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> Hello forums,
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> I’ve seen a lot of people talk about Armor Abilities and how ‘unfair’ they are. I disagree with that. Coming from the perspective of a player who has never been ‘great’ at Halo, I think that Armor Abilities help balance out the gameplay. In older games, unless you were a Halo god, so to speak, you would never have fun because you would constantly get killed by all of those Halo gods. When they were introduced in Halo: Reach, I found that some of them were a bit unbalanced, (Armor Lock Especially), but all around they were good in helping worse players get better. When Halo 4 came out, I think the 343 perfected them. All of them were balanced out and could be combated easily. I’m not saying that Halo 4 is perfect, as it does have some flaws, (Personalized Loadouts, ok-campaign, etc.), but all-in-all, I think that it was a good game. When people complain about the Armor Abilities, and yes even Ordnance, I think they’re not giving them a full chance. Ordnance, no matter how pointless it is, does not unbalance the gameplay. It isn’t unfair, as many people have said, because EVERYONE CAN USE IT. Armor Abilities aren’t unfair because EVERYONE CAN USE IT. The definition of the word unfair is “disproportionate; undue; beyond what is proper or fitting”. Halo 4’s Armor Abilities add new layers of gameplay to diversify it. Like I said earlier, all the Abilities can be combated easily. It just means that the people who don’t like the Armor Abilities need to learn about how to combat them. A lot of old Halo maps rely on the fact that everyone knows all of the nooks and crannies for finding weapons, vehicles, etc. This is just a new thing for Halo Veterans to learn. Find out which weapons work best against what Ability.
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> Many people on the Internet have an issue with change. Die-Hard Fans especially. If their perfect thing gets changed in any way, they freak out about it, without analysing it without a bias towards the old. I’m not saying that the old Halo games aren’t good, they are better, (simply because the campaigns were amazing), but you can’t say that the new games are horrible simply because they are DIFFERENT. Different does not equal bad.
Armor abilities help worse players do better. That’s one reason why they are terrible, they’re essentially crutches. If you want to become better, you should get off your lazy -Yoink- and practice to improve the areas of skill you may lack or aren’t the best at. Armor abilities destroy a lot of that, instead giving the lesser skilled players an easier route rather than making them work hard to get better.
If you’re issue is that you would never score any kills, that is why Halo 2/3’s matchmaking was the best. You could let the game match you up by skill to fight against players of the same level, rather than having these cheap crutches to make it so you don’t have to use a lot of the skill that’s normally required to win. Promethean Vision takes out the awareness and prediction skill, you don’t have to stay on alert, listen closely to enemy footstep, or learn about the hotspots of the map because this ability lets you see through walls. Jet Pack takes out the memorization and critical thinking skill, you don’t have to memorize the not-so-obvious shortcuts of the map in order to race from place to place or plan what route you should take because this ability lets you skip large amounts of terrain and easily fly over newrarly any obstacle in your path. Active Camo takes out the positioning, caution, and stealth skills, you don’t have to carefully strategize your approach, be patient until its the appropriate time to strike, or position yourself so you won’t be easily seen, because this ability lets you turn invisible at moment’s notice. These are just some badic examples.
No one can use each of the armor abilities in game, a person can only equip one at any given time. Because everyone gets to spawn with any out of the eight and you will never know which players have which armor abilities at any given time, it creates a larger emphasis on luck and randomness. You may try to argue that this requires players to adapt, but a lot of the time they won’t have a chance to before it’s already too late. If you carefully coordinate and plan a surprise ambush/flank onto the enemy’s base with all of your team members, none of that matters when a hostile has promethean vision and his ordance randomly decides to give him a choice of rockets or a shotgun. You’ll never be able to know in advance or plan for the situation because of the extreme randomness and the amount of random bs that has a chance of happening, and when you find out, your plan is already screwed, you and your teammates are already doomed, and there’s NOTHING your team can do about it. It transforms the game into something as luck-based as a casino. All you can do is HOPE that something doesn’t go wrong. And for your point about having to find out what weapon beats which armor ability, you can only hold two weapons at any given time and you’re never going to know which armor ability your enemy has until you’re already in battle.
Random Ordnance is random. Halo’s weapon spawns used to spawn at set intervals at fixed places, requiring players to memorize the spawn times and locations, keep track of the spawn timer, strategize your routes, and fight against the opposition in order to retreat. Random Ordnance takes away this aspect and changes everything into luck. You have to hope that the weapon you’re good at spawns at the right time, and at the right place, because your memorization and planning means nothing when all of these factors are random (the weapon itself, the spawn time, and where it spawns). One match you might get unlucky because the weapon CHOOSES to spawn next to your enemy instead of you, and there’s NOTHING you could do to prevent that from happening. There’s an extreme difference between luck and skill. Ordnance also tells you where each weapon is and when it spawns. Goodbye map memorization.
Personal Ordnance rewards players, even if they’re just camping or are teaming up on the weakest player. With the normal on-map power weapons, you would have to move out into dangerous territory and fight against the opposition to aquire something. Now the game isn’t forcing you to do that, because you can get the same exact power weapons from camping or teaming up on the weakest player. Not to mention, the choices the Personal Ordnance gives you is entirely random. You could be given the weapon choice of just a Needler, but your enemy could be given the weapon choice of an Incineration Cannon for gaining the same exact amount of points aa you did. That’s luck, not skill. The weapons, an essential part of any game mode, become random. And you’ll never be able to prepare for an enemy’s weapon from personal ordance, because they can be ANY WEAPON in the game’s entire arsenal, even if that weapon doesn’t normally spawn on the map.
I wouldn’t mind the Random Ordnance as much if the game was divided half and half into Casual and Competitive playlists, and it only appeared in Casual playlists, appearing alongside the normal weapon spawns for some general consistency. And I wouldn’t mind the Armor Abilities if they were pickups on the map so you’d have to use a lot of skill in order to acquire them.