Desync Fixed? Halo Infinite Network Update Review
Okay, I think they may have actually done it. I think 343 may have solved one of the biggest, most annoying bugs playing Halo since its launch. They’ve done it! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have finally seen the end of desync in Halo Infinite. Or have we?
Since dropping seasonality, this update was technically known as CU31, which I guess just means Content Update 31, but I understand that it’s probably best to just refer to it as the March Update, which I’m happy to do. You’d think they would have been able to find a better name for it, but anyways, I’m happy we got something this juicy because, I’m not going to lie, I’ve been a bit underwhelmed with this game lately. But this update kind of addresses some of the bigger concerns that people have been having lately.
They added Easy Anti-Cheat to help combat the rising cheaters. They added several new maps to the Squad Battles playlist, a ton of weapon adjustments, added Firefight to custom game modes, fixed a plethora of stability and crashing issues, and most importantly, brought in the long-awaited Network overhaul.
The network overhaul is no surprise. It was brought in a few months back as a special to Squad Battles while they fine-tuned and evaluated it all. But after much testing, they took it offline and let it simmer. Well, now they made it official and implemented it game-wide, and trust me, it’s noticeable.
But what exactly was the issue to begin with? My non-Halo playing friends may be asking, or at least those who got so used to how Halo played that they didn’t even realize just how broken things had gotten. Most every gamer knows what lag is. It’s so ingrained in our vernacular that most any network-related issue is simply “lag.” But there’s many different things that contribute or make up lag, with one of the more annoying ones being desync.
More technically, desync, as the name implies, is when your game falls out of sync with a server, which becomes problematic when you’re gaming online, especially in fast-paced shooters. By the sheer nature of online gaming, desync is kind of unavoidable, so the devs got to do a whole lot of magic mathing to help predict and try to best offset it, make it as minimal as possible. Obviously, some games do it a lot better, but with its higher TTK and newly added speed, it was heavily noticeable in Infinite.
An issue likely exacerbated by lower player counts, leading to less optimal matchmaking. The end result is that the game feels a lot snappier. Your shots and trades actually do indeed feel like they’re hitting way more regularly, and it just feels nice, man. No desync probably wasn’t or isn’t why I’ve been hard stuck in Platinum, but it definitely removed a level of jank that has haunted Halo for a while now when playing online.
Yes, I know and I agree, this would have been amazing had it played like this from the start, but I’m big on better late than ever. So kudos to all y’all at 343 who worked on this. This update has been dope so far, and I’m enjoying my time back in here. But hey, that’s just me. How are y’all feeling about it? Hopefully, we get more updates like this every few months, you know, seasonality and all that. But hey, I’m happy that we’re still getting love on the game, even if rumors suggest everyone’s shifting focus internally to the next title.
Personally, though, I’m still kind of hopeful that we’ll see some new big game modes, multi-teams, and maybe a return to last Spartan standing, but hey, I’ll take whatever I can get. Anyways, curious if this will be enough to get some eyes back on the game and really boost numbers a bit. Then again, network model updates may just not be sexy enough to get noticed. Maybe it’s the Easy Anti-Cheat that gets people back on. Or maybe it’s the Halo show. Man, the finale was freaking dope as hell.
I haven’t really covered the show at all, talked about the show much, but yo, if season two can have any sort of marketing push to the game and bring new players in, I’m all for it. On that note, a like goes a long way in supporting the video and helping this channel grow, so I’m always appreciative for those. But hey, till the next one, peace.
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