A slight introduction since this isn’t my first account, and there’s no easy way to view my beta stats. I’ve played every Halo since CE, but only 2 and 3 as what I consider competitively. I have several thousand multiplayer games played under each title except Halo 4, and just finished the grind from Silver 1 to Semi Pro in Halo 5 last night. I’ll start with what I like, then break down some areas that could use work.
Big picture, the game feels competitive and requires teamwork to win against any reasonable opponent. This is exactly what I want from a Halo title. Sprint and thruster make duels longer and more versatile while reducing the breaks between, and almost force map control to finish kills. The maps that have been made available are built open enough that every stronghold can be overrun, and each game is fluid. Every basic weapon but the pistol has its place. SMG and sword for close range, assault rifle for mid range, battle rifle for mid to long, DMR and sniper for long. Hydra, spartan charge, and ground pound are only really effective against people who aren’t looking at you, which makes them an unobtrusive addition. I will never forget or forgive the MCC, but I love what has been offered with Halo 5 so far.
GAMEBREAKING IF NOT CHANGED
Party Communication:
There is no means of communicating until you are already in the final stages of finding a game outside of the xbox live party. If you use game chat instead of the party chat inside the game, people are randomly selected every game who will be unable to talk or hear anyone else until the game ends. If you use the party chat, the game constantly forces you back and forth between party and game chat, requiring you to snap the party midgame to change it back. The in game menu on the back button does not work for this. I have to run a skype voice chat in the background to have a reliable chat, which automatically excludes any new people in the game from the most basic form of teamwork.
Matchmaking:
The process of finding opponents is not broken like it is with the MCC, but the people found appear to be horribly mismatched. I spent a lot of time yesterday in the onyx division, and just about every game it would put someone who was legitimately playing their first game on one of the teams. The team that landed the new person was almost guaranteed to lose. This was worse as the player base got smaller into the night, but the speed at which they were found and match improved. The gameplay devolved into a series of harvest races and groundpound competitions for so long that I was almost afraid to play someone who could shoot back. Hopefully this was just an issue with the size of the player base, and, when released, it will stick closer to players within the same division.
INCONVENIENT
Party System:
There is no way easy way to back out of an in game party that isn’t in an xbox live party. Sending a party and game invite opens a separate menu list instead of just sending a party and game invite. Going through the process of getting to a screen that can send a text message takes longer than entering that message one letter at a time. Going through the xbox live party menu is the only way to back out of a broken lobby search without waiting the extra 5 minutes for the game to realize it’s a dead lobby after people start quitting.
Color Schemes:
People blend too easily with the background. This is particularly noticeable when fighting in dark areas (such as against the outside in eden) against the blue team but happens in red areas with the red team as well. The base that looks blue from the outside in regret is the red base, and the pale blue base is blue base. I can’t tell which base I died in on regret because of the lighting scheme in Red/Blue one. The yellow in forge mode is overly bold and distracting. Small changes across the board in this category would be a huge quality of life upgrade.
Kill Cam Accuracy:
I assume that people know how to shoot me in the head, and I lose more duels than I’d care to admit. However, the shots in the kill cam are rarely on my head (even when the game calls out a 4 or 5 shot kill), and often nowhere near any party of my body if it’s a sniper shot. For longer range grenade kills, the footage doesn’t go back far enough to show who threw it or from where. It essentially only shows it landing under you. The camera makes normal, legitimate losses frustrating.
ALTERATIONS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE
Division Placement:
Ten games seems like it should be enough to figure out an initial position, but that placement requires tremendous effort to overcome. It looks like it takes 100 exp to advance a level within a tier, which could be as few as 5 matches for a level or 15 for a tier. With the team mismatches, however, the majority of the games were only worth 5 - 10 experience on a win and 10 - 15 on a loss, requiring the equivalent of least 30 consecutive wins to advance in games that completely ignore personal performance. I like that the individual isn’t placed above the team, but I would like to see smaller experience requirements within the tiers or larger chunks at the end of the match to accelerate the process of finding reasonable competition.
Losing a Division:
If you lose a game that would place you into a lower division, add an option somewhere that would allow you to go to the lower division if you wanted. I felt bad for the onyxs and golds with negative KDAs and less than 20 games played stuck at the bottom of their division. I don’t want to someday be stuck in a division that I can’t compete in.
Headsets Required for Ranked Playlists:
If you don’t want to work as a team, you should probably be in a different playlist. If game chat actually worked, I’d go so far as to say that party chat should be blocked as well.
Black Loading Screens:
I’m consistently at them almost a minute longer than everyone else in my party for apparently no reason. A status bar would be welcome over the 4 dots in the beta. I assume the full game will have something else on the page to look at.
Spartan Charge:
A Spartan Charge from the back should be a one-hit kill or an assassination. It feels weird to charge someone, then stop and melee them as a more effective attack.
Location Names In Kill Cams:
Small quality of life upgrade. You can already see where the opponent is standing, it would just make the call outs a little cleaner.
Custom Button Mapping:
No control scheme matches exactly what I want to try out, and I lost a significant portion of my early games trying the ones that existed out only to eventually settle back on the default scheme.