Halo 4 has a great foundation, but there are a few tweaks and changes that I think need to be made to make the game the best experience possible. I would love to hear your feedback on these, agree or disagree, with constructive arguments please.
1.) Grenades. I think grenades are the most underwhelming facet of Halo 4. They have a very small radius, you cannot pick them up off corpses (without a perk), and they are simply not a core element to Halo 4’s gameplay. As far as I’m concerned, Halo CE was the pioneer of smart, usable grenades in console FPS’s. They were the most strategic tool in the game, and you could always tell a good Halo player from a great Halo player by their use of grenades.
If I remember correctly, Halo 2 initially had very weak grenades, but they later patched in decently powerful grenades in the major patch to that game (RIP Halo 2 Dual Magnums, still the best weapons ever [prepatch]). Halo 3 and Reach had decent grenades, but for some reason Halo 4’s grenades have been neutered. This is especially evident on certain Halo 4 maps that promote camping (Adrift, in my experience), where it can be extremely difficult to flush people out of cover, even if you know exactly where they are camping. This is all talking about frag grenades, of course. Plasma grenades seem to be only useful against vehicles and pulse grenades appear to be almost totally useless. The Halo 4 grenades need a buff, a much larger explosion radius and possibly more damage.
2.) Unsatisfying Medium-Long Distance battles. I think weapons kill a little too quickly in Halo 4 from medium and long distance. While I like that the assault rifle has been buffed to be almost usable in close combat situations, the precision weapons do not allow for a ton of interesting gameplay. The DMR and battle rifle in particular are extremely potent weapons. It has become extremely important to get the first shot in, as it’s very difficult to lose a 1-shot or half-shot advantage in all but the closest quarter fights (yes, it’s harder to miss at short range than long range.) I think the decision to not unzoom you when you are hit is a questionable one, and though it is not the sole reason for unsatisfyingly easy long-range battles, it is exacerbated by the inherent power of the DMR. The Reach DMR was balanced by the horrific bloom, but Halo 4’s DMR has no such restrictions.
I think the solution is to put back in the forced unscoping when you are hit that has been in every Halo game ever. I understand the CoD players probably prefer to stay zoomed, but CoD is a totally different game where you usually don’t get to fire back, you just die immediately. Halo needs interesting medium-long range battles, and not unscoping when you get hit only provides one type of fight: Whoever hits 5 shots first wins. There’s no grenade play, no decision of whether to zoom back in or just noscope, no thought of your surroundings to take cover. Instead, you just jam the right trigger and hope the other guy dies first. Also, the headshot hitbox is gigantic. Headshots in Halo 4 are more prevalent than body shots, which leads to even more boring, quick battles. Also Bullet Magnetism in this game is absurd and needs to be toned down, see this thread: https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst160742_Halo-4---Where-everyone-can-kill---UPDATED-2.aspx
3.) Imbalanced teams. It is extremely difficult for me to understand why the system allows games to start with an imbalanced number of players. Playing 4v5 on Capture the flag is not only quite hard, but not any fun. I can understand when big team battle is 8v7, but 3v4 and 4v5 is too big of a gap. The fact that the system will actually start games with this imbalance is infuriating.
4.) The Warthog. I don’t understand why the warthog cannot be given a reasonable place in Halo. Halo Reach’s hog was horrible, and so is Halo 4’s. It does reasonable vehicle-to-vehicle damage, but it’s damage to players is abysmal. When you are better off getting out of the hog to shoot someone with a dmr from close range, something is wrong. I understand that getting reamed by a warthog all game is not fun, but isn’t that what the cumulative vehicle damage model was designed to combat? If 3 people shoot the warthog, it’s not going to kill you more than a couple times without exploding. Please do not relegate the warthog to an easier to shoot mongoose. Increase the turret damage.
5.) Ordnances. Ordnances are too random for any kind of competitive game. They are even more imbalancing than CoD killstreaks, which are at least consistent and harder to get. It is extremely annoying when luck favors the other team and they spawn 4 sniper rifles at the 5 minute mark. If weapon spawns are put back in (see below), they need to be severely tweaked. Halo can take another page from CoD and let us choose our ordnance drops (loadout style), or they should gradually ramp up in power, rather than randomness. If someone gets 30 kills in a game, I don’t mind if they get a sniper or a rocket launcher, they probably deserve it. Randomness needs to be toned down.
6.) Weapons Spawns (or lack thereof). I think the decision to remove regularly spawning weapons (both power weapons and random nonpower weapons on the ground) is the largest mistake Halo has made in its effort to attract more mainstream CoD audiences. Halo typically had two main ways to win a game: control the power positions on the map (where you can shoot a lot of people), and control the power weapons. This meant you could not stay at the top of the level all the time, because eventually the sniper/rockets were going to spawn, and your camping ways would soon come to an explosive or headless end. But now, there is very little incentive not to camp. Instead of two objectives, now all you have to do is control the power positions on the map. This leads to stale, camp-heavy gameplay, as half of the maps go unused.
7.) Ranked playlists Due to the character limit, I can’t go into this in depth, but Halo needs a viable competitive option. This Thread provides an excellent synopsis and discussion.
8.) Death Xs. In most previous Halo games, there would be a big red X on the map for a few seconds after you died. This would allow you to call out where people were in comparison to your X (ie. 1 shot on my X). Now, all you get is a radar indicator, which is grossly insufficient. The red Xs when teammates die need to be added in.
For the record, I am a long-time Halo fan who wants Halo 4 to be the best it can be. I played countless hours of Halo 1 system link, over 10,000 Halo 2 games, and thousands of Halo 3 and Reach games. I reached level 50 in Halo 3, and was Onyx in every Halo Reach season I participated in. I have also played CoD Black Ops to prestige 15, so I’m not aimlessly bashing Halo for being too “CoDified”, as I thoroughly enjoy those games also.
I’m sure I will add more to this list as I find more ways that Halo 4 can be improved, I’d love to hear what you think about any or all of my suggestions. Thank you for reading. If you agree with some or most of these points, please bump this thread. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
