First off, Admins, Moderators. I made a post similar to this a few days ago. If you find this too close to my old topic, I’m sorry to ask that you combine the two threads.
Riding shotgun in the Warthog has usually been something that hasn’t really been anywhere near as useful as it should be. Yes you can have it be for a person to get to their objective quickly, by bringing the bomb, or stealing the enemy team’s flag, but in game’s like Slayer, all you are doing is giving most people an easy triple kill if you step into the passenger’s seat.
What if we gave passenger seat Spartan’s prompts to be able to help make them feel more valuable to the Warthog, rather than just that guy catching a ride. What if we gave them options like:
- To have a button prompt to take the driver’s seat should the driver’s seat become vacant, instead of making them get out, and go to the driver’s spot. (if not holding a bomb or flag)- Made it so a Warhog with a passenger required 2 EMPs to stop, with the Passenger able to sacrifice their shields to restart the car.- Allowed them to have a button prompt to stop the driver from being jacked.- If the people in the car SHARED a shield, so if you had 3 people in the car, they all had 2x Over shield, and if you shot one, all took that damage.Now these are just some ideas, and some aren’t nearly as good as other ideas (some of these Ideas are just unbalanced some could say), but I’m trying to get the ball rolling for things that we can do to make passengers in the Warthog feel more useful than they currently are.
This is one of the few things that I consider too far to change up. The passenger seat isn’t really meant to be something overly useful. As to the button to change positions, that is something that has always made Halo’s vehicle combat unique. You have to get out and change, it makes things a bit easier unlike Battlefield where if you accidentally press a button you get thrown into another position in the vehicle and then one of your teammate takes control of the vehicle.
The only thing I’d like to see added to the passenger’s usefulness is perhaps allowing support weapons to be carried and mounted while you are in the passenger seat. A machine gun or missile pod would make a passenger with those weapons invaluable and give double the firepower to a Warthog.
I don’t see how the final option would work at all, but any one of the other ideas you have could work quite well. I like the idea of saving the driver from getting jacked, though I feel it would basically resemble a QTE. The idea of the passenger basically being the fallback guy in case anything bad happened to the Warthog isn’t a horrible idea, but is there anything proactive that he could be doing? It’s alright if the answer’s no. I don’t want to theoretically break the game on something that hasn’t historically been a problem (Middle Fingers raised in Sprint’s direction)
In Slayer he could grab a giant gun and get in the Warthog, but that’s very much based on both the gun and driver in question. Perhaps if shooting from the passenger’s seat weren’t as -Yoinking- awful as it is, allowing for scoping and such, we could drastically increase the effectiveness of sitting passenger in a Warthog. It’s already hard to hit anything in a moving vehicle without being unable to scope with a precision weapon.
Oh yeah. Every gun has a scope now. Um…that might be an actual bonus for ADS in this scenario. 
I honestly don’t know of anything that is proactive that a passenger can do, all my ideas make him into a “Plan B Guy” but that’s why I threw this thread up. I want to hear people’s ideas and see what they could come up with.
The 2x Overshield is meant to be applied that they somehow link their shield generators together. You’de have to have a lore guy make the science to make it work.
EDIT: What if the front right seat wasn’t a widow, but a more restricted front gun, kind of like the Gun goose had?
Perhaps the passenger could wield a ripped-off mounted turret?
I think it should be more situational , minor buffs that also make sense.
Sitting in the passenger seat could give rockets the ability to lock-on to ground vehicles for example, which they would lack on-foot.
Since it’s kind of Halo tradition for vehicle passengers to carry a power weapon, and unlike a mounted gun it’s something you actually have to earn the reward for. A warthog passenger shouldn’t automatically be granted the status of second-machine-gunner in my opinion.
Another idea, having a passenger increases the radar range of everyone in the vehicle.
Possibly having slow ammo regeneration, rewarding vehicle teams who manage to survive long times and again promoting the use of actual weapons in the passenger seat.
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> EDIT: What if the front right seat wasn’t a widow, but a more restricted front gun, kind of like the Gun goose had?
Nah. Not all of the people sitting that seat have lost their husbands.
Cough
But seriously, I like how I can take any gun into the passenger side of the Warthog. I think it’s pretty useful.
Giving increased auto aim like the Revenant did might be a good thing. At least for the passenger, kind of annoying when you are getting no-scoped by a passenger sniper though. 
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> > 2533274807231709;4:
> > EDIT: What if the front right seat wasn’t a widow, but a more restricted front gun, kind of like the Gun goose had?
>
>
> Nah. Not all of the people sitting that seat have lost their husbands.
>
> Cough
>
> But seriously, I like how I can take any gun into the passenger side of the Warthog. I think it’s pretty useful.
laughs
I’m just trying to think of ideas, I didn’t make this thread to say ‘look at all my amazing ideas’ It was more to try to milk the community for ideas before we are deadset and have Halo 5 in gold status XD
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> > 2535421619942348;7:
> > > 2533274807231709;4:
> > > EDIT: What if the front right seat wasn’t a widow, but a more restricted front gun, kind of like the Gun goose had?
> >
> >
> > Nah. Not all of the people sitting that seat have lost their husbands.
> >
> > Cough
> >
> > But seriously, I like how I can take any gun into the passenger side of the Warthog. I think it’s pretty useful.
>
>
> laughs
>
> I’m just trying to think of ideas, I didn’t make this thread to say ‘look at all my amazing ideas’ It was more to try to milk the community for ideas before we are deadset and have Halo 5 in gold status XD
Oh no, I get it. You’re doing the exact thing I’ve been trying to get the forums to do for 6 months, back when everyone was too freaked out about 5’s culture shock to have the talks we’re having now.
Like I and Ramirez alluded to, I honestly think making it easier to fire the gun you got into the Warthog with, coupled with one of your passive buffs for a player in the Warthog would do wonders for the amount of people jumping in passenger.
One more possibly -Yoink- idea. Say we bring the Vehicle and Passenger health counters from CE back, (and to be fair, regardless of what we say on this thread, we should be doing that anyway) what if having a third player allowed the Warthog to slowly repair lost health? That probably wouldn’t work at all…
It’s hard to imagine adding much to the position without changing vehicles mechanics.
Though 2 things I’ve wanted since halo 2 that you mention. Maybe have it passenger specific to cut down on control clutter - Swapping seats, taking up the driver or gunner if they die, and more effectively preventing driver-side boarding, like maybe melee-ing the boarder would knock them off. Though these are the only new functions I imagine would be viable for the series.
As it is now the passenger is, as stated, just an easy triple unless they’re holding a heavy weapon, and even then, rockets haven’t had a good lock on fucntion for awhile and that extra firepower would be mostly useless anyway due to the difficulty of hitting anything small and anything large would obliterate them before a splaser can even be charged.
so the passenger is pretty much useless outside of objectives. Unless that’s always been the plan, I would heartily suggest some more capability for the hapless 3rd man.
> 2535421619942348;10:
> One more possibly -Yoink- idea. Say we bring the Vehicle and Passenger health counters from CE back, (and to be fair, regardless of what we say on this thread, we should be doing that anyway) what if having a third player allowed the Warthog to slowly repair lost health? That probably wouldn’t work at all…
Actually I think it’s a decent idea, maybe not combined with all the other buffs, but by itself its good. If the third passenger is just a free ‘triple kill’, he might as well make it harder for the enemy to obtain that kill. And since it’s an over-time effect, it rewards proper use of the vehicle itself.
This is the direction these kinds of things should take. You want to offer little buffs to encourage people to ride more, but you don’t want to empower the passenger to the point the warthog is an unstoppable death machine.
I don’t like the ideas the OP suggested because basically the common thread is having a passenger makes you immune to certain attacks.
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> I think it should be more situational , minor buffs that also make sense.
>
> Sitting in the passenger seat could give rockets the ability to lock-on to ground vehicles for example, which they would lack on-foot.
>
> Possibly having slow ammo regeneration, rewarding vehicle teams who manage to survive long times and again promoting the use of actual weapons in the passenger seat.
Now that’s some incentive.
I will not mind the idea of slow, passive ammo regeneration for passengers riding shotgun.
Of course, rate of regeneration being inversely proportional to the power of the weapon.
I think they should allow the passenger to aim 360 degrees. There are many times I where I was shooting at someone and the driver would turn just a crack and I was barely out of the aiming deadzone which stopped me from finishing a kill.
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> I will not mind the idea of slow, passive ammo regeneration for passengers riding shotgun.
>
> Of course, rate of regeneration being inversely proportional to the power of the weapon.
It could fit nicely into the lore as what military vehicle wouldn’t have ammunition stocks installed?
I would propose making the passenger first-person just like Halo CE. It can be crazy to land shots on rough terrain but the freedom to use scopes is totally worth it. Not to mention how cool it is riding in a warthog in first person perspective.
Edit for great justice: Maybe it only regenerates ammo for certain weapons and / or has limited stocks for power weapons.
Beam rifle, fuel rod Cannon, rockets, and saw are all pretty good from the passenger seat at least in Halo 4.
I think the passenger seat should be first person, allow 360 degree aiming and should have ridiculous auto aim. Other than that, it’s purpose should remain the same- giving a quick ride to Flag/Bomb/Oddball carriers or anyone that wants to get around the map more quickly.
ETA: I guess allowing melee to prevent hi-jacks is also a good idea.
I like the first idea.
The second idea doesn’t make much sense from a logical standpoint. EMP’s aren’t countered by adding more power, you just have to ride them out.
The third idea could be tweaked to make it better. Maybe instead of actually stopping the hijack altogether, there could just be a prompt for the passenger to hijack the driver’s seat from the enemy after he hijacks your driver. This would kind of fall in the same category as the first idea about the passenger sliding over to the driver’s seat if the driver is removed. Basically it would be a hijack from the passenger seat.
The fourth idea is just not very good. It doesn’t make any sense and would lead to weird inconsistent vehicle gameplay. I wouldn’t want my gunner to die because my passenger got shot a bunch.
Another idea would be for the passenger to be in control of a counter measure of some sort. Like a flare dump that they could activate to get seeking explosives and plasma charges off their tail. Make it single use or give it a gnarly cooldown.
I like these ideas. It always bothers me when there is something in a video game that has no purpose in and is basically useless. Why use an SMG when the BR is better in every way? Why go into Halo 4 with a Pulse Grenade instead of frags? Why hop into a Warthog’s passenger seat if you’re just going to die quickly, with an assist at best?