Sorry for the long rant, but I believe this may resonate with some players.

It's honestly really frustrating watching my double XP boosts going to waste because I'm waiting 10+ minutes to find a match. Even though I always use the 'Extended' matchmaking option. Because of that, I'm forced to just pick the playlist with the lowest estimated wait time and pray.

When I find matches, 80% of them have a ping ranging from 120-170+ms. And unfortunately, this game does not feel good when playing over 100ms.

You could argue that this happens with every game. And you'd be right for the most part. But man, I can guarantee you that high pings are specially bad in HI. I am constantly being killed behind walls, losing fights I should have won, trading melees when I'm full health and sometimes, just being killed without understanding what happened.

For the sake of comparison, I was able to get to Diamond in Apex Legends ranked by playing with 150+ms. I'm sure I could never do the same in Halo Infinite. Even though I consider myself a decent player.

And c'mon I live in Brazil. We are the country with the third largest number of videogame players. Not only that, but the South American server is in my city, so for me, having so much trouble finding good matches doesn't make sense. I can only imagine what a nightmare it must be to play this game in some other countries...

To add to my frustration, the same does not happen in MCC. I am able to select the exact servers I want and in a few seconds, I find quick and good matches to play.

Yes, maybe these are just symptoms of a low player count. Not much 343 could do other than making the numbers go up. Or maybe removing some redundant/less played playlists (without getting rid of the flagship ones, of course) because I feel like they are splitting an already small number of players even more.

But man... We are talking about Halo. One of the greatest gaming franchises ever. With crossplay on Xbox and PC. This should not be happening.