My setup:
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
32gb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX1060 6gb
Acer SA230 Monitor 1920x1080 60hz
This is pretty much my experience all the way to the end of the flight. Overall I really enjoyed it despite some technical difficulties! I know this is an older build so I am curious to see what problems we had during the flight were already noticed and fixed and what new ones presented themselves.
Starting on 7-29-2021
When changing cosmetic options I noticed that it lags between changed and sometimes, even after backing out and returning to the selection menu, won’t accept the change at all. This was especially noticeable with prostheses. I also noticed that changing the prostheses sometimes re-loaded armor parts back onto the model when they weren’t supposed to be there.
When selecting parts of the armor core to play with, it’d randomly load the armor onto the prosthesis as well. Sometimes what would happen is I’d go from having an arm prosthetic, turn it off, and the prosthetic on the leg would go back to a normal leg with armor (or sometimes a prosthetic leg with armor). Same would happen if I turned off the leg prosthetic but the arm would go back to normal. This armor pop in issue is kind of tedious getting it back to normal.
Audio cut out weirdly during some matches, making the audio focus on the grunts and breathing and muffling the weapon sounds, background music, and A.I.
Load times for matches are sporadic at best. Sometimes it’d be a few seconds between loading weapon types in the firing range and sometimes it’d be 30 seconds to a minute. Loading into matches were anywhere from 30 seconds to almost 2 minutes and that’s if the game itself loaded and connected me. I had a case where when loading the map it then glitched and gave me a “can’t connect, unable to join” error but every time I clicked okay it’d try loading the map/game again and give me the error again. It went on in a loop for about 2 minutes or so until I stopped the game.
Sensitivity for mouse is a little weird and very difficult to fine tune. It’s even more difficult to figure out how the controller mapping works, especially since I’m used to MCC’s controls. Left Stick being turn and move and Right Stick being up and down really threw me off. Turned out that southpaw was default for some reason and it was fixed the next game. It was also hard, once this problem was fixed, to actually fine tune the sensitivity settings.
Sound design is kinda weird. Needler, Plasma Pistol, AR, and Plasma Carbine all feel muffled. Like you can hear the reverb from the shots firing but none of the classic sounds come through very strong. Plasma Grenade’s signature charge before exploding is way too quiet, if it’s there at all.
I also wish the Battle Pass was more like MCC’s unlock system. I much prefer getting to pick and choose what I get and/or pickup. There should also be non-challenge based XP gain, much like MCC.
Sliding is not very interesting. There’s no incentive for it and not much changes from running to sliding and back. I wish sliding caused you to pick up more momentum as you slid down a hill, ramp, or set of stairs and then threw you forward if you jumped out and started running.
Starting match countdown shouldn’t flash at you in bright colors. That’s just not great to look at and I miss the countdown noise.
Game doesn’t always show the end of game screen with all 4 spartans standing together and instead black screens until the main menu loads with the stats.
Couldn’t quite get a handle on Bulldog’s reach, mid range it was too far away but up close it still didn’t do a lot of damage.
Armor Coating’s wouldn’t load their symbols in the menu for a time, and neither would images for armor parts.
Audio doesn’t always remember my original settings when I launch the game and get to the main menu. Goes from loud to quiet to loud again once I’m fully in the main menu.
Surprised voice type isn’t an option in Spartan customization. Was hoping it would be selectable in the game but instead you can only change it via the Waypoint app.
Sometimes the game beginning and ending shows that it’s just me and not a whole team.
There should be an option in armor coatings to select “Show Owned” and KEEP it as show owned even when you leave the settings and Armor Hall. Having to re-do the “show owned” setting every time was slightly annoying.
No 360 spin option to look at character in the Body settings, there should be one.
Can you earn the in game currency via playing? If not, you should be able to. Challenges load way too slow and there aren’t enough of them to earn XP with. Was able to power through all challenges pretty quick and was stuck waiting on the daily one to recharge. They fixed this by the end of the flight, where I just had permanent “Play any match” challenges but at the start it wasn’t like that.
Grenade bounce is near perfect.
Punch range is weird, can’t pin down the exact area where punching will thrust me at the enemy but when it works it works and you LAUNCH people. Wonder how that’ll feel or if it will be any different with the energy sword.
Update 12:46pm EST 7/31/2021 Version 199229.21.07.20.0001.flt002int:
Should be a way to apply the custom Weapon Offsets to all weapon types in settings.
Settings menu flashes white when I try to open it while in a game, either in weapon drills or multiplayer itself.
I didn’t notice or see a timer for when the cloaking pickup was about to end it’s run and a lot of the ammo/grenade counters and the radar were really small on the screen. I’d almost wish those were a resizable setting in the settings menu.
Got my first crash 7/31/2021 at 3:03pm est
Dead pixel line on the game screen about a third across from the right of screen. It was part of the game as it showed up on stream.
Game crash 7/31/2021 at 4:17pm est
Game disconnected multiple times. Only played 1-3 games because of it. 8/1/2021
Bot Slayer Bazaar never loaded for me so I only got to play the first two maps.
Sensitivity and turn settings reset for no reason after launching the game.
Stuck in a loading screen for 3 minutes 10:52pm EST 8/1/2021
Took me into a game but didn’t let me play despite there being an open spot. I was stuck as a spectator.
Took me into the black loading screen for a few minutes and then brought me back to the main menu saying “Back to the main menu for inactivity” when all I was doing was waiting for the game to load.
Game crashed every time I tried to alter the keybindings to show the game score. Specifically if I changed it from default (tab) to another key and then went to change it back to default, it’d crash. Resetting keybindings to default didn’t work either. This eventually fixed itself after I turned off my computer and came back the next day.
Loaded me into a game in sound alone. I could hear the game but it was a black screen otherwise.
The Friend or Foe tag. In Halo 4 MP I’d have the hardest time actually seeing the enemy due to how garishly color coded the maps were to red and blue and I always felt bad because I just thought my skills weren’t up to snuff with my poor reaction speed. But with the FoF tag I can SEE everything, the maps can be whatever colors they want and enemies are clear. Now, my skills still aren’t up to snuff but I really appreciated this new system for the accessibility AND I really enjoy running around with my custom colors on a map.
Hopefully this is of any use to the devs. I really enjoyed what I played and I can’t WAIT to play again with friends and family!