Learning from Halo 4, for a better Halo 5

Well Halo 4 has been out a while and while it would take a long time to voice my total opinion, I can see the potential and now knowing what we know, Halo 5 could be something special.

First lets look at what Halo 4 did wrong

It streamlined playlists and eliminated gamemodes.

Custom games and Forge were extremely lacking

No competitive incentive

Spartan Ops ultimately failed.

And some other stuff.

What 343 got right, at leas imo, was the gunplay and the feel of the game. While Reach felt broken, Halo 4 at least feels like Halo. Even with Sprint being added.

To make Halo 5 the best game it can be, honestly the way you play isnt the problem, its why.

Why play Halo 5?

A xp based system, ala every shooter out there, is a poor fit for Halo. Should it copy Halo 3’s 1-50 system? No, but it should create a system similar that is less easy to exploit and also more consistent when you progress or lose rank.

To implement this system I suggest you divide the playlists between ranked and social. I imagine it like this

In war games there are standard matches and ranked matches. Ranked all have a 1-50 type of system in place. While population is a concern and streamlining playlists is not a bad thing, they need more playlists than Halo 4 has.

Ranked

  • Team Slayer
  • Swat
  • Snipers
  • Team Hardcore ( No AA’s etc)
  • Team Doubles
  • Team Objective

Standard

  • Big Team Battle
  • Social Objective
  • Rumble Pit
  • Social Slayer
  • Infection

Playlists can change and be added to etc so dont freak out if I didnt list your favorite gamemode. its just an example.

Anyway have a competitive system with competitive playlists.

Misc changes to game

Change random ordnance back to static weapon spawns. i hate running around with starter weapons. Halo is about being resourceful and picking up what you find. Halo 4 recently added weapon placements that are consistent and on the map and its much more enjoyable. I think Halo 5 should do the same. Snipers, rockets, railguns should all be consistent spawns on map. Along with starter weapons like carbines, brs, etc.

Turn Active Camo into an ordnance drop/power up. It isnt fun to fight against and isnt even fun to use with the likes of promethean vision. It was better as a power up and it belongs in that category

Bring back grenade launcher because it was best thing to happen to Reach.

Screw Flood, bring back infection, or at least change flood so that you can actually customize it and make it how it used to be.

Better forge, and customs options

Rebalance BR/DMR.

Replace Concussion Rifle with Brute Shot because everyone ( mostly) likes brute shot way better.

Replace Spartan Ops and bring back firefight or something similar

Hide some skulls in campaign because they were fun to find.

Well thats all I have. Give feedback and suggestions. Thanks for reading

A Beta would be nice.

Nah, Spartan Ops didn’t fail. It just didn’t last long enough.

Check the charts, the population went up at the start of every week while SO was still running. SO was holding people’s attention.

This is also because Campaign was neglected. It was short, it didn’t have much substance, it’s easter eggs were pretty lacking. So people were driven to Spartan Ops, which did some things a lot better than Campaign IMO.

I’ve hated Spartan Ops for a long time, but there’s practically no incentive to replay the Campaign. Once I’m done documenting some glitches/skips/tricks for Reclaimer, I only have a few mission sections to cover (an experimental skip on Composer, Battlewagons on Infinity, speedrunning dead ends on Forerunner, Sentinels on Requiem). And then I’m done, done, done!

Anyways, Halo 5 Campaign needs:

-scoring
-theater
-worthwhile, game changing easter eggs
-Co-op scaling
-skull hunting
-in-game terminals
-better challenges
-in-game stats
-HUD customization
-larger FoV
-flashlight
-new options (why hasn’t revert to second last checkpoint been made an option yet? Why must we still die 5 times in rapid succession to access it? Why can’t we turn on/off skulls without restarting the level like in Halo 2? Why can’t we quit without saving?)