I love doubles. It’s always been one of my favorite ways to play Halo, and some of my friends actually REINSTALLED THE GAME because its finally in Infinite. Its a big deal, because I’m sure others have done the same.
But it needs work. Now I’m specifically talking about Ranked here, as I don’t really mind the random craziness of social doubles since I hardly play that one. But here are some suggestions to improve it:
First and foremost the spawns need tweaking. The spawns are really wonky on the 4v4 maps when only 2 people are on a team. You will often just spawn right with a teammate in one situation and across the map in another, because of positioning. Often its the exact wrong place either time.
Sword needs to go. Even with the reduced ammo it is vastly overpowered in Doubles. Almost every match if a player gets a sword and then a grapple, there is no way whatsoever to come back. It softlocks you out of the match. I think replacing the sword with a mid tier weapon would be the ideal, there doesn’t need to be overtly strong weapons with low skill ceilings in these matches.
More maps should have even weapon spawns. Or if not even, then relatively comparable. Streets is my favorite map, but giving one side a free stalker rifle, and thruster if they so choose, creates issues with balancing. If you don’t know how to do curb slides then you have little to no chance at a fair fight for rockets or bulldog. And once the ball gets rolling it will flatten you.
Rockets might need to go. I’m iffy on this one still. Rockets are very very powerful and cause people to fight for mid more often than they might otherwise, but it also creates cheesy gameplay where the team that got the first rockets and shotgun and/or stalker just keep getting easier than normal kills and that helps them get the respawned rockets over and over. Its a steep hill to climb, and it feels kind of dirty when you’re the one doing it.
I think a powerup in the center of streets would be more logical. An OS with a 3 minute timer would work right there just fine.
Equipment respawn timers should be much higher. Being able to spam thrusters and grapples so often really hinders balanced gunfights and map control. Once again this is really just apparent when one team gets the first batch of good items and steamrolls the other due to how much of a difference they make in combat.
Dynamos need to go too. I propose replacing them with plasmas. Dynamos are way too strong on Aquarius, and as above getting the first batch can decide the whole game as they can single handedly influence several kills right off the bat. I’m mixed on spike grenades. While I like using them to clear a room, the randomness of the spikes creates more problems than solutions sometimes. I think keeping it just Frags and Plasmas in ranked is the smart play.
Lower the weighting for Catalyst. Seriously, I don’t know what the deal is, but some days its by far the most common map that shows up. I like it a lot for 4v4 objective, but in 2v2 slayer its just not that fun.
I think you have a point with sword but you’re essentially asking to remove every other important pick up on the maps.
This is already a problem in 4v4. Halo is an arena shooter, which means equipment and weapon pick ups are an important part of the gameplay loop. Infinite has very few items on the map that’s actually worth picking up and it’s boring.
Think of the pit from halo 3: 2 snipers, rockets, 2 shotguns, sword, overshield, camo.
What do we have on Aquarius? Camo and shotgun? 2 items for 4v4 where is the fun in that.
This. No matter what playlist you’re in, the sword grapple combo is massively OP.
An easy fix would be to force drop the grappleshot if you have sword or hammer +Prevent you from grabbing it if you already have the weapon.
Pulse Carbines, Commandos, a Needler in ranked, dynamos, sidekicks, thrusters, plasma grenades. Its got a good layout imo, the only thing kind of broken is the dynamos in doubles specifically. I don’t think they should go from 4v4. But in a 2v2 that’s basically as good as any power weapon and nothing you can do about it really.
Keeping the 4v4 weapon layouts isn’t always good in a 2v2 setting, as it creates a dynamic of “get the first batch of goodies, win the entire match”, which is pretty consistent. If you’re flat out better than the enemy, you can counter their power weapons and equipment they’ve collected. But if you’re evenly matched its basically game over. If they’re better than you at all, its a steamroll.
True, but the easiest solution is to just not have them on the map at the same time, which is easy to fix with the map editing software they have, or in the future: forge mode.
H3 also had grenade pickups and equipment which I didn’t meantion. If the answer to 2 snipers, rockets, sword and 2 shotguns is: Needler, pulse carbine and commandos the games in a rough state. Those are gimmicky niche weapons, which is essentially most of infinites sandbox. They’re not powerweapons just meh guns which are OK.
IMO Infinite has the most boring sandbox of any halo title. The “Map Pickup” variety is also very poor. Even worse there’s not enough BR spawns for a 4v4 match! From memory there were 6 BR spawns on the PIT. Most of the maps have 1 BR spawn, for 8 players!
Infinite has the most readily usable sandbox in the series imo. Every single gun is worth using. Just because they’re not power weapons doesn’t mean that they’re not worth picking up to give you a clear advantage.
BR spawns on the map aren’t usually necessary in BR starts thankfully, which is what makes BR starts better than AR starts.
The easy fix for sword grappling is to BUFF Mangler back to season 1 and melee properties. Red rack both weapons in doubles so they spawn as infrequently as possible.
I’ve played some of both - I actually think the radar needs to be removed in both modes. It encourages camping in 2 player, and people should be focussing on sound if they’re going to play this way.
Just a thought.
Yep. I’m finding that sometimes one person on a team can die, spawn miles away, and the other person gets gunned down in this time. With the respawn timer being 10 seconds, this does cause issues,
Not with you on this one for removing sword. It does have too much ammo though. The overshield spawns too often also, and I also feel there should not be two powerswords on map at a given time; which i guess is another indicator there’s too much ammo in the weapon. Sword should have a max of 4 kills in it and a longer spawn.
Easiest way to fix asymettrical maps would be, specifically on these maps, to have two rounds of 12-13 kills instead of one round of 25.
Same with the sword - ammo limitation, spawn times and max-on-map numbers are key.
Rockets are fine; giving a max of 4 kills with one round (2x doubles); but in most cases 2 kills.
I dont want a “vanilla” halo game mode. No pick-ups, no power-ups. Though one could argue this is the most “pro way” or whatever. It just isn’t as much fun.
agreed
Dynamos in general feel really powerful. I feel they could do with a nerf in general.
The sword does not belong in ranked. It is the easiest weapon to use and is not fun to use. The sword especially should be removed from catalyst. All you have to do is get sword and hide in the hallways.
I’m not a fan of it either. It feels like the only real counters to it are like point blank trades with plasma nades or if somehow you can use the skewer and body shot just before the lunge for a bulltrue…but the network of the game kind of makes that not happen that much. The repulsor sometimes can counter it but not all tjat great either. Then sword combo with grapple is just overkill man.
1 sword on a longer spawn timer with less ammo…perhaps isn’t so bad…but…the respawn per sword has to proc once the sword on the map is out of ammo to prevent more than 1 sword being on the map at any given time. It can’t simply be the timer resetting once it’s grabbed. It needs to reset on Despawn, or ammo reaching 0.
Catalyst is an awesome map for CTF. For slayer or anything else, I think its bottom tier, and hardly any fun at all.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of good weapons and power ups that could be used instead without the game feeling so bad. The sword makes the game feel bad in doubles, and really isn’t much better in ranked.
It’s just too strong, especially with equipment.
No lie, the only thing that actually directly counters it is desync causing the sword guy to miss his swing. I wish that were just a joke.
It wouldn’t be bad to slip a bulldog or Ravager in its place as a cqc mid tier power weapon. The Ravager would be an interesting addition to ranked since it’s buff, as it’s very strong without being overpowered. The Hydra would be an interesting choice as well since it has strong teamshot synergy and a one shot melee capability for close quarters.
Ranked Doubles doesn’t have to have the strongest weapons in the game to make it interesting. The point is supposed to be how your teamwork compares to the enemy. Something like a sword/grapple combo allows one person to run the entire match by themselves.
Does the sword make the gameplay more exciting? I honestly feel like i just get a bunch of easy kills whenever I have it. If a 1v1 duel with a precision weapon is “vanilla halo”, I’m all for that if the opposite of vanilla is flying around with a sword or hiding with one. If I want more variety I’d play literally any other game mode besides ranked. There’s enough variety still in ranked, but its the settings that make me want to play ranked. Like no motion tracker, br starts, more strict MM(when its working) etc. If i want some crazy chaos and to try additional weapons that arent in ranked I’ll play the unranked game modes that offer that flavor.
Sword can stay if its balanced though.
sword spawns beginning of match, and then the respawn timer for the sword resets AFTER all ammo is used, or its despawned off the map.
less ammo
this alleviates ever having more than 1 sword on the map at once.