I actually don’t mind repeated maps too much, and I find Spartan Ops pretty fun when playing with friends. However, I think there does certainly need to be a limit to the number of lives each player has, or simply have checkpoints like in co-op campaign, which would make it more more tense and challenging. At the moment, players simply run in and try to do as much damage as they can before they inevitably die, then repeat, which I find pretty boring when there’s no team work involved or anything tactical in the gameplay.
I imagine it would be something pretty easy for 343 to adjust, and I think players would find it more enjoyable. It would also feel like more of an accomplishment to complete episodes of Legendary.
Does anyone else agree?
EDIT: As some people have rightly said, limited lives could easily be exploited by other players, who are either AFK, playing badly or just messing around. So here are some alternatives which have been suggested in this thread:
-Have an option of unlimited and limited lives (maybe included in the voting for matchmaking).
-A ranked and unranked playlist (see YummyYummYum’s excellent post below for more detail).
-Include checkpoints, so it would be similar to co-op campaign (although I’m not sure how easy this would be to implement).
-Alternatively, make spawning more reliable (instead of respawning in the middle of several Wraiths…).
-Have a ‘safe’ spawn area.
-There are lots of lives - although you still have to be careful, there is a generous amount to make it fun but to still make it challenging.
-Include a ‘revive’ system similar to Mass Effect of GoW (again, this may be difficult to implement technically).
Due to the comments about lag, I think an option for limited and unlimted would be benefit everyone, and people can still have fun in their preferred game mode.
If they ever decide to limit lives in Spartan Ops, then they had better fix the respawn system because I don’t want to respawn in front of 3 wraiths over and over just to run out of lives
> The question is how many people would play it.
>
> I sure would, it’s more challenging. Now, I just see if I can get more kills than anyone else which is how I got through Reach’s rocketfight.
>
> Make it a option and see how it works.
I think it could actually improve replayability in the long run. If Normal is fairly standard in terms of difficulty and not to different to how Spartan Ops is at the moment, then people could still finish missions. Then they could return to the missions again on a harder difficulty. Of course that’s all speculative, but I agree with you that there should at least be an option.
> If they ever decide to limit lives in Spartan Ops, then they had better fix the respawn system because I don’t want to respawn in front of 3 wraiths over and over just to run out of lives
Good point! Perhaps there could be set points like in Firefight.
I would be OK with this if it weren’t a “Matchmaking” gametype. Any time there are randoms involved I want a lot of room for error.
In one game one of our guys quit and the other stopped playing without quitting. The trouble was we kept spawning on him and it was Shootout on Valhalla in the middle of the Mantis segment. He was in the base and in between us and our Mantises was an army of covenant which was designed to fight 4 mantises, not two footsoldiers running like hell. We couldn’t spawn on each other because the two of us that were playing were usually dead at the same time, and when we DID spawn on each other we’d die soon after.
What I ended up doing was pushing our idle random out of the base so the covenant would kill him and we’d get a new spawn location. That saved the game for us.
Now I have not personally EVER understood why people want “Matchmaking” for firefight and spartan ops, for me the fun of those gametypes comes entirely from playing with friends. However since they DO have matchmaking for these things I prefer the more forgiving versions they tend to make. I don’t want some random spoiling every damn game by wasting all of our respawns, and the fact is putting a consequence like that in only saves you some of the time (You know this to be true if you have any experience with randoms ever). Sometimes they’ll play smarter, but a lot of the time they’ll play just as stupid and ruin everything.
As it is randoms don’t ruin everything because it’s harder for them to do so, but if you make it so they’re punished for playing bad SOME OF THEM will play better, but a lot won’t.
As for a personal respawn limit that’s unique to each player, that sounds good until I play a laggy game where the enemies have insta-kill weapons like binary rifles or fuel rod cannons. I played some spartan ops just the other day and got binary rifle spawn-killed by forerunners at least twice. Nothing I could do about it, I spawned and got vaporized. That’s not fun, and getting punished for it sounds like even less fun.
YES!!! ive been asking for that for a while. It would be cool if there was some sort of some community asking event or something kind of like how undead labs has it where they take questions from the community and reply in depth to them in posts like maybe every 2 months, it would have to be every month at the most since Halo’s bigger.
> I would be OK with this if it weren’t a “Matchmaking” gametype. Any time there are randoms involved I want a lot of room for error.
>
> In one game one of our guys quit and the other stopped playing without quitting. The trouble was we kept spawning on him and it was Shootout on Valhalla in the middle of the Mantis segment. He was in the base and in between us and our Mantises was an army of covenant which was designed to fight 4 mantises, not two footsoldiers running like hell. We couldn’t spawn on each other because the two of us that were playing were usually dead at the same time, and when we DID spawn on each other we’d die soon after.
>
> What I ended up doing was pushing our idle random out of the base so the covenant would kill him and we’d get a new spawn location. That saved the game for us.
>
> Now I have not personally EVER understood why people want “Matchmaking” for firefight and spartan ops, for me the fun of those gametypes comes entirely from playing with friends. However since they DO have matchmaking for these things I prefer the more forgiving versions they tend to make. I don’t want some random spoiling every damn game by wasting all of our respawns, and the fact is putting a consequence like that in only saves you some of the time (You know this to be true if you have any experience with randoms ever). Sometimes they’ll play smarter, but a lot of the time they’ll play just as stupid and ruin everything.
>
> As it is randoms don’t ruin everything because it’s harder for them to do so, but if you make it so they’re punished for playing bad SOME OF THEM will play better, but a lot won’t.
>
> As for a personal respawn limit that’s unique to each player, that sounds good until I play a laggy game where the enemies have insta-kill weapons like binary rifles or fuel rod cannons. I played some spartan ops just the other day and got binary rifle spawn-killed by forerunners at least twice. Nothing I could do about it, I spawned and got vaporized. That’s not fun, and getting punished for it sounds like even less fun.
That’s a very good point, I hadn’t considered that. AS you said, although you do meet some good randoms, but a lot of the time they’re either away or ruining the mission (not that I mind mucking about, but it can be frustrating when all you want to do is finish the mission!). But that’s why I generally play with a friend, and it’s more fun just interacting with the.
I’m thinking perhaps a an option between limited and unlimited lives would be the best for everyone; maybe there could be a vote at the beginning of a game.
I agree Spartan Ops right now is not fun in the least. Games need to be challenging and have a detriment to when you die, Halo 4 might as well give you unlimited shields because death has absolutely no meaning in spartan ops
> > I prefer the “Defend Yoink! or fail the mission” system.
> >
> > Spartan Ops isn’t firefight, and limited lives might be detrimental.
>
> “Detrimental”…How?
Horrible spawning system that puts you right in the middle of combat 9 out of 10 times along with the fact matchmaking pairs you with randoms, quitters, and afk’ers.
Unlike firefight, the goal is to complete the mission, not see how long you can survive against infinite enemies.
Going to be hard to complete the mission if you are constantly spawn killed, have bad teammates, and have limited lives.
I’d also cite poor map design and the fact enemies just pop up around you. It’s hard to play carefully when there are few fortified positions and enemies all over the place.
I’m for this too. Spartan Ops as it is now is a pointless exercise. What’s the point of beating it on Legendary when you can just death flop your way to victory?
It’s a replacement for Firefight, and I think it should have Firefight’s shared lives system from ODST - 10 lives between all 4 players. It would make people play a little more carefully and add some challenge.
Maybe the spawn system needs to be fixed a bit (as above), but it would make a major improvement to an otherwise worthless gametype.
Hmm here is another view for the way spartan ops can play.
First off ill start with respawning and whatnot.
Unlimited respawn(unranked)-game will be just for fun and will give little to no rewards, since winning is guaranteed no matter what.Only playable on heroic.
Limited respawn(ranked)-The ultimate challenge, 3 lives to start and +1 life per 10 kills achieved.Always Legendary, and must be on MM to gain any rewards, exp is rewarded on a tier system based on how many kills were achieved starting at 10.Minimal exp for anything below 10.Rankings will match players with similar ranks, allowing players to enjoy playing with one another, bad with the bad, good with the good.Things like new Challenges,armor,Weapon skins,stances,armor colors, and a separate in-game rank will be earned, granting motivation to play spartan ops competitively and correctly would be yearned.
The current problem with spartan ops is that it has zero competitive nature, which causes stagnation.Humans naturally want to challenge themselves and see what they can accomplish(lazy people are an exception, and shouldnt count).So to encourage the Human nature to be the best, would only increase the spartan ops population and create a whole new side to Halo 4.
I’m aware i practically just wasted 20 minutes of my time, since 343 doesnt give a rats back end about what i suggest, so whatever.I only typed this out because it shows other players that people like me still play the game, and to give others another perspective of what spartan ops could be like.
> > > I prefer the “Defend Yoink! or fail the mission” system.
> > >
> > > Spartan Ops isn’t firefight, and limited lives might be detrimental.
> >
> > “Detrimental”…How?
>
> Horrible spawning system that puts you right in the middle of combat 9 out of 10 times along with the fact matchmaking pairs you with randoms, quitters, and afk’ers.
Play with friends.
I’ve never had that ‘spawning in the middle of combat’ issue you speak of.
