I've played enough of this beta along with my experience with Halo in general to gain a solid opinion of it. After this I'm pretty much gonna refrain from posting opinions about it, the games pretty much what it is at this point. Acceptance is necessary.
I really don't want to call the game bad, because I have played much worse, but when you know that this is supposed to be a Halo game, a franchise that has set a standard of excellent amongst console shooters, and have four games that came before this one (CE, 2, 3, Reach) who all to what I would consider to a large degree upheld that standard it's hard for me to sit her and give this game any sort of praise.
I said it when we saw the first pro match up of this game; it wouldn't be enough to give us things like fair starts, low aim assist, good ranking system, and arena maps (which I have yet to see any of. Making a map inside does not qualify it as being an arena map) when it would be covered by layer after layer of nonsense.
Sprint, Chamber, and Thruster are the three primary offenders to me. Too much defense in the hands of the player. It extends kill times to an intolerable amount and makes passive play the only way to play on a competitive level. It's always been a trend since the Halo 2 to lower the power of the individual player but now it's gotten to the lowest point it's ever been.
There's next to no incentive to move around the maps and probably won't be. I would be shocked if there was a camo or overshield that worked in this game much less appeared at all, 343 for whatever reason seems to not believe in them.
The maps? Like I previously mentioned these aren't arena sized maps. It's an insult to call Regret and Truth Midship inspired, nothing about these Maps lend to it outside of artistic design. The amount of cover on these things is insane, coupled with the defensive nature of the Spartan abilities just leads to pop and shoot gameplay. Shoot a guy twice and watch him thruster behind a corner or Sprint away. As far as Clamber goes? This isn't something new to Halo, you were always able to get up to places that base. Movement/jumping didn't allow, but they actually took effort. Crouch jumping, nade jumps, etc etc as opposed to just pressing a button to climb a wall. Clamber isn't opening a whole new dimension, it's just taking away from another core element of this game and spoon feeding people. Not to mention it quickly negates height advantage. You can get from the bottom to the top of any map in like two seconds cause they're putting ledges to climb up on everywhere.
I can't really be mad at anyone who likes this game, but it's shallow and vapid. It's fun for like three games at a time until you start noticing all the ridiculous things that happen game after game.
They make the claim that they want to take this franchise to new levels and are taking it back to its roots but if this was really do they wouldn't continue to just pull things from other games and throw them into this one, when Halo isn't even like any other shooter out there. They wouldn't release games where the most significant feature doesn't work a dozen different ways and then when it's made clear to them by their own fan base write it off as "self section bias" when they even played a part in polling the people...
But at this point it's to be expected from them, these are the same people who added Sprint to the game again, the same people who took all the weapons off of all their maps and created personal ordinance drops in it is place and totally removed one core element of the game (establishing map control for power weapons) as a result. They added flinch and removed descope to the game so steady aiming became a thing of the past and people could get easier kills. HALO now has ADS for goodness sake and it doesn't even stop. At the guns, the Sword of all things has it now.
I don't want to keep harping on things that they put in Halo 4, because one might say that they learned from their mistakes, but they thought that these were good ideas and would make this game play well. They actually thought unlocking weapons via exp in Halo was a good idea for goodness sake.
I just want a Halo arena game again, and MCC existing isn't a free pass to no longer make them. Idk if I'll end up buying this game or not but the lofty goals they had for this game and the future of this franchise will not be achieved with this game. Continuing to alienate your core fan base to pander to people who change shooters they play like seasons isn't going to work. They'll move on just like they always do, then when it comes time to make people pay money for DLC they won't be around to buy it, and you already angered your core fanbase, the people who were most likely to buy it so they're not around either. I really hope annualizing Halo is their aim because no title will see prolonged success if they keep making them like this.
Being better than the worst Halo game shouldn't be enough for you 343, it really shouldn't. Matter of fact what other Dev out there is drastically altering their franchise to this degree? COD, Battlefield, Gears, and a host of other games all get to make changes to their games while keeping the core gameplay the same, but for some reason Halo is not afforded that luxury. I've never seen anything like this, all under the guise of evolution as if 2, 3, and Reach didn't evolve from their predecessor while managing to keep the foundation of the game the same. This right here? This isn't the same. They bastardized Halo plain and simple.
It's not even just gameplay that has strayed away from the core, what is going on with the way their game looks. Why must every sunlit map actually blind the player? Why must everything be so shiny? Like they changed the way the Rockets looked. The one gun that that looked the same through all iterations of this game and they just thought "Nah let's just change it, it's cool" that kind of thing just shows little regard to what this franchise once was.
They're allowed to do whatever they want though they own it. I just wish I wasn't lied to and had my hopes raised for this game "We learned from Halo 4, we're bringing arena gameplay back" "ADS is aesthetic only. You've always had a 'smart-link' to your weapons in you MJOLNIR armor, we're just giving it a different look. If people feel like they have to use ADS because it offers an advantage, we've broken it." These along with all the other buzzwords they threw at us would lead someone to believe that they were actually going to take this game back to its roots as opposed to the opposite direction. Don't lie to people, be proud and initially stand behind the product you are making instead of taking this route then dancing around the backlash.
Dont lie to me and tell me this is an Arena Shooter when it clearly isnt one.
Outside of that I'm glad some of you guys are having fun with this game.