You’ve probably had at least one person tell you that Sprint is bad for Halo. Their reasons are vague: “It makes power positions less important”; “It slows down the game”; or “Sprint is a ‘get out of jail - free’ card.” Well, they’re actually right. Those are all valid reasons as to why Sprint is detrimental to Halo, but I know what you’re thinking: “I don’t play competitively, so why should I care about those things?” Well, that’s a valid question. Too many people don’t understand the problems Sprint causes, and too few explain the problems thoroughly. I’ll do my best to remedy that, so bear with me on this very long forum post.
Sprint, Small Maps, and Game Pace
I would hope that the ultimate goals of the developers are to improve Halo and make it a fun experience. The best way to do those things is to make the game fast-paced. No doubt some think that Sprint is the perfect addition to Halo; after all, it gets you into the action faster.
But Sprint makes designing maps hell for the developer. In order to make any map that plays well, the designer must measure how long it take to get from one piece of cover to the next, how long it takes to cross the map, how far a player generally strafes, and lines of sight from power positions. With Sprint, all of these measurements need to be increased significantly; this is one of the reasons that Halo 4’s maps are so big. Take Haven and compare it to Halo 3’s Guardian. Haven is huge, and so are maps like Adrift and Skyline, which are some of the supposedly “small” maps in Halo 4. They need to be so big in order to accommodate the effect Sprint has on lines of sight, angles, and general spacing. Sprint makes it so that you can traverse that distance faster, but during that time, you cannot contribute to game play. You can’t scope in, look around, shoot, grenade, melee… You can’t really do anything but move, which should be a result of normal movement, not an extra button.
Now let’s take a look at a different situation: The game has doesn’t have Sprint, and the map is smaller. Getting from one place to another might very well take the same exact amount of time as it would on a larger map with Sprint, but during that time you are active. You can instantly put shots on enemy players, instantly melee, chuck a grenade with stopping, walk backwards at the same speed, thwarting melee chargers, and look around in all 360 degrees while maintaining the fastest speed possible. All of this makes for a much faster-paced game in which you are constantly able to do something that contributes to game play without being restricted by Sprint.
Sprint, Large Maps, Vehicles, and Teamwork
All right, so we’ve covered why eliminating Sprint makes the game faster-paced on small maps, but you’re probably asking yourself, “What about large maps? Wouldn’t Sprint actually benefit those since they’re bigger?” Well, in the short term, yes. But there are other things to consider, because maps generally get more complex the larger they become.
Maps are limited. Designers are given a certain memory budget (sort of like a Forge budget) to expend on their map. Large maps can take up a lot of memory; the designer’s intention is to make this kind of map seem open, spacious, and fluid with the limited data budget they are given. Similarly to what happens with small maps, with Sprint, key points in large maps (specifically power positions, bases, weapon and vehicle spawns, and infantry havens) need to be spaced out in a certain way, limiting the basic design paths the map can take and basically forcing big maps to become bigger. “Isn’t this good?”, you might say to yourself. Well, initially, the larger the map is the more awesome (just because of sheer scale) it becomes. But the larger the map is, the more lines of sight need to be restricted with terrain or buildings. These line of sight breakers reduce the amount of playable space. A map like Valhalla does this well because the main line of sight breaker–the central hill–increases the amount of surface that players can walk on, but that hill also segments game play drastically, making the map seem less open. This is another way that Sprint makes big maps seem smaller and in turn consume more memory that could be used for a longer campaign, more Forge pieces, or even more maps. Xbox One lets 343i use more memory than the Xbox 360 did, but they still have limits to what they can put on a disc.
Now let’s talk about how Sprint affects the biggest game type in Halo: Big Team Battle. BTB isn’t nearly as fast-paced as 4v4, but it places the same (if not more) importance on teamwork, communication, and control of power items. In 4v4, the contested power items are power weapons and power-ups, but in BTB, the focus is and always should be vehicles. Vehicles are just plain awesome, and Halo is one of the few shooters to balance them with infantry so well. However, BTB has suffered a major misfortune in Halo 4 do to the inclusion of plasma pistols and plasma grenades in custom loadouts. At the moment, the only “fun” vehicles are those that are so powerful that those game-breaking weapons aren’t as useful (e.g. Mantis, Scorpion, Banshee). We can all agree that being repeatedly killed by some “n00b” in these vehicles is unpleasant; also, these vehicles don’t require much teamwork to use. Before this post turns into a rant on custom loadouts, let me explain how Sprint fits into all of this.
Sprint allows anyone in BTB to be a lone wolf, single-handedly moving across the map and disrupting the enemy’s setup. This was evident in Reach’s Hemorrhage, a remake of Coagulation/Blood Gulch. With Sprint, there was much less of a dependence on vehicular combat. Without Sprint, however, the maps became massive. I remember just how huge Coagulation seemed in Halo 2, how long it took to traverse on foot. Going on foot was dangerous; getting into cover on large maps isn’t easy with Sprint. Instead, there was a huge emphasis on using vehicles to get across the map; it required teamwork to do damage with the Warthog, coordination to pick up your teammates. Sprint makes that teamwork less important. It takes away the team aspect of the game, makes vehicles not-so-useful.
Wow, that was a lot of writing. Hopefully you were convinced, but if you weren’t, please read further.
Some of you might not have been convinced by that last point out how Sprint affects BTB negatively. You might be saying, “Why not just put Sprint into casual playlists and leave it out of competitive ones?” Well, that’s been done before (Reach), and it created a huge rift in the community. Casuals wouldn’t feel comfortable playing without Sprint, and competitive players would detest playing with it. The two sides of the community wouldn’t interact nearly as much as they should; that’s not what anyone wants. Also, if this were the case, then Sprint would have to be an armor ability; all of the other abilities would go unnoticed unless they were overpowered/game-breaking like Armor Lock or Jetpack.
You’ve come to the end of my explanation of why Sprint is bad for Halo. There are many other reasons, most of which are related to the competitive nature of the game; if you’re interested to know what those issues are, tell me and I will explain.
