Let me start by saying this:
I love halo, I have loved it since the start and from bungies time with it to now, I like how it’s managed to keep going with at least, above average glory compared to other series after their primes, halos prime being around halo 3.
But like other fans, I do have concern, concern for what could just be ahead.
This is not a “343 ruined halo” rant thread.
Hell I don’t mind sprint, no one complained then when it came in reach, to me there is no right to complain now if it wasn’t at first.
If anything, the support 343 has given to the franchise and for halo 5 getting all this free content, is a rarity for games today just churning out unfinished crap and overpriced DLC, I commend them for their efforts.
But my real concern is just in the fact that, 343 knows how to make the gameplay in halo work, halo 5 campaign wise, lockes team and personality, was just stupid. The gameplay was fine and that’s good.
But ever since 4, it’s not a matter of how they did stuff like making loadouts a central factor in 4 or how they did reqs in halo 5.
No my main concern is that, for all their ambition and effort and good game concepts, there is always and in some way, always and over glaring plain as day, dark as night, issue that just hampers the experience. Stuff that while minor, just makes no ideal sense anyway it is cut.
Go back to halo 4, I’m speaking of Spartan ops. Gameplay wise, it was a nice secondary campaign and gave you something to do.
But the biggest issue was, save for protect objectives, you just couldn’t fail. My question then was just why? Why? Why didn’t we have limited lives or a sense of failure? It’s not like the mode was bugged, but why couldn’t we fail? Shouldn’t any game have a sense of failure and you able to learn by trail and error?
Even when Spartan ops came to the MCC, they put skulls, but no iron? Just why? Why even include skulls to make it harder when the only failure inducing one is NOT present? Who would honestly play advanced difficulty with no means of failure?
We then come to warzone, save for warzone assault, regular warzone, is and still is, an unregulated mess.
Sorcing issues, far too many players, no means to limit the REQ system has given rise to so many one sided games, a game i believe is best when the constant meta has back and forth, not one sided stompfests and shutouts. Even players casually run their own friends over, not every weapon can be used to foster.
Yes it’s a social mode BUT that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some means to well, limits, to control, to even balance.
TF2 is social but has balance, overwatch is mostly social but has balance.
Why not this?
warzone itself put me off halo 5 for a few months. I have no issues with arena as its halos classic as it can be, but I generally chose to not do it.
But after the firefight beta and the feedback,we get to the most recent issue, warzone firefight and its artificial difficulty.
And we have some many issues, so many elementary mistakes by just game design, it makes me wonder, who designed this? Who outright approved it and said it was good enough?
firefight is fun, but when constantly losing is because of terrible spawning, bulky and numerously powerful enemies, needing to hike to the objective while planting enemies much closer, terrible respawn timers, bosses taking longer to kill than the time half life 3 has been in development,
how can one not be upset by a little of this?
Its even more frustrating when the same enemies, in campaign, don’t act like this! Even on legendary!
If these same poor design choices were put in any other fps 10 years ago, no one would accept it.
So why is it that 343 does this, why?
my main concern, it’s that 343 has the right heart and means well, but when basic design flaws, the very most elementary ones in FPS games, are the thing hampering the experience to such degrees we get a truely unfair experience at times, why? How could no one notice this? How couldn’t they address this before launch knowly have balanced the same AI in campaign and even, regular warzone? Just why?
To me, 343, they have goodness and well meaned ambitions and concepts, but the execution is flawed and raises such questions and concerns as to how could it turn out like it currently is?
The only upside is that feedback can change this and otherwise, firefight has a means to strive unlike Spartan ops.