343 Industries has just ended a nearly month long multiplayer beta for Halo 5: Guardians. During that time a lot was learned, both about game balance and perhaps even more importantly what Halo fans think of the game. As seen in the infographic above, tons of players contributed to the beta, offering 343 invaluable information. Now, 343 is using that information to refine its next entry in the Halo series.
A large post has found its way onto the official Halo Blog which details what 343 is doing to respond to feedback received during the Halo 5 Multiplayer Beta. Below you’ll find a concise list of everything addressed:
Some of the other improvements that we are making to Spartan Abilities and general mobility coming out of the beta:
- 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.)
Other improvements we’ll be making to presentation based on fan feedback:
- 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
Coming out of beta we have a number of fixes and improvements already in flight for matchmaking but at a high level our focus is on the following:
- 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
Some of the other improvements that we’ll be making to weapons in the game follow:
- 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
343 knows that a lot is riding on Halo 5; not only the studio’s reputation, but the future of Xbox’s most important franchise. Whether or not its efforts to listen to fan feedback are successful remains to be seen, but at the very least we’ve learned that the studio is committed to keeping Halo‘s legacy alive.
