In the original I actually wanted the opposite of what 343i did with Halo 5's radar. Back in 2009 I wanted it extended back to the range it was in Halo 1 (~40 m), whereas 343i reduced it to 18 m in Halo 5. I've since gotten accustomed to the 25-meter range from Halo 2 on through Halo 4, and that's the absolute lowest range I'd ever want the radar to be.

: visible health

They did get this right.

: movement speed

And this... well, except for the jet pack strafing and new movement and all, which results in combat being much faster-paced than in previous games.

: reduced lunging

I definitely didn't mind this, either.

: Definitely agree with you on enemy/ally stuff (although
: who doesn't) and really hope for a game in the future where "more
: damage/more health" isn't the distinction with difficulty modes.

That one was all on Bungie. They started this in Halo 2, and every subsequent Halo game has basically used the same damage scale. 343i has just failed to correct this mistake. Personally, I find Halo 1 to still be challenging on Legendary, and it always demonstrates to me that enemies don't have to be overwhelmingly powerful for the game to be a challenge.

: I heavily disagree about Forge's future, just in terms of the fact that
: increasing complexity empowers a % of the player base, but also reduces
: accessibility of the feature as well. I look to Blizzard's editors.
: StarCraft's editor was robust but straightforward; triggers were basic
: IF/AND/WHILE kind of functions, terrain was isometric. With WarCraft III,
: the game was 3D and cinematics became an in-game function; the result was
: that the editor was much more of a tool oriented towards programmers. With
: StarCraft II the functionality increased even further, but by that point I
: was lost. Unless I had an eye towards game development the complexity of
: the tools actively impeded my efforts for creating a map (such as the
: increasing number of stuff you had to do just to get a basic map *working*
: for a custom match) and made me discouraged to learn more.

: At its core, Forge is very much a "build stuff with LEGO" editor,
: and I've always posited that's its *strength* rather than a real weakness.

Which is why I mentioned that concessions would be made for novice Forgers. To wit:

"For novice Forgers or those who would rather not mess around with a terrain editor, there would still be a pre-made “Forge World 2.0,” which would itself be a creation of this more robust map editor and thus capable of being reforged into new shapes and even given new areas. Like the original version of Forge World it would have multiple distinct regions and be highly reminiscent of the original. By default it would look like it originally did (green grass, grey stone), but with the use of the texture tool they can repaint the environment to look like any of a number of other environments: desert, snow/arctic, savannah, tropical forest/jungle, wetlands, bizarre alien landscapes, and other possibilities. The player could simply load Forge World, bring up the texture toolbox to select, swap out the default textures with other textures, and *POOF!*, Forge World could become “Desert World” or “Snow World.”

I also wouldn't be averse to having "Desert World," "Snow World" and the like be separate pre-made maps in their own right with terrain distinct from Forge World's. The "Tabula Rasa" map I suggested would also just be a plain flat field, possibly using a basic grass texture.

Basically, things would be set up both novice and advanced Forgers. Nobody would be forced to use the terrain editor or texture tools if they didn't want to.