Spartan Ops needs to tweak it's gameplay.

Games Other Halo
1

First of all, I loved Spartan Ops, but I found lacking in some things mainly in the immersion through gameplay,I have a few ideas that could be implemented if the community brings it to 343 attention. And I also believe that to set spartan ops apart from campaign and multiplayer and make it a unique experience it needs to tweak the gameplay and be different.

Spartan Ops could benefit from a class based system, because since we are a fire-team we need pre-made roles example: medic, soldier, heavy weapons specialist, etc. So we can each contribute to the team differently. Because currently Spartan Ops solution to forcing teamplay is adding more enemies and more shields, and in my opinion that doesn’t make it harder just more tedious.But the act of balancing the classes is something else entirely because having one class dominate the other also breaks immersion. Thus for a truly balanced class systems we need, damage dealers, supports and specialist.
Examples:

Soldier:
Battle Rifle
Assault Rifle
50% more base shields
50% ammo capacity
1+ Grenade Capacity

Heavy Weapons Specialist:
Mounted Turret
Shotgun
Moves normally with a turret
50% more base shields

Recon:
DMR
Sniper
Ability to mark Targets
Enchanced Motion Sensor
Able to see cloaked targets
15% Base Movement
Promethean Vision

Medic:
Battle Rifle
Magnum
Ability to revive teammates faster
Deploys Hardlight Shield for protection

Operator:
Assault Rifle
Magnum
50% Vehicle Health
Repair

I am not an expert at balancing things and this classes are just a proof of concept,although I believe 343 should follow this rule “no class has a weakness just different strengths”. Also all classes are able to pick up any weapon, the only changes would be atribute bonuses and starting weapon

As you can see I added a medic because I think that spartan ops would benefit greatly if we scrapped infinite lives, and lives in Spartan ops. And instead replace it with downed/injured states like in Gears of War 3/Mass Effect 3 because it makes more challenging and team oriented. All classes will be able to revive the medic just does it faster.

Feel free to disagree or modify my idea into a better one.

2

I think its fine the way it is

3

Loadouts aren’t the main issue though (but they do kill a lot of the challenge… remember how in E6C1 we were stuck with a Carbine? That actually played like a mission).

It’s mission structure.

Only 3 of my loadouts are clever combos. My 4th loadout is for killing Crawlers and Watchers from a safe distance and my 5th loadout is what I resort to when overwhelmed by a dozen Knights (plasma pistol, plasma grenade, grenadier).

4

Loadouts don’t come close to being the first thing that needs an overhaul in SpOps. The unevenness of the gameplay is the first thing that comes to mind. The change in mission structure moving from Normal to Legendary and from single-player to multiplayer makes the game a random crap shoot. And most of the missions demonstrate a clear direction of creating Reach-like bullet sponges at higher levels and masking that as a “challenge.” As difficulty increases, enemies also fire weapons faster, more accurately and the bullets themselves travel faster. How on earth did that make its way through gameplay testing? Honestly. The bullets…travel faster. Why? I just don’t get it. And so far, no one from 343 has done anything to explain anything about why the basic design of gameplay was done using this methodology when nothing I’ve ever seen in any other FPS does this. And this really needs a satisfactory explanation, more than any other aspect of the game experience. The “interviews” they’ve done have meaningless platitudes that don’t give a solid set of reasons why making enemies take 5 times longer to kill, while making their aim nearly perfect and allowing them to have different weapon performance characteristics is a good thing. There’s no consistency at any level of SpOps. Loadouts are so far down the list of things wrong right now its not even on the third page, let alone the first.

5

Having loadouts in Spartan Ops is the reason 343i put it in Halo 4 in the first place. They want to connect it more to the books, make you feel like a real Spartan. Of course everyone lost their -Yoink- just because Call of Duty has a similar system. It’s like Crysis, Battlefield, and counter strike don’t even exist.

6

> How on earth did that make its way through gameplay testing?

I recall in the Covenant weapons bulletin how they said they’d make it so that the player’s projectiles would travel normally but the Covies would be a bit slower.

> Having loadouts in Spartan Ops is the reason 343i put it in Halo 4 in the first place. They want to connect it more to the books, make you feel like a real Spartan. Of course everyone lost their Yoink! just because Call of Duty has a similar system. It’s like Crysis, Battlefield, and counter strike don’t even exist.

They should have focused on our Spartans first, as they rarely appear in cinematics.

Also, they said a variety of playing styles would work in the game mode but all I see is DMR, plasma pistol, and plasma grenades.

Spartan Ops doesn’t really encourage adaption like Campaign does. When I get swarmed by Knights in the Campaign, I can deal with it just fine. When I get swarmed by Knights in Spartan Ops, for some reason I can’t and have to resort to an anti-Knight loadout.

7

I prefer loadouts in Spartan Ops as it’s the closest thing I get to immersion in it (although I’m neutral in it’s place in MM). It’s more something that’s there to fit your play-style better (although most I see is DMR, BR, PP and Boltshot).

The structure of the missions should be changed though, less “Push these buttons then kill these guys” missions. Why not a mission that revolved around stealth instead of charging head-first into the bad guys, or a mission that included the Pelican/Broadsword? Just something different than the repetitive missions we have now.

As for the list, I can’t quite put my finger on it but it reminds me of another game’s loadout system.

8

The biggest problem with Spartan Ops is that it was too long for the amount of environments we visited.

There was far too much filler in Spartan Ops, 343 could have easily cut nearly half the missions, the story would have still gotten where it needed to go, but with a lot less repetition.

I applaud 343 for trying to give us a lot of content but what was there was not enough to sustain it for 50 missions. There are whole episodes that in terms of gameplay could have been completely removed and nothing in the grand scheme of the story would have changed.

If there is a season 2, unless there is DOUBLE the number of locations compared to season one than they should definitely keep the seasons to about 25 missions rather than 50.

9

Id rather them just change the settings and change parameters to basically recreate firefight. It has to be possible.

10

> I applaud 343 for trying to give us a lot of content but what was there was not enough to sustain it for 50 missions. There are whole episodes that in terms of gameplay could have been completely removed and nothing in the grand scheme of the story would have changed.

But what of replayability? Do you think 343 chose to stretch out less than a campaign’s worth of plot over 50 missions because they thought we’d all enjoy -Yoink- around for bland corporate military beurocrats for a few more hours? -Yoink- no, the story is just there to justify (however weakly) a linear mission structure. Unlike as for the original campaign, its not why the mode exists.

The reason we (likely) have so many missions is to simply provide a similar amount of content to replay that the much more reusable firefight missions had because they were skinner boxes. On the one hand you have 343’s ambition to tell a story but on the other serious concerns as to how the mode is going to function in the community once all is said and done. They may have been able to provide two equivalent experiences but the core problem isn’t simply that the original campaign isn’t long enough or can’t tell a broad enough story. It’s that it can’t as effectively provide a particular service to the community, so to do that SOPS operates by different standards for pacing and repetition that set it apart from what you would expect, but that’s precisely the point.

11

sounds interesting that of having classes, but i know a better solution

‘‘less lag’’ having a good match for me will be enough

in all my co-op spartan ops life, i only got like 20 spartan ops perfect and smooth matchs
the rest…i feel like in DBZ, teleporting like Goku every 5 min in the firefight.

and no, my signal don’t suck, i only have that problem in Spartan Ops.