Betrayal System/Friendly Fire Overhaul

This is directed at the more rational side of the forum. Lurking these boards for a long time and I got to say, some of the people here are intolerable. So hopefully those of you who only come here to complain, instead of being pro-active & constructive wont bother swarming this thread.

Why would people get their knickers in a bind because some stupid thread? Well, its because im suggesting that friendly fire be REMOVED. Lets be real here, hardly anyone takes friendly fire into account when tossing grenades or shooting tank missiles into the crowd of red and blue players. People are always going to be playing indiscriminately. Worrying about themselves and not the team. Now, by “removing” friendly fire, I actually mean to direct it at the shooter. Already a handful of CoD features, whats one more lol It couldnt be exactly the same as CoD’s friendly fire thing in their “hardcore mode”. It would have to be tweaked a lot in order to make it work within the context of Halo. But i think they could work something out.

What really scares me is the new weapon drop thing. People betray the -Yoink- out of you if you get to “their” sniper, before they do. This is a sniper spawning in the same location every time. If he just camps there like a -Yoink!- long enough, he will get the next one without anyone even knowing it respawned. Now, HERE is the scary scenario…

Say there is a guy who thinks he is entitled to every power weapon in existence (basically 1/3 of the population). This guy gets FURIOUS when you beat him to snipes on the initial spawn. He starts shooting at you, melee’s your shields down in hopes an opponent will finish you off so he can run off with the sniper. Generally just trying to make you angry the entire game. He does all this despite the fact that he KNOWS the sniper will respawn again in 3 minutes, and that he WILL get it because he is sitting there camping it. Even though he knows for a fact that he can wield a sniper at some point in this game, he still feels the need to betray you. Now, imagine if you will, a world with random weapon spawns. Here is where things get interesting and potentially awful. This same guy who feels entitled to the sniper, now knows that he CANT camp weapon spawns. He CANT assure himself that weapon upon its next spawn. He NEEDS to be the one who gets it when the drop pod crashes into the level. So, sooner or later a sniper rifle is announced to be spawning in 30 seconds. He ignores everything in order to set himself up for the arrival of it. BOOM it crashes into the ground and as fate would have it, YOU manage to snag it. Guess who is just a wee bit irate about this? Too late to guess, because he just betrayed you for it. Then guess what happens, no go ahead guess. That’s right someone else betrays HIM for it. So, Mr. Entitlement find his teammate and betrays him back. He gets booted and everyone on your team has been completely distracted for the past 3 minutes. Score is now completely lopsided and you LOSE. I could go on and on with scenarios like this, but this is already one helluva first post so ill sum this up right here.

Fixed friendly fire/betrayal system = Less weapon -Yoink!- and thus, more teamwork.

Anyone have ideas for a system to counter this? Im hoping that 343 already has this on lock down but I have my doubts that they do. Think about it, they are all friends. To some degree. Do you betray or get betrayed by your friends for weapons constantly? Doubt it. So internal play testing would not show this. The people privately testing the game are probably trying to be more ‘helpful’ and thus are not running around betraying everyone for weapons. Seems a problem like this could definitely fly under the radar. Wish they were running a beta. Its not even about early access, I just want problems like this to be extinct when the game ships. Not have to ‘deal’ with them for a week or 2 until they are patched.

Just make it be turned off by default.

And then when people search for a game, they can search specifically for games that have it turned on.

Only problem with no friendly fire is that you can throw a sticky grenade at someone and they can run in and “suicide” bomb the opposing team. Likewise it will encourage grenade spamming. Betraying for weapons is a big problem though.

No keep friendly fire. Team that work together deserve to not frag themselve like idiot while idiot deserve to loose for being one.

Friendly fire should NOT be in social playlists, because there are a ton of kids that are idiots and will betray out of (1) boredom, (2) greed for power weapons, (3) pure lack of skill. The third reason is fine, the first two are not. Since these are social playlists, might as well get rid of it.

For MLG and ranked playlists (perhaps above a certain skill threshold), friendly fire is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY and part of the skill of the game. If you have rocks and your teammate is engaged in CQB, then you have to place your shot skillfully or decide to refrain from using the rockets - definitely an important part of the calculus of playing competitively.

Yeah honestly I think the best way to handle this is friendly fire being redirected back on the shooter. This would solve the weapon betrayal garbage instantly and encourage MORE teamwork because players are now forced to think about their teammates. People know now that if they kill a teammate because of negligence, then its THEIR death and they have to deal with the poor decision directly. This will force players to play more strategically which will always benefit the team as a whole. Being a Halo purist, any change is always a little uncomfortable for me but the betrayal system IMO has been flawed from the day of its inception.

> Yeah honestly I think the best way to handle this is friendly fire being redirected back on the shooter. This would solve the weapon betrayal garbage instantly and encourage MORE teamwork because players are now forced to think about their teammates. People know now that if they kill a teammate because of negligence, then its THEIR death and they have to deal with the poor decision directly. This will force players to play more strategically which will always benefit the team as a whole. Being a Halo purist, any change is always a little uncomfortable for me but the betrayal system IMO has been flawed from the day of its inception.

So If some idiot run around with a rocket and “betray” 3-4 of his team does he die 3-4 time in line when he respawn? If he do. This is perfect!

> For MLG and ranked playlists (perhaps above a certain skill threshold), friendly fire is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY and part of the skill of the game.

Completely agree. It is a very touchy thing I will say. If its removed, then it destroys “this playlist”. If its changed to FF redirected at shooter then it breaks “This playlist” and so on. Just curious to see if someone had a good idea for it.

> > Yeah honestly I think the best way to handle this is friendly fire being redirected back on the shooter. This would solve the weapon betrayal garbage instantly and encourage MORE teamwork because players are now forced to think about their teammates. People know now that if they kill a teammate because of negligence, then its THEIR death and they have to deal with the poor decision directly. This will force players to play more strategically which will always benefit the team as a whole. Being a Halo purist, any change is always a little uncomfortable for me but the betrayal system IMO has been flawed from the day of its inception.
>
> So If some idiot run around with a rocket and “betray” 3-4 of his team does he die 3-4 time in line when he respawn? If he do. This is perfect!

Lol If he kills three dudes at the same time then he would serve a longer sentence, and given -3.

I think friendly fire should stay but in a limited role

Maybe if you could only hurt teammates by explosions or vehicles. These are the main things which cause accidental betrayals in halo games up to now anyway. Gunfire and melee should do no damage to teammates, because in my experience they are what get used most in intentionally attacking teammates.

I never did like Friendly Fire. It takes one person to just go and jump right in front of your grenade thinking “Oh I’ll kill the guy you’re throwing a grenade at!” to just ruin your game.

In my thread about multiplayer changes [ http://halo.xbox.com/Forums/yaf_postsm855693_Halo-4-Multiplayer--layout-Plan.aspx#post855693 ] I said that the best thing to do would be to watch not only the number of betrayals, but also the amount of damage done to teammates in total. If this exceeds a certain amount consistently, then the player will be taken down to a ridiculously low level (in my system) and has to work his way back up.

Since these power weapon whores are also insane stat whores (the main reason why they -Yoink!- power weapons in the first place), they will most likely not risk losing their rank for a power weapon. Also, make betrayals decrease k/d exponentially, so these serial Benedict Arnold’s won’t want to have a bad k/d to get the power weapons. This should reduce 90% of the problem.

However, I find that sometimes I accidentally betray people, especially in fast vehicles when they want to get in or with people sneaking up on an enemy I lobbed a grenade at. I do agree that doing damage to teammates does cause you to be more careful, but it leads to frustration and annoyance. Maybe you only do half of the damage to your teammates compared to enemies?

>

Current Betrayal System works. Why do we need an overhaul again?

Nope, friendly fire is important. Power weapons, like rockets; or wide area damage things, like grenades, need to have the risk of harming your allies to partly balance that power.

If you see your teammate engaged 1 v 1 with an enemy near each other, if you want to grenade/rocket to get that kill, you must decide that your teammate’s death is worth it. That kind of choice should not be removed from competitive multiplayer (social/ranked doesn’t matter). Now, for some specific action sack style game modes, sure, it can be removed. But when there are explosives, you need to watch where your team is. Or if a person is bad and does get betrayals a lot, kick him from the game and you’re fine.

About people running into your grenades - for the most part, it’s on you to watch your radar and know where your team is. If somebody is moving towards an enemy, they’re probably going to keep going so don’t nade them unless you want a betrayal.

For the person saying remove friendly fire from weapons…definitely not. Several times my teammate was a bad sniper and hit me instead of enemies, or sometimes the shots went through me and killed both me and an enemy.

Redirecting damage is an interesting idea, and would help with betrayals for weapons, but would be stupid in other situations. If you have rockets, and see 3 enemies clustered around 1 ally…often times taking that shot is worth it. You shouldn’t have to die too.

It should be an option in custom games though as it always has been. And maybe FF off should be the default in the spartan ops section. But it should stay on for regular matchmaking.

> Only problem with no friendly fire is that you can throw a sticky grenade at someone and they can run in and “suicide” bomb the opposing team. Likewise it will encourage grenade spamming. Betraying for weapons is a big problem though.

Not necessarily, they could put in a system where the grenade falls off of teammates, therefore just dropping to the ground.

> Nope, friendly fire is important. Power weapons, like rockets; or wide area damage things, like grenades, need to have the risk of harming your allies to partly balance that power.
>
> If you see your teammate engaged 1 v 1 with an enemy near each other, if you want to grenade/rocket to get that kill, you must decide that your teammate’s death is worth it. That kind of choice should not be removed from competitive multiplayer (social/ranked doesn’t matter). Now, for some specific action sack style game modes, sure, it can be removed. But when there are explosives, you need to watch where your team is. Or if a person is bad and does get betrayals a lot, kick him from the game and you’re fine.
>
> About people running into your grenades - for the most part, it’s on you to watch your radar and know where your team is. If somebody is moving towards an enemy, they’re probably going to keep going so don’t nade them unless you want a betrayal.
>
> For the person saying remove friendly fire from weapons…definitely not. Several times my teammate was a bad sniper and hit me instead of enemies, or sometimes the shots went through me and killed both me and an enemy.
>
> Redirecting damage is an interesting idea, and would help with betrayals for weapons, but would be stupid in other situations. If you have rockets, and see 3 enemies clustered around 1 ally…often times taking that shot is worth it. You shouldn’t have to die too.
>
> It should be an option in custom games though as it always has been. And maybe FF off should be the default in the spartan ops section. But it should stay on for regular matchmaking.

Then unless they put in a system where they can’t rejoin the game they were booted from, they could just go back in.

To be honest and despite what I said I am pretty happy with the betrayal system as it stands except for one thing

and that is teammates intentionally damaging your vehicle to get you killed faster, my fix would be to still let them do damage to you but not actually hurt the vehicle itself. So if they so desperately want to kill you they can do it themselves and stop trying to get the enemy to do their dirty work

> I think friendly fire should stay but in a limited role
>
> Maybe if you could only hurt teammates by explosions or vehicles. These are the main things which cause accidental betrayals in halo games up to now anyway. Gunfire and melee should do no damage to teammates, because in my experience they are what get used most in intentionally attacking teammates.

exsactly I betray people by acciedent with the wraith and the back fire thing would ruin the game. I enjoy the game as it is. if they added anything it would create another problem like if they they remove it altogether and they would pretty troll you untill you run out of ammo/ die.