Halo Infinite’s second season has begun, bringing a clutch of recent maps, modes and tweaks to the sport—together with, oddly sufficient, making the Warthog 170 pounds heavier. A few of the extra notable adjustments that can change-up the sport’s really feel are in melee, and there is one change buried within the patch notes that’s bizarre in its personal method: seven months on from launch, Infinite is altering one of many ideas of up-close fight.
That is straightforward to overlook as a result of 343 would not actually get into it within the patch notes, merely noting that “‘Traded’ melee kills will happen extra usually now than in Season 1.” That’s, when each gamers melee directly, extra usually now each will die reasonably than only one.
The reason being that Halo Infinite had a deliberate kink within the melee system regarding trades. Primarily, if two gamers melee-d on the similar time and would normally kill one another, the one with the upper HP wins the encounter. That appears on the face of it… fairly unfair?
The counter-argument some gamers would make is that it is a system that’s rewarding gamers who get just a few good photographs in earlier than the beatdowns begin. You may sort of see the place that is coming from however, for me, if my melee assault ought to be killing a dude then it ought to kill a dude. It isn’t like several weapon exterior of the devoted melee instruments can one-shot gamers anyway, so simply operating round thwacking folks won’t ever be an particularly efficient Halo tactic.
Particularly as a result of this alteration comes alongside a ten% discount in melee harm throughout the board, although there are buffs too: the ‘snapping’ to enemy gamers throughout lunges has been improved, and 343 reckons it is improved collision post-meleeing. The discount in harm has additionally put 343 within the barely awkward scenario of getting to buff the BR’s melee harm, however in Ranked multiplayer solely, “to protect the Battle Rifle’s two-burst beatdown.” Having weapons do completely different harm in numerous modes is odd to say the least.
The total patch notes for Halo Infinite’s second season can be read here. For those who’re obsessed along with your rank, as I used to be within the tender days of Halo 2, there’s additionally a deep-dive into the matchmaking system to take a look at.
