I’ve seen that there is a “rant” (self-titled) regarding coatings, however it was one paragraph among many many more issues. This, I would like to preface, is for Coatings and Emblems specifically.
THE POSITIVES
I love, absolutely love that we can put our emblem - or even different emblems! - on everything now. Our UNSC weapons, our UNSC vehicles, and it’s right front and center (well, front and offset left) on our armor. I absolutely love this, and think that it has a lot of potential. We’ll circle back to this further down.
I also enjoy greatly that we can change the colors of our vehicles and weapons with various coatings. This specifically I don’t have much to say in terms of the negatives, as tweaking the colors for vehicles and weapons has never been a strong desire or element given to us. Still, there’s possibility for growth.
Concerning armor, I do quite enjoy the way the colors look. It’s a great tool to offer Armor Kits, e.g. the Noble Team design (though I think Kat-B320 should have a robotic prosthetic on the right arm by default) or various E-Sports teams. Heck, even various Sports Teams and Nationalities. Having various qualities to some colors is also interesting, though I think this could be better applied. Leading to:
ROOM FOR IIMPROVEMENT
I think it would be greatly beneficial to allow us to customize our own Coating Patterns for use. This is something that has been granted to players since Halo: CE, and has only progressed to further levels of creative expression. While the Coating System offers pre-made opportunities that are interesting and applicable circumstantially, I feel that omitting the ability to create our own Coating Palette is a step backwards. And the application of such is really hard to abuse.
More concerning, and leaving room for perhaps a few questionable combinations, but a significant thing all the same, is the ability to customize our Emblems. Yes, we’re given a palette of various color schemes, but we don’t really have any agency to edit them beyond four or five swatches. I’m betting that there will be more Emblems coming, and the return of Emblems is great, but as it stands I don’t think they really feel like ours.
Hopefully these things can be changed or added, as I assume (dangerous, I know) that it would be a relatively simple thing to grant. And the levels of expression and representation - making our Spartans truly ours - would be monumental.