August Drop Pod Preview | Hello

Coming next Tuesday, August 9th, our next Drop Pod will focus on improving the player experience on multiple fronts. This update will expand each player’s customization options, include QoL improvements, and lay the groundwork for more community-requested features.

Let’s take a look at what’s inside!

Currently, the game has many skins divided into 5 armor cores. If you want to use the shiny gold Noble bezel (until now stuck to the Mark V). [B] armor core) to complete your look on any of your other cores, you’ll be able to when the August Drop Pod drops.

What this means is that all visors currently in the game and all future visors will work on all helmets from all armor cores.

Continuing the theme of improving customization options, this Drop Pod will also allow certain Mark VII helmet attachments to be worn on multiple Mark VII helmets.

This is in response to player feedback we’ve seen regarding a request to expand the compatibility of the Mark VII helmet attachments. Of course, this move came with some complications, as most of the helmet attachments for the Mark VII core are tailored to the specific helmet, but some fit well with other Mark VII helmets as well.

The Live Team spent some time with our Artists to find out which helmet inserts look and fit best without being awkwardly cut and without large holes. Not every Mark VII helmet will be able to use every helmet attachment, as certain combinations may have cutouts or large gaps – but the overall number of options is greatly increased.

If you have already unlocked these helmets and helmet add-ons, they will automatically be available for use. If you open them in the future, all possible combinations will be opened for you. You won’t need to unlock them on a per-use basis.

A full list of helmet and helmet attachment combinations will be included in the Drop Pod patch notes when released.

On the multiplayer experience front, this update will make it easier for us to implement more ranked playlists. There will be Ranked pairs along with a CSR reset that will take place two weeks after Drop Pod release. Additionally, a social Team Doubles playlist will accompany ranked Doubles at launch, meaning Halo Infinite will be twice as fun as 2v2.

We will monitor the health of ranked Doubles and all of our playlists after it is added to the matchup. If all playlists continue to work as expected, we will keep these additions and continue testing adding more Ranked playlists in the future.

At the opening of this blog, we mentioned that we are laying certain foundations for the future. No player related changes here though fair however, this Drop Pod contains many of the basics required to enable Region Selection in the future. This will allow players to choose between all searches for all regions (faster search times) or their local region (better pings).

This feature is still a while away, but players can see some of the work being done to get things started. We’ll have more to share about Region Select as we get closer to launch.

With this Drop Pod release, your active Challenges will appear in the pause menu during a match. We know it’s useful to have a quick look at your active Challenges (as well as their descriptions) at any time during a match, so we’re more than happy to implement this.

Please note: this screen will not yet show the exact numbers (remaining or total) for your Challenges. Since challenges are currently updated at the end of a match, we’ve deliberately chosen not to show the numbers to avoid any confusion around not seeing them update in real-time. We are trying to make it Challenges to give tag during a match, but since it’s ready, we wanted to bring you all this helpful first step.

As always, we’ll have the full patch notes available on the Halo Support site (aka.ms/HaloInfiniteUpdate) when an update is released.

Thank you for your continued feedback about us Waypoint forums, Twitter, Reddit, etc. as we strive to make Halo Infinite the best experience it can be. We look forward to seeing you online next Tuesday, August 9th during the Drop Pod drop!