It’s something I’ve always wanted. Here’s a very rough general idea of what I’m thinking:
DEATHMATCH:
Elimination. Probably 5v5. Much more scenery obstacles than usual to fight and hide around, you better utilize Motion Tracker and VISR and have your wits about you.
Maps in this mode: Alpha Site, Chasm Ten, Crater, Last Exit, Lost Platoon, Rally Point, Security Zone, Windward, Foundry, Ghost Town, High Ground, Last Resort, Longshore, Rat’s Nest, The Pit.
Loadouts. Typically I condemn Loadouts in Halo but in this case I think they’d work well.
Weapons available for Primary or Secondary slots: Magnum(2 clips), Automag(1 clips), SMG(2 clips), Silenced SMG(1 clips), Assault Rifle(2 clips), Shotgun(no spare clips).
Weapons on map with limited ammo that don’t respawn: Sniper Rifle, Flamethrower, Machine Gun Turret(can’t ripoff stand) and Battle Rifle.
You play/function as ODSTs. Health Packs are picked up with a press of a button and then either used on yourself or on a ‘dead’ teammate to revive them by holding a button.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS:
Probably also 5v5. Same setup as above but it’s multibomb Assault with respawns.
BATTLE ROYALE:
Large scale FFA Elimination. Play and function as ODSTs, regular human NPCs such as Marines, Lord Hood, Miranda Keyes and maybe even things like Grunts or Jackals. Possible alliance mechanic where you can temporarily join forces with other players for help or deception.
Y’know Mombassa streets could actually make an excellent Battle Royale-ish type map. The problem would be spawning.
However I think that if an ODST MP were introduced it should stick to what ODST currently has and not try to take more assets from Halo 3. Remember how long it took for Flood Firefight to work properly?
Heavy disagreement with this; ODSTs ought to not get motion trackers. If a player wants to check if anything is nearby, they might be able to pull up the map view (which should also have a deactivation option in gametype settings for increased high-tension gameplay).
The problem with reusing the Firefight maps in competitive multiplayer is that some of them are unfortunately just not built or balanced for such a purpose, and would require rather substantial overhauls for competitive usage.
I’m not saying it’s completely impossible, but would need a ‘fair’ bit of work.
Windward is one of the few maps that work in competitive, as-is. Devs might need to make a few more paths/corridors through the map, but it’s nowhere near as weird as some others might be (cough cough Chasm Ten).
Nor do I particularly agree with straight-line importation of H3 maps into ODST. Maybe if the BSPs are imported into the ODST mod tools and given a visual overhaul so they look like they fit into New Mombasa or an urban environment. (Or rebuilt with the ODST mod tools using as much pre-existing assets from ODST as possible.)
IMO, only Ghost Town and Longshore would fit as is.
If only ODST had loadout support… unfortunately, I suspect that is limited to Reach onwards. It’s an honest shame, too.
Oh well, more emphasis on equal starts and map control, then.
IMO, never mind about the traditional H3-style equipment. Instead, how about alternative ‘grenades’ with similar effects?
For example, on top of the original variants:
Fragmentation Grenade
Plasma Grenade
Spike Grenade
Ignition Grenade
There could also be stuff such as:
Illumination Grenade (gives off same effect as Flare, but has frag grenade arc)
Proximity Grenade (chuck it like an ignition grenade, no explosion effect but spawns a smaller trip mine upon ‘detonation’, won’t destroy vehicles but will instakill infantry that step on it)
Jammer Grenade (gives off same effect as the Radar Jammer, generates false readings on the VISR map)
Barrier Grenade (generates a three-second ‘deployable cover’ upon ‘detonating’, nowhere near as disruptive to gameplay flow as the bubble shield, can be utilized in an interference role by being chucked at opposing positions to interrupt enemy fire, etc.)
Jumper Grenade (spawns a four-second ‘gravity lift’ effect upon ‘detonating’, has enough lift to launch an ODST to the height of a normal deployable gravlift, substantially more tactical in usage)
Don’t really know how I feel about revival mechanics; if ODST could support them then I guess it’s worth looking into.
That said, in regards to ODST character mechanics, I would be in support of a rework such as the following:
‘STAMINA’ is redesignated as ‘ARMOR DURABILITY’
The ‘ARMOR DURABILITY’ gauge does not regenerate; once it is fully depleted, that’s it until respawn
‘ARMOR VAMPIRISM’ (and ‘HEALTH VAMPIRISM’) are toggle options in gametype settings to encourage more aggressive gameplay
Health increased by 50%, and will passively regenerate to a maximum of 30% of total (so as to prevent softlocks in campaign)
Back-smacks are no longer instant kills (just does standard melee damage)
Solution: two UNSC frigates above the city, one with green illumination (UNSC) and one red (Insurrectionist). Players spawn on their team’s respective frigates and drop down to the city in controllable ODST pods. Due to angling and altitude limitations, the pods can only reach halfway across the city before making landfall. For vehicles, players either use assets they find in the city below, or otherwise deploy from the frigates in special landing pods (the latter of which have a very lengthy spawn/respawn timer).
The overhead frigate managing attacker spawning might actually fix some of the issues with repurposing the Firefight maps in competitive modes. Chasm Ten would remain a problem map (even after tearing off the ceiling) due to its vertical design, but the rest…
…
Post-script: the Coastal Highway as a Desert Bus-style map. That would be aggravatingly fun.
Alternatively you could use one massive UNSC frigate over the city and have it shoot drop pods to random locations.
OR, if we want to do team based, A UNSC frigate on one side, and a Covenant Cruiser on the other, ODST’s vs Elites Battle Royale would for sure be interesting.
A to-scale Charon FFG in above the center of the city with a partial configuration of internal spaces (at least one infantry deployment bay on each side, an armory on each side, and corridors connecting both sides to the main hangar for potential access to air assets like the transport Hornet or an imported Falcon) could be an interesting variation… but it’s not as readily balanced as the scenario with two competing frigates.
Enabling/importing playable Elites into ODST is… uh… a very debatable/contestable possibility. Brutes are closer in potential compatibility than Elites would be (especially if factoring in the aforementioned hypothetical ‘armor durability’ mechanics for ODST), and it would be more accurate to the campaign experience, but even that is… at the very least, there will be substantially-uneven hitbox issues.
The Covenant cruiser would have to either be scaled down to Zanar-size or it would be substantially larger than the UNSC frigate (or devs just chuck scaling out the window in favor for relative ‘balance’, sigh).
We know next to nothing about Covey infantry deployment from their cruiser hullforms (aside from the central gravity lift, of course). Where do the pods drop from? Pick a random location on the hull and cram a Covey-textured deployment bay there? Launch the pods out from the hangars on the side? At least with the Corvette hullform we know the location of the pod deployment areas and could potentially set up a semi-accurate analogue to a frigate’s infantry deployment bay.
(I say all that, but with the dimensions of a Zanar-pattern Covey cruiser, one could probably wrangle the internal components as seen in the H1 levels Truth and Reconciliation and Keyes to form a decent approximation of the internal layout. And a Zanar is closely comparable to a wartime UNSC frigate in dimensions… hmm.)
In any case, I would rather attempt to keep some semblance of balance in effect for ODST competitive modes; perhaps the UNSC vs Covey scenario could have the “blue team” ODSTs spawning in with Covey weapons instead of UNSC weapons; thus keeping human vs human in effect without injecting Coveys and having some balancing issues regarding unit comparisons start popping up.
Though this concept did inspire another potential possibility.
Perhaps a further option for the 2-frigate mode could be “Hazard: Expanding Plague”. After the first (X) minutes of the match, a Zanar-pattern hull crashes into the center of the map and starts spewing Flood parasites. Players can be infected (re: instakilled) by infection forms, which emerge in waves from the doom-ship, along with various Combat and Pure Forms. The Flood AI home in on players, forcing both teams to fight not only each other but the Parasite as well.
The match can still be won by either team using standard methods, but every time a player is killed by the Flood, their team receives a penalty of -1 point (baseline, can be modified in settings), and being infected results in -3 points (baseline, can be modified in settings). If playing Territories, the Flood can (maybe, if possible in engine) seize and hold the zones, forcing teams to evict them from the control points. And the longer the game goes on, the more powerful the Flood waves become.
I think it’s fine to take assets from H3 and put them in ODST. I assume what took Floodfight so long was the A.I. stuff?
I agree Mombassa Streets could be utilized for Battle Royale - or sectioned off into smaller maps maybe. Isn’t RejectedShotgun making a New Mombassa multiplayer map?
I think I’d be okay with no Motion Trackers, yeah and just have VISR and Map View. Would accomodate the slower more tense gameplay. Either way, VISR and Map View would be nice gametype options.
All of the Firefight maps, and to a much lesser extent any utilized H3 multiplayer maps, would definitely need to be overhauled/tweaked with scenery objects yeah. I am confident that at minimum Alpha Site, Crater, Rally Point and Windward would be suitable. Probably would be cooler to use the Night versions btw.
That’s opinion so fair enough. I 100% agree that ODST-ifying maps or perhaps just outright creating fresh ODST maps would be ideal. Sidenote, it bothers me how underrated and underused Longshore is.
Believe me, I’m usually totally against Loadouts in Halo. I hate 4 and 5. But I’d be open to Loadouts in this case the way I mentioned them because that’s pretty balanced and there’s no perks. Ultimately, I’d be more than happy with equal starts and map control/scavenging, yeah that’d probably be for the best.
Can’t believe I forgot Fire Bombs which are criminally underused and would be so appropriate! I agree it would be ideal to have custom made UNSC style equipment and imo should be as follows:
*Frag Grenades
*Incindinary Grenades
*Mine(human style trip mine you can stick to surfaces not just the floor.)
*Flashbang Grenades.
*Smoke Grenades.
*Blip Grenades(temporarily disrupts/jams the surrounding area on enemy VISR maps).
*Deployable Barrier(a hexagonal ball that juts/folds out in all directions leaving a stationary chunk of cover which can be destroyed. Think of those metal cover objects seen on the beaches of D-Day. Could also use this to block pathways.)
*Deployable Ladder or Trampoline(I love the Grav Lift but for this I think some kind of lower tech solution would be more appropriate.)
Back-smacks should be standard melee damage unless you have time to hold down melee to perform an assassination.
The health system should simply be a non-regenerative 100% that can only be replenished with Health Packs and a non-regenerative 100% for armour that protects health until it’s depleted. Possibly the lower the health percentage the more limited/slower movement is?
I’m fine with those Vampirism options for custom options. The more custom options the better imo.
I’m usually vehemently against a sprint system for Halo when playing as Spartans(it makes no sense). I can stomach it in Infinite because they’ve compromised quite well. But in this context, where we’d be playing as regular, fragile human soldiers; I think I’d be fine with a regenerative Sprint Stamina Bar. Lowered weapon and all. It should regenerate slower the more damaged you are or at least be able to tweak that in settings.
Starting the match in manoeuvrable drop-pods would be awesome. If that were to be done, maybe have it as a feature for the Battle Royale mode on a specially built outdoors map for that mode?
What’s Desert Bus? I agree though that a highway jampacked with abandoned vehicles could work as a map.
P.S. One of my many dreams for Halo is to have the whole insurrectionist/rebel element of the lore woven into the games. So with that in mind I’d definitely appreciate if multiplayer was ODSTs/Marines VS Rebels.
Sidenote, I want a large scale space battle mode where you can compete solo or in small groups operating smaller vessels or even, as a bigger group, operating entire Frigate vessels. Everything as to scale as possible.
Smaller ships are way more mobile and vulnerable but all the points they attain are divided among fewer players, greater risk & reward, perhaps the route for more skilled players. While bigger vessels are the opposite, less mobile but far more formidable/far less vulnerable and points are divided among more players, perhaps the route for less skilled players. A.I. ships. Boarding mechanics. Hazards.
Speaking of all that, to be quite honest I want a Halo Space Pirate/Bounty Hunter RPG. And yes, I demand the ability to recruit a Grunt crewmate.
P.S. I have so many ideas but no mod/tech skills lol. I actually have an idea for a new campaign that at some point in the future I’ll be creating in the form of a Halo Anime film which I’ll just release for free on youtube. Is that allowed, legally?