> 2533274890584596;4566:
> Well, I don’t think they are necessarily more open. The reason I think that sprint results in poor map design is that it tends to result in play-space division that revolves around the movement/combat division enforced by “weapon down” movement enhancements. Certain areas are stretched into what seem to me like movement lanes and ideal combat areas end up smaller or broken up with cover to accommodate the reduced base speed during combat. As for long sight lines, I’m not sure I would say that either, because there needs to be room to sprint and traverse the map optimally. If the map isn’t compartmentalized to a certain degree, moving at an optimal speed is easier to punish and the game slows down further. Most of the maps do this less, in my opinion, are trying to ape classic Halo designs. Truth, being a stretched out variation on Midship, with a nice sprint circuit around the perimeter, as contrasted with Coliseum, which has long sight lines in the middle and then all kinds of halls/streets (sprint) and jump routes (clamber) to go around it while always facing in the direction you want to move. And you just end up with a mess of routes and some small areas where something actually happens. Then there’s the Halo 5ier Regret, which to me has a much clearer separation of “moving areas” and “shooting areas” and incredibly short sight lines.
I think I could’ve chosen my words better. I guess “open” with respect to the map as a whole is better as the opposite of “compartmentalized”, but when I said maps need to be more open, I didn’t really mean the maps as a whole, but rather meant that individual spaces need to be larger. If the map happens to be divided into sections with only doors or corridors connecting them, then the individual sections need to be larger to accomodate sprint. They need to be larger because if you have too much complexity in the room layout, a player will able to move too fast from section to section without really being exposed to danger for long periods of time. This is the general problem of map design that’s very compartmentalized, but it just becomes more pronounced as players are allowed to move faster. Therefore, in one way or another, you need bigger sections. And with bigger sections, you get longer sightlines.
When you speak of play-space division, do you mean those transitional areas: corridors with no sightlines, bridges out in the open and such? In general, areas no player wants to spend time in. If yes then I agree that they are an unfortunate design choice. But is this really a necessary design choice? Even if separating movement and combat by a mechanic is bad for gameplay, I don’t think it translates to what you need to do with map design. After all, by not making distinction between combat and transitional areas, you’re not really making the game play any worse than you would be by making the distinction. At least, I can’t think of any negative effects of following the separation in map design, even if it exists in gameplay. And I want to stress that I’m not saying separation of movement and combat isn’t a problem, it is. But I don’t think it impacts map design.
Something about cover I wanted to say is that there are two types of cover at play here. There are big walls and other objects blocking all sightlines and separating areas, and then there are small decorative pieces: columns, boxes, chest high walls, etc., which give players something to dance around in combat but don’t completely protect one player from the other. The first type of cover—if you choose to call it cover—is what you must have less of the faster you allow players to move, as I discussed in the first paragraph. However, the second type of cover isn’t really impacted much by the inclusion of sprint. You might be right that a decreased base speed might increase such cover. However, we are speaking here of some 10% speed decrease from the original trilogy which doesn’t really have much of an impact on cover density.
> 2533275035781111;4660:
> How, it perfectly represents the loved core gameplay of the original trilogy, can you elaborate or do you just like to pretend everyone else is wrong?
It “perfectly” presents the core gameplay of any first person shooter with guns, grenades, and a melee ability, which is pretty much all first person shooters. The golden triangle is not a very useful tool when it comes to designing a Halo game. It has its own niche when it comes to design decisions that might deter the use of two of these abilities in favor of a third—i.e., SMG starts in Halo 2, or dual wielding in general—but it only has limited applicability in such design decisions. It certainly isn’t as widely applicable as some community members have made it out to be, treating it almost like a divine guideline that applies to everything in life.
There’s a much more powerful principle here that you miss when you parrot the golden triangle mantra: the interaction of movement and combat. You don’t ever need to bring up the golden triangle when you criticize sprint, because you can instead say that it separates movement and combat, and that argument contains in itself also the golden triangle argument. Guns, grenades, and melee aren’t the be-all end-all of Halo gameplay, it’s the player interaction. The separation of movement and combat isn’t bad because it breaks the golden triangle. It’s bad because it decreases player interaction.
Halo at its core is not about the golden triangle. A great part of Halo gameplay completely ignored in the golden triangle is movement. Not that other games don’t also have movement, but in Halo combat revolves around strafing and jumping. Players use the environment around them to get the edge on other players. The high movement speed and jump height also create interesting ways for players to traverse the maps, provided the maps are designed in an equally interesting way. Now, this emphasis on movement doesn’t uniquely define Halo either, but it’s something that your golden triangle entirely ignores. After all, even if we couldn’t jump and moved at snail’s pace, the golden triangle could be maintained, but you could hardly say the resulting game plays like Halo.
Not to mention that the golden triangle also ignores other aspects some people might consider as defining the core gameplay of Halo, such as symmetric starts, a tiered weapon sandbox, map pick-ups. The golden triangle is hardly relevant in the core gameplay of Halo, and is mainly a footnote in the history of Halo that relates to dual wielding.