> I want the -Yoink!- community to grown up!
Maybe you could do the initiative then.
On topic:
Writing what I want from the Halo experience either means a huge wall of text or a not so detailed short description. I’ll just see where it goes from here. First of all, I want an intact, strong and well defined gameplay formula. Something I can trust I get when I buy the next Halo game. I don’t want every game to be majorly different. This doesn’t mean the game can’t innovate, just that the core stays intact and is reinforced with every next game in the series. There is plenty of things to do even if you don’t change the core of your game with every new release.
Even further, I want the formula to be a clear formula of an arena shooter, not a class based shooter. And it has to have the basic concepts right. Aim and movement needs to be fluid, movement needs to be fast, weapon sandbox needs to be something hierarchical with a clear division between power, utility and niche weapons. In this weapon sandbox, utility weapon should have the chance of beating any weapon in the sandbox at their own range if the user plays their cards correctly and the player with the niche weapon makes a mistake, for example, of missing a few bullets too much. If someone misses me with a rocket, I should be able to beat them if I’m fast enough.
Loadouts, are a concept to be scrapped completely. Or maybe not, in terms of weapons. I am all for the variety of allowing someone to spawn with an AR if I can spawn with a BR, as long as all of us have the chances of spawning with an utility weapons. But as for everything else in terms of loadouts, things need to change. Armor abilities have some great concepts, concepts that are ruined by their inclusion in the player’s loadout. Jetpack, Evade, Promethean Vision, Active Camo all make for great pick-up abilities, something you want to control on the map. That way they are not bound by assuring they are suitable for giving them to players off spawn and can be given full power while not having to care are they balanced in comparison to eachother.
Through choices such as putting more objects to be controlled on the map and not given off-spawn, map movement is encouraged which is always necessary. Maps, of course, should be these dynamically behaving maps that get better and better the more you play on them and the more you learn to use them. Maps that a good player looks at completely differently than an inexperienced player. At the same time, each map should be something I want to look at, something with an interesting skybox, maybe even something that hints to a backstory. I never liked playing Epitaph in Halo 3, but I must admit that map looks beautiful and just floods me with thoughts about the Forerunners. I want maps that give me the same feel.
Well, that pretty much sums up it for the regular multiplayer even though I was simply meant to talk about gameplay in general and not multiplayer gameplay, but well, now it’s off my way. So next naturally comes the aspect that is as important as multiplayer to me, the campaign. Maybe I should now try to make a fresh start with gameplay and try to direct it to the campaign direction.
I want the campaign to feel, in terms of gameplay, like Halo CE. When increasing the difficulty, the last thing that should be done is to give the enemies too much stronger shields. I want to be able to kill an Elite with a single sniper headshot no matter the difficulty. The difficulty shouldn’t come from the difficulty of beating one enemy, but from the fact that you have more enemies against you than on higher difficulties. Halo CE did this great. Where on Heroic you had two Elite Minors, you now have four Majors. I want the Legendary enemies to overwhelm me with not their strength but their intelligence and numbers. Something I also don’t want to see are undodgeable projectiles. CE gave this nice ability to dodge projectiles even on Legendary which let you survive longer with the skill.
I want to be able to move trough levels as fluidly as I did in CE. I don’t want to be forced to stay on one location for long, peeking behind an obstacle, losing my shields and repeating. Last of all, it’s very important that unshielded enemies actually die from one headshot. Shooting Grunts twice to the head in Reach was boring.
It’s really not just the gameplay I want to be more like CE. It would be great having that same atmosphere too. There was always this mystery that surrounded the alien world you were in, reinforced by the environment and the music. The music should be variable, not just singular types of music and music that gives you singular feel. I want music that makes me feel powerful, musis that makes me feel plain badass, music that makes me feel sad, music that makes me feel like there was no problems in the whole universe at all and it was just me happily slaughtering my enemies (one word: Peril).
Then there is the story. I have to say, it’s really not my expertise. Here I can only say I want the experience to be immersive, I want it to not contradict anything I’ve learned before about the Halo univserse. Although, there is one thing here I need to say: I don’t want the story to be all gritty and dark. In other words, I want it to maintain a healthy level humor. Humor, that’s something very important to Halo, something I don’t want to go away. Let the Grunts be Grunts and shout funnyn things at you when you have the IWHBYD skull on, let them speak English. It doesn’t matter if that compromises their ferociousness, they’re Grunts and I want them to stay as such, not some ugly things I only want to kill. Because really, feeling pitty for your opponent and seeing them as comical gives a great contrast to just killing them. I don’t want to hate my enemies, I want to respect them.
A game is boring when the story is all about sadness and desperation. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a tragedy, but that’s not what Halo is for. Halo should continue being this multidimensional game that has all kinds of moments. Part of the Halo game is having this light atmosphere at some parts. It shows everywhere from the colors of the Covenant to the words of the AI. I think that’s one of the main things for Halo I want to maintain its integrity.
There it is, majority of the game, let’s see do I get all the extra features into my remaining thousand characters I’m so happily wasting by writing these interjections. So, all this extra stuff left: Forge, Theater, Spartan Ops/Firefight, custom games. Of course, I want them to evolve, thing specific, simple evolution. I want Forge to increase its possiblities while keeping the ease of use. A real map maker would be a very nice addition, but not to completely replace Forge, but as something experienced creators can use to make amazing maps and maybe we don’t need costy DLC at all some day. Custom games, too, is something that should be expanding on the options without sacrificing the older ones. And while I was initially disappointed with the removal of Firefight, I have come to realize that Spartan Ops offers more replay value and is altogether a better choice. And las of all, theater needs some improvements such as the ability to skip to anywhere on the film.