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February Update Preview

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  -  a year ago

Season 3 is just around the corner, landing on March 7, but an additional update that should improve your experience in a few targeted areas will also be arriving this upcoming Wednesday, February 15. The updates in this patch are the direct result of player feedback online and community reported issues on the Halo Support site.  

We’ll be touching on some of the updates in this preview blog but please stay tuned for full patch notes on the Halo Support site when it releases next week. 

A Spartan with an MA40 AR is being flanked by an opponent holding a Disruptor.

UXUI 

  • The Ranked CSR widget should now communicate increases and decreases in CSR more clearly 

The Winter Update introduced some additional UXUI messaging to help communicate increases and decreases in CSR after each ranked match. However, we understand that the format did not always communicate these changes in a manner that was easy to understand. Next week’s update should address this feedback making it even easier to tell how much your CSR went up or down after each match. 

Sandbox 

  • In the Ranked Arena playlist and HCS, each Weapon Rack will now be set to a “Red Rack” state after the weapon is picked up. This means once a weapon is picked up, the Weapon Rack won’t spawn another weapon until the original has despawned. 

Sandbox Team Dev Note: We’ve seen the feedback around there being too much power on the map in Ranked Arena, with many players calling out the respawn rate and ammo count on weapons. To help address this, we’ll be updating all Weapon Racks in Ranked Arena to provide only one weapon at a time. We expect this to help reduce the overall power and ensure a more competitive environment. As for ammo reductions on the weapons themselves in Ranked, ranked players should expect those to come for the Heatwave, Stalker Rifle, CQS48 Bulldog, and Shock Rifle with the launch of Season 3.

A Spartan with a Frag Grenade is winding up to throw it at an opponent.
  • Frag Grenade damage radius will be slightly reduced  

The specific tuning changes are: 

  • Radius reduction from 2.7wu to 2.5wu (world units)

Sandbox Team Dev Note: After listening to community input and doing in-house tuning, we’re happy to be rolling out a change that slightly reduces the damage radius on Frag Grenades. The update should help reward skilled Frag Grenade placement while also addressing the concerns around grenade spam effectiveness in gameplay. 

  • Drop Weapon mechanic will now have the same speed as normal weapon switching 

Sandbox Team Dev Note: The Drop Weapon meta was becoming very prominent in competitive play, to the point where nearly every top player was doing it. Many players shared their concerns about it becoming too prominent at the highest level of competition, so we’ve made sure the weapon ready up time after a dropped weapon matches the speed of swapping between weapons normally.

A Spartan holding an S7 Sniper stands at the ready.
  • S7 Sniper will have its error angle reduced when no-scoping 

The specific tuning changes are: 

  • Error angle max reduced by 30% 
  • Error angle minimum reduced by 55% 
  • Time to reset bloom reduced by 20%  

Sandbox Team Dev Note: Halo Infinite’s S7 Sniper no-scope error angle properties were in line with previous Halo titles, but we’ve seen the requests to make it even more accurate when firing from the hip. When this update lands next week, the sharpshooters out there should notice some improvements when going for kills in which no scope was involved.  

Bug Fixes 

  • Various client and server stability improvements 
  • Improvements to reduce the gun jamming on semi-automatic weapons 
  • Improvements to reduce a visual glitch that made semi-automatic weapons appear as if they were double-firing from a third-person point of view. 

A full version of the patch notes with additional details will go live on the Halo Support site next Wednesday when the update drops, so be sure to give @HaloSupport a follow on Twitter. There will also be additional sandbox balance changes when Season 3 goes live on March 7, so please keep an eye out for news on those as we get closer to its release as well.

We’ll see you online!