Very recently (in the past few minutes, at the time of me writing this, even) I’ve noticed more and more threads going over the ins and outs of BTB and Firefight gametypes. Now I’ve been preaching this dogma forever, but I’m not sure if people have seen it. So allow me to give you the gist of the Invasion + Firefight gametype:
> Player controlled Spartans and NPC UNSC assets vs Player controlled Elites and NPC Covenant assets. It would kind of merge the concepts of shooting players and shooting grunts, both of which are integral to Halo.
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> People talk about how concerned they are for BTB in upcoming Halo titles. They say they want huge 32 or 64 player games on Halo Wars inspired maps, but I don’t see that working. What if, instead, we had a simple 4v4 or 6v6 and tons of AI? Obviously, there would need to be some mechanic for tactically directing AI, so you can have a squad of Marines get your back against the two hunters and a player in a tank. (in fact, such a mechanic would have been useful in…like…every Halo campaign ever) The sandbox would also have to be balanced towards Human vs Covenant, but Reach did a pretty good job of that.
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> Of course, we could have some fun with a gametype that fuses PvP and PvE. Imagine if a third faction of Prometheans, Flood, Brutes, Sentinels, Heretics, Insurrectionists or slightly perturbed Guta’s stormed in? Imagine if, thanks to some weapon or powerup on the map that players are fighting over, these AI would bend themselves to the player’s will? Imagine throwing a battalion of Prometheans against a Scorpion and seeing who comes out on top?
Now there are a few pieces to this idea that need to be fleshed out in order for this to work.
- AI Squad control mechanics: Long time in coming, don’t you think?? The D-pad sees virtually zero use in Halo combat. It alone could facilitate the required architecture to ensure tactical commands can be issued as quickly and efficiently as possible. The player would be able to grab an AI by pressing UP on the D-pad, thereby adding it to their “Fireteam” a la that useless feature in Reach. Pressing, say, LEFT would send your AI to whatever position you’re staring at. Pressing RIGHT would have them attack whatever enemy your looking at. Pressing DOWN would have them cancel all current commands and follow you. Pressing UP without being in the presence of an AI would allow you to select units individually. That way you could diversify your team with multiple AI with varied gear and preforming unique roles. Imagine controlling a Tank, a Sniper and a squad of Marines with Battle Rifles all with the D-pad. This is a huge part of most tactically based games. AI could even feature symbols above their head, displaying who is currently controlling them and what they’re doing.- Balanced Sandbox: Reach did a really good job of ensuring every weapon and vehicle had a counterpart from the other faction. One that I immediately came up with involved Flying vehicles. I’ll explain why those would be important in a second. The UNSC has instituted 3 major flyable vehicles in Halo games: The Pelican, the Falcon and the Hornet. Consequently, the Covenant has exactly the same number. The Spirit (CE, Reach) the Phantom and the Banshee. The Pelican and the Spirit would both boast incredible armor and transport capacity, but lack in firepower and maneuverability. Once again, I’ll explain why that would be important later. The Falcon and Phantom would function with medium armor, crappy transport capacity, understandable maneuverability but insane raw firepower. The Banshee and Hornet would feature awful armor and transport, meh firepower, but crazy maneuverability.- Objective based Gameplay: Now NPCs and Players fighting together is an idea most people like, I think. But what would they do? It couldn’t work like normal Slayer, due to the disparity in usefulness between AI and players. Maybe NPCs have a select number of respawns and serve fewer points per kill, but I think we could have more fun with this. We could do a capture the flag-esque gametype, or classic control point Invasion, but once again, we could have so much more fun. How?- Player controlled Frigates: You’re welcome. Players and AI would spawn on either a Pillar of Autumn or Amber Clad inspired starship, or a Covenant Battle Cruiser or Assault Carrier (all of which would be nerfed within reason. Enough firepower to blast open a Scorpion once a few minutes.) The idea is that they would be big and hard to kill, but difficult to directly influence the battle below, mostly because they’d be fighting the other team’s frigate. Stay with me here. Over the course of the game, players may have the ability to Spawn on a different portion of the map, but AI would be relegated to the Frigate. This is where the Flying vehicles come into play. Getting AI from the Frigate to the map would be super important. Pelicans and Drop pods would be invaluable. You could have counters set up describing the respawn times of various vehicles and weapons aboard the ship. Basically, it would be the team’s center of operations. But if base play is centered around the Frigates…how does this become an all encompassing gametype dedicated to the marriage of PvP and PvE?- Objective based Gameplay…again: Blow up the Frigate. Well this sounds a lot like SW Battlefront II, doesn’t it? The trick is that the only way really to do this is by utilizing the BTB map below. I’ll explain how to do this later, but it would be pretty different for each map. Suffice it to say that I was thinking of a bit of a tiered approach to scenarios, similar to Invasion. The first two tiers would be about map control and supplanting the other team’s advantages, and the final tier would unleash a killer advantage, weapon, power up or vehicle with enough fire power to crush the frigate above.Post continued later.
