Dec 13, 2022

Halo Infinite - misplacedyank

Welcome to our third instalment of Forge Features – our final one for 2022 before the Holidays!

The community continues to make amazing Forge content that we at 343 are thoroughly impressed by; every week is made all the more exciting with the knowledge that we’re going to see some truly inspired creations, so let’s take a look at a selection of some of our latest favorites.

Maps & Modes

Mausoleum

Credits: Pwn Jones, RANMAN10, TheHoodedManZ, microbistic9576
Bookmark: Mausoleum

Mausoleum is a map that is inspired by and takes elements of The Pit from Halo 3, something that you can see in the screenshot above, and reforges them into something altogether new.

I love the Delta Halo-inspired aesthetic, the angular simplicity and symmetry, the creative use of decals – all of which come together to make this map feel like a true, living location as well as a stellar multiplayer map for some good ol’ fashioned Slayer action!

Absolution

Credits: Anvil Prime 52, Savesme6464, b0b is here
Bookmark: Absolution

Absolution has some familiar aspects of a few different maps. You might find yourself thinking of Guardian from Halo 3 at times, Sanctuary from Halo 2 at others, and you’ll notice that this is also very aesthetically reminiscent of the ancient structures seen on Delta Halo. There really is just something about those weathered stone structures...

This is a fantastic 4v4 map which supports Slayer, CTF, and King of the Hill. Hop in and give it a go with some friends!

Sandtrap Remake

Credits: JRGodoy
Bookmark: Sandtrap Remake

The culmination of these ancient and weathered stone-based structures naturally brings us to a remake of this iconic favorite.

It’s Sandtrap as you know and love it! Well, if you want to get technical, it’s actually Sand Tarp – the variant of the map in Halo 3 without Elephants.

I hear this version of the map is so loyal to the original, JRGodoy has ensured exactly the same number of grains of sand are present on this remade version. I leave the task of confirming the veracity of that statement (which I definitely didn’t just make up) to you.

Betrayal

Credits: Dellsoto
Bookmark: Betrayal

Betrayal might be one of my favorite maps I’ve seen thus far. If you’re a fan of the Forerunner aesthetics of Halo: Combat Evolved, that fascinating mix of alien materials which evoke stone and metal, you’re going to have a great time just walking around this incredible interior space.

No expense has been spared in paying close attention to detail, and you might well imagine that this could have been a real Forerunner space in the campaign.

LG Jump Progression (Parkour)

Credits: Lord Guntaz
Bookmark: LG Jump Progression

Trick jumps in Halo. Are they super cool? They sure are! Can I do them? Absolutely not...

But if you’re among those skilled movement artists with a penchant for chain slides, curbslides, equipment jumps, and so on, you should totally check out this movement course from Lord Guntaz.

Current record time is apparent 5 minutes and 50 seconds by Exi, so go and see if you can beat them!

Community Creations

Moving over to additional Community Creations, we’re kicking off with DEWtheMCCOY who is now on day 34 of expediently covering the things you’ve been making.

Of course, it always helps to be reminded of the basics, right? Koma has helpfully put together a Forge tutorial which covers just that, which will hopefully be helpful for folks just joining us – or those who simply want a reminder of the new systems and features of the Halo Infinite Forge Beta.

And finally, PengiPlays has put together a tutorial on how to script player traits through nodegraphs. Active camo, additional shields, infinite ammo, player gravity, headshot protection... all of these and more are options at your disposal!

And that’ll about do it for this issue. With the Holiday break coming up, we hope you all have some time to rest and jump into Forge to let loose your creativity.

Forge Features will be back in January, and we can’t wait to see what you’ve made!

Dec 13, 2022

Closed Alpha 2 Change Log

Deceive Inc. - Yoshiro

General Changes:

Hey everyone! We've received massive amounts of feedback from our previous alpha testing and came back with some very clear take-aways on what we wanted to tackle first. Keep in mind: This build is a stepping stone. Not every change we want to make is made. We've branched this build about two weeks after the last playtest and as such we did not have enough time to put more sweeping changes in place just yet.

That being said, we still made some very important changes that will affect the experience substantially. Our focuses in this alpha are to lower TKK overall, make stealth more rewarding and punish careless play more acutely in combat situations. With that said and expectations set, let's dive in!

Cover Shield
This is the single biggest change we are trying this alpha: The cover shield now ONLY negates additional damage from headshots. No damage reduction.

With more playtime in the game being analyzed we realized that the cover shield damage reduction was counterproductive to our goals. We designed it to make sure a victim would not get melted instantly, but this adds the effect of protecting reckless players not using stealth from possible danger.

We believe that removing that damage reduction and only keeping headshots negation will make stealth play more desirable and ambushes more efficient. We'll be looking closely at the effects this has on the game and we already have an early damage rebalancing pass on most of the cast in this build to compensate.

Slowed Status Effect
The slowed status effect is a powerful thing in the DI meta. We found it to be overperforming quite a lot in the alpha to the point of being an oppressive presence in matches. As such, we changed the slowed effect across the board to be a 50% speed reduction instead of 65%.

This should keep the effect strong while making it feel less hopeless for victims.

Guards
In the spirit of making stealth stronger, we are buffing guards. This is not a huge buff. Guards will hit more often and keep more pressure on players overall. We want to see how this behaves and see how it affects the experience before taking further steps.

Resource Changes
The amount of ammo and snacks found in the map has been scaled down a bit. Snacks also heal less by default. Packs dropped by downed spies now heal for 15 instead of 30 HP.

All these changes are made in an effort to increase attrition from continued fighting and to make ressource seeking more important. This is a very early pass on those tweaks and we are continuing this balancing as we speak.

NPC balancing
We’ve made some changes to how npc prioritize what they should do. This will mostly affect restricted areas having NPCs in them more often to generate tension and make it harder to speedrun these rooms with the wrong cover.

Scolding
NPCs will now blow your cover from scolding in 3 seconds instead of 4. This is simply another step in nerfing careless gameplay.

Pre game Lobby
While making piles of golden toilets is fun, we heard you loud and clear: The pregame lobby is way too long. We are reducing lobby times drastically in this patch to really lower friction between matches. Pre Game will now last 1 minute and 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes 30 seconds.

Back-end Fixes
Issues around party synchronization when matchmaking and kicking players to the main menu on map load have been resolved.

Melee Attacks
Keeping the best for last. We’ve put more work into the melee to make it far more reliable. It’s time to live your jump kick dreams Cavalière mains!

Agents:
We've made wide ranging changes to weapon balancing in this update. While we won't detail every single change, we've tweaked underperforming weapon mods, buffed some characters that were lagging behind in the ttk department (Xiu, Larcin and Squire for example) and nerfed overperforming weapons to try and keep the balance more nuanced and interesting.

Expect lower TTKs and tighter engagements overall.

Hans:
- The slow from Hans expertises has been reduced to 3 seconds from 6. We want to keep the slow as a timely closing mechanic and not a death sentence.
Cavalière:
- With the arrival of a better working melee, Cavalière is dangerously close to overperforming. To adjust this, we removed the small damage bonus her melee charge gave her. We believe the sheer utility of her melee passives is already quite enough to make her competitive.
Squire:
- Squire can now detect intel in drawers with his "eye on the prize" expertise.
Yu-Mi:
- The split-pellet mod for Yu-Mi now has 5 projectiles and behaves more like a shotgun with more potency at low charge time.

Package Carrier
We've received a lot of feedback around the package carrier and his abilities. Here's what we are putting in place for this test:

Looting the package no longer gives any intel in itself. You'll have to loot BEFORE grabbing it and be prepared.
The package scan ability now drains intel 50% faster.
While scanning, the ping build up of the carrier is paused. This means you can hold a ping by draining intel to try and bypass enemies in stealth. This also gives the exfiltration scanner upgrade a lot of value for stealth builds that want a sneaky extract.
Package scanning now has a max range of 150M. Beyond that, rival spies won't be marked. You'll have to scan a bit more often and stay on your toes.
Ping buildup is now faster than before when running.

This will hopefully make stealthy plays a bit more viable on both sides of the extraction phase and keep things more interesting and fair overall.

Objective Room Camping
One subject that was discussed quite a bit around the alpha was the prevalence of camping in the package room inside the vault. While camping itself is fair game in most scenarios, we feel this is one where its presence is quite destructive to the overall game. There is a single objective and everyone needs to get there.

As such we added new mechanics to make objective camping much less efficient and desirable.

There is now a light at the objective's room entrance and past the door in all maps. When someone is inside the objective room, this light turns red.
While inside the objective room, high tech security systems will start chipping away at your cover. Your cover will drain over 30 seconds unless you have the VIP rank. The VIP cover will still activate the red light visible from outside the room.
If your cover gets blown inside the objective room, from the drain or otherwise, it will never regenerate while staying inside. In addition, your location will be broadcasted to the entire match every 5 seconds while staying inside the room.
Picking up the Package disables all security systems, making it safe to stay in.

Gadgets:

Umbrella shield
- Now has correct values on cooldown (30 Sec) and the deployed version HP has been changed to 150 from 200.
Tripwire
- 25% bigger to make obvious placements less effective. Triggering a tripwire now makes the line visible for a few seconds.
Auto-Turret
- Now deals damage a bit more often and has more HP(from 15 to 30) to make it more of a distraction in combat.
Goo Pods
- The goo zone has been expanded to make a single pod more useful. We found that players really needed to throw all three in most situations to have good coverage.
Hack-Trap
- Hacking objects is now twice as fast and can be done from farther away to reduce risk to the user.

Field Upgrades:

Nutritional Supplement
- This upgrade really took the game by storm and was over performing quite a bit. We've reduced the base amount of healing by snacks and adjusted subsequent levels of the upgrade in accordance. The maximum healing from a single snack is now 18 down from 25.
Max Intel
- Adjusted the additional intel slightly to now top off a 20 instead of 22.
Exfiltration Scanner
- While no changes to the upgrade itself has been made, the changes to the package carrier behavior act as a substantial buff for this upgrade. It is by far the most situational upgrade and as such we want to make sure it has a nice niche.
Max Health
- Having more health is always useful and at the amounts it used to give, we found it to be a bit too much of a no-brainer in a build. We reduced values for all versions except the civilian one. The new values are now: 5-8-10-12-15.
- This should also help keep fights on a more even ground and open up more varied builds.
Social Battery
- By far the worst performing upgrade in the last playtest, social battery is getting a huge upgrade. Every single variant of the powerup now has the ability to heal a player back to full health. The difference now lies in how long it takes to regain health. We hope this will give it a nice spot for safer heals in between fights.

Streamer Features
We’ve received some great suggestions from streamers partaking in the last playtest. We’ve fast tracked a few features to make their experience in the game better and limit the tools for people to stream snipe them. We’ll be keeping an eye out for other features requests to make the streamer experience smoother in the future.

Anonymize Player Name
- This will generate a random username for the streamer in every match to conceal their identity to the lobby.
Hide Player Name Tags
- This will hide the name of every player in the game, preventing stream sniping by deduction of other player names inside the lobby.

Reminder this update will go live on the 16th for testing: Details HERE

And be sure to check out the content creator clips we captured from the first alpha: HERE

Dec 13, 2022

Happy Festive Season!

Counterpact - Uwasatchi

Happy Festive Season everyone! As you could probably guess, this update marks the start of the Festive Season. This holiday event will run until January 2! The Festive Season celebrates Winter Solstice, Christmas, and the New Year. You'll find multiple cosmetics for each of these holidays in this event! This update also brings a Christmas-themed metagame that will last for the duration of the event, and a new Christmas-themed weapon that will be permanently available in the shop! All players will also receive the Gift Scythe upon logging in!

New Weapon: Killing Lights

Defense weapon for Shazia the Dream
The weapon forgoes the pick potential Hypnotic Chain possesses, in favor of sustained presence and knockback-based area denial.
Attack: Knockback on hit has been increased significantly, but the attack animation will briefly pause upon hitting an enemy; this pause also affects attack delay.
Ability: Chaining an enemy will not subdue them; instead, the user's Static Charge will gradually increase until it reaches the target's maximum health. Static Charge grants armor to the user. If the user takes damage while they possess a Static Charge, some of the Static Charge will be lost, but a pulse of electricity will be released, damaging and knocking back any nearby enemies. The pulse's damage and knockback is dependent on how much Static Charge was consumed. Static Charge will automatically be lost after not chaining any enemies or taking any damage for 5 seconds.

New Temporary Shop Items:

Fresh Overwear (2023) (Common Holiday Outfit)*
2023 (Common Holiday Emote)*

* These items will only be available during 2022's Festive Season event. After the event ends, they will become permanently unavailable!

New Variety Gashapon Items:

Snow Thrower (Common Holiday Weapon Skin for Soul Crusher)
Chimney Sweep (Common Holiday Weapon Skin for Firewall)
Gift of Giving (Common Holiday Weapon Skin for Lil' Clinic)
Festive Wrath (Common Holiday Weapon Skin for Unfathomable Fury)
Brain Freeze (Common Holiday Reaper Outfit)
Overnight Shipping (Common Holiday Watcher Outfit)
Miss Cocoa (Common Holiday Pet)
Snowflake (Common Holiday Emote)
Cheers! (Common Holiday Emote)
Magic Sleigh (Rare Holiday Chair)

Holiday Rush

A Christmas tree spawns near the middle of the map. Whenever an objective is complete, an ornament appears somewhere on the map for the team that completed the objective!
- Only one ornament will appear at a time.
- Maps that are too small or do not contain a valid objective will not be able to trigger this metagame.
Ornaments can only be picked up by one team, but anyone on that team can pick them up. The player that picks up the ornament must deliver it to the Christmas tree.
If a player is KO'd while carrying the ornament, they will drop it for the enemy team to pick up!
When a player successfully delivers an ornament to the Christmas tree, their whole team will receive a temporary buff!
Each ornament you successfully deliver to the Christmas Tree will be added to an Exclusive Memento at the end of the round!

Balancing Adjustments

Back Alley Invitation now initially deals less attack damage, but will have its attack damage penalty (compared to Hypnotic Chain's attack damage) completely removed at 100% sapped bonus.
Obtaining more than 100% sapped bonus will not increase the attack damage further.
Halo's allied heal upon attack has been increased.
Recourse's allied heal upon attack has been decreased.
Recourse's attack damage has been increased.
- Recourse seemed to be a better option than Halo in most, if not all scenarios. These balance changes aim to establish Halo as having a larger, unmatched focus on direct healing, while shifting Recourse a little more towards combat support.
Shazia the Dream's chain now has a weaker grappling effect while holding the flag.

Bug Fixes

Fixed Lil' Clinic Wardens attempting to target allies through walls.
- Allies would not actually be healed through walls as the Warden would immediately stop targetting them; however, this was still an issue as it would prevent valid allies from being healed.
Fixed an issue with hosting a dedicated game server on the same machine where automatic login was enabled resulting in the game server not properly initializing the game.
- Note that this issue would not occur if the host used a Steam login and had copied the game files (excluding the Steam DLLs) to a separate directory before hosting the server.

Miscellaneous

Player healthbars no longer cover players when wearing certain outfits.
Items of rarities that inherently prevent certain actions (trading, recycling, or refining) will now display the unavailable actions in their descriptions.
All item information has been added to the localization system.