The Halo 5: Guardians beta ran for several weeks, allowing players to experience various game modes, settings, and maps. 343 Industries was collecting feedback and information throughout its duration, and has now announced the changes it will be bringing to the game as a result.
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Studio Head for Halo 5, Josh Holmes, posted a very long blog entry on Halo Waypoint stating how impressed he was with the communitys feedback and explaining the changes that will take place. The beta was not just a near-launch version of the game, but a cross-section of the title in the middle of development.
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Because of that, the suggestions provided by the community are able to provide real, meaningful feedback. Before getting to the specific gameplay tweaks and changes (all listed in bullet form below), Holmes explains this philosophy, and how the team went about collecting information:
"Halo 5: Guardians represents one of the most substantial evolutions of core combat in franchise history. We felt it was crucial to get it in the hands of fans early to ensure we have enough development time to react to key learnings and deliver the best possible game when we release later this year. This represented a shift for us as a team and a studio by sharing the development process with our community and having you help shape the game.
"The level of engagement and response from our community shattered all of our expectations. Over the course of the three week beta we saw nearly 20 million games played, accounting for 290 years of collective game time. Throughout the beta we monitored feedback channels including web forums, reddit, Twitter and Facebook. From these sources we tracked literally thousands of pieces of detailed feedback."
The gameplay changes themselves are pretty plentiful, and affect a wide variety of the game's modes and mechanics. I had seen and read some of these criticisms myself from fans online during the beta, so it's good that these topics are being addressed. From matchmaking to the sniper score, 343 is aiming to improve the full release for as many fans as possible. It should also be noted that even more changes and fixes than those listed here will be ready at launch, as the beta was held roughly a year from release.
Spartan Abilities
- Increase base speed (faster base movement)
- Increase strafe acceleration (faster, more responsive strafing)
- Reduce top sprint speed (narrow the delta between base movement and sprint)
- Modify Ground Pound controls to prevent conflicts w/ crouch jumping
- General tuning & bug fixes for all Spartan Abilities (Thrusters, Clamber, Ground Pound, etc.)
Weapons
- Sniper Rifle: improve scope experience to making it less "clunky" and faster to scope
- DMR: adjust position of the scope to improve visibility
- Bring back the SPNKr Rocket Launcher as a legendary version of the weapon
- Reduce bonuses for automatic weapons in Smart-Link & w/ headshots
- Remove grenade detonation in mid-air based on weapon fire
- Ability to turn on/off vibration feedback for weapons
- General tuning and bug fixing for all weapons
Presentation
- Post-death replay: this will become an opt-in feature. After death, players will see a traditional follow-cam and have the option to view a replay of their death from the killer's perspective (as long as the feature is enabled within the playlist)
- Medals: decrease frequency and number of medals displayed in the medal feed
- Spartan chatter: players will have the option to turn this on or off in the settings menu
- Adding highlights to placed/dropped weapons to make them easier to see
- General tuning for announcer and Spartan chatter to reduce the frequency of events and focus on the information that matters most to players
Skill Ranking & Matchmaking
- Improved skill detection during placement phase
- Improved skill matching
- Improved team balancing
- Prevent skill boosting
- General bug fixing & tuning
- Much faster matches
- Better skill matching
- Better feedback to players in the lobby and matchmaking experiences
- Allow players to set desired datacenter for matchmaking (may impact matchmaking speed and skill balance)
- Improved party vs party matchmaking
- Hide CSR ranks until in match to de-incentivize quitting
- Punish quitters with CSR penalties and matchmaking bans
