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Official Warzone Firefight Feedback Thread

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OP 6/30/2016

Forum Team

343 Industries

Have you had a chance to play Warzone Firefight? If so, here's your chance to let us know what you think about it! Please use the bullet points below as a guide for topics to discuss.

Scoring (Would you change any of the score rewards?)
REQ Leveling and Energy Refill (Is is too hard to hit REQ Level 9? Does your REQ energy refill too slow/fast? )
Objective Rounds - Do you like the objective based rounds in Warzone Firefight? Why or why not?
Boss Rounds (Do you like the Boss gameplay in Warzone Firefight? Which Bosses are too difficult or too easy? (Strength, Locations, etc.)
Spawning (Do you have any feedback on player respawns?)
Maps (Do you generally like or dislike the maps in Warzone Firefight? What would you change about how they play? Which map is your favorite/least favorite?)
Intros/Outros (What do you think of the intro and outro cutscenes?)
Replayability/Longevity – (Do you think you would continue to play Warzone Firefight?)
Favorites - What is your favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight? What is your least favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight?

Lastly, we encourage you to provide any additional feedback that you feel we may have missed in the questions above. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

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6/30/2016

JackGilb

Marine - Onyx

Sometimes bosses spawn in spots where you can't kill them (Banshee on ARC).

PS-I made song lyrics to go along with the "Drift Away" tune for you guys that I will post on the forums later.

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6/30/2016

JackGilb

Marine - Onyx

And if anyone can ask Unyshek if he saw Greenskull's firefight video, that would be great!

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6/30/2016

PMDC

Recruit - Bronze

As I posted in another thread difficulty isn't the problem. It's why it's difficult. It's difficult because it is extremely unbalanced. The AI difficulty and the respawn timers suck and could be debated either way but they don't bother me. What bothers me is 30 second respawn only to spawn on the other side of the map. Also it's unbalanced when vehicles banshees or phaetons spawn in level 2 or 3 as almost no weapons are capable of bringing them down until req level 3 or 4. It's just really unbalanced and needs some tuning. I will say that I'm not sure how I feel about the "difficulty" of a tundra mantis boss spawning on the second floor of a base with 10 knights with legendary incineration canons surrounding him. Seems a bit excessive considering no vehicles can get there, you spawn with a nice weapon and almost assuredly die only to have a 30 sec respawn across the map with no ability to spawn a req. That isn't learn to play and get better difficulty, that's overwhelm because screw you difficulty.

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6/30/2016

ElctrcBoogalord

Recruit - Gold

Whenever I join in the middle of a session, I start off with no REQ points (regardless of level) and I can't regenerate the points. But when I level up I get max number of REQ points, based on my current level.

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6/30/2016

Overlord Actual

Recruit - Gold

To address all your questions.

Scoring: Seems fine

REQ Leveling and Energy Refill: It is too hard to get started in my opinion since some enemies we can't get assists on it is every man for himself to get to Req level 3 so we can get decent weapons and vehicles. I think you should implement the Warzone Assault method of a universal leveling up when someone gets a kill but at a lower rate unless you get the kill. The refill rate I think should be bumped up about 10%.

Objective Rounds: I like the objective rounds but we need to get some grace period to actually get to the objectives, maybe 30s. On escape from ARC the forerunner generator defense in the tunnel is difficult only because we don't know where to go next until it is time to go there and the prometheans spawn at the objective and are already firing on the thing. So we have to grind through all of them to just get to the objective. Now we have no ammo, and respawns are 15-20s long and we spawn back at the garage just to repeat the cycle. MULTIPLE times on Urban we get 1st wave defend the garage where, once again, the prometheans spawn at the garage and we are already losing the objective right off the spawn. Also knights at level 1 should not be a thing with their current health and weapon levels. It is close to impossible to focus them down while 20-30+ other small guys are all around and in the garage (really that's a problem with all bosses). I have yet to win an Urban match despite my team having multiple tanks and air vehicles on the last wave. Also we need to know where enemies spawn at when it is a kill all the grunts, soldiers, crawlers type round because my team spent a good 30s just sitting around because we legit didn't even know the enemy were on the map yet.

Boss rounds: Please decrease the number of minions that spawn with bosses. We spend so much time killing them and barely have time to kill the bosses. Doing that would solve a bunch of boss fights failing to be completed solely because we ran out of time. We can't bum rush through the minions at any level because they shred every and anything. Also the mantis bosses need to get a nerf so they can regen shields but not actual health. I can't reload fast enough before their shields come back and all their HP. Also they should not be aloud to spawn at lower than wave 3. We got them wave two on Darkstar and the entire team was shooting one mantis for a good 45s before we killed it. Needless to say we did not kill all four.

Spawning: Give us 5-10s respawn at all times. On the last 2 waves dying is pretty inevitable and losing 20-30s on those waves to super bosses killing everyone is bad because our strength greatly diminishes while those people are down and we can't wait to fight because so many bosses have a way of regenerating all of their HP. I constantly check the scoreboard just to see if people quit out because there is 3-5 people there while the others are sitting in a 30 timeout. Or let us revive our teammates.

Maps: Throw a lot of work in to fix urban or remove it because it does not work well at all as a warzone firefight map. Reasons stated above. All the other ones are fine in my opinion.

Intros/Outro: All the maps need intro and outro music. Maybe its my game but none of my matches have it. Darkstar also shows all 6 pelicans coming in as if it was a regular warzone match. I imagine someone got kinda lazy but i think it cripples the framerate during the intro.

Replayability: Replayability seems okay to me but currently with the game mode being so horribly unbalanced it is hard to keep going back to lose over and over and over.

Favorites: Fly in a Helios Phaeton raining death down on my enemy.

EXTRA: Overall enemy HP needs to be reduced slightly. Down to something like Legendary campaign difficulty HP. Right now it feels like you have it on Mythic with Thunderstorm. It shouldn't take 4-5 barrages from a Hannibal Mantis to kill the lowest level knights. That is crazy.

If you'd like me to elaborate on any of these things contact me because there are more but I tried to give the most general feedback as i could while being specific.

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6/30/2016

xi Stasis

Marine - Silver

It'd be cool if Warzone Firefight Turbo was a thing every now and then.

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6/30/2016

DryHeaveKyle

Recruit - Bronze

I think you guys should add a few spartan voices for customizing your spartans. Like what Titanfall did for example.

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6/30/2016

IllusiveSamurai

Recruit - Gold

The mantises are a bit much on attack on sanctum, specifically the one in the garage. Defend the core on urban is tough when they spawn on top of the core, they usually have it pretty hurt by the time you get there then there's an uphill battle against dozens of soldiers. As far as respawn, ID say either lower the timer or make us spawn closer to the objective. Also killing 30 knights at req level 4 is really hard.

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6/30/2016

FieldDonkey

Recruit - Iron

A lot of players are complaining about the long respawn times in Warzone Firefight. I agree that there should be a penalty for death, and that watching your screen for 30 seconds gets pretty boring. Here are my thoughts on how to reconcile these design goals:

Keep the respawn timers, but allow players to revive their teammates. This encourages teamwork and rewards players who don't die right next to the warden. Because the player doing the reviving cannot move or shoot, it becomes a high risk/reward decision to res your dead teammate.
Allow dead players to watch their team mates. This allows them to do call outs, know when someone is about to res them, and its far more entertaining than staring at the fortress for half a minute.

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6/30/2016

ExalteDragon360

Marine - Iron

The respawn timer should be fixed. In later matches I think its too long.

If a round has 2-3 minutes left and you respawn in 30 secs, that's just not right.

Remember that WZFF should be fun for casual play too, not just for hardcore folks.

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6/30/2016

Duncan Idaho 11

ODST - Iron

Scoring

Fine

REQ Leveling and Energy Refill

Getting from REQ 1-4 is much too slow. From 5 on it seems right.

Objective Rounds

I like these. Getting the AI to focus on something adds a nice angle to combat.

Boss Rounds

Dull, samey. Early it's a grind to get to the boss (non-boss respawn is much too frequent) and the pay-off isn't interesting. Later it's the same, but with the precondition of having to spawn heavy vehicles to participate. The Goblin is fun but the rest of the bosses are simply tedious. All their stats are set much too high, too many are spawned, and the tactics used against them simply boil down to "use REQs, the biggest you have access to, and hope against hope that everyone else is doing the same." The only teamwork involved is really just a shared buying experience.

If there's any one area where Warzone FF particularly falls down, it's this.

Spawning

Comprehensively terrible. Frequently you're spawning too close or too far away from combat (little happy optimum) and long timers kill the pacing and all but the most risk adverse, self-focused playstyles (because who the hell is going to throw themselves into someone else's difficult situation with a 30 second timer hanging above you like the Sword of Damocles?)

Maps

The abusive difficulty settings and practical impossibility of some of the boss waves (ex. 4 banshees on round 2, 3 mantis on round 3) pretty much overrides any consideration of space. I don't have a favorite or least favorite map, only preferred waves (based simply on the question "is this doable?")

Intros/Outros

The drop pods were nice. The dropship fly-in though is tiring. I'd prefer no intro/outro to this repeated so frequently.

Replayability/Longevity

Probably not, and this kind of gametype is my favorite in the genre. Apart from the changes to defensive waves and the addition of the grunt Goblin, the changes made to warzone firefight gameplay have removed a lot of the "in its own right" entertainment value. Novelty and generous REQ packs are enough to compensate for this over the short term, but over the long I'm certainly going to move to something else (if nothing is addressed.)

Favorites

Favorite: combat against large swarms of minor enemies.
Least favorite: pecking away at heavy vehicle damage sponges while waiting for someone else to call in their tank REQs.

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6/30/2016

RDub78

Recruit - Gold

Boss Rounds (Do you like the Boss gameplay in Warzone Firefight? Which Bosses are too difficult or too easy? (Strength, Locations, etc.)

The only one big issue I've encountered is when triple Wardens spawning upstairs in the back of the base (Urban and Arc, I think, maybe more)... they're so well covered, both by geography and minions spawning around them, you just can't get enough firepower there (damage per second) to bring them down in time.

Spawning (Do you have any feedback on player respawns?)

The progressively increasing timer is OK, but :30 on the last round with 15+ secs to get back to the action feels overly punitive... considering you can get an entire wave of enemies spawned right on your Spartan.
I'd rather be punished for my number of individual deaths than having the timer increase by round. I.e., if I haven't died in any of the first 4 rounds, and then die in round 5, I should be rewarded with a shorter respawn time.

Intros/Outros (What do you think of the intro and outro cutscenes?)

This bug has been around forever, but the intros still launch without sound FX or music. Just the Palmer VO. Makes it feel sort of alpha-esque and takes away from the immersion.

Maps (Do you generally like or dislike the maps in Warzone Firefight? What would you change about how they play? Which map is your favorite/least favorite?)

For the above reason re: Warden spawns, you can be setup for what feels like an automatic loss on a few maps where Wave 5 plays out this way.

Favorites - What is your favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight? What is your least favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight?

Favorite thing is calling in vehicles, because they're the only thing that works against the bullet sponge enemies in later rounds. (Although splattering waves grunts and crawlers in a Ghost is quite fun...)

Least favorite would be calling in a weapon REQ. Learned not to do that pretty quickly, as it quickly becomes pointless given the tankiness of even non-boss enemies.

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6/30/2016

Chilly MIV

Marine - Iron

The level 5 objectives are way to hard. I played about 20 games and I only won 3. All three victories only happened when I had a full Fireteam and even then it still went down to the final seconds. It's annoying when you want to play solo with random teammates.

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6/30/2016

XThe White FoxX

Recruit - Bronze

Here are some of my thoughts on Firefight. I've just got home from work and am very tired so forgive the sloppiness. I will attempt to be as constructive as possible.

Defend objectives - give us time to get to the building/object before the ai spawns/gets there.
Spawning - spawn too far away from the current objective.
Joining game - need more appropriate req level when joining an in progress game, not able to contribute to the fights otherwise.
Req - Maybe make Req points refill faster with each round, losing your req when dying on top of the respawn penalty can mean one death loses you the round.
Difficulty - AI and Boss difficulty is in a nice place for the most part, it's a decent challenge whilst not being impossible. It's things like spawn distance/time and access to reqs that often decide the outcome of a difficult round.
Bosses - Some bosses are too high in number when considering which round it is, having 5 boss banshees in round 3 along with a bunch of normal banshees is almost impossible to stop with limited Req access. Even if you do spawn a power weapon and damage the Banshee, they have strong shields and the damage ends up going to waste, as well as the req/points.
Req - burning through a massive amount of reqs to stand a chance of winning, need better req sustain to compensate. There is decent reward but still feels like reqs will run dry before too long.
Req - The main reason my team has not won all 5 rounds of firefight is because teammates are not spending req points on vehicles/power weapons, I know this is out of your control for the most part but I feel I should point it out regardless. It is very frustrating when you're the only person on the team hitting the boss with powerful reqs whilst the rest stand there hitting the boss with br's.
Req - Perhaps reducing ammo consumption or increasing ammo capacity for power weapons on firefight only will help with some of these issues.
Req - Perhaps removing the despawn on dropped power weapons will help with some of these issues.
Spawning - Whilst I agree that dying needs to have consequences, I think the increased respawn time is not the answer, not a fun answer anyway. Whilst it does work I feel that a new solution to difficulty needs to be discussed. It is not fun sitting and waiting to respawn, we need a solution that creates the same difficulty whilst letting players stay in the action and have fun.
Req - Power weapons vs Vehicles - As it stands I find Vehicles to be far superior to power weapons in firefight. I have been stood there firing round after round of spartan laser into a boss which barely tickles at his hp, if a spartan laser doesn't do damage no power weapon will... Meanwhile vehicles are much more proficient at killing bosses and cleaning up enemies in general. I think the balance of power weapons in firefight needs to be looked at and some need their damage increased (firefight only)
Bosses - Continuing on the point above, sometimes the bosses with the most HP spawn in areas inaccessible by vehicles, this is a problem. When 3 Warden Eternals spawn in a position inaccessible to vehicles, it's almost impossible to take them all down. Again this is not an issue with the bosses themselves, but with positioning.
Spawning - There needs to be some kind of warning pop up when a bunch of enemies are about to spawn on top of you, I've died a few times because a big group of enemies have suddenly spawned on top of me and killed me, just a simple pop up that says something like "Incoming enemies".

All in all it's a great addition to Halo 5 Guardians, one which I am enjoying thoroughly. It just needs some more kinks worked out here and there. Great job 343!

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6/30/2016

Comlex Jack

Recruit - Bronze

My comments are all from my experience:

REQ Leveling and Energy Refill - REQ leveling might be a little slow in some Rounds 1/2, but overall it is pretty good. Energy refill should be faster or AI aiming should be nerfed. You die too quickly sometimes with high REQ weapons/vehicles with no ability to spawn something else decent in the same round.
Objective Rounds - The objective rounds are fun. Some of the "Protect the Armory" rounds can be difficult early no, but that's no big deal.
Boss Rounds - Easiest boss: Phantom on Sanctum; it just flies in circles and goes down pretty quickly. Hardest bosses: 1. Pipap and the two legendaries on Apex; we can beat Pipap, but there isn't enough time to beat the two legendaries afterwards. 2. The four mantises on Sanctum; one is not too bad to take down, but there are too many additional enemies to be able to take out four mantises. 3. Not sure of the exact name, but it happened during Round 2 on Apex where there were four banshees to take out; we had way too many ground enemies to fight on top of the banshees, and nobody on our team was above REQ 3 because it was just Round 2.
Spawning - Considering the length of waiting to respawn, I agree that we should be spawning closer to whatever the objective of the round is. Waiting 20 seconds to respawn then sprinting another 10/20 is just not fair. Also, spawning in the middle of a group of enemies isn't cool either. Only happened once to me, but I was not happy about it.
Maps - After the beta all of the maps seem to work really well. Urban might be my personal favorite just because of the lighting and layout. Sanctum is a very close second.
Intros/Outros - Can't really comment much here as they don't wow me or upset me. They are just meh.
Replayability/Longevity – With the randomized rounds FF certainly has some good replayability. It's quite fun to get out with the surplus of REQs and just burn through them. On that note, however, longevity is an issue with the current difficulty. We seriously would not have won a game without some pretty high level REQs. It would be more enjoyable if I could make contributions in later rounds with just the loadout weapons.
Favorites - Favorite is easily mowing down prometheans with a ghost or wraith. That is so gratifying to see 4,5, or even more splatters in a matter of seconds. Least favorite has to be the accuracy of the AI. The AI should not have 75% or better accuracy, especially against vehicles. I swear it's dang near 100% accuracy if I'm in a vehicle near any AI.
Additional - The phantom drop ships are quite OP, and with their current level of accuracy they are not fun to be anywhere near. This of course goes back to my issue with AI accuracy, but the phantoms just seem to slaughter Spartans sometimes...

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6/30/2016

Greninka

Recruit - Bronze

Less damn bullet sponges. The bosses shouldn't be able to completely heal, and the 30 second respawn timer is just -Yoinking!- unfair. Also, bosses have WAAAAAYYYYY to many minions. You get hardly any time to kill the boss because you're mowing through the constantly respawning minions.

PS: Triple wardens at the back of the base in round 5 = Automatic Loss.

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6/30/2016

Jaiing

Recruit - Gold

Scoring is a bit messed up- I often don't get credit for takedowns I participate in.

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6/30/2016

Intangible Dusk

Marine - Iron

Scoring (Would you change any of the score rewards?)

- It's a fine system.

REQ Leveling and Energy Refill (Is is too hard to hit REQ Level 9? Does your REQ energy refill too slow/fast? )

- This is my main point of contention. The REQ energy refills too slowly. But the REQ system in general is deeply flawed when it comes to Warzone Firefight. Firstly, in Original Warzone, there was a chance you could reclaim the weapon you died with - this is no longer the case thanks to the long respawn timer. You can only get higher reqs on the later rounds, at which point the respawn time is nearly half a minute, and your REQ will disappear if you die with it.

- REQs are necessary to win a match - and with death around every corner (the enemy respawn literally around you with little warning) you burn through REQ's very quickly. I don't want to spawn a high level, ultra rare req because I might not see it again. Also, the ammo is so low and most REQ's do very little damage against Bosses. This creates an artificial difficulty and pushes players to be very REQ-anxious and not spawn them because they want to save them. Find a way to give players MORE ammo for their REQ's, increase how many are rewarded in packs, give the player SOME choice in which REQ's they are rewarded, and increase their damage because I'm tired of spawning The Answer (which decimates in Original Warzone) and killing only a handful of baddies.

Objective Rounds - Do you like the objective based rounds in Warzone Firefight? Why or why not?

- Yes, the objective rounds are the best, keeping in mind I'm excluding 'kill so and so enemies' as an objective. Kill-objectives are a whole different game. I understand that players who play WFF regularly will memorize where bosses/enemies spawn, those who play only a little, will easily spend half the objective running blindly after enemies. Give us some hints as to their location. The red arrows that occur when the kill-objective is nearly finished only shows up half the time, we were down 8/10 hunters and only when there was one hunter left did the arrow spawn. That's kind of silly.

- On a recent game on Stormbreak, our entire team had just finished an objective around 'home base.' Round two was announced.... 'Defend the armoury'.... which happened to be the armoury on the other side of the map! By the time we got over there, the enemy had already captured a third of the armory. That's not very fun or fair.

Boss Rounds (Do you like the Boss gameplay in Warzone Firefight? Which Bosses are too difficult or too easy? (Strength, Locations, etc.)

- The Grunt Goblin is awesome!

- Hunters are totally not awesome! They are way too accurate - even against air vehicles. I miss the hunters of yesteryears, which you could jump over and spin around. They were easier, yes, but the hunters as they are now, in my opinion, need a nerf.

- -Yoink- the Warden Eternal.

Spawning (Do you have any feedback on player respawns?)

- -Yoink- no. The spawns are erratic. I can give many examples of strange spawns, but this is already getting long. I also don't want to spawn a Mantis on the other side of the world and spend half the round simply marching at a snail's pace.

- Is there any way we can choose where we spawn? Pretty please?

- Spawn times being increased wasn't a great call in my opinion. I see the logic, but I just don't agree that it's fun. There should be consequences for dying, but something more creative than long spawn times should be initiated.

Maps (Do you generally like or dislike the maps in Warzone Firefight? What would you change about how they play? Which map is your favorite/least favorite?)

- Love the new map!

- Urban is awful! I can't drive my tank to that many places and then there was a match where the three wardens were spawned around the armoury... what??? That was instant death for nearly everyone involved - except the Wardens. Again, -Yoink- the Eternal Warden.

Intros/Outros (What do you think of the intro and outro cutscenes?)

- Aren't they just recycled? They strike me as terribly awkward when you're using the same ones as Original Warzone, but with the sound cut. This just screams 'laziness.' I'm not saying it is... but it certainly looks lazy.

Replayability/Longevity – (Do you think you would continue to play Warzone Firefight?)

- Only if there are Daily/Weekly Challenges for Warzone Firefight. I loved this from Reach and since you insist upon the REQ system, here's a way to reward players more REQ points. Hell, even tie in certain weapons/vehicles for the completion of different challenges.

Favorites - What is your favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight? What is your least favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight?

- Favourite: Win.
- Least Favourite: The Warden Eternal. Again, -Yoink- this guy(s).

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6/30/2016

BenScout UBA

Recruit - Iron

Scoring (Would you change any of the score rewards?)

Great, Keep it where it is.

REQ Leveling and Energy Refill (Is is too hard to hit REQ Level 9? Does your REQ energy refill too slow/fast? )

Be a little better if both were a little faster to refill.

Objective Rounds - Do you like the objective based rounds in Warzone Firefight? Why or why not?

For hold the point. Example, escape from A.R.C, holding the Garage is near impossible due to the sheer amount of NPC storming it.
Defend the Objective. Please put some cover near them. You tell me to protect the Forerunner relic and it is in the wide open.
Hunt Down X amount of NPC. That is fun.

Boss Rounds (Do you like the Boss gameplay in Warzone Firefight? Which Bosses are too difficult or too easy? (Strength, Locations, etc.)

These are the rounds I love and hate.
Please limit the amount of NPCs that spawn and respawn. I don't feel like I am pushing an objective if after we kill an armada of knights with incineration cannons and five seconds later a new wave appears.
Vehicle based enemies have a strange knack of not wanting to fight. The Banshee Raiders fly all the way above the map do not want to fight.
Timing. The Last round is most guilty of this. I feel that when you tell us to destroy the Bosses and then proceed give us only 5 minutes to do so, is well heart breaking. Give us some more time, kill one boss and a 1-2 minuets to the timer.
Location. Imagine this you reach REQ lvl 8, you hear Promethean boss incoming, you spawn in your Hannibal Scorpian. Then after 30 Seconds of trekking to that location, you find that the boss is hiding behind a wall or is on a high Platform. Well so much for that REQ, out you get to fight a boss with nothing.

Spawning (Do you have any feedback on player respawns?)

Let us choose a base to respawn in, A 10 mile hike is no fun.
Respawn timer is Ridiculous 30 seconds to get back in the fight is ridiculous.

Maps (Do you generally like or dislike the maps in Warzone Firefight? What would you change about how they play? Which map is your favorite/least favorite?)

Favorite is the New One, wide open, great for vehicles.
Least Favorite. Escape from Arc, holding the garage is Impossible and Vehicle passage ways get cramped when Warden Eternal Spawns in the tunnels.

Intros/Outros (What do you think of the intro and outro cutscenes?)

Are they supposed to have no sound?

Replayability/Longevity – (Do you think you would continue to play Warzone Firefight?)

I will continue to play Firefight but I think in needs to be tweaked.

Favorites - What is your favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight? What is your least favorite thing to do in Warzone Firefight?

Favorite, I finally get to use the REQs I was afraid to use.
Least Favorite. Waiting for ever. Not feeling like a Spartan, taking two shots from a elite and getting killed. Buff us for the fight. Also getting no credit for a kill on a boss, especial Mythic bosses. Sat in front of Warden Eternal blasting him with wraith shots only to get stunned in the end. No credit.

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