I’m well aware that these arguments have probably already been made, but I want to lay out definitively where sprint helps and hurts halo, in my opinion:
Spirt is useful when traversing large maps without vehicles, such as Warzone. Sprint DOES have a place there, and I would say there alone.
The issue with sprint in BTB, Slayer, and most other forms of arena is that it makes vehicles rather useless. Why grab a mongoose if you can sprint across map?
while you CAN add more vehicles to a large map to make it more easily traveled, you can’t remove sprint from a small one. Furthermore, sprint makes radar useless. It’s nearly impossible for me to anticipate someone flying around a corner to spartan charge or assassinate me if I briefly look away from radar. No sprint simply gives me more time to make strategic, well thought out gameplay decisions instead of getting into a fly-arround-the-map fest.
However, some will argue that it’s possible to have both a sprint and no sprint halo game, two gamemodes. This is flawed for a few reasons. 1. Campaign, especially legendary campaign, is designed (now) with sprint in mind. This means that enemies are incredibly strong and overwhelming in number and damage, reducing many spots in levels to bullet sponge boss fights with little to no choice involved. Halo single player is like chess. Each weapon has strengths and weaknesses that can be carefully utilized. Sprint absolutely ruins even design by essentially allowing you to outrun and outmaneuver any enemy- level design and choice no longer matters. This is complicated; there are videos published by LNG, HiddenXperia, etc. that explain this better.
2. Halo throwback playlists, as they are today, are still somewhat broken. ADS on ARs is ridiculous, but that’s another debate. Bullet magnetism, meant to counter the sprint-behind-cover chicken strategy that’s so effective in normal arena, is so infuriating in throwback playlists. Maps designed to work with sprint just don’t play well with it not in mind. Weapon balancing, meant for sprint gameplay, simply feels off in normal gameplay.
3. The argument “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” is boneheaded. I don’t like it because everyone can use it; I’m not going to feel much better if I’m the only one not flying around the map when it gives people such a game breaking advantage. It truly is game breaking. Just because everyone can do it and it’s fair and balanced doesn’t make it good. Look at games like Madden and the more broken NBA 2ks- there are mechanics everyone CAN DO, but just because everyone can do it and it’s fair and balanced doesn’t make it FUN or strategic.
4. Some will argue they feel like a turtle with a gun without sprint- this is likely a effect of playing the modern, 343 Halo games, which focus on balancing sprint (while limited in Halo 4) with lots of bullet spongey enemies with large damage output (cough prometheans cough). Essentially, if you gave Halo 2’s jackal snipers more health and had more of them. Play Halo CE or 3 (I’d skip 2 because of it’s admittedly broken campaign) and come back to me about being a turtle with a gun. I tried to speed run levels in those games with success: mind you, I had no sprint.
5. The worst argument I’ve heard is “You had halo for 10 years, let us have ours.”
What? Why is there a us and we? How about us, all of us? We’ve tried sprint and it didn’t go over particularly well as far as level and game design go, so can all of us maybe discuss this without making two sides?
I always think that if there’s a problem, you can complain all you want, but you need to propose a solution. Here’s mine:
- Sprint is now a campaign skull with a multiplier, able to be applied like all the other fun skulls like infinite ammo or the like. Therefore, in score-based campaign or for speed running, the game is put on the competitive, no sprint difficulty, but for those of us who want to run around, sprint is available , but not a feature the game is designed around. Same goes for clamber, spartan charge, ground pound, and thrust.
- In arena, there are two solutions: Two playlists with separate 343 and forge maps with separate weapon tunings OR:
Something interesting such as a mechanic where you can sprint while you have full shields, but at no other time. Clambering stays, spartan charge is gone, thrust is still there (I guess, I’d like it to go but whatever, maybe make it a running speed burst instead of actual jetpack mechanics), and ground pound is gone. You cannot thrust with non-full shields.
Weapons would be tuned more closely to Halo 3 with reduced bullet magnet, etc.
Oh, and PLEASE remove ADS on weapons without sights. ZOOM is fine and using the sights is fine, but increasing accuracy is not okay (Magnum, AR, BR (2x ZOOM is fine), Needler, Plasma pistol, rifle, SMG, Boltshot, shotguns, scattershots, I hope the storm rifle dies but if it stays that too, CE pistol, etc. Only DMRs, snipers, Carbines, Beam Rifles, Lightrifles, that weird looking promethean sniper whose name eludes me, SPNKR and Rocket launcher variants where lock on applies, and the Hydra should have true ADS features like better accuracy aimed down sights).3. In warzone, sprint stays largely as is due to the size of the maps and casual nature of gameplay.