The live steam for the Halo Infinite Technical Preview wrapped up just a short while ago and we now know exactly what is included and when it will be available. Let’s dive in.
The tech preview highlighted a wealth of content including customization, weapon drills, bot information, Halo Waypoint updates, and even a full match on the Series X. Courtesy of the Halo Waypoint, here are the details as to what will be available for Halo Insiders this weekend.
Bot SLAYER
At the very center of this tech preview will be the Bot Slayer playlists which feature 4 players squaring off against 4 Bots on one of three possible maps (Live Fire, Bazaar, and Recharge). Please note that while players can team up online, splitscreen is not supported in this build.
With bots being a brand-new addition to Halo, we’re excited to get a chance to let you go toe-to-toe with our state-of-the-art spar partners. Bots also utilize our dedicated servers in a different way than standard matchmade games so it’s extra critical we get large-scale, real-world testing to help ensure a smooth launch this holiday.
We’re going to kick things off with the lowest skill level of Bots on a single map to help everyone get acclimated and ease into the experience. If the community can collectively help us hit our daily engagement goals over the course of the flight, we’ll increase the Bots’ skill and add more maps. The more bots you slay, the more the experience will evolve! They’ll get more deadly with each update – so, dive in early and often to make sure you’ve got a handle on what skills they’re bringing to the battlefield.
Be sure to drop in each day to play and do your part to slay some bots, unlock more content, and help us gather data! And keep an eye on @Halo each day for updates to the available matchmaking content. We’re also going to be shouting out the top Bot Slayer, the player with the most daily wins, and the team who can win the fastest each day and looking to award these heroes a special nameplate when the game launches this holiday.
Show us your clips! If you pull off incredible feats or wacky shenanigans, please share your clip with us on Twitter using #InfinitePlays – we can’t wait to see the medals and magical moments that await.
Social Arena (Conditional)
If we’re able to hit our target engagement and testing goals for the Bot Slayer before the flight concludes, we’re looking to enable a brief opportunity for some good old fashion 4v4 Social Arena Slayer. If we hit this phase, expect it to land sometime in the final stretch of the flight (i.e. Sunday evening) and expect there to be a few potential hiccups with your experience.
Specifically, we know that in some cases players will end up in a bad state as a session is forming and after a brief delay, will be kicked back to the main menu. As a result, the game itself will start as 4v3 which is certainly a less than desired experience all-around. However, as a technical preview, getting additional scale data around this problem, across a breadth of hardware, can be invaluable to the team as they work to solve this issue. Based on our prior private flights, we can generally expect that on average, a match will start with a full 4v4 approx. 60% of the time while the other 40% involves a 4v3 start with the final player joining-in-progress within a minute.
We’d love to get some additional testing and data to help the team, but we really want to ensure players understand the experience and potential hiccups before jumping in. Tech preview participants should stay tuned to @Halo and the in-game news feed to know if and when Social Arena gets enabled.
Weapon Drills
Interested in locking in your aim? Are you certain your skills with the Commando surpass that of all your friends? Now you can prove it. In this tech preview you can put your skills to the test with the following subset of Weapon Drills:
- MA40 AR
- BR75
- MK50 Sidekick
- CQS48 Bulldog
- Needler
- VK78 Commando
- S7 Sniper
- Plasma Pistol
- Pulse Carbine
- Ravager
- Heatwave
- Skewer
Battle Pass and Menu UI
In the upcoming tech preview, we’re going to be granting Halo Insiders a set amount of in-game credits (cR) so that they can dig in with a very trimmed-down version of our first Battle Pass. (Worry not, we’re saving plenty of content for launch.) As a reminder, none of the items unlocked over the course of tech previews will carry over to the game’s release later this year. Everything should be considered work-in-progress and not indicative of the final shipping systems including the cost of customization pieces in the store, the order in which they’re unlocked in the Pass, the XP granted by challenges, and more.
The key focus here will be to test out if the systems that dictate when you unlock and equip items are working correctly. So, keep an eye out for anything that doesn’t work how you would expect and let us know. We’re going to have our ears open for your feedback!
Waypoint vNext
If you read through the June 2021 edition of Inside Infinite you know big things are in store for Halo Waypoint. And, as a part of the upcoming tech preview, you’re going to have a chance to see it all first-hand! And perhaps the coolest part? You don’t even need to be in the flight to check it out.
Halo Waypoint’s new version (which we affectionately refer to as “Waypoint vNext”) is going to launch on web for your standard browsing experience, along with iOS and Android in app form. If you’re joining us for tech previews, then you’ll be able to use this same experience to edit and update your Spartan in Halo Infinite. If you’re not in the tech preview but are still interested in checking it out – feel free to! Everything will work for MCC and Halo 5 as well.
But how about WHEN you can play – the all-important question. Thankfully, they shared that as well and the good news is it begins tomorrow! Also, you can feel free to record, stream, and post images and gameplay. There are no restrictions on content sharing.
- Thursday, July 29: Tech preview is officially live! Go wild, Spartans.
- Friday, July 30 Scheduled Play Times: 12-2 PM PT, 7-9 PM PT
- Saturday, July 31 Scheduled Play Times: 12-2 PM PT, 7-9 PM PT
- Sunday, August 1 Scheduled Play Times: 12-2 PM PT, 7-9 PM PT
- Monday, August 2: Tech preview closes at 10 AM PT
Players should understand that this is a technical preview. And as such, there will be bugs and players are participating with the understanding that it’s for the benefit of the game and development team. Here are the known issues as of this moment.
Known Issues and Halo Support
This tech preview is a small slice of the game that’s designed around our specific scale-testing needs. There are bugs – some big, some small – and while most are covered in the Known Issues list, others will surely surface for the first time thanks to your help testing at this scale. For context, this tech preview build is a couple of months behind where the ‘main’ build is so there’s already been lots of bug fixing and polish that won’t be reflected here.
Here are a few of the issues we’re aware of in this build:
- AMD players should make sure the AMD Graphics Driver is version 21.6.1 or later. Earlier versions are not compatible with this version of the game and may result in significant performance and/or stability issues.
- We have a pesky bug related to Matchmaking that can result in a player being unable to join into a session, timing out, and then returning to the main menu. When this occurs, the match will proceed but you might be missing a player from your game for a brief period until another player joins-in-progress.
- We’re aware of and tracking a few different crash scenarios though the overall average failure rate is well below our targets. We’re particularly interested in getting more crash logs from a wider breadth of platforms as stability work continues internally.
- Various situations can cause stuttering, de-sync, warping, and other abnormal behavior.
- Occasionally, player scores will not appear during the victory screen at the end of the match and/or the post-game carnage report may not load after some matches.
- Rarely, a player may begin a match unable to see their own weapon and have reduced audio.
- Rarely, a player’s melee attack may not register as expected.
- Sometimes after pressing A at the title screen, Challenges, Customization, and Commerce screens take a while to appear on the main menu.
