It looks like Halo Infinite is finally getting some of the major changes that players have been asking for since the launch of the multiplayer beta last month. This begins with some Halo Infinite new challenges that are here to offer players better ways to earn experience for the battle pass. 

With the announcement of the new Halo Infinite challenges, a long blog post was released by 343 Industries going over not just the progression system but other changes that are happening now and in the near future. This includes the new playlists that are being offered, ranked mode improvements, and much more.

Here’s what you need to know.

For starters, the new update for Halo Infinite multiplayer has dropped today, offering a ton of changes, challenges and improvements across the board. The main purpose of this update was to address the overwhelming player feedback, especially with the battle pass, that has been happening since the launch of the multiplayer beta.

As part of this, the beta experienced only minimal playlists and the very baseline of what a video game has to have at a launch. However, it did not have much more than that and, therefore, disappointed players with the lack of game modes and playlists that they expected. 

Fortunately, now that the beta period is done, 343 has taken the feedback and is implementing new playlists and challenges to Halo Infinite for players to check out that will give them more control over the gameplay experiences. Much of the feedback that was responded to in this announcement centered around two main areas. 

The first of these is the fact that players have been asking for a dedicated Slayer playlist to be offered in Halo Infinite. For many players, the classic Team Deathmatch experience in Slayer is what they love and remember fondly from the past games in the series. 

As such, there are players who want to avoid the objective-based game modes as well as the brand new ones in Infinite and just skip straight to the action with Slayer. However, the problem is that this was not available in the game at all up until this point. 

The second issue that was addressed here is the fact that the first major in-game event was the Fracture: Tenrai limited-time event. In the event, we had the first major event mode with Fiesta and this was a quick fan favorite that players have been wanting to return. 

Thankfully, 343 has made sure to take the time to address this problem by offering players some new playlists in which they can enjoy the game modes that they like whenever they like. Starting today with this latest multiplayer patch for Halo Infinite, there are four new playlists in total. 

First up, we have the answer to the Slayer fans out there with the Team Slayer playlist that will let players solely play the Team Deathmatch mode with their friends or alone nonstop without ever having to worry about being thrown into a Capture the Flag, Oddball, or any other match type. 

In addition to that, there is a Free-for-All playlist that is now finally available. This one was quite bizarre to be missing from the game up until now, but you can finally queue up for matches where it is just you up against seven other Spartans to find out who will come out on top with kills in the end. 

From there, we come to a variant of Slayer that is now available that is known as Tactical Slayer, or SWAT, as many players have known it to be called in the past Halo games. For those who have not played SWAT, the Tactical Slayer playlist is all about a more intense Deathmatch experience. 

In Tactical Slayer, players will spawn with no shields at all, no motion sensor, and a weapon that is focused on getting headshots with it. In the Tactical Slayer playlist, players will have to have the best accuracy that they can possibly have in order to do well against the other players. 

And then last but not least, the fan-favorite Fiesta playlist is now a permanent addition to the Halo Infinite pool of modes. This popular game mode made its debut in the Tenrai event and featured a take on Slayer that is focused on the crazy party fun of RNG.

Instead of the usual loadout that players have when they launch into a match of Slayer with just the assault rifle and the standard pistol, the loadout that you are given each life is completely randomized. One moment you could have a rocket launcher and another you could have a plasma pistol.

It is totally randomized with every time that you respawn into a match of Fiesta Slayer. The goal here is to be as flexible as you possibly can as a player, ensuring that you are making the most out of each loadout that you are given, even if you are not a fan of the weapons. 

The best Fiesta players are the ones who are versatile, quick on their feet, and able to adapt to any situation. It is quite a different type of Slayer playlist that challenges players, so it is no surprise that players wanted to see it return to Halo Infinite. It looks like these four new playlists will be permanent for the foreseeable future at least, so players can jump in and start enjoying them right now. There are more rotational and core playlists on the way in the future, so stay tuned for that as well.

At the same time, there are some major ranked changes and improvements that have been implemented in this update based on the data that has been accumulated and the player feedback. The ranked playlist is something that 343 at least was great enough to release at the beta launch, which is not something that can be said of some other FPS games.

That said, it is not perfect and the earlier release has allowed players to offer plenty of feedback for it. As such, there are some major changes that are happening, beginning with some improvements to ensure that players are matched up with other players around their specific skill level. 

This is something that is starting soon and will have a second update in order to further increase the priority of closer-matched opponents in the future. This is especially important and more noticeable for the highly skilled players who were likely to be matched with those far outside their skill range. 

In addition, Big Team Battles have been adjusted matchmaking-wise to ensure that players are better given ones that are low latency for them first and foremost. This is mainly designed for the players in smaller countries where it is easier for them to be matched with high latency matches. 

Furthermore, for the higher ranked players out there, the matchmaking timeout has been doubled from only five minutes to now 10 minutes to make sure that you are able to find a highly skilled team that is best suited for competing against you. This is mainly there, again, for lower populated regions where this was a major problem in the past. 

There are more changes on the way as well, like addressing the BTB matchmaking issues that players (including this author) have had recently. As for rank distribution, this is something that is being worked on as the median for ranks is hoped to be Platinum 1 in the future. 

Fortunately, the open queue playlist is getting close to this but solo and duos players will find that it is more skewed towards Diamond rank and even Onyx. This is partly due to a pretty significant spike of players in the Diamond 1 rank, which is the highest that you can get during your initial 10 matches of placement and the reason for that happening. 

There is also a smaller spike that happens in the Onyx rank and this is due to the Halo Infinite matchmaking algorithm making the game a little bit harder as it challenges the player to progress through at this point. As such, the algorithm is currently being worked on to make solo and duos ranked matches more in line with expectations.

Perhaps the most important part of this update are the new Halo Infinite challenges that affect everyone in the game at once. Easily the most requested feature from players thus far, since launch has been to make progression in the battle pass much more simple and easy to go through. 

As I mentioned in our Halo Infinite multiplayer review, you can literally win a match and be the number one player in the group, and not progress through the battle pass at all if you did not happen to complete any of the challenges that you currently have available. 

Fortunately, this third overall update to challenges and progression brings with it some new Halo Infinite challenges for players to complete. Some of the longer-term solutions like performance-based XP and the like will take some time, so these challenges are here in the meantime. 

There are also some old challenges that have been removed from the game entirely, like the ones that had to do with specific modes and activities. If they were not removed, they at least had their weight or requirements lowered to make them easier to deal with. 

As for the new challenges in Halo Infinite , there are several and they are relative to specific playlists, rather than game modes. There is the personal score challenge that you get for acquiring a certain score in a specific playlist or kills, like getting the required number of kills in that playlist. 

Double kills is another example where you need to get so many double kills in a certain playlist or just completing games in general. And then there are some new challenges for wins that you get in the playlists. The requirements and XP will vary depending on the rarity type of the challenge.

For event challenges, specifically, players found that the missions for the recent Fracture: Tenrai event were messy. The challenges would get stuck behind the weekly missions or they would not have enough to complete for each week of the event. 

Changes are coming for future events, including when Tenrai returns. When it does return, event challenges will arrive more frequently, making sure that players have less waiting time. At the same time, though, there will still only be so many challenges that you can do in a week. 

The goal is still to make certain rewards in the event take a few weeks to earn, but also reward the more active players at the same time. Players will have the chance to check out these event challenge changes in action when the Fracture: Tenrai limited-time event returns next year on January 4, 2022.

There is also the HCS Raleigh event that is going to happen on December 17 and fans will be able to watch the pro teams compete for the first time in Infinite. While this is happening, there is double XP for some new ranked challenges that will happen until December 20 to celebrate the HCS Showdown. 

This is but the start of the changes that are on the way in the future for Halo Infinite’s multiplayer. There is so much more that is being worked on, but players should expect to wait until 2022 for more info and improvements. In the meantime, 343 encourages players to continue to offer feedback about everything in the game as well as submit support tickets if they run into any glaring issues that affect being able to play the game and so on.