Hello, there.
While I have been a hardcore Halo fan for quite some time, I have found my faith in the franchise waning with the past two games, coincidentally since the transition from Bungie to 343 Industries. I can’t really say that 343 Industries has done a terrible job with the epic legacy that is Halo, which they have inherited, but I can’t say they have done a great job either. Yes, there have been many complaints about Halo 4 and Halo 5’s stories. Yes, they are mostly valid and on point. Yes, Halo 5 has a much better campaign than Halo 4 did. No, Halo 5 did not live up to it’s hype level at all.
There are definitely some things that 343 Industries did in Halo 5 that I really do love, such as the adaptive 1080p at 60fps. Also, the more realistic feel that they added to the gameplay, like the new animations for aiming down the sights on your weapons. Don’t forget to mention the new game mode, Warzone! This is really fun. With the combination of the new Requisition system, which is NOT pay-to-win for multiplayer, thankfully, this new game mode resembles the Battlefield classic Rush mode, but…you know…with Halo and stuff. The lack of split-screen gameplay, which is arguably the most talked about and largest complaint that Halo 5 players have, honestly isn’t that big of a deal for me. Yes, I used to have LAN parties at times and enjoyed playing co-operative campaign with my friends sitting next to me; however, I think the trade-off for the beautiful, albeit adaptive, graphics and better game performance and stability is totally worth it.
There are also some things that 343 Industries did NOT do well in Halo 5; namely, the new CSR system for multiplayer, or Competitive Skill Ranking system. Apparently, the prime directive that 343 Industries put in place for this new system matchmaking was stability and consistency above all else. My experience so far could not be further from that description. There are many problems with this new ranking system, one of which is the lack of visibility of your performance. The structure of Halo 5’s CSR is very much similar to Blizzard’s Hearthstone ranking system. There is a set number of ranks you can achieve and only winning will allow you to climb them. In Hearthstone, you can see a number of stars, or wins, that you need to achieve to advance to the next rank, but you don’t have anything like that in Halo 5. All you can see in Halo 5 is what rank you are, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Onyx, and Champion, and what tier from one to six in your current rank. This isn’t a huge problem, but it is a nuisance. Also, I would have liked to have had a performance-based multiplayer ranking system, like that of Titanfall, in a game of this caliber instead of purely a wins-based system. One of the core differences between Halo 5’s CSR and Hearthstone’s ranking system is that in Hearthstone, casual and competitive players are separated from each other. In Hearthstone, you can choose between playing unranked games or climbing the ranked ladder, which is wonderful because highly competitive people, like myself, don’t have to play with utter noobs. Do I have that choice in Halo 5? Nope. For every playlist you choose in Arena, everyone has to play ten placement matches, which give you the rank of Unranked in games. What does that mean? Even though I got placed in Diamond, I still get matched with unranked players in every game. That isn’t a problem sometimes, but a lot of times it is. Why? Because unranked players are wildcards! That’s what “unranked” means! By not separating out each playlist by ranked and unranked, it is utterly ruining the multiplayer experience for everyone, unless you’re a masochist, because nobody wants to be in a game that’s so lopsided the other team wins with more than twice the number of kills that your team ended up getting. Too bad that seems to happen every other game in Halo 5! Because of this horribly unstable and unbalanced multiplayer ranking system, climbing the rank ladder becomes an arbitrarily unwinnable tug-of-war instead of a well-matched battle of wits…wait, I meant skill. Maybe 343 Industries might remedy these problems with their CSR system in Halo 5, but until then, I think I’m going to take a hiatus from Arena.