Isn’t it irritating when you try to jump up a ledge but your pinky toe gets caught right before you clear it? oh no I guess im just going to not make that jump.
Lets add climbing to halo! the idea is fairly simple. jump and when midair press A again to grab a ledge. your Spartan quickly climbs up automatically from here. This would be a great feature to add in halo 5. its so annoying when you can clearly see over the ledge you are trying to jump up on but oh no, I guess im just going to fall like a rock instead.
Let’s not have another thing catered to in maps. Not only that, what’s faster, jumping and clearing a ledge or jumping, pressing a button and what hinge an animation of clearing said ledge?
> Let’s not have another thing catered to in maps. Not only that, what’s faster, jumping and clearing a ledge or jumping, pressing a button and what hinge an animation of clearing said ledge?
Actually the latter can be just as fast. Play Brink. You can easily design a more “interactive” set of player movements (adding a lot to the visceral feel of the game) that don’t break flow (quite the opposite in fact).
> Let’s not have another thing catered to in maps. Not only that, what’s faster, jumping and clearing a ledge or jumping, pressing a button and what hinge an animation of clearing said ledge?
of course jumping on it, which if you can great, but im talking about a way to get up ledges that you cant get on with just a regular jump.
Climbing is not really needed. I mean, it really doesn’t cause any harm if done right, but it’s not really adding a whole lot.
I thought about how to implement this a long time ago, and basically you could go to Forge mode select an object, go under properties and set it to _Ledge, which would make it climbable. That way it wouldn’t intrude on any other part of the game, and it would still fit into the game.
Problem is that when you can’t jump up on top of something in a map, it’s made like that on purpose. When the map is designed for you to move vertically from one place to another Ladders, Gravity Lifts, Ledges, or Jump Pads are used. These all do the same basic thing in slightly different ways.
-Gravity Lifts send you straight up when you move over them, nothing else to it.
-Jump Pads act like Gravity Lifts except they require the player to jump when moving over it, allowing the area to act like a normal play space.
-Ledges are tricky, they require the player to know and have the skill to move from one to the other in a timely manner.
-Ladders, although they haven’t been around for a while, they do what Climbing would. They can’t be walked through like Gravity Lifts, and you have to be quick or not near enemies like a less skillful version of Ledges.
You could argue that they should then replace Ladders with Climbing, since Ladders have been absent for a long time. However, Ladders still allow the player on them to fight back, and an aspect of Halo is that you always have a chance to fight back and win. It could also potentially be less work for the animators to use Ladders, unless they won’t settle for just using the walking animation like Halo CE did, which is understandable. Ladders also can be any height, from just enough to move up a level to scaling the side of a building. Personally, I see more benefits from Ladders, also messing around in a spherical room of Ladders is surprisingly more fun than it sounds.
> You would have to make walls higher, or jump lower. Neither of which would be worth adding a climb mechanic.
This sort of attitude makes me very sad.
“Lets not make minor changes to how we build levels to accommodate a significant upgrade in the feel of player movement. Playing as though I was on a bouncy castle was good enough for me in my day and it should remain the mode of player movement no matter how clunky and obscenely artificial it feels.”
Maybe we just need to wait until Titanfall for a practical demonstration of what can be done with a little effort.
I think a climbing function would make gameplay feel a lot smoother. There are a lot of times when I jump to a ledge, and most of my Spartan’s body is above it, but I simply fall. I’m kinda used to it at this point, but sometimes it still feels really stupid. If there was an animation that lasts literally half a second of me grabbing the ledge and pulling myself up, I’d love it. For actual climbing (as in I stand at the bottom and start climbing up) I’d say no.
> You would have to make walls higher, or jump lower. Neither of which would be worth adding a climb mechanic.
Why not? Obviously this feature would have to be accounted for in level/ map design, but I don’t see why it couldn’t work. If the requirement to climb over a ledge was to be touching it when in the air and have for ex. 60% of your character higher than it, I don’t think walls would need to be that much taller/jumps that much lower. If a place is so high you can’t get there by jumping/climbing, there would still be a big advantage to being there. It could add more variety to gameplay where some places have some height advantage, but they’re just a jump away, and some can only be accessed trough a certain route. In my opinion this feature would make moving around feel a lot better, where as taller walls wouldn’t affect it at all (lower jumping might have a small, mostly psychological effect, you’re supposed to be a supersoldier, after all).
Also, if there are ladders, for the love of god, 343, make an animation for them, too. Now it looks and feels so dumb.
> Let’s not have another thing catered to in maps. Not only that, what’s faster, jumping and clearing a ledge or jumping, pressing a button and what hinge an animation of clearing said ledge?
Why would you go through the animation if you made the jump? If someone missed the jump , but got close near the edge of a high object you pull yourself up and if you made the jump then you don’t go through the animation .
Wasn’t this already in Halo 4 to an extent (i.e. on Exile)?
Anyways, I do not support a global implementation of this. It’d take the skill out of Campaign.
I.e. on Forerunner, there’s a jump that lets you skip the initial Covie vs. Promethean engagement, but if you get shot during the jump, you will not make it.
To be frank, I think adding such a feature would disrupt speedruns. It’s a very common impediment to be stopped by a ledge and the like, and it’s a barrier to overcome independently. Adding in climbing would also nullify the purpose of crouch jumps, grenade jumps, etc.
I actually really like this idea and I think it would be a great addition to the game, as well as the return of ladders. I’m not sure how the “competitive” players would feel about it though, as climbing could reduce the importance of skilled jumps if implemented incorrectly.
> I actually really like this idea and I think it would be a great addition to the game, as well as the return of ladders.
>
> I’m not sure how the “competitive” players would feel about it though, as climbing could reduce the importance of skilled jumps if implemented incorrectly.
Ladders would be nice.
Honestly, I think ‘casual’ and ‘competitive’ are terrible labels. It’s not impossible to embrace both, and both can prove themselves to be dedicated to the game.
That said, thanks for acknowledging the aforementioned jumps.
Only in campaign though. That would take away the competitiveness of trick/advanced jumping and flank jumps in multi-player. If not this than at least let us climb ladders throughout the campaign.
> I actually really like this idea and I think it would be a great addition to the game, as well as the return of ladders. I’m not sure how the “competitive” players would feel about it though, as climbing could reduce the importance of skilled jumps if implemented incorrectly.
Trick Jumps have to do with Ledges along with many other things. Adding climbing into the game would undoubtedly annoy Competitive players as it takes no skill to press “A”, when compared to trick jumps. It’s all a part of having depth in the gameplay; when you just have to press a button to get from point A to point B that’s kinda cool, but when you have to learn there’s a path that gets you from point A to point B and you need to practice to get good at it then you form a deep appreciation for the game and feel rewarded for completing it.
Not sure it will fit, at least in the context of multiplayer. It seems like a trivial thing, but I would say that full freedom in traversal is very important in Halo. Crouch-jumping, grenade-jumping, vertical shortcuts, whatever, all contribute to the gap separating those who are average at the game and those who are great as you have to have a really good feel for the game to nail such jumps effortlessly. I also don’t really like the idea of temporary losing player control to let some animation play out. This would just lead to a portion of the community complaining that they should have an option to turn it off - kind of like the argument with turning off assassination animations. Of course, I have never played a Halo game before with such a feature, so I don’t know how it would actually be like. I guess it worked well enough in crysis - But crysis is not Halo.
They would feel more human than man lifts and the like.
Ladders are stealthier than man lifts (the use of them is silent).
They allow players to use many different lines of sight that would otherwise be eliminated.
> Honestly, I think ‘casual’ and ‘competitive’ are terrible labels. It’s not impossible to embrace both, and both can prove themselves to be dedicated to the game.
They are terrible labels as there are very few players that are purely ‘competitive’ or ‘casual.’ I am of the many who blur the lines a bit; I play Halo for recreational purposes, but I appreciate the skillful aspects of the game and I always play to win.
> That said, thanks for acknowledging the aforementioned jumps.
No problem, the skillful aspects of the game are one of the things that define it.
If climbing were to be added it would have to be done in such a way that retains skilled jumps. I think this could be done in a couple of different ways:
Thin ledges are made un-climable.
Skilled jumps are retained as part of maps. If players execute them flawlessly then there would be no animation. If players do not execute them perfectly, the player would then start to climb (after a button press of course). The duration of the climb animation would be proportionate to the distance between the players feet and the top of the ledge. With this, players could minimize animations by crouching at the top of their jump.
It is very easy to camp the top of the ladder because the person climbing up is in a very awkward position. The higher they climb, the lower they have to aim to still hit you. The lower they aim, the harder it becomes to climb up (sometimes to the point you stop or start climbing down instead).
A gravity lift faces none of these issues in that the person going up the lift can face any direction they want without effecting their movement.
TLDR: Ladders are awkward to use while in combat, lifts are not.
Now you might say “gravity lifts don’t feel human”. But we could simply have elevators to accomplish the same effect, such as the one on Reflection.
> It is very easy to camp the top of the ladder because the person climbing up is in a very awkward position. The higher they climb, the lower they have to aim to still hit you. The lower they aim, the harder it becomes to climb up (sometimes to the point you stop or start climbing down instead).
This is a non-issue (well not really, but it’s fixable). If forward translates into up and backward into down (regardless of which direction your facing) then what is the issue?
As far as the camping thing goes, that just depends on map design more than anything else. If the top of a ladder is in a spot that isn’t easy to camp than I see no problem here.
> A gravity lift faces none of these issues in that the person going up the lift can face any direction they want without effecting their movement.
>
> TLDR: Ladders are awkward to use while in combat, lifts are not.
>
> Now you might say “gravity lifts don’t feel human”. But we could simply have elevators to accomplish the same effect, such as the one on Reflection.
Gravity lifts don’t have to be taken out if ladders are added. They both have their own pros and cons, the same goes for elevators. At the very least ladders could be added as a piece for forgers to play around with.
