I Really dislike this Feature because it doesn’t fit into Halo, It feels like you’re playing Ninja Gaiden and Not Halo. Every other Halo Game is drastically different from Halo 5 and I feel as a Veteran these Features aren’t positive game mechanics for A Game like Halo where you’re a Walking Tank!
Please bring back Linear and more toned down movement, no sliding, no groundpound and no spartan charge.
I’m not a fan of charge or pound but I like the others.
Yes, because being able to move like you can in the books is TOTALLY not how Halo should be played…
I keep reading these and all I hear is people whining about how their MLG “pro” straifing was destroyed by one kid who got behind them and shoulder charged them.
Me? I like getting behind people and crushing their bones with 1000 tons of armor moving at a couple dozen miles an hour. Ditto for dropping on people’s faces from above.
With the exception of the Spartan Charge, I really enjoy the newer abilities. The Ground Pound is quite versatile as not only can you squash someone into a pancake, but it’s great way to make a quick escape or traversing across a large portion of a map.
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Please edit your OP next time rather than double posting.
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You can use one of the existing H6 discussion threads.
I dislike Spartan Abilities for multiple reason. The main one is that they give the player too much freedom and as a result, for the most part, make movement uninteresting. There is little challenge in moving around the map when I can jump twice as high and twice as far as I could with a regular crouch jump. With that amount of freedom, it’s really easy to find (let alone execute, thanks to Clamber) the optimal path from A to B. I used to enjoy movement in Halo. When you can’t grab ledges, and can only jump moderate distances, it is much less obvious what jumps you can actually make, and performing jumps successfully is more challenging when you need to time the jump precisely and failures can’t be corrected. There’s certain elegance to the simple movement mechanics of classic Halo that I enjoy. When you’re restricted like that, paying attention to map geometry is more important. When you can’t thrust forward at the push of a button, any inclined surface is a useful opportunity to get a short speed boost. And there’s a great amount of depth in the simple movement that is only bound by the designer’s imagination to build interesting map geometry.
Speaking of simplicity, the Spartan Ability system is also unnecessarily complex. There are seven abilities, all of which have little to offer to gameplay, and some of which could easily be combined. Thruster Pack and Slide do basically the same thing when moving forward, except that Thruster Pack does more. So, Slide is completely redundant. Same goes for Sprint, because if we really want an ability that allows the player to move faster, it could be combined to an ability that functions like Thruster Pack. Evade in Reach did what Thruster Pack, Slide, and Sprint do combined, minus boosting in mid-air, but that is not a technical limitation.
Beyond that, Ground Pound and Stabilizer are built for very specific use cases, and were it not for the fact that by accident they turn out to be useful in performing certain jumps, they would be unnecessarily niche. The problem with building niche mechanics like this into the game is that they have too little to offer to gameplay. New mechanics should only be introduced to a game if they have a great deal of depth to offer. One-trick ponies don’t create interesting gameplay, and only end up cluttering the game.
I’m not completely averse to new movement mechanics, but the Spartan Ability system is bad design with an unnecessarily large amount of different mechanics that either have very little or nothing to offer in terms of new things to learn, and some of them actively reduce the amount of depth. Halo could possibly have room for one, or at maximum two, movement mechanic on top of the basic abilities to run, jump, and crouch. However, even those movement mechanics can’t be anything. They would need to be mechanics that are widely enough applicable that they’re not one-trick ponies, but using their full potential should require a great deal of skill, so that they would actually contrinute to the depth of gameplay instead of just making movement easier.
I utterly despise what has been done to Halo’s gameplay. Sprint is by far the worst offender because it not only takes away your ability to run and shoot at the same time, but it causes maps to be stretched out, aim assist to be increased, and vehicles to be less desirable. Ground-pound is just plain stupid. Clamber causes some of the same problems that sprint does in that it forces maps to be re-designed to accommodate it and it forces you into facing one direction to traverse the map while you’re stuck in a needless animation.
Thrusters seem like an unnecessary addition to the game. But, at the same time, it’s probably the least harmful.
That said, I am done wasting money on Halo games that don’t play like Halo games. If Halo 6 doesn’t AT LEAST get rid of the sprint mechanic, I won’t be buying it. Sprint in Halo 6 = I don’t buy Halo 6.
> 2811398874529013;8:
> Thrusters seem like an unnecessary addition to the game. But, at the same time, it’s probably the least harmful.
I don’t know. I would say Ground Pound and Stabilizer are completely harmless (but at the same time also unnecessary). At least I’ve rarely found myself in situations where using Ground Pound would be a good idea, considering you’re essentially just throwing away a height advantage for a single kill, which isn’t necessarily even all that certain. It just doesn’t have much usefulness to harm gameplay. Similarly, Stabilizer just stops you in the air for a moment, and I can’t immediately see this to have any harmful effects. Of course, if you can think ways in which these abilities are detrimental, then be my quest.
> 2533274825830455;9:
> > 2811398874529013;8:
> > Thrusters seem like an unnecessary addition to the game. But, at the same time, it’s probably the least harmful.
>
> I don’t know. I would say Ground Pound and Stabilizer are completely harmless (but at the same time also unnecessary). At least I’ve rarely found myself in situations where using Ground Pound would be a good idea, considering you’re essentially just throwing away a height advantage for a single kill, which isn’t necessarily even all that certain. It just doesn’t have much usefulness to harm gameplay. Similarly, Stabilizer just stops you in the air for a moment, and I can’t immediately see this to have any harmful effects. Of course, if you can think ways in which these abilities are detrimental, then be my quest.
I would consider ground-pound harmful because it gives every player much easier access to a one-hit kill that they have access to at all times. Yes, you have always been able to dish out a one-hit kill in the form of an assassination. But at least that required a bit of sneakiness and the right opportunity to be able to pull off. With Ground-pound, all you need to be is above the enemy. You can even be outside their radar range. I would consider that to be very harmful to the game.
To be perfectly honest, I often forget that stabilize is even a part of the game. I haven’t actually played Halo 5 since November of 2015 because of what the abilities and sprint have done to the gameplay.
> 2811398874529013;10:
> > 2533274825830455;9:
> > > 2811398874529013;8:
> > > Thrusters seem like an unnecessary addition to the game. But, at the same time, it’s probably the least harmful.
> >
> > I don’t know. I would say Ground Pound and Stabilizer are completely harmless (but at the same time also unnecessary). At least I’ve rarely found myself in situations where using Ground Pound would be a good idea, considering you’re essentially just throwing away a height advantage for a single kill, which isn’t necessarily even all that certain. It just doesn’t have much usefulness to harm gameplay. Similarly, Stabilizer just stops you in the air for a moment, and I can’t immediately see this to have any harmful effects. Of course, if you can think ways in which these abilities are detrimental, then be my quest.
>
> I would consider ground-pound harmful because it gives every player much easier access to a one-hit kill that they have access to at all times. Yes, you have always been able to dish out a one-hit kill in the form of an assassination. But at least that required a bit of sneakiness and the right opportunity to be able to pull off. With Ground-pound, all you need to be is above the enemy. You can even be outside their radar range. I would consider that to be very harmful to the game.
>
> To be perfectly honest, I often forget that stabilize is even a part of the game. I haven’t actually played Halo 5 since November of 2015 because of what the abilities and sprint have done to the gameplay.
In my experience, Ground Pound rarely gets used, because while yes, it can give a one-hit kill, the fact that you need to start from high up, and that it needs to be charged makes it less useful than one would imagine. A well placed grenade and a headshot is much more effective, equally fast, and less dangerous to use. The only situation where I can see myself rather using Ground Pound is if there is more than one enemy in a small area, but that’s a rare occurence, and I would consider it to be bad planning on their part rather than Ground Pound being too powerful.
Before Halo 5 launched, I thought Ground Pound was a really bad idea, but I would say it was the only Spartan Ability I was wrong about. At this point I just see it as a pointless ability that I use more often for extending jumps than for its intended use. I haven’t seen much more use from other players either.
Apart from sprint, there is not one single motion mechanic in this game that makes me like the game more than I did before. And I’m even starting to wonder if sprint is the good idea I always assumed that it was.
At the end of the day all the movement mechanics do is change Halo into a game I know longer want to play and that is just heartbreaking to me. I came to the franchise for this specific style of gameplay and it is no longer being offered and it has pushed me away as a result.
I have no issue with any of these individual mechanics in other games, I am perfectly capable of enjoying Titanfall’s advanced mobility and I cheered for the inclusion of sprint in Battlefield, but I just don’t enjoy these things in a Halo game.
In my opinion, I think thrusters at least should stick around. All other abilities can be kicked to the curb for all I care but thrusters seems to me like a fairly competent edition to the Halo sandbox. When I think of thrusters in games my mind immediately jumps to ridiculous parkour shooters like Cod, Titanfall, or even Destiny. Halo 5’s thrusters on their own don’t infringe on player movement and map design the same way as games like Cod:IW, where Cod’s 3 lane style of map design is broken beyond repair by people running on walls and flying across hallways. Remove sprint, clamber, spartan charge/ground pound, and stabilizers and you basically end up with Halo 2 with a horizontal dodge move.
Not my most thought out post, but what I mean is this: other abilities like sprint or clamber have to be compensated for in map design and it hasn’t led to 343 designing bad maps, but rather maps that feel incredibly safe and not memorable. I feel that H5’s thrusters would actually enhance the original trilogy’s map design rather than ruin it.
My ideal Halo 6 is a title that brings back classic gameplay but at the same time refreshes the movement by adding H5’s thruster ability. There is a discussion to be had about how long of a cooldown it should have or how much distance is traveled with each boost, so that’s where I’ll leave the topic open. (unless you think this is a horrible idea which is totally understandable, I’m just spit-balling here)
> 2533274907200114;4:
> Yes, because being able to move like you can in the books is TOTALLY not how Halo should be played…
You hit this one on the nose. Halo 5 finally closes in on what the Spartans’ mobility should be according to the novels. I find this infinitely preferable to loafing around like a great, lumbering oaf like Halo 3. There’s still room for refinement, but it is absolutely a step in the right direction.
> 2533274825830455;7:
> I dislike Spartan Abilities for multiple reason. The main one is that they give the player too much freedom and as a result, for the most part, make movement uninteresting. There is little challenge in moving around the map when I can jump twice as high and twice as far as I could with a regular crouch jump. With that amount of freedom, it’s really easy to find (let alone execute, thanks to Clamber) the optimal path from A to B. I used to enjoy movement in Halo. When you can’t grab ledges, and can only jump moderate distances, it is much less obvious what jumps you can actually make, and performing jumps successfully is more challenging when you need to time the jump precisely and failures can’t be corrected. There’s certain elegance to the simple movement mechanics of classic Halo that I enjoy. When you’re restricted like that, paying attention to map geometry is more important. When you can’t thrust forward at the push of a button, any inclined surface is a useful opportunity to get a short speed boost. And there’s a great amount of depth in the simple movement that is only bound by the designer’s imagination to build interesting map geometry.
I’m of a different school of thought. I feel that the enemy should be the challenge, not basic movement that would be instinct for the character I’m playing. As I see it, the more options you give the player, the more freedom you have to give additional options to the AI without completely overpowering the player. So if it is done right, encounters should be more interesting, not less.
I do recognize that it can be fun to do things most players can’t do, but from the perspective of everyone else, this can be really annoying when someone is dominating because they’re exploiting such a scenario.
> 2533274825830455;7:
> Speaking of simplicity, the Spartan Ability system is also unnecessarily complex. There are seven abilities, all of which have little to offer to gameplay, and some of which could easily be combined. Thruster Pack and Slide do basically the same thing when moving forward, except that Thruster Pack does more. So, Slide is completely redundant. Same goes for Sprint, because if we really want an ability that allows the player to move faster, it could be combined to an ability that functions like Thruster Pack. Evade in Reach did what Thruster Pack, Slide, and Sprint do combined, minus boosting in mid-air, but that is not a technical limitation.
I found the Spartan abilities pretty easy to understand, partially thanks to how intuitive the controls were. Slide is absolutely its own thing sliding across a doorway improves your odds of not getting sniped by someone with his weapon trained at head-height. It can also allow a quick approach, ducking under some of the fire from the defender, giving you a chance to strike back with your own weapons. It’s about as good as the player is creative. Also, Sprint is for getting to a destination, whereas the Thruster Pack is for evading danger. For a creative player there’s more to it than that, but they are distinct and are not redundant (by my appraisal) as you suggested.
> 2533274825830455;7:
> Beyond that, Ground Pound and Stabilizer are built for very specific use cases, and were it not for the fact that by accident they turn out to be useful in performing certain jumps, they would be unnecessarily niche. The problem with building niche mechanics like this into the game is that they have too little to offer to gameplay. New mechanics should only be introduced to a game if they have a great deal of depth to offer. One-trick ponies don’t create interesting gameplay, and only end up cluttering the game.
I disagree. Mechanics like these actually give rise to new game types. Have you seen any games of Quidditch in Halo 5? I’ve watched them online, and they’re a sight to see.
> 2533274825830455;7:
> I’m not completely averse to new movement mechanics, but the Spartan Ability system is bad design with an unnecessarily large amount of different mechanics that either have very little or nothing to offer in terms of new things to learn, and some of them actively reduce the amount of depth. Halo could possibly have room for one, or at maximum two, movement mechanic on top of the basic abilities to run, jump, and crouch. However, even those movement mechanics can’t be anything. They would need to be mechanics that are widely enough applicable that they’re not one-trick ponies, but using their full potential should require a great deal of skill, so that they would actually contrinute to the depth of gameplay instead of just making movement easier.
These mechanics can be further refined, but rather than reducing depth as you say, I find that they literally add the third dimension into combat, which adds new interesting options.
These are my opinions, and I present my contrasting view with all due respect.
> 2533274873843883;12:
> Apart from sprint, there is not one single motion mechanic in this game that makes me like the game more than I did before. And I’m even starting to wonder if sprint is the good idea I always assumed that it was.
I’m starting to think this as well. Sprint is meant to speed up gameplay, yet they stretch the maps out to compensate for it, and it results in this. Thruster packs are essentially an instant strafe dodge, which isn’t as effective as evade from Reach or even regular strafing with strafe speed increased, especially given Halo 5’s amount of bullet magnetism. Spartan charge is just annoying as hell, and ground pound is situational, only allowing kills against people who don’t recognize the sound of someone charging it up above them, though it does lead to some funny and awesome moments at times. Slide is basically useless. The only ability in Halo 5 that I truly like is clamber, but then again, I’m not sure how useful it would be without sprint.
If they could find a way to make it fit, I’d be fine with “enhanced mobility.” Issue is, they basically put these things in the game to check a box, if you will, to say that Halo is modern and on-par with other games. Which is the same level of absurdity as when people prop up their casting choices for a movie (and you know what I mean here) and say that they are “modern” and “updated” by taking old characters and adding whatever is currently popular to make it “enjoyable for everyone.”
The result is not very satisfying to original fans and it doesn’t retain new ones as well as it should because it becomes too similar to everything else, which is exactly what Halo has become: too similar to everything else. Which is a damn shame because this franchise used to determine what OTHER shooters were like, not the other way around.
So the answer to this dilemma, since it’s now one of several topics that splits the fanbase right down the center, is to update movement in a way that suits both parties. OR don’t update movement at all, but I don’t think that’s the right option. Halo Reach was one of several games that revolutionized movement in FPS, right there with Titanfall, released around the same time. Ever since then, it’s been forever changed. So it’s somewhat slow-paced to revisit Halo 2 and 3 online. I feel like we could place power-ups across maps to allow for certain abilities, like a base speed increase and things like that, rather than strictly “overshield” and “active camo” being the only ones. We could go back to Halo 3 style, with slightly faster base movement and then powerups to increase that among other abilities and after some testing and with the correct map sizes and setups I think that’d be a winning setup.
Also, to those of you saying movement should be as it appears in the novels: The games were around before the novels, and while I’ve read and enjoyed some of them, for the most part I keep these things separated in my mind. I like the games to be the games and the books to be the books, and they can tie in story elements all they want (Though 5 relied entirely too much on alternative media that I didn’t have time for). If we are basing things on The Fall of Reach, actually, the gameplay of the original trilogy isnt too horribly far off from that book.
The problem, irregardless of people ‘liking’ the way Halo 5 plays or not, is that Halo’s gameplay, its formula, its hook, its philosophy, whatever you want to call it; simply doesn’t gel with movement mechanics.
Halo is a headshot based arena fps with a high ttk and a focus on accuracy and consistent placement of shots.
Why was Halo praised in the past? It was the thinking player’s shooter, it was the one that took ‘skill’, it was often likened to chess or an elaborate dance.
Remember what Halo players used to say about CoD and Battlefield? “You just run around like a headless chicken and have no chance to fight back; who shoots first wins.” Well that sounds like Halo 5 to me.
There’s also that other thing Halo used to be praised for, I used to hear it said about a lot of solid games actually; “The game is easy to play, but difficult to master.” meaning Halo could support casuals and competitives alike.
You could get used to Halo within a single campaign mission or a game or two of Slayer, but there were layers of tactics and techniques to learn as you grew as a player, strafing and bunny hopping, re-scoping and animation cancelling, grenade jumping and crouch jumping, ninja-ing and all kinds of player created strategies that evolved naturally from the game.
The ISOs from Tron were a good analogy for this kind of thing; deep and complicated elements of a system that spontaneously grew without the involvement of the Developer, and things like this used to be nurtured and supported, but in Halo 5, by giving the player ‘more options’ through Dev tested mechanics rather than naturally evolved tactics, not only is the game now more difficult to pick up and play (given that you have much more to initially learn) making the game less accessible to newcomers, but you reduce the depth of an originally adaptable formula by arbitrarily assigning a button press mechanic to most strategies that once existed.
tl;dr - By adding so many mechanics to the game, you make the game harder to learn, and simultaneously reduce the depth and evolution of continued play; reducing the skill gap at both ends, creating a hostile environment for newcomers (and series veterans given the stylistic departure), and you leave competitive players no-where to go when they reach the upper echelons of play, causing them to get bored and often quit altogether. This is why Halo 5’s gameplay is so broadly disliked.
> 2533274857642512;18:
> Also, to those of you saying movement should be as it appears in the novels: The games were around before the novels, and while I’ve read and enjoyed some of them, for the most part I keep these things separated in my mind. I like the games to be the games and the books to be the books, and they can tie in story elements all they want (Though 5 relied entirely too much on alternative media that I didn’t have time for). If we are basing things on The Fall of Reach, actually, the gameplay of the original trilogy isnt too horribly far off from that book.
5 doesn’t actually rely on novels aside from Blue Team and Forerunner vocacb. Eveything else is explained or new in general.
Aside from clamber(sort of) and maybe sliding and sprint, the gameplay of the older games sort of matches the books.