One of the big complaints I’ve seen against the current system of loadouts is that it introduces another element of randomness into the game- You don’t have any way of knowing what your opponent has, so how can you plan to counter them until a firefight starts?
This topic will be for discussing various ways that 343 could hypothetically reduce or even remove this random factor in their future games, without removing loadouts. Thought it might be an interesting share of ideas.
Here’s one of mine- As the map loads, players are allowed to choose their loadouts. After a certain period of time the game forces everyone onto the pre-match countdown screen, where everyone’s chosen loadouts are now publicly displayed with gamertags attached. Once the match begins, players can fully update their intel by checking a submenu of the scoreboard.
I’ve thought of that as well. It’s not a bad solution… but it still adds a bit of uncertainty when you aren’t aware of which opponent you’re sneaking up on, for example.
It’s definitely better than the current method.
Another idea is that each loadout must be taken, and only 1 per player (which would create a hard-class system). Again, this would still create uncertainties, and it wouldn’t really be Halo; it would be Team Fortress-esque.
First of all, in order for this to be useful, you’d need to memorize everyone’s loadouts by name, which isn’t a realistic expectation to have. Secondly, since you can’t see an enemy player’s name until you see him, you won’t be able to match the name to a loadout until you see him. There’s still no way to know what an opponent has until you see him, which doesn’t always give you enough time to prepare.
This helps the problem at least, but doesn’t really do much to reduce the randomness.
Even if you know what everyone has, if everybody is using a different setup it won’t matter. Ok great, I know somebody somewhere on the map is using an assault rifle, but whether that’s the person currently trying to melee me in the spine or the person 200m across the map from me, I won’t be able to know. So the problem that there’s an inherent random factor during an engagement hasn’t really been reduced.
Then there’s the whole thing where you can switch loadouts during the match, although I suppose they could implement a feature that allows you to see what the enemies using while you wait to respawn…
But S OOO I don’t want people to know what loadout I’m using. Enemies could effectively counter me that way and I couldn’t be sneaky about gear I’m using.
For example I use sensor a lot and don’t want people knowing that, otherwise they would catch on to how I’m always ready for them and they would use sensor too, blowing my cover.
> But S OOO I don’t want people to know what loadout I’m using. <mark>Enemies could effectively counter me that way and I couldn’t be sneaky about gear I’m using.</mark>
Well, that’s how it is supposed to be. No one should be in a disadvantage because they don’t know what/who they encounter.
> For example I use sensor a lot and don’t want people knowing that, otherwise they would catch on to how I’m always ready for them and they would use sensor too, blowing my cover.
> > But S OOO I don’t want people to know what loadout I’m using. <mark>Enemies could effectively counter me that way and I couldn’t be sneaky about gear I’m using.</mark>
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> Well, that’s how it is supposed to be. No one should be in a disadvantage because they don’t know what/who they encounter.
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> > For example I use sensor a lot and don’t want people knowing that, otherwise they would catch on to how I’m always ready for them and they would use sensor too, blowing my cover.
>
> Duh…
If you are finding yourself at a disadvatage that is simply you reacting poorly and not adapting. When you lose an engagement think to yourself, why did I lose? Did he reload faster than he should have there? Must have dexterity. Did he have a power weapon faster than normal? Must have ordnance priority.
I encourage you to simply be more observant during your games, instead of wishing for some way to see people’s loadouts.
> One of the big complaints I’ve seen against the current system of loadouts is that it introduces another element of randomness into the game- You don’t have any way of knowing what your opponent has, so how can you plan to counter them until a firefight starts?
I’ll give you an A+ for effort in trying to salvage loadouts, but as you can already see most people here won’t play the game unless they know for certain what everyone else has. No one wants to be sneaked up on or have their cover blown. Playing a Halo game is all about who can navigate the map best and get the drop on their opponent quicker. People spawning with things you can’t prepare for is just too much to think about.
I like the concept of loadouts and, therefore, your idea sounds ok to me. I would add an idea I read in another thread about making AAs more obvious the way Power Weapons are. You could see at a decent distance what the other person has. I liked that idea but I didn’t think 343i would mar the sleek, stylish look of their shiny new Spartan IVs.
If loadouts survive into the next game, your idea should be considered.
> > > But S OOO I don’t want people to know what loadout I’m using. <mark>Enemies could effectively counter me that way and I couldn’t be sneaky about gear I’m using.</mark>
> >
> > Well, that’s how it is supposed to be. No one should be in a disadvantage because they don’t know what/who they encounter.
> >
> >
> >
> > > For example I use sensor a lot and don’t want people knowing that, otherwise they would catch on to how I’m always ready for them and they would use sensor too, blowing my cover.
> >
> > Duh…
>
> If you are finding yourself at a disadvatage that is simply you reacting poorly and not adapting. [/qoute]
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> How can I adapt to something I don’t know about?
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> > When you lose an engagement think to yourself, why did I lose? Did he reload faster than he should have there? Must have dexterity. Did he have a power weapon faster than normal? Must have ordnance priority.
> >
> > I encourage you to simply be more observant during your games, instead of wishing for some way to see people’s loadouts.
>
> I gotta admit the last time I played Halo 4 was 7 months ago but I still remember how it played back then. But I’ve played a lot Halo (Halo 3, Reach, 4) even on a competitive/semi-professional level and I know a lot about the games meta.
> And perks or AA that improve/enhance player movements like faster reload or Jetpack and Thruster Pack are causing the game to be imbalanced since they’re “standard equipment”. It’s impossible to adapt to things like this!
> Despite the fact I was outstanding good in Halo 4 I despise loadouts, perks and especially AAs because they add no depth but randomness to the game.
>
> I said it once and I’ll keep saying it:
> Halo shouldn’t be Player-centered (Halo Reach, 4) but Map-centered (Halo CE, 2, 3).
> You want AAs? Get rid of the the movement abilities (Sprint, Jetpack, etc.) and put the others on the map. Make Camo a blue “ball” again, OS red, Speed Boost yellow, Promethean Vision green (picking it up gives you 10 consecutive seconds of it).
> Get rid of perks.
> I could go on but you know what I’m trying to say…
Here’s an idea, why not make it so you can only select your custom/preset load outs in the pregame lobby, and next to your name/player card, it displays your load out, then once the game starts, your load out is locked until the next match, or you pick a weapon up off the map.
Guys, I kinda feel like you’re missing the point of the thread. I just thought it might be fun to have an open Halo gametheory discussion outside of this “Loadouts are fun, keep them.” “No loadouts suck, remove them.” loop we’ve been in for so long.
So please don’t just go “Ya sure OP, good idea.”, contribute something.
> Here’s an idea, why not make it so you can only select your custom/preset load outs in the pregame lobby, and next to your name/player card, it displays your load out, then once the game starts, your load out is locked until the next match, or you pick a weapon up off the map.
So that one loadout would become your unchangeable spawn for the game? Sounds really good. There would need to be a default loadout slot that the game would automatically select if you didn’t yourself of course.
Question though- how would that work in lobbies with custom loadouts disabled in all or some of the gametimes? Some sort of override maybe?
> > Here’s an idea, why not make it so you can only select your custom/preset load outs in the pregame lobby, and next to your name/player card, it displays your load out, then once the game starts, your load out is locked until the next match, or you pick a weapon up off the map.
>
> So that one loadout would become your unchangeable spawn for the game? Sounds really good. There would need to be a default loadout slot that the game would automatically select if you didn’t yourself of course.
>
> Question though- how would that work in lobbies with custom loadouts disabled in all or some of the gametimes? Some sort of override maybe?
Gametypes would still have control, it’s just instead of you spawning with your load out, you’ll spawn with the set load out of the gametype.
> Here’s an idea, why not make it so you can only select your custom/preset load outs in the pregame lobby, and next to your name/player card, it displays your load out, then once the game starts, your load out is locked until the next match, or you pick a weapon up off the map.
I had thought of something like this and realized that it could be really restricting. There are many times when the loadout I start the game with is not the one I want to use for the rest of the game. For example on Adrift, I have recently started using the following loadout for the opening OS rush:
BR
PP
Frags
Jet Pack
Mobility
Ammo
However I often switch to this after my first death:
BR
Magnum
Frags
Thruster Pack
Resistor
Recharge
or if the enemy team is using PV, I’ll switch to this:
Carbine
AR
Frags
Hologram
Firepower
Stealth
Another scenario is that I am working on my Storm Rifle commendation but the opposing players are all using BR’s and seem to be very coordinated. There is no practical way I can compete in the game if I continue to use my Storm Rifle loadout.
As you can see having just one loadout for the entire game could be quite restricting and we might as well just have even starts.
> Guys, I kinda feel like you’re missing the point of the thread. I just thought it might be fun to have an open Halo gametheory discussion outside of this “Loadouts are fun, keep them.” “No loadouts suck, remove them.” loop we’ve been in for so long.
>
> So please don’t just go “Ya sure OP, good idea.”, contribute something.
OK then, how about this:
When loadouts were introduced in Reach, the concept of specialization was also introduced. Every loadout had a name, which insinuated a particular specialization: Medic, Spectre, Scout, etc. In Halo 4 they created actual specializations, but you could have any loadout you wanted. That’s where I was disappointed. After a while it was clear even to 343i that what they were doing wasn’t going to work. People were having trouble getting their player card to reflect their preferred specialization, and now everyone ends up with “Mastery”. Well, I wanted Operator.
So how about you pick a specialization (Engineer, Operator, Tracker, etc.), pre-game, that offers a choice of, say, three appropriate loadouts. Your player card displays your specialization and that gives an indication of what AAs you might have. You pick a loadout before the match starts as we do now, but you’re stuck with that loadout for the entire match. Your AA and perks are visible attachments to your armor, and can be damaged/disabled. That way you can’t learn to depend on your AA/perk to get you out of a jam. Your skill will have to be about your loadout weapon. What you start the match with will be a bit of a mystery, but two minutes into the match there should be no surprises.
That’s my idea (although it’s a collection of other people’s ideas) and I know it’s not perfect so, have at it.
> > > But S OOO I don’t want people to know what loadout I’m using. <mark>Enemies could effectively counter me that way and I couldn’t be sneaky about gear I’m using.</mark>
> >
> > Well, that’s how it is supposed to be. No one should be in a disadvantage because they don’t know what/who they encounter.
> >
> >
> >
> > > For example I use sensor a lot and don’t want people knowing that, otherwise they would catch on to how I’m always ready for them and they would use sensor too, blowing my cover.
> >
> > Duh…
>
> If you are finding yourself at a disadvatage that is simply you reacting poorly and not adapting. When you lose an engagement think to yourself, why did I lose? Did he reload faster than he should have there? Must have dexterity. Did he have a power weapon faster than normal? Must have ordnance priority.
>
> I encourage you to simply be more observant during your games, instead of wishing for some way to see people’s loadouts.
Lets do a 1v1 tomorrow. I have infinity rocket ammo and you have Plasma Pistol only.
When you lose an engagement think to yourself, why did I lose? #adapt
> > > > But S OOO I don’t want people to know what loadout I’m using. <mark>Enemies could effectively counter me that way and I couldn’t be sneaky about gear I’m using.</mark>
> > >
> > > Well, that’s how it is supposed to be. No one should be in a disadvantage because they don’t know what/who they encounter.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > For example I use sensor a lot and don’t want people knowing that, otherwise they would catch on to how I’m always ready for them and they would use sensor too, blowing my cover.
> > >
> > > Duh…
> >
> > If you are finding yourself at a disadvatage that is simply you reacting poorly and not adapting. When you lose an engagement think to yourself, why did I lose? Did he reload faster than he should have there? Must have dexterity. Did he have a power weapon faster than normal? Must have ordnance priority.
> >
> > I encourage you to simply be more observant during your games, instead of wishing for some way to see people’s loadouts.
>
> Lets do a 1v1 tomorrow. I have infinity rocket ammo and you have Plasma Pistol only.
> When you lose an engagement think to yourself, why did I lose?
> #adapt
Even if we both disagree with him you’ve gotta stay fair.
Yet it seems that he contradicts himself when he says he wants loadouts to use the element of surprise but in the same context talks about adaption.