So now that I think we’ve established that sprint in its current incarnation is completely useless, how about we take a look at an idea where Sprint could be made to work in HALO?
We could try and tweak it by altering the speed, or making sprint drain shields, or making it temporary, or disabling sprint when shot…or any number of different things which don’t solve the issue. Sprint is useless when it’s a base player trait. Increasing the disadvantages of using Sprint doesn’t suddenly make Sprint useful.
The only way to keep Sprint balanced with the rest of Halo’s gameplay, and make it useful–is to make it a power-up, not a base ability. From my point of view, Sprint needs to be unbalanced. Here’s why:
First we’ll take a look at how a multiplayer match used to play out in Halo 1, 2, and 3, and to some extent every campaign in the Halo series:
- One of the key features about Halo is that all players start out on equal footing with versatile weaponry–usually with an assault rifle and pistol, or the battle rifle and pistol, or something similar.- After the match begins, players rush towards the locations of powerful weapons, vehicles, power-ups, Halo 3’s equipment, the Flag, the Oddball, or the Hill, which are situated at various locations around the map.- Once players control these objects, the battle is focused on negating the enemy’s advantage–killing the enemy, and taking what made them powerful for yourself.So, if Sprint is something which, at its core, is something which, when used, is supposed to give you a significant advantage over the enemy, why not have it as a power-up? Note that this is different to how armour abilities were used. Here, I’ll explain why armour abilities, tactical packages, support upgrades, ordnance drops, and one or two of the Spartan abilities are not really Halo–they’re fun, but they aren’t as fun as they could be:
- Halo 3’s Equipment–now this is the closest to the core Halo experience. The equipment was placed on the battlefield for anyone to pick up, anyone to fight over, and [if I remember correctly] anyone to steal once you died if you hadn’t used them [it was that way in campaign, at least]. They were a one-use only item, able to give you an advantage only once per item. The biggest problem with Halo 3’s equipment was that an enemy could not tell what equipment you had. You can generally tell what secondary weapon a player has–whether it’s a Gravity Hammer or a Rocket launcher, for instance. You can also prepare a strategy in advance for how to deal with that power weapon because you can see it. This is tactical gameplay. You could not tell what equipment a player was carrying, until they had used it, which is twitch gameplay–you have to react quickly to the unexpected, new situation. That was the biggest problem with Halo 3’s equipment.- Armour Abilities, tactical packages and loadouts–In addition to the problems that Halo 3’s equipment had in trying to tell what equipment/ability the enemy was actually capable of using, the big problem with these is that they are given to you at the start of the match. When you are killed, they are not dropped on the ground like weapons so that the enemy player can steal whatever power item made you powerful. Worst of all, they are not available for you to pick up in a multiplayer match. Spawned with Armour Lock? Need a jetpack? Find a jetpack lying around and swap it out. Make it so that the AA/Tactical package is fought over. so that the person who wins it can dominate the playing field. Or if you see an enemy with an AA/TP that you like, kill them and steal it. Why should it just be given to you at the start of the match, and that’s it? Why should you have to die if you want to change your AA/TP?- Ordnance drops–You get points, you get a power-up, thus rewarding the skilled players and punishing the less skilled players. The ordnance drop lands close to you…and sometimes ends up splattering you or someone else. One issue here is that this kind of negates the point of map control. A skilled player can easily rack up kills and get a power weapon because they are skilled. Why do they need to bother fighting over power-weapons on the map? They don’t. They’ll get those weapons anyway. Another issue is that even if ordnance drops were rebalanced so that wasn’t the case the drops you get are random. Assisted a bunch of people? Get an incineration cannon. Got a killionaire? Here’s a needler. Splattered a bunch of people? Here’s Speed Boost. It might reward your skill, but what you get typically doesn’t reflect what your skill is.Now, we’ve just discussed all the ways in which recent Halo games have skirted around the issue of power-ups. Let’s take a quick look at the features of power-ups themselves.
- Power-ups are obtainable objects placed on the map. Frankly, the rocket launcher, flag, oddball, bomb, sniper rifle, energy sword, overshield, invisiblity, sprint/speed bost, vehicles, etc, could all be considered power-ups.- Power-ups have a limited number of uses/limited amount of time in which to use them.- Power-ups grant you additional abilities. With the Energy Sword–it’s a massive lunge ability. In Grifball, you become fat, lazy, orange-yellow, shouted at, mocked, and in serious danger of being killed by Sarge…no wait, something’s wrong there…- Power-ups are transferable, if they haven’t already been activated/used up. If an enemy kills you, they may be able to acquire the power-up.- Power-ups should be visibly different. It’s quite obvious when you are using Overshield.- Power-ups should be identifiable even if they have not been activated. Have them visible on the player like secondary weapons.Personally, I think that Sprint needs to be considered a power-up. It shouldn’t be infinite. It shouldn’t have unlimited uses, it should be transferable, and it shouldn’t be considered a base trait of Spartans. What do you think?