Why we need more loadouts in Halo 4 War Games.
While some people may disagree with the idea of customizable loadouts, there’s no denying that they are now a large part of Halo 4. Whether you like armor abilities/tactical packages/armor mods or not, each fits a unique purpose among the plethora of other choices, forcing players to really hone in on what they want to use. However, with 7 primary weapons, 3 secondary weapons, 3 grenade types, 8 armor abilities, 9 tactical packages, and 11 (with 3 more coming) support upgrades, the plethora of combinations is far too great for just 5 available loadouts. For me, it’s simply not enough.
Let’s take an example. While this isn’t exactly true of me, the circumstances provided here are meant to be a representation of any random player, who has such a playstyle and uses such weapons. If I’m playing CTF and the enemy is defending from within their base, I need a rush class that can get in through unexpected entryways, kill them quickly with an assault rifle, and then get out with their precious flag. AR, boltshot, plasmas, jetpack, mobility, and dexterity would be a pretty good class for such a situation. Anyways, after a little bit of slaying and pushing, I’ve taken the flag out of their base, and within a few minutes, we’ve captured it. Now that my team is winning, the enemy feels the need to push, and I need a long range class to snipe them as they pitifully try to charge my DMR. A DMR, magnum, a pulse grenade, regeneration field, shielding, and stability work best in order to fend off the oncoming attackers. But what happens when the enemy manages to overcome us and I die? I still need the long range weapon, but a different set of abilities to stop that carrier. I’d need a jetpack, AA efficiency, and ammo! Uh oh, they’ve capped it, now I need to get to the beam rifle spawn and use it to wreak havoc and allow my team to push their flag. Carbine, plasmas, camo, sensor, etc. What about when they pick up the gauss cannon hog and I need an anti vehicle setup?
The point is that while it’s possible to pre-plan these situations depending on the map, not only is it frustrating to have to change my loadouts every game, it’s simply not very productive. We should be playing the game, not the interface. And there are sometimes that I just want to use the BR. I don’t care if my DMR is better for long range, sometimes I just have off days with it. Or even off games. Sometimes I switch styles mid game. I want to have that same jetpack class, but with my other rifle. I feel that while it is arguable that pre-planning loadouts every game adds a skill level to it, the truth of the matter is that it makes for a more enjoyable experience to have everything at hand in every game on every map.
10 loadouts. That’s all I’m asking for. Be it via ranking up (or for players who have already reached max rank, unlocked automatically), or through something like DLC, I’d be happy to do whatever it takes in order to get more loadouts. I feel it is a necessary step, and would help me to feel more prepared for each and every scenario when I go into a game.
TLDR: Being able to have a loadout for each situation is a level of customization that I think is necessary in this game. I think that we need 10 loadouts in order to maximize the potential of said system. This does NOT mean adding more items to loadouts, but rather, just increasing the number of slots available.