My Halo Wars 2 suggestions.

Games Halo Wars Series
1

So I heard Creative Assembly Is taking suggestions. First off I would just like to say please don’t make this into “Total War: Halo”. While I’ve never played Total War I feel that halo wars 2 should feel like its own game building off of what made halo wars unique. Just because halo wars is an RTS doesn’t mean its not a Halo game. One of the things that makes any halo game great is its focus on custom games and competitive games.

Suggestions:

Make matchmaking more skill base: Like have an XP ranking system that goes to say 50 (It wouldn’t take to long to reach max level) but once you reach lvl 50 the system calculates you’re skill and puts you in to a league. The leagues would be Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum… and then each league would have a sub rank like maybe 5 ranks per league and once you reach the 5th rank you move in to the next league. Now you could do the ranks in different ways one being you get so many wins in a row you move up a rank but if you lose too many in a row you lose a rank. Okay say I’m Silver Rank 1 and I lose 3 games I drop down to Bronze Rank 5. There are lots of ways you could do ranks this was just my idea.

More players: I’m thinking 10-12 players max

Forge Mode: (Map Creator) Forge is a must for all halo games. With Keyboard and mouse support. It will be super easy to make maps (Oh and please make sure the maps are dynamic like how some maps in halo wars you can have flood attack your enemys base stuff like that)

More Game modes for matchmaking and customs: Halo wars had 4 game modes Deathmatch, CTF, Reinforcement, Tug of war. I would like to have more games to play in custom games like FFA, King of the Hill, Infection (How infection would work is 1 or 2 Players start out as flood. The flood players units would spawn off map. The none flood would have to defend their bases for say 20 mins If your base is destroyed your units start to spawn from off map ( you could build them yourself or it could be like reinforcement.). Last Man standings Units gets a health and damage boost.) Also would be nice if we could make our own gamemodes or at least change the roles to the game mode we are given.

Game Browser: This is something that has been asked for in all of the halo games. With this you would have a list of open custom games you could join. (If you don’t want to play matchmaking.)

Unit Tech Trees: This something I think would be cool but not everyone may like. With this you would have more choices then what you had in halo wars. For example you upgrade you’re marines to the max you can then chose their next upgrade. You can Turn them in to ODST’s or Spartans. (Note: they wouldn’t be as powerful as the hero spartans like red team and they wouldn’t be able to highjack stuff.) The spartens would have more health and damage but you could drop the ODST from anywhere in the map. another example is with a Wrath you could upgrade to be more powerful vs Land Vehicles or you can turn it in to an AA Wrath. (I think once you do this it should cost to revert the unit or you shouldn’t beable to revert at all)

This is all the suggestions I have right now if I think of other I will comment below.

2

> Make matchmaking more skill base:

i think everyone will agree with you on that, just depends on what route they take to determine skill

> More players: I’m thinking 10-12 players max

this sounds good but think of the connection speed for 10+ players? in Starcraft2 a 4v4 can get laggy sometimes depending on players, and usually players get kicked when they time out. For custom games we should be allowed to have more than in matchmaking. But matchmaking should have a lower limit due to connectivity issues that arise.

> Forge Mode: (Map Creator)

this is almost a must**.** The community could be apart of creating maps/custom games and many other features**.**

> More Game modes for matchmaking and customs
> Game Browser

i think for matchmaking we should just stick to one game mode, so i am not stuck searching a game mode no one plays. But custom games could be anything the user creates. Starcraft 2 has a nice arcade where you can find a really unique game to play instead of playing a normal game. A custom games lobby would be nice to search and find other game modes.

> Unit Tech Trees:

this would a create a lot of variety in the game, and balancing each choice would be hard. making sure one upgrade does not overshadow the other.

3

4v4 would seem like a more realistic player max, for the reason already stated (potential lag and dropping), as well as when you add more players it shifts the gameplay focus from individual skills and tactics to double-teaming. That’s not a bad thing at all, but its more basic/primitive in terms of competition. Obviously even with lower player count games you will still have odd-man encounters, but there is still plenty of room for individual effort to shine through.
My 2 cents.

4

I was a huge fan of the original Halo Wars game and have lost many hours to it. However, I think a lot of us noticed (at least I did) a few issues from a visual design, game-play, and even lore standpoint.

For a strategy game Halo Wars looked beautiful, but I found myself annoyed with the preset colors for the units in both single and multiplayer. In the original Halo Wars demo and in the Halo games in general, it was obvious to tell friend from foe easily even without every unit being the same color. Having the spectrum of colors you see in the main series would have been great for immersion. I recognize that if multiple people were playing as the same army, a monochromatic color for your army would be important. Still, I wish the option had been available when it was just 1v1 UNSC vs Covenant. The only other visual annoyance I had was the weird sizing of buildings-to-units (at least with the UNSC).

Halo Wars game-play was fun, and I liked the feeling of being able to send special commands to my units. But because it was hard to split everyone into groups, unless all your units were of the same kind, it was likely that you would end up crashing Warthogs, and locking down Cobras when you really just wanted everyone to fire their rockets. The special abilities also created a dilemma of strategy. Giving special commands was fun, but when the majority of the game-play is related to the preparation phase rather than the execution, (building and upgrading your forces vs. direct control of the battle) it can make the special abilities feel a little unnecessary. The player who focused on micro-managing the battlefield usually lost to the player who was busy building and upgrading his next mob of soldiers.

Lastly, while I enjoyed the experience as a whole, it didn’t…and I hate using this phrasing…feel quite like ‘Halo’. Understand, I’m not referring to the story and I’m not blaming an RTS for being different from an FPS. What bugged me was how different the combat and strategy in the game was to what we had witnessed in the main series. When you really think about, the majority of the big battles in the main series were all about small groups of ground forces being dropped in to secure an area so that more forces from orbit could be dropped in, in an ongoing battle to secure the planet/construct in order to support a separate spaceship battle taking place above you.
In Halo Wars your base gets dropped from orbit, and it gives the impression that your units are also being dropped in from orbit (or were dropped in with the base itself). But it still plays so much like a traditional RTS. You still start off with a base, you still have to collect resources, which you then use to ‘buy’ soldiers, and you still win by protecting your own base while destroying the enemy’s base. To be fair the game was definitely streamlined and fine tuned to fit the Halo series better. But at its core it still had more in common with pretty much any other sci-fi RTS than it did with its own source material.

For Halo Wars 2, I want a game where the preparation and execution phases are seperate. Rather then using resources to build soldiers and upgrade, if the player was able to actually design their army and upgrades beforehand (sort of like the Age of Empires III supply deck) then more of the player’s attention would be on the execution or combat phase of the game. Rather than buying everything during the fight, there would be an escalation timer and after a certain amount of time, all players would level up together and unlock newer units, upgrades, and bombardment powers. Level 1 is your basic infantry, and scout vehicles. By level 3 you have advanced infantry, tanks and air support. By the last level (probably level 4 or 5) you can unlock super units like a Scarab or a Mammoth. The last level could also bring about hero units and fully upgraded bombardment powers like ODSTs, or full use of the MAC cannon.

I also think rather than bases, control points on the map to conquer and defend would work better. In the main Halo series, you don’t attack an actual terrestrial enemy citadel very often. For Halo Wars 2 it would make more sense that your objective is to conquer and hold the map, rather than building bases or fighting to blow up one enemy base during an invasion. These control points are the locations where your forces would spawn via dropship or drop pod. While you wouldn’t build a base like before, you would instead be able to set up turrets, force-fields, jackal towers, and other defenses at the control points under your control. In the later levels of the battle, you might even be able to build a stationary cannon that can hit enemy targets across the entire battlefield.

A player wins by either completely annihilating the enemy forces; having all the control points at once; or by holding the most control points for the longest period of time before the endgame timer goes off. The endgame timer could be set to a lengthy amount, anywhere between a half-hour to an hour. But just having the timer at all can help end those circular matches that go on needlessly for several hours.

Thanks for reading (or listening if you have a screen-reader). Let me know your own thoughts. Do you want the core game-play to be completely changed, or should we not break what isn’t really broken?

5

> 2533274810031196;4:
> Having the spectrum of colors you see in the main series would have been great for immersion. I recognize that if multiple people were playing as the same army, a monochromatic color for your army would be important. Still, I wish the option had been available when it was just 1v1 UNSC vs Covenant. The only other visual annoyance I had was the weird sizing of buildings-to-units (at least with the UNSC).

Multiplayer/online is hardly ever concerned with immersion. Visibility and differentiation between teams is a must… All of classic Halo is guilty of this with the traditional Red vs Blue scheme.

> 2533274810031196;4:
> Halo Wars game-play was fun, and I liked the feeling of being able to send special commands to my units. But because it was hard to split everyone into groups, unless all your units were of the same kind, it was likely that you would end up crashing Warthogs, and locking down Cobras when you really just wanted everyone to fire their rockets. The special abilities also created a dilemma of strategy. Giving special commands was fun, but when the majority of the game-play is related to the preparation phase rather than the execution, (building and upgrading your forces vs. direct control of the battle) it can make the special abilities feel a little unnecessary. The player who focused on micro-managing the battlefield usually lost to the player who was busy building and upgrading his next mob of soldiers.

Wow, that is painfully wrong. Perhaps you should go back and watch some higher level play. The higher level players had superb micro skills and that with their ability to simultaneously manage their economies (resources, training, upgrading) and engage the enemy made them good. Issuing commands to specific units to use their special abilities was not hard as you could quickly toggle between unit types, or with some deftness individually issue orders. Not using Micro is like using a butter knife to perform surgery when you have a perfectly good scalpel.

> 2533274810031196;4:
> Lastly, while I enjoyed the experience as a whole, it didn’t…and I hate using this phrasing…feel quite like ‘Halo’… But at its core it still had more in common with pretty much any other sci-fi RTS than it did with its own source material…
> What bugged me was how different the combat and strategy in the game was to what we had witnessed in the main series. When you really think about, the majority of the big battles in the main series were all about small groups of ground forces being dropped in to secure an area so that more forces from orbit could be dropped in, in an ongoing battle to secure the planet/construct in order to support a separate spaceship battle taking place above you…

Well yes, it pretty well had to be that way because it was an RTS. It can only do what fits within its genre. Also, it’s a game that looks at the Halo universe from a different perspective. Of course there are bases that are attacked, and large scale warfare in the Halo U (read the novels/lore). Halo FPS games just don’t focus on them, but rather the smaller and more personal engagements.

> 2533274810031196;4:
> For Halo Wars 2, I want a game where the preparation and execution phases are seperate. Rather then using resources to build soldiers and upgrade, if the player was able to actually design their army and upgrades beforehand (sort of like the Age of Empires III supply deck) then more of the player’s attention would be on the execution or combat phase of the game. Rather than buying everything during the fight, there would be an escalation timer and after a certain amount of time, all players would level up together and unlock newer units, upgrades, and bombardment powers. Level 1 is your basic infantry, and scout vehicles. By level 3 you have advanced infantry, tanks and air support. By the last level (probably level 4 or 5) you can unlock super units like a Scarab or a Mammoth. The last level could also bring about hero units and fully upgraded bombardment powers like ODSTs, or full use of the MAC cannon.

Sounds like your asking for a No Rush type gameplayer. Set time to build up before attacking. That is fine for some games, or even game types, but is not the basis for fast paced RTS games such as Halo Wars. Even Age of Empires 3, which you reference was an on-the-fly type game. You had to simultaneously manage resource collection, army training, upgrading, harrassment, defense, and attack.

> 2533274810031196;4:
> I also think rather than bases, control points on the map to conquer and defend would work better. In the main Halo series, you don’t attack an actual terrestrial enemy citadel very often. For Halo Wars 2 it would make more sense that your objective is to conquer and hold the map, rather than building bases or fighting to blow up one enemy base during an invasion. These control points are the locations where your forces would spawn via dropship or drop pod. While you wouldn’t build a base like before, you would instead be able to set up turrets, force-fields, jackal towers, and other defenses at the control points under your control…

That’s a rather serious change for an already established game. Removing bases from HW would be akin to removing shields from Halo. A weird and unnecessary change.

> 2533274810031196;4:
> A player wins by either completely annihilating the enemy forces; having all the control points at once; or by holding the most control points for the longest period of time before the endgame timer goes off. The endgame timer could be set to a lengthy amount, anywhere between a half-hour to an hour. But just having the timer at all can help end those circular matches that go on needlessly for several hours.

I have never once played a game that lasted several hours. You’re doing something wrong.

6

> this sounds good but think of the connection speed for 10+ players? in Starcraft2 a 4v4 can get laggy sometimes depending on players, and usually players get kicked when they time out. For custom games we should be allowed to have more than in matchmaking. But matchmaking should have a lower limit due to connectivity issues that arise.

True but it suck in HW when u had 3 friend who wanted to play with u would u could only do a 2 v2

7

> 2533274899748630;6:
> > this sounds good but think of the connection speed for 10+ players? in Starcraft2 a 4v4 can get laggy sometimes depending on players, and usually players get kicked when they time out. For custom games we should be allowed to have more than in matchmaking. But matchmaking should have a lower limit due to connectivity issues that arise.
>
>
> True but it suck in HW when u had 3 friend who wanted to play with u would u could only do a 2 v2

haha I WISH is still had that problem. The majority of my friends now have wives and kids and no time to play. #LifeHappens :frowning:

8

> 2533274808472678;7:
> > 2533274899748630;6:
> > > this sounds good but think of the connection speed for 10+ players? in Starcraft2 a 4v4 can get laggy sometimes depending on players, and usually players get kicked when they time out. For custom games we should be allowed to have more than in matchmaking. But matchmaking should have a lower limit due to connectivity issues that arise.
> >
> >
> > True but it suck in HW when u had 3 friend who wanted to play with u would u could only do a 2 v2
>
>
> haha I WISH is still had that problem. The majority of my friends now have wives and kids and no time to play. #LifeHappens :frowning:

Hey man ill play with you add me “warwolfrider”