Halo Infinite is Here but the XP Progression is Painful

How on Earth did we end up in this predicament, 343i? Since the far off days of Halo Reach we have always had a match-based experience system when it comes to leveling up. Which begs the question – who decided that challenges should be our primary way of progressing through the battle pass? Now, that said, the season lasts a substantially long time and even after it ends you’ll keep your pass given that you purchased it. That doesn’t mean that challenge focused progression is a good idea, though, and we’re going to discuss why.

With the mashup of game modes we’ve been given access to, only one of them is a kill objective mode. This means that for matches of Oddball, CTF or Strongholds, nobody seems very concerned about whether they win or lose. Not a huge deal, but for those that care about their stats, well you can’t even cross your fingers in the ranked mode we have. There isn’t much difference in motivation between quick play or ranked, as you’re still faced with enemies and team mates that are primarily focused on the only way they can build their rank. I’m not sure about you, but needing twenty-five kills with the sidekick and landing three matches of Strongholds in a row, kind of eliminates the drive to focus on anything but a reward down the line.

The other problem is the amount of experience you can wrestle down after finishing a challenge. Even with double boosters, which countdown outside of matches by the way, you have to plan out the best time to activate them in order to make any real use of their bump. Without using boosters you may pull anywhere from 100-150 XP per completed challenge, which isn’t much compared to the four thousand or so that you need to level up. Challenge XP could very well work, but it needs to be slated in a rewarding way. The higher the difficulty, the higher the bounty on completion, much like the side challenges worked from Reach onward.

Another problem comes down to challenges being entirely random from a varied pool. Since release, the majority of my personal matches have been either CTF or Strongholds, not a big deal, except I have also had a challenge to complete Slayer matches for two days now. That means two days of either hoping I get lucky with gamemode RNG, or using one of my challenge swaps and still hoping it’s something accomplishable. So far it’s still sitting on my challenge page.

There can be a delicate balance between performance, match win/loss and challenge experience. Another option could be moving towards match-based experience and saving challenges for specific gear unlocks. The drive to finish substantial challenges in order to unlock certain armor would certainly create the sense of having more content available, and it would push players to win games in order to continue ranking up. In the case of multiplayer games like this, the variation of movement forward is perfectly okay to be divided. More options mean more time playing different things and aiming for all the content available.

Thankfully 343 has already openly stated that they’re looking for ways to rework and adjust the progression system. If you have any ideas, opinions or important notes, feel free to head over to Waypoint and make your voice heard. Let’s just try to keep it open minded and mature. The devs are openly discussing and working with the community to try making this an honest Halo experience, as it stands they’re doing extremely well. We can only hope that going forward this channel of communication remains open and genuine.