Changes Made To Halo 5 After Beta Feedback

After the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta 343 Studios listened to the players and made some changes in response to feedback from over 290 years of collective game time during the beta.

For example, because 11% of players don't like sprint, in custom games it will be a toggle as to whether it's in the game or not.

Other changes are :

• 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.)

Changes to weapons include the new smart-link system allowing the Hydra to curve shots around cover and the following:

• 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

Multiplayer experience has had some changes too, built around the competative arena model, the look and feel of the matches is that they might be broadcast to UNSC personnel (we can imagine people cheering on Naomi-010).

Big changes post beta are:

• 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

Matchmaking changes are :

• 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

Finally, there's an interesting infographic put out by 343...