Damage types explored

Games Halo Infinite
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Damage types in Halo Infinite were revealed as a means of expanding on the classic “Bullets are strong against health, Plasma is strong against shields” trademark of Halo CE that went on to be pretty widely adopted across sci-fi shooters ever since. And in theory it was a really cool idea, that in practice seems to exist purely to make shock as “new” and “different” as possible. Because outside of shock weapons, the other damage types all feel really half baked. Far as I can tell these are the common traits of all of them:

Kinetic - Can mean a lot of things. It can be bullets, or spikes, or blamite, or even missiles. It can be hitscan, or it can be a projectile, or it can have tracking. But generally it just means stuff that does more damage to health than shields.

Plasma - Always fires as a projectile, sometimes has tracking, and tends to do less damage to health than shields on body shots, but is more neutral damage to both on headshots.

Shock - Always basically hitscan, similar to plasma does more damage to shields than health, but is closer to neutral on headshots. Has an effect that arcs between targets, can also arc when shooting certain objects, builds up a damage over time on targets, that buildup also EMPs vehicles.

Hardlight - Like Kinetic damage it does more damage to health than shields, and comes in two forms, from a laser beam to bouncy projectiles. The only functional difference between it and Kinetic against infantry is the visual disintigration effect on death. But it does do bonus damage on vehicles, but some kinetic weapons also do bonus damage on vehicles so… It’s just Kinetic with particle effects? Oh they overpenetrate too, almost forgot about that. That’s kind of their only unique trait.

Power - The most unnecessary, and varied damage type. What it does completely varies from weapon to weapon, and every weapon could easily be considered part of another damage type but isn’t, and the only reason it isn’t is to limit ammo in campaign.

I think this system should be expanded on way more.

For starters: Power weapons should be properly categorized by damage type. So going forward I’ll be listing power weapons within appropriate damage types.

Kinetic damage should be replaced by Ballistics, Explosives, and Blamite. With “spikes” being considered Ballistics.

Ballistics - Should be the simplest damage type. Nothing special, just the usual strong against health, weak against shields, weak against vehicles (with the noted exception of the Skewer, but NOT the Sniper). Weapons include the AR, Sidekick, Commando, BR, Bulldog, Sniper, Mangler, Skewer, and Spike Grenade.

Explosives - Should basically just be kinetic explosive weapons, and include the Hydra, Gravity Hammer, Rocket Launcher, and Frag Grenade. These weapons would be considered strong against all targets: shields, health, and vehicles. What sets them apart is mostly having a blast radius, but also not being capable of bonus headshot damage, and their ability to push stuff around with their explosive force.

Blamite - I’m going to put more effort into explaining this one, because I have an idea in my head for how it should work and it will take some explaining. Right now it would just be the Needler, but the Needle Rifle should be added to the game to justify it’s existence. Blamite does very low damage to shields and health, and is practically useless against vehicles, but will supercombine when a universal number of shots have hit the target, pick a number from 6-8 and ALL blamite weapons will supercombine in that exact number of shots, even if their shields aren’t down. And those shards can come from multiple sources, so one player with a Needler, and one with a Needle Rifle, only need to put 3-4 shots each into a target to score a supercombine together. This completely removes the need for a headshot from blamite weapons in duels, but they can still headshot if the enemy’s shield have been lowered by another weapon before the supercombine shot requirement is met. But these weapons will almost never break the shield before supercombining, which makes them tricky because they can put you in a situation where you don’t realize you’re about to die in time to disengage. Because it doesn’t rely on precision, blamite weapons going forward will rely on some form of inconsistency, like the needler’s tracking, or having a very short range (A needle shotgun would be a sweet replacement for the classic point blank one-shot kill shotgun not gonna lie), or have a slower optimal ttk than other weapons like would need to be the case for the Needle Rifle in this form. Just as a closer, a Needle grenade would be pretty cool, maybe it could be some kind of tripmine? You stick it to a wall with a 10-20 second fuse, and if a player walks in front of it they get showered with needles, but it has a visible pink laser sight and disables if it is shot.

Alright, now that Kinetic has been split up, for the remaining damage types I’m just going to point out how they can be adjusted to be more unique than they are right now:

Plasma - The damage model is fine as is, but it’s the only thing plasma has. So I think the best thing they could do is re-introduce plasma stun from Halo CE. Sustained fire slows the target down, making follow up shots easier to land. This alone would make the Pulse Carbine, Ravager, and Plasma Pistol so much better, and considering it needs to stack from multiple hits to reach it’s full effect, it won’t be an enormous buff to the Stalker, but just enough to make it feel a bit more consistent for the average player. Direct impacts from fully charged shots from chargeable weapons should immediately grant full stun, which isn’t a full stop of movement, but a significant enough slow that it feels about as debilitating as it did in CE, comparatively with Infinite’s faster movement. They could also experiment with it affecting vehicle movement speed as well, to replace Plasma Pistol EMP, with a universal effect that plasma slows vehicles down temporarily instead of disabling them. Plasma includes all the current plasma weapons plus the Energy Sword.

Shock - Unchanged. It does plenty as it stands. And there are no shock based power weapons so the list of weapons is unchanged.

Hard Light - I don’t really know what can be done to make Hard Light any more unique. Maybe it should just be treated as sort of a wild card damage type? Like it can do a bunch of unique and interesting things other damage types don’t do? I’d say right now all 3 weapons fit that bill nicely, since they are an overpenetrating laser, a bouncy grenade shotgun, and the implosive, fly-by-wire Cindershot. I hope future hardlight weapons continue to be really weird and unique compared to the rest of the cast.

I also have ideas for potential future (returning) damage types. Particularly Fire, for the flamethrower and incendiary grenade, and Radiation for the Carbine and Fuel Rod Cannon. But aside from having a damage over time, or area of denial effects, which are already in the game, it’s hard not to just want to categorize the Carbine and Fuel Rod in particular as explosives instead. It would be cool having an explosive payload on a standard precision rifle though, so that could work out.

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Hardlight has very unique properties regarding it, mainly that it does more damage to vehicles and that items and objects “killed” by it disintegrate. This works together with its vehicle killing property by preventing it from exploding. (At least it should)

And no, we don’t really need wild wacky damage types. You are playing a shooter, not some MOBA or MMORPG where you have to do mental gymastics for cause and effect. You shoot, you do damage.

If anything we need LESS damage types. Electric for example, makes no sense because it’s basically Plasma but not Plasma. Power is entirely redundant in nature. It does so much damage the damage classification don’t matter to it. In fact, the only reason Power exist in Infinite is to prevent loopholes for players to recharge Power weapons at respective Ammo stations.

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Your argument is weak, and you are suggesting a Halo Infinite where everyone uses the pistol and has no shields, of which there is a game mode to accommodate for your play style.

I’m still waiting to be able to get kinetic weapons that deal “electric”, “plasma”, or “hardlight” damage over time if they hit, on account of them being projectiles that contain/emit those secondary damaging forces.

Imagine shooting the spike weapon at someone and watching it create chaos and arch to all the Spartan’s it passes before it hits your target. Could be pure kino.

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Good post OP, I think ammo types was a great addition but I agree it seems like 343 didn’t put too much thought into it. I agree with all off your points and wanted to add a couple thoughts of my own:

Kinetic (Spike)

  • Playing off of the spikes in some halo cinematic where they literally pinned there victims to walls, it would be cool if the spike projectiles somehow restricted mobility. Example, if you are sprinting and get hit by a Mangler you are knocked out of sprint. If the Spiker was added it could be like an AR that “disables” sprint (automatic unlike the Mangler), which to me would make the Spiker an interesting Tier 2 AR. Then for death effects maybe the Spikes could pin ragdolled enemies to objects (i’ve already seen a concept video for this on the Skewer).

Plasma (Blue)

  • Standard plasma type, good vs shields.

Plasma (Green)

  • Homing plasma projectiles (example Plasma Pistol charged shot). I think the pulse carbine would look awesome in green, and help players understand its role better as a tracking weapon good vs shields.

Plasma (Red)

  • Superheated plasma which overheats quickly but has special effects. Stalker Rifle is a precision projectile, Ravager has area denial, Brute Plasma Rifle higher RPM, etc.
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No I just want Halo Infinite to focus on what’s important to sandbox health and not add complex interactions which usually mean balancing headaches.

You do realise that some of the changes OP have suggested could just be weapons on their own without the need of a new damage type right? For example the Blamite suggested is literally just a roundabout addition of the Sticky Detonator, so why not just put the Sticky Detonator back into the game?

Shock in general is too accessible and as a sideeffect causes the vehicle balance to become wacked because being so accessible means that vehicles are not being destroyed but exchanging hands more often in Infinite, causing vehicle bloat. And considering how powerful some vehicles are in Infinite, one team with more vehicles than the other due to this exchange of hands is just poor balance. EMP property needs to be removed from alot of guns. Dynamo’s existence is enough.

My two cents is to just have our current damage types but rebalanced:

  • Kinetic less effective against shields, like it’s always meant to be.

  • Plasma more effective against shields, less effective against health, deals bonus damage to vehicles since EMP got moved over to Shock

  • Shock can arc off players, vehicles and certain terrain, only Dynamo can EMP.

  • Hardlight can serve as the “true damage” of the game, dealing consistent damage to shield, health, vehicles and such, and as an added effect, disintegrates objects it has killed which removes explosions from vehicles or fusion coils for example.

  • Power weapons are just Power weapons. They do not need extra properties beyond doing enormous amounts of damage.

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Great post.

In general, Halo has had more damage types than people realize (I may get a bit semantic here, I understand if you don’t entirely agree, but here we go).

In the past we have had:

  1. Bullets (AR, Shotgun, Commando): Hitscan weapons that do heavy damage against flesh, but are weak against shields.

  2. Plasma (Plasma Rifle, Ravager): Projectile weapons that do heavy damage against shields, but are weak against flesh.

  3. Blamite (Needler, Needle Rifle, White Scar): A weird damage type that bypasses shields and goes straight to health damage. Traditionally, they home in on targets. It also has a status effect that causes a detonation when enough needles imbed into the target. Lastly, needles bounce off of vehicle armor.

  4. Explosive (Grenade Launcher, Hydra, Fuel Rod): Weapons with large splash damage radiuses and knockback (occasionally). Usually slow-moving projectiles.

  5. Fire (Flamethrower, Firebombs): Area of Effect weapons that leave a pool of damage behind. Ignites the player and detonates nearby grenades.

  6. Harlight (Sentinel Beam, Heatwave): Heavy damage to vehicles, disintegrates debris and bodies, penetrates targets to hit things behind them. Generally combines the best of kinetic and plasma. Also the rounds bounce, sometimes.

  7. Shock (Shock Rifle, Dynamos): New damage type that is good for shields and vehicles. Some can leave enduring damage to hurt players over time (Disruptor, Dynamos), all can chain damage to nearby players and metal objects, and all can EMP vehicles/shields.

  8. *Power: I don’t consider Power to be a damage type, however I understand its inclusion for the Campaign. 343 didn’t want us resupplying rockets and such every time we came across a kinetic ammo crate. *

  9. Spikes (Spiker, Mangler): @Shanesaw9 had some ideas about a Brute Spike category. So it would be best ask them about it.

  10. (EDIT): Gravity (Hammer, Void’s Tear, Cindershot): We haven’t really seen a true gravity manipulating weapon (the hammer is more like an explosive stick and the Void’s Tear is just a funky plasma pistol), but I did like the VT’s ability to pull enemies and projectiles in. Gun mored dedicated to pushing AND pulling could be interesting.

And here come the semantics:

  1. Headshot (BR, Sniper Rifle): Since Halo 5, headshot weapons have been treated very differently. Before, only designated weapons could execute a “headshot finisher” after a shield break. Now, any gun can do slightly more damage (not necessarily a finisher) on the head of an unshielded enemy. I think this is bad for balancing since now weapons with spread like the AR can get a random-ish damage boost, making kill times pretty erratic.
    .
    Now, guns doing more damage against heads simply makes sense. But I’m not sure logic is reason to jeopardize game balance. I mean, a plasma pistol overcharge is a 1-shot on the head of an unshielded opponent. The ability that was famously only good for shields has a 1-shot finisher on unshielded people now? Or how about the Pulse Carbine? It’s a gun with tracking that also gets headshot bonuses. Essentially, once the player fires, they lose all agency since the computer gets the last say on where the bolts go. I’m not sure if that’s the type of headshot capable gun I’d like to see in the future.

  2. EMP (Plasma Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Power Drain): EMP is a strange damage type because it doesn’t actually deal damage (or deals very little). Instead it removes player traits (shields and vehicle mobility). EMP was usually treated as secondary effect instead of a primary mode for a weapon/item, but its role has mostly been merged with the Shock-types now, with debatable results.

So how can these be improved?

  1. Bullets and Plasma: These to go hand in hand. But with the ever lowering TTKs of guns like the AR, BR, and Magnum, plasma weapons have become all but irrelevant. A Plasma Pistol overcharge doesn’t have the same weight now as it used to. Despite using the combo, you may still come out of a fight by the skin of your teeth because the kinetic weapons shread shields so fast.

  2. Blamite: Honestly? Just more guns that use it. I’s been here since H:CE but we’ve barely explored the possibility of tracking, exploding rounds.

  3. Explosive: This is the most extensive group in Halo. I think we just need back some old favorites to fill the missing holes in Infinite’s sandbox.

  4. Fire: I’ve played enough Titanfall to know that you can absolutely have a some cool but balanced weapons/items based around fire. The Ravager is already doing some good work in this regard even if it’s not fire.

  5. Hardlight: It’s ability to disintegrate is something I hope forge capitalizes on. Basically It would be cool if you can set forge pieces to be “disintegrate-able(?)” Basically you could open up paths on maps by shooting a wall (maybe the wall respawns after a while).

  6. Shock: In general, 343 needs to get their heads out of the -Yoink!- and stop acting like Shock and EMP are the same thing. You can have a Plasma Pistol EMP without making shock gun useless. In fact, 343 should be focusing on the shock guns’ ability to deal indirect damage. Titanfall 2 has a gun called the “Thunderbolt”. That will be my example.
    .
    Also just like hardlight, I’d like to see forge blocks that are “shock-able” so you can arc damage off of them.

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I see what you are saying, but you “know” when a weapon combo works. Doesn’t matter what damage type you use, and more about the situation (i.e. what distance away from your opponent are you, is it a group of enemies etc.)

Thinking in terms of “best damage” is difficult, as I would rather have guns that are better in different situations.