The sprint discussion thread

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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> > > If the result here is 600 > 300 than obviously it’s a good indicator that on a grander scale it is 600,000 > 300,000
> >
> > By that logic if I were to ask 2 people if they like ice cream and they both say yes, the 100% of the population worldwide likes ice cream. In math class that might be true, but not in real life.
> >
> >
> > > 2533274923562209;13698:
> > > Go look at the old bungie forums and then tell me what you see when it came to the topic of sprint. Sprint back then got -Yoink- on if it was brought up. Of course the only people left playing will result in sprint “now” being higher up in the majority cuz people left ages ago when reach and H4 happened.
> > >
> > > ive been playing mass effect Andromeda and ark for a month, put in maybe 2 hours into h5 in that span. I’m done with h5, I may give H6 a go depending. It’s not even sprint being why I left either, it’s just the general direction of the franchise as a whole. Art style is gone, just to look “practical” for others. Achievement unlocks is replaced with RNG -Yoink-.abilities (I hate abilities as a whole more than sprint itself) are still being out in after three games, now we’re at a point where even halos own story isn’t holding up anymore. I’ll touch the broken abomination that is the mcc more than h5 at this point as it still plays and feels like halo. Odds are mass effect and bioware games will get more of my love here on out.
> > >
> > > I’m more neutral on the topic of sprint but I do often lean more towards removing it. When 343 can truly make sprint work for halo in a way no other games do besides adding panalties to it, I may support it more often. For now though, I dislike it removing combat readiness, stretching maps, and people using it to run away from fights they lossed in the first place.
> >
> > Ah I loved the old bungie forums. Too bad once destiny rolled around they got shut down. I disagree with all Spartan abilities being bad. Personally I love thrusters, and in my opinion, they feel like they belong in Halo. I really love Halo 2/3’s movement system, but if a Halo game game out that was basically Halo 2’s movement + thrusters and Halo 3 caliber maps, it would easily be my favorite Halo game. I can only wish though. I would take abilities over sprint any day. I don’t really care for any abilities, but sprint just takes away the halo feeling.
>
> I don’t mind thrusters, stabilizing or slide, I actually have ideas for the 3 I mentioned on improving movement capabilities(maybe not so much on stabilizing tho). Everything else I just don’t care for, even then my point is 343 saw people disliked abilities so what did they do? Removed every ability reach and h4 used (minus thrusters) and simply replaced them with an entirely different set of abilities, but this time they made them passive with all the players and renamed them something else.

I can see the appeal to those abilities because they don’t force developers to change map design to accommodate them like sprint, clamber, and ground pound do.

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> Remove SPRINT has 292 likes, keep SPRINT has 633! That gives the answer to this debate.

Lol, that’s not an answer at all. We’ve already had our polls, and no sprint won each time. Including Waypoint.

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> > Remove SPRINT has 292 likes, keep SPRINT has 633! That gives the answer to this debate.
>
> Go look at the old bungie forums and then tell me what you see when it came to the topic of sprint. Sprint back then got -Yoink- on if it was brought up. Of course the only people left playing will result in sprint “now” being higher up in the majority cuz people left ages ago when reach and H4 happened.

I’ve already been told this. It’s a fair point what you are saying.

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> > > > 2535423139980712;13687:
> > > > Remove SPRINT has 292 likes, keep SPRINT has 633! That gives the answer to this debate.
> > >
> > > No it doesn’t. A poll taken in today’s Halo community who already accepted sprint doesn’t mean -Yoink-. 5 million+ players left Halo between 2009-2015, that says more about “new Halo” than anything.
> >
> > Sprint does not make 5 million + players leave.
>
> I’m pretty sure the player retention rate (from Major Nelson), freely available (physical) sales figures, and Xbox Live Top Played charts say otherwise. Obviously there are many other outside factors to take into account, but generally, several thousand players left because of the Reach hate bandwagon, and then a vast majority of fans left because of Halo 4 for one reason or another. I’m not saying sprint is the sole reason people left, but honestly, thinking about other probable reasons, it is a part of the many reasons why people left, including a changed multiplayer philosophy

True. They need to focus on the smaller communities and why they left, e.g Gameplay, Playable Elites and Story. Also I don’t mind if Sprint stays or gos, it’s a win win for Me. Doesn’t mean they should ignore issues like this though.

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> > Remove SPRINT has 292 likes, keep SPRINT has 633! That gives the answer to this debate.
>
> Lol, that’s not an answer at all. We’ve already had our polls, and no sprint won each time. Including Waypoint.

I’ll take your word for it. Even if Sprint was removed there is no guarantee all the veteran players would actually even want to play or have the time to play Halo anymore.

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> > > 2535423139980712;13687:
> > > Remove SPRINT has 292 likes, keep SPRINT has 633! That gives the answer to this debate.
> >
> > Lol, that’s not an answer at all. We’ve already had our polls, and no sprint won each time. Including Waypoint.
>
> I’ll take your word for it. Even if Sprint was removed there is no guarantee all the veteran players would actually even want to play or have the time to play Halo anymore.

But new players would get to experience true Halo gameplay. Why change a game for people who have never played it before? I could see doing for a game that was doing poorly, but when 343 decided to change up everything halo was doing quite well, and when bungie decided to change it Halo was doing incredibly well. I think that it’s safe to say that bungie was just using reach as a testing ground for destiny, so 343 should’ve based the gameplay off of Halo 3 anyway. I feel like 343 missed the memo on Halo reach being a prequel, because for some reason they based everything in the successor to Halo 3 (just look at Halo 4’s weapon design and abilities-it’s all obviously based off of reach) off of the (in-universe) predecessor to Halo 1.

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I wouldn’t complain if sprint was removed entirely.

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> - Unlimited sprinting allowed me to speed-run the campaign much easier than I should have been able to. I understand that it’s my loss if I choose to skip the campaign, but I really shouldn’t be able to.

I do not agree with this point at all, and it has nothing to do whatsoever with sprint.

Videogames are the only entertainment medium that is completely built upon consumer choice. (Unless you count “choose your own adventure” books.)
Therefore, anything reducing player choice is completely contradictatory to the videogame medium itself.
(Ironically, this is the very reason I don’t like sprint either: Because the game takes away my choice of moving and shooting at the same time by deciding for me when I’m able to do one or the other.)

I am by no means a speedrunner. In fact, I play a lot slower than most other gamers, and it usually takes me considerable longer to finish games than the average play time (according to howlongtobeat.com, etc.) But I oppose anything that takes away the choice from those who do.

Same argument also applies to lots of other things, btw, such as unskippable cutscenes, and so forth…

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> > - Unlimited sprinting allowed me to speed-run the campaign much easier than I should have been able to. I understand that it’s my loss if I choose to skip the campaign, but I really shouldn’t be able to.
>
> I do not agree with this point at all, and it has nothing to do whatsoever with sprint.
>
> Videogames are the only entertainment medium that is completely built upon consumer choice. (Unless you count “choose your own adventure” books.)
> Therefore, anything reducing player choice is completely contradictatory to the videogame medium itself.
> (Ironically, this is the very reason I don’t like sprint either: Because the game takes away my choice of moving and shooting at the same time by deciding for me when I’m able to do one or the other.)
>
> I am by no means a speedrunner. In fact, I play a lot slower than most other gamers, and it usually takes me considerable longer to finish games than the average play time (according to howlongtobeat.com, etc.) But I oppose anything that takes away the choice from those who do.
>
> Same argument also applies to lots of other things, btw, such as unskippable cutscenes, and so forth…

There’s consumer choice, and then there’s gamebreaking imbalance.

Using your argument of why you don’t like Sprinting: Being able to Sprint and Shoot at the same time would be gamebreaking unbalanced, which supersedes your “consumer choice”.

The reason balance supersedes “consumer choice” is because if there was no balance in the games, then games would not be fun - games designers create limitations to preserve challenge and therefore to preserve fun. If there were no limitation then there would be no fun.

The campaign of the game is supposed to Challenge an average player.

Challenge is one of the three major components to create fun in games. (For trivia, the other two are Clear/immediate feedback and Clear Goals/Direction.)

There is no challenge when I can sprint past the challenges (the fights), which makes the game less fun. Additionally, if I can Sprint past the battles (essentially skipping many parts the game), then what’s the point of even playing it or having achievements/rewards for it?

This has nothing to do with “choice” of how you play the campaign - it’s to do with the balancing of the Sprinting mechanic. It’s incomparable to your cutscenes example because cutscenes are not gameplay mechanics, nor do they have any relation to them.

You have many choices on how you approach the campaign in a Halo game. You have the choice of recklessly charging into battle, or can play slower and tactically - but both of these still require you to complete the battle. Sprinting allows you to SKIP the battle – which is why it is problematic. If you can Skip most battles in the campaign by Sprinting through them, then why even have a Campaign?

You can make the argument that it was my choice to cheat the game by Sprinting through it, and that I should have chosen to not do this. However, my argument is that I should not be able to do this at all - it’s not my job as a player to limit my potential in games, it’s the game designer’s job to limit me.

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> > > 2533274823779352;13659:
> > > - Unlimited sprinting allowed me to speed-run the campaign much easier than I should have been able to. I understand that it’s my loss if I choose to skip the campaign, but I really shouldn’t be able to.
> >
> > I do not agree with this point at all, and it has nothing to do whatsoever with sprint.
> >
> > Videogames are the only entertainment medium that is completely built upon consumer choice. (Unless you count “choose your own adventure” books.)
> > Therefore, anything reducing player choice is completely contradictatory to the videogame medium itself.
> > (Ironically, this is the very reason I don’t like sprint either: Because the game takes away my choice of moving and shooting at the same time by deciding for me when I’m able to do one or the other.)
> >
> > I am by no means a speedrunner. In fact, I play a lot slower than most other gamers, and it usually takes me considerable longer to finish games than the average play time (according to howlongtobeat.com, etc.) But I oppose anything that takes away the choice from those who do.
> >
> > Same argument also applies to lots of other things, btw, such as unskippable cutscenes, and so forth…
>
> There’s consumer choice, and then there’s gamebreaking imbalance.
>
> Using your argument of why you don’t like Sprinting: Being able to Sprint and Shoot at the same time would be gamebreaking unbalanced, which supersedes your “consumer choice”.
>
> The reason balance supersedes “consumer choice” is because if there was no balance in the games, then games would not be fun - games designers create limitations to preserve challenge and therefore to preserve fun. If there were no limitation then there would be no fun.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The campaign of the game is supposed to Challenge an average player.
>
> Challenge is one of the three major components to create fun in games. (For trivia, the other two are Clear/immediate feedback and Clear Goals/Direction.)
>
> There is no challenge when I can sprint past the challenges (the fights), which makes the game less fun. Additionally, if I can Sprint past the battles (essentially skipping many parts the game), then what’s the point of even playing it or having achievements/rewards for it?
>
> This has nothing to do with “choice” of how you play the campaign - it’s to do with the balancing of the Sprinting mechanic. It’s incomparable to your cutscenes example because cutscenes are not gameplay mechanics, nor do they have any relation to them.
>
> You have many choices on how you approach the campaign in a Halo game. You have the choice of recklessly charging into battle, or can play slower and tactically - but both of these still require you to complete the battle. Sprinting allows you to SKIP the battle – which is why it is problematic. If you can Skip most battles in the campaign by Sprinting through them, then why even have a Campaign?
>
> You can make the argument that it was my choice to cheat the game by Sprinting through it, and that I should have chosen to not do this. However, my argument is that I should not be able to do this at all - it’s not my job as a player to limit my potential in games, it’s the game designer’s job to limit me.

In that regard, any game that has speed running qualities would be considered bad games because the developers didn’t prevent players from having the option to skip past things in order to beat the game faster. I guess Super Metroid is the worst game ever because it flat out REWARDS players for beating the game in a relatively quick manor. Also, the speed running example isn’t that valid of a complaint since ALL Halo games can be speed run. Choosing to skip a fight is just as much player choice as it is to take the fight slow and tactically or to rush into it.

I’m not saying that sprint is a necessary mechanic for Halo, but that it giving the players an option to effectively skip battles in campaign isn’t really as big of an issue as you make it out to be since it was always an option. I guess the main problem lies in the fact that it makes skipping fights easier, which is what I’m assuming is your actual complaint, but other than that, I don’t see why having the option to skip fights isn’t considered good game design.

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> In that regard, any game that has speed running qualities would be considered bad games because the developers didn’t prevent players from having the option to skip past things in order to beat the game faster.

This is a pretty fair argument for you to make, and I had to think about it for a moment on how to best approach/explain my position with it.

  • Firstly, I think it’s worth noting that the argument I posed about Sprinting through the Campaign was a tag-on argument; a small addition to my main arguments.Being able to Sprint through the campaign is not an individual argument which has enough weight to use as justification for removing Sprint (that’s what my other arguments are for.)

  • So, obviously a game isn’t immediately a bad game because you can skip past certain aspects of it (or speedrun it.)People who speedrun games have usually completed the game enough times that they know the levels inside-out, to the extent that they know how to exploit each of them to gain the fastest times. The best speed running times are often achieved through exploiting poor or overlooked design. This became so common that there’s now categories of speed running (such as Bug Abuse allowed, or No Bug Abuse Allowed.)

I have zero speedrunning experience on Halo 5, and I had not played the campaign before. I pretty much sprinted through the last few levels without doing any real fighting. If you ask a Games Designer “Should the player be able to skip most of the fight scenes in Halo?” they would likely respond with “No, that would defeat the point of playing” - but with Sprint, you can.

> 2533274912467533;13713:
> I guess Super Metroid is the worst game ever because it flat out REWARDS players for beating the game in a relatively quick manor.

Remember, that being quick at completing the challenges of the game is perfectly acceptable.

It’s skipping the main challenges entirely, for free, which is problematic. It defeats the purpose of playing the game, and if there’s rewards involved, can allow you to gain them unfairly.

> 2533274912467533;13713:
> ALL Halo games can be speed run.

Pretty much any linear game can be speed run.

I agree with you that all past Halo games had areas which you could walk past; I’m not saying that the problem never existed until Halo 5’s sprinting.

But, I feel that Sprinting made it more problematic. Halo 5 already has a shorter campaign comparably, being able to Sprint through much of it really doesn’t help that.

> 2533274912467533;13713:
> Choosing to skip a fight is just as much player choice as it is to take the fight slow and tactically or to rush into it.

This is the core of the disagreement.

  • I agree that you should be able to choose how to approach a challenge: take it slow or rush it. - But I do not agree that you should be able to skip the main challenges of a game for free and then claim the rewards of it.

> 2533274912467533;13713:
> I don’t see why having the option to skip fights isn’t considered good game design.

Well, can you explain why it’s good games design? Giving players this much power over their experience isn’t always a good thing.

If you let players Skip all of the challenges in the game, and then claim the same rewards, it’s not particularly fair to the players who legitimately completed those challenges. Obviously there isn’t much reward in Halo 5 other than some GamerScore and Cosmetics, but in other games this would be considered a games design sin. If players want the rewards that come from completing the game, then they should have to actually complete the game; not skip most of it.

Allowing you to skip all of the Firefights in a First Person Shooter is self-defeating anyway. If you’re going to play the campaign but then skip all the Shoot-outs then why are you even playing it? If you’re gonna skip all the action there’s little point in doing it at all other than for the GamerScore and Cosmetics, which as I’ve outlined above, you shouldn’t be entitled to if you skip the challenges.

> 2533274912467533;13713:
> giving the players an option to effectively skip battles in campaign isn’t really as big of an issue as you make it out to be

I never made it out to be a big issue. It was one of six arguments I made in my post; you guys chose to focus on that one.

It was the smallest argument I made, and comparatively the weakest.

I never made it out to be a big deal, it was just a small addition with relation to my experience of the campaign.

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> > In that regard, any game that has speed running qualities would be considered bad games because the developers didn’t prevent players from having the option to skip past things in order to beat the game faster.
>
> This is a pretty fair argument for you to make, and I had to think about it for a moment on how to best approach/explain my position with it.
>
>
> - Firstly, I think it’s worth noting that the argument I posed about Sprinting through the Campaign was a tag-on argument; a small addition to my main arguments.Being able to Sprint through the campaign is not an individual argument which has enough weight to use as justification for removing Sprint (that’s what my other arguments are for.)
>
>
> - So, obviously a game isn’t immediately a bad game because you can skip past certain aspects of it (or speedrun it.)People who speedrun games have usually completed the game enough times that they know the levels inside-out, to the extent that they know how to exploit each of them to gain the fastest times. The best speed running times are often achieved through exploiting poor or overlooked design. This became so common that there’s now categories of speed running (such as Bug Abuse allowed, or No Bug Abuse Allowed.)
>
> I have zero speedrunning experience on Halo 5, and I had not played the campaign before. I pretty much sprinted through the last few levels without doing any real fighting. If you ask a Games Designer “Should the player be able to skip most of the fight scenes in Halo?” they would likely respond with “No, that would defeat the point of playing” - but with Sprint, you can.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274912467533;13713:
> > I guess Super Metroid is the worst game ever because it flat out REWARDS players for beating the game in a relatively quick manor.
>
> Remember, that being quick at completing the challenges of the game is perfectly acceptable.
>
> It’s skipping the main challenges entirely, for free, which is problematic. It defeats the purpose of playing the game, and if there’s rewards involved, can allow you to gain them unfairly.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274912467533;13713:
> > ALL Halo games can be speed run.
>
> Pretty much any linear game can be speed run.
>
> I agree with you that all past Halo games had areas which you could walk past; I’m not saying that the problem never existed until Halo 5’s sprinting.
>
> But, I feel that Sprinting made it more problematic. Halo 5 already has a shorter campaign comparably, being able to Sprint through much of it really doesn’t help that.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274912467533;13713:
> > Choosing to skip a fight is just as much player choice as it is to take the fight slow and tactically or to rush into it.
>
> This is the core of the disagreement.
>
>
> - I agree that you should be able to choose how to approach a challenge: take it slow or rush it. - But I do not agree that you should be able to skip the main challenges of a game for free and then claim the rewards of it.
>
> > 2533274912467533;13713:
> > but that it giving the players an option to effectively skip battles in campaign isn’t really as big of an issue as you make it out to be
>
> If you refer back to my original post, my Sprint-Campaign-Skipping argument was the smallest argument I made out of the Six I posted; and also comparititrely the weakest. I never made it out to be a big deal, it was just a small addition with relation to my experience of the campgin.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274912467533;13713:
> > I don’t see why having the option to skip fights isn’t considered good game design.
>
> Well, can you explain why it is good games design? Giving players this much power over their experience isn’t always a good thing.
>
> If you let players Skip all of the challenges in the game, and then claim the same rewards, it’s not particularly fair to the players who legitimately completed those challenges. Obviously there isn’t much reward in Halo 5 other than some GamerScore and Cosmetics, but in other games this would be considered a games design sin. If players want the rewards that come from completing the game, then they should have to actually complete the game; not skip most of it.
>
> Allowing you to skip all of the Firefights in a First Person Shooter is self-defeating anyway. If you’re going to play the campaign but then skip all the Shoot-outs then why are you even playing it? If you’re gonna skip all the action there’s little point in doing it at all other than for the GamerScore and Cosmetics, which as I’ve outlined above, you shouldn’t be entitled to if you skip the challenges.

Simple answer: player choice. Long answer: Giving the players the freedom to engage in parts of the game however they want is, imo, the most important aspect of good game design. If players aren’t given much flexibility in how they can approach a section of the game, then they won’t have much incentive to want to come back after the first try. For example, the first holdout segment on the CE mission, Halo: you can choose to approach this segment however you want when it come to how you want to hold out. You can choose to stay at the top of the structure and fire on the Covenant forces down below, or you can rush up to the drop ships and pick them off as they land. You can also choose to skip the sequence entirely and continue foreword, with the only downside being that you won’t have a Worthog or any marines to accompany you. If this engagement was the exact same every time, I wouldn’t be bothered playing the game more than once, because I would know how it would turn out exactly how it turns out every single time I play.

Another example would be cheat codes. Yeah, I can choose to play, for example, Battlefront 2 completely vanilla, or I could wreak havoc with invincibility or infinite ammo. It’s all in how someone wants to play the game, and restricting how people can play the game is a bit of a turn off. Removing players’ ability to choose whether to play the game the “intended way” or not is something that gives games depth and replayability. That’s why I used Super Metroid as an example because it is a game that is very well known for speed running and sequence breaking. It’s very clear that the developers didn’t WANT you to be able to get certain upgrades early through bomb or wall jumping, but they put it in the game to give players more than one way to play the game, which gives it replayability, and thus, makes more players enjoy it because it provides play styles for everyone.

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> 2533274823779352;13712:
> There’s consumer choice, and then there’s gamebreaking imbalance.

Being able to speedrun a game does not break it in the slightest. It gives you a different way of playing it. It’s nothing else than a self-imposed difficulty setting.

> 2533274823779352;13712:
> Using your argument of why you don’t like Sprinting: Being able to Sprint and Shoot at the same time would be gamebreaking unbalanced, which supersedes your “consumer choice”.

All of the original Halo games let you run and shoot at the same time, and none of them were broken for it. As a matter of fact, neither are Half-Life, Quake, Counterstrike and so fortgh…

> 2533274823779352;13712:
> The reason balance supersedes “consumer choice” is because if there was no balance in the games, then games would not be fun - games designers create limitations to preserve challenge and therefore to preserve fun. If there were no limitation then there would be no fun.

Balance only comes into play within multiplayer. Basically no singleplayer game ever is balanced, otherwise there wouldn’t be any enemies weaker than the player or stronger than the player. Boss fights wouldn’t exist, neither would a difficulty curve.

Besides: Actively hampering speedrun tactics and thereby interfering with the way certain players would like to enjoy their game goes completely against the notion of making said game fun for them.

> 2533274823779352;13712:
> The campaign of the game is supposed to Challenge an average player.

No. A campaign is supposed to entertain the player. One of the possiblities of doing that is by challenge. You might prefer that. Others maybe don’t. I could count a seemingly endless list of games that are not challenging, starting with visual novels, over to adventures (Telltale games come to mind) up to even certain types of “shooters” (Stanley Parable)

I will ignore the rest of your arguments as they are based on a false premise.

> 2533274823779352;13712:
> This has nothing to do with “choice” of how you play the campaign - it’s to do with the balancing of the Sprinting mechanic. It’s incomparable to your cutscenes example because cutscenes are not gameplay mechanics, nor do they have any relation to them.

Unskippable cutscenes interfere with they way players want to experience a game. Maybe they don’t want to sit through the story (for the n-th time) but jump right into the gameplay. In this case the game takes this option away from them. In the same way, maybe the players don’t want to sit throug a (maybe badly designed) enemy encounter or level, but rather enjoy the story. It’s the same problem, just from the entire opposite side.

> 2533274823779352;13712:
> You have many choices on how you approach the campaign in a Halo game. You have the choice of recklessly charging into battle, or can play slower and tactically - but both of these still require you to complete the battle. Sprinting allows you to SKIP the battle – which is why it is problematic. If you can Skip most battles in the campaign by Sprinting through them, then why even have a Campaign?

You do remember Halo having achievements for completing missions without firing a weapon, right? Ironically, the purpose of this is exactly something you already mentioned: A challenge.

> 2533274823779352;13712:
> You can make the argument that it was my choice to cheat the game by Sprinting through it, and that I should have chosen to not do this. However, my argument is that I should not be able to do this at all - it’s not my job as a player to limit my potential in games, it’s the game designer’s job to limit me.

No. So much no. It is a game designer’s job to enable you to have as many ways possible of enjoying the game. If he doesn’t do that, he failed at his job.

13717

I don’t feel the need to address the points further as we will go around in circles and derail the thread.

As I mentioned, you are focusing too much of your effort on the smallest and weakest argument of the six I posted. Even I don’t think it’s a strong objective argument, it was just me sharing my feelings on how I felt like I was cheating the game by being able to Sprint through the campaign, skipping most of it.

I’m not here to argue games design 101 with you; I think when I use the term “Challenge” it may be getting misinterpreted as Challenging or Hard.

  • A challenge is simply an objective for you to complete, or a confrontation that you must defeat. A “challenge’” in design talk not a measure of difficulty.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not agree that you should be able to skip objectives in games effortlessly and for free, to then receive the same rewards as players who didn’t skip the objectives. It defeats the purpose of playing the game and it is unfair to players who completed the objectives.

This has very little to do with consumer choice in games; it has to do with how you can skip objectives in the game to then receive the same rewards as those who completed them (which is unfair.) This doesn’t apply to Halo 5 as strictly because the rewards for Campaign are cosmetic, but in other games (since you talked about other games) it does.

I am leaving it there.

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> 2533274801176260;13716:
> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > There’s consumer choice, and then there’s gamebreaking imbalance.
>
> Being able to speedrun a game does not break it in the slightest. It gives you a different way of playing it. It’s nothing else than a self-imposed difficulty setting.
>
>
>
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> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > Using your argument of why you don’t like Sprinting: Being able to Sprint and Shoot at the same time would be gamebreaking unbalanced, which supersedes your “consumer choice”.
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> All of the original Halo games let you run and shoot at the same time, and none of them were broken for it. As a matter of fact, neither are Half-Life, Quake, Counterstrike and so fortgh…
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> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > The reason balance supersedes “consumer choice” is because if there was no balance in the games, then games would not be fun - games designers create limitations to preserve challenge and therefore to preserve fun. If there were no limitation then there would be no fun.
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> Balance only comes into play within multiplayer. Basically no singleplayer game ever is balanced, otherwise there wouldn’t be any enemies weaker than the player or stronger than the player. Boss fights wouldn’t exist, neither would a difficulty curve.
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> Besides: Actively hampering speedrun tactics and thereby interfering with the way certain players would like to enjoy their game goes completely against the notion of making said game fun for them.
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> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > The campaign of the game is supposed to Challenge an average player.
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> No. A campaign is supposed to entertain the player. One of the possiblities of doing that is by challenge. You might prefer that. Others maybe don’t. I could count a seemingly endless list of games that are not challenging, starting with visual novels, over to adventures (Telltale games come to mind) up to even certain types of “shooters” (Stanley Parable)
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> I will ignore the rest of your arguments as they are based on a false premise.
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> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > This has nothing to do with “choice” of how you play the campaign - it’s to do with the balancing of the Sprinting mechanic. It’s incomparable to your cutscenes example because cutscenes are not gameplay mechanics, nor do they have any relation to them.
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> Unskippable cutscenes interfere with they way players want to experience a game. Maybe they don’t want to sit through the story (for the n-th time) but jump right into the gameplay. In this case the game takes this option away from them. In the same way, maybe the players don’t want to sit throug a (maybe badly designed) enemy encounter or level, but rather enjoy the story. It’s the same problem, just from the entire opposite side.
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> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > You have many choices on how you approach the campaign in a Halo game. You have the choice of recklessly charging into battle, or can play slower and tactically - but both of these still require you to complete the battle. Sprinting allows you to SKIP the battle – which is why it is problematic. If you can Skip most battles in the campaign by Sprinting through them, then why even have a Campaign?
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> You do remember Halo having achievements for completing missions without firing a weapon, right? Ironically, the purpose of this is exactly something you already mentioned: A challenge.
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> > 2533274823779352;13712:
> > You can make the argument that it was my choice to cheat the game by Sprinting through it, and that I should have chosen to not do this. However, my argument is that I should not be able to do this at all - it’s not my job as a player to limit my potential in games, it’s the game designer’s job to limit me.
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> No. So much no. It is a game designer’s job to enable you to have as many ways possible of enjoying the game. If he doesn’t do that, he failed at his job.

Likewise, it isn’t the developer’s job to hold your hand through the game so you’ll play the game how THEY want you to play it, rather it’s their job to make the game to the best of their ability that will appeal to the most people so that they can make the most money off of it. Most times, that is done through giving the players options with how to play the game, choosing to skip segments included. As Celestis pointed out above, the game’s goal is not to be challenging, but entertaining, and by extension, fun for the player. Maybe some players have fun blasting through segments of a game without having to fire a bullet, or maybe they like to engage the enemies in a slow, methodical, tactical shootout. It shouldn’t matter as long as the player is getting their fair share of enjoyment out of the game. Back to my cheat code example from before, by your logic, I shouldn’t be able to have invincibility or infinite ammo because that wasn’t intended by the developers for me to have, so I shouldn’t do it. However, it isn’t up to you or the developer to decide how I play the game, it’s my copy of the game, so I’m free to play it as I damn well please.

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> 2535423139980712;13687:
> Remove SPRINT has 292 likes, keep SPRINT has 633! That gives the answer to this debate.

  1. That’s not how polls or math work at all.
  2. There was a poll on teambeyond and it was something like 92%-8% with no sprint as the 92%.
  3. The number of players (pros, hardcore, and casual players) that have left Halo because of sprint out numbers the current Halo 5 population.
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> 2533274823779352;13717:
> As I mentioned, you are focusing too much of your effort on the smallest and weakest argument of the six I posted. Even I don’t think it’s a strong objective argument, it was just me sharing my feelings on how I felt like I was cheating the game by being able to Sprint through the campaign, skipping most of it.

I focus on that argument because it is the one I took the most issue with. I can actually somewhat agree with everything else, but this one bullet point was/is so completely misguided that I could not leave it uncommented in good faith.

> 2533274823779352;13717:
> I’m not here to argue games design 101 with you; I think when I use the term “Challenge” it may be getting misinterpreted as Challenging or Hard.
> - A challenge is simply an objective for you to complete, or a confrontation that you must defeat. A “challenge’” in design talk not a measure of difficulty.

Then by that definition, speedrunning is a challenge wherein your objective is to get past the enemies as fast as possible without dying.

> 2533274823779352;13717:
> I do not agree that you should be able to skip objectives in games effortlessly and for free, to then receive the same rewards as players who didn’t skip the objectives. It defeats the purpose of playing the game and it is unfair to players who completed the objectives.
> This has very little to do with consumer choice in games; it has to do with how you can skip objectives in the game to then receive the same rewards as those who completed them (which is unfair.) This doesn’t apply to Halo 5 as strictly because the rewards for Campaign are cosmetic, but in other games (since you talked about other games) it does.

What’s it to you? I don’t care how other people play their games. I played the MCC LASO playlists legit, because I wanted to feel that sense of accomplishment from completing them myself. What do I care that other people used the last checkpoint glitch? Does it take away from my achievement?

The “purpose” of a game is to beat it. That’s it. How you get there is - and always should be - up to the player. Maybe different criteria apply to multiplayer, since it’s more of a direct competition than merely comparing stats, but even there, Halo has a history of allowing and even favoring “unintended” tactics. BXB, BXR, anyone?

As for single player, it literally only affects the one person playing it. Everybody has access to the same techniques and everybody can choose to play the game “legit” (as if speedrunning weren’t a legit tactic, lmao) or not to. If you don’t want to skip parts of a game, fine. Then don’t. But it disgusts me how you try to enforce your own playstyle onto other people because you feel entitled to turn every game into a virtual -Yoink- measuring contest…

EDIT: I want to draw attention to the Fallout series. Most RPGs are already known for giving you various approaches how to solve quests, but Fallout has always gone one step beyond: Almost all of those games allow you to completely skip the final boss fights. You could literally talk the mutant overlord into self-destruction and convince the leader of an invading army of giving up. By your line of thought this is completely unfair to those people who legitimately fought with those enemies to the death - even though it doesn’t affect their own playthrough in the slightest - as they can no longer brag about beating them in direct combat (although, if anything, the exact opposite is true). That way of thinking is just mind-boggling to me…

If this really was a criteria for game development, then a lot more stuff would be thrown out: Better remove jumping, as it allows you to get out of level bounds. Radar? Can’t have that, since it enables you to avoid certain enemies by knowing their position. Halo’s gameplay would be completely butchered, if this mantra were ever to be taken seriously…

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Patch & OGRE 2 - Prisoner TS ( off host ) / OGRE Winter LAN 2010 - YouTube Anyone who can watch this and tell me that new Halo is faster than classic Halo is out of their mind. Look how smooth the movement is. They are jumping from platform to platform sideways while laying down shots on their opponents. Halo is an arena FPS. Movement and combat should blend seemlessly together not be totally separated. Imagine what it would be like if you could only shoot your gun while crouch walking in Halo 1-3. I know it sounds absurd but that’s basically what sprint is.

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> 2533274801176260;13721:
> it disgusts me how you try to enforce your own playstyle onto other people because you feel entitled to turn every game into a virtual -Yoink- measuring contest…

It disgusts me that your argument is resorting to a lot of projection, assumption, and ad-hominem – which is why I’m choosing to end the discussion with you. I agree to disagree.

I haven’t enforced anything on anyone, I made a passing remark that I disagreed with being able to Sprint past all of the objectives/battles so easily in the Campaign. You’re the one who saw red and charged in response; passing the line of respect with that last comment.