Let’s get right into it. I’m a long time Halo player. In fact, I’m going on 15 years playing the franchise, most of that has been competitive in some way. Whether it was beating everyone in the neighborhood with Halo 1 and 2 before I had xbox live, or playing tournaments in High School with H3, I’ve always walked the line between playing for fun and being a sweaty tryhard. That being said I’m leaving Halo 5. I really tried to love it, but sadly I’ve reached the point where the frustration at broken mechanics and the utter BS that occurs in game have outweighed my desire to grind through the skill curve. However, I’d like to express my frustration here under the pretext that this feedback will hopefully be taken into account for the next iteration of this beloved franchise, and that this will be put forth in a meaningful and constructive manner. Looking at the E3 trailer for Infinity, there is definitely hope here, but needless to say if the same problems which I am about to talk about, and which have been talked about countless times here on waypoint persist, I along with alot of other players will be leaving this game for good.
Firstly the spawns, particularly in HCS and SWAT are absolutely atrocious. Now before all you Diamond and Onyx players get defensive, hear me out. What sense does it make for a player to literally spawn 5 feet in front of another player? Now you may say, “Just get good and react faster.” but that doesn’t change the fact that you are spawning with an immediate disadvantage, something that counters the fundamental tenant of Halo multiplayer. Everyone is supposed to spawn on an even playing field, where skill is what separates you, not manipulating the system.
This is further exacerbated by the absolutely atrocious netcode. The fact that I am able to fire three rounds without missing before I see a hit marker or even the enemy player’s shields react, only to be perfected further illustrates my point. The majority of the time I spawn on say, Truth, I am immediately gunned down despite the fact that we both starting shooting at the same time, I didn’t miss, and the bad guy didn’t have help. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put 5-6 bursts into a player with a BR and not even popped their shields, or how many of my grenades have literally just vanished into thin air. I’ve spent countless gun fights landing head shot after headshot on one shot enemies, only to have them perfect reversal me because the game refuses to acknowledge my hits. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that I pretty much expect my first three shots to be blanks. Rockets vanish and don’t do any splash damage, sniper rounds take a full second to register, I’ve even melee’d enemy players who didn’t have shields only to end up with a double beat down even though I had full shields, which leads me to my next point.
I cannot tell you how many times I have been melee’d to death with one hit when I have full shields. It’s ridiculous. For example, say I start taking fire and duck behind cover. I wait for my shields to recharge, then pop back out and start engaging, only to have the enemy player run right up to me without firing a shot and hit me one time, killing me. It’s not just after my shields pop either, which I suspect has to do with netcode as well. I have literally been killed with one hit despite having full shields. This also occurs with other weapons as well, occasionally I will be killed in 3 shots with a magnum or BR, or even 2-3 with a DMR, despite being full shields.
In addition, the motion tracker seems to only work some of the time. I cant tell you how many times I’ve been beaten down from behind because a player didn’t register on the motion tracker, from places I just cleared only seconds prior. Let me clarify, there was no way for them to be crouch walking because they would have to sprint to reach me at those speeds, yet they don’t appear on my motion tracker and get the jump on me. And speaking of movement speeds, the base player run speed seems way too fast. We should not be playing ring around the rosey every time a one shot player starts running around a pillar to avoid being shot. This was never an issue in previous games, everyone was slow enough that it didn’t matter if you pulled that crap, the player who deserved to win the gunfight got the kill. This is just another example of this game pandering to lower skilled players to try and even the playing field overall rather than making the game fair.
I have the same views on spartan charge and ground pound. Why would you add abilities that cannot be countered, or are extremely difficult to counter, to a highly competitive game? Again, it’s pandering. Gaming is in a trend right now where developers think making things easier for newer players will make them more money, so they ruin the game on the competitive side, and don’t even get me started on weapon tuning.
Finally the playlist choices are garbage guys, seriously. The fact that I have to suffer through 3 games of HCS oddball in a row is mind blowing. There is no team snipers which blows my mind, and even when you add shotty snipers you put 5v5 which makes absolutely zero sense. These maps are tiny guys, more people on tiny maps destroys your already broken spawn system and just adds to the BS. Why would I want to play this game type when I’m just going to be spawn killed or shot from behind because I take a wrong turn and end up with my back to the spawn rotation? It’s the same in SWAT. Spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn…die.
Idk, theres a ton of other stuff I could add, I’m just kind of over it. If you disagree, I really don’t care. I’m not the only one having these issues. Hopefully we can fix this the next go round, but for now I’m done. I’ll be going back to MCC once H3 is on dedicated servers.
