HaloWC Oddball Preview Feedback Thread

This playlist does not work for competitive. First off the easiest thing too fix is to remove the maps like overgrowth and mercy. They don't work for competitive and much less for oddball. Now on the to the weapon starts, that means the BR and Gunfighter. The BR is too inconsistent and the changes made to the game from the past update have for the most part been awful. The Gunfighter doesn't really make the game more skillful. It's like spamming an auto that doesn't have an insane CQC advantage. People aren't going to switch to the other gun for every gun fight, which makes people usually stay with the BR cause at least you can shoot in CQC with the BR, unlike the gunfighter that can't even kill people in medium range. The pistol should be the start for players in Halo 5. It is a strong enough weapon to be able to kill people at most ranges, but also weak enough to give players an advantage if they control the map and pick up other weapons such as the old BR and old DMR. The new DMR is just bad. Not even high level pros can aim with that weapon. The nerf to the DMR makes it impossible to shoot enemies with and it isn't even more powerful than the pistol if you can use it. The pistol as it stands is basically a power weapon and you get it as you spawn with pistol starts.I think that we need some of the changes from this new update to be gone. There are some good changes like the camo, but overall the update made the game worse. The camo change, made it more viable, before the update people would just skip the camo over the OS on maps like Eden. Hopefully this update makes camo a harder pick up as people will go for it more often. The nades ,although I like the less damaging nades that require more skill to get kills with, overall I think it should go back to the old nades. I would be fine with the new update nades, but because people know that if you get a hitmarker then that means that the enemy is at least half shields. This means that people are flying out more to pick up kills which is just like before the update where players would clean up kills with nades.

BR/GF starts doesn't work in the current iteration, and there are issues with some of the other nerfs to precision weapons as well. I'll start with oddball though and get the positive stuff out of the way.

Oddball: The best oddball maps are IMO Truth, Eden, Rig and Plaza. This is from independent testing done before the playlist came out. Of these I've only managed to play Rig in the playlist, so if the map pool for the playlist could be reduced a bit to remove maps like Mercy and Overgrowth that we know aren't good, that would be a great start to getting actual valuable feedback. I do think the gametype works and look forward to seeing it in the future.

BR spread shouldn't have happened, and the gun fires too slow. The slower burst and magnetism/RRR changes make the weapon feel a lot more skillful, but the random spread and the slow rate of fire makes it take too long on average to kill someone. The Gunfighter should have been left alone in the patch, it was already not a weapon that would see a lot of use and it got nerfed.

DMR changes to the rate of fire were good enough, raising the inner RRR feels really awkward and I would much rather have seen a unscoped magnetism nerf across all ranges. Carbine's added spread was overkill. Should have just reduced the RRR.

In order from best case to worst case for HWC, imo:

• Remove spread on all precision weapons and slightly nerf the unscoped magnetism (or RRR) on the magnum. Magnum-only starts. Oddball on Eden/Truth/Rig added.
• Option 1 but with BR/GF starts and Magnum in place of BRs on maps.
• No more tuning, Magnum starts. Oddball on Eden/Truth/Rig added.
• No more tuning, BR/GF starts. Oddball on Eden/Truth/Rig added.

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C0ldM0use wrote:

One more thing... we played about 5 games of oddball before deciding we couldn’t play just one game-type all night so we went to the team-arena playlist and suffered the awful auto’s, radar etc there and we came across a lot of players that we usually only meet in the hcs playlist so other players couldn’t stomach the changes to that playlist either. Therefore I fear you’re not even getting the testing you require because people are not prepared to play one game type all night especially without their favoured magnum.

please return the hcs playlist to magnum starts and simply put oddball into the rotation with a heavier weighting if you really need to intensely test it.

I second this. Seeing a ton of HCS regulars in Arena. Ain't nobody tryna play this trash lol People would rather deal with AR spam, splinter nades and craptastic radar than spend all night in oddball with broken guns

Weapons/ power ups:
BR:
The BR is not predictable, it has random spread. It's combarable to the bloom in reach as in it's random. So the BR is nerfed in a way that's not ideal for a competitive game. There is a better way to nerf the BR. Take the previous BR, lower the RoF a little bit and reduce the aim assist. You would have a BR similair to the beta BR and that was absolutely fine. I'd prefer to keep the magnum starts tho. I've never heard anybody complain about pure magnum starts. It's a skillfull precision weapon with a large enough skillgap that I think it doesn't really need to be replaced.

Gunfighter Magnum:
The gunfighter magnum isn't all that hard to use thanks to it's ROF. It's a 3 shot beatdown resulting in a lot of melee kills/trades and close range spam fests. It's a bit harder to use over the AR, but not by that much. I've noticed that I've seen more succes in just staying in CQC while usingthe gunfighter magnum than I have engaging in mid to long range combat with a BR that is this random and I feel like that's not the meta we need or want. I feel like there is no place in HCS for the gunfighter magnum and that it should just be removed all together.

Grenade Launcher:
I feel like this weapon has way to much ammo and does a bit too much damage at the moment.

Oddball:
I don't think we can really say anything about the maps and game type at the moment, because of the fact that the teams are either super lobsided when searching in a 4 or the complete randomness when searching solo. I do know that I don't really like the fact that the ball carrier traverses so much slower than everybody else on the map. I feel like giving the ball carrier the ability to thrust would cancel that out a bit more, but right now there's just no getting away with the ball or towards a spot where you can drop the ball for a reset, because the rest of the players traverse so much faster

HCS:
Something that really bothers me with the way you guys are going about is the fact that you replace the only playlist that isn't completely ruined with way to powerful automatics (the AR nerf really is a massive boost and the storm rifle should be a power weapon) and less than optimal maps. You took away the playlist with the most fair and competitive settings to try out a game type/ weapon tuning that turned out to be really iffy (still wonder how the internal playtesting works over at 343I) and leave the competitive community forced to either play these weapon settings or go back to the old radar and AR starts. All that in a time where a lot of the main competitors released a new game. It's like you guys want people to move from Halo onto another shooter.

The lone voice...Oddball only playlist is fine. Keep the BR starts remove the GF, have the regular Magnum as a pick up. I only played a couple of games though. I had to get some Anniversary games in. I've been waiting for that for over a year.

It looks like the overall consensus is to just leave it like it is though. Too bad the BR just doesn't seem to fit anymore. Two year with very little bullet spread is too difficult to give up it seems.

After playing a few matches of the new settings here are my thoughts:

Weapons:

I always thought the magnum was among the few things 343 did right when they tried to 'innovate' (change halo :(). The magnum works really well. It requires skill, pacing and it works at its intended range.
It only took two years and finally they removed the AR. I hope this new BR-GF doesn't stay and It looks like a lot of people just want the previous HCS settings back. I'm assuming 343 went back to the BR because a lot of the old school players miss the BR starts. However, this BR is not like the H2-3 BRs. This game is not like H2-3. This game works decent with the magnum.

I don't even want to talk about the GF. It's a crippled automatic weapon.

Oddball:

My only comment so far is that there should be more Ball spawns after the initial spawn. It's ridiculous that a team has a setup, drops the ball when their setup is compromised and then the ball spawns in the same location every time. I can see this being exploited, specially with To4 with communication and structured setups.
Adding a few different Ball spawns and rotating to the one that is far away form players is worth a shot.

Maps

Stop giving Mercy, Overgrowth and any other non-HCS maps a chance, leave those to other playlists. They just don't work from a competitive stand point. I've always criticized the map design in Halo 5 but when Overgrowth comes up I just quit the build.

Bottom Line:

I don't think the HCS playlist was in need of a load-out refresh. If anything 343 should be dedicating time and resources to test new maps (Forge because they probably gave up after Stasis) and new game modes. It's kinda sad that they left behind so many game modes, they didn't even added them to Forge and this affects the entire Halo community.
The only reason Fathom CTF, Empire SH and Eden TS stay in the HCS rotation is because they barely have any maps that work well for a competitive playlist and removing them will leave very little options.
If they had tested Forge maps (they probably don't do this because of frames but the X1X can handle it) and a new Objective game-mode this playlist 'refresh' would be a lot more appreciated.

Moving Forward:


If anything this just looks like they are looking for a way to safely merge TA and HCS but it will be almost impossible since most of the people playing HCS come from an MLG background. That means HARDCORE settings. No radar. No funny weapons. No weird maps. On the other hand, TA players like having their radar at all times, otherwise it's like leaving home naked. I'm pretty sure 343 created this problem themselves by having Competitive players play casual settings since launch. Making a bunch of new players think those were acceptable competitive settings. The worst part are the million dollar tournaments on those settings...

Moving on... Since there's very little chance they will test Forge maps something needs to be done about SH to make it less prominent to the snowball effect. Specially because of Empire and Eden. Maybe expand the score to allow more time for a set up break.

The other big thing is Fathom CTF. Either test new Overtime rules (~10mins OT instead of 3mins and a full replay) or make it first to 5 captures wins.

Lastly, bring back the regular Magnum HCS settings. For some of us it is the only playlist we consistently play (I'd play FFA but radar and storm rifles?! nope)

DaxSeven09 wrote:

Two year with very little bullet spread is too difficult to give up it seems.

It's not about people not wanting to give it up because they are to lazy to readjust or something like that though. Which kind of seems to be what you'e implying. Previous BR iterations were much more wild, yes. But they were in much slower games. H5 is breakneck speed at all times. Dudes are running at 50mph jumping thrusting sliding and so on. Dramatic and random bullet spread doesn't exactly play nicely with a game like that. It just feels inconsisent and lucky. If I turn on a guy and five him with the standard mag, I feel like a god. If I turn and do the same with the new BR or GF mag, I just feel extremely lucky. Which of course, I am. I wouldn't call that a step in the right direction for THE competitive playlist.

I love oddball, and IMO it works best on Eden and Truth. Mercy and overgrowth are awful in general, but trying to play them in a competitive playlist is insane. Can’t you throw in some forge maps for us to test the hell out of? Plenty of people make fun maps they just may need to be tweaked for bugs and glitches.

As for the weapon changes, please, please go back to magnum only starts. BR is actually okay to me as a starting weapon alone but it is WAY less fun to use than the Magnum. The BR changes are okay IMO, but not its good enough to replace the Magnum. Gunfighter is fun to use, but it’s not very rewarding. The regular old Magnum is fun to use and getting a perfect with it feels great. I feel like it’s so difficult to six shot someone with the GFM because generally you have to spam the hell out of the trigger to do any sort of damage. Thank you, I hope you guys listen to everyone commenting here and on twitter, I really do like this game but these settings are awful.

I do not like the oddball playlist only. i think they need to put HCS playlist back on immediately and just have oddball as a pernament social playlist. Also I noticed how the matchmaking is completely unfair and is broken all the people who worked very hard to get where they are with their csr is going to drop because of this playlist.