The random elements of acquiring ordinance (random map location, random personal ordnance) is probably the single most confusingly bad decision Bungie or 343i have made in the history of halo. I mean… they’ve made some doozies, but they have also blazed some trails.
But this…? There is no face nor palm big enough to do it justice.
Let me just start by saying that other than this particular gripe, I enjoy halo 4’s sandbox. I’ve played every halo, and every halo lots. And yes, halo 4’s sand box “isn’t halo” but it hasn’t been ‘halo’ since halo 1, my personal favourite halo for competitive play. But what ever the halo of the day was, it was always better than all other console FPSs.
I’ve been through my high level competitive phase, and although I still play to win, and try to constantly improve, I’m not trying to be the best anymore, and if a lower level player takes a kill or two off me its not going to ruin my day. I’ve also been through my “Halo x is lame, they should turn it into Halo x-1” phase. I think people who say halo 4 should be halo 3 miss the irony that many of the high level competitive players of halo2/3 would say that halo2/3 should be halo 1.
So I am not one of those people pushing for some idealistic ‘pure’ halo, trying to recreate the sandbox of an older game. Shoe horning an old sand box into a new engine is never going to be as good as that sand box on its original engine. And even if you are successful, you are only gaining something you already had.
But…
How exactly do the developers of a triple A FPSs not understand the impact of weapon spawns on weapon balance? Had anyone at 343i actually played an FPS before they made halo 4?
In every halo ever played, people have been whining that the BR is too strong, AR is too easy, Pistol is too quick, ect. Yet no one complained about the rocket launcher. Weird, an instant kill splash damage weapon seems like the obvious choice for the balance winger.
Why is this?
In other halos if you die to a rocket launcher, you know you could have done something about it. Maybe not in the few second leading up to the death, but you could have prevented the rocket launcher getting into enemy hands earlier in the match.
After I passed my super competitive phase, I didn’t find my self timing and denying every single power weapon on every single map any more. But if I was feeling particularly miffed at dying to rockets one day, you could be dam sure you’d have a fight on your hands at the rocket launcher when it spawns.
Halo 4’s ordnance system is implemented in a way that destroys this counter balance to power weapons. Yes dying to a power weapon has sucked since the dawn of halo 1, but it has never sucked more than in halo 4. This is not because there are so many more power weapons floating around in halo 4, though that doesn’t help the cause.
Now when you die to a rocket launcher there is every chance there was nothing you could have done about it. The player holding it most likely just got lucky on some dice roll. There is nothing you can do to control or pre-empt random numbers.
Even if they kept the exact same system, earning points to get personal ordnance and what not, but just got rid of the random factor, it would be worlds better. If everyone got a rocket launcher on their third ordnance drop for example, most obviously it would actually be fair. But more importantly there is something you could do about it. You could prevent a player from reaching a certain amount of points, or at least know the threat in advance.
Before halo 4 came out, 343i said the changes they where making to weapon acquisition where to prevent weapon -Yoink!- through weapon timing. Noobie player would never be able to touch the rocket, because they didn’t know how to time weapons.
Never mind the just having teams skill matched in the first place, the solution to this seems obvious to me; just have a heads up display that shows where and when weapons are going to spawn. In a pro vs pro match they already know this information, so it wouldn’t change a thing. However it would allow newer players to grab or deny rockets, with out 10 year experience in weapon timing.
Frustratingly this feature is already built into halo 4’s engine, which just makes it more perplexing why it wasn’t implemented.
In halo 5, they either need to nerf the crap out of every power weapon OR remove the random elements of weapon acquisition.