The co-op campaign in Halo 5 is getting easier

Do you think that Halo 5 and its cooperative campaign is intensely difficult? You're not the only one. 343 Industries has announced that a balancing update is coming with several modifications.

The changes will be associated with the Memories of Reach update which is due in May and will include, among other things, changes in levels of difficulty, both in the single-player campaign and in co-op. The single-player campaign will get a tougher difficulty setting, while in co-op you will kill your enemies more easily.

"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.

"Given that we're constantly updating the game adding new content for Multiplayer, and we've got Warzone Firefight and other cool stuff on the way, I took the opportunity to touch global difficulty tuning and address areas where Halo 5's difficulty was spiky, too easy or inconsistent."

More details about the update are available via Halo Waypoint, but there are some specific changes detailed below:

Please note that enemy-specific changes will also apply to Warzone AI. the Warzone team has been playtesting these adjustments, and we'll be keeping a close eye on all feedback, (especially as it pertains to Warzone Firefight difficulty).

- 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