I wish 343 would just give “no sprint” a chance. Yeah, they made it possible to toggle it in custom games, but they should have made it the opposite, turning sprint off entirely, and then having it as an ability in custom games.
There are people who spend their time just trying to improve Halo 5 by coming up with detailed responses and claims as to why something should be added, or taken out, but those qualms never get heard. Sprint is arguably the most controversial thing in Halo to date, and people have time and time again proven with thought provoking details and suggestions that would easily prove to any sane or reasonable thinking person that it just doesn’t work in the series’s formula. Yet, it stays, because for some inane reason the audience who wants it to stay, have nothing but subjective and opinionated reasons that are in no way, shape, or form healthy for the Halo franchise. Phrases such as, “Halo needs to evolve.”, “It needs to be faster paced” or, “I want to feel like a spartan” and even, “Get with the times, its 2015”. get thrown around way too often, and yet, as subjective and totally naive as these opinions may seem, they apparently over-lap the sound and reasonable responses of the former.
Take it from me, I used to like Halo 4, and I even thought Reach was in fact, the best Halo. Eventually I was looking up threads on this website and found people were against sprint, and thought you would have to be a child to think Halos 1-3 were superior to Reach and 4. I thought spartan ops was great, I thought Halo 4 was doing a good thing with customizable loadouts, and Reach was the best game. But eventually I started to see more and more anti sprint threads, and how well composed they were, and how professionally well thought out they were, It was then I realized how wrong I was. Spartan Ops was nothing but copy and pasted missions, Halo 4’s multiplayer was laughably watered down compared to Halo’s 1-3, and eventually I could understand the hate Reach got. I never even knew that buyer’s regret could have played such a big role in blinding my opinions. I didn’t want to be wrong, but it wasn’t about being wrong, it was about making Halo the best game it could be, with a healthy population that could sustain itself for more than a year. It was then I launched my campaign for anti-sprint and joined forces with the “purists” that I despised so much, so we could restore Halo to its rightful glory, and set it on track from its recently astray decisions.
Funny, how long of ways a little enlightenment works, huh?
> “There was honor in our Covenant once, and there shall be again!”
>
> -Thel 'Vadam
This was a quote the Arbiter had used in regards to the Covenant Loyalists, saying that by destroying the lying, broken Covenant, his separatist Covenant will receive the real honor, undeterred by lies. This quote was something I had pondered for a little while as I grounded my newly found beliefs against the opposition to rid Halo of sprint. I say this, because the way Halo used to be seems so different than what it is now, it wouldn’t be fair to the fans who had played it for so long.
I’m not trying to say that anyone who thinks that Halo needs sprint isn’t a true fan, I’m trying to tell you guys that sprint just doesn’t work. Look at it this way:
Sprint has more negatives than positives.
I just get tired of stating that so many times, but few people try and heed my warnings. All the opposition ever says is something along the lines of, “Then don’t play Halo anymore”, or “Halo doesn’t belong to you anymore, it belongs to the new audience.” I find these statements so dumbfounded, I just can’t even fathom how selfish they sound.
I just wish that 343i would just try eliminating sprint for once. The sad part is, Josh Holmes just wants to keep it for a personal preference it seems;
https://twitter.com/joshingtonstate/status/550871890755985408
The above link shows how die hard, and unprofessionally Josh wants sprint to stay. Below, user JosephSaucey even argues with him on how sprint isn’t just a small mechanic that flaws Halo, but how it deeply roots more problems into Halo to compensate for it (Increasing map size, “watering down” thruster pack). He even states, “I totally understand your point of view”. But does he really? He later states in the conversation, after JosephSaucey asks if they’ve ever considered taking out sprint, to which Holmes replies in a technical jargon of bull, that, “You have to take each game as the sum total of its systems. Focusing on a mechanic in isolation of creates an incomplete picture.” To which Saucey easily rebuts, “Focusing on how a single mechanic is effecting the total sum of the system is indeed looking at the bigger picture.” and goes on by stating how no de-scope in Halo 4 negatively impacts gameplay, stating “Look at Descope. It was severely impacting gameplay in a negative manner and it is now re-instated. Sprint is no different.” and “Sprint negatively impacts Halo gameplay on the same level as no descope. Thanks for your time.”
I’m not here to make Halo how I want it, I’m here to make Halo the best it can be. It has proven time and time again, that sprint is a hindrance towards Halo’s grand formula and is fundamentally broken in it, because of how movement was designed. Please 343, don’t look at this as another sprint rant thread from some angry “purist”, look at these suggestions as from a hardcore fan of series that plays Halo as one of, if not the main game(s) of choice, that wants Halo to be the best it can be and sprint stands in the way of that. From my time with the beta, it was fun in certain concepts, like breakout, because it seems the game was built around the that game-type, and not the other way around (Like it should be). I’m not going to say that sprint solely is what makes it bad, but it definitely is its biggest problem, as it hinders many of us and our perspective as to what makes Halo great. It’s not fun, and its not Halo. You say you’re taking feedback from the hardcore fanbase seriously, and I want to believe you, but when you’re trying to justify a fundamentally flawed mechanic such as sprint that we have known for years that it is incapable of redemption by re instating it in another game, it just doesn’t give me confidence that you guys want Halo to be the best it can be, but more of a cash cow that you can milk until it is completely dry.
All I’m asking of you guys, is that you post a more open poll in the forums that can prove that the anti-sprint crowd isn’t the minority you seem to have branded it as. And if the polls have more anti-sprint votes than pro-sprint votes, then all I ask is that you <em>Delay Halo 5: Guardians</em>, for as long as you need, so that you may reform the multiplayer maps, reconstruct the sandbox, and recreate anything else sprint would have its effects on.