A pure Slayer playlist has been added in addition to other multiplayer improvements.
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343 Industries just rolled out a new update today for Halo Infinite's multiplayer that should appease those who are fans of the Slayer game types. Today, the studio added four new social matchmaking playlists for Halo Infinite. They are Team Slayer, Free-for-All, Tactical Slayer (SWAT), and Fiesta.

The studio says that they will be continuing to work on "longer term plans for rotational and core playlists, game modes, and improved matchmaking experiences."

In addition to these new Slayer focused playlists, 343 Industries also made some tweaks to the Ranked and Big Team Battle matchmaking. These are the short-term changes that they implemented today.

  • We adjusted the ranked matchmaking rules to increase the priority of close individual skill matches, particularly for players at the higher skill levels. We’re taking this in stages – the first priority increase took place on Dec 11th, and the second took place today.
  • We adjusted the BTB matchmaking rules to prioritize making matches with lower latency. This will mainly help players in lower population regions avoid high latency matches.
  • We’re doubling the overall matchmaking timeout from 5 minutes to 10 minutes, to better accommodate very high skilled players finding suitable matches, particularly when in full fire teams or searching from low population regions.
They say that they're also aware of some "intermittent matchmaking issues" that have popped up over the past few days. They are aware of the issues and are working on solutions.

Today also includes the third update to how Challenges and Progression works in Halo Infinite. 343 says that they are happy with the progress so far but they know there are "plenty of opportunities to continue evolving and improving." They admit that they still have a lot of work to do on this front, such as implementing performance-based XP, per-match XP, and other progression methods. For now, however, we will have to make do with the current system and the smaller tweaks that have been made for it.

To that end, 343 has removed a number of mode-specific and activity-specific challenges, lowered their requirements, and/or had their weight reduced in the challenge pool. More general challenges have been given higher weighting. Today also introduces some new challenges for players to tackle, which seem to be more focused on player performance in a game.

  • Personal Score – Accumulate personal score in the specified playlist to complete
  • Kills – Earn the required # of kills in a specific playlist
  • Double Kills – Earn double kills in a specific playlist
  • Complete Games – Play and complete games in a specific playlist
  • Win – Win games in a specific playlist
The studio also notes that Event Challenges will be added "more frequently" rather than having to push through a slog of regular challenges. Sadly, this still won't allow you to complete the special event within a week even with this change.