The Return of Armor Abilities

Games Halo Infinite
1

After spending a significant time away from Halo I’ve gained a new appreciation for the spartan abilities in 5. Before, I simply wanted Halo to go back to the slower pace of the first three games rather than force-feed other shooters’ mechanics into the series. After watching many videos on the subject from people like Raycevik and The Act Man I think I agree with their idea for how sprint and other abilities could work in Halo while allowing the game to retain its classic feel.

Reintroduce armor abilities, but not like Reach or 4’s implementations. Rather, get rid of Spartan charge, slide, and slam while keeping the ledge grab. Bring back the jetpack, and reintroduce sprint and thruster-pack to the AA mix as well. Design maps to play based on equal starts like in 5, and test the new armor abilities to see which ones work on a map and which ones simply do not. Then, place the appropriate armor abilities as pick-ups on the map that you can use as long as you are alive. When you die they drop.

Tl;Dr : Remove slam, slide, and charge. Keep ledge grab. Place jetpack, sprint, and thrusters as AA pick-ups on maps and make them behave like power-weapons.

2

Conceptually, I never had any problem with armor abilities. I don’t think adding a “fourth leg of fun” to Halo is an inherently bad idea.

My issue has always been with specific armor abilities and loadouts. Keep them out of loadouts and away from being base player traits and you already solve a huge portion of the problems with armor abilities. The next is to stay away from abilities that provide significant value for little effort. The invulnerability of armor lock, hardlight shield, or the protection of a bubble shield or regen field offer to much in a multiplayer setting.

Sprint as a power up doesn’t offer nearly enough to justify its inclusion, especially when speed boost exists as a power up. I also disagree with keeping clamber as it is little more than vertical sprint in the sense that all that it accomplishes is extending the maps vertically to create instances to justify its use.

Overall though, I do agree that armor abilities can work fine in “classic” Halo when they are not attached to loadouts.

3

Making armor abilities part of the sandbox instead of base traits is definitely an improvement, but then we run into another issue: armor abilities aren’t really worth fighting over. If you place an item at a point of contention on the map, you want that item to be worthwhile to the victors. Rockets is a good example of a power item: it’s easy to wield, has a large blast radius, and will most likely guarantee your team a few easy kills. Another example is camo. It makes the user nearly invisible and allows opportunities for flanks and other offensive plays.

Now lets look at some armor abilities.

  1. Sprint. A slight bump in speed is hardly worth fighting over. Just look at speed boost – that thing gets no love, and for good reason. Its tiny advantage is not worth the effort.

  2. Thrust. A slight bump in your strafe. Again, I don’t see this getting any love as a power item. It’s not significant enough.

  3. Jetpack. Higher elevation. This would not sit well as a power item that is fought over either, because the main advantage of jetpack is its surprise factor. If jetpack is fought over and the whole enemy team now knows you have it, you have little room to get the jump on them. Not to mention it’s not exactly easy shooting others while jetpacking (at least in Reach).

These abilities, at best, would share the same fate as shotgun/mauler on the The Pit. Nobody goes out of their way to pick those up, but if players happen to stumble upon them on their way to a destination, then sure why not.

4

> 2533274794648158;3:
> Making armor abilities part of the sandbox instead of base traits is definitely an improvement, but then we run into another issue: armor abilities aren’t really worth fighting over. If you place an item at a point of contention on the map, you want that item to be worthwhile to the victors. Rockets is a good example of a power item: it’s easy to wield, has a large blast radius, and will most likely guarantee your team a few easy kills. Another example is camo. It makes the user nearly invisible and allows opportunities for flanks and other offensive plays.
>
> Now lets look at some armor abilities.
>
> 1) Sprint. A slight bump in speed is hardly worth fighting over. Just look at speed boost – that thing gets no love, and for good reason. Its tiny advantage is not worth the effort.
>
> 2) Thrust. A slight bump in your strafe. Again, I don’t see this getting any love as a power item. It’s not significant enough.
>
> 3) Jetpack. Higher elevation. This would not sit well as a power item that is fought over either, because the main advantage of jetpack is its surprise factor. If jetpack is fought over and the whole enemy team now knows you have it, you have little room to get the jump on them. Not to mention it’s not exactly easy shooting others while jetpacking (at least in Reach).
>
> These abilities, at best, would share the same fate as shotgun/mauler on the The Pit. Nobody goes out of their way to pick those up, but if players happen to stumble upon them on their way to a destination, then sure why not.

You make a pretty good point. Granted, I think something like Thrusters as an armor ability would be pretty useful if you can use it to edge out enemies on 1v1 gunfights. It can be done now, though it does take a fair bit of skill to be used properly.

For the others, I agree completely. The jetpack was always a very niche ability that more often than not made you a bigger and easier target. Sprint in Infinite is either going to be a natural part of the players abilities (as it is now), or will be replaced by a general speed boost. Either way, a movement speed pickup would only be useful on large maps.

The general idea of having AAs as part of the sandbox is great, though so I wouldn’t be against it done properly.

5

> 2533274870884222;4:
> > 2533274794648158;3:
> > Making armor abilities part of the sandbox instead of base traits is definitely an improvement, but then we run into another issue: armor abilities aren’t really worth fighting over. If you place an item at a point of contention on the map, you want that item to be worthwhile to the victors. Rockets is a good example of a power item: it’s easy to wield, has a large blast radius, and will most likely guarantee your team a few easy kills. Another example is camo. It makes the user nearly invisible and allows opportunities for flanks and other offensive plays.
> >
> > Now lets look at some armor abilities.
> >
> > 1) Sprint. A slight bump in speed is hardly worth fighting over. Just look at speed boost – that thing gets no love, and for good reason. Its tiny advantage is not worth the effort.
> >
> > 2) Thrust. A slight bump in your strafe. Again, I don’t see this getting any love as a power item. It’s not significant enough.
> >
> > 3) Jetpack. Higher elevation. This would not sit well as a power item that is fought over either, because the main advantage of jetpack is its surprise factor. If jetpack is fought over and the whole enemy team now knows you have it, you have little room to get the jump on them. Not to mention it’s not exactly easy shooting others while jetpacking (at least in Reach).
> >
> > These abilities, at best, would share the same fate as shotgun/mauler on the The Pit. Nobody goes out of their way to pick those up, but if players happen to stumble upon them on their way to a destination, then sure why not.
>
> You make a pretty good point. Granted, I think something like Thrusters as an armor ability would be pretty useful if you can use it to edge out enemies on 1v1 gunfights. It can be done now, though it does take a fair bit of skill to be used properly.
>
> For the others, I agree completely. The jetpack was always a very niche ability that more often than not made you a bigger and easier target. Sprint in Infinite is either going to be a natural part of the players abilities (as it is now), or will be replaced by a general speed boost. Either way, a movement speed pickup would only be useful on large maps.
>
> The general idea of having AAs as part of the sandbox is great, though so I wouldn’t be against it done properly.

I agree that placing AAs throughout the sandbox rather than having them as a part of a loadout solves most of the issues they pose. I also agree that in order for AAs being placed around the map to work, there needs to be some value to the players to make them worth being picked up.

If we go through all of the AAs from Reach–sprint, evade, active camo, jetpack, hologram, drop shield, and armor lock–I am not sure which one’s would be worth picking up. I think sprint, evade, and active camo might be worth it, but I am pretty sure sprint and thruster (which works like evade) are returning to Infinite in some form. Active camo is already placed throughout the map anyway. Regarding the other AAs - I don’t find them as useful.

The point I am trying to make is that AAs seen in past Halos are either not worth picking up or are already present as core mechanics in the game. I would not be opposed to having some sort of AA pickup, but it would need to be something new and creative, something that is balanced and doesn’t detract from core gameplay, and something that has value to players and is worth picking up.