First off I would like to say I think you are doing a perfect job 343 and I am definitely hoping for a second season of Spartan Ops, if it is anywhere near as good as the new episodes. Although I love Spartan Ops, I feel that Firefight fills a different gap in gameplay and is something I would like to see return. Many people have hoped to have it return for Halo 5 and I feel that an experiment could be made to try out some new ideas.
Firstly, from a narrative standpoint, I think we should fill the shoes of other fireteams we’ve heard of such as Lancer and Castle, so no confusion is created in the story. Many of the maps seem perfect for firefight and I really wish some of the missions were longer. For example, the engine room from chapter 4 of episode 7, one of my favourite missions just for it’s survival gameplay. Maybe to create a narrative some missions may have an objective to it rather than just survive, for example, maybe in this mission our objective could be to defend the terminals and prevent the covies from shutting the engine down, while still trying to stay alive.
A new feature to add in would be an ordnance system, taken from war games of course. I really liked the support given in Installation 04 on Reach and think it could be made into an interesting system. We would be given times choices for assistance every now and again, ammo, power weapons, vehicles, marines/Spartans etc. Possible using the Dominion functions and such to call in a pelican to drop off these items.
One thing that firefight did really well was it’s unpredictability at times. Spartan ops seems to have a set enemy distribution that becomes predictable and easy to combat. While firefight would often scare the **** out of me when suddenly 3 brute chieftains were dropped off. If enemies were a bit more randomised and inconsistent I would find it a lot more re playable. Mix it up a bit and send in a pair of hunters flanked by watchers to throw back grenades, forcing people out of comfort zones. Or Jackals with binary rifles (we saw the Elite General with the scattershot). My main point is, mix up the enemies, even if that means removing customisable waves.
Firefight VS. was something I feel was not experimented with enough and was unappreciated even though I, with many others, loved it. I think this may be an idea to save for Halo 5 but I think it should be changed to 4v2 or 4v4, with a bit of a disadvantage for the Elites (this would obviously need better net coding or dedicated servers, which is why I say Halo 5). One of my favourite things about FFVS was working alongside the covies, something I hadn’t done in a long time, and would like to see again (maybe with unit commands?).
Personally, I would be willing to pay 1600+ MS points for this to be added again, and think this would be a good “beta test” for a possibility of FF 3.0 in Halo 5. If you support this idea, discuss it, make threads, vote in the poll, I don’t care, I just want to see firefight back again in a fun and interesting form more like that of ODST. Again, I think you guys are doing a great job and will not hate you for not making this, I know that businesses don’t cater to the small audiences for obvious reasons, and that you have limited resources and time.