Firefight Changes for the Title update

Games Other Halo
1

Since everyone is focusing on MM changes in the TU, I thought I’d make a go at suggestions for FF changes I’d like to see in the TU.

First, let me say, I love FF. Arcade, limited, doubles, score attack, each game type is fun in its own way. But each can be improved significantly.

Score Attack
This is a single player playlist. Therefore, map and game type choices should NOT rely on a random selection of games. If I want to work on my score in 2X Score Attack on Corvette I might go 10 games without seeing that particular gametype. Or if a friend of mine challeneges me to see who can post the best score in Mythic Attack on Overlook, there’sno guarantee I’m going to get what I need to meet his challenge. I’m thinking of a two list selection process. The first list details every game type and the player selects his game type. The second gives the player maps to choose from. That way if you want to always play Skirmigeddon on Glacier, you can play it to your heart’s content.

Arcadefight
Rocket and pistol with Sprint? Sword and plasma launcher with a hologram? FRG and needler with jet pack? How do any of these AA’s make best use of the initial weapons matched with them? It’s like Bungie purposely tried to create the worst power weapon combinations they could. I’d like to see loadouts that at least feel like they make sense if they are going give a power weapon to each loadout. Also each loadout should deafult to some of the standard human weapons, DMR, AR, pistol, etc.
Also, this is Arcadefight. It’s supposed to be, you know, arcade-like. When I play arcade games, I think of unlimited ammo and constantly blasting until something finally gets through and kills me. Even though ammo is unlimited, its not bottomless clip. The most arcade-like experience would be gotten from having bottomless clips so we can actually keep shooting. Obviously the bottomless clip needs to be balanced out a bit, so I’d like higher shootiness from the Covies. And in general, the eyesight of the covies needs to be dialed WAY down. If I’m on Beachhead spawn building using Active Camo (and not shooting), there’s no way a Focus Rifle Jackal should be seeing & shooting me from the lagoon. That is just ridiculous. It completely makes one of the neat AAs totally useless in FF.

Limited
As if things aren’t difficult in Limited having Phantom drops, vehicles, drop pods with Elite ultras and limited lives, we have to deal with default health, shields, weapon power, and bashing. Every single Spartan ability needs to be turned up to Master Chief levels. the reason the playlist has hardly anyone in it is a simple battle with 3-4 Grunts can sorely press your sheilds and a battle with two or wthree Elites can be terrifying. Nobody likes finishing a game in 5 minutes. I don’t play the playlist often precisely because when I have I watch as others on my team waste all ten lives running into the middle of Covie forces for 5 minutes while I stay carefully on my first life. Then after they’re all dead and waiting to spawn, I make one tiny mistake going against a whole waves of enemies by my lonesome and boom game’s over. Everyone knows the Reach Spartans are just too damn weak. Setting FF Limited to defaults is just dumb.

Doubles
This is the playlist I have the fewest problems with. Other than rampant quitting or underperforming. And my point about loadouts that I made in the Arcadefight section. This is a well-setup playlist. Three gametypes to choose from and the ability to choose your map (sometimes). If I did have to ask for one thing for Doubles, I think it would the totally unattainable daily ban for those who pick a crappy FF map then quit after sucking out by dying 15 times in 2 minutes. I can’t tell you the times I’ve had the other guy pick Waterfront like its his job, then promptly have his butt handed to him by packs of Grunts and decide he’d rather do something else, sticking me with 20 minutes of Pain trying to defend a 360 degree circle. (Becasue I never quit unless it’s Score Attack where I’m by myself and my wife yells for me)

Vehicles
One last general item for all FF playlists that I think is needed despearately. Vehicle changes. Only rocket hogs, mongeese, and the occasional ghost? Really? No scorpions, or gauss hogs, or falcons, or banshees or any of the other cool vehicles inthe game? i’d love to have a Guass hog and roll around blasting heretic elites with hyperaccelerated depleted uranium slugs! But no… variety isn’t any fun in FF! Plus, what’s up with not being able to skyjack the banshees on holdout? I can jack the Wraiths and ghosts on any other level. Place a soft kill barrier around Holdout to keep people in and let us jack the Banshees to take the fight to the Covenant! In addition, vehicles need to be immune to friendly fire. I’m currently working on my vehicle commendation incrementation and every time I get into a vehicle it seems the A-hole(s) I’m playing with decide I shouldn’t use the vehicle and BOOM! vehicle is gone with a couple of rockets or a few FRGs. That needs to be fixed so people can actually use the vehicles. Plus no splatters against friendlies!

So there are the ideas i think might be implementable. If you have any feel free to share!

2

I have to agree with everything you stated. Firefight is really repetitive, and is the only thing thats keeping me on Reach (just for the commendations). A versus playlist also needs to be brought back, everybody seems to have forgotten about it :confused:

3

I would love a Versus playlist. But from what I recall of the FF Versus test they did backin Feb, the Spartans were way overpowered. Plus apparently, the host scored the highest score someting like 98% of the time making for oneof the most ridiculous displays of host-advantage ever. If 343i can overcome those problems I think Versus would be an excellent addition.

I thought about adding a Versus section but decided against it becasue we first need a Versus playlist!

4

ALso what happened to generator defense :frowning:

5

It was vetoed ALOT. So much that Bungie removed it. So that’s the community saying colelctively they didn’t want it in FF MM. i didn’t include it because we already had a robust generator defense gametype but it didn’t do well.

6

Maybe they should just add a Grab Bag playlist, that would contain gametypes that you can play locally, but never show up in the matchmaking portion of Firefight?

7

Almost everything you just suggested can be done without a TU, and indeed has no relevance whatsoever to the upcoming TU. The sole exception is being able to choose a map in Score Attack instead of using the normal voting system; that may take a TU.

I also disagree with most of your ideas. You think FF Limited is too hard? That’s the point. It’s meant to be as close to the original ODST experience as Reach can get, and I don’t recall the ODSTs being able to move like Chief did. And they didn’t need to. Firefight was still fun.

FF Arcade is plenty arcade-like. It’s a turkey-shoot, and no competent player would need any more than they’ve already been given in those game variants. Hell, I’m terrible at this game and I do just fine in Arcade. It’s fine the way it is.

(You may have noticed the “was” – “Firefight was still fun.” Reach’s Firefight does need an overhaul. I just don’t think that anything you’ve suggested should be part of that overhaul, is all. Except the Score Attack selection thing. That’s a good idea.)

:\

8

i hope they keep team doubles 2x score attack, its fun having enemies where it doesnt always take an entire dmr clip to kill them (like for some elites) lol, and it feels more fast paced like how halo 2’s campaign played

and i guess i would agree w/ you on the other changes, they do need some improving upon in those areas…

9

> I also disagree with most of your ideas. You think FF Limited is too hard? That’s the point. It’s meant to be as close to the original ODST experience as Reach can get, and I don’t recall the ODSTs being able to move like Chief did. And they didn’t need to. Firefight was still fun.
>
> FF Arcade is plenty arcade-like. It’s a turkey-shoot, and no competent player would need any more than they’ve already been given in those game variants.

Exactly. Bring Firefight back to its roots. Arcadefight is an abomination that ruined what ODST Firefight established and what made the gametype worth carrying over to Reach. You think MW3’s new survival mode, and Gears’ Horde 2.0 is going to be a point-and-shoot joke that Firefight has become? Give players over 12 years old a reason to play the game.

10

> > I also disagree with most of your ideas. You think FF Limited is too hard? That’s the point. It’s meant to be as close to the original ODST experience as Reach can get, and I don’t recall the ODSTs being able to move like Chief did. And they didn’t need to. Firefight was still fun.
> >
> > FF Arcade is plenty arcade-like. It’s a turkey-shoot, and no competent player would need any more than they’ve already been given in those game variants.
>
> Exactly. Bring Firefight back to its roots. Arcadefight is an abomination that ruined what ODST Firefight established and what made the gametype worth carrying over to Reach. You think MW3’s new survival mode, and Gears’ Horde 2.0 is going to be a point-and-shoot joke that Firefight has become? Give players over 12 years old a reason to play the game.

The FF playlists offer variety. If players want to just goof around and play around with wacky settings and weapons, then they can go to Arcade. If players want a more serious survival experience, they go to Limited. Just because you don’t like what Arcade offers does not mean that it doesn’t belong.

On another note, I’d like an FF setting that gives each individual player their own pool of lives instead of the entire team sharing one pool of lives. I feel like that would improve Limited a lot.

11

> On another note, I’d like a FF setting that gives each individual player their own pool of lives instead of the entire team sharing one pool of lives. I feel like that would improve Limited a lot.

This. I stopped playing Limited because all of the randoms would waste my lives and I would die about once per game and not be able to respawn.

12

> > > I also disagree with most of your ideas. You think FF Limited is too hard? That’s the point. It’s meant to be as close to the original ODST experience as Reach can get, and I don’t recall the ODSTs being able to move like Chief did. And they didn’t need to. Firefight was still fun.
> > >
> > > FF Arcade is plenty arcade-like. It’s a turkey-shoot, and no competent player would need any more than they’ve already been given in those game variants.
> >
> > Exactly. Bring Firefight back to its roots. Arcadefight is an abomination that ruined what ODST Firefight established and what made the gametype worth carrying over to Reach. You think MW3’s new survival mode, and Gears’ Horde 2.0 is going to be a point-and-shoot joke that Firefight has become? Give players over 12 years old a reason to play the game.
>
> The FF playlists offer variety. If players want to just goof around and play around with wacky settings and weapons, then they can go to Arcade. If players want a more serious survival experience, they go to Limited. Just because you don’t like what Arcade offers does not mean that it doesn’t belong.
>
> On another note, I’d like a FF setting that gives each individual player their own pool of lives instead of the entire team sharing one pool of lives. I feel like that would improve Limited a lot.

You’re ignoring the real world situation here. Arcadefight is all that gets voted in. That means, all we get are fuel rod guns and rocket launchers killing everything. Limited has been ruined by Doubles taking away a lot of players (who, by and large, choose … you guessed it, Arcadefight … or they quit on you). There is way too much lag to play Limited successfully.

Look, the issue is players are chasing commendations. The more choices you give players to pick a heavy weapon, the more times those players are going to steer the vote to heavy weapon gametypes. That’s why Firefight has to be overhauled to separate the Arcadefight commendation chasers from the ODST style Firefight fans, where skill and strategy matter.

Everyone who has played Halo more than five minutes knows there are a lot fewer choices than what shows up on the veto screen. Right now 95% of team-based Firefight games are Arcadefight, which is why some of us are forced into Score Attack to be able to find any real Halo gameplay.

13

> Limited
> As if things aren’t difficult in Limited having Phantom drops, vehicles, drop pods with Elite ultras and limited lives, we have to deal with default health, shields, weapon power, and bashing. Every single Spartan ability needs to be turned up to Master Chief levels. the reason the playlist has hardly anyone in it is a simple battle with 3-4 Grunts can sorely press your sheilds and a battle with two or wthree Elites can be terrifying. Nobody likes finishing a game in 5 minutes.

I think you’re wrong here. The reason why so many more people play FFA instead of FFL is simple: credits.

You earn a LOT more credits in FFA than in FFL because - as you said yourself - you spawn with rocket launchers, FRGs, and so on. So it’s very easy to get lots of kills and thus lots of credits. And having unlimited lives also helps.

FFL is actually as close to ODST’s FF as it can be within the constraints of Reach’s engine. I like it a lot, and the only reason I don’t play it more often is this extremely annoying input lag. Especially in a game where you have to make every shot count, this input lag is the bane of … well, of everything, really.

14

> Almost everything you just suggested can be done without a TU, and indeed has no relevance whatsoever to the upcoming TU. The sole exception is being able to choose a map in Score Attack instead of using the normal voting system; that may take a TU.
>
> I also disagree with most of your ideas. You think FF Limited is too hard? That’s the point. It’s meant to be as close to the original ODST experience as Reach can get, and I don’t recall the ODSTs being able to move like Chief did. And they didn’t need to. Firefight was still fun.
>
> FF Arcade is plenty arcade-like. It’s a turkey-shoot, and no competent player would need any more than they’ve already been given in those game variants. Hell, I’m terrible at this game and I do just fine in Arcade. It’s fine the way it is.
>
> (You may have noticed the “was” – “Firefight was still fun.” Reach’s Firefight does need an overhaul. I just don’t think that anything you’ve suggested should be part of that overhaul, is all. Except the Score Attack selection thing. That’s a good idea.)
>
> :\

Actually, the ORIGINAL firefight was supposed to be incorporated in Halo 3. MS told Bungie to ditch it when they said it would take longer to implement. So at its essence, firefight was originally supposed to be with Master Chief-like stats. ODST was a game Bungie didn’t want to make but did it because to get out of their contract with MS and move onto something else they had to produce two more games. So they tried out firefight in ODST.

Plus, my initial diatribe was used to qualify my statement. I’m not looking for a maxing of the available stats, but a realistic increase of the stats BACK to MC levels. I just get this feeling like, the Spartans are so WEAK in Reach. It isn’t conducive to continued gameplay for many gamers. The essence of limited is still intact. You have a limited number of lives, and you can still die. I just think a slight alteration would make the play list more pleasurable.

As for the arcade, I already stated I wanted standard standard human loadouts in some way shape or form. It’s a change from having rockets and FRGs out there. I think the Arcadefight was better with the normal loadouts. But it they go to normal loadouts, bottomless clip is more “arcade-like” in my opinion. You don’t have to share it but I thought it should be put out there.

15

How bout they fix the lag? Firefight’s terrible netcode cause consistent lag not present in regular MM. It’s why I don’t play FF online.

16

IMO there should be some kind of rating or quick test or something to show how much lag you will experience in a match.

For instance i’m primarily a Sniper, so on a game with little lag I will favour headshot weapons. This is no good if lag is making it so I have to shoot 2 metres to the right of an enemies head - in which case I will use a Rocket Launcher or an explosive weapon (only FRG if i’m absolutely desperate).

The trouble however is that there’s no way of knowing initially when choosing a loadout. I’ll pick a Sniper Rifle, test out the scope only to realise that there’s even a slight lag and that I would rather choose another weapon.

17

I agree with each player having their own set of lives rather then one big pool. Also on FFL change the loadouts add another loadout with lets say hologram and shotgun, or any such combination, just to make us a little stronger. But FFL settings right now such as default health I don’t care about because it’s supposed to be about SURVIVAL so we’re going to be weaker. Also I feel that generator defense is unpopular due to the generators locations. Like in corvette one should be in the safe room, not in the middle where it can get demolished by incoming dropships, and since there’s lack of cooperation have us defend 1 generator rather then having to multitask on all.

18

I agree on the generator’s locations. That certianly would require a TU as far I know. Who in their right mind would defend an object in an indefensible loction?

I also agree that FF can get really laggy at times. Unlike moving from Sniper to rockets as one guy said, I switch from sniper to DMR which seems to overcome most lag pretty well.

If Limited did have individual life sets, I think I’d be much happier and play the playlist more often.

19

> I agree on the generator’s locations. That certianly would require a TU as far I know. Who in their right mind would defend an object in an indefensible loction?
>
> I also agree that FF can get really laggy at times. Unlike moving from Sniper to rockets as one guy said, I switch from sniper to DMR which seems to overcome most lag pretty well.
>
> If Limited did have individual life sets, I think I’d be much happier and play the playlist more often.

The problem with individual lives: kids blow through their lives, quit the game, and it’s suddenly FF Doubles or Score Attack.

343 would need to throw sloppy players another life after a round, as currently happens, to keep them in the game.