Spartan Ops, Titanfall and The Future of MM

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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First of all, I need to give credit where credit is due. Thanks to Baconshelf from Bungie’s #Gaming Forum:

Now on to the idea, what if Spartan Ops played out like Titanfall’s Campaign, having a small background story but being predominately multiplayer. It would be like an amp’d up invasion.

Now to put my own personal spin on the idea. Why not keep halo 4’s mulitplayer features (custom loadouts, ordinance, etc.) on this revamped Spartan Ops, and dedicate the rest of Halo’s MM to the classic multiplayer experience? This would make both parties happy and give Spartan Ops some replay-ability.

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I guess this could work, but if forced to choose between this and Firefight, I’ll take the latter.

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> I guess this could work, but if forced to choose between this and Firefight, I’ll take the latter.

I agree. I disliked Titanfall for that reason, and the last thing Halo needs is more reasons for people to complain about copying other games.

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They just need to bring back a fully upgraded Firefight mode. :slight_smile:

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> I disliked Titanfall for that reason

Titanfall had a great idea, and it tried it, you can’t go and blame them for trying an idea. But some times an idea will sound and look better on paper than in real life. If the next Halo game had something similar to what titanfall did for it’s campaign, but more of a Spartan Ops, than a full blown PvP match with some events and AIs to it, it should be bundled with a Fire Fight Mode.

Spartan Ops should be an Episodic campaign, where each week/month a Episode is released, with a bundle of missions. Missions in one episode can use the same map, BUT, it can’t be the exact cut and paste map, it should be different, it should feel like you’re driving through a town, but instead of taking main street, you took the side streets through the neighborhoods. BUT that map can’t be used in other episodes. The episodes shouldn’t be a DLC that’s locked to the disk until a set date, it should be a DLC that people have to download when it’s released, and shouldn’t end with a single season.

Fire Fight should be like it was in Halo ODST and Halo Reach, take maps/areas from campaign, multiplayer, and spartan ops, and put them in Fire Fight. You just played an awesome map that you want to do a fire fight match in, jump into fire fight, and load up that map.

It shouldn’t be a “You can have Spartan ops, OR Fire Fight”, There is NOTHING WRONG with having both, I don’t want an either or option, I want a BOTH, or BOTH. You have fans of both fire fight and spartan ops (Concept), don’t throw one group to the way side just because you don’t like the mode they like.

> the last thing Halo needs is more reasons for people to complain about copying other games.

If people are going to hate Halo because it’s “copying” from other games, then they shouldn’t be playing ANY VIDEO GAME. It’s one thing to copy as in they copy paste the feature/idea word for word, line by line, inch by inch, in the game, and improving on an idea/feature in another game. If Halo can take an idea that another game like titanfall came up with, and improved on it, and do a lot better than said game, then it’s not copying, it’s IMPROVING, and that’s what humans do, we look at joe’s idea, and say “HEY! I can do that, and do a better and faster job at doing it, and making 100 times better!”. To hate on Halo for “copying” and improving for one feature/idea, then you should hate every game for copying and improving on pong’s original idea.

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I’d rather not. I think that MP should be its own thing separate form the single player. This whole MP being cannon thing sounds like a limitation of possibilities that one could use to further better the campaign experience.

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> Titanfall had a great idea, and it tried it, you can’t go and blame them for trying an idea. But some times an idea will sound and look better on paper than in real life. If the next Halo game had something similar to what titanfall did for it’s campaign, but more of a Spartan Ops, than a full blown PvP match with some events and AIs to it, it should be bundled with a Fire Fight Mode.

I hardly call Titanfall’s story a “campaign”. All it is was multiplayer with dialogue at BEST. I don’t recall at all what happened during the campaign. The most redundant part was the fact that it didn’t matter whether you won or lost, the story progressed.

> Spartan Ops should be an Episodic campaign, where each week/month a Episode is released, with a bundle of missions. Missions in one episode can use the same map, BUT, it can’t be the exact cut and paste map, it should be different, it should feel like you’re driving through a town, but instead of taking main street, you took the side streets through the neighborhoods. BUT that map can’t be used in other episodes. The episodes shouldn’t be a DLC that’s locked to the disk until a set date, it should be a DLC that people have to download when it’s released, and shouldn’t end with a single season.

I didn’t have problem with maps. To me, it was doing the same thing over and over “clear an area here, clear an area there”. They could at least have some missions where you fly a Pelican or fly in Banshees the entire time to at least mix it up. Or like the last missions in Spartan Ops where you defend certain objects.

> Fire Fight should be like it was in Halo ODST and Halo Reach, take maps/areas from campaign, multiplayer, and spartan ops, and put them in Fire Fight. You just played an awesome map that you want to do a fire fight match in, jump into fire fight, and load up that map.

I have a feeling they didn’t include Firefight because of A. time and B. it was simply taken out because there was no canon behind it.

> It shouldn’t be a “You can have Spartan ops, OR Fire Fight”, There is NOTHING WRONG with having both, I don’t want an either or option, I want a BOTH, or BOTH. You have fans of both fire fight and spartan ops (Concept), don’t throw one group to the way side just because you don’t like the mode they like.

That’s the problem right now. There are people who are demanding:

  • a Halo 2/3-esque game with pretty much the same settings with a return of Firefight
  • a Halo game that keeps the same Infinity settings from Halo 4 with some tweaks.

Me? I just want Halo 5 to do it’s own thing.

> If people are going to hate Halo because it’s “copying” from other games, then they shouldn’t be playing ANY VIDEO GAME. It’s one thing to copy as in they copy paste the feature/idea word for word, line by line, inch by inch, in the game, and improving on an idea/feature in another game. If Halo can take an idea that another game like titanfall came up with, and improved on it, and do a lot better than said game, then it’s not copying, it’s IMPROVING, and that’s what humans do, we look at joe’s idea, and say “HEY! I can do that, and do a better and faster job at doing it, and making 100 times better!”. To hate on Halo for “copying” and improving for one feature/idea, then you should hate every game for copying and improving on pong’s original idea.

I wasn’t complaining, I was saying OTHER people complain about Halo 4 improving upon things from COD. I had a lot of fun with Halo 4. I just wish there was more to do.

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> I hardly call Titanfall’s story a “campaign”. All it is was multiplayer with dialogue at BEST. I don’t recall at all what happened during the campaign. The most redundant part was the fact that it didn’t matter whether you won or lost, the story progressed.

Yeah… tho it wasn’t a campaign by normal standards, but it’s still a campaign mode… But had they done a better job, it would of been a Co Op mission based campaign.

> I didn’t have problem with maps. To me, it was doing the same thing over and over “clear an area here, clear an area there”. They could at least have some missions where you fly a Pelican or fly in Banshees the entire time to at least mix it up. Or like the last missions in Spartan Ops where you defend certain objects.

Agreed, They should do city maps like ODST’s campaign, but have each mission be different, with two or three different ways to complete the mission.

> I have a feeling they didn’t include Firefight because of A. time and B. it was simply taken out because there was no canon behind it.

Time I’d believe, Cannon I highly doubt, BUT I wouldn’t be surprised.

> That’s the problem right now. There are people who are demanding:
>
> - a Halo 2/3-esque game with pretty much the same settings with a return of Firefight
> - a Halo game that keeps the same Infinity settings from Halo 4 with some tweaks.
>
> Me? I just want Halo 5 to do it’s own thing.

yeah… Halo 5 should be it’s own thing, but it should improve on past games.

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Anyone who believe Spartan Ops had a bad storytelling, one does not simply played TitanFall.

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I don’t want Halo to be anything like Titanfall, in any way, Titanfall was fun, for a little while, I have not played it in ages.

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I would be fine with a Titanfall style multiplayer as a playlist choice - maybe a fast paced offensive or defensive mission where you start in drop pods like ODST and battle it out…but not an overall replacement style…just a limited style like anything on the list (infection, SWAT, CTF, etc.).

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I can’t really blame Respawn for the limited effort involved in the campaign. According to Vince Zampella, they’d spend a lot of time making the campaign only for about 10% of people max playing it. From a dev perspective, I can totally see why they didn’t care about campaign.

Titanfall and Halo are different games though. Halo’s campaign has a dedicated following and so does the multiplayer, albeit a polarized mess. Titanfall was designed as an MP shooter, and it does it beautifully. Respawn frequently updated the game and is constantly looking at feedback and usage statistics to tweak the game.

I think a Titanfall-style episode wouldn’t be bad in Halo actually. Given Halo’s much less frantic pace it would be easier to follow everything than in Titanfall with robots raining hell and bullets and explosions everywhere.

That being said, I only want this if 343 has the time to implement it. I’d rather have a well balanced MP first and great campaign rather than a bunch of different experiences, but all of them are mediocre.

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A side Campaign in which whether you win or lose has zero effect on the story? What’s the point?

Developers waste way too much time trying to give meaning to things that don’t matter. If the Campaign didn’t exist and the IMC and Militia were renamed Blue Team and Red Team, Titanfall wouldn’t have been any worse off (it may have even been better off). Additionally, if Halo 4’s Infinity settings weren’t tied to the Infinity (Infinity Ordnance, player is a S-IV, etc.), no one would have cared any less.