A beta in the guise of Halo 5 is rare nowadays. More often than not, multiplayer betas have become more of an online infrastructure stress-test than a true-to-form beta. The Halo 5 Arena Multiplayer Beta, however, was put out there to test ideas. It was clear that everything that was shown in the beta was not going to remain in the final product. As such, 343 Industries and Halo 5 Executive Producer Josh Holmes has listed a series of tweaks and changes that will be made as a result to player feedback from the Beta:

Spartan Abilities:

• Provision of toggles in custom games so that sprint and the other Spartan Abilities can be turned off
• 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 w/ crouch jumping
• General tuning & bug fixes for all Spartan Abilities (Thrusters, Clamber, Ground Pound, etc.)

Weapons:

• Buffing the Hydra to make it more effective out of zoom and ensure that it feels like a true power weapon.
• 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:

• Overhaul of intro and victory sequences to feature considerably fewer chest bumps and high fives.
• 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 Ranking (SCR):

• End game bonuses and penalties will be based on the relative strength of the teams at play.
• 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

You can check out the full post on the 343 Forums here.

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