After playing five-ten matches of the beta, and watching a lot of footage beforehand, I have come up with a lot of feedback for 343i. Almost all of my problems with the game are superficial, and I love almost every aspect of the gameplay. As such, I have divided it into 3 categories - good things, bad things and aesthetically displeasing things. So, without further ado, here is my list. Feel free to post your own suggestions in a similar format below.
The Good
SPARTAN chatter is really useful, especially since I don’t use a mic- The gameplay feels brilliant, really well balanced (except in a few minor areas) and feels (at least to me) like Halo.- SPARTAN armour looks the best it has since Halo: Reach, in my opinion.- The way players are encouraged to control power weapons and parts of the map is really cool, and also useful for newcomers to the franchise.- I love the new HUD. The shield recharge timer, health indicator and secondary weapon indicator were long overdue a return.- Most of the weapons look great. I love the DMR, AR, Hydra and Magnum.- Maps are brilliantly designed. The Bad
Charge feels underpowered, and should be increased to an instant kill, but use up the charge of the thruster pack.- I personally quite dislike the menu music.- Smart-Link scope animations are forced. If there was a settings option to disable the animations, and show just the zoomed in reticule, that’d please a lot of fans and haters who dislike Smart Scope.- No Mk V armour. Since it’s a beta, I’ll forgive you for this, 343. But it’d better be in the final game :P- Spartan Customisation is quite limited. I think you ought to be able to customise every body piece, as in Reach and Halo 4, and seeing as Spartan Chatter has been added, the voice should be customisable too.- This is quite minor, but I think the ability to peek from behind cover should be added, as it is in Destiny. This wouldn’t be a game-breaker if neglected, but I’d quite like it to be implemented.- The service tag has to be 4 letters long. My usual service tag is DAB, so I think that as long as there’s between 1 and 4 characters, it should be considered fine.- SPARTAN movement speed (sprinting and not) feels a little slow, which in turn makes them feel slightly heavy and clunky. If upped to 110-125% of what it is now, it ought to be fine.- There’s no respawn timer when you die. I’d like one, don’t know why, but I just want one.- There are a couple of things I don’t like with the control schemes. Pressing sprint while zoomed has no effect, but it ought to take you out of Smart Scope and begin sprinting. The Prophets’ Bane has no zoom, and I think all weapons without Smart Scope should have Helmet Zoom instead.- Everybody dies a little too fast. Again, up damage resistance by about 125%.- There are no Sangheili in multiplayer :(- And, I know it’s a long-shot, but dual wielding? Pleeeaassee? It’d be balanced, if Sprinting, Ground Pounding and Thruster Pack made you drop the second weapon, accuracy is decreased when dual-wielding, reload times are slightly longer and there’s only helmet zoom when dual-wielding. The Ugly
I don’t like the BR scope. It is too tall, and makes the gun look like a generic sci-fi weapon. It should be changed to the Halo 4-era scope.- The DMR in general looks great, but I think that the circular scope in a cuboid case looks strange, and it should be a circular scope in a cylindrical case.- The greenish-grey, black, and light grey of the AR clash a little, so the contrast should be decreased a little. The same goes for the grey and black of the SMG.- What happened to the M41 Rocket Launcher? I don’t like the drainpipe… Seriously though, the design should revert to the M41 design, or be redesigned to look like Halo 3’s cut G4H-DuSH Rocket Launcher.- Shotgun looks off. It should be redesigned to look like the H2A shotgun (campaign or multiplayer, I don’t mind) or the Halo: Reach one.- I don’t like the SMG’ scope attachment. I prefer the iron-sights type thing that was on the top of it in Halo 2, 3 and H2A.- While I mostly like the MJOLNIR armour designs, I think they should have a bit more wear on them. This could easily be achieved by adding a small strip of metal texture at the edge of each flat surface on the armour, making it look like paint has been scratched off. This effect could even be optional per SPARTAN.Of course, these problems are simply minor irks in what has turned out (much to my surprise) to be a brilliant game. Nevertheless, it’d be nice to see them ironed out.
Dual wielding is out of the question now. The game is too close to completion for something that big. You’re speaking of a entire game mechanic. The only thing they can do now is fix some glitches or nerf/buff certain weapons. Any any other minor cosmetics/sounds…etc.
not a bad list. I’m enjoying the game, but some of the same things that held back reach/halo 4 are still having a negative impact in this game. As a massive halo 1/2/3 fan I have a few inputs too -
bad -
sprint - can’t be avoided I suppose as no modern game would dare ship without it, but it really does change the dynamics of halo too much. It’s too easy to get snuck up on and killed without there being anything in your power to stop it.
thruster
AR overpowered
good -
arena maps
no loadouts
4 shot br/dmr
Overall it’s been a lot of fun so far, and simply by having arena maps and no loadouts it beats halo 4 already.
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> Dual wielding is out of the question now. The game is too close to completion for something that big. You’re speaking of a entire game mechanic. The only thing they can do now is fix some glitches or nerf/buff certain weapons. Any any other minor cosmetics/sounds…etc.
Thus the ‘I know it’s a long-shot’ comment. Still, there is time for it to be implemented (shown by how Certain Affinity added it to the Halo 4 engine in the same amount of time for H2A), but time taken to balance it properly would be the problem.
Ill keep to short and sweet it sucks!! big time. It nothing like halo it shouldn’t even be part of the brand. It’s a totally different game look and feel.
It’s sad to see 343 using the halo brand to lunch a totally different game, if I could get a refund I would. Bring back the original developers all is forgiven.
I hate charge. I’m an assassination-type guy, and I need to sprint to do that. Except I can’t because I have to burst forward when I melee. At the very least, they should give the option to disable it.
The zoom feature reminds me to much of how destiny feels. There were times I was trying to boost jump in Halo 5 and forgetting I wasn’t playing destiny.
So a few multiplayer things I have picked up from the beta after having my hands on it for a bit.
The Good
Overall the gameplay does feel like Halo. At its roots the gameplay is back or getting back to where it somewhere between Halo 3 and Halo Reach. The maps look very good for a beta in my opinion and I haven’t experienced many bugs
The bad and ugly
First off right from the gate is the menu brightness. If you put a dark color on your Spartan, you’ll be lucky to see the details on it. I understand it’s the beta but the lighting in the menu is bad. Next matter of business is the way matchmaking works. First off, I feel like I’m playing MCC after a few server updates when I play the beta, since I have to disconnect and reconnect and sit in a lobby where I wait to get kicked, since you cannot formally back out of a lobby after a certain point. Next up is the ranking system. 343i put a lot of effort into the tier based ranking system (with the silver and gold levels and such). Why not use that to base who gets paired up with you. I am sure I speak for everyone when I say that people are sick of lousy teammates. Speaking of teammates, I hope that the final version of this game prevents people from rage quitting in some manner. I cannot tell you how many games I’ve been in where someone quits because they’re losing. Moving along to silly gameplay mechanics. If you use recon, your controls are weird. The crouch and groundpound are the same button, so crouch jumping turns into a tedious process and yes I’m aware that there is the vaulting movement but still. I don’t think the groundpound should leave players so vulnerable. It defeats the purpose of ground pound when you spend enough time In the air to get killed twice. Another underpowered Spartan ability is the dash. Its a great concept but it’s too risky with little reward. You charge up your sprint so your shields won’t recharge and run at someone which is another risk since you can’t shoot them and dash into them only to take their shields down if it’s not in the back? That defeats the purpose of it being truly useful so maybe an adjustment to that would help out a lot. The hover-while-you-smart-scope-ability-thing is very annoying to say the least. When you try to peek around a corner on truth that has a curve and you smart scope only to lift up ever so slightly and miss your shots, it bothers you a bit. On a side note, there aren’t any exotic weapons in the beta. Yeah there’s 2 swords and a lightrifle, but where are the plasma weapons. I’m sure 343i is tinkering with the smart scope on them for balancing but a carbine would have been a cool easy weapon to throw in the mix. Now that I’m on the subject of weapons, let’s discuss what 343 has made of the halo rocket launcher. Although it serves the same function, it does not look right for halo and it doesn’t look right in the hands of a Spartan. The Halo rocket is something that is almost a staple of halo. I can understand toying with the BR and the Smg and such, but the RPG went from this big bad MONSTER to a marshmallow bazooka. Seriously search a Mazooka and it looks like the halo 5 RPG. I hope this doesn’t stick or gets a remodel because it’s ugly. Really ugly. Next order of business is lighting. Particularly the other map similar to empire. I tried to avoid playing it so I don’t remember it’s name. That map had the strangest lighting. And most of it could be described as DARK. if you were on red team then you couldn’t see blue team. It was bad. Truth is solid and so is Regret. A little awkward but I believe it’s because the map is upside down. The forge map is not okay. It looks aestethically pleasing but would make a better infection map. Its got strange narrow staircases that have no dips for cover, a lot of weird drops and such, strange weapon placement and just isn’t like the other maps in the beta. I don’t mind Spartan chat unless my teammates are saying not to throw grenades at them when friendly fire isn’t on. Breakout is something I haven’t talked about. I love the idea of breakout but the weapon placement is kind of unfair since there’s always hat lone teammate who ALWAYS needs the BR at the start and 75% of the time, can’t shoot it. One thing that is particularly bad in breakout but is also a general issue in the beta is some of the grenade placement. If players can only hold 2 grenades why put more than 2 in a spot? All people do is camp and Chuck grenades. The kill cam is very buggy and that’s probably a beta issue that just needs to be fixed. My main issue with it is first that it exists. I prefer seeing teammates and such while I wait to respawn. The other issue is it’s inaccuracies of displaying how a player really died. I don’t think every person who kills me while smart scoping zooms in and out after every shot when its long distance. I could be wrong but I’d check into it. One thing I left out is that sprinting should not totally reset the shield recharge meter, instead it needs to stop it until the player stops then keep lowering. Having it reset just slows down gameplay and players find themselves hiding to recharge for extensive amounts of time.
That’s all I can currently point out that I’ve noticed in the beta. Feedback Is always appreciated and its always good to brainstorm back and forth with other players to get their opinions. Overall I think halo 5 has taken a giant leap in the right direction for halo and I’m excited to see the final product.