343 Industries has shared a number of changes that it will be making to Halo 5: Guardian‘s multiplayer following feedback it received during the recent closed beta.
One major change coming as the result of feedback is the ability to toggle Spartan Abilities on and off in custom games. “The results from the HCFP surveys showed that nearly 11% of HCFP participants felt that Halo should not have sprint. It is important that we continue to evolve Halo multiplayer while ensuring that legacy Halo players feel right at home,” executive producer Josh Holmes wrote.
“As a result, I’m happy to say that we will provide toggles in custom games so that sprint and the other Spartan Abilities can be turned off. By putting these tools in the hands of players we will give them the ability to play the game their way, enabling them to create a more traditional style of Halo if they prefer.”
Other tweaks being made to Spartan Abilities include:
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.)
Several changes are also being made to weapon balance, with the series’ newest weapon, the Hydra, receiving a buff by making it more effective out of zoom to ensure that it feels like a true power weapon. The full list of weapon changes can be found below:
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
Other planned changes include presentation adjustments, Competitive Skill rating improvements, and matchmaking improvements. Here are the planned changes in detail:
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
Competitive Skill Rating (CSR)
Improved skill detection during placement phase
Improved skill matching
Improved team balancing
Prevent skill boosting
General bug fixing & tuning
Matchmaking
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
“With the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta being held so early in development, there is a laundry list of other bug fixes and improvements that we are tracking as a team,” Holmes added. “Far too many to document here. Everything from weapon placements on maps, to lighting improvements, to rule tweaks in game modes and modifications to the motion tracker to encourage more movement at higher levels of play. Our team constantly looks for ways to improve the game and we’ll continue to do so until launch later this year and beyond.
“Looking back, this beta has been an amazing gift for us. The feedback we have received from all of you has been invaluable in helping us to improve our game. On behalf of the entire Halo 5: Guardians team, we thank you for your support. We absolutely couldn’t do this without you.”
Halo 5: Guardians is set to launch this fall exclusively on Xbox One.
