Selecting your Spartan's stature

Hello and welcome, so I have an idea that involves allowing players to adjust the stature of their spartan.

Here are the two categories I had in mind; height and weight, which respectively can be set to short, medium, or tall and stocky, average, or thin.

So for the height selection there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Tall Spartans have a naturally longer stride and move forward faster and run faster, and also jump higher. Short Spartans have a good center of gravity and are a bit more agile, moving sideways for strafing and backwards more quickly, and are naturally smaller targets. Medium height is a balanced mix of these two.

For weight we have stocky Spartans, are quite tough can take more fire but also their bulk can make them a tad clumsy at times, so swapping weapons, reloading and aiming down your scope are slowed a bit. Thin Spartans are harder to hit due to them being, well thin, and can handle weapons a bit better and sprint longer, but are somewhat frail. Average is an average of these two.

Well that’s the jist of it, you pick the two you want for your spartan in each category. Besides the obvious benefit to gameplay, the differences in appearances could be made quite apparent visually, in game and on your player card. Cool huh?

If it were purely cosmetic, fine, maybe. But having said attributes affect how the game is played, my answer is unequivocally no. Anything that deviates from equal starts is a no. Halo has always been about equality and every single concept you’ve suggested does nothing but deviate further and further from that.

> Besides the obvious benefit to gameplay

WHAT benefit, exactly? All you’re doing is advocating for even more random encounters. How many times do you need to be told that random isn’t Halo?

Stick to cosmetics Sammy, that is where you excel at.

> If it were purely cosmetic, fine, maybe. But having said attributes affect how the game is played, my answer is unequivocally no. Anything that deviates from equal starts is a no. Halo has always been about equality and every single concept you’ve suggested does nothing but deviate further and further from that.
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> > Besides the obvious benefit to gameplay
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> WHAT benefit, exactly? All you’re doing is advocating for even more random encounters. How many times do you need to be told that random isn’t Halo?

Well it wouldn’t even be as random as tactical packages and support upgrades, which work fine now. You would change these traits via your spartan ID, so no changing once the game begins, it is not a loadout thing.

In the pregame lobby you can tell who has what traits and get a good idea of what to expect, and also when you spot players in game you should be able to tell and react as you feel nessisary, which cuts back the random factor.

> In the pregame lobby you can tell who has what traits and get a good idea of what to expect, and also when you spot players in game you should be able to tell and react as you feel nessisary, which cuts back the random factor.

But it still changes the equal starts thing which causes randomness. So my answer is still no.

If it were 110% cosmetic, I can see the value of this. Machinima filmers would probably love it.

In its current state, I’d have to agree with everyone else - No.

Same goes for armor. It’s fine since it’s fully cosmetic. What would happen if donning the GUNGNIR really made the splaser do more damage and like, tripled its aim assist to make it more accurate? While that’s what the Gungnir was designed for - to compliment the Galilean rifle - that would make it not fit for Matchmaking.

These statures would work great in a class-based shooter like TF2…but not in Halo. Now if you introduce different species in a specific mode like Invasion, I’ll gladly take it. But as the standard experience? No.

> > In the pregame lobby you can tell who has what traits and get a good idea of what to expect, and also when you spot players in game you should be able to tell and react as you feel nessisary, which cuts back the random factor.
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> But it still changes the equal starts thing which causes randomness. So my answer is still no.

Idk though it could be something interesting to add to halo and help it differentiate from other games.

Not even cosmetic (at least in MM), why?

Well, we would end up playing with tiny and skinny spartans since everyone wants to have the smallest spartans and if this is wanted either Bungie or 343i had changed the size a long time ago.

It’s definitely useful for Machinimas but it adds no depth to the game.

> > > In the pregame lobby you can tell who has what traits and get a good idea of what to expect, and also when you spot players in game you should be able to tell and react as you feel nessisary, which cuts back the random factor.
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> > But it still changes the equal starts thing which causes randomness. So my answer is still no.
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> Idk though it could be something interesting to add to halo and help it differentiate from other games.

Some other games already have this sort of feature…

> Not even cosmetic (at least in MM), why?
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> Well, we would end up playing with tiny and skinny spartans since everyone wants to have the smallest spartans and if this is wanted either Bungie or 343i had changed the size a long time ago.
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> It’s definitely useful for Machinimas but it adds no depth to the game.

Yes a legitimate concern. If this was purely aesthetic everyone would select short and thin to make for the smallest possible target.

There needs to be some reason to go taller or wider, a benefit to make players consider it, which I addressed.

> > Not even cosmetic (at least in MM), why?
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> > Well, we would end up playing with tiny and skinny spartans since everyone wants to have the smallest spartans and if this is wanted either Bungie or 343i had changed the size a long time ago.
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> > It’s definitely useful for Machinimas but it adds no depth to the game.
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> Yes a legitimate concern. If this was purely aesthetic everyone would select short and thin to make for the smallest possible target.
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> There needs to be some reason to go taller or wider, a benefit to make players consider it, which I addressed.

Or you could just keep everybody the same size, eliminating the problem entirely. Keep different sizes and shapes to possible gametypes incorporating different species.

While I admire how you try to make the physical changes visible, I’m going to have to vote no on this one completely. On a gameplay perspective, I feel like having different speed-health ratios would create a mess of things. First of all, if some players have a higher base movement speed than others, then how are you supposed to design maps? As we know, maps are built based on the movement speed of players. The jumps, distance of cover, size of power areas, etc. are all based off of how quickly a player can get from point A to point B.

If the maps are based off of the fastest possible movement speed, then any player who does not pick that type of character is instantly at a huge disadvantage. Sure, they have a bit more health, but they won’t be able to get to cover as quickly, won’t be able to make the same running jumps. That means that they won’t really gain much advantage from their extra health. If they can’t make it to cover fast enough, then they’ll get shot more, and therefore not gain any advantage from their health. And what if the maps are based off of the slowest possible speed? The bulkier Spartans don’t have any disadvantage, but then the faster Spartans have a supremely large advantage. They’ll be able to make jumps and plays that were never intended from the map designers, creating a large imbalance. And if the maps are designed around the average Spartans? Slower ones are still disadvantaged, and faster ones get more advantage. We would end up with poorly designed maps.

And nobody should be able to swap weapons faster than others, or be able to strafe more quickly. In the heat of the battle, the winning player should come out victorious due to having superior skills. Is it fair that I win in a battle simply because I could switch to my secondary weapon faster than you? Or is it fair that you beat me simply because your character can strafe faster than mine? No, it is not. Look at it this way, if two players are exactly evenly skilled, then statistics say that both should win exactly 50% of the time against each other in a BR duel. However, if one person is a short, thin Spartan, and the other is tall and stocky the short Spartan would end up winning far more than 50% of the time. Why is that? It’s because he simply has a trait advantage that the other guy does not have. It is unfair, and unfun.

And then there’s the visual aspect of it. Making your Spartan stocky or thin? Fine, I can accept that. In fact, I would love it, as long as there’s no gameplay changes associated with it. After all, it’s the same deal as changing your Spartan’s gender. You have the same hitbox, therefore things are equal. But height? No way. People would always be picking smaller Spartans, since there would be no reason to make yourself a bigger target. And then, at that point, what’s even the point of having different sizes? Let’s just stick to one height.

Therefore, my final answer is no. Like DecepticonCobra has said, if we want to have different heights and sizes, they should be limited to different species that appear in different gametypes, like Invasion.

Messing with the hitboxes is a bad idea (same goes for the base player traits). Halo 3 elites in SWAT? And that was just a myth.

Other than that, I see no problem.

Perhaps if this was implemented in the non PvP side of halo like firefight or spartan ops, that would be acceptable, but there is enough randomness and inequality in halo already, we definitely do not need any more.

Cosmetically, we already have this sort of thing (male vs. female) so I see no harm in expanding upon it as long as the extremes aren’t vastly different. However, I think different builds should be as far as this goes. Differing heights could create balance issues as shorter Spartans would be able to hide much easier.

Halo 4 already has too many things that create inequality between players and we certainly do not need more.

Just keep the heights/weights the same. People are going to try to exploit the crap out of anything. (Remember all those guys that only played as the female Spartan because they thought it was a smaller target?)

For fun and the sake of curiosity, what height and weight combo would you pick or would you think is best based solely off the information I gave at the start of the thread?

> For fun and the sake of curiosity, what height and weight combo would you pick or would you think is best based solely off the information I gave at the start of the thread?

None of them. There needs to be one set height/weight for every Spartan. Keep difference like this relegated to multi-species gametypes and modes.

> > For fun and the sake of curiosity, what height and weight combo would you pick or would you think is best based solely off the information I gave at the start of the thread?
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> None of them. There needs to be one set height/weight for every Spartan. Keep difference like this relegated to multi-species gametypes and modes.

You missed the point there Cobra, I was simply asking you to humor me with what you would pick were this implemented.

I get that you only want one height and weight setting.