Halo 5 Getting Campaign Balance Changes for Difficulty and More

It's just Halo 5's multiplayer mode that's getting new updates. Developer 343 Industries has outlined a series of changes coming to the game's campaign mode, including changes to difficultly and more.

"Having had a few months to digest player feedback, reviews, let's play videos, and internal feedback, I've been working on an update to Halo 5's campaign balance, aiming to address parts of the game that players yelled at us about, or that bugged me and the rest of the team enough to address even without external feedback," 343 designer Chris Proctor explained in a post on Halo Waypoint.

Some of the specific changes coming to Halo 5's campaign include increasing difficulty for single-player and reducing difficulty for co-op. In both cases, the difficulty changes are described as "slight." Additionally, Warden attacks should now be "a little" easier to dodge, in particular on lower difficulties.

Below is a rundown of changes coming to Halo 5's campaign. Note that enemy-specific changes also apply to Warzone's AI characters. For lots more on these changes, which are coming with the Memories of Reach update in May, head to Halo Waypoint.

In other news about Halo 5, the beta for the recently released Warzone Firefight beta has been extended by a day.

SPECIFIC CHANGES

• Reduced two-player difficulty slightly

• Increased single-player difficulty slightly

• Made Warden attacks a little easier to dodge, particularly on lower difficulties

  • Face Beam tracks moving targets less accurately

  • Gravity Bomb has less homing

  • Melee attack has slightly less range

• Made the Warden slightly easier to kill from the front

• Reduced AI Focus Turret damage output

• Reduced AI Storm Rifle, Suppressor, and Light Rifle effectiveness

  • AI Storm Rifle: fires in shorter bursts, projectiles spread out more and move more slowly. Jackals are now less effective than Elites with the Storm Rifle

  • AI Suppressor: fires in longer bursts, projectiles have less homing. Crawlers are now less effective than Soldiers with the Suppressor

  • AI now fire shorter bursts with the Light Rifle

• Increased AI Plasma Pistol, Needler and Beam Rifle effectiveness

  • AI Plasma Pistol: slightly higher accuracy and damage

  • AI Needler: AI now fire longer bursts (i.e. can now supercombine players on Heroic and above), slightly higher damage

  • AI Beam Rifle: slightly more damage (mostly this will make it a two-shot kill instead of a three-shot kill in Heroic single player, allowing Jackal Snipers to actually kill a player from time to time)

• Added a "tackle" animation to Sword Elites – shoutout to Pat Gillette for making the sweet sword tackle animation

  • Instead of stopping to swing at a moving target they can swing on the move

• Increased Elite, Elite Officer and Soldier Officer durability

• Reduced Soldier bamf frequency

• Killing a Crawler now deals area-of-effect damage to all nearby enemies, softening them up or killing them outright

• Reduced frequency of Squad AI getting killed while in a gunner's turret in a player's vehicle

• Made being killed by an attached Plasma Grenade non-revivable, similar to lethal damage from a Binary Rifle

• Increased AI special ability chance with higher player count in co-op games, e.g. Plasma Pistol overcharge, grenade throw

• Increased AI promotion chance with player count in co-op games

  • i.e. in cooperative games you will encounter more high-ranked enemies where promotion paths exist (most noticeable with Grunts, Elites, Jackals and Crawlers)

• The first player to press the "Call for Help" now has priority, other players will have to wait their turn for a revive – shoutout to Mr. Robert Kingsley for the code fix for this.

While you'll have to wait a while for these campaign changes, 343 this week released a new update for Halo 5's Arena multiplayer mode with the following changes:

COLISEUM

• Removed Binary Rifles

• Swapped Sniper Rifle and Rocket Launcher weapon pads (Sniper to "Yellow Tower" / Rocket Launcher to "Green Tower")

• Suppressor moved to bottom of the Grav Lift

FATHOM

• SAW weapon pad modified

  • Max ammo reduced to one magazine total (no reloading)

  • Respawn time reduced from 3 min to 2 min

EMPIRE

• Shotgun moved back to Tower One

• Plasma Pistol moved to "Mid" the small street in between "Tower" and "Pit"

Finally, it was also confirmed that Halo 5's Fiesta mode is expanding with new options.

"Earlier today [April 15], we deployed an update that made Fiesta CTF, Fiesta Strongholds, and Fiesta Assault available in Custom Games, meaning you can fire up these game variants any time you'd like," 343 said.