Hi guys,
Been getting sick of the lack of honesty about ffa these days so thiught i would shed some light on the good, bad and downright ugly about ffa in halo 5. I will break it down into 3 main areas; skill, connection and spawns. As these are the three main areas that influence every game. It may explain why plats can defeat 2 onyx 1800 players in a match with it reflecting no skill level at all.
Connection- without a good connection in game you are blammed. The good news for north americans is that with focused mm yiu should never get a laggy game again. For us europeans or non north americans you are at a major disadvantage. Here’ why: on a good connection shots connect when they should, you are in time with everyone else and you play on your home server. For non americans you are not on your home server almost all the time. That means a delay in time by a fraction of a second out of phase-shots dont connect because you will be a fraction of time in the past effectively shooting shadows. You will lose more 1v1s like this and will get very few, if any perfect kills. Some pros like jimbo from the uk downolay this but he plays during the working day when most non americans are at work and anericans are asleep. He does not play evenings-meaning he probably doesnt get usa servers as much. Others like vetoed suffer from it but then downplays it too much. Turley the number 1 ffa player thiugh accepts non americans are at a disadvantage. In any case it is crucial. Shots missed because of servers mean your kills are stolen easier too and you die more often. This leads into tooic number 2. You will also get killed round corners too as enemies se you before it is possible on your screen. In short, us players are probably ok unless you are east v west coast v canadian etc. In one game 4 usa plat players beat 2 uk.onyx 1800 players in ffa because of this abd yet reviewing footage and by watching strafe patterns and map movement they were not visibly anywhere near as skilled. But connection is just unbelievably important. Europeans are always gonna be short changed until region lock becomes an option.
Spawns-the more you die the more you will get bad spawns. So eu players again are gonna do worse here. Anyways, spawns greatly influence how you do in a match. In several consecutive bad spawns you can be shot straight from a spawn by 2 people and die before you can see what happens. This leads to onyx players losing v plats if it happens very often. You may also spawn furthest from opponents. When getting to 25 is the key issue you really need close players to kill so it is a big factor. It can also be lucky too like spawning right on a power weapon and being able to kill everyone without earning anything. Happen enough times and you win no problem. Cos you cant die easily and people then respawn disadvantageously again and again. Here the skill element is minimised, and if all players are equal skill it will decide a game. Watching vetoed on ffa and he loses purely on spawns loads of times and so does everyone else. Some maps are particularly bad- tyrant on sundeck is a threeway spawn at the start and on sniper spawn too. Spawning mid on pegasus is a death sentence too. The maps on ffa have bad spawn locations for ffa and the maps are way too small in general-except torque which is way too big and should be a big team map.
Then we come to skill. If all things are equal.then of course skill would be the most dominant factor. In a fair match map moevement, power weapon control and strafes will decide who wins. And.it does. But not all.the time. Most pros will be champ in ffa but they normally live in usa so have server equality so if spawns arent bad then they will win more often because of skill. Same for onyx against plat on a fair connection with fair spawns. But as mentioned earlier this is distorted by spawns and connections. Last place could be the worst or they could have the top two issues ruin their game to ablam. You cant decide skill based on one match. As a result the leaderboard for ffa MAY not be the best indicator of skill. It involves a degree of spawn and connection luck as well. A diamond 6 uk ffa player could br equal to a usa onyx 1700.player but havr the first 2 factors ruin his chances over multiple games. Non usa players will on avrrage have a lower csr as a result, which is a reflection on 343 nit doing enough to solve many problems as well. This is not meant as a disservi e to usa players-they earn their ranks. But for non usa players we must realise their skill will never be reflected well in halo 5.
So there yiu have it. To have a good halo 5 experience in ffa yiu need spawns, connection and opponent skill to be on your side to do well. If any of them are not for whatever reason, then ffa will not work well and it has causef misery for many players. It means ranks are at best only acurate to a division or two either way and should not be taken seriously.