Hello everyone! I’ve been playing a LOT of the Castle Wars CTF playlist recently, having been a fan of the game mode since Reach, and I wanted to share my thoughts on some balance-related aspects of the playlist to see if anyone agrees. I know CW is an extremely casual gametype and thus many people just don’t care about these relatively minor details which I’m going to bring up, but I think they’re worth discussing anyway.
Also, I want to first mention that I love and enjoy the playlist already, and also don’t actually really expect anything to change in it no matter what I or others say. Still, it’s worth talking about to at least see if others agree.
- This is by far the most pressing to me: in my opinion, Spartan Charges are not properly balanced. Let me first note, for the sake of objectivity, that I’m probably biased against Spartan Charges because I personally find them very frustrating at time to fight against, but I do think there are some legitimate issues with the Spartan ability as it currently exists in the context of CW. Unlike the other Spartan Abilities, it does not introduce any interesting gameplay opportunities that don’t exist without it. Unlike the other abilities, the extent to which one can punish a bad Spartan charge seems very random, and sometimes after a clash between a person who Spartan charges and a person who lunges normally, the Spartan charge will either outright win or have a time advantage on the next sword swing. Finally, forcing a trade with a Spartan charge is far too easy for an ability that is, again, sometimes not easily punishable, and this makes it harder to actually get meaningfully better at the gametype. Yes, I’m aware that there are ways to counter Spartan charges, most of which involve baiting out a sloppy one that either comes up short or misses, but again these aren’t entirely reliable. - The Gravity Hammers and Prophet’s Bane are downright broken when in the right hands, especially when used to spawn-camp. I understand that power weapon usage is a key part of Halo’s formula, but if someone competent is using these weapons (though this is really more true of the Gravity Hammers, surprisingly), it is quite literally impossible to win a 1v1 against them. The hammers take precedence over any sword lunge, but this wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the hammers also can lunge when using Smart Scope. For great examples of power weapons in a CW gametype, look at Ravening Sliver and Vorpal Talon. They offer distinct advantages but never guarantee a win in a duel, especially if the user doesn’t know what he’s doing. - The Splinter Turret should not exist on Ecumene Sanctum. Players who can’t get into a warthog are entirely defenseless against it. In previous games, turrets in CW maps have been able to work due to mechanics like Hardlight shield, but this is not the case in Halo 5. The same isn’t true of the Shade Turrets in the Sunaion map, as there are plenty of opportunities to shield oneself from or avoid their fire on the way to the enemy base in that map. - This is moreso an opinion, but grenade pickup leads to some almost ridiculously lengthy grenade barrages. A one-and-done system would avoid that. - There’s no penalty for repeated blatant same-team splatters. These can get ridiculous and are pretty frustrating in-game.Those are the ones that come to mind - there may be a few more but if there are they’re extremely minor. So yep, there’s my list of thoughts on this playlist. I’m glad that it’s back and look forward to playing a bunch more of it in the days to come!