I jumped back into Halo 5 again and was surprised to see Firefight being back. After playing multiple rounds, I realised that it’s more of a chore than a fun game in its current state. The rewards don’t even really seem worth fighting for and the rounds either seem to drag on or end in defeat too quickly. Here are some of my observations and feel free to add your points in agreement or disagreement. Think of this as an ‘open letter’ or whatever.
PROMETHEANS AREN’T FUN
To fight against them is a massive struggle and not fun in the slightest. It seems that they have too much health and/or our weapons don’t do enough damage to kill them quickly. They weren’t fun to fight in campaign in my opinion and they make me so frustrated trying to fight them. The normal Prometheans feel too strong as it is, throw on armour and an active shield, and you might as well either quit or repeatedly throw yourself off the edge of the map until the timer runs out. The Crawlers. Don’t get me started. They appear in the worst places at the worst times. Knights are just as bad as they seem like you need to focus fire with everyone (which not everyone does/can do) and thus you lose time on your current objective.
Speaking of…
THE TIME ALLOCATED IS NOT ENOUGH
The timer is your biggest enemy. I understand that you need to be challenged, but the time you are given is not enough in most cases. Especially when you have those pain in the neck yellow shield Banshees. If your team works together, you can BARELY get the objective done. If your team is fragmented, you again might as well quit and take the loss. I was thinking maybe 30 seconds for each boss kill to give you a little extra room to take out another. 30 seconds is equally a lot and not enough time if you’re focused on an objective. I can’t count how many times we’ve lost because we just kill one boss and only have 1:00 minute left to kill 3 more! It’s unfair and not fun.
YOUR SHIELDS ARE A JOKE
Again, I can’t count how many times I’ve lost my shield and those stupid Prometheans have just skimmed my butt cheek and I’ve collapsed just before cover. I feel the shield and health buffs that are currently unlocked at Req level 5 need to be dropped to Req level 2 or 3. They don’t even seem to do much in terms of helping in my playing, so it doesn’t seem like an out of question request.
ONE ENEMY FACTION AT A TIME
This makes no sense to me.Why would you be fighting Covenant one minute then Prometheans the next? It baffles me. It would be best to go into a fight with a battle against ONE enemy faction. If the game starts with Covenant, I want to end fighting Covenant. Not fight 3 Promethean guards with shields and yellow health. I also understand it’s meant to be a simulation technically, but what are you simulating if you change enemies on the fly? You get no data to help if you change the outcome of a test. It would also be cool to fight against The Flood. Just sayin’.
WEAPON DAMAGE IS (AGAIN) A JOKE
You may as well be firing Nerf darts at the enemy. A full magazine and a half to kill one Promethean Soldier? That’s an absolute joke. Then it leaves you vulnerable to the swarms that WILL spawn behind you. There is no questioning if they will spawn behind you or not. They will. And you won’t be able to get away in time. My BR that has increased damage to vehicles seems to do the same damage as a normal BR. Making it feel useless. I would like to see future updates give the weapons, shields and health small buffs overtime to see what feels balanced enough to not feel like a cheap death.
THE RESPAWN TIMER TAKES TOO DANG DIDDLY LONG
I went through the replies and this seems like a major problem with other players and I have to agree with them. We’ve all experienced getting absolutely ganked by the enemy and have to sit what feels like a century just to get back into the fight and be gunned down out of spawn only to then have to wait another century to do it again. It also feels like cheap difficulty as in all but yourself and another Spartan are left to fight a Warden Eternal and everyone waits for 30 seconds to get back in, Meanwhile, you and the other Spartan are fighting tooth and nail waiting for backup only to receive the backup… not even close to the fighting. The time spent waiting to spawn and then being spawned so far away chews up so much time to the point it’s a crap shoot whether or not you’ll just make the round timer by the skin of your teeth or fail it altogether.
WATCHERS SHOULDN’T RESTORE BOSS HEALTH!!!
This is a big one as of recent. I have had numerous games against the Prometheans where we’re in the final few minutes of a game with 2 knight bosses or 1 low health Warden Eternal. We hear the announcement; “One minute left!” and we are trying to damage this thing as much as possible. Boss wipes out a good majority of the team and while waiting to respawn, we see the boss health go from a tiny amount to full healed from a Watcher. Causing us an unfair loss due to a code that 343i developers still refuse to fix!!
ENEMIES ARE STILL GETTING STUCK OUT SIDE OF TERRAIN
This should have been fixed when Urban received it’s update to prevent the Banshee Raiders glitching through the level and making it impossible to win. I experienced this on Attack on Sanctum where an enemy glitched near Blue base and made us lose! The maps need a serious comb over to see if there are more areas that the AI can glitch through and fix these ASAP.
GRUNT MECH AND WARDEN ETERNAL MELEE IS UNFAIRLY RANGED
I didn’t know how to word this to be clear. I’m sure everyone has at least once been meleed by a Grunt Mech or Warden Eternal after you boost away from them and have a fair distance only to be killed since they have the power of the Th’um in their fists. I don’t know if the hit box of the punch or swing is too big or if the game’-Yoink!- detection is wack, more than likely the latter, either way it needs a looking into.
YOU BROKE SOMETHING IN THE MOST RECENT BACKGROUND UPDATE
As of the 31/1/17, Firefight has a change and it doesn’t feel right. The damage you take now on Heroic feels an awful lot like playing Legenday and I can only imagine Legendary feels like Mythic. Enemies seem to put out a lot more damage and evade a lot more than usual while also taking more hits. I don’t know if it’s just me (it probably is) but something changed and not for the better.
This is basically all I can think of right now and this may be subject to change in the future. This was half rant/half open letter to 343 Studios. I want to love you people and even defend 343i and Halo 5 from the toxic Halo fans, but with some of these issues STILL continuing from the time I first put this up to me editing it right now and it seems NONE of the developers or community managers are even listening to player’s feedback, it’s making it increasingly harder to stay on your side. I want to love Halo 5 like how I love HAlo 3, but Bungie actually listened (or seemed to) to it’s fans and implemented changes that were needed. But, as everyone else says, you’re no Bungie…
