Hot take: Firefight should never return

Games Halo Infinite
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I keep hearing fans consistently bring up how awesome, how amazing, how exhilerating firefight mode was in ODST, in Reach, or in 5… I am here to give a completely different perspective on the matter.

Firefight was, and still is a poorly done PvE mode. When you compare it to say Gears of War’s Horde mode (which I freaking love btw, still play it on occasions with friends) or maybe Zombies from CoD it simply feels like a boring and uninteresting mode.

The question people are gonna ask me is why? Why would you forsake such a beloved mode Bluejay? I think there are a variety of reasons and they all attribute to a mode that just doesn’t reach its potential. The first issue is them relying on skulls to increase difficulty. Skulls in Halo are less difficulty related and more annoying/wonky, so unlike say the Gears 5 difficulty modifiers (which are overwhelming negative and specifically thought out) they just come across as a grab bag of random modifiers that may or may not impact the match significantly.

The other big issue is that PvE in Halo’s simply is not given the time, the effort, or attention it deserves. Lets compare The Coalition track record to 343i’s shall we? TC released Horde mode day 1 with both Gears 4 and Gears 5, not only did they release day 1 (meaning they say them as launch priority, whereas 343i takes many moons to get around to their PvE mode) they simply put drastically higher amounts of dev time into their Horde mode. Gears 4/5 had tons of classes, cards, builds, etc. Whereas Halo on the other hand is still stuck in that Gears 2/3 phase, and even when we finally got Firefight it was clearly just an afterthought based on the Warzone mode (which was my personal favorite btw, just saying, boss battles fun)

343i probably need dedicated people that actually understand how to make a fun and engaging PvE mode, so they’d have someone over there that’s sole responsibility would be this basically. Not their second responsibility, or their third, no its entire job to work on Halo PvE from sun rise to sun down. I don’t want to say that 343i are incapable of making a great PvE mode, I think its more fair to say that Microsoft likely never gave them the resources or to put it frankly never really demanded they do anything with it… PvE has been the greatest waste of potential in Halo history. Potential for relatively large and super dedicated community of PvE players, wasted out of neglect and apathy.

Halo can be so much more, these people are spending thousands of manhours on a BR mode with zero reason to believe it’ll be successful, instead I’d rather they spend like 1/10th of that on a good replacement to Firefight. I have heard rumors and whispers of something they are working on to do exactly what I suggest, but those mean little to me, I tend to be skeptical towards leakers as they do not know the full story, they simply show you bits and pieces of random code and use that as a hype train, but it could easily just be smoke with no fire.

tl;dr Halo PvE has been neglected for far too long, Infinite can change the course of Halo history and give us something great, thank anyone who listens to my rants lol.

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Agree. Firefight was only good in ODST, and even then I would have preferred some kind of pvp/arena mode. Halo pve just sucks without the big campaign set pieces.

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Few thoughts as someone who enjoyed Firefight a lot:

  1. Comparing it to Zombies is probably unfair. Zombies has become a massive, borderline standalone product over time. I loved Zombies back in the BO2 days, with like Tranzit and Origins and Alcatraz. Talk about incredible map design.

  2. Well, the difficulty (heroic, legendary, mythic, etc) is what affects difficulty haha. But yes, Skulls can be added in certain rounds. And you can customize how those appear if you’d like (at least in Reach as I recall).

  3. Anyway, just because it isn’t as great as it could be isn’t a reason to remove it. It’s a fun arcade mode and was a great way to XP grind in 5. If it were replaced by something better, then sure. But…

  4. At the current pace of ongoing content development versus player attrition, I personally doubt PvE will ever exist in Infinite anyway unless it’s somehow community created by Forge.

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I mean Warzone felt like it was that 3rd step in the PvE mode’s evolution (FF-Spartan Ops-Warzone) and the fact there is hardly a skeleton resembling that mode in Infinite kinda shows the creative brain-trust had no clue where to take it…Or maybe no idea what people would’ve wanted.

Personally, would like to believe that sort of thinking is getting done at certain affinity but I just don’t trust what comes out of the mouths of 343 & Co. anymore.

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Oh. for real. I thought the difficulty came from picking easy/normal/heroic/legendary and that the skulls acted as modifiers. Silly me.

This is mostly your opinion, so its not like i can tell you you’re wrong, but i disagree over all with the idea that FF should not return. I agree that 343i did not focus PvE or anything else day 1 and as this point comparing them to another company is like comparing the special ed class to AP class.

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I was a special ed student lol, I took this personally :woozy_face:

yes but considering it was difficult to get into a match without them impacting the gameplay I’d say they weren’t so ambiguous, they were clearly used as a way to ramp up difficulty and I’d argue that they simply are not good at doing so. Infinite would probably be better off just using bosses or numbers of enemies instead of throwing random modifiers at players.

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I don’t think getting rid of it is the answer. They should put tools in the communities hands so that those with the drive and passion can give the mode the love it needs. Adopting said projects as ‘official’ after being time tested would be great. Think of how infection went from honor system on h2 LAN into an actual, fully fledged gametype.

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While I do enjoy Firefight in Reach as a competitive PvE arcade type game, that’s all it is. It’s an arcade game mode. You just compete in a short killfest, with optional crazy settings. I enjoy Rocket Firefight a lot.

That all said, you are more than welcome to, in fact, you’re encouraged to make your own PvE gamemode, in Forge. By all means, make one you think is superior.

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I’m fine with Firefight not being that big of a mode. It is a nice jump in, kill things, jump out mode. I never got that into gears, but I know for me, COD zombies was best when it was simple. No big easter egg requirement, no cryptic objectives you have to do to progress. Just land on a map, work up from the pistol, and see how far you get. That made the game mode more replayable to me. Like “I want to play Halo, but I don’t want to go through a whole campaign mission, but I don’t want to play PVP, oh! Firefight, hop in, play for 30 minutes, then bail!” Heck, the items they added to MCC brought alot of life back into firefight for me. I wish we could have even more without sacrifising the casual angle.

That’s why I couldn’t get that into Spartan Ops. First, I just didn’t have 4 friends to play through all of them with, but second was that each one was an elongated slog of re-worked campaign and multiplayer levels. If you didn’t finish the episode, you were lost the next week. The second half of the season was better with level design, but the mode was still too involved. It was all or nothing. But I don’t mind leaving in a custom firefight match. Which is another point, the customs potential with firefight made it fun too.

That said, I did conceptually like Spartan Ops and I think it would be cool to see something similar, but I would want Firefight to be its own thing, a new PVE mode as its own thing, Warzone as its own thing, and Spartan Ops as its own thing.

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I personally would like to see Spartan Ops added to Co-op campaign, where you all do the campaign as your own Spartans, but do other stuff before Master Chief arrived. There are clearly dead Spartans everywhere and there was a big war. It would fit into the story fine. It would paint a nice picture of the struggle that Chief missed out on, that our pilot friend suffered through.

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I believe fire fight and Spartan ops needs to meld.

I’ve talked about this a few times we need. Fire ops

Fire Ops can be played privately or in social modes to earn XP.

There are 2 modes.during the weekday and a 3rd mode of the weekend.

The first mode is FireOps Expedition.
A team of 1-8 players is released into an open world ring like segment to establish an FOB and Rescue Marines from the area. Basically a slice of the campaign. With each objective the difficulty rises and/or a skull activates. Returning to the FOB allows for reqs or extraction (vote to end the game)

Should players complete all open world objectives it ends in a tower assault w boss fight.

A full game should take 20-45 minutes.

The second game mode is FireOps Assault. 4 players on legendary head out to assassinate 2 high value targets for access codes, then assault a fortress. Game time should be around 15-20 minutes.

On the weekends it’s FireOps Assault Mythic.

All this being said I stand with others. You’re points are kinda all over the place. Sure halo has a rough history with PVE but Zombies has had so many iterations and is basically its own stand alone.

Skulls have always been wacky modifiers.

HOWEVER I do agree they need a team to dedicate themselves to what could make a true and good official PVE mode to earn XP and further in rather then whatever we make in customs

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You are wrong firefight should return I don’t give a crap what anyone else says I love firefight mode PvP is a pain in the but just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t like it anymore it should return for people that want to play it and anyone who doesn’t want to play it they just would simply not play it

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343 keep falling short on firefight.
Little personal history-
I played a bunch of halo odst firefight.
Since firefight was the only multiplayer the game had, and we were all finally getting tired of halo 3, we pounced on it. Ommm nomnom
Who hasnt imagined fighting the covenant outside the campaign with your friends?
We had a blast, new type of halo experience.
Did the vidmaster challenge. Helped others do it.
You got a special helmet, yaaaay. (That was not just plain GIVEN AWAY or PURCHASEABLE (omg 343)
Bungie bragging rights for completing something difficult, what a great idea.
And ill allways wonder how 4 players could stay connected for that long. In halo 5 i couldnt keep a party of 4 together for 3 straight games, let alone hours.
I never considered firefight the equivalent of pvp, we used it to goof off and warm up for btb or slayer in reach. It was an upgrade to odst.
Personally i feel even reachs firefight didnt realize full potential, and neither did its pvp but…
Firefight!
As casual as you want to be- but still challenging if you want that and with a firefight editor to guarantee difficulty, and a solo playlist with friend leaderboards by gametype…
I got over a million kills in reach firefight, led in assists. Cleared Inheritor twice with just firefight
Met dozens of people, helped plenty make their onyx commendations.
Despite its limitations and limited maps odst and reach firefight were decent wastes of time, lol. Even socially it was fun. Lots of laughs and good memories, i was heartbroken when 343 didnt at least partially migrate the stats to mcc. And reach ff had stats, commendations, weekly and monthly challenges.
I played halo reach firefight while using leg machines, used it to work out and casually shoot aliens with buddies and strangers :+1::facepunch:
Halo 4 firefight is the worst of the bunch, im not going there.
Halo 5s came late. I was hopeful at first, but that req system…sheesh.
Worse, you have all these variations of weapons that were useless past a certain point because the bosses soaked up da damage, and ammo, So it became a vehicle dominated affair.
They did vehicles wonderfully in h5. Some of the weapon variations were awesome.
But unless ya gots the reqs, or got lucky, you couldnt use them.
H2 br and sidekick were enough.
With 343 and firefight, it seems like they almost make a fun firefight, hamper themselves.
They didnt do any favors to themselves by giving away helioskrill, having a half completed game, and theve ended spartan companies. (Other huge topics by themselves)
And they screwed the most hardcore of their own games fans by blowing it with watchdog. I mean, seriously, that happened. They actually did that.
And a lot of those 152s played … wzff.
I dont think 343 will even bother making firefight for infinite.
Its more likely halo 5 will get to mcc before we have an infinite firefight.
Its just business. 343 has never even stated any form of ff development, or a variation of it.
I dont have any hope at this point.
Whether hot take, no more firefight-- is irrelevant at this point, im genuinely hoping management at 343 is let go, or another developer gets halo.
Firefight was part of halo, just like theater, stats, forge, coop.
The old halo, the feel, i dont know, the spirit is gone.
This is 343s halo now.
End tokerant

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I’ll say it again just because you hate firefight doesn’t mean everyone else does it should return and if you don’t like it then don’t play the game mode just because you hate it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t return

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I don’t mind a larger scale firefight, like it’s a campaign mission with objectives, but getting rid of it is just being too lazy to find a solution.

If 343 got rid of firefight for any reason than to make a better version, they should be disbanded effective immediately and be blacklisted from ever making games again.

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I feel like a PVE mode could be awesome, but has been plagued by the “firefight” history. Some just want a rehash of Reach or ODST, yet fail to to see the potential of an evolving game mode.
Like a map changing moment when a flood horde comes crashing down, changing the landscape and altering the map by cutting off certain areas, and creating new ones. Now all the enemies you and your team has fallen are now flood forms attacking you.

Or in a last ditch attempt to take out your fireteam, banished forces destroy a part of the map and now you fight in the smoldering wreckage with smoke inhibiting your vision slightly and the ash dampening sounds.

Or imagine a conquest mode where you fight to secure rotating areas of the map and fight bosses, that have unique abilities and weapons. You and your team after defeating them would be able to ascend a gravlift into a banished ship to plant a bomb and escape back to an awaiting pelican using vehicles and battling enemies along the way.

There is so much that can be done with a PVE mode and still fit the Halo theme, and lore. Just some of my thoughts

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For me, Firefight was awesome, just because it was the only pve mode besides the campaign, where you could just simply shoot the bad guys. A mode you could play when you didn’t want to play competitive matches online. Playing against bots in the custom games of Halo Infinite is the closest thing we have to that, and it’s only alright in my opinion. Not as fun, but I’m glad it’s there.

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Despite how buggy as all hell Black Ops Cold War is, I think an 8 player Outbreak style mode would be super cool in Infinite.