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Around the time that Ghosts of Meridian released, 343 Industries decided to remove region lock. Because of this unnecessary change, latency has increased substantially and the skill gap has been removed or severely lowered from Halo 5. Essentially weapons have been buffed as shots register late and/or out of sync with visual ques. You feel as if you are melted instantly without any chance to react. I know it affects how aggressive I play as I am now playing against the game rather than just playing against other players or AI.
Halo 5 has gone back and forth on region lock and the game has been in a far better state while region lock was enabled. A lot of people think removing region lock is only a problem for Europeans or players who live far from the servers. I am not an international player. I live in the United States on the east coast with connection speeds of 100/75 with less than 10 ping. The lag without region lock is not only noticeable, but many times game breaking with all kinds of BS coming out of no where. Region lock benefited matchmaking in a great way, and it’s sad to see them go back to a more unreliable system that failed before.
So why did 343i remove region lock? Was it to help a few hundred maybe only dozen players in third world countries who can not find matches in a niche playlist like Breakout? I honestly doubt it because there are better systems such as the one Titanfall uses where you can choose your regional server. Was it to increase international play and add more competition? If so, this would simply be incompetence because there is no competition when the game doesn’t function correctly. Was it done deliberately to lower the skill gap and make bad players stand a better chance? You really have to wonder. Whatever the motivation it doesn’t matter. The fact is that region lock helped make Halo 5 a much better experience, and 343i has taken steps back removing a working system and adding more lag to matches.
I really want to keep playing Halo 5, but the lag has ruined my feelings about the game and 343i. Please 343i, fix the problem and bring back region lock!