There is a clear selling trend throughout the 5 major Halo titles. H2 sold more than CE, H3 sold more than H2, Reach sold less than H3, and H4 sold less than Reach. It is also important to note that the amount of people playing H4 after release dropped significantly after the first few months, which even further degrades the sales statistics.
Anyway, Halo 5 has the potential to outsell all of the previous Halo titles and create such an ideal multiplayer experience that the playerbase stays for years to come. I want this game to be amazing… I’m sure we all do. This thread is my compilation of mechanics/assets/concepts that could help create the perfect Halo game. Feel free to debate these ideas, or add to the list.
It should be noted that there are three sections to this post. ‘What to get rid of’ covers aspects of the game added in Reach/4 that pulled Halo away from it’s core identity, which is a big factor in why sales/playerbase dropped so hard. ‘What to implement’ covers new aspects of the game that can potentially add healthy new mechanics/assets without disrupting core Halo gameplay. ‘What to resurrect’ covers certain things that existed within previous Halo titles that were changed/deleted over time, against the general population’s will in most cases. This is not a “clone Halo 2 or 3” post. The ‘what to implement’ section proposes new concepts, and I encourage you guys to throw your ideas in the mix.
What To Get Rid Of
1a. Armor abilities (including Sprint), loadouts, weapon drops, and anything else that contributes to imbalanced starts.
2a. Bloom for all weapons/crosshairs.
3a. The vocal effects on the announcer. The natural sounding voice of previous Halo titles was more fitting.
4a. Overabundance of medals. I created a thread on this topic, so I’ll just link that -
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/6e35355aecdf4fd0acdaee3cc4156fd4/topics/medals-medals-everywhere/8f2a8ccc-0aa1-407d-9805-6373b84372c6/posts
5a. Overly detailed armor. Too much detail creates motion blur, frame rate issues, and visual clutter to the player. Previous Halo titles had just enough detail to catch the eye, but not so much that it’s painful to look at.
6a. Overabundance of forge creations in MP playlists. I enjoy forge creations, but not when map 2/3 of the map votes consist of them. More on this later.
7a. Kill camera. This is a beginner-friendly feature that reveals your opponent’s location on the map. It is new to the Halo franchise, and imo, doesn’t belong. Knowing your way around the map, being aware of your surroundings, and keeping tabs on your opponent are all things that the player is responsible for.
What To Implement
1b. Thruster pack for every player in every playlist. When activated, increases your movement speed to 105% for 0.5 seconds in direction of thumbstick. 8second cooldown. Best suited for strafing. Enhances gameplay without drastically altering it.
2b. Space-oriented map. Best suited for BTB. Indoor areas with gravity, outdoor areas with low gravity, and enough of a skybox for playable space vehicles.
3b. Enhanced forge features. Terrain modification, precision placement, toggle editing on/off for file share purposes, weather modification, skybox modification (or at least a variety of pre-sets), etc.
4b. Scarabs/pelicans on one or two BTB maps. Would be toned down in strength/mobility, but imagine “Scarab Assault”, where you have to bring the bomb into a heavily defended scarab to blow it up from the inside.
5b. Increased base movement speed.
6b. Night-time MP map. Night-vision with scoped weapons. Best used for team snipers, zombies, etc.
7b. Social playlist dedicated to forge creations. Could replace action sack; a combination of forge maps and originals with custom gametypes (racing, griffball, jenga, bunker hill, etc.) This ties in to the previously mentioned overabundance of forge maps across all playlists.
8b. In-depth post-game stats/graphs. What weapon you were killed most by, what weapon you favored, which area of the map you died most on, etc.
9b. 343-hosted forge contests, picture contests, and video contests every 6 months to keep community involved.
10b. MP brutes. Brute slayer, brutes vs elites, demolition derby (imagine brutes driving mongooses that are all on the verge of exploding), etc.
11b. Upscale BTB from 8v8 to 10v10.
12b. Sub-objectives. Example - BTB assault on a D-day type map. Sub-objective could be capturing a hill with a control panel that opens a large door in the enemy’s bunker.
13b. New power-ups. Past examples - Invisible, overshield. New examples- Jet pack placed on center of map with enough fuel for 5 seconds of use, decoy in center of map with 2 charges, radar jam in center of map that makes you invisible to enemy radar for 1 minute without causing the million red dots like it did in previous Halos.
14b. NPC’s in MP. Lots of possibilities. I quickly threw together a concept. 4v4 “Capture”. Goal is to capture all of your team’s capture points, which are heavily defended by AI NPCs, and then capture both of the neutral capture points, which both teams can fight over (which also have NPCs all over them). If both teams get one neutral capture point each, a 3rd bonus neutral capture point opens up. It’s a race to clear your team’s capture points so that you can get first dibs on the neutral ones. Map idea -
15.b Customizable HUD. Ability to relocate your radar, shield health, ammo count, etc. Example - shields on the side of HUD (vertical instead of horizontal), ammo count on top, radar bottom left, etc. Props to Anirudh07 for the idea.
What To Resurrect
1c. MP elites with certain playlists (invasion, CTF, elite slayer, etc.)
2c. Clan system. Ranked clan matchmaking would be a separate system from normal ranked matchmaking. So you could be ranked 46 in FFA, but still have a clan ranking of 1 if your clan hasn’t won any matches.
3c. Firefight. Make it more challenging and make the wave count infinite. Rewards for reaching certain wave numbers (example - piece of armor for reaching wave 20 of legendary 4-player firefight).
4c. Invasion.
5c. 1-50 (or 70, 100, whatever) ranking system and divide matchmaking into ranked/social.
6c. Campaign and multiplayer theater with rewind, fast-forward, slow-motion, a 20-game short-term memory, etc.
7c.Health system of CE. Visible health bar underneath your shield that kicks in once your shield pops. Headshots still insta-kill you, but everything else (besides explosives/splatters, etc.) does a fixed amount of damage that you can hope to survive. Put health packs at tactical locations on the maps.
8c. High quality, original maps. This also ties in with the overabundance of forge maps point. Enough remakes. Enough forge maps. Create some awesome new maps for us.
9c. H2 beam rifle.
I’m sure I’ll think of more as time passes, in which case I’ll edit them in later, along with any suggestions from you guys that I think are awesome.