sandbox/map designs and additions

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Welcome to my thread! This thread is focused on how Halo can use its map design, enemy placement and AI, and environment to change how the game is played instead of shoehorning button mapped mechanics. As you can tell, I did not receive Halo 5’s advancted movement changes well. I believe it is not good for the game, but if you like these I still want to here what you think as long as you are coherent.
What this thread is NOT
-a sprint discussion
-a place to be rude, just respect one another. Its fine to get a bit fired up, but to make a better halo we must work together!

I would love to see what you guys come up with, keep things fresh and think about things that could actually be added to a real title, imagination is great but try to ground yourself sometimes. Have fun, can’t wait to see what you say
Common

2

Regarding the art in the Halos that 343 has produced. I personally can’t stand them. They look like bubbly and cartoony. I miss the old art style from games like Halo: Reach and Halo 3. They looked much more realistic and rugged, which I believe is an excellent look. Soldiers aren’t meant to look sleek and pretty. Marines, Hellbringers, Helljumpers, Spartans, every soldier is bound to get some dirt or blood or grime on them. And with the new art style that 343 has implemented it seems like that never happens. Halo: Reach in my opinion had the best art style compared to all the Halo games. But that’s just me.

Another thing that I would like to talk about is the extreme lacking of armor customization in Halo 5 (and possibly Halo 6). Where is it?! Like I don’t understand why 343 would take that out of the Halo games. Like Halo: Reach and even Halo 4 (but Halo 4 had less) had lots of customizations available. And I looovveed that. It’s how I felt unique and like a real Spartan. Because not all Spartans are the exact same. But in Halo 5 it seems like everyone looks the same. I used to be able to get killed in Reach multiplayer but then be able to hunt that person down because of their armor. Now it seems almost impossible as most Spartans look the same, because of the lack of armor customization. Like 3 things I get to customize in Halo 5 (Armor, helmet, visor)?! Come on 343 you gotta give me and the rest of the Halo community some uniqueness and originality.

To close it out I ask for 343 to please bring back older art styles and a much more improved armor customizations in their next Halo game. Also, what do you think? Community! Talk to me!

3

WEAPON REDESIGN part 1

In regards to the weapon sandbox with halo is tricky, Its great to have a competetive sandbox with Halo 5 where everything was super well balanced, and thats great!
But we lost something when we got that sandbox, we lost all the crazy weapons. Okay maybe months later we got weapons back like the grenade launcher and sentiel beam which was awesome! (Also the gravity hammer we should’ve had on launch :///) but you get my point. Halo is a silly game, people love to mess around with dumb weapons and kill each other, they don’t have to be useless either.

You can make use of weapons from older games such as Sticky detonator, flame thrower, grenade launcher, cocussion rifle. But heres the great thing is that you can make whole new weapons!
This is where I believe promethians have so much potential in the weapon sandbox. In Halo 4 the promethian weapons had unique traits, the pistol had a shotgun function if charged, the lightrifle had a mode of burst of unscoped and single shot if scoped, the Binary rifle showed where ever zooming in but was a one shot and forced enemies to take cover. Even if these weapons weren’t perfect they has their uses and were a nice touch.
Now Halo 4 is no perfect game, not even close multiplayer wise. But this is what we need and it is a very important part of what makes halo great.

These weapons could be re done in future titles to make the promethian weapons fun to use.

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WEAPON REDESIGN part 2

Here are a few ways you can make promethian weapons awesome and unique.

Lets start with one of the most useless, the surpressor. Now in Halo 5 it used tracking rounds which is really dumb so lets use Halo 4 as an example of its usage. Its a close quarters weapon, its a full auto, and innacurate. So what is its purpose, for suppression, laying down fire. I think if you gave it more of a wide spread and thinner it would be moreinteresting, something that does light damage and decent for covering fire. There would be nothing like it.
now I just cooked this up but I think its pretty cool.

For the Scattershot, I think on certain parts of maps it should be able to disintegrate parts of cover if zoomed in. Obviously not all spots so that you dont just make a hole to snipe out of. Also of you hit something like a pipe, a bunch of High pressure gas could fill a part of the hallway for a bit. But for the most part I think its functionality is fine, a shotgun that turns your foe into ash.

You can see what Im getting at though right, these weapons need redesign. Maybe not exactly what I said here, but something of this nature.

5

In terms of mechanics with respect to multiplayer… I’d really prefer it if gameplay mechanics were kept relatively simple, with more advanced options based on player ingenuity instead of additional buttons. Case and point, grenade jumps instead of extra buttons to more effectively exploit map design. Or… well developed strafing instead of. “push button, rapidly accelerate in direction.”. Obviously, you can only go so far with the concept… I certainly feel H5 went a bit overboard with button/ability clutter though.

In terms of reasoning… Well, all these flashy abilities must be considered when developing maps. When you have so much freedom as a result of said abilities much of the map structure falls apart. Furthermore, advanced options based on player ability equates to a larger skill gap. A larger skill gap is arguably healthy for a competitive shooter.

Moving to weapons… Variety is good but redundancy isn’t. I’m increasingly feeling H5 has too much of the latter. Picking up weapon X should provide a unique option to the alternatives. A better scope, longer RRR, larger bullet mag/homing areas or a sllightly different RoF doesn’t qualify IMO.

I also feel gameplay would be improved in an arena setting if the sandbox for a given map consisted of a few power weapons, a power up, a few areas with grenades and one or two non-major power weapon pickups (aka, condense the weapon sandbox on maps). There is no need for maps being littered with toys around every corner. It devalues the importance of the toys. And if you want the toys you should have to fight for them. Add weapon variety by changing which toys are available on a map by map basis.

A few general things…

One, hit markers on grenades. All this mechanism does is promote spamming grenades to sniff out opponents. If you want to determine the location of an opponent or when to press them it shouldn’t be as simple as tossing a grenade to a spot.

Two, the cone size for the various aim assist mechanisms should be standardized across all non-power weapons (including autos). Weapon A shouldn’t be an upgrade over B simply because it’s inherently easier to aim with it with no action on the part of the player. Find another way for weapons to provide an edge (case and point, old style SR shield melting, scatter bouncing shots, LR scoped/unscoped hits, DMR body shots, homing, TTK, etc.).

Obviously the above would apply for future titles…

6

So I have question that I’m not sure how to answer myself. how much of Halo 5’s advanced mobility mechanics should be kept? since Halo 5, a decent sized community has sprung up that are fans of 343’s new style of Halo. Now in a perfect world, Halo 6 could be just in the style of Halo 3 and H2A but obviously its not fair to the other fans, nor is it likely that 343/Microsoft would do that.

So it begs to question, what do we do with the current sandbox REALISTICALLY. So how do we slow down Halo enough for classic fan like myself, but still have things for the current/new fans.

also what else besides just movement can there be to change how the overall sandbox works. I’d love to hear what anybody has to say.