I know what you’re thinking; “Free-For-All Warzone? Are you out of your damn mind?” Perhaps I am, perhaps not… but I really do believe that a Free-For-All Warzone variant would be a lot of fun if they set it up right.
Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? It would be called Warzone Mosh Pit; named after the ranked 12-player FFA playlist that appeared once or twice in Halo 3. The maps in Halo 3 were a little too small to handle big FFA games, but Warzone maps are gigantic… maybe just the right size for 12-player, or possibly even 16-player FFA, although I think that might be pushing it…
Anyway, let’s talk about the rules:
1. Scoring and Bosses.
Warzone Mosh Pit goes to 1,000 points, same as regular Warzone. Bosses spawn more frequently and in greater numbers to give all players an equal opportunity at getting their score op… bosses would also have less health. Legendary and Mythic Bosses would not appear in Warzone Mosh Pit!!! IMO, they’re worth too many points and too hard to kill for FFA; seeing as you’d have at least 12 players all trying to kill the same enemy and only one getting the credit for scoring the killing blow, higher-level bosses have a chance to be more frustrating than regular Warzone. So any boss you see in Warzone Mosh Pit would be a Heroic Boss, worth 25 Points, and enough of them spread across the map at one time to ensure that everyone has a fair shot of getting those sweet bonus points.
2. Player Traits.
Player traits should differ from regular Warzone and Arena games. To begin with, Motion Tracker range; the minimum range in Warzone Mosh Pit would be 30m over the 25m in standard Warzone. Sprint would also get an upgrade to that your shields can recharge while Sprinting; keep in mind that Warzone maps are massive and you running across wide open spaces, and you would be all alone with no teammates to watch your back. Being able to get around the map as quickly and efficiently as possible is important, I believe having shield recharge enabled while Sprinting would give you a much-needed improvement to your chances to escape from danger.
3. REQ Restrictions
Your worse fear in Warzone Mosh Pit is probably that one player who has Nornfang and Patrol Case, thus getting an unlimited supply of one-shot sniper rounds with which to terrorize you and your other opponents. Or perhaps you see someone with a Hannibal Mantis and Wheelman who’s too smart and too fast to nail with your Splasers and Rockets, and even after you kill him, he just calls in another one.
To mitigate this potential REQ abuse, I believe that in Warzone Mosh Pit all REQ items of Rare, Ultra-Rare, Legendary, and Mythic quality should be restricted to 1 use per game. In other words, once you purchase a REQ that is of Rare quality or higher, you can’t purchase it again for the rest of the game. This would apply to Power Weapons, Vehicles, and Power-Ups.
There would be no restrictions to Common or Uncommon REQs, Loadout Weapons, or Armor Mods. Go nuts.
4. Respawns and REQ Terminals
For this one, I’m going to need some input; respawn can be handled one of two ways. Either respawns are random like in Warzone Firefight, or you get to select spawns as in normal Warzone… the first problem with the latter is that players would need to be able to select more spawn points to choose from than just the Armor, Garage, Base, Fortress, or what have you… using Escape From A.R.K as an example, addition spawn points could be placed at locations such as the Grotto, Loading Bay, Comm Towers, Mine Shafts, Construction Site, and so on.
The second problem with that is it would be susceptible to abuse, as players could use to spawn right on top of people fighting in those areas. There also might not be enough locations on each map for 12 players to respawn a safe distance from each other. However, one thing is certain; there would absolutely need to be more REQ Terminals throughout each map, like there is in Warzone Firefight.
I think random respawns would present the fewest problems, but let me know what you think.