You have to stand directly on the flag to return it
There are no flag home/away markers
Bungie refers to territories as hills and use the word
“contested” incorrectly - contested is when two players of opposite teams are in the same hill
Bomb arm times are absurd
Bomb disarm times are more absurd
There aren’t any decent attack/defend maps - near enough all maps only work well (depends on definition of well…) for slayer alone
Flag (or core) dropped/taken announcements sometimes don’t happen
Nav points are far too translucent, making it much less noticeable when they flash to signify an objective being taken
Spartans are far better than elites in Invasion Slayer. Spartans spawn with pistols for the first 25 kills and all of their drops are much better, especially since the plasma launcher got nerfed since the beta
With an average enough team skunking opponents on Boneyard is too easy
On stockpile one team simply gets a better spawn
Stockpile flags spawn on random plates, which results in one team just needing to get lucky
Oddballs, especially in Hot Potato reset anywhere, again replacing tactics with luck
Armour Lock is too good for a defending side as beyond generally being OP it allows for players to waste time so their team can respawn
The Banshee is far too powerful if taken by a spartan on Invasion Breakpoint
Territories retain their time take for far too long after an attacker has left
Offense/Defense isn’t announced at the beginning of a round, it would definitely be preferred if it was like Halo 2/3 where it was
Names of gametypes aren’t consistent at all. Sometimes bomb actually means neutral bomb whereas at other times it can mean 1 bomb. The same applies to flag.
Human close range loadout with a shotgun outright beats the covenant close range loadout with a sword.
If a Banshee continually tricks it’s impossible for rockets or plasma launcher shots to even lock on. This makes camping with a banshee on certain maps ridiculously easy.
Bungie’s poor effort to patch the ability to leave Asylum has actually improved the glitch in Infection as the lower soft kill zone is only a problem for zombies.
No flag tossing. This one is really up for debate, but personally I feel on many maps it was a good thing. It’s all about knowing whether it’s worth giving your position away for the exta speed. However on smaller maps, like The Pit, it was a tad too good.
Having no motion tracker when holding objectives doesn’t make sense. It means the attacking bomb holder feels they have to run in blindly, just hoping no one notices. Pair this with the long arm times and it just makes for a pretty screwed up gametype.
There are too many gametypes where a lot of luck is involved. Headhunter, Stockpile, Crazy King, Hot Potato etc. There should be more regular flag and bomb.
Flag reset times can only be set to 15 seconds or 30 seconds, meaning it doesn’t always fit the map as the creator intends.
On splitscreen there are simply no announcements. None. As an avid splitscreen and objective fan (nearly all my games are played with my brother) I think that really ought to change. On some gametypes I do get announcements - it’s strange and exceptionally inconcistent.
If there’s one thing that compiling this list has proven to me it’s that Bungie don’t understand their own game. Basic terminology flaws, inconsistencies across gametypes and poorly thought out maps (1 Bomb, Reflection comes to mind) are what make Halo: Reach objective gametypes just awful.
This is coming from someone who has played Halo 3 Social Skirmish (yes, people did play it!), Halo 2 Flag/bomb and Halo CE on PC to death. Bungie are totally clueless as to how their own gametypes work, or more, how they should work. It’s as if Halo: Reach was made by a different developer and so they make noob errors with how gametypes work.
This list is long enough to show exactly why objective is broken, but if you have your own issues with certain gametypes beyond slayer feel free to add them.
You may be wondering why I’m posting it here, the simple answer? It will genuinely be likely to get noticed by someone who has a respectable position in 343i. It’s just horrible to see Reach in this state when I know it could be so brilliant.
My only hope for Reach is that 343i take over and come up with a godly TU.
((This is originally a post made by my brother on the Halo: Reach forums, I have edited it a little with his permission of course))
Yes, it’s pretty bad. I find it both amazing and disappointing that something so simple wasn’t highlighted during playtesting. I’ve come to the conclusion that Bungie has become so watered down with FASA employees and people with a non-FPS background that obvious things like this slip through.
It was honestly one of the first things I tried when I played an objective game with a dropshield. Halo 3, Last Resort, 1 Bomb could be won or lost by opponents getting ahold of a bubble shield - they’re that good. Dropshields are far too strong for objective games, as is armourlock.
To be honest objective games are only really balanced with just sprint and objective tossing enabled. Being able to stop flag and bomb attacks with AL is banana-insane - let alone being able to sit in it for 5 or so seconds.
> Yes, it’s pretty bad. I find it both amazing and disappointing that something so simple wasn’t highlighted during playtesting. I’ve come to the conclusion that Bungie has become so watered down with FASA employees and people with a non-FPS background that obvious things like this slip through.
>
> It was honestly one of the first things I tried when I played an objective game with a dropshield. Halo 3, Last Resort, 1 Bomb could be won or lost by opponents getting ahold of a bubble shield - they’re that good. Dropshields are far too strong for objective games, as is armourlock.
>
> To be honest objective games are only really balanced with just sprint and objective tossing enabled. Being able to stop flag and bomb attacks with AL is banana-insane - let alone being able to sit in it for 5 or so seconds.
WoW, I’m excited to see posts w/accurate analysis of things going on in Reach instead of just complaining…I agree w/all OP’s points.
I would add that there should actually be more incentive like an MVP medal or something that encourages people not to just slay in Objectives…
I mean, I just got through playing 7 objective games in Reach and because I went in w/a full party, we easily won all our games because the other teams were too busy trying to spawn kill and rack up kills and slay…
> we easily won all our games because the other teams were too busy trying to spawn kill and rack up kills and slay…
This happens so often with my brother and I. We will focus on the objective and win, really easily because the other team is seemingly trying to play slayer.
cR in Team Objective should be rewarded to the whole team based on captures etc. For instance if we were partied and you scored a flag I would get cR as well. It’s a logical step to stop players from betraying over captures.
There should be a very small bonus for killing opponents and there really ought to be objective specific commendations. It seems as if Bungie just outright forgot about objective in Halo Reach and tried to fit it all in within a few weeks of launch. It’s glitchy and unbalanced to say the least. Just a couple of games ago the host left as we captured the flag and we got the point but the round ended - my brother ended up with 3 captures in a game of 1 Flag CTF! (This game)
It’s this kind of unpolished thing that just didn’t happen in previous Halo titles. I can’t help but feel Reach needed another 3-6 months development time.
It so strong against other abilities and thats why it need to go. Sprint is less rapid meaning its more on par with none movement abilities like Camo or Holo and stand half a chance in Objective.
> > Don’t remove evade. Evade is the greatest AA.
>
> It so strong against other abilities and thats why it need to go. Sprint is less rapid meaning its more on par with none movement abilities like Camo or Holo and stand half a chance in Objective.
Speaking of AAs I have to agree that evade totally overshadows sprint in every way. Camo and AL are both too good for objective unless suitably nerfed. Camo ought to only jam your own radar - not your enemies. Ever AA should have a counter and camo and AL just don’t have one.
As for armour lock, well, I think it’s safe to say we have all seen a billion decent suggestions. I feel my own is a good one - armour lock should literally last 1 second and should stop certain projectiles coming towards the user. This would include vehicles, grenades and rockets but not bullets, not shedding of plasmas and definitely not melees. With this setup AL users could stop grenade spam but they would have to time it skillfully (1 second window) and wouldn’t utterly screw up close range combat.
Though to be honest I think reach objective if broken beyond all repair. This thread is more of a post mortem than anything else.