Ever since 343 Industries unveiled its new progression system for Halo Infinite, which does away with match XP in favor of completing challenges, there’s been somewhat mixed response. In the new Inside Infinite, it discussed having more progression options outside of the battle pass. It also sought to address how daily and weekly challenges would work.
Concerning more progression options, it said, “We have heard community feedback around wanting more progression options including things like ‘match XP’ to feed into the Battle Pass and an entirely separate, incremental system along the lines of earning SR152 in Halo 5: Guardians. Expanding multiplayer progression offerings is something the team is actively exploring, and we look forward to continuing to evolve the experience in future seasons post-launch.”
As for the battle pass, each tier will require the same amount of XP to unlock. The battle passes never expire, which removes that “Fear of Missing Out” element but there will be limited-time event passes as well. These will be separate from the main battle pass and available for “specific event periods.” “In general, an event will be available from one to multiple weeks, including weekends, offering players multiple opportunities to unlock available rewards.”
Season One’s event, Fractures: Tenrai, provides the samurai-looking Yoroi armor core to unlock. 343 Industries says, “This event will be available for all players approximately one week per month during Season One, and the event will come and go throughout the season; available for players to make progress. Each time the Fracture returns, your progress will carry over, giving players multiple opportunities to unlock all 20 tiers of rewards on the event pass.”
Moving on to weekly challenges, players will be given 20 each week out of a pool of “several hundred.” These range from easy to hard with the amount of XP reflecting the difficulty and time required but you can only have three active at a given time (battle pass owners can have four active). “The specific Weekly Challenges a player gets are unique per player so while there may be some overlap, in general players won’t all be chasing the same specific challenges at the same time. This means that it is extremely unlikely that everyone in the same match will need the same ‘Get X Kills with the S7 Sniper’ challenge.
“However, the total amount of obtainable weekly challenge XP is the same for every player. By default, all players will have 3 active challenges at any given time but players who purchase a Battle Pass will be granted a 4th slot. Again, the total # of achievable challenges and total potential XP available is the same for ALL players but Pass owners will get one extra ‘active’ slot as a perk.” Complete every weekly challenge and you can unlock an Ultimate Challenge (like killing 15 enemy Spartans with a headshot in PvP) that rewards a unique coating or emblem.
The daily challenges also range from easy to more challenging and on average, it will take players 16-18 hours to run out. These refresh every day and serve as the main incremental source of XP for the battle pass. “Initially, players will have a large pool of daily challenges along the lines of ‘play any multiplayer match’ which awards XP for playing any MP mode that operates on a trusted server (i.e. Bot Arena, Arena, and BTB playlists).
“Once a player has completed all of their ‘Stage One’ Daily Challenges, they’ll move into ‘Stage Two’ which includes a slew of dailies that now awards slightly more XP but requires playing PvP matches (i.e. Bot Arena no longer counts). And finally, once a player has exhausted all their ‘Stage Two’ challenges for a given day, they move into ‘Stage Three’ which awards slightly more XP for winning multiplayer matches.”
As for XP boosts, which can be purchased for real money or unlocked via the battle pass, they will double the XP earned from daily and weekly challenges. They only last 30 minutes but 343 Industries is still evaluating the best possible duration. The next multiplayer tech previews will play out over the coming weekends and introduce Big Team Battle among other content for Halo Insiders to try out.
Halo Infinite is out on December 8th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.