Long and boring Impressions, good and bad.
Menus and Pre/Postgame:
-Aside from a few times where it wasn't working, Active Roster is fantastic. Only improvement I could think of is that maybe it should give the Lobby Leader some sort of little pop-up in the corner (probably in Post Game) that someone has joined, or more importantly tried to join and failed. We did have a couple times where it failed, and unless you're in a Party Chat you probably wouldn't even realize someone was trying to join your group if it failed.
-For some reason (and it's probably me being stupid) I have difficulty navigating/hitting wrong things in the Saved Films area. Also maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see an option to rename a video?
-In the Post Game Carnage as far as I can tell there's no way to see how many cR you earned that match once you've gone past that screen into the actual game stats. For that matter, I shouldn't need to hit A 3 or 4 times to see every little thing that game that gave me cR; give me one Post Game Carnage screen. I also agree that First Strike really shouldn't be in the top medals on the Carnage screen.
-Unless I'm missing it there is no way to see your Commendations anywhere in the game, only on Bungie.net.
-Very minor, but it would be nice to see how many cR you have to go to the next ranking; you do get the % at the end of a match, so this is isn't much of an issue but at the same time I don't see why they wouldn't either.
-Game needs a sound effect when you get to the vote screen. It seems ridiculous that we're bitching about getting games too fast, but I feel like I have no time to even look at post game stats most of the time, much less look at buying some armor pieces.
-The fact that there IS a vote screen is freaking awesome, well done.
-The fact that you can now save games without having to back out and go to theater is fantastic, although I didn't know you could even do it until urk and Shake told me how, not very clear there.
UI/HUD in game:
-Everything looks super sleek and nice, but a lot of that seems to come at the cost of practical value. I think some of it might be related to the FOV change (which I like), but for example I never look at my health or shields.
-I practically never look at my ammo, but that doesn't seem to really be a concern in the beta, so the change in the ammo display in the top right doesn't bother me like it does some people.
-The location callouts in the bottom left are also nice, but I would also suggest that maybe those stay on screen when you die, so if you die somewhere and blank on the name you can see where you were.
-It's not as bad now, but I still have trouble at times telling where I'm getting shot from.
-I've tried and can't articulate it well, but the HUD indicators suck for objective games, in particular Stockpile. I still get confused at times even after playing a bunch, so I'm on the Red team but I'm taking the flag to a Blue indicator?. I can't quite put my finger on why I can't deal with it or how to specifically fix it.
-I think overall they placed a bit TOO much emphasis on pushing everything to be small and on the edges of the screen.
-
MOTION BLUR/GHOSTING. HOLY SHIT TONE IT DOWN. I found out what's been giving me headaches the last 3 days (seriously, I don't know if I'm going to even play tomorrow).
General Gameplay:
-Honestly? The issues with Melee, Shields, Grenades, Reticule/DMR/Magnum that people are complaining about don't really bother me at all. I would probably agree that the grenades maybe need slight nerfing, or to not drop off corpses, but aside from that none of those issues really bother me.
-I think all of the Armor Abilities are all fine at the moment. Sprint's great and probably my favorite. Armor Lock is a little annoying with how frequently people can do the short bursts to fuck with you, but eh. There might be issues once we get to fuck around with vehicles and possibly breaking that equation, but as of now I think it's fine. Jetpack is fine for me. Only change I would maybe suggest is to down the amount of time Camo lasts a bit. If you just have it on it seems to last a very long time, possibly too long.
-I never even bother with getting health packs. Provided I even take a hit on my health and don't die, it has never once crossed my mind to go get a health pack. I have no understanding at all for why they did this.
-You realllllly need to somehow not be able to Elite roll with the Hammer, that is pretty broke-ass at the moment.
-I agree with the complaints that it seems like I never have enough time to change loadouts on spawns. I don't know if they just need to tack on a second or two or what. I can understand why they wouldn't want to let you NOT spawn until you chose, to avoid griefing etc. Also I swear on several occasions I've changed my Loadout, but then I spawn with a different one or it starts defaulting to a different one for some reason.
-In-game sound is all over the place in terms of quality, distance, and what the fuck factor. Probably a Beta issue though, can't imagine any of that stuff is final yet.
Weapons:
-I agree that most weapons and melee really need improved feedback. I'm with Ghaleon, half the time I have to look at the text to see if I killed the guy before someone else killed me, or it was mutual death, or a grenade, or who the hell knows.
-Focus Rifle - Feels fine to me, maybe could use a reduced clip though, thing seems to last forever.
-
Plasma Launcher - NERF THIS SHIT. Fuck everything else everybody's bitching about, this thing is crazy broken. Has a ridiculous amount of ammo, and it gets a lock-on and fires a grenade absurdly fast across a freaking map.
-Plasma Repeater - No one ever, ever uses this. It's better than the Plasma Rifle, I'll give you that much.
-Needler - As much as I love this and want to say it's broken so they'll make it stronger, I think it's about fine as-is. It takes more Needles if someone has shields yes, but the homing seems a bit better; I've gotten a bunch of kills with it I know I never would have in Halo 3.
-Grenade Launcher: I've gotten to use this like twice, no real impressions beyond the fact that it definietely takes skill to use, but I've gotten a few sweet bank shots with it.
-All the other weapons feel pretty much fine to me including the apparently hated DMR and Pistol, although it was definietely a learning curve on those two. Once I get the hang of them though I think they're fine. Also not a big fan of the Shotgun right now, it seems a bit inconsistent but it's hard to tell yet. Also not sure how I feel about being able to melee block sword lunges.
Maps/Gametypes:
-Swordbase is okay for most variants, but it is dog shit on 1-Flag CTF, which seems to be a large Grab Bag default at the moment. This is made worse by the fact that half of the time people are still looking at post game stats and/or buying armor, so it never gets voted off half the time, even when people would have.
-Stockpile is a good map. The area at the south (?) end of the map where the Shotgun is never ever gets used though unless there's an objective there.
-3 Plots is awesome, but goes super fast (matchmaking churn my ass urk
)
-Team Headhunter seems like it will be awesome. FFA Headhunter that is in the Beta is broken and sucks. People just wait by terrorites to kill dudes. I've played it 3 times, 2 times ended with Skullmanjaros. We played with a guy who was telling us that he has a clip in his file share where he spawned near a territory by a guy who was weak and had 12 skulls. Within 5 seconds of spawning he killed the guy, took all the skulls and ended the game. Yeah, loads of fun.
-Stockpile is pretty awesome.
-I like Covy Slayer, but it needs some variations on Loadouts, it's a bit stale with the two current ones (and one of which no one ever ever uses).
-I only played two matches of Juggernaut, and completely owned on both of them and never got to be the Juggernaut, so I can't really comment on this one.
-SWAT is awesome, like it way more than in Halo 2/3, especially since you can headshot people from the back now since it's not everyone play as motherfucking Elites.
-Sudden Death in 1 Flag CTF either needs to be longer, or needs to be considerably longer/not end if someone is holding the flag (but then immediately end if dropped).
Bnet:
-On the main stats page, the Spartan (next to your Commendations) should really show your own Spartan
-The "bar" type breakdown on your win/loss and kill/death streaks is fantastic, love it.
-Also really really love the k/d by hour, as well as the weapon kills/death stats, super awesome.
Overall the Beta is still so limited right now it's hard to make any overall judgements. It may seem like a lot of complaints up there, but I'm trying ot remember the little things that bugged me, I could go on forever about the little things I like. I am enjoying it more and more, but that's because I'm playing it less and less like a Halo game; it's a change of expectations. As someone who plays a bunch of FPS games it not feeling like a Halo game (which I 100% agree I don't think it does) doesn't bother me, but for people where Halo is pretty much their primary game, I could see this being a huge bummer.
As of now though I'm really enjoying it, probably more than Halo 3, but I've had to change around my expectations and what I thought it was going to be like (like Halo). I honestly don't know that after the Beta is over that I can back to Halo 2, MW2 or any other online FPS; I may just focus on trying to knock out some of my single-player backlog.
As an aside, are we getting Challenges during the Beta? For some reason I thought I heard/read that we were going to get Weekly Challenges but not Daily, or vice versa.
