This year Halo 5 is going to have a quite a tough time trying to keep it’s player base for more than just a couple months trying to contend with This years Cod and especially Star Wars Battlefront. I think it’s pretty safe to say the majority of casual players who like a game like Halo would also probably like a game like Battlefront. Even for me (I’m a pretty restricted player who plays solely halo over 95% of the time) this new Battlefront is probably the most excited I’ve ever been for a game besides Halo and I can Think I can speak the same for lots of other people as well there. I have very fond memories of playing 4 player split-screen on Battlefront 2 with friends back on the original Xbox and can’t wait to get the new Battlefront.
And This here is a problem for Halo 5. Now for me personally, I’m extremely dedicated to Halo so I’ll keep coming back to H5 and play it regularly, but for the average casual gamer once they’ve completed the campaign once or twice they’re just going to hop on matchmaking for a couple games and get bored and move on to Cod/Battlefront. Or if the experience they have is good enough they could get hooked on the new multiplayer experience that keeps them coming back again and again. After H4’s campaign and seeing a glimpse at H5’s arena mulitplayer I’m going to go out on a limb and say that both these areas of H5 are going to do just fine and not have any problems, but what about BTB?
All you MLG tryhards might hate to hear it, but your the minority. The majority of Halo players are casuals. They don’t care about all these hardcore settings, they just want to have fun. And what gives the average casual player the most fun? Vehicular gameplay. BTB. Looking back at all the previous Halo populations we could see that BTB was always in the top 2 for playlist populations.
If you remember back to prior each games BTB reveal there were always tons of requests for bigger battle, drivable pelicans/phantoms and even scarabs. And each game we were left without these features, just playing it safe with a 16 player max and a couple new vehicles. This has to stop now, heck this new generation is suppose to do something isn’t it?
Now I just want you to imagine this for a second… It’s E3 and Frank O Connor walks on stage, the lights dim and he proceeds to talk. “Today we are excited to reveal this new first look at the Halo 5 BTB experience.” It cuts to a new ginormous map with amazing graphics and you hear Jeff Steitzer announcing “Invasion! Storm the elite Blockade and neutralize the AA turrets to initiate Phase two!” Then you see yourself loading up on to a small UNSC Frigate bay with 15-31 other spartans and get to ride Pelicans laden with warthogs into battle, or Take an ODST Pod down to the surface. Then huge epic scale Warfare ensues and after destroying the AA turrets you move on to fight and take down a scarab (or two) and then finally move on to destroy the covenant facility with a havoc nuke.
Now after that I want you to imagine this… It’s E3 and Frank O Connor walks on stage, the lights dim and he proceeds to talk. “Today we are excited to reveal this new first look at the Halo 5 BTB experience.” It cuts to a new simple symmetric map with amazing graphics and you spawn in normally and from there you proceed to watch a standard 16 player Slayer game with one or two new vehicles.
Now I don’t know about you guys, but to me the former sounds a lot more interesting than the latter, and this will also be true for the majority of casuals. Halo 5 needs a new, innovative BTB experience if it wants to compete with other games for a larger player base. If Halo 5 does indeed continue with the same 16 player max count that we have always had, People won’t be very interested in it and just move to other better vehicular experiences such as Battlefront.
We need a BTB experience that will keep players coming back, and quite bluntly gamers like bigger experiences. I know Personally if does H5 does only have a 16 player max count I will be pretty disappointed.