Firefight: What they could've done better...

Games Other Halo
1

Since 343i has screwed up Spartan Ops in Halo 4 at the moment with the addition of forced Skulls, I’ve returned to Reach to play some good ol’ Firefight.

I love what Bungie did with Firefight in Reach; all the customization options and such. But there are still a few things they could’ve done better; things I hope to see in Halo Xbox One (or maybe even Reach, if 343i would consider releasing some small DLC):

1. Vehicles. I’m all about the vehicles. Firefight doesn’t have a whole lot; we get 2 Warthog variants, the Ghost, and the Wraith. That’s it.
Why not the Revenant? We hardly ever get to drive it in Campaign, and it would fit perfectly in Firefight. Why can’t we highjack Banshees? We could fly Banshees in the Campaign missions “The Package” during the battle in the cavern; the Firefight map “Glacier” is based on this area, but there are no Banshees.
The Scorpion? Would it be any more overpowered than the Wraith? Considering it doesn’t have boosters, it’s more difficult to maneuver it tight quarters, and you would only get 1 per round… I don’t see any problem with featuring it on a map like “Unearthed”.
No reason the Gauss 'Hog wouldn’t work, either; seeing as it has a small blast radius and a slow rate of fire, I don’t see how it would be overpowered. It would actually be pretty good to have on a map like “Beachhead”, where there’s lots of enemy Wraiths.
Also, it would be nice to have some Friendly AI on Beachhead and Unearthed to get the Warthog with you, like on Installation 04.

2. Elites. Versus mode could’ve been a lot of fun, but for some reason they never put it in matchmaking; except for that botched Versus playlist a while back where the Elites (for some reason) had limited lives and the Spartans did double damage.

Why can’t we play as Elites on the Spartan’s team? You know; Heretic Elites. There could’ve been Elites that betrayed the Covenant before the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3. I want to be able to play as my Elite character somewhere other than Elite Slayer or Invasion.

3. Maps. There aren’t enough. Firefight has only ever gotten 2 DLC maps, and they could’ve made more. Why not make Firefight versions of competitive maps? Ridgeline, Breakneck, Anchor 9, Condemned, Highlands, Breakpoint, and many others could’ve worked great in Firefight, I think.

2

As an avid firefighter all of those are ideas are fantastic. Would have loved to use more vehicles. Especially on the dlc map. Ridge line in particular would have been awesome.

I wonder if they could. I think will look into trying to do a custom firefight on one of those maps.

Have you already tried that?

3

> I love what Bungie did with Firefight in Reach; all the customization options and such. But there are still a few things they could’ve done better; things I hope to see in Halo Xbox One (<mark>or maybe even Reach, if 343i would consider releasing some small DLC</mark>)

343 are barely even supporting Reach now, and all DLC for the game has been released so there wont be any more. 343 are spending their time and resources supporting Halo 4 and the development of Halo 5, so any support for Reach and Halo 3 is out of the question.

> As an avid firefighter all of those are ideas are fantastic. Would have loved to use more vehicles. Especially on the dlc map. Ridge line in particular would have been awesome.
>
> I wonder if they could. I think will look into trying to do a custom firefight on one of those maps.
>
> Have you already tried that?

It can’t be done. Matchmaking maps can’t be used in Firefight. The maps in Firefight were used specifically with Firefight in mind.

4

I think the best thing they can do for Reach FF is remove all Arcade variants. Unlimited lives, ammo and no friendly fire took all the challenge out and allowed all the stupid in. I still see at least one AFC player in every game.

5

> I think the best thing they can do for Reach FF is remove all Arcade variants. Unlimited lives, ammo and no friendly fire took all the challenge out and allowed all the stupid in. I still see at least one AFC player in every game.

Try playing FF Limited version. That should cover most of your desired changes like limited lives, limited ammo , normal shielding etc. I “think” limited also enables friendly Fire too.

HTH…

6

If we are creating a wish list I want to toss in an afk timer/no movement/no fire kick feature. I stopped using multiplayer FF as a means for gaining credits because of the amount of people who AFK farm credits off the maybe 1 or 2 people of 4 actually playing.

7

> If we are creating a wish list I want to toss in an afk timer/no movement/no fire kick feature. I stopped using multiplayer FF as a means for gaining credits because of the amount of people who AFK farm credits off the maybe 1 or 2 people of 4 actually playing.

2 minutes of inactivity gets you the boot. Been saying that since reach launched.

8

> > If we are creating a wish list I want to toss in an afk timer/no movement/no fire kick feature. I stopped using multiplayer FF as a means for gaining credits because of the amount of people who AFK farm credits off the maybe 1 or 2 people of 4 actually playing.
>
> 2 minutes of inactivity gets you the boot. Been saying that since reach launched.

I don’t know if this is happening at all.

Last night my online buddy got called away twice just as we started co-op FireFight games with 2 other random players. He did not get back until the game was done in both cases. He never touched his controller except at the first few seconds at the start. He did not get booted.

And I wish people would get booted if they don’t move for 2 minutes. However, a rubber band to your controller stick will cause your player to spin around with no user intervention, which would certainly work around the 2 minute limit.

9

More maps…would be awesome.

10

> > I love what Bungie did with Firefight in Reach; all the customization options and such. But there are still a few things they could’ve done better; things I hope to see in Halo Xbox One (<mark>or maybe even Reach, if 343i would consider releasing some small DLC</mark>)
>
> 343 are barely even supporting Reach now, and all DLC for the game has been released so there wont be any more. 343 are spending their time and resources supporting Halo 4 and the development of Halo 5, so any support for Reach and Halo 3 is out of the question.
>
>
>
> > As an avid firefighter all of those are ideas are fantastic. Would have loved to use more vehicles. Especially on the dlc map. Ridge line in particular would have been awesome.
> >
> > I wonder if they could. I think will look into trying to do a custom firefight on one of those maps.
> >
> > Have you already tried that?
>
> It can’t be done. Matchmaking maps can’t be used in Firefight. The maps in Firefight were used specifically with Firefight in mind.

the kind of DLC I had in mind would be an update to existing Firefight maps; like adding Revenants to Beachhead, Unearthed, Outpost, and Glacier; friendly AI to Beachhead and Unearthed, and adding a Scorpion to Unearthed. It could be a free DLC.

Though it is probably too late to ask for even such a small thing… I can only hope 343i improves upon Reach’s Firefight in Halo Xbox One.

11

Vehicles, while fun, would only result in angry/jealous teammates purposively teamkilling you to destroy the vehicle. Whenever I manage to get a undamaged Wraith, I spend most of my time running away from other players. Unless you lower the boundary zones or increase the amount of Banshees, using one will break the game.

That Versus mode was taken out because of the lag issues with the game.

Maps aren’t programmed to handle A.I. They’re split between maps for players and maps for A.I. Would need a massive update to change that.

I think they should add objectives to Firefight. Like, KotH, defend an area for a specific amount of time with at least one player in the zone. Capture the Flag with infinite spawning enemies. Oddball, etc.

They should also remove Arcade FF and leave it only available on weekends. It’s the easy way out.

12

I don’t disagree with any of your suggestions. But honestly I very much enjoy Reach FF the way it is. The long-lasting commendations only add the to the replay value IMHO. I sincerely hope it returns in Halo 5, because Spartan Ops was a poor replacement. Sometimes we don’t need canonical tie-ins or storylines. Sometimes we just want unlimited ammo and endless waves of covies to annihilate.

13

> I don’t disagree with any of your suggestions. But honestly I very much enjoy Reach FF the way it is. The long-lasting commendations only add the to the replay value IMHO. I sincerely hope it returns in Halo 5, because Spartan Ops was a poor replacement. Sometimes we don’t need canonical tie-ins or storylines. Sometimes we just want unlimited ammo and endless waves of covies to annihilate.

Yes! I rather enjoy the arcade version. Its nice to just blow stuff up. The limited version should have been a little more akin to ODST, that way everyone would be happy.

I agree with the replay value of FF over spartan ops.
Being able to go into theatre to capture screen shots and clips is so awesome.
The way explosion and other things going on can’t be achieved in halo 4. Even with the use of fx and lighting.
These:
Medals
Scoring
Jeff
These things all make it better. Even though we play on a set number of maps to me, it doesn’t get stale. Getting certain medal sprees is very rewarding. My favorites are sunburst and Sunday driver and corrected.

The only thing that spops has on FF is the look of the maps.

14

> Vehicles, while fun, would only result in angry/jealous teammates purposively teamkilling you to destroy the vehicle. Whenever I manage to get a undamaged Wraith, I spend most of my time running away from other players. Unless you lower the boundary zones or increase the amount of Banshees, using one will break the game.
>
> That Versus mode was taken out because of the lag issues with the game.
>
> Maps aren’t programmed to handle A.I. They’re split between maps for players and maps for A.I. Would need a massive update to change that.
>
> I think they should add objectives to Firefight. Like, KotH, defend an area for a specific amount of time with at least one player in the zone. Capture the Flag with infinite spawning enemies. Oddball, etc.
>
> They should also remove Arcade FF and leave it only available on weekends. It’s the easy way out.

  1. We should have had an option to turn Banshee highjack On or Off. I think I should at least be able to use it in custom games. Also, there’s no reason they couldn’t have added vehicles like the Revenant, Scorpion, and Gauss 'Hog.

BTW, what difference does it make if people online are trying to betray you for your vehicle? It wouldn’t be any better if there were no vehicles at all; that would make Firefight pretty boring.

  1. We should still be allowed to play as Elites on the Defending team (the same team as the Spartans) if we want to. I would consider that more fun than Versus, anyway.

  2. My point is, they could’ve made separate versions of DLC maps for Firefight and Multiplayer; it would’ve been better than only getting 2 DLC maps for Firefight. Better yet, I could actually play the maps I paid for in some way.

  3. I play custom games if I want a more traditional Firefight experience. I don’t like Arcadefight any more than you do, but if they took away, there would be no one if the Firefight playlist.

15

Arcadefight kinda sucks. Not on principle you understand, it can be fun sometimes, but because it gets voted for EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

It’s just far too easy to grind for credits and challenges in it.

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> Arcadefight kinda sucks. Not on principle you understand, it can be fun sometimes, but because it gets voted for EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
>
> It’s just far too easy to grind for credits and challenges in it.

You know, I wouldn’t mind if they put Arcadefight and Firefight Limited in the Score Attack playlist; I prefer to play on my own anyway as to not put up with lag, and I could play them whenever I want and earn credits doing it.