So I was browsing through Halo Waypoint when i saw a playable elite section but would it be cool to be able to play as all Covenant species in custom games also to be able to play as marines and ODSTs well let me know what you think.
Yes BUT and that’s a big but, the gametypes they appear in should be limited and specialised.
For example in competitive, it should be the same specie against itself i.e. Spartan V Spartan, Elite V Elite, Brute V Brute you get the idea…
For social this can be a little more lenient depending on how each race is balanced defensively, someone playing as grunt would have no chance when the whole enemy is spartans. Standard gametypes would have probably be limited to Spartans, elites, brutes and possibly Soldiers. Wheres as special gametypes like a improved version of invasion that allows more players and forces species. So there’s 2 spartans and the rest are regular marines on one team and the other has 2 elites and rest are randomised with grunts and jackals.
Warzone could probably allow free choice and allow the ability to change species after death.
Game modes like juggernaut could possibly use hunters and knights instead of just a beefed up spartan.
Action sack would probably see a lot of grunt usage in its gametypes
Machinima makers will be very over joyed if this ever happens
How would I effectively play as a freakin engineer? I’d literally float around and explode.
it wouldn’t be very balanced, but if it were for a more casual spin off game sure. it’d certainly help out machinima makers
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> How would I effectively play as a freakin engineer? I’d literally float around and explode.
and now I desperately want playable engineers. just the thought of being a floaty squishy guy zooming into a pack of enemy players only to kill myself sounds hilarious.
as for actually being effective, it might work as a support or healing character but then it’d be to close to games like overwatch
I’d say no as you’d have to put in a lot of work to even make them uniquely playable.
No, I don’t think it’s sensible to spend valuable development time for that. First of all, the idea that all these vastly different character classes could work together to create a coherent experience in standard multiplayer gametypes is ridiculous. The Spartan–Elite combination of Halo 2 and 3 only (sort of) worked because they were just reskinned versions of the same playable character. To go down this path for Brutes already would require changes to the character models that are completely unjustified from a lore standpoint (and here I assume players who would want to play as these characters consider lore accuracy as something important).
The other path is, of course, what Bungie did in Halo Reach with Invasion, and actually make the different characters into separate classes, in some sense. However, this would greatly depart from the symmetric gameplay where everyone has the same abilities that many players care a lot about. This would either mean showing the door to a portion, possibly a great portion, of the fan base, or creating entirely separate game modes from the standard ones to accomodate for this class based gameplay.
And regardless of what route was taken, it would require great effort for what? The lazy approach of reskinning the same character offers very little to the player, especially compared to the effort it takes to design the character models to fit the same size specification, which is impossible for most species anyway. The less lazy approach of alienating a portion of the player would require multiple different sets of character mechanics with attention paid to some balancing considerations, if done poorly, and essentially a complete redesign of the game’s mechanics, if done properly, to suit the new class based gameplay. Then for the approach that actually made everything properly (i.e., made these characters interesting to play and didn’t alienate a significant part of the player base), this would all have to be added on top of the traditional gameplay.
And all of this without any guarantee that a significant number of players even cares about this sort of stuff. Frankly, the Elite community is already somewhat of a niche group in the Halo community. Then there’s the group that would like to play as Brutes which, based on how rarely I run into them, is even more niche. Then for any other species, I might have heard once anyone seriously suggesting that idea.
So, this is an unnecessary amount of work to satisfty a very niche part of the community, with a huge amount of pitfalls, and almost nothing in return. While I would never be opposed to spin-offs that explore the Halo universe from other angles, I would never want to see this in a main Halo game, knowing that any effort spent on it would have been better spent elsewhere.
I’d be all for it in some type of Halo RPG game, but not in the main one.