So digital foundry looked at Halo Infinite. Surprisingly, the performance is not in the order you'd believe (in multiplayer).

Xbox Series X > PC > Xbox One X > Xbox Series S > Xbox One S

So yeah. This isn't confusing at all. Buying a NEW Series S and having an old X perform better.

The X tier was always marketed as 'beefy af' and the Series S as 'just barely enough to pump out 4k'.

Very true. Newer doesn't always mean higher performance if you're dealing with different tiers. If you buy the top-tier graphics card right now, a couple of years down the line it will still be outperforming baseline $30 cards, even if they're "newer."

Still, I feel like this stuff is worth pointing out, just for public education. Until very recently we didn't have different tiers of console in the same generation. Most people who've grown up with gaming consoles probably expect newer models to be more potent across the board, because they always used to be.

I was surprised.

Did anyone play big team battle? I enjoyed the little I played.

I’m really, really impressed after playing this weekend. The game feels absolutely incredible. It’s difficult to describe, but it fried like almost a perfect modernization of classic Halo. I think all of the maps we’ve seen so far are really good. The weapons all feel and sound great.

120 fps is incredible, as well. I really hope this high frame rate trend continues.

I was surprised.

Did anyone play big team battle? I enjoyed the little I played.

The map is great and the bump in equipment uses made it feel like a massive hilarious sandbox to play in. I spider man'd across the map, repulsed speeding ghosts and scouted enemy bases behind a drop wall.

I felt like the 12 vs 12 allowed for epic engagements while keeping it a tactical battle and not a strategic war.

The ordinance drops from weapons to vehicles solved the issue with gridlocked BTB games that drag out. It's a hell of a thing when the tanks drop in and things get kicked up a notch. I started trying to identify the lane their tank was coming so I could make an alt side push.

All in all, I really enjoyed it, but I'm not that hard to please, so I'm curious what other people think.

I’m really, really impressed after playing this weekend. The game feels absolutely incredible. It’s difficult to describe, but it fried like almost a perfect modernization of classic Halo. I think all of the maps we’ve seen so far are really good. The weapons all feel and sound great.

120 fps is incredible, as well. I really hope this high frame rate trend continues.

Will Randall Glass return? Pile grenades under warthog. Launch. Attach to flying car with grapple hook. Warthog jump part 3.

12v12 felt good, but I’m really interested to see what 24v24 will feel like.

I really liked the BTB map. It has good opportunities for vehicle use, while being tight enough with enough alternate routes that the vehicles don’t completely dominate.

I’m really, really impressed after playing this weekend. The game feels absolutely incredible. It’s difficult to describe, but it fried like almost a perfect modernization of classic Halo. I think all of the maps we’ve seen so far are really good. The weapons all feel and sound great.

120 fps is incredible, as well. I really hope this high frame rate trend continues.

Will Randall Glass return? Pile grenades under warthog. Launch. Attach to flying car with grapple hook. Warthog jump part 3.

I’d love that.

- No text -

I can actually find much info, but I could have sworn I saw a tweet from someone at 343 talking about higher players counts than that.

Edit:

343 Industries is doing investigations on increased player counts beyond 16 players for Halo MCC!
Up to 40-60 players potentially. pic.twitter.com/Lh9kWZg0Ch

— Mint Blitz (@MintBlitz) June 22, 2021

I think this is what I saw, but didn’t really pay enough attention to see it was MCC at the time.

I enjoyed it, but I do have a couple of nipicking complaints. The biggest is that the controls felt off on their default settings. I turned the dead zone way down and adjusted the acceleration and it got a lot better. I am really glad they have a lot of customization in the controls.

I also thought the radar was useless, especially in BTB. Is the range a lot shorter? A few times I had somebody right on top of me before the radar showed anything.

Is there going to be any way to turn off the highlights around players? It looks goofy and is more distracting than helpful. Plus it looks totally silly when players are inside of vehicles.

I enjoyed it, but I do have a couple of nipicking complaints. The biggest is that the controls felt off on their default settings. I turned the dead zone way down and adjusted the acceleration and it got a lot better. I am really glad they have a lot of customization in the controls.

I thought they were fine, but turning the dead zone down definitely made them feel better.

I also thought the radar was useless, especially in BTB. Is the range a lot shorter? A few times I had somebody right on top of me before the radar showed anything.

It’s at 18m instead of the typical 25m. Lots of people have the same complaint. I found myself in lots of 1v3s because only one person was in range on the radar, only for their two buddies that were two steps around the corner to suddenly appear and fuck me up.

Is there going to be any way to turn off the highlights around players? It looks goofy and is more distracting than helpful. Plus it looks totally silly when players are inside of vehicles.

I also hope they at least tone it down.

A dead zone is a section where the sticks do nothing right? Why on earth would you want that? If you move the stick a little, you should move a little. What possible advantage is there to having you move the stick and nothing happen?

I guess I’m asking why dead zones even exist. Or at the very least why they didn’t just copy Bungie’s stick code and call it a day.

A dead zone is a section where the sticks do nothing right? Why on earth would you want that? If you move the stick a little, you should move a little. What possible advantage is there to having you move the stick and nothing happen?

I guess I’m asking why dead zones even exist. Or at the very least why they didn’t just copy Bungie’s stick code and call it a day.

Some folks might need higer or lower dead zones if they can't make super precise movements on the thumbstick, or they find it too responsive (think about how sensitive different steering wheels are in cars, and how so many factors affect how comfortable the sensitivity makes you feel, from suspension to center of gravity).

I prefer a larger dead zone, as I make a lot of glidey and in-air movements, and twitchy controls make it harder to crunch the numbers while in motion. Some folks want the stick to jerk left as they hit left, to replicate mouse movements as closely as possible.

Basically, it's an Accessibility feature that some people rely on. Halo Infinite's is at a mid-point, which I assume is for broad appeal, but it lets you crank it way up or down from default.

Oh interesting. I always just thought that the intensity of movement was proportional to the amount the stick was moved. So a tiny movement just would do something, but not much. I imagined the accessibility being the other way around: people who had trouble with large stick movements would set it to get that input with smaller range of motion.

It appears they only show up if they're either sprinting or shooting, which is... odd. I pretty much started ignoring it and relying on audio cues once it came to my attention.

Changing the enemy highlight to yellow made a massive difference to the better for me. For one, that's what I'm used to seeing Spartans glow when I shoot them, but there was also something wonky with visibility on red for me.

+7 on the massive amount of custom control adjustments there.

Some of it is just about margin of error. Thumb sticks are just two potentiometers at the end of the day, and potentiometers kind of suck. If your controller had a dead one of actual zero, your cursor would be jittering all over the place because of the inherent fluctuations in the voltage of the potentiometers. You can “fix” controller drift by upping the dead zone, sometimes.

I also tried yellow, but neither of them looked correct to me. They were both far too bright and didn’t really look any closer to the old Halo shields than red does.

I guess I’m asking why dead zones even exist. Or at the very least why they didn’t just copy Bungie’s stick code and call it a day.

I suspect that with introducing so many new tweakable settings, the old code may not have been easily adaptable to the new variables/settings and had to be refactored or rewritten.

Also, 343i has already responded to many people's feedback about the controls feeling off and said they're aware and are looking into it.

It appears they only show up if they're either sprinting or shooting, which is... odd. I pretty much started ignoring it and relying on audio cues once it came to my attention.

The first flight definitely had the radar no longer displaying walking enemies. They acknowledged the negative feedback and were changing it IIRC, maybe the change didn't make it into this flight.