I know there is some king drama and I have even got into the mix with my lack of split-screen and radar issues. But every version has had its early challenges getting good again.
Halo CE - I was lucky to be the 1st of my 20 friend group to figure out the Pistol ruled. I quietly milked that for about 5 months and then everyone evolved.
Halo 2 - This transition was funny the 1st couple of weeks with everyone pistol (sometimes duel wield) happy until they realized how terrible it was. BR was king and the ones who perfected jump aimed headshots could even tear down the noob combo people. The bigger shock was the king of the small island effect. Everyone based their skill in comparison to their LAN buddies only to realize a very humbling experience…you need to get better. I was obsessed and it took me about 2 months to get good. My best moment in H2 was cracking top 1000 in Rumble Pit ranking. It only lasted 2 weeks but it was an exciting achievement for me.
Halo 3 - I was lucky enough to run Beta but to be honest this was the less dramatic transition. You could still rule with the BR. Tons of candy added though and lots of fun matches. Theatre was great! Forge was amazing! This version also introduced choice in the menu on what map to battle in.
Halo ODST - I actually skipped this entire title for personal medical reasons so I would be curious about this transition from people that played Multi-player
Halo Reach - Fun stuff for the most part. A lot of adjustments with sprint/jet pack/etc. Armor Lock for Campaign is fine but in my opinion it was the worst multi-player addition in the history of Halo. The douchiest part of AL was that the AL users excuse for using it was because of all the nades and melee yet 90% used nades and melee when they came out. Hypocrite much? Our LAN parties banned Armor Lock and it made this one of our favorites of all titles. Cloaking campers also annoyed me. Assassination delays were also extremely welcome and reduced melee overall. I felt like some previous versions had too much melee. More FPS and less FPM.
Halo 4 - We had less fun in H4 than Reach but it was still fun. A lot of people hated this title but I enjoyed plenty of elements. We loved the Armor Lock ban hammer and the addition of Promethian Vision to combat campers. This version of Halo relied most on range control for each weap and had a lot of useful options for a kill.
Halo 5 - I am terrible but until I wrote this I didn’t really remember being terrible in a lot of the previous versions at the beginning as well. Practice will make be better so I will see where I am at when I hit gaming hour #200. I think perfecting boost, pro-jumps, and aim will be the key. I think this is the most heavy motion title in the group and I love motion. I do wish radar was 30 Meters again though so I can play chess and plan for my next areas of attack while I am taking someone down locally. The funniest game for me so far was playing CTF and having more flags than kills. I know CTF isn’t about kills at all but its still a bit embarrassing.