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*Original post. Click at your own discretion.
343,
I like a lot of Halo 4, and, being slow to judgment as well as involved with many games yet few forums, this will likely be my only post.
Thank you for capturing the spirit of Halo.
The Spartan Ops narrative was a brilliant tactic for engagement. I played it with my friends every week and it was something we joyfully anticipated. The armor customization went above and beyond what I had hoped (even without the inclusion of neon pink), and the plot choices in the campaign were–if not edgy–daring, and successful.
But,and I think you knew this was coming, you have lost Halo’s heart.
I cannot be brief,but please,listen.
Halo began with a hushed casket, the last of the Spartan subjects, a superhuman so tough, so formidable, that that single warrior fought his way through three story installments almost singlehandedly, sending saurian enemies shrieking away in fear. Halo is literally a future cyborg soldier fighting dinosaurs.
And in this future, the player is given health and a regenerating shield. An infinitely regenerating shield that protects better against bullets than energy.
The heart of Halo is the slow death.
Fast-forward to Halo: Reach, and the advent of armor lock, much loathed and feared by the CODBLOP generation. I grew up on Unreal and Counter-Strike, and the speed of mouse-look and/or instakill guns is beautiful and intense–but it isn’t Halo.
Armor Lock exemplified the drawn out, gun-battling, fist-fighting, sci-fi action that the original Halo began with its shields and complete disregard for gritty, realistic, modern warfare. The fact is, the longer it takes to die, the more tactics you can try, thus the more awesome the battle, and, in the end, the more triumphant the victory.
The Nerfing of Armor Lock and the Powering of the DMR are what staked the heart of Halo in the end. But let me be clear: the overpowered rifles (not just the DMR) are a symptom. Power weapons are like the nerdiest of the weapons: awesome at whatever their nerd thing is, and terrible at everything else. Sword: CQC. Sniper: camper paradise. Rocket: total TK. Power weapons are not a problem. The problem is that you, 343, forgot what it was to dare.
To be fair, Oni (Bungie’s original dare) failed, and as part of “Microsoft”, you need to feed demographics, or whatever, but here’s the thing. Once you created weapons (DMR, BR, LR) that had no range restriction, tore shields down faster than a plas grenade on a Halo 4 Warthog, fired almost as fast as the automatic rifles, and with better accuracy, you took away every player’s chance to innovate.
Innovation is about making mistakes, adapting to what’s happening, pulling a pistol for the 3rd guy coz you forgot to reload your rocket and now the dance is on and you pop forward for a melee but S**T a shotgun Armor Lock scream to teammates thru ur mic crap the plas grenade mine SURVIVED aw dang he meleed as I came out TACTICS.
The problem is that there is, literally, no reason not to camp and ping anyone who steps out from cover. All open areas on your maps (which are beautiful, let me interrupt this harangue to compliment your color choices and design aesthetics because the maps are gorgeous beyond compare) are now suicide zones.
The problem, 343, is not that your rifles are overpowered, but that they curtail any attempt at tactics apart from camping. I watched people camp with the Scorpion, which should be barreling down the (narrow, so narrow) plains of Exile and the expanses of Ragnarok, but instead, due to rifles being able to destroy vehicles, sit behind hills and mortar their way to victory.Come. On.
Spartans are able to hop onto a tank and punch it to death. Let me repeat that.
Halo was about being able to punch. Punch a tank. Punch a tank to death.
Wait. Almost done.
Punch a dinosaur tank to death.
/rant
Apologies. Let that be my bridge coz here’s my chorus.
343, you have forgotten what it is to dare, and in forgetting, you have underappreciated, sodded, broken the heart of Halo. You captured the spirit and it crushed the heart.
Imagine, for a moment, that rifles are either (1) terrible vs. shields, or (2) slower to fire. Here’s what happens:
Loadouts matter. If shields are great vs. rifles, the Regen Field becomes an actual, valid tactic. On small maps, assault rifles will PWN rifles, and every corridor on every large map will be treated with more caution or more sword or basically moar awesum. Loadouts will actually matter.
Open spaces will be scenes of epic battles between (I hope) every Spartan on every team. If shields are awesome, then the campers will have to prove their “amazing” “n00b”-killing skill by watching and waiting for headshot moments within the giant assault rifle / sword / hammer / melee fiesta, while the sniper rifles laugh and pick off people trying to get assassinations before the vehicles swoop in to turn the fiesta into an all-caps FIESTA. If rifles are slower to fire, then more people on one team will have to camp and coordinate fire to make them effective, in which case the fiesta is pretty one-sided and America wins, followed by a battalion of Spartans on foot and in vehicles making their way towards the objective or the enemy campsite. Still awesome. Campers bein’ all 300 spartan, holdin’ their camp to the last respawn. Props, yo.
But mostly, whether (1) or (2), people will try new things, and fight more often, and more doggedly, because, hey: the longer you take to die, the fiercer you fight.
343. You. Listen. Please.
The longer you take to die, the fiercer you fight.
So dare with me. Back in the Reach days, I saw that the real problem with Elites carrying Armor Lock and a Needler was de-escalation. It was a great game, but once you had both components, there was nothing better. That had to be something collected on the map, not a starter kit. Overpower is a term for simpleminded tune-in-tune-out Call of Rainbow Battlefield Duty 2: The Hardening players. You love Halo, and I get that. I really do. But you’re killing it.
The DMR is a bullet weapon, so if it takes 12 bullets to tear down a shield (no bleed-through) but keeps its original range,BLAM! fixed.
If the BR fires a little faster than the DMR but longer than currently, shorter range, no bleed-through (because bullet)and better against shields, BLAM! fixed.
If the LR keeps all its stats except the rate-of-fire, toned down to just above a sniper rifle–since, as a nearly-energy-weapon, makes sense–BLAM! fixed.
All right, while I’m at it, replace whatever tissue paper you constructed the Warthogs with actual armor, with actual weight, and stop killing drivers with plasma grenades on my rear bleepity-bleep bumper, and the Warthog will dare, and cruise, and bring fiestas to the entire map the way it should. Bonus: you can drop that ridiculous Survivor loadout fix. Really? Really? A loadout to survive driving? We’ve come to that?
343, I love so much of what you’ve done with Halo 4, and I’ve played it long enough to know exactly where you’ve faltered. Please. Make a separate playlist. Call it “evolved”. Call it “Halo 5 Beta”. Call it whatever. But try it out. Try this out. If I’m right–and I probably am–the battles you witness will only become more