Having watched this video, I don’t want to get into the debates about whether spartan abilities are a good or bad change. The overall theme is that all players are equal, and all abilities are available to all characters.
First of all, they mentioned map control. I had assumed that these spartan abilities may have been map placements which you could control, but it seems to me they meant that as a result of spartan abilities map control is back
Ironically, this dramatic change has me thinking about the possible tradeoffs losing features such as loadouts and equipment/armour abilities might have, if they are indeed removed for good.
Whilst nothing is confirmed, one benefit of loadouts is it could be used for non-arena style playlists and potential custom gametypes that could be very good.
Furthermore equipment and armour abilities were a good way of providing people with an opportunity to change the face of a conflict.
Don’t get me wrong I despised loadouts for general arena gameplay, and arour abilities whilst a nice idea were implemented poorly, but I am ironically thinking back and thinking that with a few tweaks, these things could have been implemented more successfully, and losing them could mean we miss out on some less common, custom or potential gametypes.
When they mentioned spartan abilities originally, and based on the comments about map control, I had pictured/hoped for an equipment/armour ability hybrid - a spawning item that could be used either individually a person, or deployed for the team. It would have a limited charge, so that it wouldn’t alter core gameplay, whilst implementing some evolution of the existing games.
For example, an ‘armour lock’ item, which would protect the player, but could be deployed as a bubble shield. With a limited amount of damage it could take, and as a controllable spawning item, armour lock be quite a cool feature.
Further examples could include:
- Jet pack (individual) grav lift (team)- Overshield/Charge shield (individual) Regen (team)- camo (individual) flare (team)- hologram (individual) or radar jammer (team)- emp/protect from melee (individual) or power drain (team)
Just wondering if people think these kind of features might still be included.
Is anyone going to miss loadouts or armour abilities (for customs/certain gametypes or armour abilities)?
Would you have preferred a solution like the above to spartan abilities.
Although button layouts might not allow for it, there is no reason spartan abilities and these equipment/armour abilities couldn’t run concurrently. It would be a big evolution from Halo 2, but would mean we have equal starts, map control would be important and could still allow people to change the dynamics of the map, as well as providing lots of possible game types, map types etc.