Yes as i said i know these issues arent new and existed before.
My point is i just fundimentally dont agree with the hypothesis you have put forward where the root cause is the hylack mechanic itself as i dont believe thats accurate.
The balance issue isnt really a point i care about because i dont believe “balance” is an issue.
I want there to be risk reward and punishment.
Nor do i believe vehicles are as powerful as you do.
I get where you are coming frkm but just think its a focus kn the wrong issues.
i dont beliieve vehicles are powerful. My point is, 343 have nerfed them to hell with the sandbox because they dont like how unbalanced vehicles would become with their new toys and map design. If they were powerful, you would notice how hijjackiing would completely skew the match in one teams favour. if hijacking was far less effective, vehicles could become powerful again because one team couldnt hoard all the vehicles
A quick solution is to remove shock weapons and get rid of the grapple hook in BTB or at least have a playlist toggling it. Hijacking is an important feature and has to stay. It’s the execution of making it easier as you said.
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There needs to be vehicle health. And it needs a lot quite honestly unless you get shot in the head, which damages your shields. Ever since it has been tied to your shields, vehicles have gotten weaker throughout the series. Halo 4 did this but there wasn’t an indicator and the ttk to destroy a vehicle was laughably easy. It needs the equivalent of three overshields if shooting at it with bullets, two rocket shots, but a smart player would aim at the driver’s head. That’s another thing that has to be distinguished too.
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even if so, hijacking has always been flawed from a game design perspective. in a multiplayer pvp game where you respawn, it is a fundamental bad design to have an advantage (extra vehicle) while the other team has one less. It is however ok to destroy a vehicle and have a extra vehicle temporally because the other teams vehicle will spawn back and balance will be restored.
That is why hijacking should only give you a short temporary boost as it will rebalance itself like the vehicle respawns do to keep the match fair. Thats why when you steal a vehicle it should be far less effective such as having less health or self destructing in 30 seconds so that the scales of the match are eventually rebalanced and the other team has a fair chance of fighting back. When something is this balanced, 343 could get really creative with their vehicle combat instead of nerfing everything.
Its still possible to steal vehicles from enemy bases so 343 would have to figure out a balance for that too. It wouldnt really make game sense to hop in a unused enemy vehicle and have it have less health or self destruct in 30 seconds which only makes sense for hijacking. I think btb could do with a battlefield vehicle spawning system where you choose to spawn in a vehicle from the menu.
I’m honestly confused what the update is going to do to vehicles, because I didn’t start playing Infinite until late S1. I read that the losing side would get extra vehicles to help them, and this would turn the tide so to speak. Is that what you mean by snowballing vehicles?
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where did you read that. i wouldnt be surprised if its that way because even with nerfed vvehicles they are stiill capable of snowballing so i guess 343 added a way to give the losing team extra vehicles to balance the scales. its just sloppy patch jobs to make matches balanced but sucks the ffun out of vehicle combat when the game decides to give the losing team more power. plus i dont think it would work very well as the other team could just steal them in some matches and make the problem worse
I remember complaints about the losing side getting the Scorpion, probably because it’s quite powerful against a team that doesn’t know how to destroy it.
I understand your opinion and encourage you to share but i do not agree with your logic is my position.
Like ive said i do t see the hyjack as being the issue just a symptom of others and hyjack by its very nature cou ters vehicle hoarding and snowballing just by virtue of its function.
It just seems erroneous to me to ignore the overarching reasons as to why the hyjack would feel so powerful to you.
For me personally your points dont actually serve your arguement because the cause of your issue as far as i can see isnt the mechanic you are focusing on.
I also dont really think vehicles should or need be “balanced” to the extent others appear to.
The fact is that you see the mechanic as a flawed one but id argue your perspective is flawed.
It isnt a system that allows for hoarding or extra advantage rather its a tug of war systemto allow for more reversals.
To be honest it just sohnds like you have been unlucky with your teams.
The mechanic is sound and the principles are also.
The issue is power weapoms are plain more advantageous and theres a space that actually has the ideal solution to this issue in the heavy weapons.
Picking up power weapons, power ups and holding map power positions all have a much the same impact on match “snowballing”. So again as you have said yiurself the new toys and map design is the issue. So why fix the thing that isnt broken instead of focusing on map design and variation in the tools on map.
Having infantry routes that force a team in vehicles to have to exit to make progress is a very easy thing to achieve and removing hyjack makes holding onto a dead spartans ghost, hog etc. Aside from main gunner in tanks and ariel vehicles easier to hoard.
So i just fundimentally disagree i guess. I think there much more interesting ways to tweak the sandbox than to resort to nerfing or removing the mechanic that makes vehicles more interesting for both the occupant and the opposition.
Especially when vehicle spawns are now weighted in faviur of the losing side i see this snowball complaint as kind of mistaken basically.
It all sounds more like bad coordination than an issue with the games mechanics to me. But what do I know eh, your experience obviously differs from my own and thats just how it goes i suppose.
I dont think inifinites btb regarding vehicles has much snowballing, 343 have done a good job tacklingg that but in the process making vehicle combat boring. we both agree vehiccles are boring. I really think you are misunderstanding the entire point of this thread. you say the losing team can just hijack back but what if one team is guarding the grapples? even if they could just easily hijack back. is that fun? Making hijacking harder would improve things but the problem is still there before 343 can make vehicles more powerful especially wwith 12v12 that has more danger of snowballing than classic 8v8.
I explained it in another post here—
hijacking has always been flawed from a game design perspective. in a multiplayer pvp game where you respawn, it is a fundamental bad design to have an advantage (extra vehicle) while the other team has one less. It is however ok to destroy a vehicle and have a extra vehicle temporarily because the other teams vehicle will spawn back and balance will be restored.
That is why hijacking should only give you a short temporary boost as it will rebalance itself like the vehicle respawns do to keep the match fair. Thats why when you steal a vehicle it should be far less effective such as having less health or self destructing in 30 seconds so that the scales of the match are eventually rebalanced and the other team has a fair chance of fighting back. When something is this balanced, 343 could get really creative with their vehicle combat instead of nerfing everything.
Its still possible to steal vehicles from enemy bases so 343 would have to figure out a balance for that too. It wouldnt really make game sense to hop in a unused enemy vehicle and have it have less health or self destruct in 30 seconds which only makes sense for hijacking. I think btb could do with a battlefield vehicle spawning system where you choose to spawn in a vehicle from the menu.
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Some good points to ne fair but im really not in favour of changing the hyjack when other elements are far more deserving of change and said changes would boost modularity and variety map to map in my mind.
I mean the version of hyjack you are outting forward is scarcely the reality of the feature. The arguement you make for it being flawed isnt really true in the majority.
I hope the game makes changes that address your issues with the game and that it becomes more fun for you but not in the way you propose as i see it as ultimately detracting from the fun factor and would create more balance issues than it solves while also having a negatice impact on avenues 343i can use to expand and iterate on the existing sandbox.
Thats my take i appreciate your points but they fail to convince me that your direction is one that 343i should take going forward.
PS id be interested to see you playing pvp and examples of these situations as they seem very reductive to me and not how most encounters actually play out from my own anecdotal experience. Please dont mistake that for me saying you are disingenuous or wrong in your observations. Just an acknowledgement that experiences differ.
my suggestion is just one solution to a problem. The problem being the other teams having too many vehicles “IF” they were too effective. 343’s solution is nerfing the vehicles and giving losing team more vehicles. i know youre not happy with that solution so what is your solution to the problem. You cant just make vehicles better otherwise you will introduce snowballing. So how do you fix it?
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I have no problems with hijack at all. I see hijacking not too often to be honest. People prefer use grapple to move around more I believe.
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no one cares about hijacking because the vehicles are boring and easily dealt with
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Idk for real, maybe you’re right.
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As i said previously i think map design and expanding the heavy class is the best course but i havent put to pen to paper.
heaavy class? isnt that just more anti vehicle weapons? are you suggesting there should be parts of the map where vehicles are weak and parts of the map where they are sttrong so that when enemies have too many vehicles, that is where you retreat to, to kill the excess vehicles? Its an interesting idea but doesnt seem like a full solution. however I would like maps like that.
Vehicles havent been fun since halo ce for various reasons.
could you elaborate. halo 3 was my fiirst halo and i still havent played the older games properly
Yes and no.
The class is by design the best option hali has had to allow for more powerful, halo ce level vehicles.
I get the impression you are a 3 or reach generation fan but vehicles had been on a decline since ce days with each subsequent game being more focused on “fairness” for infantry players.
At the expense of fun factor imho.
The heavy class has an interesting but not captialised feature in that it relays a change in player properties very effectively.
Like vehicles it alters locomotion.
Unlike the tanks and bikes it doesnt offer an increase in mobility or fortitude, rather it provides massive damage at a cost of being stationary or less mobile than a standard spartan.
Making it an easy to focus on target.
They are almost invariably placed at well established control point on the map often inaccesible to vehicles.
They arent littered around the map and thus are more predictable.
Players likely wont get very far if they arent usi g their heads due to the classes trade offs.
They are often placed as protection on objectives ans are effective on vehicles. But they are treared as an after thought for the most part.
Post 3 halo moved towards player empowerment through more base traits but the heavies could ha e been a way to incorperate these transformative player abilities in a more balanced way.
They also present a unique possibility in design within the sandbox as they are the only interactive map element/pick up where its properties can change depending on its state.
Think of say the droidika in starwars. Essentiall turrets with a bubble shield when stationary but they become highly mobile wheels that makes for a interesting yet intelligible shift in mechanics in games they are featured in.
This hasnt been i corperated intk theyre design nlr has the option to reset them. Via reattaching probably using a long relode animation of connecting them back to the encampment and only its own. Thats important because if a team is trying to hoarde these they are forced to hold 2 points on the map or be limited be resource as ammo drops for heavies do not exist. Additionally mounted weapins are near always placed with the back exposed to an infantry flank.
By expanding and iterating on these weapons we can have weapons designed for larger targets such as vehicles but not the more mobile spartans with unique effects and properties that make them the anti vehicle class and an added power fantasy in the right use case.
This whole section of the sandbox can then be offset by strong vehicle with more health and power.
This also means there is a varied approach to map and vehicle design as these weapons wouldnt be as ubiquitous or available as standard weapons.
They could also change a la vehicle spawns in response to the score line in infanite without being totally chaotic. And shiuld help manage the number of vehicles in play at one time by both sodes.
The shock and dynamo arent required on every map then making the decidedly unfun mechanic of stalling and hyjacking an enemy hog less frequent and straight up non existing dependjng on map or mode.
They dont have to always be abiut fire power they ciuld be a shield turret that bouces back missles when placed and becomes a small mobile cover to move objective carriers to infantry paths away from tank fire. Or perhaps a redesigned gravity wrench from the mac world build can drop banshees straight out of the sky by slow moving gravity blasts that turns momentum against the pilot. That when dismounted allows one player to boost team mates speed speed and jump hieght or lower the enemies.
That could be really cool in mpas that have lots of dangerous jumps in protected infantry routes with open spaced vehicles paths.
Halo is highly modular even in the moment to moment. In btb infantry and armour only intersect when the map allows it and i think they maps so far are afraid of the same levels of seperation or choas as older games. We sort of have a middle ground approach wich is fime as long as it isnt the only map design philosophy in the game. Valhalla was great but its not the only approach to btb maps that works and infinite had not acknowledged that untill lone wolves imo. The launch maps where sort of homogenous.
The 2 weapon limit and melee mechanics encourage modularity but we can push it further by implementing more interesting tools to the sandbox.
As it is infinites main vehicle issues are that they are absurdly easy to stop in their tracks or grapple onto and take. But are also far too easy ti destroy.
Thats why i dont understand why yiu see snowballing as an issue because they dont sway the game unless you are some eejit that runs head long into a tanks barrel. Map design lets yiu avoid them in most cases and if a team was using all the vehicles that spawn on the map they would be open to being unable to score points in many objective modes and unable to score kills in slayer modes as they wouldnt be engaging with the enemy team using the infantry paths.
Sure there are exceptions.
But vehicles dont pose enough of a threat to be worth hoarding to begin with.
Since ce vehicles have been made less and less viable.
Be it via nerfs, weak spots, over heating or anti tank toys often littered around the map ad nauseam. Also anti vehicle weapons usually boil down to big boom or turn of the engine. Niether are that fun. The brute shot and concussion rifle for example added lots of fun because it could flip your hog over and reimagine the infantry on vehicle encounter and make it a totally other type of fire fight.
The heavy class can provide that sort of variety that rather than make the vehicles pointless by blowing them up or making them immediatly hyjacked they create oppertunities TO do one of those things be it kill the occupant blow uo the transport or hyjack it and in a way that isnt immediatly empowerjng you to do so but providing the oppertunity for team synergy and emergant gameplay. Or in a 1 v1 situation mearly level the playing field by making it risky for one side to push the other without having some sort of plan.
The chance to make i teresting scenarios play out and have vehicles that are absolutly powerful untill the enter that part of the map where there is a hars counter just adds a sense of flow and dynamism to a match and can bring back the joy of taking sown that scorpion in blood gultch through team work that arose organically due to map and sandbox design.
The hyjack in this scenario is just another risk v reward element as getting into the vehcle will be beneficial some of the time not a garunteed death or advantage.
Vehicle control should present a challange of maintenance and map control and i think theres much room for the sanbox to grow in support of that goal.
Also with hyjack being left as is theres room foe new vehicles designed around the question you present. That is to say; What does a modern halo vehicle without hyjacking look or play like? Or how can we design something where hyjacking takes on a different sort of function or behaviour.
Sorry im sure this reads very poorly and is incoherent and unintelligable in places. I wrote this in parts without much focus between LSS matches.
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