Ok so A Halo 5 beta is essential for me now. I won’t buy Halo 5 until I KNOW 343i know what made Halo fun.
BUT…
Including the Halo 5 beta with Halo 2 and not as an open beta for every Xbone owner. Is that a good idea or a bad one. On one hand I feel everyone should get the chance to try the beta and help improve the game. On the other hand, do we really want everyone adding in their two cents when they don’t care and will go off and play COD 15 a month later.
Is including Halo 5 beta with Halo 2 ensuring Halo on Xbone is a return to glory, atleast with it’s fanbase and MP support?
Rather than a beta specifically, I’d like to see them include a “Demo” featuring their idea of what a basic Halo 5 gametype would look like. Specifically, have two playlists, one with “Infinity” styled settings and one with “Classic” styled settings.
Whichever is more popular should be the main/default gametype for Halo 5.
Personally I’d offer the Demo through Halo 2 Anniversary, sort of an “Early Access” deal to promote the game a bit more.
Betas, as fun as they are, aren’t necessary to ensure the quality of the game and really only serve as an “early access” for the community.
They’re fun, but they’re not even remotely necessary and end up lengthening the development time and, in some cases, can hurt the sales of the final release.
If you’ve played the beta, and hated every aspect of it, are you going to spend 60 dollars on the final game when it comes out?
I think a public beta for those who purchase H2A (or whatever may release this year) would be the best way to go about dealing with things. While I won’t deny that public betas do serve as early access for players, I know that there is undoubtably a very vocal Halo community that would report bugs. I wouldn’t be opposed to temporarily addend a Halo 5: Guardians Beta forum on the forums. It could be useful.
The sad truth is, betas are used almost solely for bug testing and glitches, not for gameplay improvement. You have two options if Halo 5 gets a “gameplay” beta. A)THe community likes it a lot and sales increase dramatically as hype goes out of the roof. or B) THe community either hates it or doesn’t like it enough and it gets sent back into development and we wait another 2 to 3 years for a Halo game. Now I know we want an excellent Halo game, but I don’t want to have to wait five years to get it.
So then the beta is really to appease the old school halo fans and reasurre them that Halo 5 is taking a step in th right direction?
I always said that Halo 4 wouldn’t get a beta for fear of backlash.
So back to my original question. If a beta is about bug squashing, then surely a larger base would help that process. Could the fact Halo 5 is getting a beta a better sign and mean that 343i have more faith in how fans will receive the game (or just the fact it’s a new system and new engine so needs a beta to finish the bugs properly)
I do understand the fact a beta can add more value to Halo 2A, but I question whether the people who can’t want to play Halo 5 aren’t the same people who would buy Halo 2A on release anyway.
Very good. A public beta would be an effective way of finding bugs and fixing things that could potentially be overpowered and ruin gameplay. Their closed beta for Halo 4 didn’t particularly do a good job of this, since they used people that never really played Halo games in general, like NFL players, if I recall correctly.
If they have an open beta, they could have answers from the community, whom they want to please with their new installations to the Halo series.
I’m for a Beta, in that it would help improve the final game, but I am slightly wary of the effect on final sales. An open beta to everybody? The effect would be mass hysteria (both good and bad) which would limit the ability of the beta to act upon genuine bugs. A beta key with a Halo 2A (or similar) would be the best way - get the fans who worship classic halo to test the game, as they will be the ones most likely to give effective and useful feedback.
Another way of doing it could be to give closed beta keys to everyone on the forums with a certain forum rank, as these are the people that would give the best feedback (looks at forum rank, shakes head, “better get posting”)
> Another way of doing it could be to give closed beta keys to everyone on the forums with a certain forum rank, as these are the people that would give the best feedback (looks at forum rank, shakes head, “better get posting”)
Absolutely not. Even as someone with one of the highest post counts on the forums, I think doing that is a BAD idea. It just screams, “You want to play Halo 5? Spam the forums to get a high enough post count!” In fact, the idea of limiting it to only forum users isn’t a good idea. If it comes with whatever comes out this year, I will be satisfied. Hell, from a business standpoint that is more of an incentive to purchase whatever is coming out.