343 Industries used the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta on the Xbox One to gather real world feedback that they could not otherwise get through internal testing. The three week effort paid off, with nearly 20 million games played and more large amount of feedback from the community. The developer shared some of the changes to gameplay and weapons as a result on Thursday.
Executive Producer @JoshingtonState talks data, learnings, and changes from the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta: http://t.co/4gfqhtRAq7— Halo (@Halo) February 5, 2015
The Spartan Abilities in Halo 5 are one of the more controversial additions to the game's mechanics, along with the ability to sprint. While sprinting and thrusters are here to stay, 343 Industries is going to give players an option to toggle the abilities on or off in custom multiplayer matches.Additionally, the following changes are also being made to Spartan Abilities.
- Increase base speed (faster base movement)
- Increase strafe acceleration (faster, more responsive strafing)
- Reduce top sprint speed (narrow the delta between base movement and sprint)
- Modify Ground Pound controls to prevent conflicts w/ crouch jumping
- General tuning & bug fixes for all Spartan Abilities (Thrusters, Clamber, Ground Pound, etc.)
- Sniper Rifle: improve scope experience to making it less "clunky" and faster to scope
- DMR: adjust position of the scope to improve visibility
- Bring back the SPNKr Rocket Launcher as a legendary version of the weapon
- Reduce bonuses for automatic weapons in Smart-Link & w/ headshots
- Remove grenade detonation in mid-air based on weapon fire
- Ability to turn on/off vibration feedback for weapons
- General tuning and bug fixing for all weapons

The Halo 5 presentation is also receiving numerous tweaks. The pre and post-match hero changes will tone down the high fives and chest bumps. There are also other changes coming on some things that were noted in this beta impressions piece.
- Post-death replay: this will become an opt-in feature. After death, players will see a traditional follow-cam and have the option to view a replay of their death from the killer's perspective (as long as the feature is enabled within the playlist)
- Medals: decrease frequency and number of medals displayed in the medal feed
- Spartan chatter: players will have the option to turn this on or off in the settings menu
- Adding highlights to placed/dropped weapons to make them easier to see
- General tuning for announcer and Spartan chatter to reduce the frequency of events and focus on the information that matters most to players
- Improved skill detection during placement phase
- Improved skill matching
- Improved team balancing
- Prevent skill boosting
- General bug fixing & tuning
- Much faster matches
- Better skill matching
- Better feedback to players in the lobby and matchmaking experiences
- Allow players to set desired datacenter for matchmaking (may impact matchmaking speed and skill balance)Improved party vs party matchmaking
- Hide CSR ranks until in match to de-incentivize quitting
- Punish quitters with CSR penalties and matchmaking bans
[Images via Halo Waypoint]