By now most of us have heard that Halo 4 will include these features. Now what i wanted to do with this post is just share the vision i have of these aspects, and my view on their best interpretation. I would rather this doesn’t become a Halo 4 hate thread, and i would prefer people avoid saying that “Halo is a game about starting equal.” I understand this, and agree, but now we have this information there is nothing we can do about it, so if you could avoid flaming, it would be greatly appreciated.
Firstly, i think the word “perks” doesn’t represent the feature appropriately, i think it leads people to believe a call of duty type system. I disagree. Let me explain, what if every piece of armor changed your stats slightly. So for instance, knee guards changed your movement speed or agility, in different ways. None would be better than others, just different. If you started with knee guards that gave you a 5% bonus to sprint, when you later unlocked knee guards that let you strafe faster, that may be cool and all but you lose your speed bonus. This might slightly alleviate the balance issue of higher level players dominating the battlefield. I imagine these to be minor changes for the most part, that just play towards your play style a little. What if also though they had downsides, so a big chest plate would increase your health (after shields so a skilled player would take off the shields and still be a able to finish you off with a head-shot), but your movement speed was decreased. This could be extended to hit box changes as well, so you have a larger body hit box but you can take more damage.
The final thing that occurred to me was the visor. What if the markers on the HUD that show a player where the power weapons are was a helmet specific ability. This helmet would give no other bonuses, a experienced player would be able to time the power weapon drop, so would still have a distinct advantage. A more advanced player would also be able to you’s a helmet with another advantage, balancing out the bonus to newer players.
The next thing is the customizable load-out. I imagine something like gears of war when it comes to this, a choice of primary and secondary weapons from a choice of three or four weapons. This would hardly change anything, in some game-types in other halo games you could spawn with BR primary, AR secondary, would it matter if you could choose which is your primary? Anything remotely powerful would remain on the map for pickup. Then you would match that load out with an armor set, like i talked about above. If armor abilities are in the game, you may be able to choose this too.
Remember, this is just my imagination for the system. I understand it goes against some core halo principles, but if this was the way they implemented character customization, i would not be too upset. Anyway, please share your opinions, i would be happy to add these to the OP for other to see.
TL/DR
If you don’t want to read the post, you might as well not bother replying, i can’t summarize my ideas, so if you don’t want to read, go. I won’t hold it against you.
