Should the Community Bother Balancing Flood?

Games Other Halo
1

I’ve been an adamant supporter of a more “balanced” Infection experience that smooths out some of the inequalities between Humans and Zombies for a long time now. With Reach this attempt at balancing was made through the maps with revamps to non-Forge World maps and “exploded” Forge World maps. All worked to remove or lessen the power of camp spots and force Humans to use teamwork.

But lately I’ve been thinking: Should the community bother trying to “balance” the Flood gametype?

Since it’s inception in H2 Infection has been the most unbalanced, god awful creation I’ve played. It always devolves into Humans finding the most overpowered camp spot on the map and sitting in it, blasting Zombies who have no choice but to face Humans in head on encounters. Head on encounters which are heavily favored in the Humans favor because of the weapon setup. Blasting Zombies is mind numbingly boring and requires little skill. Meanwhile being the Zombie is a rage inducing, frustrating experience that makes me wanna snap my controller in half.

Yet despite all the noise people have made over the years about it, this is now the third game where the experience has not changed from what I have described. Sure the Flood have AAs in H4 but the gameplay experience still devolves into the “Camping Humans, Dying Zombies” gameplay that I hate.

And the gametype is still as popular as ever.

And so I’m being drawn to these thoughts: These people obvious like it, and like it a lot. So who are we to change it on them? Who are we to tell them what they should like and shouldn’t like?

I’m thinking that we give up the ghost of trying to balance Infection since if Bungie/343 wasn’t/hasn’t been moved by now to change it, they won’t.

2

I don’t yet have an opinion on this, but I will point out two notable events in Reach’s lifetime: Bungie attempted to patch out multiple exploit spots in Reach’s Living Dead, and either Bungie or 343i (IIRC the latter) implemented more balanced community maps (though their adamant support of four-player split-screen limited what those maps could accomplish).

So the trend I’m seeing is that the devs are interested in preventing experiences that are outright exploitative… but beyond that, they seem to prefer a laissez-faire approach.

3

> I don’t yet have an opinion on this, but I will point out two notable events in Reach’s lifetime: Bungie attempted to patch out multiple exploit spots in Reach’s Living Dead, and either Bungie or 343i (IIRC the latter) implemented more balanced community maps (though their adamant support of four-player split-screen limited what those maps could accomplish).
>
> So the trend I’m seeing is that the devs are interested in preventing experiences that are outright exploitative… but beyond that, they seem to prefer a laissez-faire approach.

Never noticed that before but it does seem so obvious now that you spell it out.

We are likely to see the tower on Complex soft killed out. But not gameplay balance on a whole addressed.

4

Halo 4’s Flood is perfectly balanced. This is the first Halo where I have actually played Flood and I love it.

Here’s why:

  1. I always score higher as a Flood, and almost never go negative. If you use thruster pack right you are basically a God and the humans have little chance.

  2. With the exception of the (patched) glitch spot on complex all the maps are really fair. If you are good as a human, you’ll usually get around 8 kills a round. If you are good as a zombie, you can get a 3 spree really easily.

  3. Pistols aren’t one shot kills. Meaning that the “camping spots” become useless after 2 minutes when you run out of long range ammo.

The fact is that the zombies are actually more powerful than humans, and I love it.

Key Tips

As a zombie, use thruster pack and swing for the enemy as you boost PAST him, not at him.

As a human, use promethean and stay with other humans, let them absorb the charging zombies. Stay in the open.

If you are a zombie, don’t just throw yourself at the humans. Play smart.

Try and take out individual humans first. Build up the numbers of Flood before you try attacking the groups head on.

TL;DR

Flood is awesome if you use thruster pack and don’t just throw yourself at groups of humans over and over.

5

> 1) I always score higher as a Flood, and almost never go negative. If you use thruster pack right you are basically a God and the humans have little chance.

Subjective experience does not make for objective fact.

TP’s range is huge in Flood and it’s very easy to underestimate and overshoot your target.

> 2) With the exception of the (patched) glitch spot on complex all the maps are really fair.

Sounds like you haven’t played with people abusing camp spots.

Just rage quit out of a game on Solace were Humans were camping Living Side by the Grenade Spawn where it has the open void into the background rocks/waterfall.

Wasn’t even going to try that game.

> 3) Pistols aren’t one shot kills.

Already knew that.

> Meaning that the “camping spots” become useless after 2 minutes when you run out of long range ammo.

No.

They don’t.

> As a zombie, use thruster pack and swing for the enemy as you boost PAST him, not at him.
>
> As a human, use promethean and stay with other humans, let them absorb the charging zombies. Stay in the open.
>
> If you are a zombie, don’t just throw yourself at the humans. Play smart.
>
> Try and take out individual humans first. Build up the numbers of Flood before you try attacking the groups head on.

I don’t need tips.

I already knew all of these tips.

I knew you could attack during TP’s third person animation from 343’s Flood reveal video prelaunch.

> Flood is awesome if you use thruster pack and don’t just throw yourself at groups of humans over and over.

We’ll have to agree to disagree.

It’s the same recycled garbage that I’ve hated for two games now. Adding AAs and reskins of the player model hasn’t changed anything. If anything the game mode is worse off because of a lack of custom game options.

Any forum postings I’ve made with my thoughts on the matter have been met with negativity, hostility and name calling. I’m ready to flip the table and say let players have it as it is. Don’t bother fixing camp spots. Don’t bother trying to balance the gamemode a bit and smooth out the extreme lows and highs to overall create a better experience.

The players have spoken and what they’ve said is that they just want to play a glorified version of Duck Hunt so they can rack up all the kills while the Zombies get to gargle buckshot.