Halo Infinite developers looking into battle pass grind
Ed reckons he'll be 80 years old by the time he hits level 100
Developers 343 Industries surprise-launched Halo Infinite's multiplayer this week on Xbox's 20th birthday, and so far it seems that folks are finding it fairly fun to play. But a lot of players have one major grievance: the battle pass is a massive grind. Complaints about challenges that award very little XP are all over the game's subreddit. Fortunately, the devs have seen this feedback, and are already looking into the slow progression.
To level up Infinite's battle pass, you need to complete daily and weekly challenges to earn XP. Unfortunately, it sounds like you don't get much XP at all for doing these, and to make matters worse, you don't even get XP from simply completing games (which is an odd omission, almost every other shooter I can think of gives you an amount of post-match XP depending on your performance).
Our own Ed Thorn has been playing this week, and I was curious how far up the battle pass he'd managed to get. Reader, it is not far. Ed tells me:
"Nearly four hours of big team battling last night got me to – drum roll please – level 3 of Halo Infinite’s battle pass. And the challenges I’ve got to complete are mind-numbing. Get a kill with this weapon, then three with this one. What does all this effort amount to? Maybe one level, if you’re lucky. I will be an 80 year old living inside an Eden Project on Mars by the time I hit level 100."
A whole thread on the Halo Infinite subreddit is dedicated to battle pass progression feedback. Some players say they've had to play upwards of 12 hours just to reach level 5, and others have concerns that this system encourages an "unhealthy playstyle", where players are just trying to complete challenges, rather than properly play the objective.
It's worth noting that Halo Infinite is still in beta right now though, with its full release still set for December 8th. So, there's still plenty of time for changes to be made. The developers have seen the feedback about the battle pass too, so hopefully tweaks are on the way.
"FYI the team is looking at Battle Pass progression and gathering data from yesterday's sessions and we'll share updates as we have them," community director Brian Jarrard tweeted yesterday. "Please continue to share feedback and raise flags as you see them."