Oddball strategy in Halo Infinite is getting lots of backlash

If you are a fan of the Halo franchise, you know that the Oddball game mode is no stranger to the franchise. Oddball has indeed made its way into Halo Infinite, but some players are noticing a team strategy that is really annoying the opposing team. There have been mixed opinions on this Oddball strategy and if there should be a penalty for using it.

What is Oddball?

First off, if you aren’t familiar with the Oddball game mode, the rules are actually pretty simple. One blue flaming skull spawns at the center of the map. The two teams race towards the skull with the intention to be the first team to grab and hold onto it. The first team to hold onto the skull for 100 seconds wins the round and it is the best two out of three rounds to win the entire match.

The key to this game mode is to work well with your teammates. Whenever you are carrying the ball, your movement speed becomes slightly slower, and you are no longer able to use any of your weapons unless you decide to drop the ball. The only weapon you have when you are holding the blue, flaming skull, is the skull itself as a melee weapon. You can also drop the skull too to reacquire your weapon if you feel like you are in danger of dying to the enemies.

Your teammates are your best friends in this game mode because the better your teammates are, the better protection you will have when holding the skull. If at any point you jump off the edge of the map with the skull or it falls of the edge of the map for any reason, it will respawn back at the neutral location in the middle of the map. If you are killed while holding the skull, the skull will drop, and it is fair game for its possession.

What is the Oddball strategy that is annoying gamers?

Halo Infinite is a very team-oriented game and thus why when you play with a team that is very competitive, you tend to develop some interesting strategies to do whatever it takes to get the victory in the end.

The strategy has come into play when players realized that the ball resets once you jump off the side of the map. What that means is that if you are getting shot at and think you are going to die and surrender the ball to the other team, you can just jump off the side of the map so that it resets, and the enemies cannot take the skull from you. Then if your teammates know you are going to jump off the edge, they can stand at the spawn point and wait for it to reset so theoretically, your team never loses possession of the skull. This strategy has come with a lot of mixed opinions where some players are calling it great strategy and others are calling it a cowardly way to win.

Should there be a penalty for using this strategy?

I can see both sides of the argument for and against a penalty, but ultimately jumping off the edge and having your teammate retrieve the skull to keep position requires tremendous amounts of communication and chemistry and ultimately can be stopped fairly easy. If you recognize that the other team is doing this consistently, you can have players on your team camp the skull spawn point and try to kill the opposition before they retrieve the spawning skull. Both teams have the chance to wait out the skull once a player jumps over the edge, so technically, this strategy has the potential to blow up in your face if you go about it the wrong way.

Some of the potential penalties that people are calling for would be to subtract 5 or so seconds off the team who intentionally kills them self to reset the ball. Another potential fix for this complaint that gamers are having is make the spawn point for the skull random and this way players can’t predict where the skull will spawn making this strategy ten times harder to use.

I got to be honest, I do not think that this complaint is something that 343 Industries is going to have high up on the list of fixes that they have. This strategy is something that can easily be countered by the opposing team and something that will only work with teams that are on the same page with one another at all times. It is not like what any of the players are doing is illegal to how the game works, which is another reason why I don’t know if there would be any penalties implemented regarding this. However, I do see how this can be annoying for some players as I am sure that seeing this happen over and over again is not how 343 Industries pictured their Oddball game mode being played out in Halo Infinite.

If Oddball in Halo Infinite does get changed in some sort of way, I would assume that the way 343 Industries fixes it would be to randomize spawn points of the skull. I can see that being a new and fun way to switch up the game mode a bit. However, it appears that this may just be really good gameplay strategy by players, and it may not get fixed at all. What do you think?