First of all, let me talk about my experience with Halo 5 and other Halo games.
I like to consider myself a decent player in all Halo games (except for Reach because of DMR/Pistol Bloom) but I am not a very competitive player. I play for fun and want Halo to be a fun as possible. I always have liked Halo because of the mix of everything (infantry/vehicle, social/ranked, arena/warzone, matchmaking/customs) with a strong foundation of gameplay. I enjoy both classic and advanced gameplay for different reasons and am overall neutral in the 343vsBungie argument. My biggest issue with the abilities in Halo 5 is how the only thing based solely on a cooldown timer is the thrust evade. On to my idea for a new ability system.
I want a shared energy system for abilities using your thrusters. I imagine this as instead of that triangle indicating when you can thrust again, what if we had a bar that would be depleted different amounts by different actions. For example, thrust evades could use 1/3 of the bar (but still have cooldown), spartan charge and ground pounds could use 3/4 (enough so you can’t instantly thrust after), hover could use 1/4 each second its active, and while sprinting it will recharge at half the normal speed (sprint is assisted by thrusters). Maybe even slide could get a thrust boost to it and use up some energy too. I also really liked the longer but spread out thrust present in H4, so maybe if we hold down the evade button we can get a more gradual but longer lasting boost useful for air control or just opening up new combat opportunities. This would also indirectly nerf things like spartan charge and ground pound (enough said) by making it so you are using most of your energy charging a guy and leaving you more vulnerable to the victim or his teammates until you can recharge. By making it recharge slower while sprinting you keeping it from becoming too effective as a way of escaping an enemy (like how broken it would be if you could recharge shields while sprinting).
As we all know, all spartan abilities are made possible with the thrusters built into your suit, so this idea would make perfect sense and not need a complex lore explanation. I can legitimately see this idea being easily implemented with some balance tweaks of ability efficiency and even imagine callouts (“Energy low!”) or armor mods (Thruster Efficiency) that work with this. All of this should also be modifiable in custom games or even playlists if people see a need for it.
While I’m writing this I want to bring up some other thoughts I have on things changing/returning in the future. These are just miscellaneous thoughts thrown in here because why bother make a new post for them. Dual wielding (balanced by disabled abilities and reduced accuracy), equipment (Halo 3 style), and brute weapons to start. Another thing that I think needs to come back is some of the vehicle physics. I don’t mean splatter physics, which work relatively well in H5, but instead crash physics between vehicles. In Reach/4 you could ram a lighter vehicle with a heavier one and destroy or almost destroy it, now it just ends up on top of you with minimal damage. If two warthogs or ghosts crash at max or close to max speed, that should take out 9/10 of the health of each (so that people who just spawned in a fresh vehicle don’t get frustrated in a car crash and have a chance to survive). The next ideas are more for just funny gameplay moments. Make explosives have more physical force (pushing) on warthogs because because of how fun flying and rolling warthogs is, especially when you barrel roll over half the enemy team. Also, add more weapons with strange physics effects like the Voids Tear that have endless potential for funny moments.
What do you guys think about the idea of a shared energy meter and how can it be improved/tweaked?
TL;DR: Change spartan abilities to have a shared energy meter and some other random stuff