Prioritization of Actions is a feature I believe would vastly improve Halo’s gameplay. Have you ever tried to pick up a Shotgun or a Sniper Rifle from a pile of weapons? If you have played Halo for any length of time there is no doubt that you know how frustrating this is.
I propose that some sort of hidden logic be built into actions that share the same controls. For example ‘X’ is used for entering, exiting and boarding vehicles, picking up weapons, activating switches, picking up objectives etc. Each individual action should be ranked from most important to least important, such that when the game has a choice between 2 (or more) actions it will intelligently pick the correct one. This would involve ranking every weapon, vehicle and other action and perhaps some sort of situational logic should be built in as well.
- Board Tier 1 Vehicle (Scorpion / Wraith / Banshee / Guass Hog / Revenant)
- Pickup Tier 1 Weapon (Rocket / FRC / Incinerator)
- Board Tier 2 Vehicle (Ghost / Warthog)
- Pickup Tier 2 Weapon (Sniper / Shotgun / Grenade Launcher)
- Pickup / Activate Objective
- Board Tier 3 Vehicle (Mongoose)
- Pickup Tier 3 Weapon (DMR / BR / AR)
- Pickup Tier 4 Weapon
etc.
The fine tuning within each of these groups of actions would be up to 343, or us as players if we were given some level of customization. Situational logic could be applied to actions through some sort of hidden point system. For example a Rocket Launcher may be worth 75 points, whereas a Flag would be worth 50 points unless it is within 15m of the capture point and then it is worth 85 points.
So now that you’ve read through my idea I’ve got a few questions for you: Do you think it would improve gameplay? How would you rank various actions? Do you think customization is a good idea? Did I miss anything?
I guess this could work, but it just seems overly complicated as a solution to a very minor issue.
Better idea, how about if say, you are next to a pile of weapons and a flag. You are given the option to press X to get weapon A but you want to get Weapon B. What I think should happen is that it should give you a prop to press down on the D-Pad to toggle between the options until you can get the weapon you want
> Better idea, how about if say, you are next to a pile of weapons and a flag. You are given the option to press X to get weapon A but you want to get Weapon B. What I think should happen is that it should give you a prop to press down on the D-Pad to toggle between the options until you can get the weapon you want
Which takes time too. That time could be enough time for an enemy player to kill you.
To be honest I do not like the idea in the OP.
Even the Assault Rifle can be as good as a rocket launcher in the right hands.
No, it would certainly not take more time than trying to scramble through the pile until you get the prop to pick up the weapon you want. You literally press down on the D-Pad twice in the aforementioned example, how slow is that?
Oh and the statement you made about the weapons is ridiculous, why do you think one of them is called a “POWER” Weapon, you want those short kill times if you are in a hurry or, hell, in any case really
> No, it would certainly not take more time than trying to scramble through the pile until you get the prop to pick up the weapon you want. You literally press down on the D-Pad twice in the aforementioned example, how slow is that?
>
> Oh and the statement you made about the weapons is ridiculous, why do you think one of them is called a “POWER” Weapon, you want those short kill times if you are in a hurry or, hell, in any case really
It still depends on the situation. In terms of close combat the Assault Rifle is technically better than the rocket launcher or even the sniper rifle.
Lets say you have two power weapon in that pile. In that case you are probably going to try to decide on which one you want.
> > No, it would certainly not take more time than trying to scramble through the pile until you get the prop to pick up the weapon you want. You literally press down on the D-Pad twice in the aforementioned example, how slow is that?
> >
> > Oh and the statement you made about the weapons is ridiculous, why do you think one of them is called a “POWER” Weapon, you want those short kill times if you are in a hurry or, hell, in any case really
>
> It still depends on the situation. In terms of close combat the Assault Rifle is technically better than the rocket launcher or even the sniper rifle.
>
> Lets say you have two power weapon in that pile. In that case you are probably going to try to decide on which one you want.
The point remains that if the player is close enough for multiple weapons /actions to be possible, it would take less time to use the D-pad than to bounce back and forth trying to get the option that you want to actually come up.
Moreover, it can be done in such a way that an extra button push is not required. When the action dialog box comes up, if there is only one possible action, then you can just do it. If there are more, then there could be the default selection and a little scroll arrow or something that optionally allows you to select a different one via D-pad. If you just press and hold X or B or whatever is the action button, you pick up or do the default one that first came up. Or you could bounce back and forth if you don’t wish to use the D-pad and pick it up the same way you do now.
As long as you can do it the way it’s done now, I don’t see any issue at all with adding a different interface to make those infrequent cases easier.
I’m guessing that, considering that there are only 4 D PAD buttons, each Pad direction would probably follow a designated category like for example
Right: Power Weapons
Left: “Regular” Weapons (Plasma Rifle, Spiker, Assault Rifle)
Down: Objectives (Flags, Skulls)
Up: Precision Weapons
I’m sorry but I can’t help but like my idea a little more for the sake of convenience because imagine you have more than one item of said category on the floor and you wanted item X but you got item Y
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> 1. Board Tier 1 Vehicle (Scorpion / Wraith / Banshee / Guass Hog / Revenant)
> 2. Pickup Tier 1 Weapon (Rocket / FRC / Incinerator)
I can’t help but have the question of: what happens when I wish to pickup Incinerator to blow up an incoming Banshee that gets close enough to be boarded?
Priorizations should be for objectives only. I don’t know how many times someone has parked a mongoose on a Flag while somebody takes me out when I try to pick up Flag but get in mongoose instead.
> The point remains that if the player is close enough for multiple weapons /actions to be possible, it would take less time to use the D-pad than to bounce back and forth trying to get the option that you want to actually come up.
>
> Moreover, it can be done in such a way that an extra button push is not required. When the action dialog box comes up, if there is only one possible action, then you can just do it. If there are more, then there could be the default selection and a little scroll arrow or something that optionally allows you to select a different one via D-pad. If you just press and hold X or B or whatever is the action button, you pick up or do the default one that first came up. Or you could bounce back and forth if you don’t wish to use the D-pad and pick it up the same way you do now.
>
> As long as you can do it the way it’s done now, I don’t see any issue at all with adding a different interface to make those infrequent cases easier.
I really like this idea, the game’s internal logic would determine the default action which can be overridden by the player.
> > 1. Board Tier 1 Vehicle (Scorpion / Wraith / Banshee / Guass Hog / Revenant)
> > 2. Pickup Tier 1 Weapon (Rocket / FRC / Incinerator)
>
> I can’t help but have the question of: what happens when I wish to pickup Incinerator to blow up an incoming Banshee that gets close enough to be boarded?
With the way I ranked the actions, you would board the Banshee.
I realize not everyone would make the same decision in a scenario such as this which is why I asked how others would rank actions and why I suggested that players be able to customize their own set of actions in-game.