Beta War Week 1 Suggestion Discussion!

[Mos Deaf]

Funky title, y'all.

If you haven't seen the feedback survey for Week 1's Battle Night, follow this link (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vmRPT4B1VEwQaXOq1GSL2b3y jQwqOsb_mjC_QOPfN58/viewform) and fill it out!

I'd thought I'd use this to get together and discuss together what could be improved regarding the maps and/or gametype settings. Granted, most of this data is going towards, if not already, War Council to prep for the next Beta War. But as a community, we should knock our heads together and see what kind of solutions we can come up with! Plus, bonding together and all that silly emotion stuff.

LET US BEGIN!! (doooooonnnnnggggg) ....... that was a gong sound, not a "raise your dongers" battle cry.



MAPS



Empire:


Honestly, I didn't have any issues with this map at all. Solid shit. Had more fun on this map too!



Coliseum:


I DID have problems on this map. Let me compare thee to a summer shit in the toilet. Meaning, it's in the right place, but not exactly preferred by me.
Slayer works perfectly fine.
Strongholds is shit on this map. If you control the upper bridge, you have oversight on ALL THREE Holds. That's just bad design, shame on 343i for doing that.
Suggestion #1: Green Tower Hold should stay where it is, and the other two holds should go into the opposing bases
Suggestion #2: Green Tower hold is moved to underneath Rocket/Yellow Tower (at the bottom of the map), and the Red/Blue Holds are moved to the grassy areas between each base and Green Tower.


Weapons on Maps:

The weapon placements and timers on both maps are ideal as well. No complaints here.


Spawning:

Overall seemed to be fine in most cases (unlike Warzone, amirite???)
It feels more complicated than previous Halo, and might be more prone to mistakes. I'll need to look into how it works when Forge releases to understand it better though.





GAMETYPES



General settings:



15 minutes for all modes seems perfect.
No complaints on respawn times across all modes.
AR/Magnum loadout is perfect. Don't you fucking dare change this.


Conflict:


Part of me wants to drop the score down to 75, largely due to it getting a bit boring over time to just hunt down enemies for that time. 50 is high enough for a normal 4v4, no point in increasing it to 100 just to make it "unique" for us.
However, should we have larger teams, then sure, 100 or 125 would be ideal for that.



M Liberation:


10 points is too high. I'd suggest 5 points. This'll help prevent a dominating team from making their enemies feel like shit for the next 8 flag captures too.
Keep the setting for "At Home to Score," too. That made for a really intense game!



Strongholds:


Personally, a score of 200 allowed for my squad to make an epic comeback from 7-100 to 200-148. So I'd say keep this. However, if others complain it's too high, drop it to 150.
To Ghost and Renegade 2 squads: those were my favorite games <3 Looking forward to those rematches!

[Mythonian]

Thanks for making the thread, I'll take this opportunity to perhaps get a bit of feedback on specific things.

First, I'll discuss the goal of the score limits for ending games. Basically, it's to act purely as a mercy rule and meant to be a secondary system to end games a bit early if the teams are imbalanced.

If the teams are even, the score limit should be high enough so that it's not ending the game early. Also, it should be high enough to allow for reasonable comebacks, such as how Mos described in his Stronghold game.
If the teams are uneven, the score limit should be low enough so that the game is ended several minutes early. People sitting through 15 minutes of being rofl-stomped is not fun for either side.

Finding this balance is tricky, so we'll be making numerous adjustments throughout this beta war to try to find a good spot for them.

15 of the 23 games that were played yesterday ended via the score limit. That shows the severity of the skill imbalance.

Conflict:

9 games were played.
7 games had the winning team reach 100.
The remaining 2 had scores of 99-89 and 95-90.
Because of this, reducing the score limit to 75 is not being considered right now.
Current respawn time is 5 seconds, compared to the default 8 seconds in MM. Does everything think this was a good change, should we reduce it further to 3 seconds (like we used in previous Halo games), or increase it back to the default of 8 seconds? In the event of reducing it to 3, we'd raise the score limit to 125 (125 is unfortunately not a selectable option :( goes from 100 to 150).


M Liberation:

9 games were played.
3 games had the winning team reach 10.
5 more had the winning team at 5+.
The remaining game had a score of 2-1.
We've received a lot of feedback that 10 is too high, and it probably is. If 7 were a possible option, we'd definitely go for that, but the closest thing if 5, which is borderline too low, as 8 of 9 games would have hit that score limit. Using 5 will almost certainly be tested next week, and that will help us make a permanent decision.
Can you clarify what you mean by the statement on the "At Home to Score"? Do you mean you want us to keep the setting turned off so that you can cap it anyway, or turn it on so that you can't cap it until you return your own flag?


Strongholds:

5 games were played.
All 5 had the winning team reach 200.
Because of this, reducing the score limit to 150 isn't really being considered right now. Once we see a few games end without reaching 200 we'll have a better picture of this.


Potential new gametype:

Conquest, modeled after a gametype we used back in Reach.
Utilizing Strongholds, except where you gain points based on how many locations you control. If you have all 3, you get 3 points per cycle. If you have 2, you get 2 points per cycle, and 1 point per cycle for a single location. A cycle is 3 seconds.
Main advantage over Strongholds is that both teams are scoring in a 2-1 split, this prevents landslide victories from being as huge. Also rewards flanking past the enemy to steal their back location.
Experimental score limit of 500 for testing purposes.
Let me know thoughts on how this might turn out.



We're hoping that when BTB releases this week we'll also get a few new gametype options, like Oddball, KotH, Ricochet, Assault, etc., but only time will tell.

[Mos Deaf]

Happy to help out!


15 of the 23 games that were played yesterday ended via the score limit. That shows the severity of the skill imbalance.

This might be the most challenging problem that we'll need a solution for. Probably going to involve switching squads around.


...should we reduce it further to 3 seconds (like we used in previous Halo games), or increase it back to the default of 8 seconds? In the event of reducing it to 3, we'd raise the score limit to 125.

I personally think keeping it at 5 will be fine. Should we increase it to 8, that's also fine. Keeping the respawn timer at 5 or above will hopefully help people realise their deaths are a bit more meaningful..... hopefully.


Can you clarify what you mean by the statement on the "At Home to Score"? Do you mean you want us to keep the setting turned off so that you can cap it anyway, or turn it on so that you can't cap it until you return your own flag?

Turn it on so that you can't score unless your flag is at home.



Potential new gametype:

Conquest, modeled after a gametype we used back in Reach.
Utilizing Strongholds, except where you gain points based on how many locations you control. If you have all 3, you get 3 points per cycle. If you have 2, you get 2 points per cycle, and 1 point per cycle for a single location. A cycle is 3 seconds.
Main advantage over Strongholds is that both teams are scoring in a 2-1 split, this prevents landslide victories from being as huge. Also rewards flanking past the enemy to steal their back location.
Experimental score limit of 500 for testing purposes.
Let me know thoughts on how this might turn out.



I actually thought this was how Strongholds was originally going to be like. Still fun the way it is, but a skill imbalance will screw shit over :\
This 'Conquest' mode sounds like more fun because, like you said, prevents landslide victories from being larger. It also draws more of a feeling from Battlefield, which as we all know, it totally inspired by real war combat.


We're hoping that when BTB releases this week we'll also get a few new gametype options, like Oddball, KotH, Ricochet, Assault, etc., but only time will tell.

We can only hope. I personally think those might not quite arrive until Forge releases, though :\
Speaking of, I hope they release a REQ set with Forge that includes Forerunner Builder armor or a Monitor helmet so we can be nerds while we work on maps :D

[UNLUCKY NUM13ER]

I would suggest keeping the Conflict spawn at 5s, and perhaps increasing the Stronghold score cap.

I'm not a big fan of the added score caps, but they don't ruin the experience either so I can live with them

[NervyDestroyer]

I did feel the flag cap limit was rather high. 5 isn't too low IMO especially since the maps used were rather small. Though if it is too low, I'd rather see it to 10 so good games come of it. No need to sacrifice close nail-biters for a couple matches to end early anyway

[Drth spartan]

once forge hits in December we will be able to change all the points around the map (for strongholds)

As for skill imbalance it is possible to beat the Good teams as long as your team practices and finds what game mode works for you, then you will probably have a fairer fight. The only reason some of these Battles were one sided was from lack of practice as a squad. (It will take more then one practice)