Hey yo,
I am pretty much reaching my breaking point with Warzone. This gametype has defined my Halo 5 experience, and in the past I found ways to work through some of the challenges. However, 343’s lack of effort to make improvements and further fine-tune the gameplay in this area is translating into a poor and worsening experience.
The problems that have persisted for almost a year are still rampant, and getting worse in many cases. As the population naturally declines over the games lifecycle, little is being done to keep engagement and interest for the casual player.
Several issues have persisted for quite a while. What is being done to make improvements??
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Matchmaking: This has been the bane of the existence for Warzone players almost since launch. The matchmaking is absolutely horrid. I have mentioned some of these points before. Even worse, 343 essentially denied the prevalence of farming. With population numbers dwindling, there is a huge gap in the player base. For the most part, I’m come across the “tryhards” or “casuals”. There is no middle ground. I have done considerable sampling of the “expanded” vs “balanced” search function. There is literally zero difference. If you don’t match a full squad, you match a complete mishmash of randoms. I can’t remember the last time I played an actual ‘balanced’ matchup. It’s either farm or get farmed. The majority is the latter.
Solution? - Either create a “squad” and “social” Warzone playlist, or limit Warzone groups to 4 people.
After bouncing from company to company, like so many do, I resigned to just play with my few friends and try to just enjoy the game with them. Every game we sound like a broken record, “Let’s bust out our nasty reqs this game!”. However, that never goes down. We are mostly getting farmed, and it’s frustrating to pull out a req to get smashed before you even get a second to use it.
- Boss Refresh: Originally, I appreciated the attempt to shake things up in Warzone. However, this change has made Warzone so chaotic that the core purpose of the game is busted. I commented on this before: Here and Here. In the latter example, when 343 responded, I kinda felt bad for being rude. However, I am not regretting that feeling. That post was made over 4 months ago. You have plenty of data and metrics to see what a mess this is. Noctus is completely unplayable. Bosses stack all over the map, you can’t even spawn in many cases. The combination of the ‘matchmaking’ and ‘boss refresh’ issues is evident when you come across full squads. The don’t even bother with the objectives or AI. They triple-cap and farm until enough people quit that they can core. The boss refresh is a mess, and Mythic bosses have no place in Warzone. In Warzone, you have to slay, hold bases, and kill bosses to score points against other teams. That is more than enough objectives. Mythic bosses makes sense ONLY in FireFight, where a WHOLE TEAM is focused on that SOLE objective. I’m tired of spawning a banshee, hearing the stupid grunt jockey fire his needles on the other side of the map, and a few seconds later, i’m getting blown up by him. Obnoxious.
Solutions? - Increase boss time spawns, don’t allow new AI to spawn until old ones are killed. Remove/reduce Mythic bosses. Limit AI agro range.
343 - You have had plenty of time to look at “data and metrics”. A lot of improvements that can really benefit Warzone don’t require massive coding efforts or massive changes to the gameplay. I can’t fathom how no action has been taken. You have seen the disease you created with Achilles, surely. Since then, nothing has been done to add balance to the gametype.
I’m pretty much ready to give up on this game after A LOT of time invested. Updates with “content” were cranked out regularly, which coincidentally resulted in shiney new req packs for people to buy. Do your customers a solid and FIX your game and do some things to improve it in good faith, as opposed to adding something just meant to drive more req sales.