The Halo 5: Guardians Beta is More Fun than Advanced Warfare

[hard1ine]

I love how, in a beta with 7 weapons, I face a legitimate challenge from more than two weapons in a single game, as opposed to the BAL-27 and ASM1 spam in Advanced Warfare.

This game is promising, and I think 343 learned their lesson from their failed Call of Duty clone called Halo 4.

[Deleted]

I agree; we should always reward works of art on pure ambition. THAT is what criticism is all about. As gamers it is our dream to take a game on what it could be; if the developers fail to read our minds they will face our IRE! If the VG industry experts ignore our vocal minority we will deface them for making the game their way. Everything that will be will be perfect; that's how the world works, and these other guys I'm routing for now can only deliver.

That's the beautiful thing about what will be. Games in the future don't have problems! Games that have been released and reviewed accordingly have flaws; and that's bad. Look FORWARD to what's new and exciting! From now on that's all what we should do; just promise good games and never release them so that they'll be perfect forever. New concepts filling our heads and vapour dreams; it's like a lottery ticket bought with exorbitant amounts of time and emotion.

[ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42)]

Halo 5, the best Call of Duty evar

[ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42)]

[pachiderm]

Jan 1, 2015 3:19:56 GMT -5 hard1ine said:

I love how, in a beta with 7 weapons, I face a legitimate challenge from more than two weapons in a single game, as opposed to the BAL-27 and ASM1 spam in Advanced Warfare.

This game is promising, and I think 343 learned their lesson from their failed Call of Duty clone called Halo 4.

Game sucks nuts. Game was engineered to suck nuts. There is nothing about this game that doesn't irritate me by sucking too much nuts. Even the announcer sounds like his nuts are being sucked too much while he commentates on the game. The guns sound like a pair of nuts being sucked. The player models sound distinctly like their nuts are being sucked while they make their gay little callouts. You cannot disable vibrate. The entire game runs at a laughably low resolution and the textures look like they're covered in a mixture of genital perspiration and saliva. The boost mechanic makes your player model fly across the map as if he's saying "oh no, you can't suck my nuts, you silly goose." I've never joined a game in less than 5 minutes of waiting, which makes me feel like the matchmaking is actively trying to suck its own nuts, and won't put me into a game until it either succeeds or gets tired and falls asleep. Overall, I give this game two pairs of sucked nuts/10.

[pachiderm]

Jan 2, 2015 2:18:31 GMT -5 Mousey said:

Jan 2, 2015 2:15:57 GMT -5 pachiderm said:

You cannot disable vibrate.

you cant fucking write this shit

You can't tell me what to do.

[wittyscorpion]

New content coming out: www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/community/blog-posts/halo-5-guardians-multiplayer-beta-week-2-info

New game mode (pretty much a SnD variant), new maps, and a new weapon.

I have mainly heard positive things about this game from Halo fans. It is nothing like CoD BTW , and is going the complete opposite direction of H4.

I still haven't tried it yet, because I dread being pwned. However, with a ranking system and SBMM in place, I SHOULD be matched with people at my level. I am diving in this Sunday. Bronze (or whatever the lowest division is), here I come!

[UrbaneVirtuoso]

Jan 2, 2015 14:27:06 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

SBMM

Dohoho, you said the naughty word! How else are people going to pub stomp? Reverse boosting? :3

[wittyscorpion]

Jan 2, 2015 14:38:02 GMT -5 UrbaneVirtuoso said:

Jan 2, 2015 14:27:06 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

SBMM

Dohoho, you said the naughty word! How else are people going to pub stomp? Reverse boosting? :3

That's what I am afraid of, hopefully nobody reverse boost into my bracket

With the visible rankings and the lack of scorestreaks (specifically: no "nukes"), I see little reason to do so, but of course I could be wrong...

[n1gh7]

Jan 2, 2015 14:27:06 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

New content coming out: www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/community/blog-posts/halo-5-guardians-multiplayer-beta-week-2-info

New game mode (pretty much a SnD variant), new maps, and a new weapon.

I have mainly heard positive things about this game from Halo fans. It is nothing like CoD BTW , and is going the complete opposite direction of H4.

I still haven't tried it yet, because I dread being pwned. However, with a ranking system and SBMM in place, I SHOULD be matched with people at my level. I am diving in this Sunday. Bronze (or whatever the lowest division is), here I come!

As a halo fan, I don't like it. It plays exactly like cod with higher ttks. It's disappointing to say the least. Maybe later on I'll organize all my thoughts about the game after I get some time into the other game modes and BRs starts, but it's not looking good.

Also it's Iron I find the matchmaking to not be too strict. Often you'll get matched with people in a division above and below you, but not more. I'm not so sure about how the teams get balanced from the pool of players in the game through it doesn't always seem to work (e.g. Puts the 2 players who are a division above the rest on the same team) but it at least recognizes when it puts you into a game that it expects you to lose and you lose less points.

[wittyscorpion]

Really? From the limited game play I watched it does not look like CoD at all. The only aspects that resemble CoD are:

1) The concept of ADS. However, since firing from hip has no spread at all, it is just for bigger zoom;
2) AR might be a little bit too powerful at the moment. But since it is beta, I am not too concerned about weapon balance yet. There are a limited weapons in the game, so balance should not be hard;
3) Sprint;

IMHO these aspects can attract CoD fans without breaking the Halo feel.

The core game play still looks like Classic Halo. Headshot focus, team shots are very important, and fight over power weapons.

What I hope H5 turns out to be: not a popular shooter like CoD that appeals to casuals (H4 proved that is not a good idea), but one with dedicated fan base.

And yes: "Iron" sounds like my forte and "Bronze" is going to be my stretch goal

[wittyscorpion]

Evil or not, Sprint is here to stay, just like ADS. New gen FPS players have gotten used to them, and all popular games nowadays have them (at least the ones I play anyway: CoD, Titanfall, Destiny). When I was playing MCC the habits of using these two are way too strong to overcome.

343i did manage to pull the worst game launch of 2014, and maybe one of the worst in the history of video games. Not going to preorder their games any more, they have to prove that what they made is worth of my money, and more importantly, time investment.

3 week beta is a good start. We will see.

[ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42)]

Jan 2, 2015 2:15:57 GMT -5 pachiderm said:

Jan 1, 2015 3:19:56 GMT -5 hard1ine said:

I love how, in a beta with 7 weapons, I face a legitimate challenge from more than two weapons in a single game, as opposed to the BAL-27 and ASM1 spam in Advanced Warfare.

This game is promising, and I think 343 learned their lesson from their failed Call of Duty clone called Halo 4.

Game sucks nuts. Game was engineered to suck nuts. There is nothing about this game that doesn't irritate me by sucking too much nuts. Even the announcer sounds like his nuts are being sucked too much while he commentates on the game. The guns sound like a pair of nuts being sucked. The player models sound distinctly like their nuts are being sucked while they make their gay little callouts. You cannot disable vibrate. The entire game runs at a laughably low resolution and the textures look like they're covered in a mixture of genital perspiration and saliva. The boost mechanic makes your player model fly across the map as if he's saying "oh no, you can't suck my nuts, you silly goose." I've never joined a game in less than 5 minutes of waiting, which makes me feel like the matchmaking is actively trying to suck its own nuts, and won't put me into a game until it either succeeds or gets tired and falls asleep. Overall, I give this game two pairs of sucked nuts/10.

Noob

[jaedrik]

I played it at my sister's house.
It was fun.
It felt very Halo.

[pachiderm]

Jan 3, 2015 19:29:32 GMT -5 jaedrik said:

I played it at my sister's house.
It was fun.
It felt very Halo.

Have you played much Halo?

[n1gh7]

Jan 4, 2015 0:41:24 GMT -5 pachiderm said:

Jan 3, 2015 19:29:32 GMT -5 jaedrik said:

I played it at my sister's house.
It was fun.
It felt very Halo.

Have you played much Halo?

Clearly not.

[jaedrik]

I have played them all through on legendary. I played the multiplayers of each for years.
And, ODST is one of my favorite games.
ADS is functionally a visual change and nothing more, aside from no automatic unscoping. It's still very team oriented. You don't have backup you can't succeed against competent opponents, or things reach a stalemate, due to the long TTKs.

[wittyscorpion]

I have friends who have reached the level of semi-pro, he has played a crap load of Halo2/Halo3 in the past. He thinks that H5 is truly Halo, especially now with BR start.

I follow some Halo pros on Twitter, they like Halo 5 as well. Of course, we have to take that with grain of salt though because these guys NEED Halo 5 to succeed to continue to have a career.

Anyway, these feedbacks are promising because this is only beta. I am diving in today to see myself.

[wittyscorpion]

Did not play yesterday, played 2 games today so far. In the first game I was matched into a bunch of Onyx guys, and with a controller setting that confused the hell of myself. Needless to say I got pwned hard: 0 kills, a bunch of deaths. Second game I was matched with Gold/Sliver/Bronze, still did horribly because I still have no idea of what I am doing, just happy with being able to come away with a greater than 0 number in the kill column

For bros who are playing this, I have questions regarding shots to kill:

1) BR & DMR: I understand that they are 4 shot kill, 3 shots to remove shield, then one headshot;
2) LR: 3 shot kill if zoomed in? How about from hip? 4 or 5?
3) Magnum?

It's too early for me to form a mature opinion about this game, but so far I can see myself investing times into this game. The core game play is fun enough even when I suck badly. As long as I am matched with players at my skill level I am happy to keep playing.

[n1gh7]

Gotta say, with BR starts, the game is much more fun. It's not "Halo", but I can enjoy it.

1) yeah
2) i think so
3) not sure, maybe 5

[wittyscorpion]

Starting the 3rd game, game play experiences become much more pleasant as matchmaking finally finds my crowd . Played 8 more games and I got my ranking tier: no surprise her, Bronze 1 .

"Halo" or not (I would still say H5 is more "Halo" than H4 and Reach), the game has the ingredients I like:

1) Slow TTK + importance of critical shots / team shots
2) Interesting movement system (which "classic" halo fans probably don't like, but for a mediocre player like me, escape needs to be an option . It's a nice touch to disable health regen when sprinting, letting the players who have shots advantage maintain that and making the cat-and-mouse game much more interesting)
3) Skill based matchmaking
4) No BS streak rewards (e.g.: scorestreaks in CoD, Super in Destiny Crucible)

These plus convenience (aka "noob/terrible-player-friendly") features like

a) Killcam
b) Waypoints / announcement for power weapons
c) Hitmarks

Make the game fun to me. 60FPS is great too.

I can see myself playing this game on a regular basis.

[wittyscorpion]

Notes on H5 beta matchmaking:

1) I can find lobby fast enough;
2) SBMM works pretty well;
3) If you are in a dead lobby, there is no way to back out. You'll have to quit the game and restart. Fortunately this does not happen very often (I needed to do this 2-3 times over the 10 games I played;

[wittyscorpion]

One of the most useful movements in H5 is thrust. The following is a great "tip" video on how to use it effectively:

[wittyscorpion]

How to use Hydra effectively: lock first then fire 2-3 shots into the sky

www.xboxdvr.com/Deez/dbc6338b-38ad-47ed-8550-a18b7cb33aa5

[eLantern]

I've enjoyed the Beta thus far for the most part, but the restrictive control schemes annoy the living shit out of me. I've been flipping all around trying to find something that I can get comfortable with. Trying the H5 default, Halo 4, Bumper Jumper, Fishstick, and Green Thumb, but what seems to be missing from all of those outside of the default is the need to re-link the Ground Pound mechanic to the Sprint mechanic when in the air similar to the option that's provided for the Stabilizer mechanic. If I could use the Fishstick or Halo 4 control scheme while maintaining the effective use of the Ground Pound mechanic I think I'd be fairly content with the control schemes, but I'd still prefer custom control schemes with full remapping abilities. I don't understand why developers can't do this nowadays -- it's 2015 for fuck's sake!

The Beta's gameplay has proven to be quite enjoyable and IMO feels very Halo-like (especially with the focus on balanced starts) while the mobility is boosted way up which brings about it's own new differences that I don't find out of place or aka "bad" within the franchise. I look forward to getting more hands-on time with the Beta and really pushing 343i to incorporate either a minor control option change (re-linking Ground Pound to the Sprint mechanic) or a big change (fully remap-able controls); plus, maybe a suggestion to add a "final" kill-cam because if you're going to have death cams in the game why the fuck would you not incorporate the best aspect of it -- Replaying the Final Kill of the match for all to see!

[wittyscorpion]

Jan 6, 2015 19:25:11 GMT -5 eLantern said:

I've enjoyed the Beta thus far for the most part, but the restrictive control schemes annoy the living shit out of me. I've been flipping all around trying to find something that I can get comfortable with. Trying the H5 default, Halo 4, Bumper Jumper, Fishstick, and Green Thumb, but what seems to be missing from all of those outside of the default is the need to re-link the Ground Pound mechanic to the Sprint mechanic when in the air similar to the option that's provided for the Stabilizer mechanic. If I could use the Fishstick or Halo 4 control scheme while maintaining the effective use of the Ground Pound mechanic I think I'd be fairly content with the control schemes, but I'd still prefer custom control schemes with full remapping abilities. I don't understand why developers can't do this nowadays -- it's 2015 for fuck's sake!

The Beta's gameplay has proven to be quite enjoyable and IMO feels very Halo-like (especially with the focus on balanced starts) while the mobility is boosted way up which brings about it's own new differences that I don't find out of place or aka "bad" within the franchise. I look forward to getting more hands-on time with the Beta and really pushing 343i to incorporate either a minor control option change (re-linking Ground Pound to the Sprint mechanic) or a big change (fully remap-able controls); plus, maybe a suggestion to add a "final" kill-cam because if you're going to have death cams in the game why the fuck would you not incorporate the best aspect of it -- Replaying the Final Kill of the match for all to see!

I share your sentiment towards H5's direction

I have been using Green Thumb, which is consistent with my controller loadouts across multiple shooters (Titanfall, Destiny, CoD AW, Halo MCC).

I have not even attempted "Ground Pound" though. It seems to be the most complex movement to use. Is the following how it can be activated?

a) Get up in the air
b) Crouch to enable the aiming reticle
c) Aim at your intended victim
d) Un-crouch to pound

In Greenthumb, crouch is mapped to "B". Seems to be OK for me (I do use a claw grip so buttons are usually not a problem).

[eLantern]

I've personally narrowed down my use more or less to the Fishstick and Green Thumb schemes now; plus, occasionally I might switch to Halo 4's scheme because it just feels more Halo-like for me given my history with the franchise. Honestly, I can't decide which I like better though of the Fishstick/Green Thumb setups. I mean, at times I prefer having my grenade button be on the left bumper because of the time I've been putting in playing Destiny; however, at other times I prefer having my grenade button be on the right bumper because of my history with Call of Duty and my recent time with TitanFall, but I've never been a big fan of having the melee button be the right thumbstick (I always used tactical in CoD; though, TitanFall's controls forced me to adapt somewhat). I like using the Halo 4 scheme because I'm so use to having the zoom feature on the right thumb stick in Halo along with grenades being the left trigger and with melee on the right bumper. For me finding something consistent between multiple titles is important because my muscle memory takes time to re-adjust when switching back and forth between games.

In truth though out of all the schemes offered within the beta the Halo 5 default scheme does allow for the best effective use of all the Spartan abilities or mechanic functions as I don't play with a claw technique, but for whatever reason I've been slow to adopt to it and I've gotten fairly use to using the "B" button for toggling my crouch in many titles. It would be nice if they also offered another setup that put the jump button on the left bumper without moving sprint from the left thumbstick so I could see how that played - something a little more akin to Titanfall's control scheme after swapping the jump button to the left bumper.

You're understanding of Ground Pound is correct.

I should also add that another grievance of the Halo 5: Guardians beta is that the consistency in finding matches could be much improved. It seems that if you're not put into a completely full lobby with everyone appearing to have mics right away then you simply wont find a match despite the "searching for players" notation. I know it's a beta though so I want to reserve my real judgement and criticism for the gameplay itself at this point and to that regards I think it's been pretty good.

Btw, I can't tell you how many times I've tried performing a double jump in-game after getting done playing some Destiny and/or Titanfall. I have to wonder if that wouldn't be a bad mechanic to include in Halo down the road (if it's only a quick double jump move and not reflective of a jet pack's extended rising thrust) due to the booster-pack that's considered standard equipment for Spartan soldiers allowing it to make some thematic sense; though, the negative reaction that would cause seems pretty obvious as many people are incessant on hating on Halo already for implementing the amount of mechanics from other titles that they have - me personally, I don't mind and wouldn't mind that addition either as it will only continue to serve in raising the soldier's fluid mobility which I like.

[wittyscorpion]

For bros who have played H5 beta, what's your opinion on sprint?

a) Sprint is the source of all evil and should have never been included in any game with "Halo" in the title;
b) Sprint is good to have for offensive purposes, but should not be allowed as an escape option. It should only be enabled for players who have full shield;
c) Sprint is now a signature of modern day shooters, and should be part of Halo. Using it for escape presents an interesting cat-and-mouse mini-game;

The reason why I ask is because this seems to be the biggest H5 beta debate among halo fans. While almost everybody are saying positive things about thrust, and the majority are fine or neutral with "Smart Link" (aka ADS), many are against sprint.

I don't have a strong opinion any more, fine with all 3. On the one hand, I can live in a sprint-less world where the only ways out of a gun fight are to either kill the opponent or be killed. On the other hand, I like to have richer movement options enabled by the addition of sprint, not only the ability of running at higher speed, but also the derived movements from it, like slide (=sprint+crouch) and shoulder charge (=sprint+melee).

Maybe b) is the right way to go? The main issue I have with that is the "asymmetric" rule between offense vs. defense is too artificial. I don't like movement options to be context-sensitive. Once I get used to the movement controls, I want to be able to use them equally in all situations.

[n1gh7]

Jan 7, 2015 12:04:19 GMT -5 eLantern said:

Btw, I can't tell you how many times I've tried performing a double jump in-game after getting done playing some Destiny and/or Titanfall. I have to wonder if that wouldn't be a bad mechanic to include in Halo down the road (if it's only a quick double jump move and not reflective of a jet pack's extended rising thrust) due to the booster-pack that's considered standard equipment for Spartan soldiers allowing it to make some thematic sense; though, the negative reaction that would cause seems pretty obvious as many people are incessant on hating on Halo already for implementing the amount of mechanics from other titles that they have - me personally, I don't mind and wouldn't mind that addition either as it will only continue to serve in raising the soldier's fluid mobility which I like.

You can use thruster pack while in mid air to get a kind of "blink" double jump kind of movement however it only moves you on the horizontal... So if you're at the right height but need to travel sideways or forward more to make a jump, it's a good option. Also, you can activate ground pound to give you some additional height and a sort of hover sideways sort of thing. And, if you are in the ground pound mode and you clamber, you don't get the weapon down thing where you can't shoot so you'll be able to fire right away. These things combined with clamber can give you a significant amount of movement options, although they are harder to execute than in other games.

[n1gh7]

Jan 7, 2015 18:49:33 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

For bros who have played H5 beta, what's your opinion on sprint?

a) Sprint is the source of all evil and should never been included in any game with "Halo" in the title;
b) Sprint is good to have for offensive purposes, but should not be allowed as an escape option. It should only be enabled for players who have full shield;
c) Sprint is now a signature of modern day shooters, and should be part of Halo. Using it for escape presents an interesting cat-and-mouse mini-game;

The reason why I ask is because this seems to be the biggest H5 beta debate among halo fans. While almost everybody are saying positive things about thrust, and the majority are fine or neutral with "Smart Link" (aka ADS), many are against sprint.

I don't have a strong opinion any more, fine with all 3. On the one hand, I can live in a sprint-less world where the only way out of a gun fight is to either kill the opponent or be killed. On the other hand, I like to have richer movement options enabled by the addition of sprint, not only the ability of running at higher speed, but also the derived movements from it, like slide (=sprint+crouch) and shoulder charge (=sprint+melee).

Maybe b) is the right way to go? The main issue I have with that is that the "asymmetric" rule between offense vs. defense is too artificial.

Okay here's the thing with sprint. With sprint they had to make the maps bigger, which means that they made the average engagement distance either really close (two guys sprint around a corner and see each other) or really far (two people see each other along the long sight lines that are created when the maps are enlarged). So maybe that's ok, but then what they did is added a zoom/ADS to automatic weapons. Classic halo has never had automatic weapons with zoom. The lack of zoom firmly put their ideal ranges and close (AR) and really close (SMG). With the addition of "smart scope" and ADS on these automatic weapons the ranges at which they are effective has increased. Now you might think that this change is a good thing, due to the map size increase or that those weapons used to be "useless" but what has happened is that they wanted to keep the classic Halo feel that the community wanted so they couldn't add a movement speed penalty to zoom or a general hipfire nerf. So for the automatic weapons' (and actually all weapons too) zoom ends up being a complete improvement over hipfire with little penalty. So now, you NEED to zoom/ADS to be effective whereas before the whole point was that zoom wasn't needed to be effective at range.

Additionally with sprint added I can tell that they tried to curb people's ability to escape by decreasing the TTK of all the weapons across the board. But this, with the spread improvements due to ADS/zoom on automatic weapons, kills a player's ability to do anything when outnumbered in 2v1 situation. This is unfortunate as Halo was always known for giving players options when outnumbered or down a shot to succeed. So that seems to be lost too.

Also another thing I noticed is that they seemed to increase the shield regen time (time since you last too damage to when you start recharging) probably due to the fact that sprint resets this timer. This time is too fast, but a simple fix that I can see while keeping the sprint = no regen mechanic is to make sprint only "pause" the timer rather than reset it. This will allow them to increase that timer while not making the game feel sluggish.

Anyways overall I guess what I'm trying to get out of this is that sprint is shoehorning Halo to be a different game than what it used to be.