Future Halo - Ordnance, any ideas?

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

So this week, I’m on the topic of Ordnance, do you guys like them? I don’t like how they were implemented in H4, but I like the idea of getting a little something for your time on the battlefield, whether that killing the other team (H4) or could be designed where you get it from doing the objective from certain gametypes. Other than that reason, I just like the feeling of pressing the button where you want it and comes crashing down or actually constructs itself, and looks really, really cool. The only problem is what the player should get when he/she is rewarded it…

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Ideas listed below
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Concept one
Personal Ammo Ordnance (Social playlist)
When player score enough points in either slayer (through killing sprees) or objective based games (doing the objective and scoring without dying), an indication will show up and through the D-pad, the player can choose between either a restock on ammo, or an option for more grenades (fully), that was from the players original loadout (previous discussions would suggest UNSC, Covenant, Promethean preset weapon sets and characters, concept 1 or 2) it can only be one or the other. Additionally, the Ordnance drops will be of a different appearance if the player is a Spartan, Elite or a Promethean character. Once the Ordnance appears and the ammo is replenished, the players screen may have a visual flare added that soon fades after restock, something like FX Juicy from H3 would happen and go back to more neutral colors. This will only be for the Social playlist and will not be included in the Ranked playlist at all

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Concept 2
Mass Random Ordnance Drops (Social playlist)
This so called “Mass Random Ordnance” will be in Social - to have a system where the Ordnance effects all payers and not just a single player. The match starts and there are set power equipment (weapons, power-ups, or Equipment/AA’s) that always spawn in the same area all the time on given maps. Now let’s say when both teams pick up all the stuff on the map and it begins like any normal Halo, but this time, it depends on how many kills both teams have accumulated altogether in order for the new wave of Mass Ordnance to spawn on the map again, instead of having timed spawns, it would be registered towards amount of kills instead, and will be random as well. Also, when Mass Random Ordnance Drops take place, take place all players will have the Drop Recon armor mod in order to prepare.

2

Take Ordinance out of Halo, it has no place in a Halo game.

3

Even assuming ordnance isn’t random, it still creates a massive snowball effect.

I’ve had tons of games of Adrift where someone grabs overshield, kills people, calls down another overshield, grabs it again, kills people, calls down ANOTHER one, so on.

Essentially, every other opponent I fought had an overshield. It’s ridiculous and it’s practically every game.

4

@Ramir3z77

You’re talking about how it’s designed in H4, we all know it sucks, I’m thinking how it can be changed so it’s not like that at all

I was thinking one night, let’s say you’re playing Slayer, and you call in an ordnance, it would actually make you’re visor see different colors and effects just for fun. And when you call in the ordnance, it wouldn’t necessarily be in a canister, but be a small meteor shower effect and the the “stuff” is shattered all over the ground…I dunno. Seemed cool when I thought of it

5

Other than the set Ordnance that was in Firefight, I don’t think it should come back. In Team games I feel that it promotes selfish gameplay, people get more focused on getting Ordnance than helping their teammates. I don’t think that Personal Ordnance would have any positive effects on Firefight either.

6

> Take Ordinance out of Halo, it has no place in a Halo game.

-Yoink-, there’s nothing writ in the fabric of the universe OR in Halo to be more specific about this that says we can’t have ANYTHING in Halo. Giant robot dinosaurs, ninja monkey torpedos, it’s all fair game because this is all just a game. Don’t be so dogmatic about this.

Anyway, Ordnance could be a fun thing to have in Halo but if it weren’t taken as such a half step. This franchise DOES have a problem in distributing its best toys around but throwing it over to a randomly generated item that spawns in under not-too-clear circumstances isn’t that much of an improvement over letting -Yoinking!- chaos theory handle the whole matter (or as we say around here, of letting map control take care of it.)

What I’d like to see is several major changes to the sandbox and how deployables are called in. First of all, there needs to be a clear point system involved towards requisition. 343 need go no further than copying Section 8 or Iron Brigade in this because those both use very standard and very functional ordnance systems but they could probably do still better. Get a kill, that’s five points. Assist, that’s three. Objective score, another 5 and so on and so on. Get 40 points and you get to call in ordnance. It’s quite simple.

Now for what you get, IMO the idea of being able to summon your own power weapon isn’t a very good one and for one very good reason. Those weapons are broken. Rockets, snipers, shotguns, they were all originally designed with a campaign in mind and as it turned out they were -Yoink!- hilarious to use in multiplayer as well because games of the CE era weren’t quite so careless with their sandboxes. That only worked, however, because for all the power a sniper rifle gave you it was limited by its spawning frequency. Take that away, and in WHATEVER fashion spawn in more frequent power weapons, and you’ll quickly break Halo.

So where does that leave ordnance? Simple, either nerf all power weapons to compensate for their increased spawn frequency or set the big stuff aside (rockets, snipers, ect), keep that to on-map spawning, and use variety weapons (needler, rail gun, detonator, laser, ect) in ordnance drops. Either way you pull the focus away from the more tedious parts of Halo (ie. scoped semi-automatics which we are presently fixated upon) and set it to rest on the wider diversity of weapons this franchise has to offer. As for what weapon you get, again Iron Brigade serves up a pretty good model for this. Select your ordnance weapon in your loadout, thereby forcing some level of strategic choice in what is now a pretty automatic system.

But I think we can do better than that by incorporating equipment into ordnance to further expand the depth and strategy of the game. Turrets, ammo drops, sensor platforms, light vehicles, Section 8 is the game to look towards for this. In spite of pulling all weapons into the loadout system map control is a huge part of that game, perhaps even stronger than in Halo, because ordnance allows you various deployable equipment pieces that enable you to in one way or the other better hold territory. It’s an explicit part of that game’s design, not just an incidental function of having broken on-map weapons which is our way of handling map strategies, and all it requires is a few more items tailor made for the purpose of doing stuff to the map that we can easily accommodate in an ordnance system. We can even do better with land-mines, radar jammers, jump pads, and holo-decoys and potentially remove whatever apparent need there is now to have armor abilities (thus freeing 343 to do something else with that system as well.)

There’s a lot of potential in doing something else with ordnance. The worst thing, perhaps, would be to throw it all away and go back to our old, outmoded, schemes.

7

Ordinance: I could careless if they remove it, but for arguement sake lets say 343i keeps it. The way its design in Halo 4 is a big No No because it makes the MP unbalance by giving people power weapons, over shields, and such. Which thus creates having map control or choke points rather pointless to do the fact that you can just pop an OP weapon out of your Yoink and kill the entire team. In the end if they really know whats best for a balanced MP and decide to bring it back they have to bring it back by only giving players ammo refills for their primary’s or secondary’s. Finally, Ordinance in Custom Games for the sake of making the game fun should be customizable like it is in H4.

8

Just take it out. The whole point of Ordnance is power weapon delivery, and we’ve already established that on-map pickups are the best way to give power weapons to players.

9

I see two options, if loadouts are kept then Ordnance should only supply ammo for the loadout weapon currently in use, a secondary loadout weapon and a refill on the grenades.

Another option is to only use it in a specific playlist where there are no weapons on the map, at all. But the players who get the personal ordnance choose which weapon will spawn on the map. Then the game choose a place for the weapon to spawn, alerts all players in the match about what will spawn, when and where.

10

OMFG - Thank you to WRGGuntDevil2 and Naqser to bring back a thought I had before I even posted this, but wrote down the more “stupid” idea - yes, that would be PERFECT to have the default/normal ordnance (exclusive to the Social playlist) only bring either ammo for the primary weapon and secondary weapon or you could pick grenades, but you can only choose one or the other.

That’s something I shall write down, thanks guys!

11

I’ll be honest, I have trouble imagining any positive effects that Ordnance has/could have on ANY aspect of the game.

We’ve already seen and discussed what it does to multiplayer, so I’ll leave that one out.

Some people say that it could work in Campaign and Firefight… I disagree.

In Campaign, weapon placement is just as important as it is in multiplayer. Every weapon placed in each level is placed with a specific scenario in mind. The crate full of Rocket Launchers exists to assist the player in defeating the Scarab that will soon rain hell upon them. The set of Shotguns held by dead Marines is placed to allow the player to fight off the hordes of Flood Combat Forms that will round the corner.

If you throw Ordnance into Campaign, the importance of weapon placement in terms of encounters is nullified. The game goes from being a challenge that punishes the player’s errors in properly utilizing the given equipment to an arcade game that revolves around blowing up Grunts and then getting more tools to blow up Grunts.

The same issue exists in Firefight.

The defaultb Firefight is a gamemode that tests how well you can hold off against ever increasing odds. Letting people call down equipment as a reward for gaining points would change the objective of the game from surviving to getting more kills than your teammates.

That doesn’t seem to play well with the concept of Firefight, does it?

However, given that Firefight is to Campaign as Custom Games is to Matchmaking, the option to have this feature MUST exist. If I want my Firefight experience to be about blowing -Yoink- up, nothing should stand in my way.

12

> -Yoink!-, there’s nothing writ in the fabric of the universe OR in Halo to be more specific about this that says we can’t have ANYTHING in Halo. Giant robot dinosaurs, ninja monkey torpedos, it’s all fair game because this is all just a game. Don’t be so dogmatic about this.
>
> Anyway, Ordnance could be a fun thing to have in Halo but if it weren’t taken as such a half step. This franchise DOES have a problem in distributing its best toys around but throwing it over to a randomly generated item that spawns in under not-too-clear circumstances isn’t that much of an improvement over letting -Yoinking!- chaos theory handle the whole matter (or as we say around here, of letting map control take care of it.)
>
> What I’d like to see is several major changes to the sandbox and how deployables are called in. First of all, there needs to be a clear point system involved towards requisition. 343 need go no further than copying Section 8 or Iron Brigade in this because those both use very standard and very functional ordnance systems but they could probably do still better. Get a kill, that’s five points. Assist, that’s three. Objective score, another 5 and so on and so on. Get 40 points and you get to call in ordnance. It’s quite simple.
>
> Now for what you get, IMO the idea of being able to summon your own power weapon isn’t a very good one and for one very good reason. Those weapons are broken. Rockets, snipers, shotguns, they were all originally designed with a campaign in mind and as it turned out they were -Yoink!- hilarious to use in multiplayer as well because games of the CE era weren’t quite so careless with their sandboxes. That only worked, however, because for all the power a sniper rifle gave you it was limited by its spawning frequency. Take that away, and in WHATEVER fashion spawn in more frequent power weapons, and you’ll quickly break Halo.
>
> So where does that leave ordnance? Simple, either nerf all power weapons to compensate for their increased spawn frequency or set the big stuff aside (rockets, snipers, ect), keep that to on-map spawning, and use variety weapons (needler, rail gun, detonator, laser, ect) in ordnance drops. Either way you pull the focus away from the more tedious parts of Halo (ie. scoped semi-automatics which we are presently fixated upon) and set it to rest on the wider diversity of weapons this franchise has to offer. As for what weapon you get, again Iron Brigade serves up a pretty good model for this. Select your ordnance weapon in your loadout, thereby forcing some level of strategic choice in what is now a pretty automatic system.
>
> But I think we can do better than that by incorporating equipment into ordnance to further expand the depth and strategy of the game. Turrets, ammo drops, sensor platforms, light vehicles, Section 8 is the game to look towards for this. In spite of pulling all weapons into the loadout system map control is a huge part of that game, perhaps even stronger than in Halo, because ordnance allows you various deployable equipment pieces that enable you to in one way or the other better hold territory. It’s an explicit part of that game’s design, not just an incidental function of having broken on-map weapons which is our way of handling map strategies, and all it requires is a few more items tailor made for the purpose of doing stuff to the map that we can easily accommodate in an ordnance system. We can even do better with land-mines, radar jammers, jump pads, and holo-decoys and potentially remove whatever apparent need there is now to have armor abilities (thus freeing 343 to do something else with that system as well.)
>
> There’s a lot of potential in doing something else with ordnance. The worst thing, perhaps, would be to throw it all away and go back to our old, outmoded, schemes.

seems you just wanna play section 8.

CE didn’t have carefully placed spawns, it had a lot of power weapons for what it was because it could afford to, power weapons were de-powered through difficulty of use and a high kill time.

ordnance cannot be fixed because either way you’re snowballing a player no matter what you give albeit an OS, resupply or an AA, it is a random and undeeded addition to the sandbox, there could be better ways of introducing new mechanics in halos MM to liven it up without breaking most of the core mechanics and ideals in the first place.

if things became a bit more scarce then for social MM we could see many mechanics if we got rid of loadouts and ordnance, for instance in reach the jetpack as a pick-up wasn’t too bad, it was scarce and could be monitored.

you don’t need tonnes of this and tonnes of that to be fun, if anything it detracts from the experience because you can’t truly enjoy the mechanics because theres so much being thrown at you.

if it was layed out correctly there could be a variety of different pick-ups, weapons, special nades, powerups, equipment/AAs and potential for more VARIETY, variety is what halo needs again, halo needs to make change, halo needs to evolve and be ambitious, but it can’t wipe away the core game in the process, otherwise what makes it halo?.

13

Getting rid of them would be the best option in my opinion for sure.

If they are to be kept (which I REALLY hope not), they should not have huge impacts on the game flow like they do now. Currently, you are basically guaranteed to get at least 1-2 ordinances per game if you are relatively familiar with the game. This results in people being rewarded for maybe not doing all that much. What would be much better is if the point meter to get an ordinance reset every time you died. This would at least guarantee that the person earning an ordinance had to at least stay alive and do some skillful things to earn it. They should NOT, not, not, not bring down power weapons or power ups. This undermines the essential factor of Halo that requires players and teams to fight over and earn those things. So, bringing down something like ammo, grenades, maybe even a perk like dexterity or shield recharge or something like that may be better. Then it goes away when you die. I think these things could be okay because they would not really have a large enough impact to derail the game flow, would not be frequent enough to be ridiculous, and would be an actual bit of a reward instead of just a blindly handed power up.

14

Here is an idea a person had that I’m going to borrow:

Suppose you need five kills in a row. A Killing Spree. After that, you have a chance to select from three static weapons. You can choose a Needler, a Sentinel Beam, or a SAW. Above those weapons is the number Five. When you select one of them, the number goes down to Four, and the announcer shouts to all players.

“Ordnance incoming!”

You do not get the weapon immediately. It doesn’t drop at your feet either. Instead, at a point in the map where both teams can set up, the weapon drops. Everyone knows it will be there because of a ten second timer and a way-point at the location it will drop.

This method of Personal Ordnance Drops promotes teamwork; you want that weapon? Gotta go get it. And anyone can get it, not just you. This, along with the starting Ordnance that respawns, can mix power positioning on both terms.

The number above the POD selection represents the number of times all players can summon drops. After it hits zero, no more POD. This can also be customized to have whatever three selections you want. It can be random. It can even be turned off.

What do you guys think?

15

> Here is an idea a person had that I’m going to borrow:
>
> Suppose you need five kills in a row. A Killing Spree. After that, you have a chance to select from three static weapons. You can choose a Needler, a Sentinel Beam, or a SAW. Above those weapons is the number Five. When you select one of them, the number goes down to Four, and the announcer shouts to all players.
>
> “Ordnance incoming!”
>
> You do not get the weapon immediately. It doesn’t drop at your feet either. Instead, at a point in the map where both teams can set up, the weapon drops. Everyone knows it will be there because of a ten second timer and a way-point at the location it will drop.
>
> This method of Personal Ordnance Drops promotes teamwork; you want that weapon? Gotta go get it. And anyone can get it, not just you. This, along with the starting Ordnance that respawns, can mix power positioning on both terms.
>
> The number above the POD selection represents the number of times all players can summon drops. After it hits zero, no more POD. This can also be customized to have whatever three selections you want. It can be random. It can even be turned off.
>
> What do you guys think?

Interesting. Certainly FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR more balanced and better than what is currently in h4.

16

>

Sure, it’s balanced, but it makes no sense. Why should the Ordnance Drop only appear when a player gets a killing spree? What’s the point? To preserve an unnecessary likeness to Halo 4’s POD?

No one can predict beforehand when a player is going to get a killing spree. So to other players, when the drop appears will seem random. And, as Frank O’Connor once said, if a player perceives something as random, it may as well be random. So instead, why not just take Infinity Slayer, remove PODs and keep RODs, and give all players the Drop Recon perk? It’d be pretty much the same.

17

> >
>
> Sure, it’s balanced, but it makes no sense. Why should the Ordnance Drop only appear when a player gets a killing spree? What’s the point? To preserve an unnecessary likeness to Halo 4’s POD?
>
> No one can predict beforehand when a player is going to get a killing spree. So to other players, when the drop appears will seem random. And, as Frank O’Connor once said, if a player perceives something as random, it may as well be random. So instead, why not just take Infinity Slayer, remove PODs and keep RODs, and give all players the Drop Recon perk? It’d be pretty much the same.

I have a big hunch 343i isn’t just going to completely throw Personal Ordnance out the window. They kept the Armor Abilities, expanded loadouts, and still have problems with weapon balancing. These problems will most likely be fixed instead of removed.

As for getting the POD via Killing Spree instead of points, it keeps them from being too common. Almost anyone can get 70 points simply by Assists, Distractions, Comeback Kills, and all the other ridiculous medals. A Killing Spree is harder to come by.

Plus, when you obtain a Killing Spree, everyone knows it. The killfeed on the left side of the screen has always shown what player has a spree. A novice player might not notice, but an expert player will keep a watchful eye. When they see it, they’ll be prepared for an oncoming Ordnance in the location it will spawn even before the announcement, giving them a chance against the other team.

This kind of combat will only happen five times at most. Then you won’t have to worry about PODs until the next match. Random Ordnance is something I never really liked. Simply making a starting Ordnance spawn in a minute late, then respawning like normal is a much more balanced way of Power Weapon spawns. Normal Power Weapon spawns can be mixed in the fray, keeping the sneaky methods of ambushing alive along with this new assortment of Halo gameplay.

18

Now, UEG S0UL FLAME and Vektor0 gave me an idea. We already pretty much covered the personal ordnance drop issue from being overpowered and have a snow ball effect, but I like the idea of mass ordnance drops, as in ROD’s are in Social, SOD’s are in Ranked.

I think since UEG S0UL FLAME came up with the idea for the player to get killing sprees while still staying alive to get POD’s, this so called “Mass Ordnance” can happen in Social, Ranked, BTB, smaller maps, Team, or FFA - to have a system where the Ordnace effects all payers and not just a single player. The match starts and there are set power equipment (weapons, power-ups, or Equipment/AA’s) that always spawn in the same area all the time on given maps. Now let’s say when both teams pick up all the stuff on the map and it begins like any normal Halo, but this time, it depends on how many kills both teams have accumulated altogether in order for the new wave of Mass Ordnance to spawn on the map again, instead of having timed spawns, it would be registered towards amount of kills instead.

Furthermore, at the start of the match, and when Mass Ordnance Drops take place, whether it’s ROD’s (random weapon drops- Social) and SOD’s (set weapon drops - Ranked) take place all players will have the Drop Recon armor mod in order to prepare.

It’s a neat idea to toss around

19

> Now, UEG S0UL FLAME and Vektor0 gave me an idea. We already pretty much covered the personal ordnance drop issue from being overpowered and have a snow ball effect, but I like the idea of mass ordnance drops, as in ROD’s are in Social, SOD’s are in Ranked.
>
> I think since UEG S0UL FLAME came up with the idea for the player to get killing sprees while still staying alive to get POD’s, this so called “Mass Ordnance” can happen in Social, Ranked, BTB, smaller maps, Team, or FFA - to have a system where the Ordnace effects all payers and not just a single player. The match starts and there are set power equipment (weapons, power-ups, or Equipment/AA’s) that always spawn in the same area all the time on given maps. Now let’s say when both teams pick up all the stuff on the map and it begins like any normal Halo, but this time, it depends on how many kills both teams have accumulated altogether in order for the new wave of Mass Ordnance to spawn on the map again, instead of having timed spawns, it would be registered towards amount of kills instead.
>
> Furthermore, at the start of the match, and when Mass Ordnance Drops take place, whether it’s ROD’s (random weapon drops- Social) and SOD’s (set weapon drops - Ranked) take place all players will have the Drop Recon armor mod in order to prepare.
>
> It’s a neat idea to toss around

This has a few flaws.

Having all the weapons spawn by an amount of kills eliminates the tactical play of waiting for fresh weapons to spawn. You will make players have to push instead of slowing down the game to form a new strategy, or even disappear on radar for an ambush.

The idea I proposed was where some of the weapons on the map where dictated by a POD via Killing Spree, not all. The old formula of weapon timers still needs to be there if the next Halo wants to have a competitive edge. People can setup for more than one weapon, and they can control some of those weapons to spawn when they want to; that’s the idea I think can make Personal Ordnance a much more welcome addition to Halo.

This Mass Ordnance system could probably be used for a separate gametype, maybe even used for an updated version of Invasion, or Dominion. It can promote teamwork to defend against/offend forward the enemy and the objective. If they do a successful job and all obtain a decent amount of kills, weapons will fly down for everyone to use to win or lose. (Hey that rhymed.)

20

> Having all the weapons spawn by an amount of kills eliminates the tactical play of waiting for fresh weapons to spawn. You will make players have to push instead of slowing down the game to form a new strategy, or even disappear on radar for an ambush.

You did clarify that for me, thanks a lot. Now that you said that, how’s this - the Mass Ordnance earned by kill points can be the Social playlist, while the Timed Spawns can be for the Ranked playlist.

The push for kills is fun and less taxing for people who just want a good time, and the strategic people can still have their timed spawns in Ranked for competitiveness, I think that’s better

What do you think?