty big update?" wrote one player in reply.
"Too little too late for me honestly. You guys still have not addressed some of your major issues. Where's the roadmap? Where’s the content? You guys are treating this game pathetically, complete and utter joke," added another.
Those feelings translated over to the Halo Infinite subreddit where many compared it to other live-service games and found it paled in comparison. Putting the actualities of the mid-season update to one side, it's becoming obvious that 343 Industries has bitten off more than they could chew with Halo Infinite.
The game was pushed back a year and when it finally did come out in December of last year it was still missing co-op singleplayer and the Forge map maker. Season 2 has also been delayed until May having originally been scheduled for March.
Are Things That Bad For Halo Infinite?
Click to enlargeSeemingly small updates to Halo Infinite's storefront and a failure to fix Big Team Battles multiple times (it is performing better now) are the only "major" changes to the game since launch. Some in-game events have come and gone but not without their own issues.
The feeling that the developers don't have the resource or the workflow to run a game like Halo Infinite was given further credence by a former 343 Industries employee, now Senior Encounter Designer at Respawn, Patrick Wren. In a Twitter thread, Wren revealed that the previous title, Halo 5, and its monthly updates, had proved "unsustainable" for the team, "by the end of those 6 months we were extremely burnt out."
Why Xbox, and in turn Microsoft's, flagship first-person shooter can't get the extra staff needed to make what is a very good game, truly great, is anyone’s guess… we just hope it has nothing to do with all the money spent on buying Call of Duty: Warzone. It's not all bad news for Halo Infinite fans, with more content seemingly on the way with a recent leak claiming there is up to ten maps in development.
