I want to add my own gripes specifically with the domination Game mode. Put simply, domination is not a balanced game mode, period. You can win it outright before even building an ‘army’. (Army is in the inverted comas because the max size of an army in Halo wars 2 is actually smaller than Halo wars 1… how did that happen? That absolutely has to change). All you have to do is send all of your marines straight to the domination points at the match’s start, and before you know it, you’re already halfway to victory, and by the time the opponent starts capturing domination points, it’s too little, too late, because by then, you could add in units to defend them. Maybe it was meant to be played in this manner, but quite frankly, it makes for a poor game mode, with little room for strategy. This is a strategy game after all. Does a game mode which amounts to nothing more than the first team to do the most obvious thing in the world wins strike you as a tactical gametype? Didn’t think so.
One might say that both teams might know about this and send their marines straight to the domination points and then you have battles going on. To that I say this: Both teams start with the same units. Both teams will lose most, if not all of their units at the start of the game, and then they have to build up an army. What does that mean? You have two teams cancelling each other out at the start of every game. That’s just daft. It’s like the rush for the overshield on Halo 5’s empire, but unlike H5, one team will not come out with an advantage. You just have an unnecessary battle which amounted to absolutely nothing, with the result being a proper match of Halo wars has been stalled unnecessarily for 5 minutes. Why?
I’m not one of those guys who won’t try to provide solutions. This is admittedly a difficult problem to solve, due to the game mode already having all of its rules coded for etc. but I think I have one. Have the domination points spawn at scattered (pre-determined, and fair, i.e both teams have a fair chance at getting there) locations throughout the map, one at a time, like warzone bosses in Halo 5. Giving players 30 seconds or more warning time is optional to be honest. I’d say don’t warn them, just spawn them in, because the better prepared player with the more well balanced army will have the advantage at going for the domination point, but there are pros and cons either way, that is really just a creative decision.
Given this mechanic, something of a snowball effect would come into play. One domination point spawns in at, say… 2 minutes, and stays there for the rest of the game, always contestable. Another comes in at 5 minutes and stays for the rest of the game, and so on and so forth until all 5 are on the map. This way, you simply have to spend time building your army and trying to out-think your opponent straight off the bat.
Another thing I want to add is that regarding the timings of the domination point spawns, I will say make them pre-determined, so that the more alert players know exactly when to have their army ready for a capture battle, just like the better Halo FPS arena players are always ready for weapon or power up spawns. If they are randomly spawned in, then in all honesty, that encourages camping at your base with your continually building army, which doesn’t take much thought. Making them come at pre-determined times encourages well-timed map movement to gain control of the locations and also well-timed map movement to try and hold off the enemy’s routes to the control points.
Feel free to critique my personal suggestions on how to fix the domination gametype. Make sure to provide alternative solutions, otherwise your feedback really doesn’t have much merit, and the devs have nothing to fall back on but the current, and very broken gametype.
This is Dino, signing out.
