I want to start off by saying that the games feels amazing, I think it’s exactly what you guys were aiming for with something that feels new but still holds the halo feel. And thank you to everyone who worked on it to get it where it is today. So here are my thoughts
Map Design:
Acadamy overall is an amazing 4v4 map, the avenues you can take to navigate the map are simple and also unique and flow together very nice, almost has a CE feel. the weapon spawn locations are well balanced, but the sniper tower I feel has odd or awkward sight lines when looking at the Skewer/Sniper spawn and the Bridge. And while I understand this is preview and we are meant to be testing as much as we can, I don’t think that the Sniper and Skewer are good power weapons for this map (I’ll touch on actual weapons later) but the sniper mainly because it only has one good spot to be utilized from.
Recharge is very reminiscent of Plaza from Halo 5, with paths around the outside of a open middle area, But Recharge seems to have more of a emphasis on clambering to gain height advantage, and that’s why the grapple shot is perfect for this map
Bazaar is easily the best map of the 3, it is exactly what you want out of area style shooter and it feels like no matter what weapons, equipment, and power ups are loaded into the map, they will have a use somewhere and somehow on this map
Although I said that Bazaar was great for how well it can Utilize everything IF it was randomized, Bazaar and Recharge didn’t have randomized power weapon spawns, only academy did. And overall I liked the randomized spawns at first, but I would much rather see consistent power weapons on maps
Weapons:
The AR, Sidekick, BR, Bulldog, Plasma Pistol, Ravager and the Rockets all feel great, no real complaints about those.
The Commando, idk how to feel about this gun I have tried countless times to figure out this gun and make it work, is it long range, mid range? I can’t tell, I end up having to use it like the DMR most of the time but it feels like it doesn’t do enough damage to warrant using like the DMR. Its in this weird limbo area where I’d honestly just skip over it and use the AR or Sidekick until I can find a BR which the Commando is trying to clearly compete with. On top of the fact that I feel as if I have to micro manage my aim settings constantly when using this gun. My aim steams from playing nothing but Halo Reach Swat in middle school, and I play R6 for reference, a game built on headshots, so I know my aim is good and above average, so why is it so hard for me to actually ADS this gun? something just feels off about the commando weather thats it’s recoil or it’s bloom, I can’t tell, maybe a bit of both?
which leads me into the Sniper Rifle. I love sniping, who doesn’t, but this is another gun I had to go into my setting and the firing range and micro manage it’s ADS setting just to use and have it feel right. And side note keep the old Sniper ADS, get ride of the large circle around the main reticle when you zoom in.
the Skewers ADS reticle is very busy and has a lot going on to give it that worn and used look while ADSing. But that also might be because it’s being used in a small map, in the trailer this gun is showcased being fired at a vehicle, so if the Skewers intention is to be this big bulky anti vehicle gun, then it definitely has that feel, regardless I’d still recommend cleaning up its ADS reticle, I would never grab this gun to use against other players, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way because in the games of academy that the skewer did spawn, a majority of the time people wouldn’t pick it up, this gun definitely has a place, but I don’t think a small map is that place.
New Plasma Rifle gun, (forgot the name) this gun feels great, works exactly as it should, but I think that it’s projectile tracking needs to either be faster, OR more aggressive, not both, it just needs a little more UMF.
This is not a critique, but just had to point out how amazing the Needler feels now, the Needler finally feels like a gun that I’d gladly pick up and use and I just had to point it out
The Heatwave, this is just another gun that I can’t justify ever picking up, it’s a fun gun if you wanna bounce shots off walls, but this gun is highly inconsistent, and I think that if it had a charge up feature where the longer you charged, the the more shots it consumes and the more powerful and faster the one shot would be. would really benefit it.
The biggest take away here is mainly for the commando and the sniper, precision weapons in general. I love players having the ability to micro manage their ADS settings IF THEY WANT TO, but i know for others they just want to go into setting, find the sensitivity slider, crank it up a few notches, and then never worry about their sensitivity again. make the base sensitivity for everything akin to MCC and THEN give players the option to make small adjustments if they need to, not vise versa.
Battle Pass and Shop:
The battle pass is great, I love how it works. And I think making it so each tier is 500 XP is amazing, but restricting that xp exclusively to challenges didn’t feel great. I know the goal you’re going for with the battle pass and progression is that you want players to be able to sit down, play a few games, do some challenges and be rewarded for that time. but you also have to consider the people who are going to be play more than that, after I finished my daily challenges, I felt no point to playing since I hit a road block and there was no way for me to progress.
As for the shop, I think it’s well designed, but I don’t know how I feel about there being a shop in general. if theres a system that allows me to obtain credits through game play and then use them in the shop, then I think it’s great, but I don’t like the idea of things being exclusive to the shop, FOR MONEY.
Customization:
overall the design and style for customization is going in a great direction, the style is a nice combination of the best armors from multiple games, and I can’t wait to see more.
I think that the Color customization needs to specifically be built upon, I like that there’s pre set colors, and it seems like other do too. but I don’t like that we are restricted to these set colors, I think that there needs to be more of an emphasis on personalization when it comes to colors, make it so maybe the base color can’t change, but we can change the other aspects of the coating. OR ideally, make it so we can choose what material our armor is made of, then we can just pick the colors. I like how many different pieces of the armor can be colored, but let us as the players customize that.
I think that the UI for customization could also be changed to something more reminiscent of Halo Reach, where you had a list going from head to toe on what category of armor piece you wanted to modify.
The personalization section was good, I can’t wait to see what more gets added but overall, going in the right direction
Gameplay:
My only gameplay critique is melee, it feels very aggressive, so much to the point where the lunge distance seems a tad to far, and a tad to fast.
Equipment all feels great, I didn’t feel the need to give its own section so I just plugged It here, everything so far with them feels very well balanced and I’m just glad that they are pick ups and not things we spawn with.