> More on-topic, I agree ordnance is ludicrously bad, at the very least in its current form. No team should be able to pop three overshields or damage boosts at the same time. That should never be allowed to happen. Very few people want ordnance to return, or if they do they want it to be quite different from what it is now. So I don’t expect to see it in Halo 5.
Ordnance, atleast global ordnance is on paper quite an interesting concept. I do not want Custom loadouts, or even multiple loadouts for that matter, sprint and flinch, but Ordnance is one of the things I think can be reworked to work in a good way.
If I’m not mistaken, the initial idea of Ordnance was to “balance” out matches between “good and bad” players. The good players would never be able to learn the locations of the drops so the worse players had a chance to get them, which is of course a bad idea as it unbalances even matches. And I do not think that bad players should get a handicap unless both parts agree on it.
However, the other aspect of global ordnance is that it changes from match to match and actually brings a lot of variation as locations, weapons and drop times are different. The big major problem with the current implementation is however that they’re sudden and unexpected, unless you sport a perk, and it suffers from a “proximity” problem. Outside of a certain radius, the waypoint starts fading away, and at 100 metres it’s barely visible. Along with the random timer it creates a “who ever is the closest gets it” problem. In some instances I can go contest it but that’s not the case as much as it could be. Not to mention it’s quite annoying getting into a vehicle and getting splasered into molecules by a randomly dropped fresh splaser.
The improvement I’m suggesting for Global Ordnance is that the waypoint becomes visible for everyone on the map regardless of their distance to the drop point. Another thing that should be done to the waypoint is that it becomes visible atleast 30 seconds before the drop actually happens. This would allow some contesting, yet still have the same randomness to it.
Other things that could be done to the waypoint is Color Coding, like the weapon in the waypoint gets a specific color to indicate what type it is. For instance, snipers could be orange, fuel rods, rockets and inc cannons could be red and so forth. The area could also have a color code to it that the designer decides for easy identification of the location. Even add different shapes to the background of the waypoint could help in some way. If we also have power ups and AA’s on the map the background shape could also help indicate what type of drop it is. Rectangle is a weapon, circle is and AA and a triangle a power up.
The only thing that remains is that a weapon could potentially be dropped in an area allready heavily controlled by either team. In a static environment I do not actually see this as a problem as both teams know that spot is important, and the other team can apply pressure acordingly. However when it’s just out of chance that a drop can happen the other team have a very small window to secure the location.
Either we allow it to happen or we introduce a system that checks for uncontrolled or very little controlled areas in which to drop a weapon, or AA for that matter as I want those on the map rather than on spawn as well.
Now, should a waypoint be present untill the weapon is picked up or not? This has been a question earlier as it removes a form of stealth, if the waypoint was to remain visible to everyone and one suddenly disappear then one player is certainly there. So seeing as the waypoint appears 30 seconds, at least, before the drop, everyone knows when it’s coming. As it’s color coded, everyone knows what and where it’s coming. There should be no problem in removing the waypoint the instant it drops.
This, atleast in some form would play like static spawns. Not saying static spawns are bad, but this idea would be quite fun to try.