Hmm, interesting.
I assumed those charges were tied to the skill tree and the charges would recharge to max over time.
1 Like
They could, who knows really none of us have played the campaign lol
None the less, even if the charges gradually recharge we won’t be able to go full Spiderman
4 Likes
The game was designed with grapplehook in mind so I’m sure it’s not going to feel as if they first made a game with classic mobility and then random added a grapplehook that broke everything. I think it looks incredibly fun.
1 Like
that skilltree disagrees with you, as does the open world.
Not to mention you didn’t actually address my points, you are arguing semantics not game design.
1 Like
I somewhat disagree with you as well. A skill tree can work just fine as a linear progression depending on its purpose. Here, it’s likely to encourage players to engage in side content, with the upgrades acting as a tangible incentive. Yes, they could rebalance it so it would be impossible to get every upgrade, forcing players to build into one playstyle, but with most of the equipment running out (drop wall, repulsor, threat sensor all still seem to be limited use) that means there’s much less incentive to upgrade those pieces of equipment. And 343 clearly want players to engage in the whole sandbox available, including grapple and thrust, so I can see why they wouldn’t want to limit players on upgrading and experimenting with the fun new tools if they’re prepared to explore all the side content.
As for the game being too easy, I think it’s impossible to say that yet. There might be tons of ways the enemy units have to counter equipment usage, for example, we’ve only seen the electric grapple stun unshielded enemies so far. Walk into a room full of Elite zealots it might be borderline useless. I think it’s a little bit pointless to speculate too deep on difficulty before we’ve been able to actually play the game.
1 Like
I’m going to put this into a way that you understand.
These upgrades don’t “incentivize” exploration or whatever, they simply make battles into a cakewalk and they essentially hurt the overall gameplay. Now if you just play on Normal with your kid or something this does not matter so much, but if your like me and play on Legendary its huge. One of my biggest gripes with CE for example is just how easy it is in comparison with all the other Halo titles, you are essentially almost never challenged, Infinite might be even more of a cakewalk.
We’ve already seen shock grapple and camo thruster… Pretty easy to say that regular encounters will be a breeze around midgame.
Also, your argument is sort of the Ubisoft method, where instead of making every encounter fun you worry more about progression and the like.
We’ll have to see what Legendary difficult is like though, they might do Legendary different this time around who knows.
I understand your point, I just don’t agree with it. You’re making a huge assumption about the gameplay loop without playing the game, you don’t know that it’s going to make it easy. Those abilities may have made Halo 2 legendary easy had they been in that game, but this isn’t Halo 2, and it’s quite possible 343 have balanced the game to make the abilities less effective than they look just on paper.
And don’t make assumptions about how I do or don’t play the game. I’ve been playing Halo a long time, and gotten all the MCC achievements, Laso and legendary speedruns included. I know what makes a Halo game difficult just as much as the next guy, and I too want the game to be difficult. I just don’t think these abilities necessarily guarantee that it won’t be.
The way I see it, the play space was designed to make the GrappleShot a fun, unique combat traversal tool. It’s certainly a powerful one, But with the amount of Open Sky a Halo ring has, I don’t forsee Spider-chief being a thing.
I’m sure we could enjoy a good meme about Chief hooking himself to the opposite end of the ring and destroying the whole structure with the force of Impact.
1 Like
You do realize that this is a horrible argument right? No it wouldn’t have done much if anything in Halo 2 (outside of impacting spawns or something) because the whole game is linear, its worse for Infinite than it would’ve been in previous Halos.
its not just “on paper” we’ve seen how they function in game. That camo thruster ability already looks insane, imagine how much more powerful it is in tandem with other equipment? Its starts to dawn on you that maybe they added more bosses this time around with the sole intention of actually challenging players later on throughout the campaign.
By this logic you should be more worried than I am. If players having access to any weapon/vehicle they want (via ordinance from Brohammer) and having stronger shields and abilities than ever before doesn’t sound like an easier Halo experience then I don’t know what will.
Aye… I kinda feel you on this for sure. Like I’m hoping that there is a balance between how often you can utilize it within campaign. Time will tell. See you on the battlefield fellow Spartan!
I agree. I think the grapple hook will add so much to the gameplay.
Ok but we know that there are equipment trees, if there’s one for the Grappleshot then who’s to say what we saw isn’t just the final product of the upgrade system at work? It might start out with slow recharging or limited use. How much do we really know about the equipment in the campaign? Because they’re vastly different than the ones we utilized in Multiplayer.
Lets wait to see how things play out before we start crying out about things being broken. Also, it’s ultimately up to you to use the equipment most of the time I’d wager. So if it does end up being broken, maybe just don’t use it unless absolutely necessary?
Hey HEY!!! Show that civilian engineer behind Project Magnes some respect! She sacrificed a lot of hours and family time just so that we have the opportunity to propel ourselves at high speeds at a Grunt to punch them in their cute faces okay?!?!
3 Likes
It sounds like it could be easier, but you’re missing all the context. The enemies might be made stronger to compensate, we might be facing them in higher numbers, they might be armed with their own equipment and abilities that counter our equipment, the AI might have specific behaviours designed to punish poor use of the equipment, the recharge times might be longer on legendary. There’s so much we don’t know about how it’s going to work, it’s pointless to worry about the difficulty at the moment, you can’t know that it’s going to be too easy based on what we’ve seen. You’re working on too many assumptions, you’re assuming we’ll have unlimited access to all this equipment and nothing else will have been changed to adjust the difficulty in line with tha, and I just think it’s a little pointless when we still don’t know the full picture.
Well this just shows you dont actually know what a RPG is if you think a progression tree (and its not even a tree to be clear) = RPG.
That just sounds like sword cancelling with extra steps
1 Like
When was the last time an RPG didn’t have a skilltree?
Its integral to the design because the whole point of an RPG is that you get to choose between a variety of different characters/builds and well, roleplay. The skilltree is almost necessary because it’s used to show player progression and give player choice in terms of what character they finally become.
It’s not a full-blown RPG because you are tied to one character, but it’s definitely the most RPG of any Halo game ever made.
I understand the point, they are trying to fulfill the fantasy side of the MC story, they want you to feel like the most powerful super soldier in the universe, but my point is that it will trivialize a lot of the game and make things less impactful than they may otherwise.
1 Like
I somewhat enjoyed using it in the tech previews, but I’m still undecided on it. The grapple hook works in Doom Eternal and Titanfall 2 because they’re fast-paced games, while the latter is also built around momentum. I mind it less in Multiplayer, as it’s a pick-up item, but Chief will have this all game. Like you said, it has the possibility to make things too easy.
The comparison I want to draw is actually to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, as the addition of a grapple hook and zipline tool completely changed traversal – taking away a key part of Assassin’s Creed. You could just immediately grapple out of danger, and maximising the efficiency of your traversal was made into a mindless, one-step process. This was fine in the Batman Arkham games, because they were built around the grapple hook as a tool from the start. Gliding was still the main means of traversal. Halo and AC, on the other hand, adopted it.
Even if I come to not enjoy its inclusion, I doubt it’ll ruin the game for me. I’ll just have to wait a little longer. Of course, the real reason as to why I dislike its inclusion is that it ruins how Chief’s armour looks (very low-key feel this way).
Campaigns not even out yet… like you have not played this to know for yourself.
Well, I don’t think it’s unfair to make some assumptions though. We tend to have a pretty good idea of what we’ll like. And we have seen quite a lot of gameplay now plus tried the hook ourselves. 343, ign etc have painted us a fairly good picture of how it can be used.
I don’t think we need to play the game to know that it changes gameplay massively, whether we’ll like the change or not is gonna be subjective, and some might feel more certain than others already.