I’ve mentioned this in another discussion, but I was curious about more people’s thoughts beyond those willing to read through 11 pages of previous posts.
I loved the original multiplayer style for Halo. That said, the ability to customize loadout and gear sounds pretty cool, and I’m excited for that too. It opens a lot of possibility for depth in gameplay. I do have two serious reservations though.
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The more you let people customize, the greater the chance that you have openned the door for players to find loopholes and combinations that were unforseen and are rediculously imbalanced. Once that golden loadout or loophole is found, then all other setups become non-viable from a practical standpoint. You actually have fewer options than you would have had with limited assigned loadouts. You can see it in every online PC game in existance (and on console games like COD), which is why games end up with balancing patches. I don’t see the patch system working so well here though. Not saying customization should be dropped, just that I’m nervous and hope care is taken, or it will get very boring, very quickly as 99% of players have the same 1-2 loadouts and then what was the point to begin with?
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I’ve read that not all loadouts are available and that some must be unlocked in a COD style promotion system. If this is true, then it’s the one piece of information about the game that would make me not want to play it. In fact, it’s why I never got into COD multiplayer. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with having skins, armor pieces and such unlocked as you play as a reward, but reward items should be cosmetic only. Options that actually change gameplay should be open for all people to use and choose from the start. This is not WOW. If you want WOW, go play WOW. WOW is an RPG, based on clicking and watching, where while strategy exists, what you have is more important than any sort of practiced skill.
In a truly competitive environment all gameplay options need to be available for all the players, otherwise the competition isn’t legitimate. Would the superbowl be legitimate if one team were told they couldn’t use helmets? Or the NBA finals if players had to wear sandals until they had played a certain number of games in their careers? Would a chess tournament count if players who attended the previous year got 3 queens instead of 1? Of course not, that would be stupid. Having gameplay options unlocked in a competitive environment is for children too afraid to lose without having the excuse of “but they had guns I can’t have” to protect their egos. For those that actually want to test themselves versus the skills of other players, even if that means you’re going to get legitimately spanked from time to time, nothing sucks the fun out like running into a player with no skill that’s dual wielding automatic shotguns because they unlocked the option and you haven’t.
As I said, I like the idea of having different loadouts for different styles of gameplay. Choosing the right loadout for a given situation, or for your personal strengths, is a skill in itself and adds to the depth of the game. To be taken seriously though, all the options that affect gameplay need to be available to all players at the same time. Otherwise any victory comes with an asterisk beside it.