Halo

🎁 New Operation – The “Blue Team” Operation features a free 20-tier reward track inspired by the team of Spartans known as Blue Team. Blue Team is comprised of John-117, Linda-058, Kelly-087, and Fred-104.

📈 Match Reward XP Change – The "Top 50%" Match Reward has been removed and the 50 XP it previously awarded has been rolled into the "Match Complete" Match Rewards. This change will result in all players receiving an additional 50 XP per match in the Arena, Squad Battle, and Big Team Battle playlists.

📝 Playlist Re-Organization – Various matchmaking playlists have been updated based on player feedback. These changes may improve match balance and search times as players will not be split across multiple playlists for similar multiplayer experiences. The full list of this week’s playlist changes can be found at http://aka.ms/HaloInfinitePlaylists.

🔥 Firefight Classic Game Mode and Playlist – The new Firefight Classic rotational playlist features a new endless variant of Firefight inspired by previous Halo titles. The Firefight Classic playlist is currently scheduled to rotate out of matchmaking on April 8, 2025.

🔀 Hot Swap Game Mode and Playlist – The new Hot Swap rotational playlist features a new 4v4 Arena game mode featuring weapon loadouts that rotate every 30 seconds. The Hot Swap playlist is currently scheduled to rotate out of matchmaking on April 8, 2025.

🗺️ Four New Maps in Playlists – Nemesis, a community-made Forge map, is now available in both the Quick Play staple playlist and the Hot Swap rotational playlist. Two new community-made Forge maps have been added to the Firefight Classic rotational playlist as well: Alpha Site and Security Zone. Lastly, a new variant of the House of Reckoning map has also been added to the Firefight Classic rotational playlist.

🛠️ Coming Soon: Stability Improvements – An upcoming game update will implement various stability improvements for Halo Infinite on both Xbox consoles and PC. This update is currently scheduled to be released on March 12, 2025.

via https://x.com/HaloSupport/status/1899526263309758862

Summary:

🎁 New Operations – The “Frontlines” Operation, which launches alongside this update, features a free 20-tier reward track themed around the frontline soldiers of the UNSC. Purchasers of the Premium Pass will have access to 50 tiers of paid rewards in addition to the free rewards. Looking ahead, “Blue Team” launches in March and “Forerunner” launches in April.

💥New Weapon: Fuel Rod SPNKr – The Fuel Rod SPNKr is a semi-auto rocket launcher with a six-shot magazine. This Banished-made weapon features a slightly faster rate-of-fire than the UNSC's M41 Rocket Launcher, but only a direct shot will one-hit an enemy Spartan and its projectiles will arc over longer distances.

💣 New Game Mode & Playlists – Assault, which was first introduced in Halo 2, is now available in Halo Infinite matchmaking and Custom Games. Two new Assault-centric rotational playlists are currently available: Assault and Squad Battle: Assault.

🗺️ New Forge Map in Playlists – Origin is now available in Custom Games and various matchmaking playlists. Origin was created in Forge and is based on the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer map Coliseum, albeit with tweaks for the Halo Infinite sandbox.

🆕 New Rotational Ranked Playlist – The all-new Ranked Squad Battle rotational playlist features the following 8v8 game modes: Squad Slayer, Squad One Flag CTF, Multi-Flag CTF, Neutral Bomb Squad, One Bomb Squad.

🏅 Ranked Gameplay Updates – New jumps have been added to the Ranked version of several maps to improve map flow and create new routes. Additionally, weapon and equipment spawns on various Ranked multiplayer maps have been updated to improve encounter balance.

⚔️ Sandbox Balance Changes – 7 weapons and 2 actions have received balance changes in this update, including but not limited to:

• The Heatwave now fires slower and, when set to a vertical fire orientation, its projectiles now fan outward rather than firing straight ahead.
• The Stalker Rifle's rate-of-fire has been decreased.
• The “bounciness” of Frag grenades has been increased.
• The time it takes for a player to throw a grenade has been increased to better align with previous Halo titles.
• Strafe acceleration values are being updated to improve the feel of gameplay engagements and better align with previous Halo titles.

🕹️ Forge: New Generic Bomb Object – With the introduction of the Assault game mode, players can also add the bomb object to their Forge creations.

👁️ Forge: Navigation Marker Visibility Scripting – Over ten new scripting nodes have been added to allow for greater customization of navigation marker behavior.

🛠️ Forge: New Object Scripting Nodes – Several scripting nodes have been added to improve Forge creators' experience when designing game modes and maps around specific objects.

🐞Resolved Issues – 30+ bug fixes in this update, including:

• Improved stability for Halo Infinite on both Xbox consoles and PC.
• Match loading has been improved to reduce instances of players becoming stuck in looping match intro sequences.
• Dropping a weapon by holding the Weapon Swap button now functions more consistently.
• Improved the process for reconnecting to Halo Infinite services after the game has been suspended on an Xbox console.
• Dynamic objects no longer have a chance to slightly rotate when switching between Forge's Play and Monitor modes or when entering Custom Games.

A summer update was teased with an expected release date sometime in early May. The summer update will feature the multiple-times leaked Marauder brute double barrel shotgun!

Summary:

• New weapon: Fuel Rod SPNKr
• Returning mode: Assault
• New forged maps
• Weapon balance changes
• New armors and passes (50 level track for Frontlines, other two operations will be 20 levels)

Like the MA5K, the team is looking for creative ways to reuse assets to bring new weapons into infinite. This is a completely new weapon in terms of use, it fires six fuel rods with new sounds, effects, and the classic reticle, but reuses the animations for the SPNKr.

Update preview stream this Friday (Jan 31) at 1 PM PT on YouTube and Twitch

Official motion comic based off of a short story written by Frank O’Connor for the Halo: Evolutions short story collection following an ODST who awakens from a medical procedure to find his ship has been boarded by Covenant forces and he is the sole survivor. With the assistance of the ship’s smart AI, he works to enforce the Cole Protocol in order to prevent the Covenant from finding the location of Earth.

Game modes:

• Duck Hunt
• Goose Hunt
• Hex-a-Gone
• Speedball
• Maze Craze

https://x.com/DogbrainLudus/status/1872302262707741075

For those OOTL, Digsite was/is a team of volunteers from the Halo modding community who were given special access to official dev repositories by Microsoft and Halo Studios for Halo CE, 2, 3, and Reach. They have made quite a few releases since forming a little over a year ago including the full recreation of the Halo 2 E3 2004 demo, cut Halo Reach vehicles added to forge, and tons of cut CE content being re-added, all as mods on PC.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/30017299

https://support.halowaypoint.com/hc/en-us/articles/17920041655188-Halo-Infinite-Multiplayer-Playlists

Major points:

• 1v1 Showdown playlist
• Some maps have been updated with a holiday theme
• Snowball Fight playlist coming soon^tm
• The usual new exchange gear, new operation pass, new shop bundles