Halo Infinite got a new update this week focused on a couple of different balance adjustments involving snipers and weapon mechanics overall alongside a number of bugfixes. In particular, this update has some meta-busting changes in it via a balance adjustment targeting the trend of players preferring to drop weapons to save time instead of swapping to weapons. Some context from the developers was provided, too, to offer insights into why certain things were changed.
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The concise version of the patch notes shared by the Halo Support Twitter account can be seen below to get an idea of what’s changing in Halo Infinite in the February 15th update. Beyond these changes, you can see the full changelist here.
Halo Infinite February 15th Patch Notes
- The accuracy of the Sniper Rifle has been increased when firing without zooming in.
- The explosion radius of the Frag Grenade has been reduced slightly. 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.
- Dropping a weapon and swapping between weapons now takes the same amount of time.
- Rapidly firing the Plasma Pistol or the Battle Rifle will no longer result in the weapon “jamming” and not firing on every pull of the trigger.
- Players are now less likely to experience a looping “Unable to Connect to the Fireteam” error message while joining or playing a Custom Game Browser session.
- The appropriate subtraction and addition symbols now appear whenever players lose or gain CSR during Ranked matches.
If you’ve been watching pro Halo players play Halo Infinite, you’ve probably seen the weapon drop tech and have likely seen it implemented in your own matches (or have done it yourself). Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries said the mechanic was becoming a bit too common in high-level play and took aim at it with this update.
“The Drop Weapon meta was becoming very prominent in competitive play, to the point where nearly every top player was doing it,” 343 Industries said. “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.”
Halo Infinite’s latest update is now out across all platforms.
