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

mcjihge2 wrote:Photek - have you managed to get the DMR req yet? Im still waiting

mcjihge2 wrote:Photek - have you managed to get the DMR req yet? Im still waiting

In addition, teams across the studio are hard at work on a variety of updates, including many that come straight from feedback you’ve given us. Modes and playlists like Infection, matchmaking preference options, more Forge goodness, UI updates and post-game medals, Campaign balance updates (more on that in just a bit), and lots more that I can’t talk about just yet is in the works. Many of these will be landing with Memories of Reach, which is currently slated for an early May release.

On Thursday alone, you played 287,086 hours of Warzone Firefight, and we’re also learning things about the wayyou’re playing and where you’re succeeding (or not). For example, data has shown us that almost 50% of you who ran into the “Defend the Garage” objective in round 3 met defeat yesterday.

On Monday of this week, I walked over to the Forge team and asked if they were working on anything cool, even though I totally knew they were. They sent this over, without comment, for today’s blog.

Over the past few weeks, the Multiplayer team has been testing out refreshed Arena weapon layouts based on your feedback on Waypoint with the goal of updating these map variants in real-time based on continued input.

In this spirit, the team has already pushed an update to several of these maps earlier today, including the Coliseum, Fathom, and Empire variants.

Here’s a quick list of the most recent updates:

COLISEUM
Removed Binary Rifles

Swapped Sniper Rifle and Rocket Launcher weapon pads (Sniper to “Yellow Tower” / Rocket Launcher to “Green Tower”)

Suppressor moved to bottom of the Grav Lift

FATHOM
SAW weapon pad modified

Max ammo reduced to one magazine total (no reloading)

Respawn time reduced from 3 min to 2 min

EMPIRE
Shotgun moved back to Tower One

Plasma Pistol moved to “Mid” the small street in between “Tower” and “Pit”

These new versions appear on Empire CTF, Coliseum Assault, and Fathom Assault in Team Arena – once you play them, head into the master thread in the Matchmaking Feedback section and let us know your thoughts. We’ll have more information about the full Arena Refresh timeline in the near future, and the multiplayer team will continue reviewing your feedback and making adjustments based on your experiences and input.

EXTRA FIESTA
Fiesta debuted in Halo 5 earlier this year, and we heard from many of you that you wanted to not only keep the party going all night long, but also into other game variants. Earlier today, we deployed an update that made Fiesta CTF, Fiesta Strongholds, and Fiesta Assault available in Custom Games, meaning you can fire up these game variants any time you’d like. Typically, these have been built into Custom Game options, but this would’ve taken quite a bit more time to deliver. So rather wait until those updates can be integrated, the Multiplayer team built some new variants that you can play right now, and I’ll go try to convince some people here to make Fiesta CTF a week-long social playlist one day. Be right back.

CHRIS PROCTOR, SENIOR SYSTEMS DESIGNER

Hi everyone, I’m Chris Proctor, designer at 343 Industries. For Halo 5, I was the designer on Covenant AI, Squad AI, most Forerunner weapon redesigns and final difficulty tuning, and I’m now the designer for all AI and difficulty tuning.

Having had a few months to digest player feedback, reviews, let’s play videos and internal feedback, I’ve been working on an update to Halo 5’s campaign balance, aiming to address parts of the game that players yelled at us about, or that bugged me and the rest of the team enough to address even without external feedback.

Given that we’re constantly updating the game adding new content for Multiplayer, and we’ve got Warzone Firefight and other cool stuff on the way, I took the opportunity to touch global difficulty tuning and address areas where Halo 5’s difficulty was spiky, too easy or inconsistent.

I was pleasantly surprised to get the okay to make these sweeping changes, given how rarely videogame campaign difficulty tends to be updated after launch.

ISSUES
Players and reviews commonly cite the Warden as an unfair difficulty spike on higher difficulty, particularly the triple-Warden fight towards the end of the game. Looking at this in depth, it’s partly because of the Warden himself: his attacks are difficult to avoid, he’s hard to get behind to shoot in the back, his front armor is durable. It’s also because supporting enemies don’t allow any breathing room – having multiple turrets firing continuous, highly damaging beams at you while you’re trying to dodge Warden attacks is pretty rough.

Two-player co-op play is slightly more difficult than intended, but single player is a little too easy.

Covenant encounters are generally easier than Forerunner. Elites melt a little too fast under squad fire, and Grunts and Jackals are too little threat. However, Storm Rifles are very accurate and fire long bursts, making for an uneven experience if enemies happen to target a stationary player.

Players would lose track of enemies in Forerunner encounters and die to an enemy that got behind them. Soldiers are able to bamf frequently to break line of sight, and Crawlers are fairly durable for a fast-moving, close range and lethal enemy that requires aiming down.

Certain vehicle sections were much harder than others. Squad AI would often die in a Warthog gunner’s turret, making Warthog sections frustrating in single player, even more so when several enemies with homing weapons could fire on the Warthog at once.

In two or three player co-op, Squad AI could get stuck running back and forth between players wildly mashing the “Call for Help” button.

Generally, this balance update smooths out the common spikes, increases the difficulty of mid-tier encounters, and makes certain enemies less frustrating or more satisfying to fight.

Thanks to the Test and Campaign teams for running through the campaign before and after the update to make sure nothing broke and give balance feedback. I’ve listed couple of specific changes below.

SPECIFIC CHANGES
Please note that enemy-specific changes will also apply to Warzone AI – the Warzone team has been playtesting these adjustments, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on all feedback, (especially as it pertains to Warzone Firefight difficulty).

Reduced two-player difficulty slightly

Increased single player difficulty slightly

Made Warden attacks a little easier to dodge, particularly on lower difficulties

Face Beam tracks moving targets less accurately

Gravity Bomb has less homing

Melee attack has slightly less range

Made the Warden slightly easier to kill from the front

Reduced AI Focus Turret damage output

Reduced AI Storm Rifle, Suppressor and Light Rifle effectiveness

AI Storm Rifle: fires in shorter bursts, projectiles spread out more and move more slowly. Jackals are now less effective than Elites with the Storm Rifle

AI Suppressor: fires in longer bursts, projectiles have less homing. Crawlers are now less effective than Soldiers with the Suppressor

AI now fire shorter bursts with the Light Rifle

Increased AI Plasma Pistol, Needler and Beam Rifle effectiveness

AI Plasma Pistol: slightly higher accuracy and damage

AI Needler: AI now fire longer bursts (i.e. can now supercombine players on Heroic and above), slightly higher damage

AI Beam Rifle: slightly more damage (mostly this will make it a two-shot kill instead of a three-shot kill in Heroic single player, allowing Jackal Snipers to actually kill a player from time to time)

Added a “tackle” animation to Sword Elites – shoutout to Pat Gillette for making the sweet sword tackle animation

Instead of stopping to swing at a moving target they can swing on the move

Increased Elite, Elite Officer and Soldier Officer durability

Reduced Soldier bamf frequency

Killing a Crawler now deals area-of-effect damage to all nearby enemies, softening them up or killing them outright

Reduced frequency of Squad AI getting killed while in a gunner’s turret in a player’s vehicle

Made being killed by an attached Plasma Grenade non-revivable, similar to lethal damage from a Binary Rifle

Increased AI special ability chance with higher player count in co-op games, e.g. Plasma Pistol overcharge, grenade throw

Increased AI promotion chance with player count in co-op games

i.e. in cooperative games you will encounter more high-ranked enemies where promotion paths exist (most noticeable with Grunts, Elites, Jackals and Crawlers)

The first player to press the “Call for Help” now has priority, other players will have to wait their turn for a revive – shoutout to Mr. Robert Kingsley for the code fix for this

Photek wrote:FireFight Beta - On my own.

Photek wrote:I finished Halo 5 on co-op in Legendary and now they going to nerf it cos players thought it was too hard.

Underwhelmed with Firefight beta, main reason is that its the same map over and over which is tiresome but also that games are over far too fast. Each wave last's for 5mins maximum but they really take 3-4, even less towards end as players have higher req points to unlock. I love the last couple of rounds cos it looks crazy, tanks, snipers rocket launchers going all out.

I think they should roll out that beta version and a longer mode that has either 20 rounds or 50, like Horde.

twitter.com/halo/status/725779387564445696

Kanbei wrote:Really should get back to playing this soon...