The lack of marginal advantage is what I would consider the biggest problem with Halo 4’s loadouts, and probably loadouts in general.
Now when I say marginal advantage and apply it to Halo, I’m generally referring to two different styles. The first one is Player Driven Advantage, which basically means an advantage the player creates themselves over another play. This can be movement based, grenade based, position based etc… The other form is the one that is currently subject to question, which is the Weapon Based advantage.
For an example, let’s say we’re playing ragnarok 4v4 with nothing but BR’s for starters. If I pick up a Light Rifle on map, I’ve got a better weapon than you do. In this regard, I’ve got an advantage, albeit slight. So that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about when I say Weapon Based Advantage* (or WBA).
*Note, this is only in reference to non-power weapons. Power weapons are a huge advantage, not marginal.
Now, in previous games the WBA was always available via on map weapons. Things like picking up a needler, or a plasma rifle, or a plasma pistol always offered a slight advantage over the opponent in some way. Because of the weapons being on map, it also went hand in hand with the MBA (movement based advantage). If you knew your enemy had one weapon, you would move around the map to a weapon that was better suited than your current one to counter theirs. If you died and lost that weapon, you had to try something else or wait for it to respawn.
It was their job to make sure you either didn’t get the weapons or position that was better against their own, or simply make sure you didn’t kill them. I think it worked quite well over all, and it encouraged a lot of player movement, even to spots on the map that a player wouldn’t normally move to.
Now with Halo 4 , that’s basically gone. Many of the weapons that one could place on map (Light Rifle, DMR, Boltshot, Plasma Pistol) are all available in loadout options, which not only takes weapons away from the map but allows you start with the most effective weapon set-up for any given map.
Let’s move back to the ragnarok idea. I moved around the map to find a light rifle in order to gain an advantage. With the current Halo 4 system, I can spawn with that weapon and never have to move at all. If I can spawn with the best available weapon for any given map, what need is there to pick up and use or understand any other weapons?
Along with this, tier 2 power weapons have also largely gone missing. The needler for example used to be a fairly common sight on maps, but now it’s only available via ordinance drops (be it personal on random map drops). Other tier 2 weapons like the Sticky det almost never even show up. The Railgun is the only one of the set that’s fairly common, and even that could be considered stronger than a Tier 2 weapon.
So all of a sudden, basically the only weapons that are coming into play are the best loadout weapons for any given map, or the powerweapons. Even with personal ordinance which is supposed to increase the frequency of weapons, all that most people will choose is the most powerful weapon they can. And who can blame them? Would you rather have a needler or the aim assist machine we call the beam rifle?
And I think overall, this loadout system doesn’t promote the same amount of map movement or weapon knowledge that the old one used to. It was important to understand how to use what weapon most effectively in which situation, but now I feel like it’s mostly “what range is the map” and “what is the most powerful position on the map” that’s taken into account when weapons are being used.
So while the weapon based advantage remains in some sense, I think it’s significantly less important and effective than it was in the past, and I’d liked to see it return similarly to it’s former glory. I don’t want to completely remove the loadout system, but I don’t think we should have as many options as we do to the point where weapons go un-used, and nothing is placed on maps.
I think for Halo 5 it’s important that we find a balancing point where there’s weapon variety in loadouts, but not at the cost of weapon variety on the map as well.
Here’s my offered solution for a reduced loadout system. There are a couple other good suggestions made by others in there as well that I’d encourage people to think about.
Anyway, anyone else agree? Disagree? Feel free to say why or why not.
EDIT: Also I apologise, I didn’t quite encompass all that I meant to in the above, so I’ll probably update the thread at some point.