Disclaimer: I was not a participant in the technical preview, and am basing this feedback on gameplay footage.
A lot of people seem to dislike the current radar, particularly because walking/running without sprint does not show up on the radar. I don’t think it’s a horrible change, but I believe it can be balanced to encourage more environmental awareness and radar use. A quick summary of the idea is to use the iconic inner circle design of the radar to split the radar into two functions, classic detection behavior in the inner circle, and current detection behavior in the outer circle. Radar distance and mode-ratio would need to be tweaked.
Elaboration:
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Inner-Radar mode: Detects player walking/running, jumping, sprinting, shooting, and equipment usage.
With a slight range increase, this would serve as a slightly smaller classic radar, allowing players to see an enemy coming from behind at normal speed, and encouraging crouching and cover in close quarters. - Outer-Radar mode: Detects jumping, sprinting, shooting, and equipment usage.
Being a more distant radar, it allows players to move at a normal pace when in range of an unaware enemy, only appearing for more aggressive behavior and movement. This will help with the pacing a bit while still being able to get the jump on a player. - Advanced Detection: While the outer-radar should maintain basic detection feedback, the inner-radar could have an elevation system similar to reach, and possibly an ‘X’ icon for recently killed players, to distinguish a lack of movement from death. Both of these suggestions are secondary to the main idea.
One problem - might seem a bit complicated for unexperienced players to grasp, so if we cant get this, the old radar function is best.
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> One problem - might seem a bit complicated for unexperienced players to grasp, so if we cant get this, the old radar function is best.
I accidentally posted prematurely and have explained it a bit more, but I do agree that classic radar is more ideal than current radar. In its current state, it’s not very useful, the classic radar is pretty essential to high-level halo gameplay. That being said, I think there is some validity to the idea of the current radar encouraging faster-paced gameplay, and it allows for closer calls in circumstances such as objective running, which is why I would like to see a mix of both. When it comes to complication, I think as long as the distinction is clear in the hud design itself, players should be able to grasp the function difference easily enough.
I think this idea sounds really nice, it could work and give all those who don’t like the current rader something to at least make it better. Personally i quite like the new rader.
How would you be able to tell players in the hud (which im not a huge fan of by the way) when you walk far away from players you dont turn up on the radar, and when closer you do? Its a great idea but spreading info on how it would work is problematic.
With this idea, I would also like it if players sprinting can be marked on the radar. Maybe have a few thin outer rings around the dot to show they are sprinting.
I also had the idea of revealing altitude on the radar (a feature since Reach that was cut for Infinite) when sprinting, but I fear that would be too confusing.
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> How would you be able to tell players in the hud (which im not a huge fan of by the way) when you walk far away from players you dont turn up on the radar, and when closer you do? Its a great idea but spreading info on how it would work is problematic.
I think a simple way to visualize the function for new players would be to have a slight tolerance around the inner circle, in which red dots fade in as they enter the inner-radar distance threshold while walking. If they shot while on the line, the dot would become fully solid.
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> With this idea, I would also like it if players sprinting can be marked on the radar. Maybe have a few thin outer rings around the dot to show they are sprinting.
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> I also had the idea of revealing altitude on the radar (a feature since Reach that was cut for Infinite) when sprinting, but I fear that would be too confusing.
I think that would be an interesting concept, depending on how sprint ends up in the final game. However, I think sprint in its current form is balanced pretty well, punishing it further could make it totally undesirable to use.