It should take a Halo Infinite player 16-18 hours before they run out of daily challenges
Good progress.
It will take a Halo Infinite player 16-18 hours before they run out of daily challenges, 343 has said.
In a post on Halo Waypoint, Halo community manager John Junyszek went into detail on how Halo Infinite's progression, challenges and customisation after concern was raised by the Halo community last month.
Halo Infinite doesn't have per-match XP - battle pass progression is tied to challenges instead.
Junyszek said in August that "it's extremely difficult to run out of daily challenges" - at least regarding 343's current plans for launch.
"I won't say 'impossible,' cause there are some grinders out there, but I'd be impressed."
Still, some Halo fans expressed concern about the system, accusing 343 of "timegating" progression and perhaps encouraging microtransactions (battle pass tier skips, for example). Others suggested the challenges will encourage players to play in specific ways.
In last night's post on Halo Waypoint, Junyszek went into much more detail on how all this will work, listing examples of challenges and even estimating how long it will take a player to rinse the dailies available.
It's worth digging into this detail, since, let's remember, battle pass progression is tied to these challenges.
Daily challenges are strictly engagement-focused and essentially serve as the persistent "XP drip" for the pass. They come in three flavours, starting with the easy tier ("play any multiplayer match" for example). Once you complete all the stage one daily challenges, you move into stage two, which includes dailies that award slightly more XP but require playing PvP matches - this means Bot Arena no longer counts.
Once you get through stage two on a given day, you're on to stage three, which awards slightly more XP for winning multiplayer matches.
Each day, a player's allotment of daily challenges refresh and reset back to stage one and the cycle continues.
343 said it believes that on average, it should take a player 16 to 18 hours of playing, and eventually winning, before they run out of daily challenges.
"Of course, this is going to be an area the team monitors closely, and adjustments could be made if necessary," Junyszek said.
"While we understand the community's feedback around wanting a steady drip of match XP and more ways to earn XP for the battle pass, we are optimistic that the system available at launch will give players adequate means of continually having something to accomplish and a means to progress. Looking further ahead beyond launch, we expect these systems to evolve in direct partnership with player feedback."
That's that, then, for the daily challenges. But it's worth remembering there are weekly challenges, too. These are usually more directed and specific while offering more XP in return compared to dailies, 343 said.
Each week, players will be randomly assigned approximately 20 weekly challenges out of a pool of several hundred.
One of the concerns players had about progression was challenges would encourage players to play in specific ways. 343 said the weekly challenges a player gets are unique per player, "so while there may be some overlap, in general players won't all be chasing the same specific challenges at the same time."
"This means that it is extremely unlikely that everyone in the same match will need the same "Get X Kills with the S7 Sniper" challenge, Junyszek insisted.
"However, the total amount of obtainable weekly challenge XP is the same for every player."
It's worth noting that by default, all players have three active challenges at any given time, but players who buy the battle pass get a fourth slot, which means those players will be able to complete the battle pass more quickly and efficiently than those who do not.
343 is sticking to its guns on progression, although Junyszek did say the studio is open to changing things in the future.
"We have heard community feedback around wanting more progression options including things like 'match XP' to feed into the battle pass and an entirely separate, incremental system along the lines of earning SR152 in Halo 5: Guardians," Junyszek said.
"Expanding multiplayer progression offerings is something the team is actively exploring, and we look forward to continuing to evolve the experience in future seasons post-launch."