Halo 5 Guardians Release Date, Multiplayer Beta Updates: Changes 343 Industries Will Integrate
Currently a work in progress, 343 Industries recently shared through their official site an impressive statistics of the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta. Included also in their update are the changes to which the studio wanted to see when the full-game version arrives.
As revealed by the site, the three-week run of the beta saw 20 million matches from over 1 million players. The test game also recorded more than 180 million Spartan deaths. The stats went on to indicate that Halo gamers' weapon of choice is the sniper rifle which brought in a more than 6 million kills. These are just some of the few data posted on the site.
Drawing information from what the numbers show as well as the feedbacks being given on Halo Community Feedback Program, 343 Industries were able to develop "an extensive list of improvements" that they want to see in the game (via IGN.com):
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Spartan Abilities
- 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 with crouch jumping
- General tuning and bug fixes for all Spartan Abilities (Thrusters, Clamber, Ground Pound, etc.)
Weapons
- 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 and with headshots
- Remove grenade detonation in mid-air base don weapon fire
- Ability to turn on/off vibration feedback for weapons
- General tuning and bug fixing for all weapons
Competitive Skill Rating
- Improved skill detection during placement phase
- Improved skill matching
- Improved team balancing
- Prevent skill boosting
- General bug fixing and tuning
Matchmaking
- Much faster matches
- Better skill matching
- Better feedback to player in the lobby and matchmaking experiences
- Allow players to set desired data center 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
Executive producer Josh Holmes meanwhile wrote that there are still more additional improvements and bug fixes that are being tracked by the Halo team.
"Everything from weapon placements on maps, to lighting improvements, to rule tweaks in game modes and modifications to the motion tracker to encourage more movement at higher levels of play," the executive producer revealed.
As already reported, Halo 5: Guardians is scheduled to be released "in fall of 2015."
