The studio uses the players’ feedback while explaining why there was no new Halo Infinite gameplay made for Gamescom.

“One area of focus for me lately has been on analyzing player sentiment around what we’ve been calling the “Combat Sensor” or as everyone has been calling it, “Radar”. We knew that the implementation we had for the Tech Preview would feel different, maybe even a little contentious, which is why we wanted to get feedback on it as soon as possible. We’ve heard all the feedback, and we have a new iteration that will be in the next preview which will be more in-line with players’ expectations,” Andrew Witts (the lead multiplayer designer) wrote on Halo Waypoint.

“There was a healthy mixture of known bugs going into the flight and new surprises – the Match Intro camera operator had many 1,000 lbs. Spartans tumble in their direction. We’re actively trying to polish up those Match Flow issues. And while our Medal animations weren’t playing correctly in the Tech Preview, sentiment on Medal visuals has been heard, and our UI team is investigating addressing some of that feedback. Lastly, it was helpful to see what resonated most with our players to inform areas of growth as we look beyond launch,” Alex Bean (multiplayer designer) added.

“We identified several Bot behaviours we wanted to improve coming out of the Halo Infinite Technical Preview, but two areas of focus for us have been rebalancing our difficulty tuning and improving how well Bots prioritize contesting powerful weapons on the map. The difference between Spartan and ODST Bots should feel like a significant increase in difficulty, which wasn’t a target we hit in the Technical Preview build. They also ran in a pack to all try and get the same weapon at once – we’re exploring solutions for getting them to spread out and search for weapon pickups without competing with one another,” Sara Stern (multiplayer bots designer) said.

The technical test (held between July 29 and August 2) had 519914 hours in multiplayer, 65 million 342 thousand 411 bots slew, 1 million 346 thousand 687 bot and 4v4 matches were played, 44953 hours were spent in the weapon drill (which was used 2 million 868 thousand 678 times).

Joseph Staten, the lead creative for the game, explained why there was no new gameplay: “As I mentioned in last week’s Development Update, the whole Halo Infinite team is in shutdown mode. This means we’re done with feature work and focused on crushing high-priority bugs. We’re spending lots of time playing the game, verifying fixes, and generally doing all we can to ensure Campaign (and Multiplayer!) plays excellent on all platforms—from an original, 8-year-old Xbox One to a brand new, ultra-spec PC. This is a very challenging task, even for a large and experienced team.

In many ways, shutting down a game is like being on the final approach to landing an aeroplane. And suppose you’ll forgive a bit of aviation-geekery. In that case, the entirety of the team is essentially in a “sterile cockpit,” which is to say: we’re at a critical phase in the flight that is Halo Infinite, so it’s essential to avoid distractions and stay focused on mission-critical tasks only. For Campaign, that means putting maximum effort into ensuring the wide-open, adventure-filled experience you’ll all get to play on December 8 is excellent as it can be. And gameplay demos and trailers not only take a tremendous amount of effort to do well, but they also take cycles away from bugs and other shutdown tasks.

I want to share, however, that right before I left for Los Angeles, I had to pause a full playthrough of the Campaign that I started late last week. I’m going for a 100% run, which means completing all primary and secondary missions, finding all collectables etc. I’ve played Infinite’s Campaign multiple times. But every time I do, I always find something new tucked away on Zeta Halo. Sometimes these are quiet little bits of environmental storytelling, such as an abandoned but desperately defended Marine recon post, high on a lonely mountainside (fortunately, the Banished missed the fully loaded S7 sniper rifle that the Marines left behind). Sometimes these are combat encounters with deviously polished scripting, for example, a UNSC forward operating base that seemed abandoned… until I heard the laughter and taunts of multiple, energy sword-wielding and cloaked Elites, as I stumbled into their trap,” Staten said.

Halo Infinite launches on December 8 on Xbox Series, PC, and Xbox One. Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming support will also be there.

Source: WCCFTech