It’s been just a few short weeks since we dropped Warzone Firefight, Halo 5’s latest and largest free content release. In that time, the community has banded together to battle round after round of alien enemy, taking the fight to Covenant and Promethean opponents alike. Back at the 343 mothership, we’ve been carefully monitoring your feedback and play data in order to continue evolving and improving your Halo 5 experience.

In that vein, earlier today we flipped the switch on a hotfix to improve your experience in both Warzone Firefight as well as on Tidal, our brand new Forge canvas. Let’s take a quick look at what’s been improved with this hotfix update.

WARZONE FIREFIGHT

“Hey all, during the Warzone Firefight beta earlier this year, you generated an almost incalculable amount of data from your in-game efforts on Escape from A.R.C. In that short period of time we had more coverage on that map and those objectives than the entire development of the mode to that point. For that, we thank you. Your efforts helped make Warzone Firefight a better experience for everyone. Now that the full release across six maps is out, the amount of data you’re generating has grown exponentially.

In general, we’re pleased with what we’ve seen regarding the conquering of those pesky AI foes. However, that data, alongside feedback gathered from a variety of internet locales and social media, helped us identify a few objectives that were not playing at a difficulty appropriate to the round where they exist.

Below you’ll see a more complete list of the changes you can expect to find in our new hotfix in Halo 5: Guardians. Please note, there are some additional under the hood changes in this release that should improve your in-game experience now and help set up further updates as we continue to fine-tune Warzone Firefight in the future.”

- David Ellis, Multiplayer Designer, 343 Industries

Warzone Firefight Adjustments

Urban

Moved “Defend the Garage” objective from Round 1 to Round 2

Moved “Defend the Forerunner Powercore” (Hill) objective to Round 3

Moved “Eliminate Knight Sublimis and the Phaeton Helmsmen” objective to Round 4

Moved “Eliminate the Banshee Raiders” objective to Round 4

Moved “Kill 35 Prometheans” objective to Round 3

March on Stormbreak

Reduced target number for “Kill Soldiers” objective in Round 2 from 50 to 35

Reduced target number for “Kill Knights” objective in Round 4 from 25 to 20

Raid on Apex 7

Moved “Kill 60 Grunts” objective to Round 3

Moved Solder Bandit boss objective to Round 3

Moved “Eliminate the Hunter Particulars” objective to round 4

Moved “Eliminate the Hunter Premiers” objective to round 3

Moved “Eliminate the Warden Eternal” objective to Round 4

Moved “Kill 25 Knights” objective to Round 4

Reduced number of knight waves that come in with Grunt Boss in Round 5

Skirmish at Darkstar

Moved “Defend the Armory” (Promethean) to Round 2

Moved “Defend the Armory” (Covenant) to Round 1

Moved “Eliminate the Soldier Commandos” objective to Round 4

Moved “Eliminate the Phaeton Helmsmen” objective to Round 4

Moved “Eliminate the Warden Eternal” objective to Round 3

Escape from A.R.C.

Moved “Defend the Garage” objective to round 4

Moved “Eliminate the Recon Pilots” objective to Round 3

FORGE

Fixed issues with “generating lighting” on Tidal.

“For Forge our focus was fixing the light bake (generating lighting) issue on Tidal. Ironically enough, the issue arose in relation to a change we made in how we structure the map internally – a change that we thought would actually optimize the map a bit more. Unfortunately, it actually ended up causing everything in the sky box to re-light bake unnecessarily, resulting in drastically increased bake times. This new hotfix should address these issues and immediately improve players’ Forging experience on Tidal.”

-Tom French, Director of UGC, 343 Industries