So Firefight never should have been taken out of Halo. Halo 4’s Spartan Ops was a sorry replacement and was constantly redundant and forgettable. The players had infinite lives which takes away the thrill and suspense of game play, it all becomes boring. The story cut scenes were the only redeemable things from Spartan Ops; the missions themselves were too basic and not diverse at all, only getting slightly better in the latter half. Spartan Ops didn’t have the unique level designs of Campaign and felt like a half baked experiment. Spartan Ops was a failed replacement.
In contrast, the original Halo: ODST Firefight was amazing. The game play was thrilling and extremely challenging, the player had to survive and out think wave after wave of intelligent A.I. on a set number of lives in a closed area. The ODST were innately weaker than the Spartans, and that created tension. The player couldn’t just run into the Covenant and beat down everyone and run back. The ODST had to out think and out maneuver their powerful foes; what separated Firefight from the Campaign was this escalating tension and the mounting threat of more and more intelligent enemies in a fixed space. Especially the A.I. of the brutes, which worked together brilliantly in a pack and blended so well together in combat. Skill was key to winning and that’s what made it a blast, especially with friends.
However, Halo: Reach Firefight, Firefight 2.0, was also a failure and missed what made original Firefight amazing. Firefight 2.0 was an arcade version of the original. Lives were not an issue but infinite, which removed the key factor of Firefight: tension. The struggle to survive on a set of limited lives created a wonderful reward system in the tension, if one could survive, the fun was in surviving itself and out witting the ever increasing and challenging waves of enemies. Firefight 2.0 became about ridiculously racking up the most points to buy yoinking armor ascetics. The Spartans were overpowered and were not vulnerable enough, especially with those yoinking, game breaking armor abilities. The skill of Firefight was lost in exchange for meaningless and shallow point racking.
Firefight 3.0 needs to return to the ODST model but also needs to evolve and expand in order to progress. The news that armor abilities are not returning is encouraging because those makes it cheap and less skillful to combat an enemy. Loadouts should be scraped as well because it creates an easy way to fight rather than struggling to find weapons. Sprinting, however, could make Firefight easier because of the tactics of “run over, shoot/melee, run away, repeat ad infinitum.”
Here are some of my ideas for Firefight 3.0
A Firefight map editor could be a game mode which allows players to forge their own custom maps, A.I. in all, and share them for the community.
New areas could be opened incrementally as the firefight continues or something akin to that.
3)The Halo: Reach mechanic of letting a player play as an elite and fight against his Spartan friends is great and should be expanded upon, maybe letting players play as any Covenant or other enemy beings (Flood, Prometheans, etc) against their friends.
What do you guys, as the community, want in your Firefight 3.0? Please share your ideas in the comments below
I never really loved Firefight that much either, it wasn’t bad but imo it was quite repetitive. I agree that Spartan Ops wasn’t good neither. If choosing between the two I would probably prefer Spartan Ops because it has a story to it, it would however have to be improved.
In an ideal situation we could have both, perhaps it will happen now we have next gen.
I’d say spartan ops has more room to improve, but I don’t see why h5 can’t have both.
The concept of spartan ops is great, and I think that’s what drew people to it. The execution was pretty miserable, and I think was tossed in a bit too late in development to properly give it the attention it deserved for h4’s probably most ambitious feature.
> I’d say spartan ops has more room to improve, but I don’t see why h5 can’t have both.
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> The concept of spartan ops is great, and I think that’s what drew people to it. The execution was pretty miserable, and I think was tossed in a bit too late in development to properly give it the attention it deserved for h4’s probably most ambitious feature.
I really wish people would take in consideration that adding 2 features means twice the amount of work has to be done by the developers in the same time frame (that and the added space to the disc).
I rather have a quality experience than two half -Yoinked!- ones.
Spartan Ops has the most potential out of the two, it needs better level design and more emphasis on the player outside of the designation “Fireteam Crimson”, not one in game cutscene showed the spartans itself but I can live without this, the level design definitely needs a better take.
I’ll be the devils advocate here. I did not enjoy either of them. I muscled threw FireFights for the achievements cause I have OCD when it comes to achievements. I grinded through the first half of Spartan Ops but that was again cause I’m a completionist. (Did not finish Sp Ops cause there was no achievement tied to it.)
I’m sure I’ll get flak for this opinion, but the whole thought process of ‘I wish they’d include both options so everyone is happy.’ is tiring to me. People complain all over these forums for the inclusion of everything. From H2A campaign with H2 sound and vice versa. from classic style gameplay and new load out style playlist. keep firefight and improve Sp Ops so those that like it can experience it.
So many people think that more is better, the more options the more everyone will be pleased. But I feel it just dilutes the overall experience and thus leaves people feeling lost in the end. I hope H5 is kept simple. You have your campaign play through, and you have your Matchmaking. No need for firefight or season releases of water downed campaign play throughs. H2 & H3 had wildly successfully Xbox Live numbers cause they kept the experience narrow and focused. Come for the campaign story & play through, but stay for the multiplayer match making. Nothing else is needed for Halo 5 to be successful. No need to focus time & energy for a 2nd rate experience.
I’d rather 343 didn’t waste resources on Spartan Ops, which is, for all intents and purposes, a second campaign mode.
Firefight 3.0 should definitely be more survival focused and less arcadey. I’ve also proposed in the past a “Reverse” gametype where you play as an Elite fighting off waves of UNSC soldiers. And I would like optional/secondary objectives every so often that would grant bonuses like extra ammo, power weapons, vehicles, etc.
The problem with Spartan Ops is that its like a miniature campaign, but it feels diluted and almost redundant. What is the point of having a lesser campaign and a greater campaign? Spartan Ops adds nothing to the mix, it just feels like a really bad DLC to the main campaign. Even if Spartan Ops was good, what is the point of two separate campaigns? Just give us a really long main campaign and focus all your resources on the story, mission set pieces and design.
Firefight does add something new to the mix. The whole point of a survival based game mode is that its a level of difficulty and tension that is not able to be achieved in Campaign because Campaign has to progress and be fluid because its a story.
I really like the idea of different objectives that could be done in Firefight 3.0 or especially as playing as the Covenant. It could all be done as “Spartan training” on a holo deck!
> The problem with Spartan Ops is that its like a miniature campaign, but it feels diluted and almost redundant. What is the point of having a lesser campaign and a greater campaign? Spartan Ops adds nothing to the mix, it just feels like a really bad DLC to the main campaign. Even if Spartan Ops was good, what is the point of two separate campaigns? Just give us a really long main campaign and focus all your resources on the story, mission set pieces and design.
>
> Firefight does add something new to the mix. The whole point of a survival based game mode is that its a level of difficulty and tension that is not able to be achieved in Campaign because Campaign has to progress and be fluid because its a story.
>
> I really like the idea of different objectives that could be done in Firefight 3.0 or especially as playing as the Covenant. It could all be done as “Spartan training” on a holo deck!
> The problem with Spartan Ops is that its like a miniature campaign, but it feels diluted and almost redundant. What is the point of having a lesser campaign and a greater campaign? Spartan Ops adds nothing to the mix, it just feels like a really bad DLC to the main campaign. Even if Spartan Ops was good, what is the point of two separate campaigns? Just give us a really long main campaign and focus all your resources on the story, mission set pieces and design.
>
> Firefight does add something new to the mix. The whole point of a survival based game mode is that its a level of difficulty and tension that is not able to be achieved in Campaign because Campaign has to progress and be fluid because its a story.
>
> I really like the idea of different objectives that could be done in Firefight 3.0 or especially as playing as the Covenant. It could all be done as “Spartan training” on a holo deck!
Yeah fair enough, a longer campaign would keep me happy anyway.
> So what do you guys specifically want to make Firefight 3.0 great?
I would be happy to see old enemy’s such as the brutes to come back. Possibly the flood, if Wargames was canon as a simulation, maybe this could be two.
As weak as SpOps was I still think a better version would be superior to even ODST’s firefight. I don’t know why everyone is starting to find these horde modes so enjoyable because they get really repetitive. As much as I enjoyed Halo 3 ODST’s firefight it had the same shortcomings.
> As weak as SpOps was I still think a better version would be superior to even ODST’s firefight. I don’t know why everyone is starting to find these horde modes so enjoyable because they get really repetitive. As much as I enjoyed Halo 3 ODST’s firefight it had the same shortcomings.
I admit that Firefight can feel repetitive at times. But at least it’s highly customizable and different from the other modes.
Spartan Ops is not. It is simply a glorified second campaign. Why waste resources on a mode we already have?
> > As weak as SpOps was I still think a better version would be superior to even ODST’s firefight. I don’t know why everyone is starting to find these horde modes so enjoyable because they get really repetitive. As much as I enjoyed Halo 3 ODST’s firefight it had the same shortcomings.
>
> I admit that Firefight can feel repetitive at times. But at least it’s highly customizable and different from the other modes.
>
> Spartan Ops is not. It is simply a glorified second campaign. Why waste resources on a mode we already have?
But with attention to detail and effort they can make a worthwhile second campaign that can take us to other places or have a fun mix of maps and gameplay and you could even have SpOps missions that behave like firefight. Firefight, while customizable still got bland if you ask me.
> > > As weak as SpOps was I still think a better version would be superior to even ODST’s firefight. I don’t know why everyone is starting to find these horde modes so enjoyable because they get really repetitive. As much as I enjoyed Halo 3 ODST’s firefight it had the same shortcomings.
> >
> > I admit that Firefight can feel repetitive at times. But at least it’s highly customizable and different from the other modes.
> >
> > Spartan Ops is not. It is simply a glorified second campaign. Why waste resources on a mode we already have?
>
> But with attention to detail and effort they can make a worthwhile second campaign that can take us to other places or have a fun mix of maps and gameplay and you could even have SpOps missions that behave like firefight. Firefight, while customizable still got bland if you ask me.
But that’s my point. All of this can be accomplished in the main campaign. There’s no point in two.
I liked both previous versions of Firefight, so I’m hoping there’s a happy medium kind of like how you had Legendary as an option in Reach’s firefight.
I agree with many that while Spartan Ops was a great concept and the CGI scenes were great the actual missions were not good. If anything it should have been a fully fleshed out and separate game like ODST was.
