Halo 5: Guardians (Xbox One) - Coronavirus Relief Fund DLC (p81)

NickSCFC wrote:Sorry didn't see that, hmm, custom games with friends seems good if it's free

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MONITOR'S BOUNTY PREVIEW

Well folks, the hour has finally come. It’s no surprise that this time of year exudes a spirit of gift-giving, and we couldn’t be more excited to help you unwrap a very special present from us to you: Monitor’s Bounty. Halo 5’s latest content release is an epic salvo of experience-enhancing additions, from new weapons, armor, and skins, to brand new ways to build and play, all alongside the biggest Forge update ever seen in a Halo game. In fact, we've got so much in store that we've split up the reveal across two days.

Today, we’re excited to begin our bountiful breakdown of everything that’s in store for your hungry hard drives on Thursday, Dec. 8. That’s right, baby – the day after tomorrow. Be sure to return to Waypoint tomorrow for deep dives into Forge, Canon Fodder, Warzone, and Playlists.

To kick off this party, let’s take a look at all the free REQ items heading your way in Monitor’s Bounty.



We’ll be talking more in the near future about how you can acquire those last few items above (everything can be earned by playing the game!) Stay tuned…

Check back tomorrow for Grim's Canon Fodder for a deeper look at the fiction behind many of the new REQs included in Monitor's Bounty. For now, here's a preview of a sweet new assassination, "Inevitability."



"JOIN IN PROGRESS" CUSTOM GAMES BROWSER

The Monitor's Bounty update will bring the long-awaited Custom Games Browser to Halo 5 on Xbox One and Windows 10. Here's what 343's UX Design Lead Vincent Hui has to say about this new feature:

Vincent: We know getting a full fireteam together to run customs isn’t always easy, and while Looking For Group is great for appointment gaming, sometimes you just want to jump in and discover something new. The new Custom Games Browser enables you to search for in-progress games from the main menu. Games you can join are based on their privacy settings when they are created in the lobby. We’ve also updated the Content Browser so that if you find a map or mode that you like, you’ll be able to browse for in-progress custom games from that file’s options.

This Custom Games Browser is something the team has wanted to add for a long time for the community, but we needed the Content Browser and the search engine that powers it up and running first. Thanks for being patient, and we hope you enjoy it whether you’re running Duck Hunt 24/7, or just looking for new friends to slay!

And here's a quick glimpse of how it will look in game – again, on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs:


(Edit: More pics at the link below - MM)

FULL ARENA & FORGE EXPERIENCE ON WINDOWS 10

With the addition of the new Custom Games Browser, players now have access to the entire Halo 5: Forge and Arena multiplayer experience on Windows 10, completely free of charge. Though it doesn't include Matchmaking, Halo 5 on Windows 10 will now make it possible to find and play games with friends and strangers alike in addition to having full access to an ever-expanding, incredibly robust Forge game and map editor. Build, share, and play Halo 5 on your Windows 10 PC for free and unleash the new functionality of Halo 5: Forge to create brand new experiences when Monitor's Bounty is released on Dec. 8.

OBSERVER MODE

Another new feature coming to Halo 5 with the Monitor's Bounty update is Observer Mode. Once again, here's 343 UX Design Lead Vincent Hui with some insights into this cool new addition:

Vincent: For the 2016 Halo World Championship, we unveiled an in-game overlay known as the Observer HUD that showed the status and weapon details for all eight players in the match. It was a great tool for viewers and casters to see how many players were on respawn and who had Power Weapons and Power-Ups. Not bad for a weekend prototype by Jeff Christy, Gareth Lough, Sean Walsh, and myself that Chris Lee allowed us to slip into the build just before the event. After the tournament, we moved onto other fun things, and we haven’t had a chance to get back to this pet project until now. It’s a long journey to go from prototype to shippable feature, so for this update we’re excited to give everyone a chance to use it as part of Observer Mode.


(Edit: More pics at the link below - MM)

Observer Mode enables any user in a Custom Game lobby to enter the match as an observer. Unlike spectating, observers don’t have to wait for a film to be available – just create a Custom Game or join a fireteam in one, change your team affiliation, and watch the match in real-time when it starts. You’ll see what the other players see since you’re in the same game and connected to the same dedicated server.

Most camera controls are available along with player outlines and observers can toggle the Observer HUD on or off. The overlay supports up to eight players and two teams so it’s great for Doubles, 4v4 Arena, or Free-for-All (and not so great for your awesome 1v2v3v4v5 multiteam version of Strongholds…sorry). We hope this opens up new possibilities for players to cast games, stream cool game modes, and run online tournaments without disrupting those playing the game or waiting for the film to be accessible.

VOICES OF WAR PREMIUM REQ PACK



In conjunction with the release of Monitor's Bounty comes the all-new "Voices of War" REQ Pack for Halo 5. This new premium addition brings three all-new multiplayer announcers into Halo 5 to liven up your Arena and Warzone matches featuring commentary from Spartan Buck, 031 Exuberant Witness, and Yabda the Merciless.

It’s important to note that unlike everything else coming in the massive Halo 5 update, this particular REQ pack is not free – it’s a premium purchase that will be available for $9.99, which includes all three announcers. These will appear in Spartan Customization as a new setting, allowing you to select which announcer you'd like to use (including switching back to the classic MP announcer whenever you feel the need).

(Edit: Voice samples at the link below - MM)

REQ GIFTING

With the release of the Monitor’s Bounty content update, the team has added a new feature to the game’s REQ System. While it’s technically not new content, the new gifting system is still noteworthy and in need of some explanation, particularly as you log into the game on Thursday, Dec. 8 and find yourself in possession of a brand-new gift-able REQ Pack.

To help familiarize the community with this new feature, all Halo 5: Guardians players will automatically receive a Gold Gift Pack in their REQ Inventory that can only be gifted to someone else – you literally can’t open it yourself. So help celebrate the release of Monitor’s Bounty and the upcoming holiday season by sharing some Gold Pack love with your favorite Halo 5 friend!

WHAT IS IT?
REQ Gifting gives Halo 5 players who are Spartan Rank 5 or higher a new choice when purchasing Gold Packs from the Marketplace store. Are you buying a Gold Pack for yourself or would you like to gift it to someone else?

Note that gifting is currently only applicable to Gold Packs purchased for money via Marketplace, not packs purchased using in-game RP. REQ Packs that are able to be gifted will be clearly noted with a “GIFTABLE” icon next to the purchase price. This currently only applies to Gold Packs.

(Edit: More details at the link below - MM)



COMING TOMORROW – MORE MONITOR'S BOUNTY GOODNESS!

There's so much goodness jammed into Monitor's Bounty that we had to break up the reveal into mulitple features. Check back with Waypoint tomorrow, Dec. 7, for a deeper look at the rest of Monitor's Bounty including the massive update to Forge, Canon Fodder, tweaks to Warzone, and some big changes to Arena Matchmaking Playlists!

MONITOR'S BOUNTY : FORGE PREVIEW

It would be quite the understatement to simply say that Forge is getting updated with the release of Monitor's Bounty. While there are a number of sweet new weapons, vehicles, assassinations, armor, and more – along with great new features – the enchancements and additions being made specifically to Forge dwarfs everything else in this ambitious free update to Halo 5. In fact the Forge-specific bounty is so dense and so overflowing with awesomeness that we have to break it out for a dedicated blog all its own here on Waypoint. So just how BIG are we talking? According to 343 UGC Director Tom French, this update includes over 650 new objects on top of entirely new systems and functionality!

MINIGAMES!

One of the most exciting outcomes of all these awesome new improvements and additions to Forge's scripting systems is an expanded ability to create all-new game modes in Halo 5. Here's Tom explaining the genesis behind "minigames":

Tom and the 343 team created a few minigames during the course of development that ended up not only being great proof-of-concepts but also stupidly fun in their own right. The result is that yes, "Race" and "King" are basically back in Halo 5! And even though it's not (yet) a "classic" Halo game mode, "Battle Golf" has all the makings to be the Next Great Thing for Halo multiplayer shenanigans.

MONITOR'S BOUNTY ARENA UPDATE

Monitor’s Bounty is bringing in a lot of new content to Halo 5: Guardians (more content than you probably anticipated!) but it’s also bringing quite a few updates to the game's Arena and Warzone playlists along with it. This blog will cover the changes to our Arena playlists but please be sure to keep an eye out for our Monitor's Bounty Warzone Update blog later today. The focus of this write-up will be to discuss changes to Ranked and Social playlists, how they will be arranged in-game, the addition of new Forge maps, and touch lightly on playlist management.

RANKED & SOCIAL
Diving right into the biggest change you'll see after tomorrow's update, Halo 5 matchmaking will now feature separate lists for Ranked and Social playlists. To get a little more insight into this addition, we sat down with 343 Arena Design Lead Quinn DelHoyo:

"We want to continue fostering and embracing player choice, and this is a big step towards that. This new split gives us a nice suite where people can go – do they want to 'lean forward' or do they want to 'lean back?' If they want to 'lean forward,' we’ve got the Ranked experience for them. Maybe you’re in there for a couple hours one night and then you want to cool down, then you can jump over to Social for more of a relaxed experience. The current plan is to keep both sides living and updated, and do everything we can to keep both as fresh as possible. We’re going to engage the community, especially in the social playlists, and experiment more to see what people like, what people don’t like, and listen to their feedback."

Ensuring that our Ranked and Social playlists are up to date is a promise that we intend to keep and we will be monitoring your feedback closely.

WARZONE & WARZONE:FIREFIGHT CHANGES

Thanks so much to both Patrick and David for joining us today! Now that you've heard it straight from our sources here at the studio, let's recap: Warzone is receiving a few global changes including persistent friendly service tags, AI adjustments and tuning, an improved spawn system, and a reduced Fireteam limit. Warzone Firefight now has two more maps in its rotation, has been expanded into two permanent playlists, Heroic and Legendary, and will feature a third, rotational weekend playlist, Mythic Warzone Firefight.

Every Halo FPS from now on will have split-screen

Every first-person shooter Halo game from now on will have split-screen, developer 343 has said.

Halo 5 launched without split-screen, much to the annoyance of long-term fans of the series. At the time, then 343 chief Josh Holmes said the decision to remove split-screen from Halo 5 "was one of the most difficult ones we've ever had to make as a studio".

"We know that for many of our fans, Halo has meant playing together with friends in the same room," he said. "We all have great memories of past Halo split-screen multiplayer matches.

"To move Halo's gameplay forward and deliver a true next-gen experience, tough choices had to be made. Our decision was driven by a desire for scale, fidelity and focus to ensure that we would deliver the best quality experience possible.

"With Halo 5 we are delivering massive scale environments, improved AI behaviour, increased visual and gameplay fidelity... something that truly takes advantage of a new platform. Many of our ambitious goals for Halo 5 would be compromised in a split-screen setting and the time spent optimising and addressing split-screen-specific issues would take focus from building other parts of the game.

"Game development is a balancing act of resources, time and technology, and in this case we made the tough decision to sacrifice something that's been near and dear to us all."

Now, in a talk at the DICE conference, 343 boss Bonnie Ross confirmed that the studio had learnt from its mistake.

Here's the quote, which you can watch in the Twitter video below:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ChiefCanuck/status/834842559935451137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw[/tweet]

"We've also had a lot of learnings along the way. When we fell down with multiplayer launch of MCC, or when we didn't put split-screen in with Halo 5, it was incredibly painful for the community and for us. It erodes trust with the community, as the community is a part of our world-building.

"A lot of learnings from that. I would say, for any FPS going out will have always have split-screen in going forward."

Photek wrote:Really don't see the point in this, Didn't want it in Halo 5 and didn't use it Gears 4. A perfect case of MS listening to trolls.

more heat than light wrote:

Photek wrote:Really don't see the point in this, Didn't want it in Halo 5 and didn't use it Gears 4. A perfect case of MS listening to trolls.

Dafuq?

Return of splitscreen is great news, the lack of which was one of many, many failings in Halo 5.