Let’s talk about the playtesters of 343. Who are they, and how exactly do they represent the community? Are they Casual laid-back gamers or are they super competitive sweaty try-hards…
sorry for the wording lol
Does anybody have any information on them? It would be very helpful on makeing my opinion on what I think about them. And it would help shed some light on the development of this game.
The last vi-doc I saw for Halo 5 had several teams of these MLG, e-sport type guys playing it. So yeah the more sweaty end of the community seemed to have the input on H5.
They probably cover a pretty decent spectrum tbh. They’re never going to have the super casual as obviously its someone who wants to be played to test video games.
To answer every question on this topic.
Halo 4 and 5 were both playtested, and halo 5 still is, playtested mainly by 343’s “Pro-team”, but they regularly let other developers, designers, artists, writers etc. play aswell.
The “Pro-team” consists of former MLG personas, they have a good amount of knowlage of how movement, mechanics and sandbox in Halo works and both in theory and practice of what a “good” map is.
The multiplayer-team has a good understanding of map layout and general design. -> Pro-team play these maps to test every crevase to its potential. -> Playtest after playtest and with the feedback from the rest of the studio and a map is considered “Final”.
Then it’s up to the community, the actual players to enjoy or dislike the map for one or more reasons, but IMO no map is “bad”, some maps just doesn’t appeal to me. (Mainly the asymmetrical maps)
And yes, there’s issues on some maps, such as jump-ups that are “campable”, but that is usually never intentional. And forge maps made by the community also have some areas that players use as exploits, and a simple fix of kill boundries solves the problem. But it’s never fixed sadly… Reason being that they never think of “cheaters” or “exploiters” as a category of intent while making a map.
When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
> 2812739231567241;5:
> When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
>
> Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
@ everyone who -Yoink- on 343s game testers, do I need to remind you of Bungies map exploits and glitches? You could jump out of maps back then as you can now, there were button combo glitches, remember BXR? Accidental glitch but left in game. No one is perfect when it comes to a bug free game, not a single game. It’s impossible to find every single possible exploit/glitch/bug/ect ect as it takes time, it takes one that is very creative at find these exploits, and even the best will miss stuff. I’ll also add that there’s only a handful of them and they can only find so much in the time given to them before launch and after that then they fix what the community finds.
> 2812739231567241;5:
> When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
>
> Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
Why can’t we like comments anymore ? I really wanted to be lazy and just click on the like button.
> 2533274923562209;6:
> > 2812739231567241;5:
> > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> >
> > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
>
>
> What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
At the end of it all every gamer is competitive, we want to win every game we play, be it single or multiplayer we want to beat it and win. But first and foremost we want to have fun whilst we’re doing it and Halo 5 isn’t that much fun to a lot of players.
> 2533274961229108;7:
> > 2812739231567241;5:
> > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> >
> > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
>
>
> Why can’t we like comments anymore ? I really wanted to be lazy and just click on the like button.
We can, it’s just at the bottom of the post now.
i agree, 343 should show this kind of information, at least to know.
> 2812739231567241;8:
> > 2533274923562209;6:
> > > 2812739231567241;5:
> > > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> > >
> > > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
> >
> >
> > What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
>
>
> At the end of it all every gamer is competitive, we want to win every game we play, be it single or multiplayer we want to beat it and win. But first and foremost we want to have fun whilst we’re doing it and Halo 5 isn’t that much fun to a lot of players.
You really didn’t understand a single thing I said lol. Of course everyone wants to have fun but fun will differ for everyone. You’re also wrong on everyone being competitive. A competitive player is someone who works at getting better and aims for the W, they’ll also criticize what they do wrong when they lose. They aim to get better than others.
You also contradict what you said earlier, first you say the competitive are a minority, now you say we’re all competitive? Which is it? Cuz not everyone is competitive, there are many who don’t care about winning and play simply to play and could care less about getting better to beat others.
You also disregard my comment of h4 and reach, they were very casual friendly so why wasn’t it fun? It literally lacked competitive play for the most part, the only competitive thing about it was player playing vs player and that was all.
I really want to know who play tested Warzone Firefight.
> 2533274923562209;6:
> > 2812739231567241;5:
> > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> >
> > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
>
>
> What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
>
> @ everyone who -Yoink- on 343s game testers, do I need to remind you of Bungies map exploits and glitches? You could jump out of maps back then as you can now, there were button combo glitches, remember BXR? Accidental glitch but left in game. No one is perfect when it comes to a bug free game, not a single game. It’s impossible to find every single possible exploit/glitch/bug/ect ect as it takes time, it takes one that is very creative at find these exploits, and even the best will miss stuff. I’ll also add that there’s only a handful of them and they can only find so much in the time given to them before launch and after that then they fix what the community finds.
Actually they are a minority and I’m not going to link because their are thousands of source on just that. Stop… Think… then Post. i see so many post from you and i just want to flame. Stop… Think… Then post. Stop spouting your invaild , unrelated opinions that just seem to enrage people.
> 2533274801617953;13:
> > 2533274923562209;6:
> > > 2812739231567241;5:
> > > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> > >
> > > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
> >
> >
> > What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
> >
> > @ everyone who -Yoink- on 343s game testers, do I need to remind you of Bungies map exploits and glitches? You could jump out of maps back then as you can now, there were button combo glitches, remember BXR? Accidental glitch but left in game. No one is perfect when it comes to a bug free game, not a single game. It’s impossible to find every single possible exploit/glitch/bug/ect ect as it takes time, it takes one that is very creative at find these exploits, and even the best will miss stuff. I’ll also add that there’s only a handful of them and they can only find so much in the time given to them before launch and after that then they fix what the community finds.
>
>
> Actually they are a minority and I’m not going to link because their are thousands of source on just that. Stop… Think… then Post. i see so many post from you and i just want to flame. Stop… Think… Then post. Stop spouting your invaild , unrelated opinions that just seem to enrage people.
And you have the right to state what is valid and isn’t valid hmm? its also quite ignorant for one to say how it’s unrelated when I’m talking about the topic lol. People can be enraged all the want, it’s not my problem that a post on the Internet is enough to piss you off. Regardless I stand by what I said, links won’t mean anything cuz people stereotype so much and as I said above, clearly a casual heavy game doesn’t work as well.
> 2533274923562209;11:
> > 2812739231567241;8:
> > > 2533274923562209;6:
> > > > 2812739231567241;5:
> > > > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> > > >
> > > > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
> > >
> > >
> > > What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
> >
> >
> > At the end of it all every gamer is competitive, we want to win every game we play, be it single or multiplayer we want to beat it and win. But first and foremost we want to have fun whilst we’re doing it and Halo 5 isn’t that much fun to a lot of players.
>
>
> You really didn’t understand a single thing I said lol. Of course everyone wants to have fun but fun will differ for everyone. You’re also wrong on everyone being competitive. A competitive player is someone who works at getting better and aims for the W, they’ll also criticize what they do wrong when they lose. They aim to get better than others.
>
> You also contradict what you said earlier, first you say the competitive are a minority, now you say we’re all competitive? Which is it? Cuz not everyone is competitive, there are many who don’t care about winning and play simply to play and could care less about getting better to beat others.
>
> You also disregard my comment of h4 and reach, they were very casual friendly so why wasn’t it fun? It literally lacked competitive play for the most part, the only competitive thing about it was player playing vs player and that was all.
343 needs to learn how to balance their games for Competitive and Casual.
They had strange playtesters. What pro wants to compromise comp settings with radar. It’s pretty obvious they didn’t listen much to the pros.
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> > 2533274923562209;11:
> > > 2812739231567241;8:
> > > > 2533274923562209;6:
> > > > > 2812739231567241;5:
> > > > > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> > > > >
> > > > > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
> > >
> > >
> > > At the end of it all every gamer is competitive, we want to win every game we play, be it single or multiplayer we want to beat it and win. But first and foremost we want to have fun whilst we’re doing it and Halo 5 isn’t that much fun to a lot of players.
> >
> >
> > You really didn’t understand a single thing I said lol. Of course everyone wants to have fun but fun will differ for everyone. You’re also wrong on everyone being competitive. A competitive player is someone who works at getting better and aims for the W, they’ll also criticize what they do wrong when they lose. They aim to get better than others.
> >
> > You also contradict what you said earlier, first you say the competitive are a minority, now you say we’re all competitive? Which is it? Cuz not everyone is competitive, there are many who don’t care about winning and play simply to play and could care less about getting better to beat others.
> >
> > You also disregard my comment of h4 and reach, they were very casual friendly so why wasn’t it fun? It literally lacked competitive play for the most part, the only competitive thing about it was player playing vs player and that was all.
>
>
> 343 needs to learn how to balance their games for Competitive and Casual.
I completely agree. I just don’t understand how one can assume a game being competitive is killing it when many other games are fairly competitive (while still being fun for the casual group)and well known for it, I then don’t understand how one can then say they need to cater to the majority they call casuals when reach and h4 both did it and nothing positive happened out of it. H4s dead and reach holds a small following. H5 isn’t any better and probably will be where h4 is a year from now unless we never find the numbers.
My issue tho is h5 is still very noob friendly. And I don’t think many understand that. “343 caters to pros!” Well why is the radar -Yoink- and encourages shoulder charge? Why do power weapons get called out for us? Why is sprint still forced even with more panelties to them. I agree halo needs a balance, but I’ll scoff at those who think h5 caters to the competitive cuz there’s many things lacking that says otherwise and actually makes it easier for newer players to play vs more seasoned players. H5 gives the impression of competitive play but it really isn’t lol.
> 2533274802932721;15:
> > 2533274923562209;11:
> > > 2812739231567241;8:
> > > > 2533274923562209;6:
> > > > > 2812739231567241;5:
> > > > > When Bungie were making Halo the entire studio were the first batch of play testers, having such a huge range of skill or lack of helped mould the shape of the game to cater to almost any type of player, when they needed to start nailing down bugs I assume they hired proper testers to try and break the game in any way they could. 343i on the other hand grabbed a load of MLG Esports players and said “Hey!!! Let’s make Halo 5 the most comprehensive competitive Halo 5 game ever.” The reply was “Wow that sounds AWESOME!!!” There was a small voice at the back that whispered " But, but, by building a game that caters to the smallest common denominator of Halo players, won’t we alienate our core gamers and drive out the casual player base?" the room turned on that small quiet voice and replied “Shut up fun, we don’t need you in our glorious new world of ultra competitive game types.”
> > > > >
> > > > > Or at least that’s how it plays out in my mind any way.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > What gives you the impression that the competitive community is a minority? I hope you don’t stereotype pro players as the only competitive players cuz I’m competitive, half my gaming community is competitive in many games, and halo thrived on competitive play during h2 and h3. I think it’s asanine for one to blame the competitive community when they did no wrong. Reach and h4 have also shown that catering to the supposed “majority” aka casuals didn’t work out so well either, funny that. There needs to be a balance, not having the scale tip more towards one group.
> > >
> > >
> > > At the end of it all every gamer is competitive, we want to win every game we play, be it single or multiplayer we want to beat it and win. But first and foremost we want to have fun whilst we’re doing it and Halo 5 isn’t that much fun to a lot of players.
> >
> >
> > You really didn’t understand a single thing I said lol. Of course everyone wants to have fun but fun will differ for everyone. You’re also wrong on everyone being competitive. A competitive player is someone who works at getting better and aims for the W, they’ll also criticize what they do wrong when they lose. They aim to get better than others.
> >
> > You also contradict what you said earlier, first you say the competitive are a minority, now you say we’re all competitive? Which is it? Cuz not everyone is competitive, there are many who don’t care about winning and play simply to play and could care less about getting better to beat others.
> >
> > You also disregard my comment of h4 and reach, they were very casual friendly so why wasn’t it fun? It literally lacked competitive play for the most part, the only competitive thing about it was player playing vs player and that was all.
>
>
> 343 needs to learn how to balance their games for Competitive and Casual.
They need to split settings, not this compromise garbage.
> 2533274961229108;7:
> Why can’t we like comments anymore ? I really wanted to be lazy and just click on the like button.
Turn off adblock for Halo Waypoint if you have it enabled on this site
> 2533274802932721;12:
> I really want to know who play tested Warzone Firefight.
The answer is…we are secretly which is why it can be so ridiculously bullet spongy at moments, we’re 343’s brainwashed playtesters and seeing how we react to total chaos at the hands of the promethean knights spawning with the grunt mech leg sized needler shards!