With everything currently going on, I know vehicle balancing is likely the last thing on the list of what needs changing, however I still feel it’s important to make it clear that vehicles need drastic improvement, in hopes it’s not forgotten and never acted upon. In Halo Reach, vehicles had the same wet paper(though more like a paper towel with Reach) durability, however they’d often net way more kills with their efficiency. The lack of a Gauss Hog further emphasizes the weak vehicles available in BTB, hogs either need way more durability, or we need a Gauss Hog equivalent like Reach.
Not only are vehicles less useful, they’re far less mechanically intuitive and detailed. Being someone who’s always loved driving/flying vehicles in Halo, I was ecstatic to hear about 343i’s plans to make vehicles a more integral part of BTB, with extremely in-depth vehicle damage mechanics. However, it turns out all this really meant was that warthogs could lose their tires(which losing 1 already leaves it almost dead anyways). The damage it takes to cause these structural flaws in vehicles needs to be lowered drastically, and the overall damage a vehicle can handle needs to go up, and effects such as smoke and flames need to happen in relation to the vehicle’s health rather than area-specific damage.
Further delving into the issues with vehicle damage mechanics, the red glow is an extremely poor way to alert players that the vehicle is about to explode, especially when over half of the normal vehicles on the map are already painted red, making the glow nearly non-existent. At the very least, the doomsday moment of a vehicle should have it giving off extreme smoke and fire as well as at least disabling or reducing the vehicle’s mobility. When destroying parts of vehicles like wings, tires, etc. it’s more important that the damage is easy to deal than it is for that damage to actually impact driving/flight, since I’ve barely seen any of the vehicle damage yet despite being a mainly vehicle centered player.
Another possible addition that could be made for vehicles in conjunction with drastically higher health pools, is drastically increased damage to weakspots(spots such as the tires and wings that can be destroyed). This way it at least encourages people to aim for parts that will impact your experience as a driver or pilot of a vehicle. It would also be nice if vehicles had some way to counter-act grapple-jack, for instance if grapple-jack could only occur if grappling at the driver side of a vehicle(or back of a Banshee, top of a Wasp, latch of a Scorpion/Wraith) allowing drivers/pilots to counter grapple-jacks if they manage to turn the vehicle away from the grappler in time to cancel out the hijack.
And to wrap up this post, vehicles definitely need to be far more prevalent in BTB maps. The lack of heavy vehicle spawns until the very end of a match make BTB matches feel more like large arena matches with more players, rather than an actual Big Team Battle like past Halo games. I don’t even prefer using the Scorpion or Wraith in any Halo game, but the fact that it’s not there greatly devalues the gameplay within BTB, I always found enjoyment in finding ways to deal with the enemy Scorpion/Wraith. But now the solution to heavy vehicles on the enemy team only as bad as “just shoot them with 1 clip of your AR”, but in addition, they won’t even spawn until the last second of a match, if at all. Ghosts pose far more threat than any other vehicle, and I feel like all other vehicles should be balanced similarly to the Ghost rather than nerfing just the Ghost(however the Ghost does still need somewhat of a nerf in addition to buffing everything else).
Hopefully this reaches someone, whether it’s actually somebody at 343i, or somebody else sharing similar views,. If you’ve read through the entirety of this post, thank you and I hope we eventually see the day when vehicles make their proper debut in Halo Infinite.