Should Halo De-"Consolize" its' Gameplay?

Games Halo Infinite
1

For those of you unaware, Halo is often attributed for the “Consolization” of FPS games, due to how it simplified certain genre staples to suit the Console landscape. Among other things, these claims tend to identify two key mechanics:

1: A two-weapon limit.
2: Regenerating health.

Many see these as destructive to the pace and depth of FPS games. And yet, nobody in the Halo community ever seems to question them, even though they’re every bit as game-defining as the (rightfully controversial) Enhanced Mobility mechanics. I think the community and developers alike have come to idly accept these mechanics, without truly scrutinizing them for their impact on the game, good or bad. That’s why I think we should put pressure on these series’ mainstays; we’ll either prove that they are positive contributions and should stay as they are, or we’ll discover that Halo could be improved by changing them. Either way, it would be a shame to just accept them without further thought. After twenty years, I think it’s time we and 343 ask ourselves these sorts of questions:

A: Is Halo’s current Health/Shield system healthy for the game? Or does the constant need for cover harm the pace of combat? Could it be changed to remedy this?
B: Does the two-weapon limit force tough decisions and creativity upon the player? Or does it simply reduce the options available without any worthwhile tradeoff?

I’m the last person to blindly call Halo some “dumbed down” Console game. But it’s no smarter to ignore the merits of other FPS games, and Halo might do well to take influence from them. What do you all think?

For my part, I think Regenerating Shields make the Campaign much less fun. It becomes a question of popping into cover every time you take too much damage, and waiting until you can come out. Worse still, recharging health means enemies don’t need to have reliably avoidable attacks. This means attempting to move and dodge enemy fire is unreliable, which at higher difficulties forces this slow, cover-hopping playstyle. While it would have to be carefully tuned for multiplayer, I do wish the Health mechanics rewarded movement and strafing more then sitting still. I could go either way on movement and weapon limits, but I’d truly love to see Halo’s shield system reworked in the future.

2

The regenerating health system is fundamental to not just the gameplay of Halo, but also the lore. You couldn’t simply “change” it without completely changing/destroying the past 20 years of Halo backstory and expanded universe about how the Mjolnir armor works. It’s also not part of the inherently “console” aspect of Halo. I WOULD be in favor of returning to a Halo:CE system where your actual health is non-regenerating and requires health packs, but the shields will always be regenerating.

The three aspects of Halo that WERE unquestionably about its functionality on a console, and thus a controller, were the two-weapon system, auto-aim/bullet magnetism and the slower movement speed.

The slower movement speed is never going to change because you simply can’t have Quake 3 Arena levels of movement on a controller. You don’t have the required precision and speed to make it work. I would be in favor of increasing the base movement speed to help increase the skill ceiling (strafing becomes more effective) and if it’s increased enough, you could remove the sprint mechanic entirely. Maps were stretched in Halo 5 to take the enhanced movement mechanics into consideration so the net effect was that they were a wash when compared with Halo 2/3. It took the same amount of time to “sprint” across Truth in Halo 5 as it did to just run across Midship in Halo 2 because the map was much larger.

Auto-aim/bullet magnetism will always exist on a console FPS because again, you don’t have the required precision/speed that you do with a keyboard/mouse and thus shooting other players would be frustratingly difficult. I DO think you could reduce the bullet magnetism quite a bit, and possibly the auto-aim slightly, to help increase the skill ceiling.

You’re then left with the two-weapon system. In Halo, you literally carry your other weapon on your back. It’s been heavily featured in cut scenes, in-game graphics, and expanded universe lore. If you suddenly can now carry 8 weapons…where are you carrying them? 90s arena shooters like Quake and Unreal didn’t really have expanded universes/lore. They were just pure videogames that didn’t even attempt to “anchor” themselves to believable worlds. Halo does. And regardless, I do think in general that the weapon limit forces you to make decisions about how you are going to play. I just finished playing through Doom Eternal twice (Ultra-Violence and then Nightmare) and you can carry every weapon in the game simultaneously. While it gives you more options at any point, it also doesn’t punish you for ever making the wrong decision. Regardless of what situation you are in, you have the necessary tool to get out of it. The two weapon limit forces you to decide, for example, “do I want to attempt an aggressive push when I know the enemies have shotguns and I don’t, or should I stay at distance and try to force them out with grenades?”

3

> 2533274935834633;2:
> The regenerating health system is fundamental to not just the gameplay of Halo, but also the lore. You couldn’t simply “change” it without completely changing/destroying the past 20 years of Halo backstory and expanded universe about how the Mjolnir armor works. It’s also not part of the inherently “console” aspect of Halo. I WOULD be in favor of returning to a Halo:CE system where your actual health is non-regenerating and requires health packs, but the shields will always be regenerating.

I agree with the rest of your points, but lore shouldn’t dictate gameplay. Any change can be explained in-universe, anyway. From a gameplay standpoint, a two-weapon system and Halo’s BMS aren’t inherently bad, but I think regenerating shields often are. It’s at odds with the creativity I think the weapon limit is meant to promote, because it forces you to run for cover whenever you take damage.
I wasn’t calling for an outright removal of shields, though, so I apologize if that confused you. I do think there should be aggressive alternatives to the usual shield regen so you aren’t forced to keep hiding. It doesn’t have to be DOOM, where you punch health out of everyone all the time, but I think many players can agree that the current system makes for less-than-interesting gameplay. I do think Halo should modify its’ health system to allow for more diverse approaches, especially for a psuedo-“sandbox” style game.

That said, I’m not worried about Halo playing like a “console game” so much as rigidly adhering to potentially outdated mechanics, which I think were holdovers from when people didn’t fully know how to design console FPS games. I don’t mean to say that Shields or Weapon Limits should outright be removed, but developers should be more open to changing them up than they have been, so far. After playing games like DOOM Eternal or Titanfall 2, I can’t help but feel Halo is showing its age by comparison. All I think it needs to feel fresh is an honest look at the established formula, shaking a little of the rigidity out of it.

4

What you’re suggesting sounds a lot like “Change for the sake of change” rather than anything honestly beneficial to the series. Halo 4 tried to “shake a little rigidity” out of the old style of gameplay and look how that was received. If most people like the games the way they are, then there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken. If they ever feel the need to do something drastic they can do it in a spinoff.

I mean I was all for some of what Halo 5 did and was neutral on tjhe rest - only really despising Spartan Charge and Melee-ADS - but Halo 5 was trying to find a middle ground rather than “shaking things up” for the most part. Halo 4 tried to shake things up, and again it was not received well at all.

So yeah, let’s not mess with established mechanics too much in the mainline games? Save that sort of messing around for the side ones.

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> 2533274935834633;2:
> The slower movement speed is never going to change because you simply can’t have Quake 3 Arena levels of movement on a controller. You don’t have the required precision and speed to make it work.

Consider me uninitiated to movement in Quake. Wouldn’t an analog stick allow for greater precision than 4 keys on a keyboard. Stick strafing easily creates more unique angles than a keyboard can. Also a stick allows for a complete range of speeds from slow walk to full run. (Ignoring mechanics like sprint)

6

Halos 4 and 5 are what happens when you take influence from other games. Unbalanced maps, broken ranking system, low population, spartan charge, a sniper that aims for you, and “division” among Halo fans and new players that claim they’re Halo fans. It’s bad for business. Microsoft can afford to lose in the console market, but Halo can’t afford another screw up.

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> 2717573882290912;5:
> > 2533274935834633;2:
> > The slower movement speed is never going to change because you simply can’t have Quake 3 Arena levels of movement on a controller. You don’t have the required precision and speed to make it work.
>
> Consider me uninitiated to movement in Quake. Wouldn’t an analog stick allow for greater precision than 4 keys on a keyboard. Stick strafing easily creates more unique angles than a keyboard can. Also a stick allows for a complete range of speeds from slow walk to full run. (Ignoring mechanics like sprint)

It’s not about the keyboard.
It’s about the mouse. A mouse affords you FAR greater amounts of speed and control over your reticle/movement during a game.
Take a look at this:
High-Level Quake 3 Gameplay
That’s simply not possible to recreate on a controller regardless of how skilled you are. With a controller thumb stick, you can have EITHER speed or control. With a mouse you can have both.

8

Adding more weapon slots will change the game. I think limiting the number of weapons someone can carry keeps them from becoming all powerful, you have to make hard choices about what you choose to keep and what you choose to leave on the ground for team mates. I think its fundamental to Halo.

9

I think most have been discussed already, but I wanted to point out a specific quote here down below:

> 2535410506010406;1:
> I think the community and developers alike have come to idly accept these mechanics, without truly scrutinizing them for their impact on the game, good or bad.

The console community maybe, and it ain’t easy to make them leave certain comfort zones. Especially if certain learning curves are required! However devs know exactly why they chose a certain health system over the other!

Just look at the BR crave for instance, it was clear from the get-go that full regeneration systems wouldn’t work in such a setting. Even HCE or Reach like health system wouldn’t work well in that case, because it’s better to have a small base health pool that fills up and additional protection to search for on the map. That makes you battle ready in every encounter while also forcing the player to scavenge around for more supplies. If you had shields like Halo, even with health that doesn’t regenerate, you would have much less incentive to do so.

In tactical squad based games with classes not having regen at all forces you more to work with your team, utilising your tools/abilities and is a lot more punishing. Especially in the case of single spawn titles like CS and R6S.

Regen in arena FPS line CoD are essential to keep moving. Halo’s shilds for instance are there to ensure every encounter is going to be equal, it also means player are incentivised to push more, because a slow attack means the enemy has time to recover without changing position. It also partially the reason why Reach brought back health packs imho, it doesn’t matter how big your advantage is based on SA and map position, sooner or later you’re forced to move for health which normally deploys faster than ammo.

And there are more examples, like sectional health in open world titles like in FC or “let’s punch health out of demons” like you already mentioned!

I would say we got plenty of different systems based on every single sub-genre. Those are implemented because devs tried out a lot of combinations for many different situations until finding a sweet spot for every situation! I really doubt it’s just idle acceptance or a lore thing like many implied.

10

Why should we change these mechanics?

It’s a pretty big question to answer if we’re seriously going to discuss replacing mechanics that are fundamental to the gameplay identity of a game. Sure, you can argue that making players look for health packs encourages movement, or that allowing players to hold more weapons enables a more varied weapon sandbox. But it’s also going to impose limitations.

Regenerating health makes BTB work. If the player needs to be constantly on the lookout for health, map design is either significantly constrained, or the ground must be littered with health. Quake gets away with super fast movement and small maps relative to that movement. Halo doesn’t. Vehicles certainly work better with regenerating health. For ground vehicles, the function of taking a bit of distance to regenerate health is essentially the same as the function of looking for health, though potentially more constrained. But for air vehicles there’s really no sensible way to deliver health other than auto-regeneration. I’m not saying you can’t have big packs of health floating above the map. It just looks bad without any benefit to gameplay. You can of course also have vehicle health completely decoupled from player health, but that either has to mean not all weapons can damage vehicles, or forcing players to constantly find new vehicles.

Limits on how many weapons one player can hold help distribute roles in team games. In competitive play where players actually work together it encourages a bit more deliberation because the closest player can’t necessarily pick a power weapon if they already have two good weapons. But its role is perhaps more important in casual play, where one player in the team can’t just hoard all the team’s power weapons.

Ultimately, Halo got popular with these mechanics. That may sound a bit hollow now when Halo isn’t very popular, but it does mean that a game with two weapon limit and regenerating health appealed to many players, and maybe still does. Maybe players who like Halo want to play Halo as they know it, and not as an imitation of something else. I have all the respect for old school arena shooters, and I hope that one day someone would find a gimmick to make them popular again, but I don’t necessarily want Halo to be that game, because I like Halo as Halo.

> 2535410506010406;1:
> Worse still, recharging health means enemies don’t need to have reliably avoidable attacks. This means attempting to move and dodge enemy fire is unreliable, which at higher difficulties forces this slow, cover-hopping playstyle. While it would have to be carefully tuned for multiplayer, I do wish the Health mechanics rewarded movement and strafing more then sitting still.

This is an issue with the damage, projectile, and AI aiming mechanics, not with the way health is regained. You’re barking at the wrong tree. Since Halo 2, it has been a problem that at Legendary enemies hit far too often, and do too much damage to cause to player’s shields drop instantly. If you make the player’s shields not recharge, you will only make the problem worse.

11

I’m not sure why recharging health and 2 weapon limit is tied to being “consolized” here. There’s plenty of console games that have non recharging health and more than 2 weapon limit. Could you elaborate on that more? I’m not sure if I’m understanding that sentiment correctly.

Personally I like recharging shields but not health. I think having to be more aware of your health and finding health packs in CE and Reach was more fun than everything recharging in the other games.

As far as 2 weapon limit I say keep it for MP at least. Campaign maybe it’d be cool to have a primary, secondary, and power weapon slot. I wonder if they’ve tested this kind of thing before.