The addition of location tags is an extremely useful feature that is severely underused in Reach. The advent of party chat, guests, new blood, and a trend of micless players make the ingame chat a lot more quiet than was in previous titles.
Halo 2 vets may recall a time when everyone wore mics; everyone called out. Remember calling out snipers at purple -Yoink!-?
All this information sharing allowed Halo 2, particularly objective games, to really shine. Communication has always played a vital role in Halo gameplay; I feel the lack thereof in newer titles has hindered a lot of what made Halo multiplayer so special to begin with.
My suggestion is to reintroduce this information sharing in newer Halo titles, while still allowing players to remain in party chat/silence, by means of a D-pad SITREP system.
D-pad SITREP works like this:
Pressing up or down on the d-pad instantly relays relevant tactical information to your teammates via audio announcement*(Auntie Dot style AI voice would be perfect for this)*, a text report via the kill feed, as well as a waypoint on your HUD that appears for 2 seconds while the report is being given. What information is relevant enough to be included in this system is certainly up for discussion. Below I’ve listed a number of examples to give you an idea of the number of possibilities available.
Pressing UP reports target locations. [what you’re looking at]
You see an enemy- “solo target> balcony”
Three enemies- “three targets> red barracks”
More than three- “multiple targets> blue staging”
Enemy flag/bomb carrier- “ALERT> priority target> operations”
Enemy flag/bomb carrier with escort- “ALERT> priority target in force> tower, first floor”
Enemy flag/bomb carrier in a Warthog- “ALERT> priority target mobile> canyon road”
In a Warthog- “target(s) mobile> riverbed”
In a Scorpion/Wraith- “hostile heavy armor> red base, front yard”
In a Banshee/Falcon- “hostile air> northern airspace”
Pressing DOWN reports your location. [what you’re doing]
“requesting support!> garden gates”
Hiding/stationary with flag/bomb- “priority objective secured, requesting escort> tunnel access”
Moving on foot with flag/bomb- “priority objective en route, requesting escort> main lobby”
In a Scorpion/Wraith- “heavy armor secured, requesting targets”
You get the idea. It’s context sensitive, so what you report depends entirely on your situation/what you are looking at.
This can be achievable in forge maps by labeling territories with assorted generic terms such as tunnel, blue base, P1, P2, red flag room…etc. Obviously, SITREP should have the option of being turned on/off in gametype settings, and individual players should have the option to turn off SITREP reporting if they prefer.
A huge benefit to all of this, is everyone is on the same level in terms of game communication, regardless of language barriers, mics or party chat. Noobs can use callouts along with the vets without fear of bad calls, or resorting to “on my X.” Hearing/speech impaired players would benefit greatly from this system as well.
Any opinions on why this would or wouldn’t work?
> > yeah then i would give fake callouts like i allready do and i would turn the feature off i prefer lone wolf.
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> > > This could work… if everyone had to pass a maturity test before they purchased the game. Otherwise, it would be abused a lot.
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> > The way that this works, it’s impossible to send false reports.
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> > Spamming can be curbed by implementing a cooldown similar to evade, and making it so that generic support requests can be worn out just like the horns on Warthogs. Also make it so that duplicate reports only display once.