Remove BXB. Melee/reload/melee, add 50 ranking system, and buff the pistol in AR game modes.
Regarding join in progress, players should have some type of notice that they are joining a match that is already underway. I joined a match in progress and spawned in and was getting shot immediately as soon as I loaded in. Also players should have the option to decide whether or not they want to join the match. Joining a match late where your team is already down 10 or 12 kills isn’t that exciting.
Social Arena was a very solid, fun experience, and I don’t have much to recommend for it. Here’s all I can think of:
Pros:
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All four maps had a very unique design language, making them feel much more varied than maps in Halo 5: Guardians did. - The inclusion of vehicles on Behemoth in 4v4 is awesome. CTF plays extremely well on this map as a result. I want to see vehicles on more 4v4 maps in the future. - Strongholds, CTF, and Slayer all play very well at the 4v4 team size. I particularly like the changes to Strongholds from its Halo 5: Guardians introduction. - Though there were some blowout matches, there were extremely rare. The matchmaking in the Tech Preview was surprisingly well-balanced, although this did lead to some fairly challenging matches. - Gravity Hammer + Repulsor = Pancakes for breakfast. Need I say more?Cons:
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I love the setting for Bazaar, and I like the design of the tower where the M41 SPNKR spawns, but I don’t particularly enjoy the average combat distance in the center of the map (the Market) being outside RRR for both the MA40 AR and the MK50 Sidekick. While there is some cover in the middle, it doesn’t really protect players very well against incoming grenades from the balconies, and firing from one balcony to the other felt a little frustrating with both the MA40 AR and the MK50 Sidekick. - Clamber is a bit too necessary for many jumps on Bazaar and Recharge. I would like to see Clamber either sped up so it takes less time to perform or the jump height increased so that crouch jumps can successfully clear many ledges that currently require Clamber. In my opinion, Clamber should be a QoL feature, used to make it a little easier to save a botched jump without being a necessity to move around the map. - The Plasma Pistol needs some love! I actually like that it doesn’t EMP vehicles anymore (the long-range lockon tracking was too good in previous games, especially Halo 5: Guardians), but the charged shot could use a bit better tracking on players (and better hit reg). Additionally, the single-fire mode does far too little damage to shielded players. I would like to see its headshot multiplier reduced on unshielded opponents as a tradeoff for faster shield breaking (at most 5 shots to break shields, imo).
Social arena as a whole was really enjoyable and tons of fun as someone who has played halo in a more serious and competitive fashion for about 10 years. Here are my 10 cents. Fantastic experience and I’m looking forward to all of the maps and weapons that will be available in the full release.
- All maps felt well balanced and it felt intuitive to play. It did not take me long to understand how to play them effectively. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve been playing halo a long time, but I think this is a good thing for a new halo audience. - The random weapons in the pads is interesting and mixes up the gameplay. One thing I would request is that if you are going to switch between the BR and commando, make it consistent for the whole map. One of these weapons is better than the other, right now it’s the BR because we know it but once people figure out the commando, it’s going to be dominate. If one team has access to the other weapon off the start of the game, they have an advantage just by their spawns. This asymmetrical weapon spawn only seemed to happen on the asymmetrical maps of recharge and live fire. This IMO is fine for ranged as well as long as each team has the same weapon close to their spawn. - AR start is really fun and I actually enjoyed it a lot. The AR is really effective and almost too effective. You can play the game without needing to pick up a different weapon and I found that it was almost detrimental to do so sometimes. It’s really strange in arena because the maps are so small, you can almost always put you self in a favorable position to use an AR. When you are out of position, you have the sidekick as your which with some practice is really good enough. Behemoth was the only map where I felt like it was an advantage to get an alternate precision weapon because of the range and other power weapons on the map. On the other 3 maps, it is so easy to put yourself in a situation where the AR will be the best option. I played the best when doing this. I would recommend it take a bit longer for the AR bust shields (1-2 shots) but keep the headshot. The headshot made it feel like my skill as a player mattered when using it. - Overshield isn’t very powerful. It could use a small buff. It is currently only good enough to last one extra engagement and when compared to a weapon like a rocket launcher, that can easily get you 4 kills, I know which one I would go for. - I don’t know what to use the Pulse Carbine for. It’s like a medium-long range plasma weapon that can kill in 3 burst, as long as an enemy isn’t walking perpendicular to you? I will 100% always choose a BR, commando, sidekick , or AR any day. - Behemoth seems a little too big for 4v4. At least with AR starts. Maybe I just didn’t get ahold of the weapon spawns too well, but I was never able to find a precision weapon to help me out, and there is too much open space to just use the AR and sidekick. Maybe change the shock rifle spawn to a different precision weapon, or just add another weapon pad with one. - I found it a bit difficult to identify what I was getting shot with sometimes. This mostly happened with the commando and sidekick as the rates of fire are similar but it did happen with a BR. There would be times I take a gun fight across map and not realize that I’ve been shot with a commando or BR. Then I get really confused when I die before my shields go out. This could have been net code too but thought I would say something. - Can you make grenades roll less when dropped? I was playing on live fire and killed an enemy at the ramp by the brutes. I saw that they dropped grenades so I went to pick them up. However, one of them decided to roll all the way down the hill past the power up spawn, and ended up in front of the tunnel entrance. That seems like a lot… - I still dislike weapon bloom. I would rather just have more recoil, even though I play on controller. - Nades are different. The frag seems really bouncy compared to what I recall. It was also really hard sometimes to detect when grenades have landed close to me. I did not play with a headset a lot and maybe that’s why but there were definitely times, that I just blew up and I had no idea the nade was even there. This was mostly jjust with frags.
I’d like to give you a wall of text that hopefully doesnt come off as rude! I had some feedback that i would like to share, after thinking a lot about my experience with the game, and how i might feel about things in the future.
Dislikes
I think one of my biggest problems with the whole game so far is the sound design, it just… doesnt feel halo enough for me? The sounds for many of the guns and other sound effects sound far too based in realism. I completely understand that this is a next gen game with next gen graphics and realism is like the ultimate goal, but i feel like a lot of the weapons could be spruced up a lot with some better and more “arcadey” sounds. Most of the human weapons i feel sounded too generic, they sounded good dont get me wrong! They sound amazing but I felt like a halo game could do better. The covenant weapons, namely the pulse carbine comes to mind, sounded not plasma-y enough? I have to say the biggest thing holding me back from using the pulse carbine had to be that sound it makes when it fires, theres like not enough flare and sparkle to the sound, sounds too thumpy and splashy. The gun killed quite well but i didnt feel like i was having fun using it.
Other sound related thoughts- I dont quite like that when you’re the one driving a vehicle it suddenly gets quiet or makes different noises than when you hear one driving by you. I had a moment where my brother was using the ghost and zipping around the map, and i was commenting on how amazing it sounded and how it sounded like it was angry and scary, but he couldnt hear any of that, and when i got in i understood that for some reason it’s just dead quiet when you’re the one driving. Same happened with the warthog as well.
Also for some reason grenades being thrown, hitting things, and dropping from dead bodies sounds wayyy too loud
I’m not sure how others feel about the Heatwave as i havent seen anyone comment on it, but it felt so underpowered and useless to me sometimes, i got killed while holding that thing so many times because i couldnt do enough damage i feel, i love the look and idea of the weapon but maybe i’m just bad? I say that because there were times where someone would ruin me with that thing, but i couldnt.
I think everyone can agree the pistol probably kills a bit too fast, time and time again i got slaughtered by pistol users while i was using a battle rifle because they could just deal more damage than me or hit me enough that i couldnt aim. But boy it felt great when i was using it haha.
Grappling vehicles is way too powerful i feel, too many times i had a ghost stolen from me by someone i didnt even see coming, and i did it a few times to enemys too, it’s way too easy to pull off and there needs to be a way to fight back, perhaps if you’re going over a certain speed it will snap the grapple hook and prevent a hijack?
Likes
While i wasnt too big a fan of some of the smaller maps, I do have to say they played well for the game modes that were provided, they looked very pretty too. I Really loved the one larger 4v4 map that featured the forerunner structure and the ghost and warthog. It played amazing and i loved the layout, having the overshields in the middle wide open was pretty fun to fight over too
Big Team Battle played amazing. I loved the map we were given to play on, felt fairly well balanced on both sides (even if i did spawn on blue team every single time for some reason) There were tons of weapons laid about which gave tons and tons of battle stratagies you could make up impromptu. I liked the fusion cells laid around too, getting a kill throwing one of those was so fun and a highlight of my game. I also liked the access doors on the side you could hack open. They made for these interesting small battles of people fighting to get whatever was inside, very fun.
The vehicle combat feels very nice. The warthog turret feels better than it ever has, i can actually AIM!!! The ghost plasma guns feel amazing too, consistent at killing but take some skill to lead targets. Other than the vehicles flipping every time i bump another vehicle or touch a wall, the movement of them felt great too. I love that the warthog and mongoose actually feel like they have offroad tires on them now rather than sliding around everywhere. The sound of the vehicles is amazing too (except for when you’re in them like i mentioned previously, i feel like they could be better)
The music!!! What can i say besides nostalgia, they’ve brought back some of our favorite songs and redone them in a way that feels more modern, but still the same old halo. I’m very much looking forward to hearing more songs from the campaign and so on.
Overall combat felt fairly balanced and i loved getting into a 1v1 with someone with the same weapon as me, being able to focus my shots and beat them felt very rewarding
Finishing thoughts
Overall i’m very excited about this game though, i really feel like 343 has been listening to the community feedback and is putting together a game we’ll all enjoy. There are of course some things we’ll never all agree on but i think this is going to be a great game. I’m super looking forward to what the team does with it and I’m hoping we all love it!
Continuation from Xbox post page 56.
Weapons:
Weapons that I believe are good where they stand: BR, Shock Rifle, Energy Sword, Mangler, Heatwave, Skewer, & Sentinel beam.
(side note if aiming is fixed, I’m sure most of these weapons will feel better)
Assault rifle: Damage at range needs to have a drop off, otherwise perfect gun.
Commando & Sidekick: Reduce recoil or reduce bloom, or just eliminate bloom altogether.
Sniper: Doesn’t feel right, I’m a veteran player & can tell you this sniper feels wrong. It’s a power weapon, so it should feel like one. everyone should be able to pick it up & have a good time. this weapon should not be for the select few.
Plasma pistol: Gonna get some heat for this, but here it goes. In BTB it was actually nice not having the charge shot stun vehicles. it made vehicle seem more active in the battlefield, if they don’t have to worry about being stunned. On the other note, Behemoth can over power a team, without the stun ability. so what works in BTB doesn’t work in Slayer Arena.
Rockets: Increase splash damage.
Needler: needs a tiny faster TTK, just a wee bit…
Pulse Carbine: I like how this gun fired in the 2020 Campaign trailer, bc right now its at an odd place in the sandbox.
Hammer: Needs reach or bigger splash damage.
Bulldog: Needs to act more like a shotgun, close one shot kill range. Can’t get a bull true with the Bulldog if it takes 3 shots.
Maps:
Live Fire: Too small, doesn’t have a good game flow. works great for strongholds tho. Also Sniper isn’t a good fit for this map, Rockets suits it better.
Recharge: Good flow to it. don’t have any complaints on it.
Bazaar: Doesn’t have a good flow to it, works great for CTF in my opinion. Sniper however would be a good fit for this map.
Behemoth: Good map but has issues, bases need to be even with Vehicles & Power weapons. This map can go south real bad, if enemy team controls everything. Which isn’t hard to do.
Fragmentation: Ya’ll nailed it, great BTB map. Maybe more vehicles at start?
Vehicles: To me all vehicles fall under this, driving in all vehicles feels off. They need to be more grounded, not sliding all over the place. Also have a bit more health & have a better way of showing wear & tear. As far a shooting from any of these vehicle, they feel great. I love how powerful they are now & crazy it makes the battlefield.
Gameplay/ Multiplayer: Lastly I wanted to say, 343 with Halo 5 ya’ll went too much into the MLG style of gameplay. I feel like that really hurt Halo 5’s Multiplayer. The maps were too small, which didn’t fit with the faster gameplay. The Radar almost seemed nonexistence. While there are a good amount of players out there who enjoy sweaty matches, a lot of us don’t. Some nights we just want to come home from work, open a cold one & enjoy the game. I know ya’ll are really listening to us on this one, which I really appreciate. Back to the gameplay: Spawns on Arena Slayer needs work, especially on Live Fire. Radar Is too small, bring back the Classic Radar. Have more than just one power weapon on maps. Make maps bigger for 4V4. Maps need good game flow. Players need to be able to collide with each other. Keep friendly fire off, its so nice to pick up a power weapon or vehicle without being betrayed.
Send off: 343 what ya’ll have been working on these pass years is incredible, but we can tell its not finish. Once the Community feedback is put into place, I honestly feel like this could be the best Halo multiplayer up to date. So let’s FINISH THIS FIGHT!
Strongholds has been my favorite game mode since it was introduced in Halo 5! I think it should be a stand alone playlist. If not, then it should only be mixed with Team Slayer. I, and everybody I know, loathed being forced to play ctf just to get to strongholds (like in Halo 5).
Bazaar: Interesting map but the ground level in the midfield is cramped and often chaotic. Rocket launcher definitely shouldn’t be on such a small map either. If it’s there, it should be in a more difficult place to get where you can be punished for attempting to pick it up. High risk, high reward.
I love where the game is headed!
Really digging the game so far, game balance feels really good. Feels like anyone has the capacity to be lethal in this game. I feel like that is what contributes to the long term population of a game.
With that said, I do have some gripes.
- The current grenade physics feel ‘empty’, they don’t feel as powerful as they actually are. The knockback is minimal, when I feel like it should push back. The current grenade physics also don’t allow you grenade jump. I believe grenade jumping is a skill that heavily rewards game knowledge, and shouldn’t be limited to just the Repulsor.
- Player Collision should be implemented, it feels really strange having so many games with it. And now it’s just gone. Taking this out also limits team creativity when it comes to reaching areas of a map. If certain spots aren’t meant to reached, you can definitely put in a soft-kill barrier to prevent camping in advantageous spots.
- The multikill medals are the only medals I have issues with. They all look too similar, and the rarity motif makes multikills from Overkill onwards look less meaningful. From Killimanjaro onwards, I get what the medals are going for, but they just look strange when previous Halo games didn’t need to change much on the multikill medals. I would prefer the classic star medals, but all of them different colours, like previous games.
I don’t think vehicles should be spawned on 4v4. Mouse didn’t work on Series X.
Game feels outstanding. I love it.
I can’t wait to play Halo again and be able to chose my platform!
Disclaimer, I tried to stay keep myself isolated from social media when writing these observations so I apologize if the things I bring up have already been addressed or were bugs/unintended features in the flight.
Social Slayer (4v4s):
My general comment is that I find the social slayer maps to be too small.
There were times where I’d spawn right in the middle of a firefight and easily 2v1 an opponent purely due to luck.
Other times, it felt like the same issue was happening to me; I find I’m getting flanked too easily.
The smaller map sizes also encouraged a lot of grenades being thrown because there are a ton of them to throw.
This leads to area of denial situations where you can get locked out due to the amount of non stop explosions.
With regards to the plasma pistol, for Behemoth and BTB, the charged shot didn’t disable vehicles as I expected.
From what I heard, this is a bug so I won’t elaborate much of this.
This was rather annoying as the ghost in Behemoth I found was particularly sturdy and too resistant to small arms damage.
A minor comment to add is that from what I could tell, the matchmaking system wasn’t turned on.
Matches would swing wildly from crushing the opponents (with a complete random team) to losing terribly against well coordinated players.
The only reason I’m mentioning this is because supposedly, after 10 placement matches, I should’ve been matched against similar ranked players. (as far as I could tell, that wasn’t the case)
Big Team Battle:
I do think the vehicle spawning could use some work.
As mentioned numerous times, I personally find most (80% or so) of the action against infantry and only occasionally against vehicles.
For reference, I think out of the whole flight time, the scorpion spawned only 1x at the end of a CTF match to my surprise while the banshee and wasp appeared about 2x during the flight.
Neither the banshee nor wasp was particularly impactful during the match. (although I appreciated not getting banshee bombed every 5 sec after spawning)
Now I do think that there’s enough anti-vehicle weapons for the infantry to easily pick up (which is a very nice improvement), but the lack of vehicular targets means that these weapons are primarily used against other infantry.
The BTB map was also pretty heavily forested so it was pretty easy to avoid vehicles altogether or ambush warthogs/mongeese.
on xbox one x on controller I find it hard to use the side kick commando BR sniper or other guns that scope in far when I’m using them and enemy’s are there its like I’m fighting the game to try to aim right I don’t know if I have to adjust the dead zones on my controller for the right thumb stick but I know halo 5 had the dead zones option too but I just left it on default so pleas make the aiming like halo 5 default aiming I don’t like the CALL OF DUTY NO FRENDLY FIRE WALKING THROUGH TEAM MATES need to make a teammates dead X larger and RED need to make the medals bigger I can barely see some of them I think halo 5’s location in the bottom center of the screen was nice spot for medals to pop up O WAIT YOU HAVE THE SCORE AND TIME THERE PUT THAT BACK AT THE BOTTOM RIGHT SCREEN AND GUNS LOADOUT TOP RIGHT LIKE ITS AWAYS BIN!!! ok back to medals I did not get a perfection but my buddy says there no perfection medal WHAT!!! at least there’s a killjoy medal in this halo BUT THE ANNOUNCER DOSE NOT SAY IT WHAT!!! WHY!!! THERE BETTER BE A UNFRICKEN BELEVABLE MEDAL WITH THE ANNOUNCER SAYING IT did not get in the testing so not sure if there is. speaking of the announcer HE’S NOT IN BTB WHAT!!! I was angry when he was not in warzone in halo 5 but that was not BTB it was different so I let it slide but not being in BTB come on now another thing I see your going back to try to make story for multiplayer aka war games just look at how that work out for halo 4 not so great and then 343i got a pro halo team to help make halo 5 I will say this halo 5’s MULTIPLAYER is one of the best halo multiplayers I’ve ever played now I cant recall the multiplayer maps as much as halo 2’ 3’s but halo 5’s gameplay just excellent so you don’t have to focus on a multiplayer story what I care about is trying to get to onyx trying to get the most kills having good gameplay movement and maps. I know its a test but need to get a solid 60 fps on xbox one x I can see you not having a solid 60 fps on xbox one but not the one x so hopefully you can do that since all the bots have the xbox series x I wont be getting one for a long time that’s why its the fastest selling xbox Microsoft the bots buy it ok back to halo bring back the halo 5 magnum I miss my 5 shot head shot compared to the side kick 7 shot head shot if that’s it hard to aim so hard to tell other then all this stuff I say the game is fun competitive I’m sure I miss some stuff but I say what jumped the most out to me thanks for the opportunity for letting me play test and lets make halo great again
Ghosts and vehicles should not be able to push (CTF flags) or objective objects around the map.I encountered this issue to many times, where someone would take the flag and die in the open and a ghost would come along and just push it over to their base and capture it too fast. This is game breaking in my opinion and needs to be fixed. This happened in BTB and on the arena map behemoth. This ruins vehicle based objective modes in Halo infinite for me.
The game is very good, I had problems with changing armor, it only remained charging the same to make purchases, some maps did not load the textures on 2 occasions it was very difficult to play, the loading screen turned black, many days I did not let myself play for that said it was not authorized and sometimes it hurt me out of nowhere, but in general I really liked the game
I am going to talk about a very controversial topic today and a feature that I believe should be included. The reason this feature needs to be included is that it will help people who have played bot trainings but now want to play PvP are not left overwhelmed. The feature is the dreaded SBMM(Skill Based Matchmaking)
Requirements
- SBMM should be a toggle based functionality. I suppose you could put it in Network or gameplay settings, which ever section you deem fit. The menu should be something like this Matchmaking > 1.SBMM or 2.Random
The user will then be match in lobbies accordingly.
Furthermore to avoid the outcry of people wanting to stick with the same lobbies, there should be an option for the user to Leave a Lobby or Stay in the lobby. This choice should not be dependent on the whether the user chooses an SBMM or Random lobby.
This will help new players get used to Halo and not get badly beaten by Veterans and eventually stop playing the game, because they feel the PvP Arena is difficult.
Major event notifications for enemy team or your team pop up in the HUD as blue with small text (ie - XYZ captured your flag).
It was confusing to instantly know if a positive or negative event occurred because I associate Blue with my team only usually.
I can see this really being an issue with the hearing impaired who rely solely on the visuals to quickly identify what happened. With the notification banners being all the same color, agnostic to whether your team or the enemy team completed an objective, it requires the user to stop, look up, read the dialog and determine what just happened. I think making the colors red/blue based on negative/positive events for your team would be a great improvement.
I didn’t have many problems with the game itself
Only a few details with the radar was very small
You appear close to enemies and Far from your allies
The bots worked great and I loved that if you took an enemy flag they would cover you immediately.
It was easy to identify a console user from a pc user because on pc they had a faster aim than on console but still enjoy it
The flight overall felt very good. The weapons all felt great to use and they all felt like they had a purpose in the sandbox.
I did have a few issues. Firstly I experienced some connection issues where I was halfway through a match and I would be disconnected, even if my internet was fine and I wasn’t lagging in the game, other than that happening a few times there was no rubberbanding, delay or any other connection issues.
Another issue I had was with matchmaking. In almost all my games my team was either dominating the other team or being dominated by the other team and I was almost always the lowest player on the leaderboard or the highest player. I got mainly balanced games on the day of the flight so maybe the matchmaking was figuring out who to pair me with or something else.
The last issue I had in the flight was the way armour pieces look in customisation (not on the Spartan but in the menu’s where the armour is selected.) The armour all looked to oversaturated and with a white hue, not sure if that was the intention or a visual bug, but I don’t like the look of it. Another issue in customisation was that the lightish red colour for the a.i was appearing as orange where as I thought it was supposed to be pink. Not sure if it is pink in game I just know it isn’t pink in the menus.
Other than those issues I had a great time with the flight. Keep up the good work 343.
I had more fun in Arena compared to BTB. It feels like the sandbox is better designed for this game mode. Overall, Halo Infinite is shaping up to be a good game. I just have some minor nitpicks with some things, but these aren’t really game breaking.
Weapons:
Plasma Pistol: feels way too weak compared to the Sidekick. Its only redeeming quality is the overcharge, which means that all you are encouraged to do with the weapon is to combo people. I feel that there are just better, more consistent weapons to use over this, giving players no reason to ever pick it up.
Pulse Carbine: A weapon that has potential, but I feel that the auto-tracking ends up hurting this weapon more than it helps it. The weapon lacks consistency, and makes me want to ignore it in favor of the UNSC weapons such as the BR or the Commando.
Needler: I think this weapon is in a pretty good spot. Works well up close as an SMG. I personally think if super combine could take maybe one or two fewer needles, then it would be perfect. I also wish the super combine sound effect was more noticeable though.
Heatwave: I didn’t like this shotgun at first, but it grew on me. Not a big fan of the vertical mode. It felt way too risky for way too little gain. If I can two shot people with horizontal mode just fine, and vertical mode requires the same number of shots to kill, then I am going to use horizontal mode more. Maybe vertical mode is designed to be used to extend the effective range of the weapon, but I feel that if I need more range, it would just be better to swap to a precision weapon.
Controls: Mouse and keyboard felt good, while controller felt bad. Read somewhere that aim assist would get weaker if you were aiming at someone with no shields. If this is true, change this to allow for more consistency with controller, especially since this game is going to have cross play in it.
Commando: I feel like the bloom is just nuts on this weapon, making it feel random as to when your shots will hit or not. The weapon is also in a weird spot since it is a full auto precision weapon, so I feel that the weapon is at odds with itself. Firing the weapon in full auto was too inconsistent. Had to fire it as if it was a semi-auto to get better results with the weapon, and even then it felt awkward. It is still a decent pickup, but I would choose the BR over this any day.
Sidekick: I don’t know what I am doing wrong with this weapon, but I don’t understand how sometimes I can spam the trigger, and all shots seem to land, melting my target, but other times my shots just miss. I feel like this weapon is just too inconsistent.
Bulldog: An awkward shotgun to use at first, but once you get used to it, it works pretty well. You need to be more accurate with this shotgun compared to the heatwave, but it does let you 2-shot at a longer distance more reliably than the heatwave.
AR: A very solid and consistent weapon. Was using the sidekick almost exclusively for a while, but then I learned how good this weapon was and started using it as my primary starter weapon. The weapon had a surprising effective range to it.
BR: The weapon feels perfect. Nothing to change here.
Rockets: Rockets are rockets. They go boom. They are fun. A power weapon worth fighting for.
Sniper: I was surprised that I didn’t see this appear too much in weapon rotations. Overall though, much easier to aim in this flight compared to the last. Still requires skill to use well. Pretty well done weapon and is something worth making sure the enemy sharpshooter doesn’t get their hands on.
Ravager: A very fun weapon to use. My only complaint with the weapon is that the fully charged shot’s AoE feels rather useless. The fire should also be a little bit more noticeable.
Skewer: This weapon is pretty satisfying to use. Its main role definitely feels like it is designed for anti-vehicles though. Also wish that it wouldn’t spawn so frequently as a power weapon in arena matches, especially on maps with no vehicles. Also wish it could pin targets to walls, would make using it more satisfying. But not sure if that is possible due to age ratings.
Shock Rifle: It feels like a weaker binary rifle, but with the ability to chain lightning on enemies and EMP vehicles. It is basically just a weaker sniper, but with a little bit more utility to make up for it. An interesting weapon overall. The chain lightning probably needs better visuals to make it more noticeable.
Gravity Hammer: Feels solid to use. Has a nice AoE to it, but wish it was slightly more lethal. Wish the melee would be quicker to make finishing off enemies a little better.
Grenades: All nades felt good. I definitely like the newer dynamo grenades a ton. The arc lightning effect needs to be more noticeable to the player though, because sometimes I didn’t notice it draining my shields. Grenade spam is a problem mainly because friendly fire is turned off. Makes it way too easy for an enemy team to push as they are throwing nades since their teammates can just rush in and clean up with no problems. This basically means that some areas of the map became impossible to cross to get the power weapons. Some matches felt that I was fighting a B52 with how often the enemy team was nading an area.
Sniper glint: Kind of weird to see sniper glint affect things such as the BR and Commando. If the glint is going to stay, then maybe reduce it’s intensity for weapons with weaker zoom.
Equipment:
Overshield: Felt weak. Only really useful for one engagement before most, if not all of it just gets drained.
Cloaking: Felt effective, but not overpowered. Can still notice it if you pay attention, and it decloaks you whenever you attack or move too quickly. Doesn’t mess with the radar, so it doesn’t warn enemies that you are in the vicinity, allowing for more sneaky opportunities.
Barrier Shield: This pickup is in a good spot. Deployment time is much better in this flight, and the shield feels effective for how common of a pickup it is, while not feeling too strong. Can turn the tide if used right, but also allows for counter-play to not get annoying.
Grappling Hook: Very fun to use. Especially when used in conjunction with the gravity hammer. Like how the reticle turns yellow letting you know you are in range.
Repulsor: An interesting piece of gear, but it feels better as a tool for movement compared to using it to reflect projectiles back.
Threat sensor: I feel the sensor range is too small, even on the smaller arena maps.
Vehicles:
Warthog: Feels good to drive. Just wish the chaingun had a little more power. Right now it feels like it shoots peanuts at enemies.
Ghost: Feels solid.
Radar: Radar felt good in Arena. Not so much in BTB. Encourages communication with teammates.
Friendly fire: Turn this back on. I know the reason for it being turned off is because the playlist is social, but I feel that friendly fire would help players get used to it for when they jump into ranked. Otherwise, bad habits could form as a result of this. Maybe make it so that friendly fire reduces damage, making it more difficult to betray teammates.
Maps: All maps felt pretty good. The weakest map was Bazaar though. The middle area feels like a death trap, since it is surrounded by the high ground. When going up against a team that knows what they are doing, this map can become a bit of a drag due to this.
CTF: I don’t like how vehicles such as ghosts can push a neutral flag across the map. Not a problem on a majority of the maps, but will be for those that have vehicles.
I think this is the best place for these:
In BTB i think the Ordinance and Vehicle drops should be more pronounced so that it is easier for the player to identify that they are coming in and where they will be dropping, This could be made a little better by making the AI scan keep the items of interest highlighted longer after the scan has ended (long enough for the player to spin 360 degrees and take note of where these items are. I’m sure there are other things that can be done here as well.
The warthog turret needs to be able to be shot off without completely destroying the vehicle, this is something that I was hoping for upon hearing about the new vehicle destruction mechanisms and was disappointed when the turret couldn’t be shot off separately. As someone who is regularly on the turret and also focusing on the turrets of enemy warthogs this would be great to see.
The ghost does feel ever so slightly sluggish when it comes to turning, and the projectiles (bullets) could also be ever so slightly stronger or have a slight increase to the rate of fire (this also applies to the banshee, although I didn’t get a whole lot of time in the banshee)
The weighting of game modes doesn’t seem to be equal, I would get a lot of slayer, and not much of anything else in arena.
In BTB there needs to be more variety with the vehicles that the pelicans drop (this could just be the flight) and definitely more of the heavy and air vehicle (scorpion and banshee/wasp) drops. Perhaps allowing these vehicles to be dropped earlier in the game could resolve this and still allow the BTB shenanigans to build up through out the match.
The lack of friendly fire is problematic. Perhaps that’s a social only strategy? No games benefit from lack of friendly fire, let alone a Halo game. I won’t regurgitate the arguments of the past about this. Everybody knows what they are and there is only one logical conclusion.