MrFish's Halo 5 Beta Notes and Feedback

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

The Halo 5 Beta has come and gone, and now is the time where players are asked to leave their feedback and experiences of the game, in order to create a more polished gameplay experience, come release day. Fortunately, I feel like I played more than enough games to have a solid understanding of my overall feelings of Halo 5! Of course these are my personal opinions, but I will do my best to explain why I feel the way I do on certain issues, and maybe someone over at 343i will take my feedback (and many other’s as well) into consideration for overall changes! I know most people are not willing to read a book’s worth of complaints, so I put the basic summarized notes up front, and the more detailed reasoning after that. I don’t cover every aspect of Halo 5, but the things that I didn’t cover, I felt like they weren’t worth mentioning, or I just didn’t have a strong opinion on the matter. Anyway, here are the cliff notes…

TL;DR CLIFF NOTES VERSION!!!

BR/DMR/ Light Rifle and AR/SMG:
*Weapons feel distinct enough from each other
*Well balanced

Sniper Rifle:
*Aesthetically ugly
*Quick scoping is hindered by scope animations
*Can no longer descope by holding and releasing scope button (please fix!)

Rocket Launcher:
*Aesthetically ugly (iconic double barreled design tossed in favor of a generic RPG look)
*functions great (good splash area, good speed, rockets still deflected by other explosions)

Hydra:
*Fun to use
*Fairly weak power weapon (potential buff by increasing reload speed)
*missiles easy enough to avoid

Prophet’s Bane/ Energy Sword:
*glare from the weapons makes it hard to see (please remove the glare entirely)
*scoping in with the sword to increase swing distance is silly (just have a base swing distance)
*performance enhancing items (prophet’s bane) have no place in competitive multiplayer

Sprint:
*Overall improvement from Halo 4’s version
*Shields should stop recharging when sprinting
*Despite the shield recharge nerf, Sprint still does not belong in Halo, please remove it

Thrusters:
*Too powerful at the moment
*Please increase the time between thrusts

Clamber:
*Pointless addition that could have been fixed through jump height adjustments, and better map design

Ground Pound:
*Fun to pull off
*terrible idea to use it at all

Shoulder Charge:
*encourages a style of gameplay that is frowned upon
*I just wish this was not in the game at all

Maps:
*little to distinguish one area from another
*overall chunky designs
*awful sight lines
*forge maps were very unbalanced and should be completely reworked

Gametypes:
*Slayer should never spawn you without a BR in competitive settings
*Friendly fire should be turned ON by default
*The game both visibly and audibly tell you when power weapons spawn (this completely takes away any need to time weapons. Please let us turn this off for competitive gametypes)
*Breakout is a fail experiment and should be canned immediately
*Strongholds is ok, but the games are over too quick (increase the required points to win)

Ranking System:
*works great for teams of 4
*does not work when searching solo
*add a win streak bonus until a player reaches Gold Tier I
*The icons for the ranks are very nondescript, and don’t hold any sort of “wow factor”

Spartan Chatter:
*Pretty useful for searching solo and matching a team without mics
*There should be an option to turn this off (I hate having it on when in an actual party)

Glaring Omissions/ Confusing Additions:
*You can’t hear other players in lobbies (this really has to be a bug…at least it better be…)
*Once you exit the post game stat screen, you can’t view it again
*You can’t see your medals
*You can’t view other player’s Spartans
*You can no longer make an emblem for your spartan (please tell me this just wasn’t ready for the beta or something)
*There is not an option to turn vibration off (impulse triggers are killing me!)
*You can’t make you Party invite only
*Anyone can start a match, not just the party leader (this is just way too chaotic at times)
*Spartans bro-out at the end of each game (please allow me to never see this again)
*The game runs in 720p and 30FPS, was 1080p and 60FPS just not ready yet I guess?
*Post game bro fest needs to go (I can’t stress that enough)

General Pleads:
*PLEASE let us turn off kill cams in our personal menus. I definitely prefer to see what’s going on currently, rather than what has already happened.
*Though CTF was not in the beta, you need to remove flag carrier indicators, and allow players to drop the flag. (THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN!)
*Please adjust the controls for ground pounds so that players are still able to crouch jump. It is a very bad idea to remove crouch jumps from the game.
*I’m not sure why it has never happened, but allowing an option for a customizable control scheme would be excellent.
*For the love of God, please allow players a way to completely silence the booming menu music. It’s extremely obnoxious.

If anyone is interested in reading further, below I try to explain my reasoning behind a lot of my feelings on the cliff notes above. It’s not necessary to read it all, but it’s there for anyone that is looking for a bit more explanation. WELL! here we go!

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Full Chunky Version:

Weapons:

(BR/DMR/ Light Rifle and AR/SMG) I think it’s a good idea to start on a positive note, and the weapons showcased in the beta were pretty well balanced. The Battle Rifle, DMR, and Light Rifle each felt like their own weapons, and were meant for different situations. The BR is the best of the three rifles at midrange, and has a 4 shot kill. The DMR while still good at mid range, it’s much better at a long range weapon with a 5 shot kill. The Light Rifle was the biggest change, since it now has the ability to kill players with just 3 shots while zoomed in. Hopefully the light rifle is never a weapon that players can start out with, as it’s very powerful. This is a weapon that while it’s not something you want to time, like a power weapon, but you should always familiarize yourself with it’s spawn location. Overall, I really enjoyed how the three mid-long range rifles were much less clones than they were in Halo 4.

The Assault Rifle and SMG are also different enough from each other as well. It was possible to pepper your shots with the assault rifle to get a bit more range out of the weapon than you would have normally. The SMG seemed like a strictly close quarters weapon, and beat out the AR up close every time. What I’m trying to say is, it would have been easy for these weapons to have been straight clones of each other, but they’re JUST different enough that they seem to be well balanced amongst each other at the moment.

(Sniper Rifle) There are other weapons in the Beta however, that I didn’t feel like they were working as well as they should have. The sniper in this game is an eyesore to me. Purely on a cosmetic level, I hate how 343i is tossing out some of Halo’s unique designs, and replacing them with a more generic militarized looks. Aside from the repulsive look (again, just my opinion) the snipe fires fairly well, with relatively low auto aim. The two problems that I do have with how the snipe functions though, revolves around the way you zoom in and out. In previous Halo games, if you clicked and held your scope in, and quickly released that button, you would be able to back right out of scope. In Halo 5, you have to press your scope in two more times in order to descope (once to zoom in further, and again to leave the scope). Also, when trying to quick scope, the animation of the sniper often takes longer than necessary, and it leaves you with an additional quarter of a second where you can’t see through your scope. That sounds very minimal, but when you’re quick scoping, a quarter of a second is generally all you have at best. These are changes I would definitely like to see implemented in the final build.

(Rocket Launcher) Although I don’t like the new look for the rocket launcher, I feel like it functions very well. Rockets have a good splash radius, they fly at a steady clip, they can still be misdirected by a well timed grenade explosion… The rockets are pretty solid in Halo 5. I just wish the extremely iconic double barreled “SPNKR” design didn’t have to go. The thing is just a generic bazooka now. I don’t understand the need for the design change on this one. Sad to see this new redesign.

(Hydra) The Hydra is a very fun weapon to use. Close range, the weapon is complete garbage, which is fine! This weapon is meant for mid to long range, due to how the weapon tracks while zoomed in. The rockets are fairly easy to avoid, so I really only found myself getting kills with this weapon on players that weren’t looking directly at me. If you do manage to see the red glow of the hydra before they’re fired at you, just pop behind some cover and you’ll generally be fine. This power weapon is slightly underpowered, but still very strong in the right situations. Should there be a buff applied to this weapon, I’d say you could possibly increase the reload speed, since as it is right now it’s fairly slow. Overall a decent and fun new weapon.

(Prophet’s Bane/ Energy Sword) These weapons are pretty straight forward, but I don’t like the idea of adding stat boosts to weapons. For those that didn’t play the beta, the Prophet’s Bane is a stout orange version of the energy sword that allows you to move faster while holding it. Seeing this made me think that it’s only a matter of time until we have some sort of promethean assault rifle that strengthens your shields, or a pistol that increases your jump height. These kinds of specialty weapons can work just fine in campaign or custom games, but please keep them out of any sort of competitive multiplayer. Another issue with both of these swords is the blinding glare that comes off of the weapons as you wield them. My right side of the screen is almost useless when holding these things, it’s ridiculous. Also, you can now zoom in with the sword for more range? I don’t understand why there isn’t just a set lunge range with these weapons. It just seems pointless and odd to me.

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Movement:

(Sprinting) Ever since the addition of sprint in Halo Reach, this has been a polarizing topic for the Halo community. I for one am against sprint, but I do feel that Halo 5 did nerf sprint enough that it is better than it was in Halo 4. THAT BEING SAID… I feel as though sprint should still be removed from the game entirely. By adding sprint, and other forms of flashy movement (I’ll get to those in a bit), maps have to be built around these ideas, and are generally larger due to this. So to simply say that certain gametypes should have sprint, while others should have these extra movement options turned off, won’t work. In previous Halos, team slayer on midship was a fast and frantic dash to 50 kill, whereas slayer the remade maps in Halo 5 would often end by time. Players are able to escape too easily when working with a team. Even though their shields don’t start to recharge if they’re sprinting, the option to get away faster is still largely preferable. I realize that sprint is here to stay, and it’s not going anywhere no matter what I or anyone says, so I guess I can only ask for a compromise. I think sprint should be further nerfed by stopping your shield recharge process while sprinting (as it is right now, you can wait until your shields start to recharge and then sprint as the bar . goes up). Also, removing sprint from certain gametypes and slightly increasing the base player speed would be an ideal compromise (though I still think the maps will be a poor fit)

(Thrusters) As it is right now, thrusting is a very powerful defensive mechanic. I found myself using the thrusters much more often than I thought I would in order to stay alive. I think the thrusters should have a much greater cooldown between thrusts. Maybe even go so far as to add an additional 5 seconds between uses. It’s more of the frequency of use rather than the distance that I’m concerned about.

(Clamber) Clamber is a very strange addition to Halo for me. More or less this feature removes crouch jumping from the game, and sort of “auto-skill jumps” for you. The issue with automatically reaching new heights and ledges, is that the game is now designating which ledge you are able to reach. In previous Halos, there were a lot of skill jumps that there was no way the developers intended players to reach, but they did so anyway through skill and creativity. For example, “ring 3” on Sanctuary is fairly difficult to reach, but a player can do so with proper crouch jumps. In Halo 5 however, it would have been up to the developers to designate certain lips and ledges as climbable through the game’s code for a player to reach those areas. No crouch jump, no ring 3. This issue is one that coincides with another feature, the ground pound, since the second you try to crouch while in the air, you hover and trigger your ground pound mechanic. The idea of camber just seems like a pointless addition since the game could have allowed you to reach certain heights by making the maps from the ground up with player base jump height in mind, and even potentially just increasing the player jump height. Instead this just seems like an idea stolen from another popular franchise (TitanFall), much like how parties are now referred to as “Fire Teams” (Destiny).

(Ground Pound) To be clear, I actually think the ground pound is a very fun mechanic, and I am ok with this being in the game. The ground pound sort of reminds me of going into an assassination animation in Halo Reach/4; It’s generally a bad idea, and is just there to show off to some extent. When you ground pound, you have to hover in the air, completely exposed for a good amount of time, and when you land, there is a long recovery animation that further exposes you. Even if you do manage to get the kill, you are giving up any height advantage you had, and are now on the bottom of the map. Overall, it is a terrible idea to try to pull this off, and it’s because of how bad of an idea this is, that I am all for it! It’s just a new show off mechanic in the same vein as animating someone, or killing someone with double needlers in Halo 2. No point to it, but it’s hilarious and fun when pulled off right.

My issue with this feature lies in the controls used to activate it. Right now, if I try to ninja someone, and accidentally press my thumbstick in too much, I just hover in the air like an idiot and get punished for it. The ground pound is on a hair trigger right now, and it tries to go off far too frequently. Also, as stated above, ground pounds are blocking players from being able to crouch jump, which in turn blocks their creativity with traversing the map. Crouching and ground pounding should not be on the same button, and if they HAVE to be, then maybe make ground pound something you have to double tap or hold for a solid second or more in order to activate.

(Shoulder Charge) This is an addition I am not okay with. People would complain about players that would run up to you and double melee you as it was, but now they have the option to sprint and shoulder charge into you for a devastating melee (it seemed more powerful than a regular melee, but not a one hit kill). Maybe a way to deal with this is to only allow players to shoulder charge someone if they have 50-100% shields, otherwise, it doesn’t work. You could say that the extra boost is taken from you armor’s power supply, and when the armor is focusing on recharging your shields, you can’t divert power to your charge thrust. Something along those lines needs to happen to the shoulder charge.

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Maps:

(Truth/ Regret) These revamped midship maps in Halo 5 are very chunky. For example, Halo 2’s Midship, players could spawn anywhere on the map, and essentially be ready to team-shoot nearly anywhere on the map. Even when you spawn on your own base, you can immediately be on the offensive since you can see directly into the other team’s base. In Halo 5’s Truth/ Regret maps, most sightlines that you remember from Midship/ Heretic are completely blocked by chunky objects. When you spawn in your base, you can see little slivers of the enemy’s base, since the majority of that sight line is blocked by the massive central platform/ center pillars. Also, these maps do a poor job of distinguishing one side from another. Possibly a fresh coat of paint, or color coded lights could be used to help differentiate the bases from one another, and also help with telling the difference between carbine side and Pink tower. I honestly doubt that anything will happen to the geometry of the maps based on player feedback, but if 343i is willing to change, then PLEASE put these damn maps on a diet!

(Eden/ Empire) These two maps at the very least, don’t suffer from the same bloated nature as Truth and Regret, but they are still a little odd. The catwalk system on Empire offer a bit too much cover to the team holding the inside snipe area, which results in a lot of camping on that map. Weapon spawns should always be symmetrical on that map as well. I would prefer to see a sniper spawn in both bases, and should the sword spawn anywhere, I’d like to see it spawn outside near the boxes. The inner tower area doesn’t need a power weapon to spawn there since it already has the best cover on the map, and holding that area is basically as important as getting a power weapon. This way both bases, the outside box area, and the inner tower will all have reasons to push towards those areas. As a side note, Empire has a suicide spot when crouching against the inner wall as you walk into the red base. It consistently killed me when I crouched in that spot, so please fix this.

(Forge Maps) The forge maps were very unbalanced, to the point where I really hope that they do not make it into the final build. For example, the red team on Orion spawns with a height advantage, and favorable access to the rockets. Once you have rockets and top control (which is given right off the bat to the red team), you have a very strong advantage over the blue team. There is even a light rifle that spawns up top with the red team that can be used to counter the blue team’s sniper. Pegasus is very unbalanced due to this height advantage and weapon spawn. The map as a whole needs to be rethought. Orion is also unbalanced since one side of the map has tight corners and lots of cover, while the other has long stretches of exposed areas between cover. As a map that has a sniper on it, this is a problem. Both of these forge maps just seem like an afterthought, and would benefit from a complete redesign.

Gametypes:

(Slayer) Team slayer in Halo 5 is pretty straight forward, and does manage to bring the game back in the right direction after Halo 4. Having the game show you kills/ assists/ deaths all in game at the press of a button is fantastic. I’m very happy to see that confusing and pointless scoring system from Halo 4 was given the axe in favor of a traditional score board. Good on you guys for doing that. Throughout the weeks of playing the beta, I was able to try out AR/ AR+ Pistol/ BR/ and AR+BR Starts. Out of all of them, I definitely prefer just BR starts, though AR/BR starts is a fair compromise for those that prefer to start with an assault rifle. Starting with JUST and assault rifle, or an assault rifle/ pistol is a problem though. This type of game ends up being a mad dash for the BR/DMR/LR, if you didn’t get any of these weapons, then you will most likely die to someone that did manage to pick up those weapons. When you respawn you’ll only have close range weapons in your hands, while your opponent is still holding that BR that he killed you with just a few moments ago. This turns the game into a very frustrating easter egg hunt for better weapons. AR+BR or BR starts were the only options that functioned well in this game. Bottom line, you need to spawn players into the game with the proper equipment needed to put up some kind of fight.

(Breakout) Breakout just does not work in Halo. The game spawns you with half shields and the maps are custom made for the gametype. There is one Battle Rifle and Assault Rifle per side, otherwise you have SMG/ Pistol starts. The two maps are awful since there’s no real reason to go to the center of the map (it’s a death trap), and there just aren’t many ways to play the map. Basically any suggestions I can give for this gametype would change it into something that is so far from the original game that it becomes pointless to play over a normal round based slayer game. I’d say give players full shields, BR starts, and possibly play the game on a more traditional map, or at least one that isn’t trying to be some kind of speedball field. See? With those changes the gametype is basically regular slayer. I honestly think this gametype should be tossed in the trash, and change your focus to other areas. Good on 343i for trying something new, but experiment failed, it’s time to admit the gametype was a mistake, and just move on.

(Strongholds) This gametype was ok. I don’t see myself wanting to play it very often, but I didn’t mind playing it every so often as a break from slayer. Not too much to say on this game type other than that the games seem to end fairly quick. Possibly try increasing the score needed to win the game?

User Interface/ Menus: This area definitely needs some work, and I completely assume that these menus will change when the full game is released. You can’t view each other’s spartans, you can’t boot people from your party, you can’t make your party invite only, you can’t view your post game stats, ANYONE can start the game up (not just the party leader), you can’t even talk to the members in your party until the game starts. I mean what the hell happened here? The menus are missing some of the most basic aspects needed to make a functional lobby. Things were so horrid in the beta, that I really doubt that those lobbies and menus were the final builds. Just… get it together in this area 343, for the love of god…

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Miscellaneous:

(Ranking System) In order to give a Halo title some sort of longevity, you need to have a solid ranking system in place. Halo 5’s ranking system seemed to work fairly well when searching with a party of 4, but not all too great when searching solo. When searching with a party of 4 we were very frequently playing games that would end in a difference of 5 or so kills, so the ranking system was great in that aspect. However, when I tried to search solo, I found that the players I went up against were really terrible and easy to beat. I’m not really sure what made the difference here, but something was not right. Hopefully when the game is released, the ranking system will have a larger pool of players to pull from in order to match players up more appropriately. My only guess as to what was going on here, was that by searching solo, the game would see that i was alone, and toss me into a team of 3, in favor of getting the game to start, regardless of their skill level. I just hope that doesn’t happen when the full game is released.
The actual progression through the ranks was ok, but I feel like it could be managed better. As it is, you have 10 games to sort of prove yourself before being assigned an actual rank. Should you win all 10 games, then you’ll skyrocket through the ranks. One of the minor issues I have with this is if you are one of the first people to play Halo 5, and you bang out your 10 wins immediately, the game sees that you’re winning against players that have either a very low rank, or no rank at all. So no matter how good you played, your initial rank placement will be relatively low. Should you wait a week or so after players have well established ranks, and you win 10 games against gold/ onyx players, you could be boosted straight up to the Semi Pro ranking. The grind between levels is pretty real, which is great, BUT I would like to see a possible win streak XP bonus, so that those really good players that won 10 games immediately can escape their initial silver ranks. You don’t want amazing players playing against actual silver players, it’s not fun for either player. This win streak could potentially only be applied to bronze 1 through gold 1, and just not work at all for higher ranks. I feel like this would be a good way to appropriately rank those early winners.

(Medals/ Announcer) Aside from the addition of a small handful of medals (Perfect kill is the only one that comes to mind) the new list of medals are completely ridiculous and unnecessary. Between the pointless announcements like constantly announcing how many people are alive in Breakout, and burping out medals for mundane actions, the announcer just does not shut up anymore. In the original Halo when you heard the announcer say something, it meant that you were pretty damn awesome. Hearing “TRIPPLE KILL!” or “RUNNING RIOT!” got you pumped up and hungry for more. Now when I hear “BRAWLER!” “HAT TRICK!” “HARD TARGET!” etc, I just wish that there was some kind of mute button I could hit. Which brings me to my suggested fix for this situation.
I think it would be great to allow players to personalize their experience through a series of checkboxes in their individual menus. There could be an Announcer section where medals are listed by categories such as multikills, sprees, legendary medals, weapon/ style medals, and objective medals. By unchecking a box, that category of medal will not pop up in your game, and the announcer will not say anything about it, though the medal will still be recorded to your overall profile page. This would fix this problem for me, and I would be very happy to see it implemented

(Spartan Chatter) I understand the reasoning behind this feature’s implementation, but I don’t think it’s for everyone. When playing solo on a team of players that refuse to talk, or don’t have mics, it can absolutely be frustrating. Creating a system where the spartan’s communicate to each other through a series of callouts is a great idea. However, when you do have people to talk to, the spartan chatter becomes very annoying, and I often felt like someone was trying to talk over me the entire game. The fix here is simple; allow players to turn this feature on/off in the menus. This way when I’m searching with my team of 4, I can turn it off, and when I play solo, I can have the option to turn this back on. Also, it’s annoying to have someone steal your multi kill, or kill someone you’re assassinating, only to have your spartan say “THANKS FOR THE HELP!!!” Oh god I hate that…

(Post Game Cinematic) The bro down… I have been told that lore wise, Spartan IV’s are -Yoink- bag volunteers, so apparently their -Yoink–baggery is cannon? Even if that’s true, please don’t make me watch this… I don’t want to see my spartan bro out and do a keg stand with his frat buddies. Please just let the game end with some dignity and take this out of the game. Just…. please no more.

Closing Notes:
After reading over what I have to say about the game, This probably comes off as very negative. Let me be clear though, I had a very fun time with the Halo 5 Beta, I’m looking forward to the full release for sure. This game is much better than Halo 4, so good on you guys for improving so much. That being said, there is a LOT of areas to improve upon, and some areas that I don’t ever see being fixed (Sprint, the chunky maps, the over abundance of new movement options…), but even with those seemingly untouchable aspects, there are plenty of things for 343i to improve upon, it’s just a matter of time to see how far they’re willing to deviate from their original plan for Halo 5. I guess we’ll have to wait, and I for one am hoping that by typing my thoughts and suggestions out, that I’m not just pouring these ideas into some kind of wishing well.

6

There only needs to be a carbine, dmr , and pistol. For precision based weapons.

Everything else is redundant, takes away from skill as well.

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> 2533274815962246;6:
> There only needs to be a carbine, dmr , and pistol. For precision based weapons.
>
> Everything else is redundant, takes away from skill as well.

Well, I like the way the DMR/ BR/ Light Rifles feel at the moment. The BR and DMR are fairly close right now, but since the DMR doesn’t have any bullet spread, it’s better for long range (though it is a 5 shot vs a 4 shot kill). I would prefer the BR for close range battles since it has a quicker kill time, and the bullet spread is a non factor up close. So with both being great at mid range, I see myself going for the DMR in BTB maps, and the BR in 4v4 maps. The Light rifle is worth picking up at all times due to it’s 3 shot kill while zoomed in, it can almost be considered a very weak power weapon at this point. These weapons in Halo 4 were way too similar for me, and I would agree with you in that game, but in Halo 5, they’re distinct enough for me that I don’t mind that there are options out there.

P.S. I can’t wait to see the carbine! :slight_smile:

8

This is amazing good post.

9

I agree with all of what you said regarding the new mechanics, they really are just gimmicks

10

Did you ever try the ICBM technique with the Hydra? It’s not so underpowered if you use it like that.

11

> 2533274932540799;10:
> Did you ever try the ICBM technique with the Hydra? It’s not so underpowered if you use it like that.

ICBM technique? Do you mean the lock on system, or is this something else?

12

My friends and I were discussing possible ways to nerf Halo 5’s thruster ability. Our nerf conversation boiled down to three options; Increase the time between thrusts, decrease the distance covered by the thrust, or keep the thrust distance and wait times the same BUT you would only have a certain number of charges per life. Myself, I think increasing the time it takes to recharge your thrusters would make the most sense, though I am interested in the idea of having 3-5 thrust charges per life. I’m not sure how this would play out for people that stay alive for a long period of time. Would those players be put at too severe a disadvantage against players that have dies recently, or would this reduce the overall chaotic movements in the game? What do you guys think about this? Even if you think thrusters are perfectly fine at the moment, and should not be touched, I want to here why!