How to make Halo 4 last. Balancing.

Games Other Halo
1

Why is it that when you first buy a game and try out all of the new weapons, you know by day 2 which ones you won’t be touching for the rest of the game’s lifespan? It doesn’t make sense for a single misjudgement of a developer to spoil part of a gaming experience for the next 1, 2 or 3 years.

In games like Street Fighter 4 the developers have a great deal of customisation at their disposal. They can change the size of a punch’s damage taking box, damage dealing box, the speed the move comes out, the speed the move goes back in, the amount of damage the move does, the amount of stun the move does, whether the move is special cancellable etc. This allows the developers to fix problems the game has, to increase the lifespan of the game and to let players appreciate as many of the characters of the game as possible. Different characters have become relevant and irrelevant as they continually try to balance the whole cast against each other to make every character a viable choice for someone to play.

My question is, why don’t FPS do this?

Imagine if Halo 4 was created leaving the option for the developer (or even the player) to deeply customize the weapon set, to enable them to make meaningful balancing updates, to try to correct any mistakes they made at launch.

Take the plasma repeater for example: it sucks. Imagine if 343i had the ability to increase the damage 10%, increase the time before overheat 10% and decrease its bloom by 10%.

The rocket launcher is far too powerful, and far too easy to use. Imagine if 343i could decrease its damage radius, increase reload time and decrease the speed of the rocket.

The grenades are too powerful: decrease the damage radius 10%, increase detonation time by 1s, decrease damage 10%.

Jetpack is too good: decrease total airtime by 1s, decrese acceleration 10%.

Human turret is useless: decrease bloom, increase walk speed.

It’s not hard for them to leave these things open for them to change, and it could really save the game from day 1 mistakes spoiling the entire experience.

Imagine if Reach’s overpowered grenades, underpowered automatics, overpowered rockets, unbalanced AAs etc could all be fine tuned into a genuinely well-balanced, tried, tested and approved system which everyone could enjoy.

I’m not suggesting daily tweaks here, I’d want it to be done periodically, say every 3 or 6 months so that players are paying attention and understanding the differences in order to try out a different style and see what works better now.

Halo used to be a revolutionary, it popularised recharging health, it’s amazing Forge and Theatre modes are copied by others, it created the matchmaking system we know today, and that is now copied by virtually every game out there. They brought the fileshare, the idea of fun heavily customised gametypes like Grifball etc. This is a new thing which Halo could do that no Xbox FPS (to my knowledge) has really done before.

Halo 4 has to do something different, something new that really improves the game. 343i need to make a good impression with their first game, and I think this is something that could go down very, very well with the community.

2

So basically, you’re saying that Halo 4 can live longer with more periodic patches? Learning the game is fun, but having to relearn it every time the weapon sandbox changes would be a hassle.

3

It wouldn’t be learning the whole game again, just a small portion. They really would be small tweaks, not like making the DMR useless and the Plasma Repeater becoming the weapon of choice, just trying to slowly push the game into a position where any weapon is useful, with none being too overpowered.

A tweak like a slight grenade or rocket nerf would just make the game more enjoyable, even if you didn’t know what they’d done exactly. The idea is this is a system which they can use to fine-tune the game into being fun and not unfair. The main reason you’d notice a difference is feeling a little less frustrated after each patch.

Besides, even if 5 weapons changed about 10% of their stats, it’d take about 5 minutes in a custom or 3 matchmaking games to become accustomed to the changes, which seems worth it when the other option is a potentially unbalanced sandbox like Reach’s where people don’t use half of the weapons.

The changes that Street Fighter undergoes are huge, the balance of power can change dramatically, there are new combos you don’t know about and old ones that can’t be done anymore. There’s so much more to it than an FPS would ever do, yet it’s not frustrating in the least. If you care about a game and it changes, it’s just interesting.

It’s like saying you don’t like map packs because you’ve learned the weapon spawns on the old ones, know some tactics and where the flag capture point is so you don’t want to learn it all over again with new maps. Balancing weapons so that they can be used effectively when before they weren’t worth picking up is almost like adding new content.

4

Individual Weapon Traits have been tossed around as an idea for a really long time now. It really would be the next revolution for FPSs, and for Halo in general.

Please, please, please, please make this happen, 343! Give us total control!

5

Something like Brink’s netvars? Interesting. But I think they should be community-accessible.

For example, look at Reach’s Megalo. It’s the gametype-setting equivalent of what you’re describing. Who can use it? 343. Who’s actually using it? No one. If this weapon idea is also dev-exclusive, then it’ll be abandoned just like Megalo has been.

6

You forgot the worst thing about Reach- loadouts :slight_smile:

7

Customizable weapon traits is a must in Halo 4.

8

> So basically, you’re saying that Halo 4 can live longer with more periodic patches? Learning the game is fun, but having to relearn it every time the weapon sandbox changes would be a hassle.

What he said