Personal Ordnance Tuning Idea

Games Other Halo
1

Some people like personal ordnance in Halo 4 and some people don’t. I’m not pretending to discuss if it is good or bad. Halo 4 means personal ordinance so discussing about it is pointless BUT:
I’m almost sure everybody will agree when I say that getting an Incineration Cannon for killing a few dudes is too much.

My idea is to make a distinction between first ordinance, second and next ones.
For example:
1st personal ordnance: include all kinds of grenades, needler, concussion rifle, sticky detonator, gravity hammer, SAW, scattershot, shielding and speed boost.
2nd personal ordnance: include Railgun, shotgun, fuel rod, sniper rifle, beam rifle, energy sword.
3rd personal ordnance: include binary rifle, incineration cannon, rocket launcher

NOTE: I’m not pretending to say this 3 grups are the best groups. I only want to explain my idea about how Personal Ordnance could be improved to make the game more competitive for skilled players and to make casual players try to learn to get that incineration cannon lol.

NOTE 2: I’d be pleased to read your opinions or other constructive and realistic ideas about it!

NOTE 3: Sorry for my english, I’m spanish…

2

1: If we want power weapons in Ordnance, remove weapons dropping on the map.

2: If we want power weapons dropping on the map, remove personal ordnance.

3: If we want both, replace power weapons in personal ordnance with loadout weapons. Tune the map ordnance system so the waypoint appears earlier and is visible for everyone.

Map ordnance is useless with power weapons in personal ordnance.

3

> 1: If we want power weapons in Ordnance, remove weapons dropping on the map.
>
> 2: If we want power weapons dropping on the map, remove personal ordnance.
>
> 3: If we want both, replace power weapons in personal ordnance with loadout weapons. Tune the map ordnance system so the waypoint appears earlier and is visible for everyone.
>
> Map ordnance is useless with power weapons in personal ordnance.

It seems like you don’t comment about my post you just say the same as some people on this forum once and again and again. Personal ordnance isn’t going do disappear from halo 4, that change would be too big and it won’t happen. If you don’t like it, I think the only thing you can do is wait to see what happens in Halo 5.
Map ordinance would be very usefull if personal ordinences would be as I say (more or less, I just give some guidelines).

4

I would tweak personal ordinance by making it give you: ammo for your loadout weapon/armor ability/grenades. That’s it, put all of the power weapons on the map.

5

> > 1: If we want power weapons in Ordnance, remove weapons dropping on the map.
> >
> > 2: If we want power weapons dropping on the map, remove personal ordnance.
> >
> > 3: If we want both, replace power weapons in personal ordnance with loadout weapons. Tune the map ordnance system so the waypoint appears earlier and is visible for everyone.
> >
> > Map ordnance is useless with power weapons in personal ordnance.
>
> It seems like you don’t comment about my post you just say the same as some people on this forum once and again and again. Personal ordnance isn’t going do disappear from halo 4, that change would be too big and it won’t happen. If you don’t like it, I think the only thing you can do is wait to see what happens in Halo 5.
> Map ordinance would be very usefull if personal ordinences would be as I say (more or less, I just give some guidelines).

You only proposed a “tiered” system, which has also been proposed so many times. What you fail to realise is that personal ordnance change the behaviour of players.

Do you want personal ordnance? Then map ordnance is basicly useless, if you want map ordnance, then you can’t have personal ordnance in the same gametype.

We can keep both, but they can’t co-exist in the same gametype if personal ordnance “need to have power weapons”.

See, map ordnance is a high risk high reward kind of system, in order to get a power weapon you need to move around on the map and in turn risk dying. However there’s less risk with a personal ordnance power weapon, and players in turn hang back more.

Any player is inclined to hang back if they are promised the chance of getting a power weapon rather than running around the map looking for one.

A tiered system would not make map ordnance more powerful, or useful, as you are still promised a power weapon where ever you want it as long as you get the points. Furthermore, the map ordnance is too random to be of any use. None of us know when a weapon will drop, if it’ll drop at all.

The only way to make map ordnance useful is to make it “static”, or put the waypoints before the drop and visible to everyone, like the Drop Recon perk. Then the problem remains with personal ordnance power weapons.

So, for map ordnance to be of “use”, put the waypoint in place before the weapon spawns and make it visible to everyone on the map, or make them static, while either not having Personal Drops in the gametype at all, or replace power weapons with loadout weapons that act as ammo refills.

If you want a tiered system, map ordnance won’t be that important and will only mess with the “balance”. If you want map ordnance, personal ordnance power weapons will only mess with the balance and make the map ordnance less “valuable”.

6

I’ve read a similar list a few months ago. I have an easier idea.
Left - Refill grenades
Bottom - Refill Primary weapon
Right - Refill Secondary weapon

Requisition: You can refill any ordinance by 1 extra mag.

Another idea:
Customizable ordinance palette. You can choose a grenade, a primary and a secondary weapon of your choice then call them down.

Left - Fragmentation Grenade, Plasma Grenade, Pulse Grenade
Bottom - Battle Rifle, Assault Rifle, Designated Marksman Rifle, Covenant Carbine, Strom Rifle, LightRifle, Suppressor

Right - Magnum, Plasma Pistol, Boltshot

This settings gives you a little variety. Each loadout have a customizable palette. Basically you cannot run out of ammo too easily (nobody uses Storm Rifles… nearly nobody), or you can call down something that’s better for the situation (LightRifle maybe a little bit weak for CQC, call down an Assault Rifle).

Requisition: Same as mentioned before.

Remove random ordinance. Use initial ordinance instead. Basically fixed weapon spawns with highlighting.

7

I just want to say that removing power weapons from ordnance completely sounds good in theory but there are a lot of weapons that are extremely rare as map spawns like the Shotgun and Concussion rifle.

You could start putting them on maps but it’s going to be very easy to find unbalances caused by this and that could take months to be fully re-balanced.

Ordnance with no power weapons sounds great to me but it’ll be a bit of a risk but it still seems to be the best thing to do.

Also if we’re talking about Halo 4’s ordnance being tiered I don’t think that’s even possible in Halo 4. It’s something that could work in the future though.

Increasing the points required wouldn’t be a bad touch either.

8

> This settings gives you a little variety. Each loadout have a customizable palette. Basically you cannot run out of ammo too easily (nobody uses Storm Rifles… nearly nobody), or you can call down something that’s better for the situation (LightRifle maybe a little bit weak for CQC, call down an Assault Rifle).

I use the storm rifle in my firepower load out. The assault rifle has better range, but I find that in the situations where the assault rifle is better than the storm rifle I’m better off just using the DMR. The suppressor is more powerful, but the range is so darn limited.

9

I feel Power weapons should be on map ONLY with a waypoint. PODs should be power ups only. Left-Damage Boost, Middle-Speed, Right-OS. Thats a good mix of old and new. People can “earn” a power up and fight for power weapons.

10

How Map Ordnance, & Personal Ordnance can co-exist.

11

I believe selection of Personal Ordinance should be allowed. Those who get Ordinance drop earlier can get a larger selection of weapon/grenades/powerup. This can be done by hitting the ^ dpad key. When a desired available weapon is presented hit the appropriate dpad key to select it as is now.

12

POD’s throw off game balance. How is getting an ordinance for 3 beam rifles in a row fair what so ever. I could understand them being in a playlist like Team Action Sack for fun. But in regular halo playlists it’s ridiculous.

It’d be better to remove it completely. If it stays I wouldn’t mind it as much if power weapons and perks stayed as set drops on a timer with pods being for regular weapons

Example: you choose BR load out your POD has DMR, AR, LR with an option to reset (requisition) for Carbine. You choose DMR load out you have pod for BR, AR, LR requisition for Carbine. Etc etc. and so on

13

The point of ordinance was to balance things out by giving players of all skill levels access to weapons… What it did however was turn things into chaos.

Doing this would encourage two things that are bad:

  1. Players running out and dieing while just trying to build up their points as quickly as possible.
  2. Restrict players who are not as skilled from access to weapons that could help them even the playing field a little. Keeping the power weapons in the hands of only people who are good would ruin gameplay.

I think the better solution is to just not vote for pro gametypes and walk away from that infinity rif-raf.

14

I have two basic thoughts on this.

Thought #1: Trying to make the socially-oriented Infinity settings compatible with a truly competitive gametype is likely to end in failure.

  • While I am not saying it is impossible, as others have mentioned in other threads, attempting to find the right balance is going to be extremely difficult and is bound to piss some people off.
  • What might work better is to first decide what Halo 4 items are popular enough to be retained in a social gametype and what Halo 4 items should be excluded from a competitive gametype. After this, go back to a Halo-3 style social / ranked playlist split.
  • Tiered personal ordnance is unlikely to resolve any of the competitive complaints about POD. Tiered or not, it’s still personal ordnance that has the potential of allowing a player to receive a fuel rod cannon as a reward for kamikaze play, which is disruptive to the style of game many competitive players like.

Thought #2: In Halo 4, a social / ranked split is unlikely to happen, so what would be nice in the meantime is to have two different Slayer types - one social type and one semi-competitive type (as Throwdown already exists for the uber-competitives).

  • Keep Infinity settings for 4v4 Slayer, with the exception that only the tier 2 weapons in Pfoifee’s hybrid slayer are available for POD. All other Infinity settings would remain.
  • For BTB, the entirety of Pfoiffee’s hybrid slayer (or something similar) ought to work out just fine. There’s already plenty of map ordnance, and it respawns quickly enough for players to get their hands on it. I have a few points about the hybrid slayer idea that I would change, but these are terribly minor in comparison to the many problems that the hybrid version would seem to solve.
  • In general, I am very fond of limiting POD to exclude sniper-class weapons, cannons, and swords. The game would play better with those as map weapons. Pfoifee’s list of shotgun/SAW/scattershot/needler limitations on POD are quite acceptable to me.

Anyway, I’m not sure a tiered system would resolve a measurable portion of the angst against POD.

15

> The point of ordinance was to balance things out by giving players of all skill levels access to weapons… What it did however was turn things into chaos.
>
> Doing this would encourage two things that are bad:
> 1) Players running out and dieing while just trying to build up their points as quickly as possible.
> 2) Restrict players who are not as skilled from access to weapons that could help them even the playing field a little. Keeping the power weapons in the hands of only people who are good would ruin gameplay.
>
>
> I think the better solution is to just not vote for pro gametypes and walk away from that infinity rif-raf.

They could of just added a working ranking system like H3 so lvl 30s got matched against other lvl 30s and lvl 50s vs lvl 50s.

16

> They could of just added a working ranking system like H3 so lvl 30s got matched against other lvl 30s and lvl 50s vs lvl 50s.

That would not help make this idea any more viable. Players would get an unfair advantage for starting out well. This would be 50 times worse than infinity as it currently stands.

17

> > They could of just added a working ranking system like H3 so lvl 30s got matched against other lvl 30s and lvl 50s vs lvl 50s.
>
> That would not help make this idea any more viable. Players would get an unfair advantage for starting out well. This would be 50 times worse than infinity as it currently stands.

But why match players of vastly different skills?

Any game changing idea that may affect balance should be implemented under the assumption that teams are even in skills.

18

> > They could of just added a working ranking system like H3 so lvl 30s got matched against other lvl 30s and lvl 50s vs lvl 50s.
>
> That would not help make this idea any more viable. Players would get an unfair advantage for starting out well. This would be 50 times worse than infinity as it currently stands.

You implement a working ranking system so there isn’t a mismatch in skill lvl between players and remove the aspect of PODs aka make it Slayer Pro. Bring back set weapon spawns and power up spawns on times.

Lower lvl players can still get the weapons and power ups but don’t have to worry about a more skilled player knowing the exact time.

19

> > > They could of just added a working ranking system like H3 so lvl 30s got matched against other lvl 30s and lvl 50s vs lvl 50s.
> >
> > That would not help make this idea any more viable. Players would get an unfair advantage for starting out well. This would be 50 times worse than infinity as it currently stands.
>
> But why match players of vastly different skills?
>
> Any game changing idea that may affect balance should be implemented under the assumption that teams are even in skills.

I am for the idea of ranked matches. The idea of doing this with infinity just sounds like bull -Yoink- to me, this is not going to help anything. Infinity just needs to die.