Please kill armor abilities 343

Games Other Halo
1

Wondering what everyone’s opinions are on armor abilities being brought back for Halo 4.

For myself,I would prefer to see them gone. I could live with a dedicated sprint button just to speed up the pace a bit, but all of the other abilities could be scrapped.

Armor abilities screwed up something that I really valued about the Halo franchise, a level playing field where the best player was the best player because of his ability to outshoot the other opponent, not fly away to map boundaries, duplicate himself, turn invisible and mess up radar, etc.

When watching demos from e3 displaying promethean vision, I couldnt help but cringe. I thought, “Do I honestly have to use this every 5 seconds to give myself a chance at walking around a corner without dying?” why not just take all of this extra junk out and get back to the Halo franchise. Even playing field, pick up and play Halo.

Let’s be honest, Halo 4 will be one of the best looking games to be released on the 360. But will it be the best true Halo, even with loadouts, an awfully exhausting credit system, weapon ordinances, and all of the variables that separate each player?

2

Halo 4’s Armor Abilities are awesome!

3

What you’ve seen in Halo 4 is pretty much set to be in there come release time. Granted it might not be 100% the same but there’s no chance 343 will pull out AA’s this far into deelopment

4

> Wondering what everyone’s opinions are on armor abilities being brought back for Halo 4.
>
> For myself,I would prefer to see them gone. I could live with a dedicated sprint button just to speed up the pace a bit, but all of the other abilities could be scrapped.
>
> Armor abilities screwed up something that I really valued about the Halo franchise, a level playing field where the best player was the best player because of his ability to outshoot the other opponent, not fly away to map boundaries, duplicate himself, turn invisible and mess up radar, etc.
>
> When watching demos from e3 displaying promethean vision, I couldnt help but cringe. I thought, “Do I honestly have to use this every 5 seconds to give myself a chance at walking around a corner without dying?” why not just take all of this extra junk out and get back to the Halo franchise. Even playing field, pick up and play Halo.
>
> Let’s be honest, Halo 4 will be one of the best looking games to be released on the 360. But will it be the best true Halo, even with loadouts, an awfully exhausting credit system, weapon ordinances, and all of the variables that separate each player?

Please complain about this in ongoing threads dedicated to these issues instead of creating a new one.

5

> Wondering what everyone’s opinions are on armor abilities being brought back for Halo 4.
>
> For myself,I would prefer to see them gone. I could live with a dedicated sprint button just to speed up the pace a bit, but all of the other abilities could be scrapped.
>
> Armor abilities screwed up something that I really valued about the Halo franchise, a level playing field where the best player was the best player because of his ability to outshoot the other opponent, not fly away to map boundaries, duplicate himself, turn invisible and mess up radar, etc.
>
> When watching demos from e3 displaying promethean vision, I couldnt help but cringe. I thought, “Do I honestly have to use this every 5 seconds to give myself a chance at walking around a corner without dying?” <mark>why not just take all of this extra junk out and get back to the Halo franchise. Even playing field, pick up and play Halo.</mark>
>
> Let’s be honest, Halo 4 will be one of the best looking games to be released on the 360. But will it be the best true Halo, even with loadouts, an awfully exhausting credit system, weapon ordinances, and all of the variables that separate each player?

Because old Halo is old and wouldn’t sell in the current market.

You see, if Halo is to survive it needs fresh ideas. Markets would prove this very quickly.

I hear lots of people saying that Halo would be better off without AAs and uneven starts in general. But it needs something new, and people who want to maintain Halo 2/3 style play never give any practical ideas on new features to add while keeping the core Halo 2/3 elements.

6

I would be 100% with a Halo 4 as it stands without armor abilities. I think that is more than enough of an improvement over Halo 3, still keeping up with this market you speak of. To me it’s about the balance of new players and veterans, where at game start everyone has a BR/AR and 2 grenades.

7

Armor Abilities aren’t going anywhere. There here to stay. If you don’t like them, play the “Classic” playlist/s that don’t have them.

8

> Armor Abilities aren’t going anywhere. There here to stay. If you don’t like them, play the “Classic” playlist/s that don’t have them.

Are there confirmed Classic playlists? Fingers crossed!

9

I didn’t really have too much of an issue with armour abilities in Reach, except for Armour Lock - Active Camo always seemed kinda pointless to me because you always know that there’s a guy near you with it because your radar goes weird.

There’s usually a decent counter balance to using certain abilities, the hardlight shield puts you in third person and slows you down (and your feet are unprotected), promethean vision alerts other enemies that you’re using it (and if you pay attention to your radar at all you likely won’t even need it - I can’t see many people using this late in to Halo 4’s lifespan).

Plus I’m pretty sure that 343i said that there will be vanilla playlists for those who dislike armour abilities?

10

> > Armor Abilities aren’t going anywhere. There here to stay. If you don’t like them, play the “Classic” playlist/s that don’t have them.
>
> Are there confirmed Classic playlists? Fingers crossed!

My god…

Confirmed months ago.

Actually, it’s been rumored (Not quite confirmed) that Halo 4 may even LAUNCH with Classic playlists.

11

Armour Abilities add variety and complexity. They’re the sort of addition that keeps a franchise from getting stale.

What’s that? Halo 2 didn’t have AAs, and it was really popular? How lovely. Unfortunately for the analogy, Halo 2 was popular around 2004-2005. Releasing Halo 2 now would be the market equivalent of going to war against America with swords, horses and chain-mail armour.

12

> Halo 4’s Armor Abilities are awesome!

13

> Because old Halo is old and wouldn’t sell in the current market.
>
> You see, if Halo is to survive it needs fresh ideas. Markets would prove this very quickly.
>
> I hear lots of people saying that Halo would be better off without AAs and uneven starts in general. But it needs something new, and people who want to maintain Halo 2/3 style play never give any practical ideas on new features to add while keeping the core Halo 2/3 elements.

That’s because “classic” Halo doesn’t need any new features.

The one thing that irks me the most about the direction Halo has gone is that there was no need to entirely cripple “original” Halo in the process of adding new features.

Let me put it this way…you say “old Halo is old and wouldn’t sell in the current market.”

Oh really? So you’re telling me that Reach wouldn’t have sold the way it did if “classic” Halo CE, 2, 3 style TEAM SLAYER was a dedicated default playlist at launch? You’d be wrong…

The mindset that Halo was stale and needed a change is INSANE.

The masses weren’t planning to buy Reach because it has AA’s and the gameplay is totally different. No. It was because Reach had HALO in front of it. How do people not get this?

Halo Reach was going to sell regardless. If anything was proven, it was that this “new” Halo is unwanted by a vast number of Halo fans, otherwise, Reach’s population numbers would have exceeded Halo 3’s over the same time-span.

Instead, some players were turned off, other players enjoyed it…Reach was a wash population wise in the grand scheme of the Halo franchise.

Back to the point…

Instead of Bungie having the mindset of “we know why people love Halo, we know what people love about Halo, we’re going to keep Halo as it always has been AND we’re also going to add new features to new playlists and game-types”…Bungie had the mindset of, like you described, “Halo is old and won’t sell in the current market, we better change it up and try to appeal to new demographics and copy other aspects of games that were successful, let’s go in a different direction and not even offer players the classic gameplay they are accustomed to and love.”

Boy did that backfire.

Think about this…

What if Bungie had dedicated “classic” playlists from the beginning of Reach’s life-span?

What if Bungie also had dedicated “evolved” playlists (featuring AA’s & new game-types like Invasion, Bro-Slayer, Headhunter, as well as the classic game-types)?

Classic Halo fans wouldn’t have felt betrayed and newcomers and veterans alike who wanted a new experience had those new features available.

Everyone was happy.

I honestly believe Bungie shoving AA’s down our throats and turning their back on “classic” Halo has severely crippled Halo’s legacy.

Instead of being super psyched about Halo 4 coming off of the insanely crazy success of Halo Reach…

“Halo Reach, the actual Swan-Song of the Halo franchise. Identical gameplay to its predecessors with new amazing game-modes that allow the player to experience Halo like never before! You’ve never had more options! Forge! Custom games! Classic Playlists! Invasion! Armor Abilities! Arena! It’s all there on one single disk!”

…everyone is up in arms over what is right for Halo.

What was right for Halo is to keep it as “classic” as possible. That’s what sold. That’s why people played the game. The gameplay was the core, all the amazing extra amenities was Bungie over-achieving.

If that “classic” Halo still existed and was complimented by Load-outs and AA’s instead of replaced, Halo would be a lot better off.

14

> > Armor Abilities aren’t going anywhere. There here to stay. If you don’t like them, play the “Classic” playlist/s that don’t have them.
>
> Are there confirmed Classic playlists? Fingers crossed!

yes your watered down experience excuse me “classic” playlists have been confirmed. Have fun playing the same old same old.

15

Ok I am truely getting tired of this. Let me brake something down to you op, there is nothing wrong with armor abilities, and there never was anything wrong with them. Now before you try to chew me out listen, the problems with AAs is not them in their pure form, no its was Reachs map design and core gameplay that made the armor abilities fail. In Reach it was nearly impossible to perform the most basic tatics because of many numorous factors. Factor 1: since the default movement speed and jump hight were decreased it became impossible to dodge the over powered grenades forcing player to spam ‘‘armor lock’’ or even ‘‘jetpack’’ to escape danger. I have even came to the conclusion that the players that spam armorlock are not doing it to ‘‘troll’’ or to ‘‘get a get out of jail free’’ card, oh no they do it as a reaction to the increase of grenade spam that came to Reach. Factor 2: Them maps in Reach were designed with sprint and jetpack in mind. Since sprint was a armor ability that ment if you chose any armor ability other than sprint or jetpack you became screwed as you default movement speed was not fast enough to traverse the map with out having to spam the aa you happen to have or to try and not venture to far from you base. This ruins map movement and slow down the game because players were to worried to move across the map.

In Halo 4 all of this has been fix and armor abilities have been turned into what they were ment to be which is ‘‘re-usable equiptment’’. Now that the jump height and movement speed have been increased as well as sprint becoming a default mechanic players won’t be worried to move across the maps allowing the gameplay to speed up as well as giving incentive to move again. Not only that but the armor abilities in Halo 4 can be countered not only by the other abilities but from the default core mechanics as well, meaning you could enter in Halo 4 and not have a AA and still do just as well as some with a AA. All in all what made AAs a hinderance in Halo Reach has either been fixed or removed. Meaning they are there and you can spawn with them but they no longer hold you back like Reachs did.

16

> I would be 100% with a Halo 4 as it stands without armor abilities. I think that is more than enough of an improvement over Halo 3, still keeping up with this market you speak of. To me it’s about the balance of new players and veterans, where at game start everyone has a BR/AR and 2 grenades.

I along with many others would love this –

Although sprint looks like its been fixed

As for the others only time will tell how they all play out

17

What’s so bad about thinking?

18

Just remove active camo as an armor ability and put it back as a pick-up and I’ll be totally ok.

19

> > Wondering what everyone’s opinions are on armor abilities being brought back for Halo 4.
> >
> > For myself,I would prefer to see them gone. I could live with a dedicated sprint button just to speed up the pace a bit, but all of the other abilities could be scrapped.
> >
> > Armor abilities screwed up something that I really valued about the Halo franchise, a level playing field where the best player was the best player because of his ability to outshoot the other opponent, not fly away to map boundaries, duplicate himself, turn invisible and mess up radar, etc.
> >
> > When watching demos from e3 displaying promethean vision, I couldnt help but cringe. I thought, “Do I honestly have to use this every 5 seconds to give myself a chance at walking around a corner without dying?” <mark>why not just take all of this extra junk out and get back to the Halo franchise. Even playing field, pick up and play Halo.</mark>
> >
> > Let’s be honest, Halo 4 will be one of the best looking games to be released on the 360. But will it be the best true Halo, even with loadouts, an awfully exhausting credit system, weapon ordinances, and all of the variables that separate each player?
>
> Because old Halo is old and wouldn’t sell in the current market.
>
> You see, if Halo is to survive it needs fresh ideas. Markets would prove this very quickly.
>
>
[/quote]
What exactly is this assumption based upon? Trends in the video game market would suggest that changing the core of a successful franchise is not a good idea. One of the highest selling games of this gen is “new” super mario bros which is essentially a super nintendo game.

20

> What’s so bad about thinking?

Im not sure. But they decided to replace it with AAs.