The sprint discussion thread

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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> > > > Sprint as much as I hate it has a place in halo. Just limit its duration and shrink the maps so sprint isn’t needed 100% of the time. Make it for quick gotta get outta here moments. Not something that can be relied on every time.
> > >
> > > You also have a gun, and up to 6 grenades.
> > > Just saying.
> >
> > That’s a given. Sprint is just abused and it should not be up 100% of the time
>
> Yes, but the problem is that it prolongs firefights and requires little skill to use.
> I’d rather that it’s an armor ability over mapped as a permanent ability.

I don’t think that prolonging fights is a bad thing (I think that the TTK needs to be elongated anyways. H5’s seems a little too fast.), and making it so you can’t recharge your shields more or less solves the problem of being able to escape an encounter. The real problem from Sprint is what it does to map design, and the domino effect that has through the sandbox. When maps have to be made bigger so that Sprint doesn’t break them, it shifts the ideal weapons to be longer-ranged, therefore making close-range weapons worse. Because they’re worse they have to be buffed to either have a much faster kill time (SMG, Storm Rifle) longer range (Shotgun) or a combination of the two (AR). Now automatics are considered to be too powerful, so now precision weapons have to get a buff and now you have Halo 5.

15247

Thanks for your reply. It’s interesting to read, because we basically come to the exact same concusions… for the exact opposite games. I could basically return almost every sentence to you, with the names of the games flipped. When playing ODST, “[t]he movement and basic weapon mechanics are roughly the same, and therefore feel instantly familiar to me” (which was to expected, with the game built on the same code as Halo 3) but I absoluteley disagree that “the basic mechanics are about the same” in Reach, given that Reach had bloom and sprint, amongst the rest of the AAs, all of which ODST was lacking. Which ironically is the entire point of this thread: Games with sprint do not play the same as those without.

I also find it… well, interesting, that you mention the same criteria for both of these games, namely health, movement and jumping, yet come to different conclusions on how familiar they feel. It even goes so far that, if I remove the titles from the quotes, you couldn’t tell which game you are talking about:

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> when I actually got to play the game, while I was clearly playing a game derived from Halo 3, your character was significantly weaker in many ways: health, movement, jump height, grenade throws.

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> the basic mechanics are about the same with marginally smaller movement speed and jump height. The health system is noticeably different, but it’s still directly inspired by CE.

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> Consequently, I move slightly slower and jump slightly lower, but not enough for it to make meaningful difference in gameplay.

I mean, yeah, ODSTs movement was even slower than Reach’s, but other than that, I hardly felt any difference between both games (in terms of changed parameters, that is). Jump height and “shields” (put in airquotes because of ODSTs stamina system) were gimped roughly the same amount. It’s more the added mechanics that distinguish these games to me. All in all, I feel like ODST was sort of a trial run for Reach, they changed as much as they could within reasonable development time (cutting dual-wield, small changes to the movement, VISr, etc.), but then they went completely all out for Reach (AAs, bloom, night vision, assassinations,…)

Sure, the game was meant for the same target audience - but then again, so was Halo Wars. Could it have been even more different than it was? Of course. But I don’t consider “it could be worse” an argument, in any discussion. Plus, if A Blue Illusion and CUSTARDP00DLETK are to believed, they seemingly wanted to throw in all of those mechanics that were initially meant for Halo, but didn’t work. So that would explain why it’s still remotely similar to its predecessors, with Bungie not purposely trying to turn the apple on its head, but also not wanting to make another game following the Halo formula. Although I have to admit, I’ve never seen this alleged source, otherwise I would have used it as an argument in that farce of a discussion with Comedic Hermit, way back when.

In the end, I guess we’ll never see eye to eye on this. It’s actually kind of funny, because that last quote, “Consequently, I move slightly slower and jump slightly lower, but not enough for it to make meaningful difference in gameplay.” is almost word for word exactly how I feel about ODST. But still, thanks for the reply. As I’ve already said, if anything, it was an interesting read…

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Only hopping on here to remind y’all that excessive mobility options like sprint is what killed the player base in the first place. There is a reason Halo 5 has struggled and it is because old fans like myself abandoned ship when 343 turned halo into something it was not. We don’t bother coming to the forums anymore to remind you that we exist, posts like this serve only as an echo chamber as those that support sprint are the only ones still playing Halo 5/visiting this section of the forums. We’ll just continue to not buy the garbage and leave you guys to wonder what is hurting the sales. Cheers.

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Given the recent results of some survey on the Halo Reddit, where many seem to not want sprint and other mobility options, what does everyone take from this?
Personally I dislike the survey (and not just because of my bias against Halo 3), especially regarding certain questions, but maybe I’m just overreacting.

I’m not sure how much Bungie wanted regarding gameplay mechanics. All I can recall are some player interactions such as shooting out lights or something of the sort.

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> but I absoluteley disagree that “the basic mechanics are about the same” in Reach, given that Reach had bloom and sprint, amongst the rest of the AAs, all of which ODST was lacking. Which ironically is the entire point of this thread: Games with sprint do not play the same as those without.

Well, that definitely goes to the definition of “basic mechanics”. I kind of suspected it wouldn’t translate clearly enough, but by “basic” I practically mean things like movement, health, and the general weapon mechanics (which would include recoil, bloom, hitscan/projectiles, and so on). These are mechanics that somehow set the tune for the gameplay. For example, if there’s really agressive recoil and movement based bloom with low health, it leads to stop-and-shoot gameplay where hitting the first shots is very important. Then if there’s moderate health and fast movement without accuracy impeding mechanics, you get something more like Quake, and so on.

In my opinion, these mechanics are the strongest determining factor on how the game feels, For Reach I don’t really factor in sprint, because it wasn’t yet the default, and I don’t factor in armor abilities because they were stuff on the top.

> 2533274801176260;15247:
> I also find it… well, interesting, that you mention the same criteria for both of these games, namely health, movement and jumping, yet come to different conclusions on how familiar they feel. It even goes so far that, if I remove the titles from the quotes, you couldn’t tell which game you are talking about:

They key differentiating phrases are “significantly” in the first quote, “marginally” and “but it’s still directly inspired by CE” in the second, and “slightly” in the third. In ODST I felt the effect of these changes more so than I did in Reach. Although when it comes to the health system of ODST, I suspect I’ve been tricked psychologically into thinking that it’s more different than it actually is. But I guess that doesn’t matter if we just discuss the feel of the game.

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> Sure, the game was meant for the same target audience - but then again, so was Halo Wars. Could it have been even more different than it was? Of course. But I don’t consider “it could be worse” an argument, in any discussion. Plus, if A Blue Illusion and CUSTARDP00DLETK are to believed, they seemingly wanted to throw in all of those mechanics that were initially meant for Halo, but didn’t work. So that would explain why it’s still remotely similar to its predecessors, with Bungie not purposely trying to turn the apple on its head, but also not wanting to make another game following the Halo formula. Although I have to admit, I’ve never seen this alleged source, otherwise I would have used it as an argument in that farce of a discussion with Comedic Hermit, way back when.

I wouldn’t say Halo Wars was intended for the same audience as Reach. If we consider what kind of a Halo player you would have to be to get Halo Wars, you would either have to already be interested in RTS games, or you would have to be really into the Halo lore to get a game in a genre you don’t normally play. If you’re the kind of player that mostly just enjoys the Halo multiplayer, and has no real interest in RTS games or Halo lore, you probably don’t care about Halo Wars. The relative smallness of the Halo Wars target audience is evident in the fact that it never received the same level of marketing or hype (and ultimately, sales) as Halo Reach did. Reach, on the other hand, as an FPS Halo game, was clearly always going to be the next big Halo. Bungie really needed to get those players on board who just liked Halo for its gameplay, and nothing else.

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> “Consequently, I move slightly slower and jump slightly lower, but not enough for it to make meaningful difference in gameplay.” is almost word for word exactly how I feel about ODST.

Well, I have to admit that ODST retains such a level of movement, at least again AI, you can do a lot of the stuff you could in Halo 3. It’s not that I think ODST is a huge deperarture from Halo 3. It’s just that to me Reach feels like an even smaller deperarture.

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> Given the recent results of some survey on the Halo Reddit, where many seem to not want sprint and other mobility options, what does everyone take from this?
> Personally I dislike the survey (and not just because of my bias against Halo 3), especially regarding certain questions, but maybe I’m just overreacting.
>
> I’m not sure how much Bungie wanted regarding gameplay mechanics. All I can recall are some player interactions such as shooting out lights or something of the sort.

Well, straight off the bat, the distribution of answers to the third question tells me that Reddit is not representative of the player base as a whole, or most people weren’t entirely honest with their answer. The age distribution, and the overall bias towards Halo 3 in the rest of the survey makes me suspect that the latter is true. As for the former, I wouldn’t hold my breath.When it comes to sprint, this certainly doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know from previous community polls. Namely, its takeway is: the majority of people who visit the Halo subreddit either don’t care about, or don’t like sprint, but that we already knew.

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> >
>
> Well, straight off the bat, the distribution of answers to the third question tells me that Reddit is not representative of the player base as a whole, or most people weren’t entirely honest with their answer. The age distribution, and the overall bias towards Halo 3 in the rest of the survey makes me suspect that the latter is true. As for the former, I wouldn’t hold my breath.When it comes to sprint, this certainly doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know from previous community polls. Namely, its takeway is: the majority of people who visit the Halo subreddit either don’t care about, or don’t like sprint, but that we already knew.

I got the same impression too. But who knows maybe most people on Reddit started Halo with CE on a school computer.

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> Now, to address one point I have seen so frequently: why not just increase the BMS? Through playing Halo 3 on the MCC I have grown more fond of the idea of being able to run at maximum speed while blasting someone with an SMG, and if the plan is to cut Spartan Abilities, I would say cut sprint out as well. However, if they are going to stay, and I hope they do, sprint is going to be necessary to be able to charge, slide, crouch, and melee. Otherwise, you would have to move at maximum BMS to charge and slide, but what if you want to melee instead of charging? That isn’t possible if you are moving at maximum BMS. It would be so much easier to keep sprint, because it introduces that second movement speed which replaces crouch and melee with slide and charge.
>
> In summary, I see the good and the bad in both. I look back on some of my older posts and wonder how I could have been so blind to the benefits of a no-sprint game. It also comes down to not being bothered by the presence or lack of a mechanic. Halo 6 will have either sprinting Spartans or speed-walking Spartans, and in my eyes, they both belong in Halo.

I haven’t critically analyzed this new idea and worked out all of the pros and cons, but here is some food for thought:

Halo 6 could have maps half-accomodating sprint, half-not. What I mean is to have the a remake of Midship/Truth in Halo 6, you would take the length of Truth’s pathways and the length of Midship’s, and divide that by two. Add that length to Midship’s pathways (or subtract it from Truth’s, it doesn’t matter. This principle could be used for all of the maps.

We would have “sprint” in a raised BMS where you can run, shoot, throw grenades, and melee simultaneously. Here’s the catch, though: You can “charge” by moving at maximum BMS and holding melee. You will run only slightly faster, and you lower your weapon while you go through a 2-second charge cycle. Then you will charge, dealing the same amount of damage as you would in Halo 5. The difference here is that the moment you start the charge cycle, there is no turning back, so you have to make sure that charging is the best thing you can do in a given scenario. Usually, it won’t be.

The charge would also consume a thrust, and thrusting would stay in the game. Ground Pound could come back in the form of a limitless power-up, where once you pick it up, you keep it until you die.

I think this sort of gameplay would make for a very interesting game, and it would attract fans like me who like all of the Spartan Abilities but it eliminates sprint, not counting the pre-charge speed.

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> Only hopping on here to remind y’all that excessive mobility options like sprint is what killed the player base in the first place. There is a reason Halo 5 has struggled and it is because old fans like myself abandoned ship when 343 turned halo into something it was not. We don’t bother coming to the forums anymore to remind you that we exist, posts like this serve only as an echo chamber as those that support sprint are the only ones still playing Halo 5/visiting this section of the forums. We’ll just continue to not buy the garbage and leave you guys to wonder what is hurting the sales. Cheers.

Unfortunately, this is true. If 343 would put whatever ego aside that compels them to make these overcomplicated Halo games, and make a classic Halo again, that would say a lot for their care for the Halo community. Hopefully even start to rebuild the population again.

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> Only hopping on here to remind y’all that excessive mobility options like sprint is what killed the player base in the first place.

[citation needed]

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> > Given the recent results of some survey on the Halo Reddit, where many seem to not want sprint and other mobility options, what does everyone take from this?
>
> Well, straight off the bat, the distribution of answers to the third question tells me that Reddit is not representative of the player base as a whole, or most people weren’t entirely honest with their answer. The age distribution, and the overall bias towards Halo 3 in the rest of the survey makes me suspect that the latter is true.

Each survey listed was from Reddit, Team Beyond, ForgeHub and Waypoint plus a couple foreign sites. Reddit had the most people take the survey though. Edit: Didn’t realize the link just goes to the survey results. There were actually 4 different survey results. Link.

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Given how impact-full Sprint is to the games’ overall design, i’d say 343 already made the choice a long time ago whether Halo 6 is going to have it or not. I’m 90% sure they chose to include Sprint, for ‘‘franchise continuities sake’’ or whatever.

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I think Halo Reach did the best job with the sprint along with the other spartan abilities honestly.

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Is there documented evidence that 343 went with sprint due to the “market expectations”? I’ve heard there was some game design forum where someone inside 343 mentioned sprint being included b/c “expectations #currentyear”. As an economist, I’d love to see if there is any market research they produced to the public.

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> Is there documented evidence that 343 went with sprint due to the “market expectations”? I’ve heard there was some game design forum where someone inside 343 mentioned sprint being included b/c “expectations #currentyear”. As an economist, I’d love to see if there is any market research they produced to the public.

“Sprint is a staple for the modern FPS gamer, leaving it out of Halo 5 would mean ignoring a huge portion of the gaming demographic’s expectations.”

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> > > 2535442569875751;15249:
> > > Given the recent results of some survey on the Halo Reddit, where many seem to not want sprint and other mobility options, what does everyone take from this?
> >
> > Well, straight off the bat, the distribution of answers to the third question tells me that Reddit is not representative of the player base as a whole, or most people weren’t entirely honest with their answer. The age distribution, and the overall bias towards Halo 3 in the rest of the survey makes me suspect that the latter is true.
>
> Each survey listed was from Reddit, Team Beyond, ForgeHub and Waypoint plus a couple foreign sites. Reddit had the most people take the survey though. Edit: Didn’t realize the link just goes to the survey results. There were actually 4 different survey results. Link.

Respectfully, surveys like this are pointless. All the people who quit Halo after 4, such as almost everyone I know. Did they know about the survey? No. The majority of the original trilogy fanbase left after 4, this is most evident in Halo 5’s sales, and I am sure we all see it with our friends/friend list. The people who used to play Halo stuck with destiny when Halo 5 came out. Quite a few bought Halo 5 and tried it out, but they never came back after a week (on my personal friends list). I am sure this would be echoed in the population numbers on a larger scale if 343 was not ashamed enough to release them.

I know these surveys try to gauge what the fanbase want, but even those who say they want Halo 3 style game is not good enough. It had projectile based weapons, a nightmare for regional players online (especially in peer to peer networking…shudders), even to this day, when I replay Halo 3 I cannot adapt to the BR. This alone kills Halo 3 for me. Surveys may show what people “want” but that does not mean it is correct, as many opinions are misinformed, whether they want classic Halo or 343 style halo. The problem is people saying they want something without realising its effect on the game. As highlighted with projectile weapons, and all around us in this sprint thread. Both sides have this problem.

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> I know these surveys try to gauge what the fanbase want, but even those who say they want Halo 3 style game is not good enough. It had projectile based weapons, a nightmare for regional players online (especially in peer to peer networking…shudders), even to this day, when I replay Halo 3 I cannot adapt to the BR. This alone kills Halo 3 for me. Surveys may show what people “want” but that does not mean it is correct, as many opinions are misinformed, whether they want classic Halo or 343 style halo. The problem is people saying they want something without realising its effect on the game. As highlighted with projectile weapons, and all around us in this sprint thread. Both sides have this problem.

That’s unreasonably harsh. Who are you to tell other people that what they want is wrong? Do you hold an authority on what Halo should be?

People can be uninformed, but they always know what they like. Have you ever considered that perhaps not everyone carries the same standards? Sure, someone might know how sprint affects the game, but so what? They’re just effects, neither bad nor good without someone prescribing them that quality, and the prescription will vary from person to person. When people say they want something, they may not know how it affects the game, but they do know how it feels. And if it’s fun for them, who cares how it affecs the game?

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Simple, Remaster Halo 3 and add sprint. That will solve it

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> Simple, Remaster Halo 3 and add sprint. That will solve it

Solve what exactly??