Halo Infinite‘s multiplayer was a surprise release to players yesterday, peaking at over 270,000 concurrent players on Steam on only day two of its debut. Fans of the franchise have praised the game for its gameplay and for just how fun it is. However, the battle pass is having people singing a different tune. The battle pass concept is used in many games from Call of Duty, to Red Dead Redemption 2. Customarily, these passes reward players for simply playing the game. With Halo Infinite on the other hand, players can only advance in the battle pass by completing certain challenges within multiplayer. Overly specific challenges such as “Kill 15 enemy Spartans with the Sidekick Pistol in PVP” are overcomplicating the pass and causing players to say it just plain sucks.
In the Halo Infinite battle pass, players have daily and weekly challenges, with most XP coming from the weekly ones. One upside is that combining the weekly challenges gifts players about five levels of progress in the battle pass.
Although some of the challenges are simple, like winning certain matches in certain modes, it’s the the more complex ones like “Kill five enemy Spartans by flattening them with the Repulsor in PVP” that are getting in the way of players enjoying the game. It’s especially frustrating for players that no matter how well they do in a round of modes such as Capture the Flag, or others, no progression is given to the pass. This aspect of the game is making the pass far too drawn out, forcing players to grind through nearly the whole thing rather than enjoying just actually playing Halo.
In response to early criticism of the battle pass back in September, 343 Industries said, ““We have heard community feedback around wanting more progression options including things like “match XP” to feed into the Battle Pass and an entirely separate, incremental system along the lines of earning SR152 in Halo 5: Guardians.” Continuing, ““Expanding Multiplayer progression offerings is something the team is actively exploring, and we look forward to continuing to evolve the experience in future seasons post-launch.”
Hopefully players can see these updates sooner rather than later. The current season of Halo Infinite is set to last until May.
