My thoughts on halo 5 and 343's plans and record

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I was cautiously optimistic about Halo 5, optimism born from the Halo 5 beta minus the excessive lag. From the ashes of Halo 4 and The MCC I was cautious due to 343 failing a second time in delivering a complete and furfilling product worth the money I payed for it. While I only ever played Halo 4 as part of the MCC it struck me as hardly worthwhile as a game compared to the other sbundled with it. The halo 5 Guardians Preoder types are ridiculous when a tier below has better content than the most expensive pack. If a Master Chief statue wasn’t included with the most expensive pack I would have canceled it already, but it hasn’t stopped my rethinking it, don’t call me stupid or wrong for preordering I don’t want to miss out on the goodies.

REQ and micro-transactions

Anyhow moving on, a feature of Halo 4 was weapon skins, a pointless waste of time considering people aren’t playing the game to admire your fellow players weapon skins or much else it’s not Cod after all. 343 outdid themselves and introduced REQ packs for Halo 5 which are effectively pay to win for Warzone. It doesn’t reward playing more than others but rather if you have a life outside of Halo you have to pay to remain competitive. It seems 343 has taken a leaf out of EA/DICE’s playbok and added a feature like their poorly implemented battle pack, I still have no idea how those work or what their purpose is. If 343 felt a need to add microtransactions, they should have had a look at COD AW’s Supply drop system, nothing in supply drops effect any form of gameplay and they are relatively easy to earn but they add cosmetic gear. A mention was made by 343 of the inclusion of different assassination animations. Assassinations are a wasteful mechanic, they take to long to play out and leave you vulnerable on the ground. It doesn’t help 343s case for Halo5 MP Assasinations and thrusting and other feature when the controls are overlapped requiring unreasonable levels of minuet control over the players avatar to avoid being left exposed or ground pounding when you meant for something else. I don’t wish to assassinate but it seems increasingly difficult to do a instakill back sack.

Mobility

Many people have made the case for the exclusion of sprint I apologise if I don’t reference specific individuals and threads who have made key points in the case against it. Sprint is not evil but rather changes the gameplay in a manner that causes other parts of the game to componsate such as the thrust pack and charge and ground pound and the shield recharge factor. 343 have made a complication out of an avoidable situation, if sprint in any form was never a mechanic in any previous game it is doubtful people would have asked for it as they wouldn’t need to counter players choosing to use it.

Multiplayer

343 should be thanked for restoring map based weapons, removing load outs and disappearing weapons from Multiplayer. They should not be praised as they were responsible for this in the first place. I haven’t heard whether or not Elites will be playable in MP so I can’t say either way but my hope is diminishing fast. Spartan callouts is in some respects a redundant feature, you have a motion tracker for a reason.

Warzone

Taking into account what I have said previously regarding pay to win and mobility, Warzone seems like a hybrid of firefight and invasion mode from Reach with a hint of Spartan Ops it isn’t something the players asked for or wanted adding freemium content to increases the probability of it joining Spartan Ops as a poorly implemented failed 3rd gameplay type. Polish is require for a third game mode, firefight had this and this ensure its success and is why fans remember it with fondness.

Campaign

No promethean Knights in Halo 5 demo leaves me with some Hope, those were total BS especially on legendary and watchers made fighting them into a BS grind made even worse by knights with binary rifles or Crawlers with them, they put Halo 2’s info as Jackals to shame. I don’t want 343 trying to sell a plot which requires knowledge of books and hard to find brief terminals to understand. It’s bad enough 343 killed of Cortana but then to revive their namesake in the Novels, why? English speaking covenant are another good thing.

Weapons

Handguns

Plasma pistol
This weapon was a fan favourite in campaign not MP and the reason it was changed in halo 3 onwards was obviously due to the infamous noob combo but it has become of late a useless weapon, each blast does in Halo 4 on legendary less than on in Halo 3, try killing a grunt on legendary and watch your power consumption, and it’s power cell also seems to decline faster than a fried Phone battery.

Bolt shot
Well 343 obviously forgot everyone hated the Boltshot worse than the plasma pistol, the but of many jokes and yet 343 still bet on the losing horse.
If it returns in Halo 5 in MP well it could very well kill the games multiplayer. It was also very useless in Halo 4 on legendary its charge doing nothing.

Magnum
While Halo CE’a hand cannon will probably never come back the reintroduction of a viable scope leaves me happy.

Needle pistol
The chances of this appearing are slim but we can hope

continued in next post

2

REQ and Warzone seem to be okay. I don’t think they will be pay to win. A good team won’t need them, and a bad team won’t automatically win by using them. A good team that does use them won’t change the outcome, but the game may be more frustrating.
I have never been a fan of Sprint, but it has definitely been toned down/balanced since Reach. I think that it will be a much better addition to the game. As for thruster movements, I think the dashes are a bit extreme and allows people to escape danger too easily.
From the MP beta, I found this to be a good edition to the franchise. They add some touches to already existing features, while adding meaningful ones. Things like ordinance drops and loadouts, really turned me away from Halo. As long as they keep the equal starts and have those battles for the power weapons during the match will make it feel more like Halo. The zooming(“ADS”) for all weapons is a great addition, but hopefully it doesn’t give weapons that were once bad at longer ranges a chance.
The campaign looks and sounds interesting, but as long as it is decent and has that Halo, “save the world”, factor, then I think I will enjoy it.
As for the weapons, as long as people are not starting with ever OP thing, then I don’t think I will mind if the Noob Combo is too good, or the Bolt shot is either. Also if it is limit the amount on the map because I don’t want people running around with two of them again like the Maulers in Halo 3.

All I am hoping from this game is that there is skill based matchmaking. The last two games where quite disappointing. I hope they fix the issues with the one in the Beta, because I got to Pro in 5 games. I hope they just start everyone out at the lowest level and have everyone work their way up like in Halo 2 and 3. This would more accurately separate the players. In Halo 3 players that were between levels 0-30 were “noobs”, 31-40 decent, 41-45 good, 46-49 great, 50 best. Sure there were discrepancies, but as the more people played in game modes the ranks became more permanent. After 300 games in TS it took 20 wins in a row for me to get from 48-50, versus my new account that had 40 games and went from 40-50 in 20 games. The whole bronze, silver, gold, platinum, semi-pro, pro, etc. system would work better if they just started everyone at bronze. This is my opinion though from the beta. At the end of the first beta I was Pro ~2200, started in Platinum after my first 5 games and it only took me about another 5 to get to pro, and I was playing against mostly players below semi-pro. It seemed like there was no competition at times and games were just a push-over just like the past two games. Hopefully this is more fine-tuned to stop there being such a massive skill gap between players. At the end of the day, I don’t want some average shooter that rewards in medals and playtime, over a game that rewards skill and teamwork.
I understand that many people to enjoy seeing 100 medals popping up during game, but in reality they become meaningless. Medals like Double kill, Triple kill, Perfection, etc. meant something but now we have Reversal, a medal for getting a sniper kill headshot or not, and one for every single headshot. I think the ones that pop up should be the rarer ones like the kill streaks, and multi kills. While in the post match you can see all of them. Just my opinion though.

As for the “3rd gamemode”, I don’t think it is Warzone. They probably haven’t yet shown it off. I could be wrong though, but I highly doubt that Warzone is replacing Firefight or Spartan Ops.

3

> 2535462579822818;1:
> Bolt shot
> Well 343 obviously forgot everyone hated the Boltshot worse than the plasma pistol, the but of many jokes and yet 343 still bet on the losing horse.
> If it returns in Halo 5 in MP well it could very well kill the games multiplayer. It was also very useless in Halo 4 on legendary its charge doing nothing.

If it ‘ruins it’ its only because people knee jerked. The gun’s only problem was as a spawn weapon, otherwise its no different than other shotguns in the sandbox.

That said, from those who’ve actually gotten to play the game, the bolstshot sounds like its completely different.

4

just another “mimimimi”-thread…pretty boring…any proved or based information to “pay 2 win” or is this just another speculation? but guess what, tbh no one cares about another player who yells something onto waypoint…

5

OP has never used battlefield battle packs
well they really aren’t that scary and I’ve never paid for them and they add a teeny tinny amount of lotto fever :slight_smile: also I didn’t have a problem with TitanFall cards either :slight_smile:

6

You kind of have it backwards on the micro-transaction examples. BF4 Battlepacks only supply you with camos, attachments for weapons (like a scope or rds) and xp boosts, where as COD AWs supply drops contain weapon variants with different and sometimes better stats, all based on random chance.

Halo 5’s packs have camos and REQ cards that can’t be used unless your doing well and get a high enough REQ level to use them. Basically you have to be doing well in the match in the first place in order to make use of any high level cards you have. No one is joining a Warzone match and dropping a Scorpion card ten seconds into the game, and I think that makes it fair.

Plus its only for Warzone. Arena and BTB are unaffected by this card system beyond weapon skins.

7

Last time I checked, everyone who buys Halo 5 will be getting free DLC, and they need to make money somehow. That’s why there are the microtransactions.
And FYI, the microtransactions do work like the supply drops from COD: AW because you can get cosmetic items for your Spartan. Read about it on Halo Waypoint before you criticize.

8

Watch the Warzone gameplay, the Boltshot isn’t even the same weapon anymore. If it was, I’d probably cry.

9

REQ and micro-transactions
You literally took zero time to read or watch the many interviews that have come out talking about Req packs. The way you describe them as pay to win it’s silly. They are going to be packs of random draw. And even then, you can unlock them the same way that Bioware has done with their packs in that if you just put in some time, you can get the packs easily. And I’ve been hearing from reports from the E3 show floor, that the gameplay on Warzone is fairly balanced and if you want to use the High tier gear, or req cards, your going to have to put in the work in the 1st place to use it. If your slacking and not contributing, then your not going to be able use your top gear. No rewards for slackers and campers.

And it’s a great Idea. They need revenue in order to give almost everyone the new maps for free. And it’s smart. Ever sense halo 2 the new maps have always spit the MP community and now they thought of a way to do it for a working strategy that Bioware created for Mass Effect and Dragon age and Rockstar GTA V

Mobility

Your right about sprint. People were asking for it in Halo 3. I remember the Bungie.net forums and so they added it in Reach. Though very sloppily. Which in my opinion, ruined it for a lot of people. And started the hate for it. 343 fixed it up for Halo 4, but in a game of regenerative health and strong shields, kinda make it hard for competitive play for if you were in a rough spot, you ran away. Halo 5 fixes that but making it a risk. If you run. It will take longer for your shields to come back.

Multiplayer

Load outs 1st appeared in Reach and truthfully Seeing how they are now being used in the Halo 4 playlist on MCC. It feels like the Right call. Right now the community on MCC is split between AR/ SMG vs BR starts. With some very heated threads going on. But with Halo 4. You can create 5 set ups to the Way you want to play. Adding a AR start/ BR start option. And it with ordnance drops removed and fighting for map control and power weapons the key now again in the halo 4 multiplayer. No one who has seriously given the Halo 4 playlist on MCC a shot has complained and is actually coming out impressed. Many of my friends have actually changed their opinions on Halo 4 because of Halo MCC and actually starting to like a lot for they know they’ll be able to always start with their BRs or ARs.

Elites were broken in halo 2 and 3 and Bungie knew that. Ask any competitive, Hardcore swat, or Team sniper player about them and they tell you to never use them for they were easy to spot and aline headshots on.

Bungie addressed this and made the Elites play completely differently then spartans. They were bigger and had a bigger hotbox, but they had faster base speed, stronger shields, and regenerative health. But this prevented balanced gameplay and why they were reduced to invasion Spartan vs Elite playlist.

Warzone

Many people who played it and even Greenskull himself have addressed that their is very little that is pay to win about it. And that there are still plenty of options to take out the vehicles and those who spawned with power weapons littered throughout the map in true halo fasion. Req stations just give you the option to get the items here and now using a req card instead of looking around the map, killing a player with the weapon you want, or killing a AI with what you need.

They also announced another Warzone mode which IS invasion 2.0 where one team defends their series of bases and the other attacks.

As saying. Doing your research instead of getting your information from only the forums would help you here.

Campaign

Literally you have done ZERO research again. The knights have been confirmed to be in. If you watched ANY warzone gameplay. You would have seen them. And sorry. Halo story is so big now that some prior knowledge to the series is a must. It happens to ANY franchise that ends up growing as big as Halo has become. It’s the live of how universes were made. They will have some dummy explanations for those to lazy into the lore and add terminals to expand on lore and help people in explaining some backstory. But if your expectating lazy Bungie style now in the Halo series. I’m sorry, you SOL bro.

Also why the Covenant couldn’t be understood before on Halo 4, if you read the books, Jul discovered a long lost Covenant colony who had been out of contact for centuries, so their language wasn’t recorded and deciphered by the UNSC for they never encountered the Faction of covenant until Halo 4. And Chief being frozen for 4 years and Cortana not being able to download updates to her software and encryption packages, was not able to have the translation software to decipher their speech.

But now the UNSC has been fighting Jul’s faction for a few years now, have their language fully deciphered and so know when you play, you will understand them. Of course reading the books and comics and doing some research would let you discover this knowledge

Weapons

Handguns

Plasma pistol
So them adding EMP to it to stun vehicles isn’t important? Its basically a shield popper and Vehicle power weapon and should be treated as such.

Bolt shot
Literally you have watch ZERO gameplay footage or read ZERO articles about halo 5 it seems in the past 3 weeks. The Bolt shot no longer having its shotgun ability, which was drastically nerfed in halo 4 anywas. It fires a burst of 5 or 6 rounds that seek like a needler and is now considered to be the weakest gun in the game. So stop freaking

Magnum
Word has it they plan to add the Halo CE pistol as a legendary weapon. If you watch the Sprint, you would have seen this. Plus the improvements to the Halo 5 pistol with extra rounds to the magazine have made it a very go to medium and close range weapon that can easily counter the BR.

Needle pistol
You the what? Do you mean the Neddler. That has been confirmed and has gameplay footage out.

Now the crappy needle rifle that everyone wants to forget. Let it stay forgotten

Summary of OP’s post. The ravings of someone who has bother to zero to mill research. Please decide to invest into reading the Wiki’s for lore background if your unwilling to read the books comics. Also highly suggest you start reading articles and watch interviews for more them 1 source, 5- 7 is a good number of sources and even more is better, before you post what you want or wish 343 would do. Also, honestly if you just spent more then 4 hours on Halo MCC and truthfully played everything to the fullest, you would probably have a better Idea where halo was going instead of following the crowd of haters.

Don’t use any of my information as source. I gathered my information from many avenues and I gave you a brief summary of all of them combined mixxed with my opinion. So quoting me and using me as a credible source is unwise. But if you decide to do your research, you find the parts where I don’t state my opinion to be in the right.

10

> Also why the Covenant couldn’t be understood before on Halo 4, if you read the books, Jul discovered a long lost Covenant colony who had been out of contact for centuries, so their language wasn’t recorded and deciphered by the UNSC for they never encountered the Faction of covenant until Halo 4. And Chief being frozen for 4 years and Cortana not being able to download updates to her software and encryption packages, was not able to have the translation software to decipher their speech.But now the UNSC has been fighting Jul’s faction for a few years now, have their language fully deciphered and so know when you play, you will understand them. Of course reading the books and comics and doing some research would let you discover this knowledge

Well… not exactly

> Throughout the level, players hear that the Covenant are once again speaking English, rather than the alien language they spoke in Halo 4. This is because Jul M’dama, Hand of the Didact is losing his grip on the Covenant that we saw in Halo 4. One of his rules was to not speak the language of the enemy and as his leadership becomes weaker, the Covenant are less inclined to listen.

This is from the game informer article. The covenant speak english because they want to, not because we’ve translated it Theron Nett. Maybe its a different explanation in the books, but this isnt the kind of info GI would just guess or infer, they were probably told.

11

> 2533274920092347;10:
> > Also why the Covenant couldn’t be understood before on Halo 4, if you read the books, Jul discovered a long lost Covenant colony who had been out of contact for centuries, so their language wasn’t recorded and deciphered by the UNSC for they never encountered the Faction of covenant until Halo 4. And Chief being frozen for 4 years and Cortana not being able to download updates to her software and encryption packages, was not able to have the translation software to decipher their speech.But now the UNSC has been fighting Jul’s faction for a few years now, have their language fully deciphered and so know when you play, you will understand them. Of course reading the books and comics and doing some research would let you discover this knowledge
>
>
> Well… not exactly
>
>
> > Throughout the level, players hear that the Covenant are once again speaking English, rather than the alien language they spoke in Halo 4. This is because Jul M’dama, Hand of the Didact is losing his grip on the Covenant that we saw in Halo 4. One of his rules was to not speak the language of the enemy and as his leadership becomes weaker, the Covenant are less inclined to listen.
>
>
> This is from the game informer article. The covenant speak english because they want to, not because we’ve translated it Theron Nett. Maybe its a different explanation in the books, but this isnt the kind of info GI would just guess or infer, they were probably told.

I’m going off Halo: The Fall of Reach, First Strike, Kilo-Five Trilogy and, the Hunters in the Dark book that just came out. We’re almost all communications were done through translations devices. So you have 7 books vs 1 game informer article. Which one do you think I’m going to follow as lore. Those 7 books established the use of translation devices. And the Kilo-Five Trilogy establishes the Faction based off the forgotten Covenant colony that Jul ends up using for his faction of covenant. A faction that never encountered humanity until Jul started employing them

12

Something is saying to me that, if there won’t be a big surprise in the Halo 5 Game/Story (that was never teased or revealed before the game releases) it will cause another serious decay for the value that is only called by a lot of people “it is Halo”; maybe one that might have fatal consequences for the franchise.

The Halo franchise has high expanses and I am not talking only over the try to statisfy the so-called “core fans”. This franchise needs to find a way to get some new people into it. Also it can’t bear a real slump in the earings - not now, after the XBox One has had this … lol, suicidal caused starting problems. Guess you know what I mean - as long as you are always online. ;p

13

> 2533274803137071;11:
> > 2533274920092347;10:
> > > Also why the Covenant couldn’t be understood before on Halo 4, if you read the books, Jul discovered a long lost Covenant colony who had been out of contact for centuries, so their language wasn’t recorded and deciphered by the UNSC for they never encountered the Faction of covenant until Halo 4. And Chief being frozen for 4 years and Cortana not being able to download updates to her software and encryption packages, was not able to have the translation software to decipher their speech.But now the UNSC has been fighting Jul’s faction for a few years now, have their language fully deciphered and so know when you play, you will understand them. Of course reading the books and comics and doing some research would let you discover this knowledge
> >
> >
> > Well… not exactly
> >
> >
> > > Throughout the level, players hear that the Covenant are once again speaking English, rather than the alien language they spoke in Halo 4. This is because Jul M’dama, Hand of the Didact is losing his grip on the Covenant that we saw in Halo 4. One of his rules was to not speak the language of the enemy and as his leadership becomes weaker, the Covenant are less inclined to listen.
> >
> >
> > This is from the game informer article. The covenant speak english because they want to, not because we’ve translated it Theron Nett. Maybe its a different explanation in the books, but this isnt the kind of info GI would just guess or infer, they were probably told.
>
>
> I’m going off Halo: The Fall of Reach, First Strike, Kilo-Five Trilogy and, the Hunters in the Dark book that just came out. We’re almost all communications were done through translations devices. So you have 7 books vs 1 game informer article. Which one do you think I’m going to follow as lore. Those 7 books established the use of translation devices. And the Kilo-Five Trilogy establishes the Faction based off the forgotten Covenant colony that Jul ends up using for his faction of covenant. A faction that never encountered humanity until Jul started employing them

I didnt word it well. You’re probably right, established lore comes before news, but im pretty sure they got that info from 343. Its probably a combination if the GI article is correct.

14

I didn’t read your entire post. I couldn’t. It’s fallacious, through and through. I did notice two problems right off the bat while I was skimming though, and I’m sure there are plenty more:

  1. You didn’t read my post about REQ packs and microtransactions, which was stickied as a resource thread (spoiler alert: that means it has accurate and useful information in it), before you started in on Warzone being pay-to-win. This shows an immediate disregard for fact-checking. I consider us even, you didn’t read my post and I didn’t read yours.

  2. The Boltshot has been changed from Halo 4, it’s no longer a pistol/shotgun. They said something about a burst fire that tracks, but I’m not quite sure what that really means or how it’s going to work. The point is that Halo 5 Boltshot ≠ Halo 4 Boltshot, so don’t assume it will bring the same issues. Again, blatant disregard for fact-checking before you start complaining.

Your post was pretty. It was neatly organized and easy to read. But there wasn’t a shred of journalistic integrity to be found. You rant about things you don’t fully understand and at some parts you completely make things up, which strips away any credit your other points may have had. But again, I didn’t read your other points because I couldn’t get through the inaccurate slop that came first.

15

I didn’t mention ADS purely as I forgot about it in addition to the fact it is hardly game breaking or changing it only really changes the view for specific weapons, in Halo 2 you were descoped when hit while zooming with the battle rifle, so the AR has slightly less spread, big deal you don’t have to ADS and you still retain an acceptable level of accuracy so long as you don’t get lagged. We don’t need gun skins at all what purpose do they serve beyond self gratification. Assasinations are a liability which no one mentioned. What purpose now does the Boltshot now serve? With out its original charged shot it is for all intents a model swap of the M6. I did watch the Halo 5 Guardians E3 reveal, and nothing on Warzone through the Waypoint app on Xbox one. I apologise if I missed seeing any Promethean knights in the Warzone reveal. I haven’t watched any additional content Warzone due to working away from home which is why I took so long to start this thread.

Theron Nett, this entire thread is about my thoughts if you didn’t feel the need to read the title of the thread. I actually thought that people would be able to realise I was referring to the plasma pistols EMP when I metntioned how people loved it in campaign and despised it in MP. People want elites not for the perception of them being broken, I agree that they do present a larger target but people want variety they couldn’t care less about 343’s lame reasoning for dropping them I heard something about MP being a infinity holo deck simulation, can’t remember who or where I first heard it but Halo Escalation volume 1 ruined 343s explanation. They plan to introduce the Halo CE pistol weapon as a legendary gun how exciting, excuse me for being sick of this legendary weapon bs, Halo is an arena shooter not a interactive trophy cabinet, the very introduction of map specific ‘legendary’ weapons ruins the nature of the weapons IMO, I am not happy about the Spnkr being reduced to a legendary weapon especially as it’s regular replacement is a green tube. Why 343 decided to radically change everything I don’t get, people loved halo for its humour the fun the simplicity of the action yet the skill needed to win not fancy cameos and tanks with every single possible ability. The needle pistol does exist, read the book Halo ghosts of Onyx if you think it was made up. You cannot speak for everyone when you say no one who has played the Halo 4 MP roster has complained, many don’t bother complaining they just avoid it like the plague.

d the Doctor b please quote specific things you found in the OP which you believe are fallacies, i am aware that 343 does not perceive
the manner of REQ packs being purchasable and provide access to vehicles etc, game changing features to be enabling a pay to win aspect 343 saying it isn’t doesn’t reassure me in the slightest as their track record shows.

For the record I have read both Halo Ghosts of Onyx and Halo Contact Harvest, the only reason I have never played Halo 4 MP personally is due to it not being in Team Slayer and with the MCC still taking Forever to find a game I won’t waste searching on a mode few play. I was going to continue listing my personal thoughts on the weapons and other things but my time was spent explaining to you haters that I am aware of 343’s claims regarding Warzone REQ packs infact I’ll make the point I didn’t want Warzone I wanted firefight, anyone disagree with me go ahead and play Spartan ops on legendary solo and then come and tell me how great halo 4 is post MCC inclusion. I also don’t care for people saying my opinion is less valid than theirs. You respect mine and I will respect yours.

16

Battle packs in halo, news to me, I love them in BF, getting new dog tags and knives etc fits well with the game, hope they do the same for Halo.

17

> 2533274823654350;6:
> You kind of have it backwards on the micro-transaction examples. BF4 Battlepacks only supply you with camos, attachments for weapons (like a scope or rds) and xp boosts, where as COD AWs supply drops contain weapon variants with different and sometimes better stats, all based on random chance.
>
> Halo 5’s packs have camos and REQ cards that can’t be used unless your doing well and get a high enough REQ level to use them. Basically you have to be doing well in the match in the first place in order to make use of any high level cards you have. No one is joining a Warzone match and dropping a Scorpion card ten seconds into the game, and I think that makes it fair.
>
> Plus its only for Warzone. Arena and BTB are unaffected by this card system beyond weapon skins.

This and the fact that Supply Drops have weapons which are better than others. Which is effectively ruining the balance of the game and is punishingplayers with a life and letting the long terms players be the only competitive ones