After many interactions with many great community members on the topic, I have altered and improved my knowledge on the topic, at hand. Please check out my EDITED response at the end for a more thought out response to the topic of gameplay mechanics. I invite you to express your opinion on it, as well, develop conversations with others, educate others, and educate yourself.The overall notion of Spartan Abilities in Halo makes sense and has the potential to stay in the series. However, the abilities of Sprint and Dash should go NOW for the benefit of Halo 6 due to the fact that it doesn’t rightfully evolve Halo and the negative impacts on core gameplay. Anyone who tells another regarding Halo to “go back to MCC for Classic Halo,” or “go back to Call of Duty for your sprinting,” is really taking the topic of a movement system lightly. As of my first response to this forum, I believe that yes, Halo must evolve, all games can’t play the EXACT same way over many titles, consistently. However, any FPS Shooter should not attempt at attracting the populous due to the negative feedback focus groups invoke. In a interview with PC Games in 2013, John Gibson, President of Tripwire Interactive for Red Orchestra 2, states “And just listening to all the niggling, pedantic things that [focus groups] would complain about, that made them not want to play the game, I just thought, ‘I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers.’” Based on Gibson’s statement, clearly, there is a lot of pressure on FPS developers, including 343 Industries, from Call of Duty’s influence on this generation to make their games appeal to the populous. But, giving in to game-breaking, movement systems will negatively alter many aspects of classic Halo that made it stand out from other games and just won’t save it’s legacy. As my solution, the use of CSGO-like Weapon Run Speed Value Movement System over Halo 5-like Spartan Ability Movement System for Halo 6 is much more beneficial and is a better direction for Halo; here is why!
Having your weapon weight to determine your movement speed over having the ability to sprint or dash DEFEATS abusing Halo 5’s Spartan Abilities. For example: In a perfect world, Sprint and Dash can be great additions to the Halo franchise in an aggressive sense. As a few examples, you could use dash at the end of a strafe, you can use sprint to get around the map faster, but in reality, that isn’t the case. During an average match in Halo 5, people use dash while one shot in a gunfight to dash behind a corner and survive an interaction, with or without sprint, thus cheating death and not learning how to better position themselves. Apply the same scenario to any other Halo game, apart from Halo 4 and 5, and the player would die in the next shot. Furthermore, they make classic game modes impossible to work for Halo 5 created maps, because 343 has to increase the original size of an average classic Halo map to arbitrary margins to estimate and guess-timate the viability of a map. This is the frustrating and harsh truth about Sprint and Dash. Abilities, as such, do not evolve the game or increase the depth and complexity of the gameplay. Now, you may wonder, “what can be the best option for Halo to evolve and improve?” The goal for growth is not to look at other communities and none of these games I’ve listed hold a similar tenure as Halo. However, an my opinion, a viable game to watch and take notes from is Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
Throughout the Counter Strike series, although it has been out for decades, the developers have never drastically changed the core gameplay of those games. Yet, currently, they have reached to such a wide audience of people-- with overall positive reception-- over the likes of Halo and Call of Duty. They have millions of eSports viewers and one of the highest sever populations, worldwide, for a reason. A perfect note to take from CS:GO, in particular, is its movement system.
The CS:GO movement system, in summary:
- Determines a player’s speed, from fastest to slowest, based on the weight of a weapon in a subtle way. - Allows the player the ability to use a weapons’s movement speed to their advantage in many strategic ways. - *Most importantly, it excludes the need of Sprint and other movement additions for the game.*For the sake of Halo, this type of movement system has never been introduced in a Halo game, to date. However, it can easily be implemented into the next installment instead of rehashing the use of Spartan Abilities for another 2-3 years. While considering Halo lore, yes, a Spartan is a super-soldier, and a major component in the many aspects that make them an agile, alien-fighting machine is the ability to carry heavy objects with ease. On the other hand-- and I’m sure many can agree-- no Spartan would move the same exact speed with a pistol as carrying a loaded Rocket Launcher; if anything, they’d move faster with the pistol and slower with the launcher.
Overall, this is my solution for the many problems in Halo’s current gameplay system. Yes, I’ve had many great encounters and in-game battles with the use of Spartan Abilities in Halo 5: Guardians, however in many interactions, I feel like returning the game and demanding reparations from retailers because of the negatives outweighing the positives in Halo’s current attempt at their “Evolution” period. In definition, the word “evolve” is to build off of something. And in the case of Halo, it is not to completely change the core gameplay for the sake of changing it, and appealing to the populous.
EDIT: After having conversations with many community members, I have changed my views on whether a game should evolve or not.
Games should not evolve; they should ado new features to the game, building off the original core gameplay and features in the game. Not completely scraping what previous games had for the replacement of a different set of gameplay mechanics and experiences. YES, Halo 5’s Spartan Abilities create new opportunities in gameplay. However, they completely take away what madepervious games enjoyable and Excell uniquely as well as promoting many sources of abuse in a game as precious as Halo. It cripples gameplay in different ways while making it excell in others. Unique gameplay mechanics present in games such as Halo 3 make certain experiences possible while others in Halo 5 will not be present, but that doesn’t mean that the original style of Halo gameplay is viable at all in this day and age.
Yes it is competing with other games in popularity, but it isn’t a race to see who can add as many arbitrary features ad possible to get the most money. Many games, such as Unreal Tournament, Resident Evil, CSGO and others, have kept the same gameplay setup for years and still succeed in giving players what they want. Although I don’t agree with sprint, it doesn’t mean that it shouldnt be considered at all in this type of discussion. However, it is important for me to say that I’s prefer “classic” Halo gameplay back in future titles and that the options of CSGO’s system are possible and have potential but don’t NEED to be in the next game; and I’m glad I realized that.
Thank you for creating this dialogue and I hope it continues for 343 Industries, themselves, to notice and publicly address.
If you took out the time to read my thoughts and my EDITED response above, thank you! What do you think of my opinion on the Halo 6 Movement System and what is yours and WHY?