Sprint encourages charging in head-first, and also takes away the skill of retreating in Halo. In classic Halo, you had to know the map well to retreat, by memorizing the shortcuts and desperately trying to keep your line of sight cut off from the enemy through smart positioning, as well as accurately bouncing grenades off of certain walls as a form of area denial to slow down your chaser. A lot of that skill is simply sucked away when all you have to do is press a button and turn the other way for a long burst of speed. So now instead of using pure skill to escape from an intense conflict, most of retreating is now about mashing the left thumbstick and running the other way. Sure, there may be a LITTLE skill in sprinting away (as in almost none), but not enough to be considered “skillful”. What doesn’t help either is that no one can shoot while sprinting, so a lot of the time it ends up becoming nothing more than a wild goose chase. Either your enemy doesn’t sprint and tries to shoot you, only for you to speed away before he has a chance to kill you, or he tries to sprint after you, further delaying the combat and still giving you extra time to strategize your escape, as again, your enemy can’t shoot you during this time.
I also wanted to add that in Halo 4, 343i compensated for the addition of sprint by lowering the base movement speed. All this does is lower the emphasis on strafing and make the game easier, because when in combat you’re opponent will either be trying to charge toward you in a straight line for a pummel (due to the sprint encouraging them) or will be strafing with the slow movement speed. It was a lot more challenging and skillful when your target darted left and right at faster speeds, instead of either doing it sluggishly or just running forward because the game encourages him to. Which seems a lot more fun? A game where you outmaneuver your opponent through randomizing a series of rapid movements, or a game where this has little to no use and instead you’ll just be skipping around in a game of cat and mouse?
Halo 4’s gameplay is essentially pop out of cover, just keep tapping the trigger and hope for the best, and then if you’re shot, run away super easy and recharge your shields. No one’s strafing that often, because of sprint and the reduced movement speed, the game is just a more pathetic version of those kung fu movie chases, except with a lot less action and without any of the cool parkour. This is Halo dangit, take out the sprint and increase the movement speed. What happened to the days of outmaneuvering your opponent to win the engagement?
Last couple of things I need to mention. People say that since your a super-soldier, you should be able to sprint, because according to them “What kind of super-soldier can’t sprint?” Firstly, this is a video game, not reality, so realism has no point, because no matter how realistic it seems, it’s never going to BE REAL (no Yoink! but apparently people don’t realize this enough). And think of it this way, if you are a super soldier, why are you forced to PUT DOWN YOUR GUN to achieve a faster speed, and why are you restricted to moving forward when wanting to move fast? Why can’t you move just as fast while going backward or to the side? You ARE a super-soldier after all, so if anything, your movement should be less restricted.
And lastly, people make the point that without sprint, it would take a lot longer to travel from
place to place. Bs, because upon implementing sprint into Halo: Reach and Halo 4, they decided to make the maps LARGER to compensate (in terms of sight lines and distance from place to place). So if anything, traveling from place to place in Halo 2 takes just as much time as traveling from place to place in Halo 4.
You heard my point, so 343i, please do us a favor and take out sprint in Halo 5 for the better of the franchise. This is coming from not only a lover of competitive FPS (I play tons of Quake 3 as well), but also a lover of the Halo franchise. This series came out when I was five, I killed my first marine and I was attached to the game ever since. Make the right choice.
I think I may see the problem here though. You want to add a bit more “style” to your game and spice things up. Here is my suggestion then, replace default Sprint with a default Thruster Pack. Increase the range a bit from it’s Halo 4 incarnation and it’ll function like a dodge maneuver. It’ll be just quick jolt of speed that lasts for less than a second, and it goes back to the gunplay. That and it’d be good for the competitive community, because it would enhance the strafing mechanic of Halo and would make for a faster pace. Even if you want, allow for two thrusts before having to cooldown. Make it so that upon double tapping in any direction with the left stick, your character will thrust in said direction, this would feel very natural and smooth. If you want, you could also let players walljump by thrusting near a wall and hitting A upon collision. All these mechanics would be welcome in the Halo series and wouldn’t alter the gameplay from the formula we love. Imagine dodging a rocket with a thrust to the side, as well as all the epic ninja assassinations that can come while landing a wall jump.