So, its well established that many players don’t care for the random/extensive additions to Halo’s gameplay with the inclusion of Infinity Slayer. Players often cite the problems as: Sprint, Personal Ordinance, AAs at spawn, Loadouts, etc. These players (not all of them, mind you) cry that 343i should scrap Infinity altogether and stick with the “classic/traditional” gameplay…
My opinion is one that Infinity settings do have some major flaws, but can be fixed rather than scrapped. I often hear that Sprint ruins competitive play, as does the inclusion of loadouts, but I don’t see the problem in the concepts themselves (maybe I’m just slow or something?), but rather in their execution. Other things, like Personal Ordinance, I will admit take far too much focus off of map control and make the game too random.
-Random weapon spawn remove skill element of remembering where weapons are, and kills incentive to fight over these weapons, for example on The Pit rockets are always at mid, people fight for them as a result. In Halo 4, weapons are random and players don’t know when to fight for them or where to position themselves, it’s mostly luck.
-Ordnance means everyone gets power weapons at some stage, it’s essentially an inevitable part of the game, instead of being a part of the game that can be controlled and influenced by other players.
-Ordnance encourages camping. With random weapon spawns and ordnance, there’s little incentive to move around the map. You don’t know when weapon spawns will pop up and if you’re effective you can teleport power weapons of your choice to your feet and use that to accrue more ordnance.
-Default sprint has led to 343i elongating map pathways and corridors to prevent double melee sprinters (a problem in Reach), leading to CQC gameplay that isn’t as tight and generally poorer map design.
A few off the top of my head. Sure, you can try fixing these, but to fix ordnance, you’d have to remove it, same for sprint, so essentially how are these infinity settings if they have no ordnance or sprint?
AAs should be map pickups and loadouts shouldn’t have plasma pistol imo, that should be a map pickup. Give players an option of AR, BR, Carbine and whatever other rifles are, secondary should by default be magnum. PP should be a pickup and can be more effective as a result, not nerfed like in Halo 4.
> Loadouts can be fixed.
> Armor Abilities can be fixed.
> Personal Ordnance can be fixed.
> Sprint is one of the few things that can’t be fixed.
>
> I’m okay with Infinity being in the game.
> But Halo should be focused on Classic Slayer with Infinity being a gametype in the Slayer Playlists.
I agree with this, classic should be the standard, infinity should be a separate playlist, the reverse of how things currently are whereby classic is the niche playlist.
> > Loadouts can be fixed.
> > Armor Abilities can be fixed.
> > Personal Ordnance can be fixed.
> > Sprint is one of the few things that can’t be fixed.
> >
> > I’m okay with Infinity being in the game.
> > But Halo should be focused on Classic Slayer with Infinity being a gametype in the Slayer Playlists.
>
> I agree with this, classic should be the standard, infinity should be a separate playlist, the reverse of how things currently are whereby classic is the niche playlist.
Or have the multiplayer split into two sections so fans of each style have more than just one playlist
> > > Loadouts can be fixed.
> > > Armor Abilities can be fixed.
> > > Personal Ordnance can be fixed.
> > > Sprint is one of the few things that can’t be fixed.
> > >
> > > I’m okay with Infinity being in the game.
> > > But Halo should be focused on Classic Slayer with Infinity being a gametype in the Slayer Playlists.
> >
> > I agree with this, classic should be the standard, infinity should be a separate playlist, the reverse of how things currently are whereby classic is the niche playlist.
>
> Or have the multiplayer split into two sections so fans of each style have more than just one playlist
Decent idea, but what with Halo XB1 coming out a year after the Xbox is on the market, a LOT less people will own the Xbox One compared to when Halo 3 released and 20 million people had Xboxes. I’m just worried too many playlists will segment the community and as a result we’ll have slower matchmaking and dead playlists, hell we’re seeing this in Halo 4 and that released on the 360 last year to a userbase of 80 million gamers.
We can’t have a playlist for everything, and I’m beginning to think classic would be more preferred as a standard than infinity. But hey, if they do it like a ranked/social split, and have about 10-12 playlists total, it could work I guess.
-Personal ordinance is less competitive than map ordinance for 3 reasons, again it’s random, power weapons become surprise attacks and the fact you can’t compete for power weapons and deny your enemies of said weapons inherently makes it less competitive.
-AA’s and perks are hidden abilities.
-Imbalances in sandbox.
That’s it really. Many of the problems can be fixed.
Top three reasons it’s not really considered competitive:
Ordinances: A random weapon drop can cause a bad player to gain a huge adv. a key points in the game. A playing going 6-15 shouldn’t get a beam rifle spawn for a teammate when the game is tied or late in the game. NO ONE should gain any drops.
AA’s, to many different things to explain. Most need to be pick-ups or power-up spawns, NOT DEFAULT SPAWN OPTIONS.
Motion tracker, way to large or an area covered. Having it either drastically dropped in distance or off all together.
It goes back to game play elements that undermine Halo’s identity as an arena shooter for many of the complaints. Others have to do with heavily imbalanced sandbox elements that reward neutral or even negative game play, and still others have to do with random elements that undermine player influence.
Imagine you’re playing the skilled, strategic game Chess. Now imagine that you can’t tell what some of your opponent’s pieces are until they move close to you (AAs, perks) and some pieces just randomly change into other pieces (Ordnance).
Anything that takes control away from the player and gives it to a random or changing element of the game is something that takes away skill.
> Imagine you’re playing the skilled, strategic game Chess. Now imagine that you can’t tell what some of your opponent’s pieces are until they move close to you (AAs, perks) and some pieces just randomly change into other pieces (Ordnance).
>
> Anything that takes control away from the player and gives it to a random or changing element of the game is something that takes away skill.
You could argue that reacting to those unknown elements and adopting a play style that gives you the flexibility to deal with those is a form of skill.
I don’t think the loadout system undermines skill (some of the items are included in the loadout system are problematic), it just erodes Halo’s identity as an arena shooter. That is a slightly more subjective argument that comes back to personal preference but has little to do with skill.
Well, I wouldn’t say that the randomness is such a huge problem as many here make it out to be. Yes, it can be a problem if it’s very random, but I don’t think that the randomness in the ordnance would be that bad if it had some adjustments to the aspects around it.
The problem with randomness is that the event is unpredictable. A multiplayer game is about seeing which player is better. With unpredictable random events that alter the flow of the game, a player can get an advantage all of a sudden without contending it with the other players.
A lot of people argue that the noob won’t win against the pro, but that’s not the point, the point is that in an even game, which is how you play a proper MM game, against someone your own skill level. If you’d play against yourself the luckier version would win because he/she would get ordnance drops favourable to his/her current situation.
You can’t say that one player is better if he/she keeps getting better equipment through random events.
A solution to the map ordnance problem would be to have the waypoints appear for the drops a good 30 seconds before the drop actually happens, like the Engineer Perk. As well as showing it to every player on the map regardless of how far away they are. With this, everyone would know what weapons are in motion and where they spawn, as how it worked in classic. Everyone knew what, when and where it spawned. So they could contend each other for it.
> > > > Loadouts can be fixed.
> > > > Armor Abilities can be fixed.
> > > > Personal Ordnance can be fixed.
> > > > Sprint is one of the few things that can’t be fixed.
> > > >
> > > > I’m okay with Infinity being in the game.
> > > > But Halo should be focused on Classic Slayer with Infinity being a gametype in the Slayer Playlists.
> > >
> > > I agree with this, classic should be the standard, infinity should be a separate playlist, the reverse of how things currently are whereby classic is the niche playlist.
> >
> > Or have the multiplayer split into two sections so fans of each style have more than just one playlist
>
> Decent idea, but what with Halo XB1 coming out a year after the Xbox is on the market, a LOT less people will own the Xbox One compared to when Halo 3 released and 20 million people had Xboxes. I’m just worried too many playlists will segment the community and as a result we’ll have slower matchmaking and dead playlists, hell we’re seeing this in Halo 4 and that released on the 360 last year to a userbase of 80 million gamers.
>
> We can’t have a playlist for everything, and I’m beginning to think classic would be more preferred as a standard than infinity. But hey, if they do it like a ranked/social split, and have about 10-12 playlists total, it could work I guess.
My guess is that most people that play Infinity regularly generally don’t like the traditional settings, and vice versa. There is some overlap where people like both styles and will hop back and forth between them, but a down-the-middle split of Infinity/Traditional would not segment the population in the way that you believe it will. At least that is what I believe. It is, after all, only an educated guess.
The ranked/social split is still just about mandatory in matchmaking (also my opinion) for it to be more successful than Halo 4’s. Among other issues, this is pretty high up there in my book.
> A solution to the map ordnance problem would be to have the waypoints appear for the drops a good 30 seconds before the drop actually happens, like the Engineer Perk. As well as showing it to every player on the map regardless of how far away they are. With this, everyone would know what weapons are in motion and where they spawn, as how it worked in classic. Everyone knew what, when and where it spawned. So they could contend each other for it.[/color]
Even with warning, you could end up with a spawn that your team, through no merit of its own beyond chance and the spawning engine, already controls the area for. So your opponent is left to scramble and attempt to take an area that your team already controls or be punished by the resulting power weapon.
its a really interesting read. Even though he isn’t involved with the franchise any more, I do believe that his vision for the franchise is a very good jumping off point for what it should actually be.
> You could argue that reacting to those unknown elements and adopting a play style that gives you the flexibility to deal with those is a form of skill.
I’d like to expound upon Naqser’s post:
> The problem with randomness is that the event is unpredictable. A multiplayer game is about seeing which player is better. With unpredictable random events that alter the flow of the game, a player can get an advantage all of a sudden without contending it with the other players.
>
> A lot of people argue that the noob won’t win against the pro, but that’s not the point, the point is that in an even game, which is how you play a proper MM game, against someone your own skill level. If you’d play against yourself the luckier version would win because he/she would get ordnance drops favourable to his/her current situation.
I agree that a more skilled player will be able to react better to unpredictable circumstances, but that does not mean that unpredictable circumstances require skill. By definition, a skill is an ability that depends on practice and knowledge. Since randomness and unpredictability cannot be learned, calling them “skillful” is an oxymoron.
Imagine that a marksman enters a contest where with every shot, the sights are adjusted by a random amount in a random direction. Would the outcome more likely be based on skill or by chance?
What about musicians? Sight-reading music is an ability that tends to get better with skill, but in a competition, it should not be the deciding factor in determining the winner.
Skeet shooting is largely your skill to be able to react to a “random” trajectory.
You don’t know in football whether the other team has called a run or a pass until the play starts. Skill comes into play in two ways:
reacting to the play once it starts
having a defense that can adequately respond to either play call
Obviously skill isn’t involved in knowing whether your opponent chose jet pack or hard light shield, but once they lift off the ground skill comes into play in two ways:
reacting to your opponent’s action
having played up until that point in a manner that allowed you to succeed once they did lift off
> make all the armor abilities and perks personal ordinance,
>
> then you’ll have the incentive to earn something and be good with it rather than waste it…
Great idea. Just like how throwdown is currently set up, except you could choose three options in your loadout screen and then when the ordinance bar fills in game you could have the choice of three options?
A game of any kind that relies heavily on randomness and luck cannot be competitive. It defeats the point of competition to be handed a win instead of earning it with map knowledge, teamwork and general skill. It’s just a shallow victory that means nothing.
Whether or not you get a Sniper or a Needler in Ordnance is a dice roll, nothing to do with how good of a player you are.
If you were to put the best Infinity players into a game of traditional Halo, they’d get decimated.
Ordnance doesn’t really need to be gone over. It creates a snowball effect, adds tons of additional power weapons, and is currently randomized. Already sufficiently explained.
Abilities like Sprint/Hardlight/Regen reward running from battle and can be highly abused in specific situations to give the lesser skilled player an edge. Abilities like Jetpack, Camo, and Promethean Vision break the sandbox and/or lower the skill requirement of the game. It also isn’t currently possible to determine which ability a player has just by looking at them. Abilities should not only be easily recognizable, they should also support player skills, instead of being a replacement for them.
Perks and Abilities don’t really augment play styles as much as they act as crutches. The ability to see the location of the last person to kill you is not a legitimate, fleshed out playstyle. Furthermore, unlike a pure class based shooter, the perks don’t seem to be designed with other perks in mind.
Radar exists in Infinity.
And lastly, there are the balancing issues of the items loadouts contain.
> You could argue that reacting to those unknown elements and adopting a play style that gives you the flexibility to deal with those is a form of skill.
To a degree.
If the game is randomized to the point the player has no control there is no skill involvement, the game is purely based on chance.
Referring to chess again, imagine if the pieces changed into a different piece every time they were moved. Absolutely no strategy could come from this.
> That is a slightly more subjective argument that comes back to personal preference but has little to do with skill.
Agreed, there are respectable class based games on the market.