OK, I’m not going to beat around the bush with this; Halo 5 is a let-down for many reasons. After all the hype, all the promises of what could have been in the game, and all the predictions from fans, many (including myself) were left disappointed with the end product.
I’d like to list everything that I find is wrong with Halo 5, or what could be improved. The main purpose is just to compile all of the problems and complaints into one place. And if anyone at 343 sees this (as if!), it’ll be a bonus.
Let’s get started, then.
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Marketing and Campaign (both are linked): These are the obvious ones, but they are two of the biggest problems with Halo 5. The marketing did not match the story we were given. The adverts depicted an epic hunt for Master Chief and presented all these exciting concepts; Master Chief going rogue, has he become a villain, what is he looking for, etc. It was going to be dynamic, a hunt for the Chief, exploring how he moved on from Cortana’s death. 343 promised much of this. None of it was delivered. The only bit of that marketing that we saw was the Chief going AWOL to find Cortana. He went AWOL on the 2nd mission, and there was virtually no drama from it- the essential in-game reaction was ‘Chief’s gone AWOL. Oh well, better find him.’. Pathetic. And THEN, Osiris are only actually searching for him for 4 missions. FOUR. Not much of a hunt, is it?! Halo 5 just makes this enormous jump forwards from Halo 4 without bothering to look back even once! They just glossed over from the death of Cortana, changes to the Chief’s character, and all the fuss about Lasky’s appearance as well; he’s been relegated to a even smaller role, despite Halo: Forward Unto Dawn trying to boost his character and make him special- this doesn’t count for anything in Halo 5!Then there is all the extended lore that you need- yes, NEED- to read/watch in order to fully understand Halo 5. You’ve got novels, comics, cartoons, Halo Nightfall (which I found incredibly boring), all to explain who the characters are, what makes them special, how they ended up where they are in Halo 5; Halo Escalation is needed to explain what happened after Halo 4 ended, because HALO 5 DOESN’T BOTHER TO EXPLAIN ANY OF THIS! Without looking through this, you aren’t going to know much about the characters, what happened after Halo 4. Hey, if you didn’t see any extended lore in the first place, then you’re not going to know or care about Blue Team, either!
To be honest, the extended lore hasn’t been utilised to it’s full potential. Some of the lore introduced some really good characters. For example, Usze 'Taham, in Hunters in the Dark, was a badass. He should have been in Halo 5. Then they should have put a focus on Chief’s emotions and personality, and actually done some character development in the cutscenes, rather than the horrendous action sequences. You all know what I’m on about- the fight with Jul 'Mdama? The opening cutscene? Complete rubbish. You know, I could rant on and on about all the problems within the story and the characters themselves, but most people have already worked them out, so I’m not going to carry on. Besides, this is pretty boring stuff.
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Releasing an unfinished game: Halo 5 was released far too soon, by my reckoning. That might explain the terrible storyline, but it was most obvious with the multiplayer. And by that, I mean bringing out forge AFTER THE RELEASE. That, and the fact that the ‘casual’ gametypes (infection, firefight) were brought out a long time after release was deeply irritating for me. - Removing content from previous games: File Share. Why remove it?! If you’re a professional Forge-user like me, you will be familiar with the File Share systems of Halo Reach and Halo 4. You had a whole search engine to use to find the map of your choice. And yet, it was removed from the game, just like MCC. OK, so you can still look on people’s profiles and see what maps they have, but that is entirely dependent on who you have played a match with and who has some good maps saved on their Xbox. Armour abilities were also removed. Now, whether you like them or not, it makes no sense (especially in canon, but let’s leave that to one side). If they had done some minor tweaks to the control layout, they could have included both Spartan Abilities AND Armour Abilities (like doing something with the B button. Seriously, it serves no purpose). Loadouts have also been removed. Again, whether you like them or not, they didn’t do any harm. - Overly competitive multiplayer: Now this is probably going to be divisive, but bear with me. 343 wanted to bring competitiveness back to Halo after Reach diverted towards casual gaming. It’s fair to say that they succeeded in giving Halo 5 a very competitive multiplayer. For some, particularly skilled Halo gamers, this is great; it makes the multiplayer exciting and creates fast-paced, explosive matches. However, they overcompensated. By focusing on the competitive edge, they have alienated the casual gamers who play just for fun. OK, Warzone is meant to be casual, and they have brought in Firefight, Grifball and Infection, and casual gamers can have fun in the other game modes as well, but there isn’t a distinction between casual and competitive in the game. Whatever you play, there is a sense that you need to play to win; even the supposedly casual modes can be very heated and irritating to play, particularly Firefight.Now, don’t mistake me for a cry-baby. To tell you the truth, I quite like the return of a competitive multiplayer. What I don’t like is how, whenever I want to play casually, I cannot get away from the competitive, play-to-win atmosphere. What I want to see is what was done for Halo 3: separate competitive and casual games. Halo 3 had Ranked Games, for competitive players, and Social Games, for casual gamers. That would have been a far better system, as it would have drawn both communities to the game (particularly important since Halo Reach’s casual style drew a lot of players to the series).
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In-game bugs and faults: Req system prone to breaks, Theater is constantly glitched. - Minor irritations: Not having playable elites, which really bugged me, especially after the uproar when Halo 4 didn’t have this either. You would think that 343 would think to correct this. Also, the inability to leave a game when it’s loading. Yes, people who do that are annoying, but there are some maps that I just hate. I’m not going to want to play those games. The quitting ban is reduced to 3 or 4 games (correct me on this). Whatever the figure, it also applies when lag or a glitch forces you to quit (as in, you don’t have control over whether you leave or not. You leave regardless). Lastly, the game takes up WAY too much storage space on the hard drive.
So, this is what I think is wrong with Halo 5, and what I would do to improve it. And hey, whether you love or hate the game, that’s up to you. I’m not here to tell you that my opinion is right. Not at all. I respect that everyone’s opinion is unique, and you might disagree with me. Personally, I somewhat like Halo 5, but it’s disappointing. It could have been so great. And 343 have made some serious changes to the game since it’s release, so they are trying.
OK, so feel free to leave a comment on this. If you want to add something to the list, rebuke anything that I’ve said, or if you want to express that you disagree, or anything else, then please do. I’d love to have some feedback on this.
Ok, I agree with almost everything you said especially with the campaign. Such a disappointment. In my opinion, most of the problems you mentioned is because of one thing: TIME. 343 doesn’t have had enough time to release the game finished with the campaign they really wanted to deliver and the story they really wanted to deliver. They doesn’t have had enough time to fix some annoying bugs like ‘retrieving data’ or the theater. They doesn’t have had enough time to release forge, big team battle, infection, assault and essential content that should have been there since its launch.
Unable to sell more than 1 req at a time
Unable to set default loadaouts per req level
Wheelman does not count as assist
Arena & social all lumped in as arena.
OP, give me 5 things you like about the game as well? If you make a hate list, you have to counter it with things you like. It gives you a more overall picture of everything.
I agree with almost everything OP said except the removal of armor abilities and loadouts
Armor abilities were a mistake, hence the reason they are no longer in the game. You could look at the Spartan abilities as the same concept, which I guess it is, but everyone has the same abilities so no one person has an edge over the other (spawning with camo, even if it affects an enemy’s radar, was a terrible move), plus armor abilities made fights too random and sometimes more drawn out than they needed to be, like when you had to wait for someone to run out of Armor Lock, or when someone would normally die if you chased but they went around the corner and healed with Regen Field from Halo 4 and started fighting you again. Armor abilities just don’t fit with what Halo is not just trying to be, but what it’s SUPPOSED to be
Loadouts are the same idea, it stops everyone from being on an equal playing field and essentially turned Halo 4 into a one-gun game, just a straight-up BR fest. You could say Halo 2 and 3 were BR fests too, which they were, but loadouts could have stopped this and they didn’t since the BR ended up being the best weapon by the time 343 had finished tweaking the weapons. Plus, why should anyone be able to spawn with a mini shotgun and pistol in one gun??? AND being able to spawn with a Plasma Pistol basically killed BTB since anyone and everyone had the ability to EMP vehicles without having to find the right gun to do so. But it didn’t end there. Just to make it worse, 343 decided to add what is basically perks, which is possibly the farthest move from equal starts in Halo history and anyone could randomly have an advantage over other players just because of the perks they chose (the EMP reduction in BTB, for example, or faster reload times giving someone the edge in a fight). Maybe just having one single customizable loadout wouldn’t have been as bad, but they gave us 5 of them so we could prepare for any situation, or rather, so a player could just freely have an advantage over another player when maybe they didn’t before just by switching loadouts. Loadouts may have looked decent enough on paper, but just like armor abilities, there’s a reason they didn’t return: no one liked them because they go against what Halo is supposed to be
So now a couple of my own things wrong with Halo 5 and how to fix them
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Aiming: After what probably numbers in hundreds of threads about this, there’s no doubt that there’s a problem with Halo 5’s aiming system, whether you’re decent or good at it or not. Play any past Halo title and you will see how much better the aiming feels, how much easier it is to control the crosshair, but with Halo 5, the fight seems to more often be with controlling the crosshair than the fight being against the enemy. Obviously there’s no way 343 is gonna redo the entire aiming system for Halo 5, so the only solution is to bring back the old aiming for Halo 6 - Removing rotating playlists is a mistake: In a game where there are like 8 or 9 playlists for Arena, the last thing 343 needs to do is remove the rotational playlists. When they add a playlist to the rotation, what’s stopping them from just leaving it there? Can the game/servers only handle a handful of playlists at most? Or is the player count too low for any extra playlists (despite 343 telling us the population is as high as Halo 3 was like a couple of years after release)? I don’t mind rotational playlists at all. Remember the good ol’ Double EXP Weekend playlists in Halo 3? Those were always fun to play and having a different gamemode every weekend kept things fresh. BUT, it worked just fine in Halo 3 because both Social and Ranked had like 7 or 8 playlists EACH, so the rotational playlist didn’t detract from the game when it was removed since all the essential playlists, like Snipers, Doubles, and Action Sack, were already there. The best solution to this would be to have AT LEAST 5 or 6 social playlists AND 5 or 6 ranked playlists, plus the rotational playlist that is always changing, but only if the population wouldn’t be too thin, but if there are enough players still playing, 343 should stop doing rotational playlists until the game has several more social and ranked playlists, and separating social from ranked wouldn’t hurt - Add Double EXP/REQ Point Weekends: I just mentioned Halo 3’s Double EXP Weekends, which always added either a fun gamemode to play, like Grifball or Infection, or something like Ranked BTB. 343 doesn’t necessarily have to have a different gamemode every weekend, nor do they have to give us double everything every single weekend, but at least once a month, doing a Double EXP/REQ Point Weekend event would be nice for people trying to grind through the ranks or for people still trying to get that new piece of armor they want. Plus, if they only did this once a month, that’s plenty of time to make a quick gamemode for the event, then it’d be just like the old weekends from Halo 3. I think a lot of people would be happy to see this return, whether because they wanna grind through the REQ packs, or because it brings back memories of the fun they had on weekends in Halo 3 - Weekly/Monthly community events will keep players playing: This is something that doesn’t necessarily HAVE to be in the game, but I feel like it would keep current players playing longer and bring back old players who have already moved on from the game. Imagine Weekly/Monthly Challenges from Reach and Halo 4, but to the next level. 343 could say “Players must earn x amount of kills this week/month, or players must complete this many rounds/kill this many bosses in Firefight, and anyone who participates receives a free premium REQ pack (one that gives a higher chance for Ultra Rare and Legendary unlocks than a gold pack does), or 20,000 REQ points” This would bring players together to work on completing a common goal in the game, plus some old players may come back to do the event and realize they miss the game and start playing it again, which would increase the player count, and it would keep things interesting if the game starts becoming stale. They don’t HAVE to do these every single week, but maybe every 2 or 3 weeks would be niceThese are what I could come up with off the top of my head. The game is finally almost complete, but I feel it is still missing some things that would complete it and make it fun for people who aren’t competitive and also give the competitive players more of a reason to play than just winning and ranking up
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> Ok, I agree with almost everything you said especially with the campaign. Such a disappointment. In my opinion, most of the problems you mentioned is because of one thing: TIME. 343 doesn’t have had enough time to release the game finished with the campaign they really wanted to deliver and the story they really wanted to deliver. They doesn’t have had enough time to fix some annoying bugs like ‘retrieving data’ or the theater. They doesn’t have had enough time to release forge, big team battle, infection, assault and essential content that should have been there since its launch.
I completely agree, timing is the big problem. I would have been happier to wait longer for the game’s release if it meant that the game was finished and to a better standard.
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> OP, give me 5 things you like about the game as well? If you make a hate list, you have to counter it with things you like. It gives you a more overall picture of everything.
I’ll come up with a list soon 
I agree with much of what you say although some of it doesnt bother me personally but its worth remembering that nothing was removed from H5 as it was built using new netcode and so to some degree was made from scratch (not entirely i know but more than any previous game).
That being said its not an excuse and H5 should have had much more at launch but its in a much better state now, i just hope they use this (at least) as a base from which to build H6.
The OP would be recognized better if he listed everything right and wrong with h5, but hey being one sided seems to be more popular than being properly constructive here on the Internet.
TL: DR The op points out the h5 media prior to launch and its faults to the actual game, along with [read the bullet points.]
stuff that we normal way pointers have never ever heardz b4z and are expecting 600 threads on this starting now. /s
> 2533274909139271;9:
> The OP would be recognized better if he listed everything right and wrong with h5, but hey being one sided seems to be more popular than being properly constructive here on the Internet.
>
> TL: DR The op points out the h5 media prior to launch and its faults to the actual game, along with [read the bullet points.]
> stuff that we normal way pointers have never ever heardz b4z and are expecting 600 threads on this starting now. /s
I’m working in a separate post about what was good in Halo 5. But give me some time.
I think I had better balance the argument by stating what is good about Halo 5.
I would like to apologize for how negative I have been, and in fairness, the opposite side needs to be presented.
I’m going to summarise it here.
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Competitive multiplayer: Really good for classic/hard-core players who enjoyed Halo 3’s multiplayer. Reach and 4 failed to deliver the same dynamic experience, so it’s nice to see it return. - Variety of equipment: I’m talking about the multiple variants of weapons and vehicles. Quite cool to see a diversity of weapons and vehicles with different properties, as Halo’s arsenal hasn’t been enormous in the last. They’re also more fun to use. - Restoring classic gamemodes: Namely traditional Infection and Firefight, both of which are thoroughly enjoyable. - 343 are willing to listen: Since it’s release, Halo 5 has had some big changes. And it seems that a lot of changes were due to feedback from players. The introduction and changes to Firefight, adding Infection and not removing Grifball, it all points to the fact that 343 are listening. So there might be some more big changes coming, but let’s wait and see. - New Forge mechanics and objects: Halo 5’s forge is fantastic. It’s got new toys (such as Pelicans, drop pods, bodies, explosions, slip-space effects, the list goes on.), you can program doors to move at the touch of a button, you’ve got better lighting effects, more objects to place, big maps to use, you can change the skybox and atmospheric effects. There’s so much, and it’s so good! It’s probably the best part of the game, but that’s my opinion.Feel free to add your own points.
It is good to see 343 is listening to us. Most of the things you said above was added to the game thanks to our feedback.
People still complaining about the lack of casual playlists, but in the competitive scene, 343 did it very well and I like to see the Esports growing up again.
The weapon variety (reqs) is some of the best additions to the series. Now I cannot see a Halo game without badass variations of the Banshee, Sniper, SAW, Shotgun, Carbine, etc.
There is no doubt that Halo 5’s forge is the best ever.
And this feedback is the formula that 343 needs to use more often. We are a team, we make Halo together. I hope all the feedback we give to then (especially about the campaign) can improve the next Halo even more.
Everything wrong with the game and every way to improve it, in one post.
This is like Highlander, but for video game forums.