So I know people are gonna rage, scream and break their computers over this, but please read.
So about 90% of the halo players hate amour abilities, why because they add randomness and make the game unfair. So as for the unfair part, does it acutely make a game unfair? NO. First off you get an amour ability as well. And second from my experience in halo reach, the ONLY armour ability to make me lose a kill (besides skill level) is amour lock. All the other abilities don’t effect gameplay that much. So when I play BTB in reach if someone has a jet pack, than I would kill him or he would kill me, this time it matters on skill. As for randomness, it isn’t because of the reasons above. Besides well can all agree on one thing: WE ALL HATE CAMPERS MORE THAN AMOUR ABILITIES.
> Besides well can all agree on one thing: WE ALL HATE CAMPERS MORE THAN AMOUR ABILITIES.
Disagree, and you know why?
Whats worse than a camper? A camper you can’t physically see.
Was there not just a thread about this?
> > Besides well can all agree on one thing: WE ALL HATE CAMPERS MORE THAN AMOUR ABILITIES.
>
> Disagree, and you know why?
> Whats worse than a camper? A camper you can’t physically see.
>
> Was there not just a thread about this?
Nah, I think it was ‘Why all the Loadout Hate’? Which I’m asking both questions.
Sure some of the armor abilities can be a bit annoying COUGHARMORLOCK, but you just learn to defeat them.
Campers using Active Camo are quite the predicament, but camo isn’t foolproof, and only last a few seconds at a time. Armor abilities add variety to gameplay, and if people don’t care for them, there’s plenty of other playlists and game types that have set loadouts.
Most of the AA’s should, in my view, make a return, but I can see why people are disagreeing highly with the concept. They think that spawning in every time with an ability is too easy. They want these abilities to either be abolished or remade into pick-ups around the map, so not everyone’s an invisible nuance or jetpacking power house.
So that’s why there’s the hate for AA’s. Personally, I don’t care what 343 does with them, as long as they don’t get rid of them entirely.
Randomness in the sense of armor abilities isn’t so important. What is important is how the specific armor abilities affect the game. Not even discussing the concept of armor abilities, the current ones shouldn’t return for their own reasons.
I’m getting my -Yoink- kicked by three enemies. I pop armor lock and survive long enough for my team to come save me. I should’ve died that battle.
I’m fighting a 1v1 and getting low on shields. I find a corner and pop down a regeneration field. Suddenly I’ve turned the fight completely around.
Jetpack is obvious, with enough power it breaks map movement. Even if it’s just a ‘jump pack’ it still gives you height advantage over the enemy.
List goes on. If armor abilities return they should function as multi-purpose tools and not pick-your-crutch.
> I’m fighting a 1v1 and getting low on shields. I find a corner and pop down a regeneration field. Suddenly I’ve turned the fight completely around.
IMO, if the enemy is incompetent enough to let you get away with that they deserve to lose the fight anyways.
Well one major reason people have issues with AAs is that so far they have been tied to loadouts which means anyone can have anything at any time. In this way they cannot be ‘predicted’ or planned for. If someone kills me a rocket, I can call out ‘player x has a rocket at location y’. My teammates can then plan accordingly, take out player x and when player x respawns they will no longer have a rocket.
With AAs and loadouts that same player spawn with any AA they want and there is no way for the opposing players to limit their use. This results in encounters being less about skill and more about who just happens to have right AA at any given moment.
If AAs were pickups with one ability such as thruster as the ‘default’ you would hear a lot fewer complaints about AAs.
As for reasons why specific AAs get hate I’ll go through a few.
Armor Lock:As you might guess on demand invulnerability does not do great things for gameplay. The biggest issue being that it destroys the pace of a game. One button press and things come to a screeching halt.
Camo:Another AA with obvious issues is on demand invisibility. It promotes passive gameplay and the design of the AA only encourages this behavior further. In this sense it was actually better in the Reach beta as you could actually move from cover to cover with decent camo.
Jetpack:That’s a nice setup your team has. It would be a shame if anything happened to it… The issue with Jetpack is that it takes one look out your control of the map(in this case covering things like lifts, teleporters, ramps, etc) and ignores it completely with a portable grav lift. Not to mention instant height advantage .
Hardlight Shield:Not quite as bad as armor lock, still has issues. Did your team work together to secure that rocket spawn? Too bad a player on the opposing team bounced the rocket back with something he did nothing to earn.
Sprint:Though not an ability in Halo 4 the hate it gets is well deserved. Slowing the pace of the game using its ability to easily escape danger. And in Halo 4’s case easily close on the player who just killed you. Sprint does nothing to increase the pace of the game that could not be accomplished through proper map design.
Regen Field:Accelerated shield regeneration? Yeah, that’s an issue, especialy when many of the weapons have no-bleedthrough allowing for players to pop in and out without being vulnerable to that final DMR shot.
Auto-Sentry:This one isn’t too bad aside from its absurd range and line of sight.
Hologram:Pretty much the only ability besides thruster that isn’t irritating. However that is mostly because it is almost worthless.
AAs have some serious issues and unless loadouts and AAs are separated they will continue to be hated.
> > I’m fighting a 1v1 and getting low on shields. I find a corner and pop down a regeneration field. Suddenly I’ve turned the fight completely around.
>
> IMO, if the enemy is incompetent enough to let you get away with that they deserve to lose the fight anyways.
Enemy doesn’t have to be incompetent. If it’s a long range fight (they can’t reach me in time to finish me off) and I’m in a hard to grenade location…
imho, all AA changed gameplay, because all AA are tools for help low players…
jet pack:
if a team take a base, players has a good position, and good teamwork, it’s difficoult for the other team to break the defence. Every access point is controlled. But, with a jet pack, you can surprise their… so, people can appear everywhere… everywhere = casuality
camo
Another “surprise factor” for noob players, very fastidious… the same person, in heat to head probably lose the conflict. But, if he could shoot before me, he has a vantage…
hologram
in head to head, only one shot can be decisive… if you shoot hologram only one time, you can lose HTH.
evade
Its effect is the same that hologram…fail one shot.
ecc… ecc…
Do you want to say why people hates AA? because in HTH, skilled player must win, and noob player must die. So, noob player will has a reason to improve himself, to work on him skill, to do training, not to appeal to armor ablities…
> Do you want to say why people hates AA? because in HTH, skilled player must win, and noob player must die. So, noob player will has a reason to improve himself, to work on him skill, to do training, not to appeal to armor ablities…
We can discuss balance another time, but I disagree that abilities are inherently unskillful. For example, reflecting a rocket with hardlight shield requires proper reaction and timing. It might not be balanced but it’s not easy to pull off either.
Armor abilities might work if they are designed with skillful use in mind. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case for the past two titles. People are too focused on what abilities are and not what they can be.
Armor Abilities do not work because they are essentially class abilities, but instead of each class ability being an essential part of the team (e.g. healer, tank, DPS), they are simply buffs. If Halo were to become a full-fledged class-based shooter and not some mutant hybrid, Armor Abilities wouldn’t be a problem.
> In class-based games, classes must have certain abilities that other classes don’t (with a significant amount of power): only Healers can heal others, only tanks can take massive amounts of damage, and only DPS can deal massive amounts of damage. The classes must be balanced so that each of their exclusive abilities are necessary–you must have all of them to function effectively.
>
> Halo 4 didn’t have this. The loadout options were only buffs, not essential abilities. Teams did not have to coordinate loadouts because each and every one of them is capable of taking on any role at any time and only be slightly more or less effective. Because the effort it takes to coordinate loadouts is not balanced enough by advantages gained, having classes was not only optional, it was almost inconsequential. To make everything worse, players’ loadouts were hidden, so no one could ever know how to effectively complement (as a teammate) or counter (as an opponent) them. As a result, loadouts added to the game randomness and not strategy, chaos and not structure.
> > Besides well can all agree on one thing: WE ALL HATE CAMPERS MORE THAN AMOUR ABILITIES.
>
> Disagree, and you know why?
> Whats worse than a camper? A camper you can’t physically see.
>
> Was there not just a thread about this?
And you want to know what’s worse than a camper that you cannot physically see?
A camper with extended radar and the ability to see through walls and call down new power weapons with every three or four kills.
> > Do you want to say why people hates AA? because in HTH, skilled player must win, and noob player must die. So, noob player will has a reason to improve himself, to work on him skill, to do training, not to appeal to armor ablities…
>
> We can discuss balance another time, but I disagree that abilities are inherently unskillful. For example, reflecting a rocket with hardlight shield requires proper reaction and timing. It might not be balanced but it’s not easy to pull off either.
>
> Armor abilities might work if they are designed with skillful use in mind. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case for the past two titles. People are too focused on what abilities are and not what they can be.
yeah this is the motivation that my friends say when he use armor lock…
but, there is a big truth: in Halo 3 my friend would die, in halo reach he survived…
i don’t like this…
> > > Besides well can all agree on one thing: WE ALL HATE CAMPERS MORE THAN AMOUR ABILITIES.
> >
> > Disagree, and you know why?
> > Whats worse than a camper? A camper you can’t physically see.
> >
> > Was there not just a thread about this?
>
> And you want to know what’s worse than a camper that you cannot physically see?
>
> <mark>A camper with extended radar and the ability to see through walls and call down new power weapons with every three or four kills</mark>.
LOL This!! so true!!
On Topic, I think AA’s have a place as map pick ups…maybe 1-2 times use depending on the power. I can’t tell you how easy it is to kill someone with PV, jetpack, invis etc. AA’s to me take all the challenge out of the game. Ya they’re kind of fun sometimes when your chilling with your buds having a few cold ones but other then that, I think there horrible. Invis. as an AA is THE WORST! just make it a power up again please! I honesty don’t understand what was going threw bungies/343 heads when they decided to do this.
AA’s and Power up’s as map pick up’s are the way to go by far I think.
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doesn’t understand why AA’s are bad
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plays BTB
That’s it right there. AA’s don’t have nearly the negative impact on BTB as they do in Arena gameplay, which is Halo standard.
A lot of the problem is that you aren’t limited in your options. You can pick one of 8 superpowers, and whether or not it’s useful enough to make a difference depends almost entirely on luck and randomness. You can’t predict what fight you’ll get into 10-15 seconds after spawning. If you get into a fight where Thrust is beneficial, and you picked Jetpack well you just screwed yourself, and not because you made the WRONG choice, but because you couldn’t predict which choice you’d need.
For instance, say I get into a fight while I have the high ground with the thruster. The fight doesn’t exactly go how I’d like so I thrust back and use the platform I’m on as cover, getting ready to poke back out and surprise him with more bullets.
He picked Jetpack when he spawned, so he just jets up and finishes me off. My whole strategy was useless because I had ZERO way of knowing that of the 8 abilities offered to him, he just happened to have a Jetpack.
Another example? I just got the Rocket Launcher and I’m feeling good about it. I find a pair of guys close together and fire between them for a double kill. But OH WAIT one of them busts out his hardlight shield, the Rocket ricochets back and actually kills me instead, because I have camo, not thrust or HLS the only two things capable of saving me in this circumstance. Well I just got screwed by a mechanic I had ZERO control over, and ZERO prior knowledge they picked. Because he could have had any of the other 7 abilities and I’d have gotten the double.
That’s why AA’s are terrible as spawning mechanics. If you had to pick them up off the map, and they were treated like PWs or Powerups, there wouldn’t be a problem. I’d know what abilities are available on the map, how many there are, how often they spawn, and I’d be able to to compete against other players for the right to use them, and my team would be able to monopolize them if we have excellent map control by the middle of the game, rewarding us for playing well, instead of punishing us when the other team spawns with Jetpack and shortcuts to top control -_-
> That’s why AA’s are terrible as spawning mechanics. If you had to pick them up off the map…
…then the same potential to make the ‘wrong decision’ exists regardless. “I went and picked up jetpack and found myself in a situation where I needed thruster. I picked up a Carbine and lost because the other guy had a Battle Rifle.”
> yeah this is the motivation that my friends say when he use armor lock…
>
> but, there is a big truth: in Halo 3 my friend would die, in halo reach he survived…
>
> i don’t like this…
I didn’t once mention armor lock, which I will agree is imbalanced.
> > That’s why AA’s are terrible as spawning mechanics. If you had to pick them up off the map…
>
> …then the same potential to make the ‘wrong decision’ exists regardless. “I went and picked up jetpack and found myself in a situation where I needed thruster. <mark>I picked up a Carbine and lost because the other guy had a Battle Rifle.”</mark>
If someone with a Carbine loses to a BR, it’s entirely their error. Both weapons have the same effective range and the same kill time.
> > yeah this is the motivation that my friends say when he use armor lock…
> >
> > but, there is a big truth: in Halo 3 my friend would die, in halo reach he survived…
> >
> > i don’t like this…
>
> I didn’t once mention armor lock, which I will agree is imbalanced.
I still have nightmares from Armor Lock.
> If someone with a Carbine loses to a BR, it’s entirely their error. Both weapons have the same effective range and the same kill time.
Ugly debate to get into, not that I disagree.
But be prepared to see a lot of theory craft.
Their killtimes aren’t the exact same and neither is their range.
I was simply quoting common thoughts. Point I was hinting at is that whether someone grabs or spawns with an item doesn’t change the fact it’s being used against you at any given moment and you have to react to it at that moment.
> Point I was hinting at is that whether someone grabs or spawns with an item doesn’t change the fact it’s being used against you at any given moment and you have to react to it at that moment.
And seems to me this exact same sentence could be applied to Power Weapons.
Yes, players don’t spawn with Rocket Launchers but I also don’t think we should be spawning with Jetpacks either.
And throwing this out there for the OP: AAs are hated because of poor implementation and the presence of several rather powerful AAs (Camo, Jetpack, Armor Lock) which greatly soured the idea in people’s minds.
The thing is that in an arena sandbox additional advantages (any form of item: power weapon, vehicle, power up, AA/Equipment, etc.) all share the same issue.
They exist to imbalance the game (in someone’s favor) and hence there is always a small degree before their impact on the game becomes annoying or even gamebreaking.
When there is a single power weapon placed on the map and you get killed by it, it is to an extent “annoying” but nonetheless because the weapon (advantage) is extremely rare and doesn’t last forever and because everyone has theoretically the same chance to get it and use it its impact on the game is strictly controlled and therefore it is “bearable”.
When there are 4 power weapons placed on the map and one team (implying 4v4) manages it to get them all and you get slaughtered then the impact of the additional advantages is way too big and significant and therefore it isn’t “bearable” anymore.
I would even say the game is broken now because the chances of a fair comeback have become extremely slim for the other team.
To relate that on the issue “AAs” their current impact is just way too big. Several one’s are extremely useful or effective, they are available at spawn and they can be used an infinite amount of time.
They are (personal) additional advantages that are constantly present what makes them annoying most of the time and for many people.
Now you could limit their impact on the game by either nerfing (“crippling”) them individually or placing them on the map like once equipment but what do you actually achieve with that in regards to overall gameplay? I think nothing signifcant or entertaining.
Personally I am currently seeing only two solutions in regards to AAs.
The first would be to pick one and incorporate it as an default ability into the design of a map or a gametype. That would allow them to function as inherent gameplay mechanics and not as additional advantages (in an arena sandbox).
The other would be what Vektor0 mentioned. Changing Halo into a full-fledged class shooter in which an AA is connected to a certain and set (non-customizable) class and hence has a significant purpose within the gameplay other than imbalancing the game in your favor.
> > That’s why AA’s are terrible as spawning mechanics. If you had to pick them up off the map…
>
> …then the same potential to make the ‘wrong decision’ exists regardless. “I went and picked up jetpack and found myself in a situation where I needed thruster. I picked up a Carbine and lost because the other guy had a Battle Rifle.”
>
>
>
> > yeah this is the motivation that my friends say when he use armor lock…
> >
> > but, there is a big truth: in Halo 3 my friend would die, in halo reach he survived…
> >
> > i don’t like this…
>
> I didn’t once mention armor lock, which I will agree is imbalanced.
other AA are the same concept, though they’re less invasive… imho…