Grapplehook/equipments should become a pickup in campaign, or not in it at all

Games Halo Infinite
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Can you imagine taking down the Scarab in Halo 2/3, Kraken in Halo 5, tank v tank fights, or fighting through massive structures if you had the grapple hook? You would see everything obsolete since you can scale layers, swing yourself within structures, and grapple vehicles without much pain. It neglects direct puzzle-solving or traditional linear pathways that open after a sequence is done.

For example, Halo 3’s mission 4, when you take an elevator to jump onto a scarab. You can bypass all that by just swinging yourself onto the scarab itself. How often will you find yourself doing that in each scenario? Sure you can create some structures becoming non-grappling. But then you defeat their point of the grapplehook being a sandbox weapon. There would probably be even more kill barriers. Now imagine that in many more scenarios in past Halo games.

I remember the only mission Infinite where you ride a tank to the House of Reckoning on Heroic/legendary, once you lose that tank, you actually were pinned through mass amounts of infantry. The only challenge that Infinite actually manifests is just through sheer amounts of Banished forces. In my eyes, I see it as lazy campaign gameplay. Giving you the tools to solve your own problems at spawn, drop as many enemies as they can then call it a day. I think it’s also why Hunters became such bullet hassles to take down without equipment use.

There is never going to be another massive combat unit situation that is challenging or linear missions that don’t support your equipment. Equipments just solve everything for you. Now I’m not against the equipment, just it should really not be something you spawn with.

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first you make a thread about : Grapplehook shouldn’t stay in future campaigns
and now you make a new thread about that it most become a pickup or and here we go again not at all in the campaign.

have you really notting pick up anything about that other thread at all it seems.

before we get the same things again on this thread about it i can tell you that the points from your other thread stay the same on this one also.

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Don’t know why you would create a new thread complaining about the same thing as your last post but the grappling hook isn’t that overpowered. It opens up a lot of possibilities regarding strategy and play style. I don’t see why the fact that we start off with equipment is such a problem. The equipment doesn’t necessarily solve everything. We probably will see more big challenging fights in the future.

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i think i agree. since grapple is a base trait, they designed everything around the grapple. In the future they should work into the story where masterchief has all his abilities stripped so that different kind of levels can be designed and then eventually get his grapple back. its ok to have both if both are fun. more variety the better.

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the grapplehook is the first equipmet he get.
after that in the Tower mission he gets the Threat Sensor.
and then he gets the Thruster and Drop Wall on the same mission.
is that something all that he gets then in diffrend missions all.
so whats the problem he gets the grapplehook from the start.

and since in the first mission you need to use it all so whats the problem when the other equipments have been split all in diffrend missions all.

then for your idea you need to have a other spartan death body on the first mission all.

to make then pickup is only making problems on some levels and it make’s it more useless at all.
so how it is now its the best way and most keep it also.

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the grapple and thrust affect level design the most. the story could just say theyre damaged and it willl take a while to repair them.

there shoulld also be enemies that disable your abilities. lets say there is a scarab mission. To stop you easily grappling on, have special enemies that stop you or turrets on the scarab that disable your abilities.

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the thrust has 0% effect on the level design at all.
since i have never use the thrust in the campaign mode at all.
since i use more the grapplehook then the thrust.

like dynemo grenate’s that some brute bezerks love to use against you.

remove the scarab part please since its pointless to tell things like that since we not have any level at all since halo 3 was the last time.
and nobody knows if there are coming in halo infinite.

this point about the scarab and grapplehook has been told all on the other thread so we going to repeat the same thing again with it.

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This person likes to make the same thread 300 times. He had like 14 threads about the same store/pricing topic in one week. Best to ignore tbh.

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i not really care since if he keeps making then the more and more people use it to fool around with him.
and who knows the moderators start locking the dupe threads more he make about the same point.

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the scarab is an exxample. the grapplehook can limit certain types of level design because it can remove challenge so counter measures are needed when a designer wantss abilities nerfed/removed for a new type of level

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The Banished Scarabs we have seen are heavily modified from what the Covenant used.
The Grapple Shot won’t solve it since getting in the Scarab will be a bit difficult instead of just walking onto the platforms we used to have.

In fact, the Grapple Shot might be somewhat required in order to get up-top and destroy something to loosen an armor panel in order to get inside and wreck it in a close-quarters fight similar to how we beat the Halo 2 Scarab.

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The scarab fights would be pretty epic with a grapple imo. Sure, you can use the grapple to get up into the scarab and kill it, but that’s why they put enemies in there for you to fight once you do. And grappling around to try to get close enough without getting vaporized would be pretty sweet, or jumping out of a hog and zipping up into the belly of the beast like Luke Skywalker.

That said, I do agree on the principle that it’s a lot harder to design curated experiences if players always have all the options. If the grapple is always up, you can’t create a tense encounter by having enemies try to swarm the player from all sides, because they can just grapple away whenever things get a little too hot to handle. If the wall is always up, ranged fights are trivialized because the player can just stand in the open and be invincible, picking enemies off as they uselessly shoot the wall. Having unlimited sensor cheapens camo, either turning it into an unfair death with no warning (cqb jackal snipers, muchfun), or telegraphing the camo and rendering it completely pointless because you can just erase it with a button press.

Also, having limited equipment uses, lets you give the player these options in a more meaningful way, where when and how you use them is as important as which ones you use. Do you save up your grapple charges for the whole level to make the last encounter easier, or do you use them early and grab something else? Or maybe you swap for this encounter, then backtrack to go grab the grapple and use it later. That can’t matter if the player can always just have all the options.

Still, they would need to be careful about how they limit those tools and how they design, especially for larger maps. I wouldn’t want to ever be deprived of my grapple in the infinite open world, for example, because the map geometry is so unfriendly to the vehicles outside of some fairly narrow paths, and traversing that without my superspeed button on demand would just plain suck.

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If the moderators aren’t locking my threads, then my posts are valid. I don’t know why you lot like the whine about seeing them. Its not like we see the same threads complaining about how bad Infinite is/why they quit by a multitude of players here anyways?

Compared to you, you’re ironically way more active here than me. Why are you talking?

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One way I see fighting a scarab epic with a grapplehook would probably be chasing it as its moving away from you and scaling terrain. THAT would be epic as you use the grapplehook to keep up. So I do see that more enjoyable than trailing it on a warthog or mongoose.

I actually only speak about it being a pickup, and not being a limited use. I prefer them being able to pick up one at a time and still being infinite use. That way, we can still keep the sandbox idea fresh. After all, all equipment in Halo games has never been limited use unless it was overshield or camo.

That’s also what I’m aware of. In Infinite, there was no reason to use a vehicle unless it was aerial. You never really had an angle to be in vehicle combat. Even then, the enemy’s damage output was so heavy, you never relied on the vehicle to be anything but transportation.

So this really does support my idea that permanent equipment does limit the use of the gameplay angle, and just support a down-to-earth sandbox.

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Seeing how in Halo wars 2, an army with an arsenal 30 years ago can take down their scarab, I think you’re giving the Banished too much credit.

I don’t want to compare an RTS to an FPS, but adding too many steps to take down a monster kind of stretches the uniqueness of an activity’s worth. Thats what make scarab fights in Halo 3 so popular whenever they appeared.

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Can you elaborate on an example? I played on the campaign on legendary being on M&K and I definitely was more flexible. The problems then weren’t so hard. I even beat the Bassus fight by just grappling hopping above him after my third round. Only think I can think of is doing high skyscraper chases. But would that be really fun?

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I get what you mean, but consider Halo 3. Bubble shield, drop shield, grav lift, power drain, regenerator, flare, trip mine, etc etc. Halo 3 was littered with equipment items, and they were all on an ammo count of 1. What to take, when and where to use em, what to go back for, all meaningful decisions that make the gameplay that much more engaging to play.

That single use model definitely would have sucked for non-deployable stuff like sprint and jetpack in Reach (and oh god sprint on a timer is so painful to go back to), and because they were experimenting with how to integrate these into level design they went with a cooldown system to prevent players running out and getting stuck. Which is neat and all, but I think the best method is to split the difference.

The system infinite has for equipment in multiplayer is a good one I think, although obviously you would want to give the player way more ammo in a campaign setting. And in situations where you want the player to have effectively infinite ammo for certain equipment, all you have to do is hand it out like candy.

The Bungie games are great at this. When they give you a specific tool to solve a problem, there is always more than you strictly need available, just in case. If you blew up one banshee, but you need a flier to progress in the level, there is a spare (usually several). If you got a rocket launcher, you will have a few extra rockets just in case. And in situations where there is no alternative means to solve the problem (a different vehicle, nades, normal guns, whatever it may be), there are usually enemies around to supply you what you need.

And why not experiment with letting enemies use these abilities too? Remember when brutes would drop bubbles or power drains and you had to play around that and turn it to your advantage? How cool would it be if grunts could throw up drop walls and huddle behind them for safety so you can clear them with a well placed grenade or break a few panels and watch them try to scatter as you pop their buddies? Or if jackals could use thrusters to try to dodge nades or back off when you get up close, and they can’t quite keep their shield up properly when they do? Or elites with repulsors who can try to force you back when their shields drop or deflect badly placed nades? And for any of these, plus whatever other combinations, you either kill them and take their stuff or you can go find them in the weapon racks.

But yes, I do think having hypermobility all the time makes it, if not impossible, very difficult to deliver a lot of the well tailored experiences that, in my opinion, set the early Halo titles apart.

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I remember a post by 343i, they created the equipment in Infinite to rival power weapons in multiplayer. Make you choose to go for equipment or a power weapon. In this case, I believe any of the Infinite weapons definitely overwhelm the equipment in Halo 3. Even though the drop shield sucks, it was a 3-4 use and not a single-use. As for many of the equipment had multitude of uses than Bungie’s. Not much of the equipment from Bungie was actually wanted to take. Only some of them actually were more viable than others.

The brutes would always instantly drop everytime their armor were shattered, it was kind of annoying back in Halo 3. I feel like instead of having the Banished using our equipment, they should have their own that compliment their gameplay design. Atm, that seems too much to ask since the campaign is already created though.

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If that’s true, they did a pretty terrible job of it. A power weapon is pretty much always better than equipment, and most maps don’t even have equipment that is a good counter to the power they spawn in any case. Like, you have the wall/rocket on streets, and the repulsor/sword on recharge, and then what? Maybe the wall/sniper on live fire, but wall is too slow to be a good reflex counter vs snipes and it’s too easy to erase if pre upped.

Definitely explains why the maps are so barren when it comes to equipment spawns though.

Compared to how many they experimented with, sure, but there were always plenty of different ones around. And other than the flare, I can’t think of any that were so bad as to not be worth using at all. Plus, there were a fair few that were pretty consistently solid options if you wanted to use them.

Yeah, but that’s a matter of what equipment you give to what enemies, and how you script the behavior tree. I wouldn’t generally recommend giving tanky enemies extra shields too often unless there’s an exploitable weakness to it. Like, the drop wall as it is in multi is what I would want deployable shields to act like in campaign; easy to break but they can come in clutch so it’s worth using but can be outplayed without too much trouble.

Sure, it would feel weird if all equipment was human origin. But the brutes in infinite already use human guns sometimes, so why can’t other aliens also use human gear the same way we can use theirs?

And I wouldn’t expect the equipment system to change from how it currently is for infinite in any case. This is all purely a future games hypothetical.

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we not know at all if there is a scarab is coming to halo infinite campaign.

people keep telling it but first we need to see it if there are coming back at all.
who knows is that there are never coming back at all any more.
the last scarab fight we have was in halo 3 and after that we got never any scarab fight any more.

and this is also something i have told on the other thread from the OP about it.
we never know if the shut down function the scarab has in halo 3 is coming back also.
and there is a big chance if the scarab is coming back that the shut down function from halo 3 is not coming back at all then you need the grapplehook for sure to enter the scarab.
the same thing about the core that we can destroy it with a scorpoin tank or Wasp like in halo 3 that you can destroy it easy with a hornet without entering the scarab at all.

first we most see it if its coming back and then we can have discusions about it since on something what not is in the game at all or is coming back to have discusions about is more pointless to do now.

and when there is a scarab in halo infinite then i really like to have a discusion about it then i have no problem at all with it.