Vehicle Combat, please, stop the pattern

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Personally, I’m a big Warthog Driver. I’m a Banshee Flyer. I’m a Ghost Rider. I’m a Wraith and Scorpion Tamer.

what am I getting at?

VEHICLES IN HALO HAVE BEEN MY THING.

However, ever since Reach, that has not been the case. And here’s why.

THEY ARE MADE OUT OF PAPER MACHE

Reach started this horrible trend, and it has persisted since. Why? There is literally no good reason why this should be happening. The pitiful state that vehicles have been in since 2010 is absolutely not fitting. They are essentially good for a few cheap kills (and that’s only guarantee with a tank) before your imminent death. They are basically rolling death traps. Not only that, but their weapons have seemingly been getting weaker. In H2AMP, the Gauss hog was given a charge time. Why? The damn thing can already be taken out COMPLETELY with a single sticky grenade to any location on the vehicle. Its a heavily armored Jeep not a model car… The Ghost can be taken out with a single grenade of any type. Same with the Goose. Snipers wreck any vehicle now. BR fire can chip whole chunks of armor away. With a couple people firing on a Banshee it explodes in no time flat.

HALO 3 WAS THE LAST GAME WITH ENJOYABLE VEHICLE COMBAT
Banshees weren’t pathetic, Warthogs could hold their own, and Tanks of either kind were feared. Now they are all just multikills waiting to happen.

and whats worse?

IT IS ALREADY CONFIRMED THAT HALO 5 WILL HAVE PAPER MACHE VEHICLES
Seriously 343, why have vehicles at all if they are just going to guarantee your death within 30 seconds of use? ReadyUpLive has a video up of Warzone gameplay where he confirms that the Banshee in particular is incredibly fragile. It seems to have a Shield, but a Shield that pops with like, 1 BR shot. He goes on to say that the banshee “it goes down…pretty fast”. I can see the Phaeton having lower health because of its strength, to balance it, but EVERY vehicle we have seen from H5 gameplay so far has been made of sticks and cardboard.

Please 343. Reconsider your decision to make vehicle combat suck.

2

The mantis in Halo 4 was a beast, the scorpion and the wraith in Halo 4 were both very strong. I feel as though they are making lower end/more common vehicles weaker to increase the player desire to use new or stronger vehicles like the Phaeton and the scorpion. Is this the right course of action? Maybe…i mean the Warthhog is exposed and at its core just a automobile. The mongoose is a ATV, the only thing that doesn’t click with me is the Banshee, although modern day jets are not the strongest thing we have in our arsenal so it makes some sense. I personally like how vehicle combat looks in Halo 5 but we will have to wait and see…

3

Yeah I think there could be a better balance, vehicles that don’t seem to die can be incredibly frustrating but you’re right, especially with the banshee, if it dies to the damage dealt from one and a half BR clips there’s something wrong there. The Mantis’s health pool could use a nerf in my opinion, and the banshee defs needs a bit more durability from small arms fire. Maybe making it so that certain parts of the vehicles are vulnerable to small arms fire, so that at least there’s an aiming thing there rather than just pour bullets into it until it explodes. Don’t like bullet sponges.

4

I’m not quite sure it’s been “confirmed” that vehicles are still made of paper. The banshee still seems flimsy but in warzone gameplay it took a lot of sustained fire to bring down a player controlled phaeton, and I’ve not ever thought the warthog could be taken down by anything that didn’t make sense. plasmas are the antivehicle grenade, after all.

Case by case basis, I think. The banshee does have speed, and these things can be modified if indeed it is a real problem.
Above all, thank the popular deity of the realm for no more plasma pistol loadouts.

5

The reach vehicle system was the best IMO, it punished impatient players. Players who were smart and attacked at specific moments thrived in the vehicles.

It is your own fault if you are quickly dying in vehicles. The exception being halo 4, as players could spawn with anti vehicle weapons and grenades.

There is also no indication of paper vehicles in halo 5, this is warzone, not BTB. There is a team of 12 players all possibility attacking you, of course you are going to die quickly, especially when vehicles like the phaeton are abundant. Before you call for a buff, wait for gameplay that is meant to be more balanced with vehicles.

6

I’m not too bothered by this. I’m an infantry type of guy.

7

> 2533274804597910;6:
> I’m not too bothered by this. I’m an infantry type of guy.

Ditto.

8

> 2533274898131165;5:
> The reach vehicle system was the best IMO, it punished impatient players. Players who were smart and attacked at specific moments thrived in the vehicles.
>
> It is your own fault if you are quickly dying in vehicles. The exception being halo 4, as players could spawn with anti vehicle weapons and grenades.
>
> There is also no indication of paper vehicles in halo 5, this is warzone, not BTB. There is a team of 12 players all possibility attacking you, of course you are going to die quickly, especially when vehicles like the phaeton are abundant. Before you call for a buff, wait for gameplay that is meant to be more balanced with vehicles.

its hardly my fault that the vehicles have had a different health system since Halo 3. And Reach didnt have a good vehicle system. A sniper could take out a Banshee from anywhere on the map. and only using 1 clip. And two clips could take down a damn Scorpion! how in the world was that a good system? and how long do i have to “be patient” to make my vehicle not be made out of cardboard?

its not my skill. Im a great warthog driver, tank driver, pilot in Halo 1-3. However, that all changed once vehicles got a different health system. If a platform for Heavy Arms and Armor (vehicles) does not have either Heavy Arms or Armor than there is little reason to even get into a vehicle if its basically going to be a less maneuverable Spartan.

9

While I can appreciate the sentiment and mirror the concerns OP has in general about tinfoil war machines, let’s take a step back from Halo: Reach and Halo 4 for objectivity’s sake.

In Reach, the visibly drunk physics engine combined with the overall HP system of vehicles made for some miserable moments overall, however clever driving and skilled gunning in tandem still prevailed as I can testify from personal experience. The Banshee in Reach was also equally terrifying if wielded properly. I must admit that the Ghost indeed suffered grievously from the Armor Lock ability’s inclusion, though, but it was more a failing of proper sandbox balance than any fault of the Ghost itself.

On that note, vehicles were further impeded in usefulness by the overall inclusion of Armor Abilities. Sprint and Evade offered tactical flexibility even at nearly the last instant before death by impact and could be applied to make tracking targets from armor difficult. Jetpack could be used to remove oneself from the threat of a great many things by simply avoiding them and/or staying in their vertical dead zones.* Armor Lock, as previously mentioned, actually allows a fatal reversal to be performed on a boosting Ghost operator and its EMP effect and ability to turn one effectively into a stone for a brief moment also allowed Armor Lock to be used offensively against wide array of vehicles.

Vehicles were not impossible or even necessarily difficult to field with a competent crew (at least for myself), despite all of this. However, tactical flexibility and ‘thinking outside the box’ was no longer something that merely helped your survival. These skills suddenly became essential, and without them your fate as a slag heap was assured.

Now on to Halo 4, where this problem was both lessened greatly, but then immediately made worse in four words: Personal Ordnance and Loadouts.

Despite your average vehicle in Halo 4 having notably more resilience under withering fire than in Reach, the game brought a whole pile of far greater foes to the table for the humble vehicle. Suddenly, your average combatant could spawn with Plasma Grenades and Plasma Pistols, both tools which individually prove hazardous to a vehicle but which together offer an almost childishly easy method for dealing with even the heaviest armor to those nuanced in their use.

Add to this the increased amount of directed explosive weaponry available (and with frequency), the continued inclusion of Jetpack, the addition of the previously exclusionary ability to Sprint to the intrinsic abilities of the Spartan? This creates a vast opportunity for one to have an ‘Anti-Materiel’ Loadout on-call for contingency without actually having to do much. Even without an ordnance weapon in your hands, Plasmas, PP, Jetpack and sprinting are simply put a death sentence together.

Now, the end of my long-winded analysis, or TL;DR if you please: The reason vehicles were easily overthrown in Halo 4 was less the vehicles and more the fault of certain things available in Loadouts, imbalanced Heavy Ordnance drop rates and the inclusion of Jetpack. Even in Reach, where clear blame must be placed on vehicle HP, the situation was compounded quite substantially by armor abilities.

Halo 5, however, has no Loadouts, no AAs that aren’t intrinsic traits and seems much less prone to handing out explosives like candy. Even were the vehicle HPs identical to Halo 4’s, this would still mean an overall increase in average vehicle viability across most modes, with exceptions perhaps for WarZone.

  • This is especially notable with regard to avoidance of splatter kills and by its addition of the tactical possibility of attacking a Scorpion from above in an open field.
10

> 2533274813330105;8:
> > 2533274898131165;5:
> > The reach vehicle system was the best IMO, it punished impatient players. Players who were smart and attacked at specific moments thrived in the vehicles.
> >
> > It is your own fault if you are quickly dying in vehicles. The exception being halo 4, as players could spawn with anti vehicle weapons and grenades.
> >
> > There is also no indication of paper vehicles in halo 5, this is warzone, not BTB. There is a team of 12 players all possibility attacking you, of course you are going to die quickly, especially when vehicles like the phaeton are abundant. Before you call for a buff, wait for gameplay that is meant to be more balanced with vehicles.
>
>
> its hardly my fault that the vehicles have had a different health system since Halo 3. And Reach didnt have a good vehicle system. A sniper could take out a Banshee from anywhere on the map. and only using 1 clip. And two clips could take down a damn Scorpion! how in the world was that a good system?
>
> its not my skill. Im a great warthog driver, tank driver, pilot in Halo 1-3. However, that all changed once vehicles got a different health system. If a platform for Heavy Arms and Armor (vehicles) does not have either Heavy Arms or Armor than there is little reason to even get into a vehicle if its basically going to be a less maneuverable Spartan.

The ‘good’ vehicle system pretty much gave infantry the middle finger and caused frequent, game-ending sprees. Yes, unlimited ammo and immense firepower come with a cost now. Halo 4 and H2A are the perfect example of doing it wrong, of course, but my experience with Reach has been far from that. I’ve only been playing Reach on xbl since November, and I’ve gone 35-1 with the Wraith in Hemorrhage a few times now. Not to mention a few games ago my teammate went 41-0 with the Banshee, so if my evidence is non-anecdotal enough, they are far from useless in the right hands.

But anti-spree measures are common in competitive games, and that includes Halo - you could argue this has been in play for quite some time now: the half-empty rocket launcher in 4v4, the single sniper magazine in Infection, the limited energy sword battery in every Halo game after Halo 2, the long power weapon spawn times, etc… Realistically it’s been there since the beginning. You don’t believe they did this for giggles, right?

A lack of urgency using a power weapon is a lack of urgency using a power weapon… even if it’s on wheels. You will find that the Scorpion is a fairly capable sniper, and it is entirely possible to dispose of one long before he empties two whole clips into you. The Banshee is especially effective with the infinite roll trick as well. Yes, you will receive damage, and your vehicle will eventually succumb to constant fire, but the game is not to blame because you couldn’t get 30 kills before this occurs, especially when skilled players succeed in doing so very, very often.

Yeah, not all of them are things I agree with, (especially the sword battery one) but I understand that my shameless fun doesn’t always provide other players with a fair experience, and I respect their decisions in taking measures against it.

11

> 2533274885498412;2:
> The mantis in Halo 4 was a beast, the scorpion and the wraith in Halo 4 were both very strong. I feel as though they are making lower end/more common vehicles weaker to increase the player desire to use new or stronger vehicles like the Phaeton and the scorpion. Is this the right course of action? Maybe…i mean the Warthhog is exposed and at its core just a automobile. The mongoose is a ATV, the only thing that doesn’t click with me is the Banshee, although modern day jets are not the strongest thing we have in our arsenal so it makes some sense. I personally like how vehicle combat looks in Halo 5 but we will have to wait and see…

When playing Halo 4 a plasma grenade destroyed my Scorpion tank from one grunt throw when it was near full health. I was playing on legendary, but that is still laughable.

12

I agree with you but not with every vehicle.

  • First of all, the sniper should not damage the vehicles anymore just like in H1-3.

  • The vehicles in H2A are the worst I ever saw. They are all literally completly useless. Warthogs are just free multy kills. The Ghost can be destroyed with 1 BR shot. (thanks for the 100 splatter achievement) and the Banshee is as weak as never before without even having the Banshee bomb.

  • The vehicles in H4 are extremly powerful (lets forget about PP PN combo since that never should have happen or happen again)
    Without the PP its extremly hard to take out a good Banshee, Wraith or Mantis pilot.
    The Warthog “would” have been ok imo. The problem was just that there was no map really build for good Warthog driving, and on the maps it would have been useful there was a Mantis completly wrecking it.
    Lets also not forget about Ordonance which gave everyone a free laser, rocket or whatsoever.
    That made Vehicle combat in H4 extremly unbalanced, the Vehicles were just fine, but setting around them were not.

Pretty sure we will have the same problem with H5 Warzone. Everyone will have power weapons all the time.

The reach Banshee was the best. A good Pilot could completly wreck with it (watch GameSager videos) but he could be taken out by good teamshot or if he is challengeing too long.

I would almost call the Warthog in H3 (even if its my fav game by far) too overpowered. On standoff it literally decides which team wins. At the same time I like how it takes skill and how it is rewarding to take it out.

Overall I think Vehicles should get more powerfull again. Specially the Hog since it needs teamplay.

13

> 2533274813330105;1:
> Personally, I’m a big Warthog Driver. I’m a Banshee Flyer. I’m a Ghost Rider. I’m a Wraith and Scorpion Tamer.
>
> what am I getting at?
>
> VEHICLES IN HALO HAVE BEEN MY THING.
>
> However, ever since Reach, that has not been the case. And here’s why.
>
> THEY ARE MADE OUT OF PAPER MACHE
>
>
> Reach started this horrible trend, and it has persisted since. Why? There is literally no good reason why this should be happening. The pitiful state that vehicles have been in since 2010 is absolutely not fitting. They are essentially good for a few cheap kills (and that’s only guarantee with a tank) before your imminent death. They are basically rolling death traps. Not only that, but their weapons have seemingly been getting weaker. In H2AMP, the Gauss hog was given a charge time. Why? The damn thing can already be taken out COMPLETELY with a single sticky grenade to any location on the vehicle. Its a heavily armored Jeep not a model car… The Ghost can be taken out with a single grenade of any type. Same with the Goose. Snipers wreck any vehicle now. BR fire can chip whole chunks of armor away. With a couple people firing on a Banshee it explodes in no time flat.
>
> HALO 3 WAS THE LAST GAME WITH ENJOYABLE VEHICLE COMBAT
> Banshees weren’t pathetic, Warthogs could hold their own, and Tanks of either kind were feared. Now they are all just multikills waiting to happen.
>
> and whats worse?
>
> IT IS ALREADY CONFIRMED THAT HALO 5 WILL HAVE PAPER MACHE VEHICLES
> Seriously 343, why have vehicles at all if they are just going to guarantee your death within 30 seconds of use? ReadyUpLive has a video up of Warzone gameplay where he confirms that the Banshee in particular is incredibly fragile. It seems to have a Shield, but a Shield that pops with like, 1 BR shot. He goes on to say that the banshee “it goes down…pretty fast”. I can see the Phaeton having lower health because of its strength, to balance it, but EVERY vehicle we have seen from H5 gameplay so far has been made of sticks and cardboard.
>
> Please 343. Reconsider your decision to make vehicle combat suck.

despite being more vocal in favour of classic play the banshee, tank and wraith were at their highest skill ceiling in reach. the warthog was trash, but the other vehicles weren’t. i don’t know your experience but as someone who played with hardcore vehicles users i can assure you that they were skillful to use. aside from the warthog which as a major downgrade all previous iterations were slow and clunky and didn’t have much presence, also in a game of good players most h3 vehicles were just open targets and easy to take care of, that wasn’t the case in reach. reach wen’t with a proper glass cannon approach, halo 4 and halo 5 have slow clunky vehicles again, but kept the low health properties of reach as well. also the gauss is just cheese, that thing has always been too easy and spawns often.

you might have had a hard time using vehicles in reach, the warthog was crap, however the top tier players were able to get over 60 kills per game frequently and hit over the 100’s sometimes, i’d know i played with 3 of them.

14

I have to say OP, I sort of agree with you and sort of disagree with you. I want to start off by saying that Halo Reach’s vehicular combat system was not bad at all. It was excellent. Sure vehicles in Halo reach were more vulnerable to shots from DMR and Sniper Rifle making them more fragile than they were in previous games but you seem to be forgetting the fact vehicles in Halo reach were powerful as hell. I am assuming that you didn’t play Halo reach much because if you had, you would no how overpowered the scorpion was in Halo Reach. It was completely removed from multiplayer very early because of how overpowered it was. Banshee was also a death machine. Sure you didn’t last as much in it but you could easily get killing frenzies and running riots with the time you had with it. I have played numerous games in Halo reach where I got 30-70+ kills using Banshee, Wraith and Falcon

Now where I agree with you is on the less powerful vehicles like the Warthog and Ghost which went down pretty quickly and their damage potential was severely reduced because of this. These vehicles controlled better in Reach compared to previous Halo games but their damage output was roughly the same but their health was severely reduced making them much less effective than they were in previous games. As for Halo 4, I agree with you. While both the Mantis and Banshee are powerful as hell, the overall system was broken. Being able to spawn with plasma pistol and plasma grenades was detrimental to vehicular combat in Halo 4.

I think we need to try out Warzone first and then see what changes are needed so I hope 343 incorporates flexibility into the system so the can make significant changes post launch. I still have a few suggestion on how to make Halo 5 vehicular combat as good as possible in Warzone.

  1. Make ariel vehicles extremely difficult and long to take down with DMR/BR/etc and Sniper Rifle shots. They are greatly exposed since they are in the air. Make it possible for coordinated teams to take them out with focused fire but and nearly impossible for 1-2 players to take them out with focused fire. A group of 4-6 players should be able to take out these vehicles with DMR and Sniper rifle shots. This seems balanced. Make teamwork count. Reason why this would work is that in Warzone, you can also spawn with Rocket launchers and Spartan Laser on high level energy which further counters vehicles so it is necessary that ariel vehicles in Halo 5 are not paper thin.

  2. Make weaker ground vehicle like the regular warthog and ghost impervious to DMR and Sniper Rifle shots. These aren’t as nearly as powerful as others and easy to hijack so they shouldn’t be extremely easy to take out.

  3. Keep the damage taken for Scorpion and Wraith the same as it was in Halo reach and 4. Somehow put the scorpion in multiplayer without making it overpowered. Halo CE Scorpion was excellent. It was powerful but the driver could be taken out of it.

  4. Make plasma pistol and plasma grenades high level energy reqs. This is extremely important. These weapons should not be readily available like they were in Halo 4 or else they will completely screw the system like they did with Halo 4. They should be in the same energy level as Rocket Launcher and Spartan Laser or slightly lower.

15

I agree 100%

I was the vehicle master in Halo3 and it saddens me that I won’t experience that epicness again. The vehicle’s health was basically based on your own shields and it was perfect. They completely ruined that in Reach and 4 :frowning:

Another thing they ruined after 3 was the feel of the Banshee, in 3 it was so smooth and responsive but for some reason they turned it into a piece of crap that’s just not fun to fly at all.

I hadn’t noticed from the Warzone vids that they had done this again so if what you say is true then I’m disappointed.

16

Actually I prefer the system introduced by Halo Reach, hope it remains as it is in Halo 5.

17

Sure, the Banshee goes down very quickly and it’s probably due for a buff, but none of the other vehicles were that weak. The Phaethon was incredibly powerful, same with the Mantis, in one video the Warthog had taken quite a lot of damage before being taken down, and the Ghost wasn’t too bad either.

18

Well I’m sorry that your Warthog doesn’t have the armor of a Scorpion now.

Just get over it and enjoy Halo when it comes out.

19

> 2533274813330105;1:
> Personally, I’m a big Warthog Driver. I’m a Banshee Flyer. I’m a Ghost Rider. I’m a Wraith and Scorpion Tamer.
>
> what am I getting at?
>
> VEHICLES IN HALO HAVE BEEN MY THING.
>
> However, ever since Reach, that has not been the case. And here’s why.
>
> THEY ARE MADE OUT OF PAPER MACHE
>
>
> Reach started this horrible trend, and it has persisted since. Why? There is literally no good reason why this should be happening. The pitiful state that vehicles have been in since 2010 is absolutely not fitting. They are essentially good for a few cheap kills (and that’s only guarantee with a tank) before your imminent death. They are basically rolling death traps. Not only that, but their weapons have seemingly been getting weaker. In H2AMP, the Gauss hog was given a charge time. Why? The damn thing can already be taken out COMPLETELY with a single sticky grenade to any location on the vehicle. Its a heavily armored Jeep not a model car… The Ghost can be taken out with a single grenade of any type. Same with the Goose. Snipers wreck any vehicle now. BR fire can chip whole chunks of armor away. With a couple people firing on a Banshee it explodes in no time flat.
>
> HALO 3 WAS THE LAST GAME WITH ENJOYABLE VEHICLE COMBAT
> Banshees weren’t pathetic, Warthogs could hold their own, and Tanks of either kind were feared. Now they are all just multikills waiting to happen.
>
> and whats worse?
>
> IT IS ALREADY CONFIRMED THAT HALO 5 WILL HAVE PAPER MACHE VEHICLES
> Seriously 343, why have vehicles at all if they are just going to guarantee your death within 30 seconds of use? ReadyUpLive has a video up of Warzone gameplay where he confirms that the Banshee in particular is incredibly fragile. It seems to have a Shield, but a Shield that pops with like, 1 BR shot. He goes on to say that the banshee “it goes down…pretty fast”. I can see the Phaeton having lower health because of its strength, to balance it, but EVERY vehicle we have seen from H5 gameplay so far has been made of sticks and cardboard.
>
> Please 343. Reconsider your decision to make vehicle combat suck.

Get good at using vehicles then. If you don’t know how to use it you lose it.

20

> 2535450036212628;19:
> > 2533274813330105;1:
> >
>
>
> Get good at using vehicles then. If you don’t know how to use it you lose it.

It’s not simply a matter of being good, it’s the fact that no matter how careful you play, you will eventually be taken out simply because small arms fire devastates vehicles, along with the plethora of anti vehicle measures accessible to players.