Halo Infinite

Six months after Halo Infinite’s multiplayer component went live, Season 2: Lone Wolves is finally live. It brings two new maps – Breaker for Big Team Battle and Catalyst for Arena – along with new narrative content centering on Spartan Sigrid Eklund and Spartan Hieu Dinh. Check out the launch trailer below.

Along with a free Lone Wolf armor core and a new Fracture Core, there’s also a new Battle Pass which includes 1000 Credits that players can earn. The Interference event is currently live until May 15th and offers the chance to earn 10 different cosmetics via its Event Pass. The Alpha Pack event runs from July 19th to August 1st and also features 10 cosmetics.

Both events offer Last Spartan Standing on Breaker but these will be available in regular matchmaking and Custom Games as well. The Fracture event, Entrenched, runs from May 24th to 30th and consists of playing the new Land Grab. It will run six times throughout the season and offer 30 cosmetic items to earn. For more details on the balance changes, check out some of the patch notes below.

Campaign network co-op is also slated to arrive this season with a target of late August so stay tuned for more details.

Halo Infinite Season 2: Lone Wolves – Patch Notes

Balance Changes

Weapons

Melee

Melee damage has been reduced by 10% in both multiplayer and campaign.
In multiplayer, this change to melee damage makes the Mangler a 2-shot beatdown rather than a 1-shot beatdown.
In Ranked multiplayer only, the Battle Rifle has increased melee damage.
This change was made to preserve the Battle Rifle’s two-burst beatdown after the global melee reduction.
Other changes to melee will also result in the following improvements for multiplayer:
“Traded” melee kills will occur more often now than in Season 1.
Improved snapping to enemies during melee lunges.
Improved enemy collision immediately after meleeing.

Developer Notes

Global melee damage has been reduced by 10%. This overall brings down melee lethality, including making the Mangler 1-shot beatdown a 2-shot beatdown.

There was a system in place with melee clangs that would award a victory to the player with higher HP if they were both below a specific threshold. This system caused a lot of confusion and frustration when players felt there should have been a traded melee kill. We have removed these rules and now apply the damage to both players and don’t allow one of them to survive.

Since launch we’ve seen awkward melee encounters being a pain point across the game, specifically occurrences where two players melee and then “phase” through each other, ignoring enemy collision and creating inconsistent and unpredictable resolution to combat.

When players melee, there is a brief “rebound” window where they go airborne and bounce backwards, however players also have air control during this window. Since you generally hold forward while melee’ing, you end up moving forward during this window, and then combine that with two players both holding forward and you get overlapping positions causing a “phase” through to occur. To help reduce these occurrences, we’re ignoring player input in the counter direction of the rebound, which should lower the possibility of overlapping positions while still allowing positional adjustments in the non-overlapping directions.

Changes:

Updated “clang” simultaneous death vitality threshold so it will not be triggered.
Forward input ignored after a successful lunge for 0.2 seconds.

Notable Bug Fix

Fixed a bug where aim bending was not working as intended. Aim should better snap towards your target on a successful melee lunge, helping keep your target in view for successive melees (reducing the need to spin around) and hopefully reduce instances of “whiffing”, which typically occurs when the target is towards the edge of your screen.

Mangler

In addition to the melee damage change noted above, the following changes were also made to the Mangler in multiplayer:
Reduced starting reserve ammo from 24 to 16.
Reduced max ammo capacity from 56 to 40.

Developer Notes

We like the way the Mangler is playing however it does have more spare ammo than other pistols. We reduced the amount of starting ammo from 4 full cylinders to 3 full cylinders.
Ravager
The Ravager’s base shot is now stronger than before and is therefore capable of a two-burst kill.

Developer Notes

The Ravager has been one of the worst performing weapons looking at our telemetry. It has also had a lot of feedback that it was much more fun in the Tech Preview where it was a 2 burst kill. So we have increased the damage of the base shot explosion. This moves the weapon back to being capable of delivering a 2 burst kill.

Change

Increased core splash damage from 10 to 25

Equipment

Drop Wall

The Drop Wall is now stronger than before and deploys faster once it hits the ground.

Developer Notes

The Drop Wall has been struggling more than we’d like across the game, with successes requiring a fair bit of nuanced understanding of how to play around the equipment. We are seeing the wall playing closer to where we want it in high level play, so we are making adjustments that should help lower the floor for success without pushing its 1v1 power too far.

Changes:

Warmup time decreased from 0.125 → 0.05
Duration increased from 9 → 12
Shield durability vs kinetic explosions (Frag Grenade, Hydra, SPNKR) increased by 40%

Overshield

The Overshield now grants an additional half bar of shielding.

Developer Notes

Overshield has been slightly underperforming in its impact on the match, with players securing usually just a single kill before being depleted and being unable to transition it into any meaningful progress in the overall game. We are increasing the Overshield strength to reward players who utilize it correctly.

Changes:

Overshield increased from 3x → 3.5x shield amount
Decay time unchanged

Vehicles

Warthog

The Warthog’s tire positions and suspension have been adjusted to better improve its handling on uneven terrain.

Developer Notes

General sentiment was that the Warthog was taking the bumps in the road rougher than it should. Instead of absorbing these bumps, the vehicle would either twist or roll a frustrating amount. Bounciness is an important part of the Warthogs fun but not if it makes the vehicle out of control.
Pushing out the position of the tires while reducing the angles they consider valid ground will widen its footprint, give the suspension more room to absorb force, and treat the ground more flat than it actually is.

Changes:

Increase mass from 3130lbs → 3300 lbs
Increase inertia tensor scale, a value which controls resistance to change, from 30% → 80%
Reduced ground penetration depth on tires from 0.145wu (world unit) → 0.13wu
Reduced ground slope to start traction from 40 → 35 degrees
Reduced ground slope to have no traction from 55 → 40 degrees
Reduced angle to stop hit checks from tires from 70 → 50 degrees
Moved driver camera position, the position the vehicle attempts to drive itself from, back from -0.013wu → -0.028wu
Pushed rear tires back from -0.56wu → -0.66wu
Pushed rear tires out from 0.35wu → 0.39wu
Pushed rear tires down from -0.11wu → -0.18wu
Pushed front tires out form 0.35wu → 0.39wu
Pushed front tires down from -0.11wu → -0.18wu

Chopper

When boosting, the Chopper will now one hit kill all vehicles except for the Scorpion and Wraith.

Developer Notes

We had hoped chopping a vehicle to death post collision would enhance the melee fantasy of a vehicle named the Chopper. However players were feeling frustrated that we had changed something that wasn’t broken! Players wanted a one hit kill while boosting on the Chopper and it is a tuning we are happy to deliver on.

Banshee

The Banshee’s mobility and weapons have received multiple buffs:
The Banshee can now move slower and faster than before, including when turning.
Weapons cooldown faster and deal more damage.

Developer Notes

The Banshee being called the “Badshee” was a huge red flag for us. Being found overwhelmingly weak for it’s fragility we set out tuning it towards where fans expected. Our goals were to buff it’s mobility and fire power before buffing it’s durability. The reason we want to avoid buffing its durability is due to early builds of Infinite where the Banshee was a medium armor class vehicle. In these iterations the Banshee was such a persistent part of BTB matches that it was perceived as annoying by many studio members.
343’s internal perspective of the Banshee has been much different than fan perspective. We ask that you keep sharing feedback openly and honestly so we can get the Banshee where it should be.

Changes: