Slayer Playlists And Challenge Adjustments Arrive In Latest Halo Infinite Update

After repeated requests from players, Halo Infinite now has playlists for specific game modes, including Slayer, Free-For-All, and more.

Today's update for Halo Infinite comes after developer 343 Industries confirmed that more game mode-specific playlists would be coming to the game's multiplayer. Players have previously expressed frustration over not being able to choose which game mode they were queuing into. The solution for that problem has finally arrived, including a playlist for Slayer, which 343 had previously claimed would have to wait until after the holidays.

However, today's Halo Infinite update doesn't stop at adding playlists for the game's multiplayer mode. Multiplayer challenges are also getting an overhaul, with some of the more difficult challenges in the game being made easier or removed entirely.

Personal and playlist-specific challenges are also being added to Halo Infinite, giving players more agency over their XP gain per match. These challenges are simple, rewarding players for earning a certain score or number of kills in a playlist. However, the amount of kills or wins that players will need varies depending on the rarity of the challenge they receive. Ranging from normal to legendary, these challenges will give players more XP the higher their requirements are.

Another change is also being made seemingly in response to player criticism. Going forward, events will now have more challenges, which should let players earn more XP and make more progress through them before they're taken down. Halo Infinite's first event, Tenrai, gave players access to a free battle pass loaded with samurai-themed cosmetics but made only a few rewards available, as the event is meant to return in future weeks with new challenges.

A full list of changes in Halo Infinite's December 14 update can be found below.

Halo Infinite December 14 patch notes

At launch, we took a measured approach to include a baseline set of playlists in a simple and straightforward way. Thankfully, our beta period went very well, and we heard your feedback around wanting more variety and more control over the modes you play. And, following Halo Infinite’s first official event, Fracture: Tenrai, we heard your feedback around wanting Fiesta to persist as a regular offering rather than be limited to just the active event period.

We also heard a lot of feedback around a desire for a pure Slayer playlist – something that was always coming but was originally a bit further out as more time was needed to test and finalize new game mode variants. Slayer fans should expect this playlist to expand with new experiences in the months to come.

As a result of this feedback, we're excited to bring four new social matchmaking playlists to Halo Infinite today:

• Team Slayer
• Free-for-All
• Tactical Slayer ("SWAT")
• Fiesta

Today’s playlist update is just a first step – we know players want even more agency and more variety - and the team continues to work on longer term plans for rotational and core playlists, game modes, and improved matchmaking experiences.

Ranked & BTB matchmaking updates

Since the beta launch, the team has been monitoring matchmaking data and keeping a close eye on the overall system to ensure it’s working as expected. Additionally, we’ve heard feedback from players who are concerned with how the rankings are working and/or express frustration with their ranked experience. Work will continue in this space but we’re making some targeted changes in the short term:

• We adjusted the ranked matchmaking rules to increase the priority of close individual skill matches, particularly for players at the higher skill levels. We’re taking this in stages – the first priority increase took place on Dec 11th, and the second took place today.
• We adjusted the BTB matchmaking rules to prioritize making matches with lower latency. This will mainly help players in lower population regions avoid high latency matches.
• We’re doubling the overall matchmaking timeout from 5 minutes to 10 minutes, to better accommodate very high skilled players finding suitable matches, particularly when in full fire teams or searching from low population regions.

We will continue to monitor ranked and overall matchmaking closely and will share more details on the system and future plans as we can.

As of this news post, the team is aware of and actively working to address Big Team Battle intermittent matchmaking issues that have been reported over the past few days. We appreciate your patience and support as we continue investigating and working on solutions. Please be sure to follow @HaloSupport on Twitter for the latest updates.

Lastly, we understand some players are also eager for more Ranked Playlists beyond the game’s current offering. Please be note that we have more technical complexities to navigate with Ranked Playlists than Social, so any future ranked updates are going to take more time.

Challenge Updates

Today marks the third overall update to Challenges and Progression since Halo Infinite’s beta launch on November 15. In each case, Challenges have been iterated and tuned, removing outliers and adjusting troublesome entries, while also helping to speed up overall Battle Pass progression. So far, we’re happy with the results of these changes, but we know there are plenty of opportunities to continue evolving and improving.

There’s a lot of work to do here to truly address player feedback around these systems – and broader changes are going to take time (i.e. performance based XP, per-match XP, additional progression vectors, etc..)– but in the interim, the team will continue targeting meaningful services-side updates to hone and improve the overall experience.

Today’s update aims to further alleviate frustrating challenges, adds brand new challenges to take advantage of the new playlists, and reduces the requirements for the weekly Ultimate Challenge. And, while it won’t come into play quite yet, changes have also been made for Event Challenges to help address some initial player feedback.

Challenge Pruning

Overall, a number of mode and activity-specific challenges have been removed entirely, had their requirements lowered, and/or had their weight reduced across the challenge pool. Additionally, the overall weighting of ‘General’ challenges has been increased.

We understand the inability to pick a specific mode to coincide with a specific challenge can be frustrating and today’s changes should help reduce some of that friction in the near term as longer-term work continues.

New Challenges

Today’s playlist additions will also usher in new playlist-specific challenges. You can expect to find specific playlist versions of each of the following new challenge types:

• Personal Score – Accumulate personal score in the specified playlist to complete
• Kills – Earn the required # of kills in a specific playlist
• Double Kills – Earn double kills in a specific playlist
• Complete Games – Play and complete games in a specific playlist
• Win – Win games in a specific playlist

The specific requirements and corresponding XP will vary depending on the rarity type of the challenge (i.e. “Normal”, “Heroic”, “Legendary”).

Event Challenges

Player’s gave feedback that it was difficult to progress Event Challenges due to them getting ‘stuck’ behind Weekly Challenges and/or not having enough to tackle during the event week. Going forward, and when Fracture: Tenrai returns, Event Challenges will come in more frequently, removing gaps where a player would previously be stuck waiting. And, while Events will often still have a finite limit to the number of challenges available in a given week – meaning it will take playing across a few weeks to fully complete – the maximum will increase to provide more buffer and let highly engaged players progress a bit faster.

We’ll have more details about these changes, and a few other ways in which Event feedback was addressed, when Fracture: Tenrai returns on January 4.