To start, I’d like to say that I do like this update very much, especially seeing as it’s free. But I feel that Firefight in Halo 5 isn’t the firefight we’ve known from other Halo games. There’s no survival element, all that happens is players rush from place to place on the map and attack enemies with absurd amounts of health and then wait 10-30 seconds to respawn. Having a longer respawn doesn’t affect the way people try to survive, it just means that if you die you have to wait half a minute, you leave your base and get killed immediately because that’s just what happens with exceedingly tough AI and then you’ve spent an entire minute watching everyone else focus fire on a Knight that won’t die.
I also think the Warzone maps that are used take away from the mode’s potential, too. The maps are huge and too spread out. If you don’t want to spend the match respawning you can stand a half mile away from the action with a DMR or Sniper and manage to scavenge a few kills that way, but Firefight should be somewhere in the middle. Where you maneuver around the map while still in the thick of the action, not the two extremes of hiding vast distances away or behind buildings, and running around in the many many flat open plains the maps have and getting killed instantly because there’s no cover.
I do think that Firefight would benefit more with more compact and asymmetric maps that put an emphasis on defence. Perhaps even throw in a generator defence in one of the UNSC bases just to feel a bit of the classic firefight element of survival. And of course believe that the respawn penalty should be removed in favour of lives. This is ultimately what would make Firefight a survival mode.
Again, I don’t hate the mode, I’ve been enjoying it for hours ina single sitting, and I know it’s less than a day old, I just figured I’d offer my two cents on what I believe would benefit the playlist.