Matchmaking
After seeing some of the supposed leaked halo 6 stuff on youtube (that are probably fake) felt the need to reel off some of my hopes for halo 6. I first want to say that halo 5 has been a good game when it comes to matchmaking and the way that we had seasons and new maps and content getting released was a good thing for the longevity of the game. That being said my man gripe with halo 5 was the lack of content for matchmaking, everything was ranked, no social playlist were available except for 2 days or something like that when a playlist would be made available over the weekend and it would be something like fiesta etc. This was the main reason my interest waned. I am part of the feedback program and I must admit, after halo 4 and its lack of ranked playlists I felt the need to run home the fact that we needed ranked, I didn’t realise that 343 would then take that to mean no social playlists. I don’t like warzone, I am not a massive fan of BTB, so for have those as the only social game modes was not good, I want to play CTF, strongholds, oddball, king of the hill, Riccochet, Regicide, team snipes, team slayer, all that good stuff, 4v4, red vs blue action but socially, I don’t want to be forced to play ranked 24/7. The halo reach model was good in my opinion, you had social playlists where you got an emblem for levelling up (not an SR number) but a nice emblem that went all the way up to forerunner and you played against other people that had played the game a similar amount of time. For me that was good and fun and how I would want halo 6 to be as long as they have a HCS playlist which is ranked and only HCS game types. That in my opinion is all that needs to change with regards to playlists and matchmaking.
Spartan Abilities
Spartan charge is the worse thing to happen to halo ever, 343 took away the ability to constantly sprint but handed players a new one the allowed them to sprint around maps like a lunatic and not get punished because they hit melee and your pretty much dead, because the people that do that are the people that run around with assault rifles and your shields are gone and you aint winning that fight. I can live with ground-pound, thrusters, clamber and even sprint if they remove spartan charge. I feel that the balancing still needs to be done with regards to these abilities, e.g. the amount of times you can thrust and its cool-down, how fast you can run at max sprint etc but the abilities are ok.
Bigger maps
The map sizes in halo 5 feel too small to me, I’m a fan of Halo Reach and feel like the maps on that game were better in general and gave you the ability to control areas if you were good enough. Maps like oni sword base had lots of vertical but also gave players the ability to get to the top instantly if they wanted to take the risk, with halo 5 maps it feels like you cannot hold areas and players are basically spawning next to top mid so they just sprint and they are on you within 3 seconds of spawning. Surely if you have sprint and mechanics that allow players to traverse distances more quickly, then maps should get bigger not smaller. I would also like to see more remakes of old favourites, these don’t have to be in HCS playlists but just in social playlists. The map overgrowth should be destroyed with fire forever never to return.
Game modes
Said this earlier really but I want social playlists, for example I want to be able to play objective game types like CTF, King of the hill, strongholds etc unranked, want to be able to play team slayer unranked, I want team snipes unranked and I don’t want them to be on some sort of rotation they should be fixed playlists. There should also be an unranked pro playlist that has maps and settings that are HCS but unranked and also have one that is ranked. Again I feel that reach did this well you had lots of unranked playlists and one ranked, the only problem was the actual ranking system they had, you could also play an MLG playlist with no radar that had good players on it but no ranking.
Daily quests, Reqs and customisation
Just a little thing but having daily quests to complete for extra credits or XP would be good and a reason to play, many online games have things like this, HOTS for example and Halo Reach had it. The Req pack system could continue in some form however I think it could be done better again I point to games like Over-watch and Heroes of the storm that give players random rewards as well as letting them save currencies to buy things they want. For customisation I felt like Halo 5 was pretty good with plenty of items and skins, emblem customisation however could be better and give players more customisation options. Why no armour effects, something else that was gone after Reach was armour effects like inclement weather and grunt birthday party, these are not game breaking omissions but would make good additions to customisation. think the game would be more successful if it adopted a customisation system like that of Heroes of the storm, with players able to get rewards for free through playing but also being able to save and buy the items and skins they want.
Seasons
Another small things but I think seasons is a good thing but was not implemented well in halo 5 with seasons not being announced in an exciting way and rewards being lacklustre. If seasons were longer and players got rewards for ranking high or different rewards depending on their rank when the season ends then people would have a reason to play every season. Again I point to games like over watch and HOTS as good examples of seasons and how they rewards players for playing the game, I fully get that games need to make money but when a game is good and polished and the money making is not obvious to people playing the game then it will make money because people will invest in the game and want to spend money on it.
Campaign
Honesty its hard to sum up all that is wrong with Halo 5 campaign, the levels, the story, game-play. All I can say is that I hope they look at Halo 3 and take lessons from that games level design and game-play in campaign. Story wise I don’t like the direction 343 has taken halo in but the story can be whatever they make it. For me halo 4 had the right idea, it was clearly the follow on from halo 3, humanity had advanced beyond the covenant using salvaged forerunner tech and the next logical step was the return of the forerunners. I think people may have missed how good halo 4 story actually was and maybe that is because the actually game play in the campaign was terrible and some of the story was in extra content like books etc but that story was on the right tracks, with chiefs backstory and humanities links with forerunners and precursors getting fleshed out. It bugs me that Halo 5 did not follow on from halo 4 at all, it fells to me like halo 4 was written by people that worked on halo 1, 2 and 3 and that halo 5 was by completely new people and the story just goes in a completely different direction, I could be wrong and hope I am because the idea that the forerunners could come back would give John 117 the chance to save earth some more and not just get killed off by 343 and Microsoft. Another thing that needs to be implemented is more enemies, brutes, drones, flood etc.
Hopefully halo 6 will address these issues and launch with all the features and great story telling we expect from a halo game.