Halo 5: Guardians to Change With Beta Feedback

Image courtesy of 343 Industries blog.

Halo 5: Guardians beta has been over for a while, but today developer 343 Industries revealed some interesting stats, as well as explaining some of the changes coming from the beta and user feedback.

Speaking through a blog post, 343 Industries has revealed that about 1 million players have helped shape the following changes being made to the next iteration in the Halo franchise: 

• Spartan Abilities

• Increase strafe acceleration (faster, more responsive strafing)
• Increase base speed (faster base movement)
• 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.)

• Weapon Changes
• 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 Changes
• 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 Rankings
• 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

It seems that this beta is actually a real beta, meant to shape the game, and not just some glorified demo. Do any of these changes seem appealing to you? Did you participate in the beta? For more news on Halo 5: Guardians, Xbox One and gaming today, stay tuned to The Jesters Court.