Not sure if anyone on the Dev team is going to see this, but I wanted to do a final thoughts post for everything I can think of on the flight.
I Played all day Friday, most of Saturday, and most of Sunday.
First: Some bugs I had that I did not get a chance to report:::
-Xbox Series X player in my lobby had 2 occasion where he threw a grenade out of sprint, and it caused the game to freeze for him. His character would still be in game, but he was frozen on scene - walking straight ahead, killable by the bots, then he would respawn in game - but he was still stuck frozen on screen till he closed the game from dashboard.
-Xbox one: Would occasionally get stuck on loading circle after hitting A to get to the main menu
-Two of the same weapon can be pulled at once from a spawn by two players. Managed with Sniper, and BR.
-beatdowns occasionally not registering. This was a known bug but worth mentioning since I had it happen frequently.
-Not sure if intentional but the radar can stick to people. If this is a bug, don’t fix it. I loved tagging a team mate and letting them be my radar.
Now onto some actual notes:
-The gameplay feels smooth. It feels like a new iteration of the Halo games, and I love it. The ability to hold onto armor add on’s like camo/overshield is great.
—with that said, Please PLEASE take off the timers for the power up’s, even if the weapon timer stays. A major component of Halo competitive play is keeping time of these things so you know where to be when. Map control is important, and knowing when to take certain parts of certain maps is a big part of that. This negates the need to learn that info. I understand the argument of “accessible play” but all games have a learning curve, and that is part of Halo’s. There’s a timer in the game for a reason.
-The weapons feel good - mostly. There are some tweaks I would love to see - the Needler is way to strong, and I would love to see the pistol dropped to a 6 shot kill and see how that feels. The Sniper feels….wrong.
-the Hud display. Please change it. Please put weapons at the top right. Grenades top left. Score bottom right, radar bottom left. Some things should not be changed. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. At LEAST make this customizable.
—on that same note, I don’t particularly care for the menu UI either. It feels very COD/Fortnite to an extreme when trying to buy stuff/expand seasons.
-OH AND ON THE UI NOTE: At the end of the game, why can I only see how my team did?!? What’s that about?!? Bring back the old score board system please. Please please. ALSO make it so that we can turn off the toggle scoreboard view.
-Medals: I love the new 360 medal, and I saw a deadliest catch medal that seems interesting, but noticed there was no noob combo medal. I’m curious if there are more being added still?
-I’m not a fan of the new radar style. I can’t tell when exactly it picks up or doesn’t pick an enemy up, but it seems someone can just walk up behind you without any indicator.
-Outlines are weird. Sometimes I can easily pick up on an enemy and others I can not. Maybe make them optional with a toggle for traditional style Red V Blue as well if possible? Not sure if its possible, but if so and letting people chose would be great. I personally don’t care about all the armor customization’s, and find them a bit overwhelmingly to much…”right shoulder. Left shoulder….right knee left knee” it’s a lot. I appreciate the effort, but…its a LOT.
Overall, the game feels great. It plays really well. The bots are surprisingly good - best I’ve seen in a game for sure. It certainly feels like the next step in a Halo Game and has plenty of potential. Can’t wait for round 2.