Halo Infinite’s multiplayer beta was remarkably smooth, especially considering that the game comes with full cross-play integration from the start. That’s right: While the game was released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S and PC, there is no obstacle between these groups of players – and you can freely team up with your friends, no matter what platform they’re on.
Cross-play like this can be great for expanding the number of multiplayer games, as players are no longer isolated based on which platform they’re on and can instead play together. But it can also have its drawbacks. It’s a competitive truism that gamers who use a mouse and keyboard have an advantage over those who use consoles, for example. The mouse allows for faster and more accurate aiming in many cases, and the controller’s analog joysticks can’t be compared to the ease of pointing and clicking. Console players, on the other hand, typically benefit from the aim assist to help deal with console ambiguity, and it’s not hard to argue that this part of the game’s feel of Halo Infinite derives from its history as a console shooter. Either way, some players get annoyed with cross-play in Halo Infinite, thinking they might be at a disadvantage depending on their platform.
The bad news is that unlike most competitive multiplayer games, like Battlefield 2042 or Call of Duty: Vanguard, there’s no easy way to turn off cross-play in Halo Infinite — at least, not at the moment. But if you prefer to play with it Only other people of the same type as your inputThere is a section of Halo Infinite multiplayer that allows you to do just that: the ranked game. Here’s how to access your arena ranked playlist and how to compete against players using your favorite brand.
Ranked matches start
The categorized playlist lets you control whether you want a cross-play experience or just prefer playing with other people using your input type.
There aren’t many options to fine-tune your Halo Infinite experience in the beta right now, but one place where you can select the type of players you’re up against is in the ranked arena playlist. Find it at the bottom of the multiplayer list. This playlist pits you against players of similar skill levels and requires you to fight for 10 matches before making your place on the leaderboard.
Choose your correspondence type
In the ranked arena playlist, you can choose to play in the Global Open Queue or the smaller Solo/Duos Queue menu. The difference between these two groups seems to be in the composition of the team you will be facing. Solo/Doubles Queue is where you want to go when playing alone or with a teammate, as matchmaking adds you to games full of singles or duos. This way, you can avoid getting caught up in entire teams of four who might have a competitive advantage against you if you were on your own. On the other hand, an open queue will simply put you in matches, with no requirement on the list of players you will be joining or against.
If you want to modify entries used by other players, you will need to enter the Singles/Double queue.
Choose your starter
The entry menu is as close to disabling cross-play in Halo Infinite as you can get right now.
Once the dropdown is set to Solos/Duos, you can access another dropdown menu below. Here you can dictate the type of player input into the match, whether it’s a mouse and keyboard or a gamepad. This does not mean that you should turn off cross-play. You’ll still likely be in mixed-player matches on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S. What you’ll decide is whether they use a mouse or a controller, so you can at least feel good knowing that you’re on par with the rest of the players in the game.
Your ranking is determined by your play queue
If you pay attention to the lists of playlists for the ranked arena, you’ll see that the leaderboard progression is tracked across all three queues: you’ll get a leaderboard for open queue, a leaderboard for solos/duos with mouse and keyboard, and ranking for solos/dual mode with stick control. This means that you can skip the queues you don’t care about, or you can jump into each of them and test your skills in different scenarios.
We’ve got loads of coverage of Halo Infinite, including our Halo Infinite multiplayer demo review and how-tos for the game’s best weapons, gear, and vehicles. We’ve also looked at 343 Industries’ developer responses to player complaints about Halo Infinite’s progression and examined why its challenge system has upset some Spartans.
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