1) SIGNIFICANT REQ/EXP boosts for JIP Games
Ideally, you’d let us hit a toggle in the options menu for whether or not we agree to jump into matches that are half-finished or not, but I doubt that would ever happen. That said, if you don’t want people jumping in, looking at the score, and immediately leaving while rolling their eyes, you could at the very least incentivize people to stay in a JIP match. People that clean up **** for a living are paid, you know.
2) TWO Life Bars for Every Boss
One life bar for each team, color coded (Blue bar for Blue, Red bar for Red). All damage dealt by blue team goes toward the blue bar, all damage dealt by red team goes towards the red bar.
Right now boss fights are not fun. You have two teams spamming the boss with the most powerful weapons they have, crossing their fingers and hoping they get the last shot. Even teams that try to coordinate and take out the other team while dealing damage to the boss basically have to cross their fingers and hope that some enemy doesn’t respawn with a legendary weapon and take the final shot before the last tank blast/rail gun/rocket/laser/etc hits.
It’s not fun.
Two life bars, takes the frustration away. If you’re on red team and the boss is almost dead, and then you hear ‘enemy killed yada yada’ then you know that you lost the kill because the other team took out the ENTIRE LIFE BAR before your team took out yours. It wasn’t a roll of the dice to see who gets the final kill shot.
Hell you could even show BOTH bars to BOTH teams, so that for example, Red team sees the Blue team bar going down really fast and knows they have to take out some blue team players in the boss area.
3) Dropped power weapons should hang around longer
I get it. You don’t want the mid and later stages of Warzone matches filled with people running around with insanely powerful power weapons at all times. That’s a smart consideration.
But you’ve gone too far the other way.
There is an inherent satisfaction in out-gunning an opponent who has the more powerful weapon. But there’s also HUGE satisfaction in picking up that implement of destruction and using it yourself. This applies in Arena, in BTB social, and in Warzone.
Cut the remaining ammo in half as soon as the weapon drops. Hell, cut it into a third of the remaining ammo. But if a player guns down an enemy equipped with a godly weapon, let them use it, for at least a shot or two.
The plus side for you 343i, if I may speak to what you truly care about, is that it gives players a taste or sneak preview of what they can get if they keep buying REQ packs. You know what the first time I ever gave even half a **** about a new weapon cert was (aside from the DMR)? It was getting lucky enough to pick up the Spartan Laser that dealt damage with the targeting laser. ‘Oh, I gotta get me one of these’. I even - stupidly - blew some money on a Gold pack or two with the futile hope I might get one. I eventually did through the standard grind, but you made 5 bucks off me just from that taste.
4) REQ level adjustments
This is minor, but there is no way in hell the Carbine should be a level 4 when the the BR has several variants with enhanced scopes, vehicular damage, stability and melee damage/range as early as level 3. Drop it to level 2 or 3.
Also, either fix Ghosts or increase the REQ level. Maps are packed with them before the middle base is even taken over, and despite the ‘shoot the weakpoint’ tip, it takes at least 2 people perfect-shotting the weak point or driver to take one of the suckers down. Now imagine dealing with 3 at a time. Little bit powerful for a level 3.
Also, jacking Ghosts is currently finicky garbage, and it’s a little ridiculous that they can splatter me while traveling slower than a Spartan spring.
Fix it.
.Im gettin kinda tired of crossin my fingers too. Especially if i went to town on knight strategos with my typhon or the answer and the kill gets snaked from under me. I want my damn req cards back. Haha