TL;DR at the bottom.
Since a lot of us think that Infinity Slayer is more decided upon random weapon drops than team skill and tactics, yes a good team will win over a bad team but with equal teams, I started looking at the maps in forge and the Infinity Game Options with the goal of making Infinity Slayer more balanced since I have ideas on how to do it.
I found most options I want to change available in both forge and game options but there were some small things that would require either i343’s help or the Engineer specialization, you can force Tactical Packages and Support Upgrades for players through traits but the specialization packages and upgrades weren’t available. Either they’ll never be available through the options or they’ll be unlocked later on. I’ll get back to this later.
> Personal Ordnance: We want to keep this but limit it to no power weapons. In the options we can change what weapons, AA’s and Boosts we get and what “weight” i.e propability they will have to be available. Now I was thinking of a couple of options for these drops.
>
> A: Limit the drops to grenades only, as in “Frag : Plasma : Pulse”
>
> B: Limit the drops to Grenades and loadout weapons, “Grenade/Loadout Weapon : Grenade/Loadout Weapon : Grenade/Loadout weapon”, it would include both primary and secondary loadout weapons.
>
> C: Limit the drops to grenades, loadout weapons and boosts. Much like it is now but with the removal of the power weapons.
With A and B I could also imagine that we could lower the required points to recieve personal ordnance drops so they’d be more frequent for ammo refills, switching of weapons if none is available and more grenades.
> Problem with Random Global Ordnance Drops: The current problem we have with these as they are, is that matches can become unbalanced, and teams can win because of luck throughout the match instead of pure skill. Some may argue that a skilled player thinks of ways to go around the one with a power weapon instead of shouting “unfair”, while it’s true that skilled players do think of ways to go around a player with a power weapon, it’s the way of getting said power weapon that is a problem, as well as the random nature in “symmetric” drops. Some teams may not get power weapons at all while the other does. Between two equally skilled teams, power weapons is a deciding factor of the outcome of the match, and randomly handing out said power weapons to players leaves a lot to chance and randomness, the outcome is partly based on a team’s luck, which it shouldn’t. Yes, a player may be lucky in an aspect that an opponent fumbles and does something wrong, that is still however player control, not a random factor inside the game.
How would we do to keep random in, because it is refreshing and something with a twist.
> First off I suggest that the random drops of power weapons are reduced, and some drops only have grenades and loadout weapons, especially those closer to bases in large maps.
>
> Second, for those of you who doesn’t know how the engineer specialization works, it announces what will drop and where a while before it is dropped. That is how I imagined the random drop mechanic would have worked in the first place. Long before a drop, the game would put an icon over the drop point what will drop.
> I suggest that this is how it should work for players even without the engineer specialisation, atleast for power weapons. It’d also be shown globally for all players, not just those within that 100m radius of the drop, and not faint either, as it now faints out the longer you are from it. What about players who use the engineer specialisation then? Well the icon would of course appear earlier for them. For example, the icon would appear thirty seconds before a drop for regular player, it could appear 40 seconds before the drop for those using the engineer specializatin, or something like that. To prevent clutter, grenades and loadout weapons would only show inside a radius. Power weapon drops would be visible on the whole map, the drops would be random in both when they drop and what drops.
>
> An alternative for Engineer specialization users would be to put a spawn countdown timer over the icon instead of showing the drop icon seconds before it’s shown for the others. They’d know the exact moment it spawns.
This would be “Newfinity Slayer”.
Before someone comes shouting that I’m trying to force my way of playing down others’ throats, that the way it is now is how it’s meant to be played and it works perfectly fine, I’m going to leave that debate to you and someone else who’s in the mood of talking with you and say that 343 easily could make a playlist for “Newfinity Slayer” as well as keeping the old vanilla “Infinity Slayer”.
Pros/Cons? Improvements? Suggestions?
TL;DR
> Personal Ordnance: Remove Power Weapons alltogether, use grenades and/or loadout weapons and/or possibly boosts.
> Global Random Drops: Before a weapon is dropped, 20 to 30 seconds before the drop, an icon lights up where it’ll drop and what will drop for everyone on the map. What kind of weapon that drops is random, timer when it drops is also random, location is also random based among the preset drop locations.
> Engineer upgrade: would either see the icon before it appears for everyone else or get a countdown timer so the player would know the exact moment of the drop.