The title really just says it all… lol… but in all seriousness after sinking much of my time into H5 WZFF, I realized I will be sorely disappointed if Infinite implements bullet sponge enemies/bosses into its campaign or a potential firefight mode. H5’s FF is only moderately fun when you have good weapons and vehicles and teammates with such; not only that, but a team that communicates and cooperates with each other. Very rarely has this been my experience, which has made the bullet sponge enemies very annoying to whittle down.
I understand the idea was to get REQ packs in order to have a good experience in Warzone, which would in turn make the enemy-killing experience much more enjoyable. So if Infinite does not have a REQ system, then I am hopeful that there will not be bullet sponge enemy types. Thank you and good day.
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> The title really just says it all… lol… but in all seriousness after sinking much of my time into H5 WZFF, I realized I will be sorely disappointed if Infinite implements bullet sponge enemies/bosses into its campaign or a potential firefight mode. H5’s FF is only moderately fun when you have good weapons and vehicles and teammates with such; not only that, but a team that communicates and cooperates with each other. Very rarely has this been my experience, which has made the bullet sponge enemies very annoying to whittle down.
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> I understand the idea was to get REQ packs in order to have a good experience in Warzone, which would in turn make the enemy-killing experience much more enjoyable. So if Infinite does not have a REQ system, then I am hopeful that there will not be bullet sponge enemy types. Thank you and good day.
WZFF wasn’t in the game at launch so wasn’t particularly designed that way. That said I totally agree about bullet sponges. The reason for the original Warzone bosses having such high health was to allow teams to compete over them.
I totally agree with you though. Really hope that it doesn’t return
If you have a game mode with a large number of players… all sporting moderate to high powered weapons…the bosses have no choice but to be spongy.
The other options of increasing speed and movement to make them harder to hit… or making them stronger offensively (nuke type weapons) would be more or less jarring?
The best method would be to have groups of bosses that truly worked as a team to take the players down. I’m not sure game AI is up to this though.
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> What’s the alternative?
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> If you have a game mode with a large number of players… all sporting moderate to high powered weapons…the bosses have no choice but to be spongy.
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> The other options of increasing speed and movement to make them harder to hit… or making them stronger offensively (nuke type weapons) would be more or less jarring?
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> The best method would be to have groups of bosses that truly worked as a team to take the players down. I’m not sure game AI is up to this though.
I’m sure there are plenty of alternatives. Groups of bosses, like you said, is possibly one. Taking down a huge boss with a weak spot, having to work together in order to open that weak spot is another one. Yes we had that with the Warden Eternal but even then it took waaay too long to kill. I like the idea of having an enemy change up their move-set once they are on the brink of death, becoming more challenging as they get closer to being defeated. Perhaps once the boss is damaged, you then have to use plasma weapons instead of unsc weapons (for instance). So then you have to be strategic about which teammate has what weapon at one time. Just spitballing here.
The fun can just be getting to the “weak spot”, in and of itself. Scarab fights are pretty much just that if you really think about it. The fun is getting it damaged so you can board it fight covenant on board, to get to it’s weak spot and jump off before it explodes. Make an enemy type like that. Idk, there are plenty of other options than simply just getting a powerful weapon and ganging up on a bullet sponge. I think it’s more fulfilling when the engagements are more strategic than just head on combat.
Honestly yeah, I can’t tell you how many times on mythic or legendary firefight a spongy warden eternal would soak up scorpion fire especially at it’s weak point and these were either ONI scorpions or hannibal. WZF can be very annoying and a nice balancing for infinite would be more akin to old school firefight with bigger areas and added objectives like take a point, defend or survive while a heavier enemy like a boss (not bullet spongy though) or a swarm of enemies would be the harder rounds that or drop pod enemies that would surprise you at random.
My preferred alternate would be to increase the aggression and quantity of enemies especially for a mode like firefight. I realize that increasing the number of NPCs is taxing on processing, so I say axe the 24v24vNPC mode and bring it back down to 4 players. Halo is at it’s best (in a PvE environment) when you are outnumbered. Give me an aggressive pack of grunts that I have to run away from because I simply cannot shoot and reload fast enough. That is way more entertaining than sitting a half mile back in a scorpion firing endless rounds into a nearly invulnerable enemy.
I’ve played like 10,000 games of WZ and WZFF. The trick to defeating the AI is to understand their weakness. They’re not spongy then. For example, you could attack a Swarmlord with rockets and vehicles etc, but a Twin Jewels to the weak spot in its back will drop it almost immediately.
Lesser enemies are easy to deal with just pull out a ghost or wraith and go on a splatter spree.
I saw a similar thread recently on enemies in Firefight etc, you need to coordinate with your team and attack each boss in accordance to its weakness otherwise of course it’s going to bullet sponge. There needs to be an element of challenge to the game. Do I agree that there needs to be some updates of how the AI interact against the player? Absolutely. The enemies need to have a “personality” almost to break up the monotony of repeatedly attacking in the same way, that being said however makes the enemies predictable and more or less easy in a sense that their weaknesses and habits aren’t going to differ a great deal game to game.
Find what works for you and exploit it at every opportunity you can.
The Scarab Battles of Halo 3 are by far the BEST boss battles in any FPS game. They were a challenge yet they had a very clear weak point that wasnt a pain to take out. You just had to be smart about how you approached it. We need more battles like that. Maybe a Banished Scarab, since they are uparmored and would be more challenging than a Covie Scarab.
If 343i want to give people choice in Infinite then they need to remove bullet sponge enemies to help give players unique ways to fight back and no more unbalanced homing attacks where enemy AI in Halo 5 could instant kill players in the spawn area sometimes plus wasn’t a fan of Hunter being randomly overpowered at anti-air. Enemy’s should be exploitable to some degree so that players can take down their shields and find weaknesses.
I know I’m super late to the party, but I absolutely agree that the enemies in Halo 5 (campaign and FF) are still to this day way too spongy. My biggest personal gripe is being forced to use vehicles by the 4th round in order to succeed whatsoever. I’m an infantry player; meaning I like holding a position or advancing cover to cover while firing precise shots or short, controlled bursts. FF does NOT cater to infantry players whatsoever. You have what? Minimum 20 variants of assault rifle, SMG, DMR, etc? The thing is: I’d like to experiment with all of them, but I find myself simply choosing the one that gives you more ammo and a Patrol Case equip so I don’t have to run to a REQ station to get more bullets every minute of game play.
There are an incredible amount of issues that FF has, but the enemy’s ability to soak up constant shots (and your personal shields being made from construction paper while an enemy GRUNT can take a SPNKr round to the face and shrug it off) are two of my biggest peeves with Halo 5’s FF mode specifically.
In order to fix it in Infinite: you can go a few routes. I’ll list off my personal thoughts and just kind of leave them here.
Blend Halo 4’s “Loadouts” system with Halo Reach’s enemy combatants system. In this way we can choose what basic weapons we want from the get go (AR/Sidekick/BR/etc), what types of grenades we’d like (so happy to see the Spike Grenade making a comeback, by the way!), our tactical ability and/or equipment, and perhaps, the ability to call in a REQ drop based on your own personal preference: i.e. - I choose to select a Sniper Rifle as a REQ drop when I earn enough points that can only be opened by myself whereas my teammate might choose to call in a Heatwave or something, just an example. Now that this system is in play, let’s talk about the enemies. In Reach, if I was playing FF on Heroic, here’s what happens: instead of the enemies being incredibly spongy, they simply have better AI (they shoot a bit quicker or more accurately, chuck grenades at players behind cover, try to flank from different angles, but overall, they take the same amount of hits to kill, with the shields of elites being only SLIGHTLY (key word) spongier (which makes sense, because they’re at a higher rank overall), grunts simply taking two head shots to pop (Ultras) and them dealing only a little more damage (and certainly not wiping out my shields at a speed faster than slipspace travel). In this way, the challenge is still there, but the mode is enjoyable and I’m not forced to sit in a tank or a Wasp peppering the same lone grunt for 20 seconds only to be blasted away by another grunt 200 yards away on the ground with a fuel rod gun. - You could take the idea a step further from something mentioned above by implementing actual mission objectives (kill these sponges on Ghosts or kill the 12 Warden Eternals with the 2 minutes we have left). Personally, I would like to see more focus on team objectives. Assign mission objectives to specific Spartan groups or have multiple objectives (within reason, can’t stress that enough) going at the same time. Better yet, have the objectives make sense for the map. Let’s pretend Bazaar is a FF map for a moment: some objectives could be: Protect the Central Market from incoming hostiles. Then while you’re doing that, another objective pops up and says: Go to location X and kill the Kig-Yar Commander. Then all of a sudden, drop pods start raining down onto the roofs and: Uh-oh, you have a few Kig-Yar snipers and Jiralhanae Stalkers. Objective: eliminate the deployed spec ops-sniper team. These would make rounds feel engaging and would force players to still cooperate and play the game in a tactful way. - Have vehicles on maps available, but do not make vehicle play the sole purpose of the mode. Vehicles used to be used to get a few dozen kills or take out other vehicles and then: Uh-oh, your Warthog is out of order from taking too much plasma damage. Better abandon it. So now you’re forced to fight with boots on the ground and the weapons you’ve got. Vehicles added an element of fun back in the day, and I remember plenty of matches where we managed to keep those vehicles going for long periods of time; but the other players involved would still have plenty to shoot at without feeling like they need to be in the vehicle too. - Take out the time five minute time period, please. I don’t want to feel rushed and nobody else does either. I don’t know a single person who enjoys it when the time runs out because I just couldn’t pump enough bullets into the four armored, needle-spitting hunters who decided to spawn on the other side of the map. Which brings me to my final way to fix FF - The spawn time is WAY too long in Halo 5. I, nor anyone else should have to wait a full 60 seconds to respawn. Even 20 seconds is too long; especially when there’s already a timer ticking away. If enough of your team dies, guess what? Suddenly that bullet sponge becomes a lot harder to take down for the one or two guys who didn’t get splashed from 150 yards away by a stray projectile. That means the round is pretty much over for you. Also; spawn the characters closer to the action. If you add 60 seconds waiting to spawn followed by another 60 seconds of running all the way from Spawn Point B to the target, guess what? I’ve now wasted almost half the timer just waiting to shoot the enemy–until I inevitably get struck down by a stray projectile.Halo Infinite really looks like it has potential. I want to love it. I want it to be the ultimate Halo experience for players veteran and those who never played a Halo game in their entire lives.
You say you want Infinite to bring the game back to its roots?
Put the squeeze on bullet sponges and go back to those classic ODST/Reach FF vibes.
TL;DR - I don’t like sponges either, I’ve listed a bunch of ways you could put the kibosh on sponges and make FF a great experience in Infinite, I want to love the game. Stop Spongy Enemies.
If you made it to the end, thanks a lot! I hope my ramblings offered some insight. Catch you starside!
I would like the removal of how 343i handled many of their AI in terms of bullet sponging. However I’m not sure 343i will pull it off because its easier to do and they are in crunch time. So we’ll have to see
Also want to point out: Please don’t make it where it literally takes one mode to rank up to max rank. I got sick and tired of grinding WZ over and over jus for that 152.