It feels like half the time you get in a warthog, for example, you are in a giant bomb on wheels that half the time is more trouble to deal with than just simply going on-foot with your assault-rifle/pistol combo for everything.
The entire purpose of the vehicles in Halo MCC is that when you get in one, you have an agility trade off for a mobility and and defensive gain. Small arms fire is almost a non-issue, and for on-foot players to pose a threat to you they either need anti-vehicle weapons, or to play well enough that they can board your vehicle and kick you out of it.
The only other threat to vehicles then, is other vehicles - which creates a great big-team-battle environment where people are mounting up in vehicles and coordinating to take down the enemy in their vehicles. But when it’s just quicker and easier to walk around in a team of 3 rather than those same 3 people get in a warthog and become a free triple-kill to whatever assault-rifle wielding group of enemies they drive into… what is the point of the warthog, other than a means to ferry the flagbearer in CTF?
Your manner of play shifted in MCC when you’re in a vehicle: Dangers switch from small arms fire to boardings, bombs and other vehicles.
In infinite: You still have those dangers, but the on-foot dangers are basically still there.
I’ll do agree, some vehicles are… Very weak to small/light arms fire. For some vehicles it makes sense but other… E.g. Mongoose, ghosts, maybe choppers? As they’re made more for a hit-and-run form of attack. Whilst medium vehicles (Warthog, razorback, wasp, banshee) Should be more armoured and take less damage to small arms. Whilst the heavy tanks should basically take ‘chip’ damage or shrug off light arms fire (Unless hitting weak spot of said vehicles)
Let’s not forgot, that technically the multiplayer is till beta and was released earlier than antisipated so 343 needs a little time to iron things out like DPS for certain weapons and armour provided by vehicles. Give it time, they’ll sort it out!
No one likes to play against vehicles, and they should be manageable to play against, especially since you can spawn in front of them with no access to power weapons.
Mongoose and Ghosts are definitely alright as they are.
The mongoose is fine because it’s really no threat at all, it’s just a super fast quad-bike and its only real purpose is to get you and a fellow teammate back into the fray, or to pitch up in front of a flag-bearer or power-core holder and quickly drive them back.
And the Ghost is fine too because of how incredibly agile it is. You can actually avoid a great deal of damage just by strafing about at high speed, and in fact it’s pretty overpowered compared to the warthog. If you focus-fire a Ghost as a warthog gunner, and the Ghost does the same - the ghost will not only kill you, the gunner, it’s going to kill any driver on-board too. This was never the case in the MCC. A ghost pilot had to be much more clever when daring to tangle with a warthog, because the 50cal turret would tear through it.
The Chopper i’m not really happy with at all. It feels slow, dumb, clunky - the original vehicle was this chaotic fun machine of pure destruction you’d be rampaging about the battlefield in at high speed, smashing head-first into other vehicles with. Your back was exposed which was its primary weakness, and it was hard to control. Now it’s only real use is to park it somewhere tactically safe to do so and use it as a glorified artillery platform, which hits about as hard as throwing stones might, and its sound effects feel about as threatening.
Yes, but both sides spawn in front of them, and in previous games the primary counter to vehicles was other vehicles, which were distributed evenly and fairly.
The winner of a vehicle matchup’s victory would be a temporary supremacy over the on-foot enemy, who would have to play more carefully once their vehicles lost the matchup.
New maps also provide ample ground to avoid the vehicles if you are on-foot altogether, being able to run behind the myriad positions of cover and high areas the vehicles have trouble getting to. Halo is not and never was supposed to be cawadoody. Vehicle combat has been a part of big-team battles since the beginning. It’s one of the defining characteristics of the Halo franchise.
343 should have gone with the Halo 2 and 3 vehicle health system where they only explode if all the passengers are dead. With the current system, btb maps have to cut off line of sight with cramped vehicle path ways, as evidenced by all the BTB maps we currently have. We will NEVER get wide open maps like Blood Gulch or Sidewinder or any of the others with this system.
I agree with your point, although I do miss the old chopper. I remember when in H3 you could ram people with it and destroy most vehicles with it. Although, I’m not sure if Infinite has the same… ‘Use’ as the Halo 3 one did. I miss how hectic the drivers of choppers used to be. Now they’re just as you said, playing a glorified artillery cannon.
Depends, whilst it is… Sad to see classic maps such as Blood Gulch or Sidewinder not included with the game as of now, it wouldn’t surprise me if they decided to do what they did in Halo 5 after forge was released. Which was having certain player made maps added to the map pool for certain game modes. Sadly though, I feel like we’re going to be waiting a while for forge.
Precisely. Blood Gulch was expertly designed for both on-foot and big-team-vehicle combat. If you’re on foot, you go up the edges of the map to snipe and fight your way through the well-covered terrain. If you’re in a vehicle, focusing on people fighting in these areas disadvantages you to oncoming fire from the other team’s vehicles who are fully focused on you - that was the balance.
These new maps are just guerrilla-tactics havens that make vehicles a liability more than some sort of bonus or alternate mode of combat.
I agree about it being possibly a little too hard to get a chopper-splatter on other vehicles, it’s definitely still possible, but much more difficult to achieve than in 3.
I also think that vehicles in general need to be much more resistant to small arms fire. On vehicles where the driver is exposed, i.e. mongoose, chopper, I don’t mind so much if the driver can be killed by small arms fire, but currently it feels like vehicles (warthog/razorback especially) are liable to explode long before the driver is killed by small arms. There are a few exceptions - I think the Ghost and the Wasp are already in a really good place armour-wise.
Overall the vehicles feel really good, and I’m enjoying them a lot! - Especially the razorback in stockpile, I think that’s my new favourite, I just wish they were a little more durable.
Exactly. Covenant vehicles are all highly shield-like in nature, by which i mean they’re all designed to be very sturdy and offensive in the front, but quite exposed in the back - They’re not unlike a Macedonian Phalanx when it comes to tactical design, as the covenant swarm into a place in large numbers, make a strong line of attack, and advance forward, slowly choking the enemy out step by step. Every vehicle in the covenant arsenal contributes to this design and overall goal of being a sturdy line of defense backed up by artillery that just flatten the enemy from a distance and advance on them slowly.
Completely converse to this tactic, the UNSC vehicles are more like Berserkers - they’re not designed for slow, methodical conquest, they’re designed to hit quick, hit hard, get in, get it done, and get the f*ck out. They have 360 defenses on their vehicles, and every vehicle is rock solid down to its frame, canonically, from the Warthog, to the Pelican, all the way up to Halycon-Class cruisers like the Pillair of Autumn. There’s a reason why every time you see one of these vehicles downed or in ruins in the games, despite being out of comission - they’re almost always in one solid piece.
Because the assumption is, in space or planetside - in the fray of battle and the line-breaking strategies that define UNSC tactics, you’re going to be attacked from all sides, not just the front of a slowly advancing Phalanx, and your goal is to break the defensive line, disorient the enemy and just start blasting like a madman.
Every UNSC vehicle in halo until Infinite has held true to this standard, of being a bullet-sponge-come-heatsink for small arms and plasma fire whose primary weakness is oriented focus fire from enemy vehicles (exactly what UNSC berserking tactics are designed to stop the enemy doing), or highly acrobatic on-foot attacks from hard-hitting and agile stealthy units like the Sangheli/Elites jumping aboard and ripping the human driver out of the vehicle to disable it.
As they currently exist in Infinite, the UNSC vehicles feel more like a Ford Ranger with a body-mod than a line of tough-as-nails vehicles created by the rough and tough built-to-last industrial might of a Humanity building no-sell-by-date tech to withstand the rebellion of dissident colonies and total annihilation at the hands of The Covenant.