Halo’s transition to a live service hasn’t been a smooth ride. While fans have had a number of issues over server stability and map selection, one issue has remained constant: XP rewards and challenges. A recent blog from 343 Industries outlines the upcoming changes with the “Match XP Beta” expected to launch with the game’s Winter Update on November 8.
Like many live service games, Halo Infinite offers a battle pass that you progress through via XP. Unlike many live service games, however, Infinite doesn’t reward much XP for completion of games, and few challenges seem to reward competent performance in a match. Locked to specific game-mode playlists, challenges often seem arbitrary, overly taxing, and in some cases arguably reward poor performance. Currently, winning, gaining killing sprees, or maintaining a high K/D ratio doesn’t matter at the end of a game. The new system, however, will focus on match completion as well as player and team performance, with various weapon and mode-specific challenges providing additional XP boosts.
As outlined in the dev’s blog update, the new system will still be in beta, as the team expects “to be monitoring the values for each reward category, adjusting them as we move forwards with this new model.”
The new “Match XP” system will base XP rewards on completion of matches as well as additional amounts to reflect high performance, “like being on the winning team, your end-of-match placement, and more.” Neither the screenshot provided by 343, nor the blog itself, however, indicate that medals for killing sprees, multikills, or even newer ones like “Hold This” (triggered by getting a kill after dropping your weapon) are factored in.
While it remains to be seen if the new system will satisfy the broader Halo community, those who loathed the previous challenge system (I don’t blame you) should still have something to look forward to in the Winter Update next week. 343 is lowering the bar for accessing the Ultimate Weekly challenge from 20 challenges to just 10, and every challenge will be “playlist agnostic” (thank the Rings!). As stated in the blog, “Mode-specific Challenges were found to be prohibitive to playing with friends, and players shouldn’t have to choose between progress or playing together.” Yeah, no kidding.
Alongside updates to Match XP, the November 8 Winter Update brings two new maps and a new asymmetric take on Capture the Flag.
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