Ok I have a legitimate question for the Halo community… Or at least a question for those who think AAs and sprint are game braking. Now I have been playing Halo since CE and I love AAs and sprint. The only reason I’m not playing Halo 4 is both because my Internet sucks and the majority of m friends don’t play it. But thats for another time. Now someone, anyone please give me some justification for all the hatred of AAs and Sprint.
There isn’t a good reason. I’ve wondered the same thing and for sprint people normally give some vague ideology about not wanting people to escape bad situations which I struggle to understand let alone agree with seeing as you slow when shot. As for AA’s I think they are great and totally a part of halo at this point, yet some denounce them for again reasons I’m not quite sure but think it has to do with making the game unpredictable.
Yes, why should something like looking throught walls, seeing everyones position and weapon so I dont need awarness be game breaking?
How about a shot trough wall abylitiy? Im sick of seeing through walls and have to run to the enemies to kill them 
If I could just shoot through the wall the game would run a lot more faster.
If you don’t have an idea of why at least some of us dislike these features, then you haven’t actually been reading the threads that discuss these issues.
Forum members like Funzbob, Jazzi, Ghost of Maine, and myself have dedicated pages to outlining exactly why we object to the current implementations and detailing how we would go about resolving these issues.
I’ll quit being cantankerous and just link to another thread that I think addresses these conversation points at least obliquely. Probably don’t necropost it, but give it a once over and tell me what you think.
I’ll be happy to continue this conversation in your thread. =D
https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst225829_Is-sprint-REALLY-a-problem.aspx
This is a blog post that I found I agreed with for the most part.
> There isn’t a good reason. I’ve wondered the same thing and for sprint people normally give some vague ideology about not wanting people to escape bad situations which I struggle to understand let alone agree with seeing as you slow when shot. As for AA’s I think they are great and totally a part of halo at this point, yet some denounce them for again reasons I’m not quite sure but think it has to do with making the game unpredictable.
As nothing will ever convince you - You will just have wait until you see the flaw in the system yourself.
Let’s makes use of a cave to explain this; I will use another means. A child believes in the myth of Santa Claus, a child has good reason to suppose this myth is true, it is inculcated when he receives Christmas presents, the media, family and friends consolidate the belief, the child even writes to Santa Claus and receives a reply. On Christmas Day this belief becomes a ‘reality’. Through education and maturity, the child will have doubts as to the truth of this illusion. At some stage during the transition from childhood to adulthood he will acknowledge the illusion, and further, during parenthood the myth really comes home to roost as knowledge and absolute truth. (He now has a choice; he can put an end to the myth or continue the cycle) What is distinctive regarding each stage, is how far they have come out of the cave. Through illusion and belief to knowledge.
> When is sprint actually useful?
>
>
>
> The answer is, according to me, when maps are larger or base movement speed is slow. Why?
>
> Well, if you have a high base movement speed on small maps, sprint is essentially not something you’ll use as cover is mostly always close by and the action is around the corner. Why sprint to something when I can be caught off guard? Or be in position a third of a second earlier? In that case, to justify the addition of sprint and actually make players use it, you need to lower the base movement speed. What happens when you lower base movement speed? Well you move slower of course, and sprint is suddenly a fast way of getting around, with your weapon down.
>
> The negative side about lowering base movement speed, you sacrifice strafing. What does this actually mean then?
>
> Strafing is a way to “confuse and throw” your opponents aim off and thus gain the upper hand in an engagement through the sole action of moving around. The better you are at strafing, the better you are at throwing your opponents aim off. With lower movement speed, there comes a limit of how effective your strafing can be. With low enough movement speed, strafing becomes pointless and engagements become “who saw who first” or “kill trades”.
>
> Of course we could all argue that an increase in aim sensitivity would also make things more difficult, the only difference here is that there is no global sensitivity for aiming, it’s a personal preference, while movement speed is a game rule.
>
> Now about larger maps. If we don’t want to sacrifice strafing, there’s always the option of increasing map size. While it again justifies adding sprinting as a viable way of moving around quickly, it comes again, with a price. Larger maps don’t play well with smaller player numbers on the actual map. For instance, Complex is a big map, however it’s not in BTB, or atleast it wasn’t when I played. It was used in 4v4 Infinity Slayer, with the other larger maps present, I found Infinity Slayer 4v4 quite boring as engagements in long range was frequent and they mostly ended up with someone behind cover rather than a kill and some points. I would also argue that it’s the reason BTB is the most played playlist, simply because the larger maps don’t play well with smaller teams.
>
> In the end, we’re left with two options, lower base movement speed and a decreased skill gap, or larger maps that doesn’t work with playlists with smaller player counts. If we want sprint in that is.
>
> If we leave sprint out, we don’t have any of those problems. High base movement speed increases the skill gap because it allows more freedom with strafing. Maps can be small because there isn’t a mechanic in the game that needs to be justified.
>
> There are no problems and the game is deeper, it’s a win-win situation. As opposed to having to choose between two bad choices, slower base movement speed or larger maps.
>
> Now, there are people arguing over the “realism” part. Consider that the game is set 500 years into the future, you’re an augmented super soldier in a big half ton armor that further enhances your abilities. Shouldn’t we be able to “sprint” all the time with our weapons up and actually be able to use those weapons?
>
> There’s also that other take at it, gameplay is vastly more important than realism, unless of course realism is what the game is about, and last time I checked, Halo isn’t one of those games. If realism really was the question, why can’t we prone? Why does tanks explode after getting hit with a couple of bullets?
>
> There’s also that fun camp explaining that sprint is a part of what modern FPS games have.
>
> In what way is that an actual argument? In what way does a game stand out from the rest if aspects of other games is introduced? We can talk industry standards when it comes to safety issues, but in gaming? No, there are no such things as “industry standards”. Using features from other games without actually doing anything else than copying them is not innovative or in any way bringing the game from the cluster of similair games. No, Halo 4 isn’t CoD, or any other modern shooter out there, but it’s certainly way closer to that area now than it ever was. Continue down that road and all that’s left is the same experience through all games but with different skins.
>
> I played Unreal Tournament because it wasn’t Quake, I played Starcraft because it wasn’t C&C, I played Warcraft because it wasn’t Age of Empires. I’m not going to buy two games to get similair experiences, many others share my opinion in this, so why on earth should games be “standardised”?
>
> I doubt anyone who should read this will read it, and I’m not going to post a TL;DR either, anyone who wants that version isn’t in the right place in the first place anyway.
>
> love
> Naqser
The problem I have with sprint is that it gives you speed at the expense of agility.
Maps were designed for sprint. Sprint is roughly twice the speed of base movement. While sprinting, I cannot shoot, nor can I look in one direction while moving in another. In order to do either of those things, I will be forced to move at half the speed the maps are designed for. Thus, while speed is increased, overall movement capability is decreased.
Sprint and instant respawn work together to create an environment that allows you to jump back into the action quickly after a death. This is good and fun for casual, noncompetitive, and team-indifferent gameplay; however, since death no longer carries as steep of a price, it is no longer something to be avoided. Whereas killing another player before meant he would be unavailable to the other team for about 10 seconds, giving my team a chance to control the map, power weapons, or just gang up on his remaining alive teammates, now that player is back in only about 3-4 seconds.
EDIT: The first problem I have with AAs is the same problem I have with perks: they give an unknowable and therefore unpredictable advantage to players at spawn. Does my enemy have faster reload or an extra grenade? Does my enemy have an increased motion sensor range or the ability to use the motion sensor while scoped? Does he have a Hologram or a Jet Pack? Does he have a Regeneration Field or a Thruster Pack? As you can see, it is completely possible for my enemy to do something that I could not have predicted, not because he outsmarted me, but because he pressed a button that could do any one of 8 actions, which may as well have been random. And as Frank O’Connor has said, “randomness is a poor substitute for tactics and skillful execution.”
The second problem I have with AAs is that they can be used at spawn, at will, and an infinite number of times. The Active Camo AA is a great example.
All of these problems with AAs could be fixed by reducing AAs to on-map pickups only. Honestly, I would prefer AAs to function more like Equipment. For example, the Jet Pack equipment would boost you upwards like a gravity lift, but could only be used once or twice.
> If you don’t have an idea of why at least some of us dislike these features, then you haven’t actually been reading the threads that discuss these issues.
>
> Forum members like Funzbob, Jazzi, Ghost of Maine, and myself have dedicated pages to outlining exactly why we object to the current implementations and detailing how we would go about resolving these issues.
>
> I’ll quit being cantankerous and just link to another thread that I think addresses these conversation points at least obliquely. Probably don’t necropost it, but give it a once over and tell me what you think.
>
> I’ll be happy to continue this conversation in your thread. =D
>
> https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst225829_Is-sprint-REALLY-a-problem.aspx
I read the majority of that post. As far as I can tell the problems are Lag related, which might I add will be fixed with dedicated servers, unfortunate situations, which rarely happen to me and when they do I’m usually able to overcome most situations that only involve 2 or 3 players, and last but not leased an inability to cope with AAs and sprint, however that doesn’t make it game breaking. The real problem I’m seeing has less to do with sprint or AAs and more to do with map control and size. The 343 map designers are obviously inexperienced in making Halo maps.
Also to reply to your second post. That article or whatever has almost nothing to do with Sprint and AAs. If anything he/she is stating that 343 will most likely bring Halo back to the top.
It depends, as a whole I like AA’s and Sprint, however there are some exceptions
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Jetpack - this just breaks maps
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Active Camo - offering full invisibility whenever you feel like using it is a bad idea, I don’t mind it as a power up, like overshield, but not as an AA
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Promethean Vision is self explanatory
I don’t want to get into sprint seeing as it’s been explained so many times but I don’t care how many times AA’s are talked about because IMO they impact the game far more than sprint. You simply have to understand the randomness factor that people here are talking about. As if that wasn’t the issue alone, the majority of AA’s are outright ridiculous and unbalanced. Active camo is the perfect example, in H3 it was a map pick-up and it should have stayed that way. Just think about it, you can spawn with the ability to go invisible an infinite number of times. Hardlight shield is also so frustrating! Winning a long range gunfight? Get him one-shot only to have him pull hardlight shield is just annoying. I stand with a lot of people that the majority of AA’s should be map pick-ups and not work with spawn mechanics.
> I don’t want to get into sprint seeing as it’s been explained so many times but I don’t care how many times AA’s are talked about because IMO they impact the game far more than sprint. You simply have to understand the randomness factor that people here are talking about. As if that wasn’t the issue alone, the majority of AA’s are outright ridiculous and unbalanced. Active camo is the perfect example, in H3 it was a map pick-up and it should have stayed that way. Just think about it, you can spawn with the ability to go invisible an infinite number of times. Hardlight shield is also so frustrating! Winning a long range gunfight? Get him one-shot only to have him pull hardlight shield is just annoying. I stand with a lot of people that the majority of AA’s should be map pick-ups and not work with spawn mechanics.
While I agree that any form of prolonging life when you should be, by all rights, dead, the guy pulling the shield moves slowly, and his personal shield does not recharge. So you can follow him, or chuck a nade to his side.
As for AC, I know it is game breaking, but it became so when you had to crouch in order to make it effective. If we had arbiter camo, and took out the AA efficiency perk, I think we could cut down on campers a lot. Not all campers, but the most annoying ones.
> There isn’t a good reason. I’ve wondered the same thing and for sprint people normally give some vague ideology about not wanting people to escape bad situations which I struggle to understand let alone agree with seeing as you slow when shot. As for AA’s I think they are great and totally a part of halo at this point, yet some denounce them for again reasons I’m not quite sure but think it has to do with making the game unpredictable.
I love shootin sammy. Every one of his posts are just so fun to read 
Edit: Hey sammy, if you want i can dust off my h4 disc and come show you how sprint is broken. wont take more then 5 mins feel free to pm
> As for AC, I know it is game breaking, but it became so when you had to crouch in order to make it effective. If we had arbiter camo, and took out the AA efficiency perk, I think we could cut down on campers a lot. Not all campers, but the most annoying ones.
The Camo cuts out while moving so that people can’t be in Camo all the time while moving, and I think this is a good thing–I would hate to play a game where everyone has on-demand camo and can move around without giving themselves away. This is a necessary balance, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of promoting camping.
Simple fix: remove Active Camo as an AA and make it a power-up again, like Overshield. No one ever complained about the Active Camo powerup being OP.
> There isn’t a good reason. I’ve wondered the same thing and for sprint people normally give some vague ideology about not wanting people to escape bad situations which I struggle to understand let alone agree with seeing as you slow when shot. As for AA’s I think they are great and totally a part of halo at this point, yet some denounce them for again reasons I’m not quite sure but think it has to do with making the game unpredictable.
There is perfectly good reasoning. It annoys me that you ignore them.
I personally like AAs however the hatred revolves around the fact half of the AAs (most commonly used ones par Thruster Pack) are just broken on so many levels. There is no way of balancing them therefore should be removed.
There is no justification to why AC and Jetpack should stay as an Armor ability because if you try and defend them it just shows a lack of knowladge to what is game breaking.
I personally don’t like Sprint because it ruins maps. The map maker/developer has to take into account Sprint which is why the maps on Halo 4 are so big. Even Haven doesn’t play incredibly well without Sprint. It also ruins remakes which are my favorite maps to play on. I can understand why people would want it because it speeds the game up but it is broken in the sense its a “get out of jail free card” which like it or not is a problem and again if you are denying it you clearly have little understanding of what is balanced and what is not.
> When is sprint actually useful?
>
>
>
> The answer is, according to me, when maps are larger or base movement speed is slow. Why?
>
> Well, if you have a high base movement speed on small maps, sprint is essentially not something you’ll use as cover is mostly always close by and the action is around the corner. Why sprint to something when I can be caught off guard? Or be in position a third of a second earlier? In that case, to justify the addition of sprint and actually make players use it, you need to lower the base movement speed. What happens when you lower base movement speed? Well you move slower of course, and sprint is suddenly a fast way of getting around, with your weapon down.
>
> The negative side about lowering base movement speed, you sacrifice strafing. What does this actually mean then?
>
> Strafing is a way to “confuse and throw” your opponents aim off and thus gain the upper hand in an engagement through the sole action of moving around. The better you are at strafing, the better you are at throwing your opponents aim off. With lower movement speed, there comes a limit of how effective your strafing can be. With low enough movement speed, strafing becomes pointless and engagements become “who saw who first” or “kill trades”.
>
> Of course we could all argue that an increase in aim sensitivity would also make things more difficult, the only difference here is that there is no global sensitivity for aiming, it’s a personal preference, while movement speed is a game rule.
>
> Now about larger maps. If we don’t want to sacrifice strafing, there’s always the option of increasing map size. While it again justifies adding sprinting as a viable way of moving around quickly, it comes again, with a price. Larger maps don’t play well with smaller player numbers on the actual map. For instance, Complex is a big map, however it’s not in BTB, or atleast it wasn’t when I played. It was used in 4v4 Infinity Slayer, with the other larger maps present, I found Infinity Slayer 4v4 quite boring as engagements in long range was frequent and they mostly ended up with someone behind cover rather than a kill and some points. I would also argue that it’s the reason BTB is the most played playlist, simply because the larger maps don’t play well with smaller teams.
>
> In the end, we’re left with two options, lower base movement speed and a decreased skill gap, or larger maps that doesn’t work with playlists with smaller player counts. If we want sprint in that is.
>
> If we leave sprint out, we don’t have any of those problems. High base movement speed increases the skill gap because it allows more freedom with strafing. Maps can be small because there isn’t a mechanic in the game that needs to be justified.
>
> There are no problems and the game is deeper, it’s a win-win situation. As opposed to having to choose between two bad choices, slower base movement speed or larger maps.
>
> Now, there are people arguing over the “realism” part. Consider that the game is set 500 years into the future, you’re an augmented super soldier in a big half ton armor that further enhances your abilities. Shouldn’t we be able to “sprint” all the time with our weapons up and actually be able to use those weapons?
>
> There’s also that other take at it, gameplay is vastly more important than realism, unless of course realism is what the game is about, and last time I checked, Halo isn’t one of those games. If realism really was the question, why can’t we prone? Why does tanks explode after getting hit with a couple of bullets?
>
> There’s also that fun camp explaining that sprint is a part of what modern FPS games have.
>
> In what way is that an actual argument? In what way does a game stand out from the rest if aspects of other games is introduced? We can talk industry standards when it comes to safety issues, but in gaming? No, there are no such things as “industry standards”. Using features from other games without actually doing anything else than copying them is not innovative or in any way bringing the game from the cluster of similair games. No, Halo 4 isn’t CoD, or any other modern shooter out there, but it’s certainly way closer to that area now than it ever was. Continue down that road and all that’s left is the same experience through all games but with different skins.
>
> I played Unreal Tournament because it wasn’t Quake, I played Starcraft because it wasn’t C&C, I played Warcraft because it wasn’t Age of Empires. I’m not going to buy two games to get similair experiences, many others share my opinion in this, so why on earth should games be “standardised”?
>
> I doubt anyone who should read this will read it, and I’m not going to post a TL;DR either, anyone who wants that version isn’t in the right place in the first place anyway.
>
> love
> Naqser
So much this.
Other than the obvious negatives of Jetpack, Camo, and PV, AAs at spawn allows players to function differently.
In an arena shooter, players are supposed to spawn exactly the same.
Many players, including myself, like the idea of choosing between weapons of similar function, range, and power.
But other than that, the majority of experienced players believe we should spawn equal.
> Ok I have a legitimate question for the Halo community… Or at least a question for those who think AAs and sprint are game braking. Now I have been playing Halo since CE and I love AAs and sprint. The only reason I’m not playing Halo 4 is both because my Internet sucks and the majority of m friends don’t play it. But thats for another time. Now someone, anyone please give me some justification for all the hatred of AAs and Sprint.
I’ve commented on this again and again. The reason Sprint sucks is because in the real world ALL games lag, yes even ones on dedicated servers as promised in H5 - and latency isn’t going to drastically improve, in fact it’ll probably get worse over time - read about buffer bloat.
I’m almost certain that Halo netcode compensates for sprinting players in laggy games by increasing bullet magnetism - this is of course why you can shoot a sprinting player, but also why you can noscope people from across the map. When you increase bullet magnetism, you reduce the skill gap, because it means Joe Schmoe can now compete on a similar playing field with Joe Pro. It reduces the importance of techniques like strafing and using jumping techniques when injured because even if you strafe the bullets will most likely hit you.
If you want to make Halo more of a skill game like H3, you have to reduce bullet magnetism from its current levels. That means if you want a competitive game with a skill gap you need to get rid of sprint or you need to fix the netcode compensation mechanisms so sprint works in a game with lag.
In addition to this, I also happen to think that sprint messes with the dynamics of things like pro style games with no radar. With radar off you will see more assassinations as people are snuck up on by sprinting players. It also makes it much less of a team game as map control becomes harder to achieve.
And it increases map size. The best part about the BR was that in a small to medium size map a skilled BR player could make the difference against a less skilled player. In larger maps now you have to introduce longer-range regular loadouts or pickups like DMR, which means you now have an extra thing to consider in addition to short range and medium range combat considerations when traversing a map. Watch the pros, skilled players will switch from medium to short range when going around corners, for example, just in case they run into someone. You can’t wield three weapons so now what do you do if you’re in the medium to long range no-man’s land? Who wins, DMR or BR? Do you keep your medium range or long range, and when you run into a guy at long range now you’re hosed or you have to flee? Too much complexity IMO for a game that is supposed to be a bit like Texas Hold-em - a game with a mostly even starting situation that plays randomly at the bottom but much less randomly at the top for those hardcore players who know how the game is played.
Many people here will disagree with me because they think the game should appeal to casuals, but I think the game should appeal to both, and you can’t have both if you reduce the skill gap to stupid levels.
I understand the arguments against the bulk of AAs, though many of those concerns can be fixed by turning them into expendable equipment rather than infinitely recharging features. If the jetpack had a set amount of fuel and a new one had to be found once it was burnt out, you couldn’t simply fly around wherever. Yes, people can fly over a wall, but probably only over that one wall. If camo ran out permanently, you wouldn’t have cloaked guys hanging out in the open and only ducking back just long enough for their camo to recharge. Equipment is the way to go. Have people drop theirs when they die. Throw a few around the map to fight over. Hell, even keep some selectable for loadouts. It will still be a major improvement over AAs as they exist now.
Sprint, I think the logic used to ask for its removal is flawed. “I don’t like people running away.” Sorry, but that’s a BS argument. You aren’t skilled enough to kill someone, so they managed to get out of a bad situation. If anything, sprint requires you to think more tactically during battle. Can your target run out of combat? Can you keep up and prevent him from bailing? Is that piece of cover close enough to sprint to before the sniper caps you from the other side of the map? Sprint can actually speed up the game while adding a new layer of complexity.
Power weapons everywhere and spawning with PPs and plasma grenades have drastically altered vehicle combat, but many maps aren’t designed to balance out the vehicles in the first place. The tank in Exile required people spawning with stickies and PPs just for fairness. Originally, the blue team had a huge leg up on that map by starting with a gauss hog at their spawn. Vehicle stats and spawn locations have been altered to try to fix this, but the issue is still the maps themselves, not the toys on them. Poor map construction really screwed up Halo 4 more than anything else.
Opinions and personal preference. I prefer a more simple straight forward arena shooter. I use to play one called Halo and it was fun and unique. It’s now been turned into a gimmicky hybrid cluster that has completely divided and drove away it’s fanbase. I didn’t like the idea of equipment in Halo 3 either but at least it was picked up on the maps and minimal. What can I say, I come from an era where video game controllers only had 1 button and a joystick.
Sprint is bad for Halo due to how it ruins the “skill” in positioning, if you move into a bad position you are not punished for it, instead you can simply sprint away- yes, you are slowed down when shot, but it does not simply do the trick.
Maps have also had to of been enlarged to accommodate sprint, meaning there are only a small selection of small arena maps in Halo 4.
AA’s are considered bad for Halo as it creates and element of randomness, apart from the Jetpack, you can not see what AA someone is using when you engage them, meaning you do not know what to expect.
This means that you can not plan in advance and ruins the tactical aspect of Halo.
I could go on but I’m no expert, hope those short summary’s help.