Halo 5 appears to be slower-paced than Halo 3.

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Want to skip straight to the spreadsheet?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BkmA26fzSDaq4DFcAiKvXf3PazW4aAEoUZewlUm0trw/edit?usp=sharing

Hi!

Recently, after watching a bit of Snipedowns stream of the Halo 3 tourney, I noticed that Halo 3 felt a bit… ‘quicker’… than Halo 5. Being a huge nerd, I decided to find out if that really was the case.

The first thing I did was just search up a competitive match of Heretic in Halo 3, and a competitive match of Truth in Halo 5, and play them side-by-side. You can view that here:

It seemed to confirm what I had thought, but I also knew that one match from each game was hardly indicative of anything. So I decided to collect more data.

To do this, I took 15 MLG Team Slayer matches on Heretic from Halo 3, and 15 HCS Team Slayer matches on Truth from Halo 5.
I took matches starting from the 2009 Orlando tournament in Halo 3, which was the first MLG tournament after the map Heretic released. For Halo 5, I worked backwards from the most recent HCS finals, because I wanted as many matches with the Energy Sword at top mid as possible, to more closely resemble the layout in Heretic.

I recorded the final score, the total number of kills, and the total runtime of the match itself.

The end results are this:

Matches of MLG Team Slayer on Heretic are, on average, 2 minutes and 36.05 seconds quicker than HCS Team Slayer on Truth.
This is despite the losing team in Halo 3 having an average of 4.54 kills more per game than Halo 5. In other words, the Halo 3 matches were faster even though they were closer.

Halo 3 had an average of 3.44 seconds between each kill.
Halo 5 had an average of 5.04 seconds between each kill.

And that’s pretty much it.

I thought it was interesting, because many people seem to think of Halo 3 as actually being one of the slower-paced games in the series. But it seems that - at least with MLG settings - it’s still quite a bit faster than Halo 5.
I also caught a funny quote by Strongside in one of the Halo 5 matches, which I forgot to write down, so this is a paraphrase: “Truth is basically Midship on steroids, with Halo 5 being so fast paced.”
I think it goes to show just how much the appearance of speed that you get from spartan abilities can affect your perception of the speed of the game.

Thanks for reading!

2

So, this is absolutely amazing and I’d like to thank you for bringing this data to the community’s attention. My question to you is: Why do you think this is? Is it because of the map sizes? Or perhaps the spartan abilities make it easier to escape.

For me CE had the best MP because of how fast it was and how quickly you had to adapt to changing situations. I do love all the Halos, but this s something that needs to be discussed.

3

A little off topic, but the only thing I could think of while watching the side-by-side of the remade map was the wise old Unggoy, Dimkee Hotay, reminiscing on Sanghelios “You remember being more purpler? I do! Ah, maybe it’s just my eyes getting smarter, but I swear sometimes it’s like there’s a whole spaceship that’s different and nobody says anything.”

But on topic, I think the size of that map now has something to do with it. If you could find a 1:1 Pit remake or even Heretic or Midship and do the same (although I don’t know if you’re gonna find clips of pros playing on those) or even use Pitfall from Halo 4 (cuz, you know, sprint) … but there’s always a way to explain why it makes the game either faster or slower: “Sprint speeds up the game” or “sprint helps you escape” … ¯_(ツ)_/¯ … it’s one of those things that no matter how much data and research you put behind it, you aren’t going to sway people on because the reason they don’t like it is because they simply don’t like it. You can hack away at their reasons, but it boils to them just not liking Green Eggs and Ham; and they’ve tried it in a house with a mouse and a box with a fox.

Kinda like the people who keep saying Halo 5’s Spartans look like plastic, unlike Halo 3’s, and you’re like “what are you talking about? They both look like plastic … or metal … because painted metal often looks like plastic. I’ve had toy trucks that were quite deceiving”, but they keep saying it so you just start suspecting it’s because they’re not 12 anymore and it’s not 2007 and they’re just not happy about any of that because that’s all they’re leaving you with. And you completely understand because that’s how you felt about the Star Wars prequels because you’re in your 30s. Don’t change things I grew up with. lol. But Halo wasn’t part of my childhood like Star Wars was, so I don’t have that problem, but I get it. … I’ve been over this a lot.

4

> 2533274943854776;2:
> So, this is absolutely amazing and I’d like to thank you for bringing this data to the community’s attention. My question to you is: Why do you think this is? Is it because of the map sizes? Or perhaps the spartan abilities make it easier to escape.
>
> For me CE had the best MP because of how fast it was and how quickly you had to adapt to changing situations. I do love all the Halos, but this s something that needs to be discussed.

Personally, I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I would say that Sprint taking away your ability to shoot is the biggest reason, combined with the fact that you need to sprint to get to areas in a reasonable amount of time.
Like this gif shows:

Truth appears to have been scaled in such a way that it takes the same amount of time for you to sprint to locations as it previously did to walk/jog there. Which means, if you want to get to cover, you have to sprint there, which means you’re unable to shoot or really even prepare to be engaged, which means when you do get shot you’re going to continue sprinting to cover and not return fire.

Previously, if you were moving from either base to say, Pink tower, you’d do so while looking across the map at areas you’re likely to get shot from, right? And if you do start to get shot, you can immediately return fire and have a fairly good chance at winning the fight. In Halo 5 you can’t really do that, because you can only move forwards while sprinting, so you’re only going to be looking at your destination. So when you do start to get shot, you’re likely not even going to be looking at that enemy, and you’re going to be in an even worse position if you break sprint to return fire. In all likelihood, you’re going to enter that 1v1 fight at least a shot behind. So you keep sprinting to get to cover so you can recharge your shields.

I think this probably also leads to cases of people being more hesitant to cross open ground in Halo 5, because when they do move between bases they’re more vulnerable. People are staying in protected cover more often.

I’d also wager a guess that thrust is another reason. I think thrust is generally, at the moment, used 50% of the time as a sort of strafe in 1v1 fights, and used 50% of the time as an escape button to dodge back behind cover.

I did consider trying another study, one based on how often players are escaping from gunfights in each game. You’d go through and take note of how many times per match a player took damage (let’s say, 50% of their shield?) and was able to escape to cover to recharge their shields. But this would require a lot more time. You’d actually have to watch every single match, as opposed to this which only needed me to find the match and look at the end time / scoreboard.

5

If you get the chance make a classic slayer game type find a good Heretic/Midship remake and test it out in Halo 5, the results will surprise you.

6

Hi are you the same person who posted this on Reddit? Interesting data, and your methodology seems sound, but it still feels like apples vs oranges, until I have a chance to look at the data. Thank you for analyzing this.

7

> 2533274875982754;6:
> Hi are you the same person who posted this on Reddit? Interesting data, and your methodology seems sound, but it still feels like apples vs oranges, until I have a chance to look at the data. Thank you for analyzing this.

I am, I couldn’t post it here immediately because of some dumb ‘5 posts a day’ rule.

This is mostly done as a response to people who say Spartan Abilities speed up the game. It’s also said fairly often that it’s actually the opposite, but until now there hasn’t been any real evidence of that.

8

> 2533274913398097;7:
> > 2533274875982754;6:
> > Hi are you the same person who posted this on Reddit? Interesting data, and your methodology seems sound, but it still feels like apples vs oranges, until I have a chance to look at the data. Thank you for analyzing this.
>
> I am, I couldn’t post it here immediately because of some dumb ‘5 posts a day’ rule.
>
> This is mostly done as a response to people who say Spartan Abilities speed up the game. It’s also said fairly often that it’s actually the opposite, but until now there hasn’t been any real evidence of that.

I trust in people’s feelings, but getting the data was probably a tall order to most of them.

9

One thing that came to my mind is that Halo 3 MLG used modified settings with a 10% speed and damage bump, whereas Halo 5 HCS uses pretty default settings, doesn’t it? So, these results do not tell us how Halo 3 compares to Halo 5 by default. This could explain why I did not observe such a significant difference when I gathered similar data by a different method (not that it isn’t possible that my method was just bunk).

I think you should branch this to other maps if you have the time, because ultimately we’re not trying to answer the question “is this map faster than that map?”, but the question “is this game faster than that game?”. Because while this data does offer preliminary evidence, ultimately it only shows with significant certainty that Heretic with MLG settings is faster than Truth with HCS settings. Averaging over all the maps that appear in HCS and all maps that appear in Halo 3 MLG would allow us to at least conclude something about whether Halo 3 MLG settings are significanty faster than Halo 5 HCS settings, and if the difference was still as drastic as this, it would possibly allow us to say something about the relative pace of default Halo 3 compared to Halo 5, because it doesn’t seem like such a large difference is solely attributable to a 10% speed and damage bump.

In fact, I’ll probably have to go digging around for some more Halo 3 data, and see what kind of differences one can expect between MLG and regular Team Slayer.

10

> 2533274913398097;1:
> **Want to skip straight to the spreadsheet?**https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BkmA26fzSDaq4DFcAiKvXf3PazW4aAEoUZewlUm0trw/edit?usp=sharing
>
> Hi!
>
> Recently, after watching a bit of Snipedowns stream of the Halo 3 tourney, I noticed that Halo 3 felt a bit… ‘quicker’… than Halo 5. Being a huge nerd, I decided to find out if that really was the case.
>
> The first thing I did was just search up a competitive match of Heretic in Halo 3, and a competitive match of Truth in Halo 5, and play them side-by-side. **You can view that here:**ViewSync - Multiple YouTube Viewer
>
> It seemed to confirm what I had thought, but I also knew that one match from each game was hardly indicative of anything. So I decided to collect more data.
>
> To do this, I took 15 MLG Team Slayer matches on Heretic from Halo 3, and 15 HCS Team Slayer matches on Truth from Halo 5.
> I took matches starting from the 2009 Orlando tournament in Halo 3, which was the first MLG tournament after the map Heretic released. For Halo 5, I worked backwards from the most recent HCS finals, because I wanted as many matches with the Energy Sword at top mid as possible, to more closely resemble the layout in Heretic.
>
> I recorded the final score, the total number of kills, and the total runtime of the match itself.
>
> The end results are this:
>
> Matches of MLG Team Slayer on Heretic are, on average, 2 minutes and 36.05 seconds quicker than HCS Team Slayer on Truth.
> This is despite the losing team in Halo 3 having an average of 4.54 kills more per game than Halo 5. In other words, the Halo 3 matches were faster even though they were closer.
>
> Halo 3 had an average of 3.44 seconds between each kill.
> Halo 5 had an average of 5.04 seconds between each kill.
>
> And that’s pretty much it.
>
> I thought it was interesting, because many people seem to think of Halo 3 as actually being one of the slower-paced games in the series. But it seems that - at least with MLG settings - it’s still quite a bit faster than Halo 5.
> I also caught a funny quote by Strongside in one of the Halo 5 matches, which I forgot to write down, so this is a paraphrase: “Truth is basically Midship on steroids, with Halo 5 being so fast paced.”
> I think it goes to show just how much the appearance of speed that you get from spartan abilities can affect your perception of the speed of the game.
>
> Thanks for reading!

Halo 3 Isn’t “quicker” than H5, halo 5 maps are simply larger to compensate with the spartan abilities and it is easier to escape a gunfight in H5. Halo 2 on the other hand has a extremely high base movement speed for a halo game so if you were arguing that I would agree. Compare H2 midship games to H3 heretic and H5 Truth, you’ll see what I’m talking about. H2 had small maps like H3 with the fast movement speed and duel weilding which made the gameplay so quick while H3 it’s more of an illusion. Take any game from a similarity sized map based on the size of in game character models and you’ll understand.

11

This is really interesting. And a extremely good read.

I hope this helps heal some of the wounds for parts of the community.

Good on you, Spartan!

12

MLG used 10% more speed in their settings were Halo 5 uses default.

13

> 2533274913398097;1:
> I also caught a funny quote by Strongside in one of the Halo 5 matches, which I forgot to write down, so this is a paraphrase: “Truth is basically Midship on steroids, with Halo 5 being so fast paced.”
> I think it goes to show just how much the appearance of speed that you get from spartan abilities can affect your perception of the speed of the game.

I think this goes to show why we need to question everything, and test everything people say, regardless of who said it, and regardless of how much we believe in it.

14

> 2533274825830455;9:
> One thing that came to my mind is that Halo 3 MLG used modified settings with a 10% speed and damage bump, whereas Halo 5 HCS uses pretty default settings, doesn’t it? So, these results do not tell us how Halo 3 compares to Halo 5 by default. This could explain why I did not observe such a significant difference when I gathered similar data by a different method (not that it isn’t possible that my method was just bunk).
>
> I think you should branch this to other maps if you have the time, because ultimately we’re not trying to answer the question “is this map faster than that map?”, but the question “is this game faster than that game?”. Because while this data does offer preliminary evidence, ultimately it only shows with significant certainty that Heretic with MLG settings is faster than Truth with HCS settings. Averaging over all the maps that appear in HCS and all maps that appear in Halo 3 MLG would allow us to at least conclude something about whether Halo 3 MLG settings are significanty faster than Halo 5 HCS settings, and if the difference was still as drastic as this, it would possibly allow us to say something about the relative pace of default Halo 3 compared to Halo 5, because it doesn’t seem like such a large difference is solely attributable to a 10% speed and damage bump.
>
> In fact, I’ll probably have to go digging around for some more Halo 3 data, and see what kind of differences one can expect between MLG and regular Team Slayer.

For a quick and dirty calculation, couldn’t you adjust the H5 times to compensate for the 10%? I know it wouldn’t be exact, but it would be closer.

15

> 2533274875982754;14:
> > 2533274825830455;9:
> > One thing that came to my mind is that Halo 3 MLG used modified settings with a 10% speed and damage bump, whereas Halo 5 HCS uses pretty default settings, doesn’t it? So, these results do not tell us how Halo 3 compares to Halo 5 by default. This could explain why I did not observe such a significant difference when I gathered similar data by a different method (not that it isn’t possible that my method was just bunk).
> >
> > I think you should branch this to other maps if you have the time, because ultimately we’re not trying to answer the question “is this map faster than that map?”, but the question “is this game faster than that game?”. Because while this data does offer preliminary evidence, ultimately it only shows with significant certainty that Heretic with MLG settings is faster than Truth with HCS settings. Averaging over all the maps that appear in HCS and all maps that appear in Halo 3 MLG would allow us to at least conclude something about whether Halo 3 MLG settings are significanty faster than Halo 5 HCS settings, and if the difference was still as drastic as this, it would possibly allow us to say something about the relative pace of default Halo 3 compared to Halo 5, because it doesn’t seem like such a large difference is solely attributable to a 10% speed and damage bump.
> >
> > In fact, I’ll probably have to go digging around for some more Halo 3 data, and see what kind of differences one can expect between MLG and regular Team Slayer.
>
> For a quick and dirty calculation, couldn’t you adjust the H5 times to compensate for the 10%? I know it wouldn’t be exact, but it would be closer.

Not really. There is no reason to expect match length to scale that way with either movement speed or damage. For all we know, the effect could be completely negligible (<2%) or huge (>30%). Without other evidence, we have no reason to rule out the possibility that matches could even get slightly longer with increased player speed, as improbable as it sounds (this works, for instance, under the hypothesis that with higher movement speed more encounters end with the losing player escaping, and that this effect outweighs the effects that decrease the match length). Now, the last possiblity is just an example of the worst case scenario, but the first two are definitely within the realm of possibility. So, if reducing the match lengths by 10% brought us closer to the truth, it would pretty much be completely accidental. That’s why doing it doesn’t really give us new information.

16

Or one could start up each Halo game and access the movement per second of the player by km/h or metres per second for both jog and sprint for campaign and multiplayer.
I believe the way to do this is finding some sort of reference in forge and for older games a waypoint that denotes metres.
I mean Scorpion speed was calculated for each game so Spartan and ODST player speed should be able to be calculated as well.

17

I can’t believe for a second that Halo 3 would be faster than Halo 5. The spread on the BR combined with its often questionable net code led to pretty long kill times in that game, especially at longer ranges. You almost couldn’t do jack to anyone at long range in that game. In Halo 5 everyone sprints around the map while in Halo 3 everybody had to slowly walk everywhere with a base movement speed that was probably slower than most if not any other Halo game. It seemed faster in MLG settings because MLG settings in that game I’m pretty sure had the speed upped to 110 or 120 percent, but default games of Halo 3 to me were always some of the slowest and longest matches of any iteration of Halo multiplayer. That’s not a bad thing. Halo 3 was great. But it did frustrate me a lot with the slower pace and longer kill times sometimes. Especially on the Master Chief Collection.

18

> 2533274967369999;16:
> Or one could start up each Halo game and access the movement per second of the player by km/h or metres per second for both jog and sprint for campaign and multiplayer.

I already did that years ago.

HALO CE:
7m/s

HALO 2:
7m/s

HALO 2 ANNIVERSARY:
7.6m/s.

HALO 3:
7m/s.

ODST:
5.5m/s

REACH:
6.85m/s (Base)
10.75m/s (Sprint)

HALO 4:
6.6m/s (Base).
10.75m/s (Sprint)

H5G:
8.3m/s (Base).
10.75m/s (Sprint).

> 2533274912849176;10:
> Halo 2 on the other hand has a extremely high base movement speed for a halo game so if you were arguing that I would agree. Compare H2 midship games to H3 heretic and H5 Truth, you’ll see what I’m talking about. H2 had small maps like H3 with the fast movement speed and duel weilding which made the gameplay so quick while H3 it’s more of an illusion. Take any game from a similarity sized map based on the size of in game character models and you’ll understand.

Halo 2 literally has the same movement speed as Halo 3, to the decimal point. In fact, all of the original trilogy did. It’s even in the game files.

19

Do you have any way of comparing damage dealt in each game? There is a chance Halo 5 may have longer time between kills, but have less time between shots Lansing on targets.

If the more bullets are hitting targets in halo 5, even with less kills, I would argue Halo 5 is still faster paced, but people have a higher ability to evade deaths.

20

> 2614366390849210;19:
> If the more bullets are hitting targets in halo 5, even with less kills, I would argue Halo 5 is still faster paced, but people have a higher ability to evade deaths.

Well, that boils down to how you define “pace”. Is it the average rate of kills? Or the average rate of encounters? Measuring kill rates is simple, and is a completely reasonable and meaningful metric of pace. There could be other, equally valid metrics, but this is the one that is easy enough to work with.