Regarding some of the new features in H4 - Ordinance/Instant Respawns/Killcams
I believe that personal ordinance would be great for FFA instead of Team Slayer. The reason is that FFA spawns are harder to balance in regards to the distance of power weapons/key map areas. It’s not guaranteed that you’ll always have the same initial spawn, so then it’s not fair that someone spawns closer to a particular power weapon to you. With personal ordinance instead of on map weapons, this problem is eliminated. The player who plays the best, will get the more points and therefore earn their weapons and their victory.
For the reasons described above about map control and random spawns, I also believe that Instant Respawns should be in FFA instead of Team Slayer.
And then because of instant respawns there would be no need for killcams. I think it would be ideal to integrate them in to the Theatre. It hasn’t changed much since Halo 3 and infact now can only be viewed by the 1 person. This would give that one person the opportunity to go back and find out just how they were bested (from a 1st person view, instead of 3rd) without it impacting their current game.
Regarding Halo Reach type features - Loadouts/AAs
Halo Reach was the first game which stepped away from spawning all players on an equal footing and Halo 4 followed in its path. The problem we have though is that Halo has always been an Arena shooter and that’s what we’re fans of. There have been complaints about certain weapons which are overpowered and others which are underpowered.
The DMR has been the most discussed with it being able to dominate all ranges and many people want it nerfed. I don’t. I would rather have other weapons buffed. It would be an opportunity for us to finally get the 4-shot BR back (don’t worry, the DMR should still win long range) and then we could have a stronger carbine too (it shoots fast, but it’s meant to be a primary weapon, not a support weapon). And finally, the Magnum is a secondary weapon which if it’s lucky to be picked over the Boltshot will be dropped for a power weapon anyway. It needs to be more like the Flagnum.
After having some of the weapons in our loadouts re-balanced, it would also be worth re-balancing our AAs. Active camo as an AA really affects the pace of the game, considerably more so on bigger maps. This is why I think it should be dropped as an AA and put in to Personal Ordinance (it would be in the same class as Speed Boost and Damage Boost. Let’s call it Stealth Boost). This way it would become a one use item and wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
This maybe could have gone in the section above, but meh
Other AAs that could do with a touch up include: the Regen Field, which made my eyes water the first time I stepped in to it due to the distortion (I’m not sure whether I’m used to it now or this has been addressed already in a weekly update); the hardlight shield, which causes players to slow down and is not used that much because of this. Users need to stay at full speed; the thruster pack, which is more of a cheeky slide than a powerful thrust. It should become more like the thruster pack the Flood use.
Regarding Halo 3 features - Ranks/Maps/Weapons
The most important aspect of Halo 3 was the 1-50 ranking system. There’s another thread about this which I’ve already commented on but here’s what I said in short: The reason for excluding the 1-50 from Halo 4 was because of boosting, but Halo 4 has a progression system which offers gameplay changing rewards. Naturally boosting is more prevalent in this system.
With a rank back, we would need more Arena styled maps. More symmetrical 4v4 maps where we can have an equal opportunity fight. By this I mean the weapon placement. Each team needs to spawn roughly the same distance from each power weapon so that they can fight over them. And then whichever team wins the fight wins the power weapon.
Regarding Halo 2 features - Settings/Maps
A lot of the Halo 4 maps remind me of the traditional Halo 2 maps. Big, asymmetrical maps better suited for FFA (& Zombies)/BTB (& Objective)/Snipers gameplay. Because of this, I think it would be a great idea for 343i to aim for a Halo 2 feel with the settings of Slayer Pro. If they were to remove the DMR and the Forerunner weapons then it would become a great play space for the fans of the more classic gameplay.
Regarding anything I’ve missed
There’s bound to be stuff that you disagree with and other stuff that I’ve downright missed, so feel free to point that out to me. Thanks for reading.