First of all sorry if what I am gonna say has already been told but I have not seen an official topic to give feedback.
Secondly, to everyone who will feel the need to tell me “they are already working on a new progression system”, I know and I do not care. 343i were told about it in July after the first Flight and have had a double lenght development cycle compared to every other major game and Halo title. Game development is not easy and the pandemic didn’t help but botching the progression system so badly, especially when Halo MCC and Halo 5 have much better systems in place, is not excusable.
Lastly, I think the core gameplay is really good and I find it to be much fun so I am hopeful that the things that I, and possibly some other member of the community, find irritating will be fixed sooner or later.
CUSTOMIZATION, BP and PROGRESSION
As the vast majority of us who participated in the Flights said the current progression system is idiotic. I understand that with a F2P model microtransactions must exist in some way but the current system is beyind predatory with only pointless XP boost or Challenge swap available for free to the players that are not willing or able to pay for the premium pass and no way to earn cR to unlock stuff. And on top of a cR exclusive Store with different stuff.
The worst part of all this is, beyond having being told back in July and not having acted on the feedback, is that Halo 5 already had a way in place to allow players to both spend real money and at the same time earn in-game points to unlock almost everything with only some minor things been locked behind a real paywall.
The Coating System is, at the moment, a definite step back from the Armor Colors of every other Halo title. In my time playing the game I have seen like four coatings being used by everyone. Partly is certainly due to the above mentioned idiotic BP bound progression. But the issue is rooted deeper than that. I think Coatings should be in the game as an option alongside Armor Colors.
The same goes for the Emblems. While I like the idea of using different Emblems on a gun or on the Armor they should be more (ideally import the Embles from Halo 5) and should be color customizable. Again: you already tried this system when Halo 5 launched, nobody liked it and you, thankfully, brought bakc the previous system. What was the reasoning for trying it again?
( Also there is no howling wolf Emblem: the game is dead. Dead! )*
Furthermore having basically every Armor permutation behind a hard paywall means that all those words about “being able to express yourself” are just hollow: in my entire playsession I have only encountered players using the base Mark VII armor. Surely with more Season and more playtime things will change but at the very least, after years of development (six years from Halo 5’s launch and four years since its last update), a bit of starting and free Customization was to be expected.
Alongside with these issues, somehow making them worst is the actual way to progress in the BP. Having Challeng only progression is a nice idea on paper but then it clashes hard with the reality of the game.
Let’s say the Challenge is “Destroy a vehicle in Slayer”. Easy, I’ll just start BTB and get CTF so the Challenge will not progress. Fine. Let’s try again and get in a Scorpion to find a vehicle. Too bad the Scorpion spawns only after you finish a game. Fine. Let’s try again again: find a Slayer match, get a power weapon, hope that you can find an enemy vehicle and blow it up.
The same goes for every gametype specific Challenge.
BTB 2.0
Once more to nobody’s surprise not having acted on the feedback brings back the exact same criticism I had for the last Flight. The Pelican Drop is cool but the “power escalation” is still disappointing.
I played some matches and in all but one I was able to see a Scorpion. It was dropped off literally 20 seconds before the overtime extension and we (and by we I mean some random teammate) were only able to drive it because it was a CTF match and the score was even. Again my feed back is the same as last time: spawn power vehicles at the start of the game and then resupply teams with Pelican Drops.
Again spawning with the AR/MK50 combo is totally fine in Arena but in BTB I only find it to be busy work after every respawn (I never had any problem immediatly finding a BR in my matches). I understand the reasoning behind this start and I know someone will like the current start more but still I would like a BR/AR start (as it has been since I play Halo BTB) more.
MENUS
I still find menus overcomplicating things that should be easy: why does the game thinks I do not want to search for a new match if I look at the Challenges in the first three seconds after I click search? I just clicked it and I can stop the search if needed. Also why does it continue the search if I look at the Challenges from the fourth second onwards?
WEAPON BALANCE
Why was the VK-78 nerfed? It should be better than the MK50 as it is a pickup weapon but as it is now with its crazy recoil it’s just not worth picking up (except for the occasional Challenge).
Again, sorry if something has already been said and very sorry if someone got offended at what I am saying. It is not my intention to be rude but I think criticising things that in our opinion do not work great is the only way to better them.
Also, I am not going to start arguing. If you don’t like my opinion, ignore it; if you want to show a different point of view, please, go haed and do so; if you just want to insult, I will ignore the post and report it.
Maybe I will add something later after more matches.
* Just joking. I am more interested in the core gameplay.