After hitting Semi-Pro today I feel like I have a decent feel for how this games beta shapes up with all the other games and have some personal suggestions here and there. I’ve always played this game in a somewhat competitive way so my opinions are going to be skewed toward that part of the community. As a note, I’ve been playing since Halo CE and have always managed to achieve 50’s, high credit ranks and whatnot where ever they’ve appeared so I got some idea of how the past games operate as well.
- Teams are necessary if you want to win and rank up. Barely managed to keep my rank steady at Gold III playing alone, won 20-30 games in a row from Gold III to Semi-Pro on a team
- It seems teams are more or less necessary for everything to feel balanced. If you haven’t played much on a team, you probably think a lot of things are broken.
- Except for the AR, the range is ridiculous and I’ve been mowed down going 1v1 against someone with an AR at about 10 feet distance while landing continuous perfect head shots with the BR. Properly timed bursts up close will hit faster and harder than precision weapons head shotting you. I’ve also been more or less head shot while running away from a player at Tower 1 (closest to the red base) while I was all the way in the main room of Red. Something must be done about this.
- All the precision weapons feel tight and well suited for there rolls.
- The SMG is wonderful up close and I enjoy it being more of a power weapon now. I’ve never felt it was too strong when used against me and always managed to get good, consistent use out of it.
- Grenades have a bit too large of a blast radius, but I suppose it’s necessary to stop people from camping all the time. I will say that a skilled team can utterly demolish anyone inside inside the tower base of Empire by continuously throwing well placed grenades at them. It’s hard to avoid in any location and not much too do about it when you’re pinned down while the safely lob bombs at you through the doors and windows in relative safety.
- Melee is decent but I’ve found myself using it a lot less than previous games, mostly because the lunge is horrid and I’ve messed up a seemingly easy win by trying to beat down someone too early.
-The armor abilities all have their purpose and feel right. Personally I don’t get much use out of things like Ground Pound and slide (though I’ve played against some pro level players that used them with an infuriating level of ability) but I must say that the Thrusters are key to being able to play well in Halo 5.
- Truth is an excellent map.
- Empire is alright, but I feel like it lacks something. My team and I always had trouble finding a decent spot to defend on this map and the flow didn’t seem nearly as good as Truth. Snipers are awkward on this map, but a few decent sight lines make the game a lot tougher if the other team can hold down an area for a bit with a good sniper on their side.
- I enjoy the ranking. I wouldn’t mind having a 1-50 system like Halo 2 or Halo 3 but this system is much more transparent about when you’re going up or down rank and provides a better look at whose really the best when you hit the higher levels by having an ELO-like system.
-Matchmaking is horrible. This is one of the reasons teams are necessary, being a player whose serious about rank and then being paired up with a group of fresh recruits, playing their first few games, while up against a team of Pro’s is terrible. I guess this may be enjoyable to those who simply want to rank up but I personally have more fun when I’m up against a good team of similar skill. Some of my favorite matches so far have been those were the ending score was 49-50, not 47 to 3 chasing around the last player who didn’t quit.
Sir, you get a “like” for posting a constructive post that isn’t a lot of whinging like some individuals on this message board.
Though I would plainly like to disagree with you about the Assault Rifle in that I personally feel that it is fine, and many of my friends and temporary teammates throughout the Beta have found that it is fair as well. It can only attain mid-range at best and you need to use ADS to do so. On top of that you can only maintain a short burst for up to 4 or 5 rounds max, otherwise your accuracy will suffer drastically when aiming at range.
The Matchmaking could use improvements, the rank system also needs improvements. So I do agree with you there.
Most everything in the game feels fluid and right, and I also feel that every weapon serves a purpose in their respective roles with little overlap. It’s good that an AR can prove a threat to a BR at mid-range when a BR can easily take it out at long range, but at long range a BR is going to be at a disadvantage to a DMR, and a DMR is going to break a Sniper at close range but at long range be disadvantaged. The AR is after all an “Assault Rifle” it should have some range, otherwise it would be an oversized and poorly performing SMG making that role rather redundant.
It’s all about knowing when and where to counter something and making sure you have diverse enough tools that suit the role you’re trying to play.
> 2533274824466008;2:
> Sir, you get a “like” for posting a constructive post that isn’t a lot of whinging like some individuals on this message board.
>
> Though I would plainly like to disagree with you about the Assault Rifle in that I personally feel that it is fine, and many of my friends and temporary teammates throughout the Beta have found that it is fair as well. It can only attain mid-range at best and you need to use ADS to do so. On top of that you can only maintain a short burst for up to 4 or 5 rounds max, otherwise your accuracy will suffer drastically when aiming at range.
>
> The Matchmaking could use improvements, the rank system also needs improvements. So I do agree with you there.
>
> Most everything in the game feels fluid and right, and I also feel that every weapon serves a purpose in their respective roles with little overlap. It’s good that an AR can prove a threat to a BR at mid-range when a BR can easily take it out at long range, but at long range a BR is going to be at a disadvantage to a DMR, and a DMR is going to break a Sniper at close range but at long range be disadvantaged. The AR is after all an “Assault Rifle” it should have some range, otherwise it would be an oversized and poorly performing SMG making that role rather redundant.
>
> It’s all about knowing when and where to counter something and making sure you have diverse enough tools that suit the role you’re trying to play.
Thank you 
The AR wasn’t that big of a deal too me till I got killed by it faster than I could kill them while perfectly head shotting them. That’s not right, but I’ll have to try and reproduce it before I can truly say that’s what happened.
> 2533274803896054;3:
> > 2533274824466008;2:
> > Sir, you get a “like” for posting a constructive post that isn’t a lot of whinging like some individuals on this message board.
> >
> > Though I would plainly like to disagree with you about the Assault Rifle in that I personally feel that it is fine, and many of my friends and temporary teammates throughout the Beta have found that it is fair as well. It can only attain mid-range at best and you need to use ADS to do so. On top of that you can only maintain a short burst for up to 4 or 5 rounds max, otherwise your accuracy will suffer drastically when aiming at range.
> >
> > The Matchmaking could use improvements, the rank system also needs improvements. So I do agree with you there.
> >
> > Most everything in the game feels fluid and right, and I also feel that every weapon serves a purpose in their respective roles with little overlap. It’s good that an AR can prove a threat to a BR at mid-range when a BR can easily take it out at long range, but at long range a BR is going to be at a disadvantage to a DMR, and a DMR is going to break a Sniper at close range but at long range be disadvantaged. The AR is after all an “Assault Rifle” it should have some range, otherwise it would be an oversized and poorly performing SMG making that role rather redundant.
> >
> > It’s all about knowing when and where to counter something and making sure you have diverse enough tools that suit the role you’re trying to play.
>
>
> Thank you
>
> The AR wasn’t that big of a deal too me till I got killed by it faster than I could kill them while perfectly head shotting them. That’s not right, but I’ll have to try and reproduce it before I can truly say that’s what happened.
I often find that there is more than one damage source attacking me from places unseen.
Also I think that people need to more clearly think what “close, mid, far” ranges actually mean in game terms.
> 2533274824466008;4:
> > 2533274803896054;3:
> > > 2533274824466008;2:
> > > Sir, you get a “like” for posting a constructive post that isn’t a lot of whinging like some individuals on this message board.
> > >
> > > Though I would plainly like to disagree with you about the Assault Rifle in that I personally feel that it is fine, and many of my friends and temporary teammates throughout the Beta have found that it is fair as well. It can only attain mid-range at best and you need to use ADS to do so. On top of that you can only maintain a short burst for up to 4 or 5 rounds max, otherwise your accuracy will suffer drastically when aiming at range.
> > >
> > > The Matchmaking could use improvements, the rank system also needs improvements. So I do agree with you there.
> > >
> > > Most everything in the game feels fluid and right, and I also feel that every weapon serves a purpose in their respective roles with little overlap. It’s good that an AR can prove a threat to a BR at mid-range when a BR can easily take it out at long range, but at long range a BR is going to be at a disadvantage to a DMR, and a DMR is going to break a Sniper at close range but at long range be disadvantaged. The AR is after all an “Assault Rifle” it should have some range, otherwise it would be an oversized and poorly performing SMG making that role rather redundant.
> > >
> > > It’s all about knowing when and where to counter something and making sure you have diverse enough tools that suit the role you’re trying to play.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thank you
> >
> > The AR wasn’t that big of a deal too me till I got killed by it faster than I could kill them while perfectly head shotting them. That’s not right, but I’ll have to try and reproduce it before I can truly say that’s what happened.
>
>
> I often find that there is more than one damage source attacking me from places unseen.
>
> Also I think that people need to more clearly think what “close, mid, far” ranges actually mean in game terms.
There usually are, but when the rest of my team is fighting their team over at Big tower and the bends, while that guy and me are at the back of red 1, I’m pretty confident there was no outside interference. I’d say the ranger was about the size of that middle structure at the bottom of red base, 5 feet? (If your reply was aimed at mine)