Introduction
Okay, so the Halo 5: Guardians Mutiplayer beta has been out for two weeks now, while I have only been a part of it the second week, I can say there are some good points and some bad, obviously which is to be expected from a Beta.
Now first off, let me say the maps Eden and Regret are both very beautiful, and they flow for the most part, Eden being an exception which I will get into later. The game itself with battle rifles feels a lot like Halo 3 in terms of nostalgia, even though the Battle Rifle has been re-skinned. This is a good sign as the base battles that I have often come across are usually fair and reward skill and patience.
<strong>Spartan Abilities</strong>
These are a different approach from the armor abilities introduced in Halo: Reach and Halo: 4, but in my opinion it seems like there is no real transition (Granted this can be discussed in the actual game, so its no big deal). I am happy however that all the unnecessary abilities have been scratched and sprint and thrusters have been kept, because they are arguably, the better ones for the game (if any). I do also think that both the slide and charge are alright, and do not break the game as much as I originally thought, but the Spartan Air Smash (Not the proper name) seems unnecessary, and not very practical. Sure it is a humiliation tactic, but there isn’t much control, and just floating there waiting for it to charge, looks stupid, and is as mentioned, not practical at all. I feel it can be kept in the game, as it doesn’t disrupt gameplay really, but to me at least it is just very unnecessary. Clamber is cool and flows nicely, I appreciate this Spartan Ability rather highly, and think it works good, especially on Eden when there isn’t usually an easy way to get up to the higher parts of the map especially while in the Courtyard(Bottom Mid).Smart Scope
This is indeed a cool idea, however I must admit that the addition of de-scoping when hit might be pushing a lot of potential players away at the moment. When first starting the game, it feels great, and the scopes all look great, but then when you get hit from that person across the map, before you get a chance to pull the trigger on them, you get de-scoped and suddenly you are at a major disadvantage. Okay I admit this is perfectly fine at medium range, but it is a little bit too much during a long distance encounter, when the first person to shoot has the most accuracy during the whole fight.
In addition to this, I feel as though the addition of the hover while aimed is unnecessary, but is definitely acceptable, I just hope this isn’t why it was said that “one shouldn’t think that smart scoping is over powered” (From the vidoc), because the smart scope just feels like a regular scope, besides that it is on a few weapons that haven’t had a “real” scope before.
[Note: As an FPS veteran I have no issue with the de-scoping, but it is easy to see how it can drive off new and unsuscepting players, especially considering other games of the genre do not have this feature.]
Ranking System
As for the ranking system, it seems to be very similar along the lines of Halo: 3 with the leveling up based on game performance, which is definitely good. However the current algorithm still penalizes players for poor teammates, and close games. In my opinion the top 3-4 players in the game [either team] should not be negatively penalized, as they are clearly the better players. In addition to this, the points received (or lost) at the end of each game should be a correlation of the amount of kills you have made during the match. Then if you are also on the winning team, an additional multiplier should also be added, and a multiplier of <=1 should be given to the losing team. Then as a person gets higher in the rankings, their multiplier and amount of points won should decrease (or the rank should at least be longer to get past).
For example, the top player of the game is on the winning team with 23 kills, the second place player is on the losing team with 19 kills, and the third place player in on the winning team with 18 kills. This is a very possible turnout in a game, and in this case the Top player should receive roughly 23 points to be added to his rank. The second place player, did well however, his team lost, but instead of penalizing him, he should still be allowed to either lose nothing, or gain a little bit, because he was the second best player in the game. So perhaps he could gain 2 points toward his rank which would be a multiplier of (.10) to the amount of kills he had. Of course assists can also be factored into this as well, but significantly less. The lower players on the losing team can then lose points based on how far off they were from making the top 3 (or four) i.e. getting 5 kills would result in -13 points, and so on. The winning team can gain points based off of their kills as well, but perhaps be a multiplier of (.2) because they won as well. A player on the winning team for example with 10 kills will gain 2 points to his rank. This can also be balanced by longer ranks so that playing good is all the more important. [Sorry if that was a little hard to follow.]
Spawning System
Ahhh, As soon as I saw that there were some “buddy spawns” (not all the time, but there are definitely times where you or someone would spawn on your or very near you) similar to Halo: Reach, I thought “Oh Great.”. These spawns while sometimes effective are rather lazy and for the worse more often than not. This is because your teammate is obviously looking for the enemy, and they are obviously looking for him, so while spawning on him might be good at the moment you do, the very next second could mean you are in a firefight, and you haven’t gotten your bearings yet as you just spawned. This was easily avoided in Halo: Reach with the addition of Anti-spawn zones, and Pro-Spawn zones (Not the actual names). Anyone who tinkered around in forge and understood the spawning mechanics would know this, but the “Anti-spawn zones” would basically mean that you can spawn here, but only if your opponent wasn’t in the zone. The “Pro-spawn zones” meant that you can only spawn there if your teammate was there. This is really useful as it says you cannot spawn in your enemies base unless you have a teammate there, for example. This also removes the need for the "buddy spawning system, because the maps should be laid out with spawns already in mind. Granted I have experienced this issue quiet a few times, but the majority of the time it would be on Eden, which as a forger, I know is harder to make spawns for because of the layout, but the issue is that sight lines must also be taken to account. Regret has much nicer spawns, but then again it is a familiar design to begin with following the likes of Midship and Zenith (I think it was called in Reach).Closing thoughts and Summary
Overall I am very pleased with the beta so far, besides the few issues I described, I have high hopes for the full game, as long as 343 listens to the community about multiplayer. I would originally have had an issue with the behavior of the grenades as well, because they seem to slide and move along the ground a lot more than previous games, but it seems that the issue may have been addressed with the mini-patch recently, and just getting used to it in general. Anyway, if you have any other comments, please let me know!