I would think for the most part the halo community can agree on the opinion that Halo’s multiplayer should be balanced. No one should be able to spawn with something that gives them the upper hand, power weapons should be battled for, and won based on strategy and aim.
Yes?
EDIT: By balance I mean starting spawns. One person should not be able to spawn with something like rockets and overshield, while another spawns with the plasma pistol.
Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
No-one agrees on what that means.
Everyone wants balance, the problem however is that with some gameplay features this is near impossible to achieve. Bungie once said that AA’s were balanced. Obviously they were not seeing as hologram is just not as good as jetpack. My concern is that the new gameplay features 343 is impelenting are also going to be impossible to balance perfectly.
> Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
>
> No-one agrees on what that means.
No has advantages starting the game, i.e. same weapon, same grenades.
Maps need to perfectly balanced, and in my opinion the best maps in all halo lore are symmetrical.
Well… obviously
> Well… obviously
some of the posts people make don’t make it that obvious… :3
> > Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
> >
> > No-one agrees on what that means.
>
> No has advantages starting the game, i.e. same weapon, same grenades.
Is your personal idea of all that makes a game balanced.
Others would disagree.
> > > Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
> > >
> > > No-one agrees on what that means.
> >
> > No has advantages starting the game, i.e. same weapon, same grenades.
>
> Is your personal idea of all that makes a game balanced.
>
> Others would disagree.
How would people disagree on that? I’m not undermining you, I’m just curious. I always thought it was the golden triangle of guns,grenades, and melee that made halo work so well and be so balanced.
> > > > Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
> > > >
> > > > No-one agrees on what that means.
> > >
> > > No has advantages starting the game, i.e. same weapon, same grenades.
> >
> > Is your personal idea of all that makes a game balanced.
> >
> > Others would disagree.
>
> How would people disagree on that? I’m not undermining you, I’m just curious. I always thought it was the golden triangle of guns,grenades, and melee that made halo work so well and be so balanced.
Because opinions on how that triangle plays out differ, and opinions as to what starting out on even footing differ. Some people thought the grenades were balanced in Reach, others thought they were hand nukes. In Halo 3 it was believed that the BR was unbalanced because it was useful in every situation and killed weapon variety. Even melee gets it sometimes, the Halo 2 Sword was a real power weapon, then because Bungie found it unbalanced they weakened it in 3 and Reach. How you begin the game is only how you get your foot in the door as far as balance goes.
But then many people think you don’t all need to start the game with exactly the same set-up in order for the multiplayer to be balanced.
Who wants it to be unbalanced? 
> > > > > Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
> > > > >
> > > > > No-one agrees on what that means.
> > > >
> > > > No has advantages starting the game, i.e. same weapon, same grenades.
> > >
> > > Is your personal idea of all that makes a game balanced.
> > >
> > > Others would disagree.
> >
> > How would people disagree on that? I’m not undermining you, I’m just curious. I always thought it was the golden triangle of guns,grenades, and melee that made halo work so well and be so balanced.
>
> Because opinions on how that triangle plays out differ, and opinions as to what starting out on even footing differ. Some people thought the grenades were balanced in Reach, others thought they were hand nukes. In Halo 3 it was believed that the BR was unbalanced because it was useful in every situation and killed weapon variety. Even melee gets it sometimes, the Halo 2 Sword was a real power weapon, then because Bungie found it unbalanced they weakened it in 3 and Reach. How you begin the game is only how you get your foot in the door as far as balance goes.
>
> But then many people think you don’t all need to start the game with exactly the same set-up in order for the multiplayer to be balanced.
I can see what your saying, but as far as I’m going for balance, I’m just talking about how the game starts. If everyone starts out with a BR and two grenades no one has an upper hand. However, if someone starts out with a sniper rife, and shotgun, while everyone else starts with an SMG it’s clearly unbalanced.
Can we all agree that Halo needs to be good?
Balance is too general a term. You can have rock-paper-scissors balance, where everything excels in it’s designated niche - a good example is any RTS game - and complete equality, where everybody has exactly the same everything. Classic RPS balance is generally frowned on in RTS games such as Halo, as individual fights are one-sided and only average out over a large number of kills, but technically anything that isn’t the Octagon is RPS, and I’m sure we’d get fairly bored of that level of mundaneness.
Therefore, the trick is finding the right balance of the two types of balance (yo dawg…), which is of course that endless source of furiously heated debate, an opinion.
> Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
>
> No-one agrees on what that means.
Balance simply means the game has a variety of options that are all viable(in at least some way) at an expert level of play. If a mechanic, weapon, powerup, or strategy is balanced at the expert level it will work all the way through the skill spectrum. The same cannot be said of those that are balanced and tested at only the lower end of the skill spectrum.
You should have been more specific OP, seeing as how everyone rides people who use generally accepted terms on all other forums.
I think you were referring to balanced starting spawns, correct?
Yes, I agree. Everyone in an arena shooter, like Halo, should spawn with the same weapons, grenades, and abilities as their opponents. Look at the definition of an arena shooter: Quake. Everyone spawns equally.
And to everyone else riding the OP because “Balance is up to interpretation”, please stop. Why do we Halo players refer to CoD as an unbalanced game? Because everyone spawns differently. It should be obvious.
If we get customizable loadouts we can kiss balanced gameplay and a non-redundant sandbox goodbye for good.
> > > Everyone agrees it should be balanced.
> > >
> > > No-one agrees on what that means.
> >
> > No has advantages starting the game, i.e. same weapon, same grenades.
>
> Is your personal idea of all that makes a game balanced.
>
> Others would disagree.
Err… How is not the exact same start balanced. Two apples on one side of the scale vs. two apples…
Not Apples Vs. Oranges.
> You should have been more specific OP, seeing as how everyone rides people who use generally accepted terms on all other forums.
>
> I think you were referring to balanced starting spawns, correct?
>
> Yes, I agree. Everyone in an arena shooter, like Halo, should spawn with the same weapons, grenades, and abilities as their opponents. Look at the definition of an arena shooter: Quake. Everyone spawns equally.
>
> And to everyone else riding the OP because “Balance is up to interpretation”, please stop. Why do we Halo players refer to CoD as an unbalanced game? Because everyone spawns differently. It should be obvious.
Starting spawns is what I was referring to. I will edit OP for clarification.