Armor abilities

Golden Ranger wrote:

I like the abilities as well and would like to see most of them return. I'm ok with spartan charge going to file 13, but I like ground pound. The splash damage needs to be removed though. IMO it should be a direct hit to kill, no matter how weak your opponents shields are. I'm ok with unlimited sprint as well. If spartan charge is removed, sprint users will be more vulnerable than ever, so I don't see it as overpowered

WerepyreND wrote:

Conceptually, I never had a problem with AA's as they were introduced in Reach. I never thought that adding a "fourth leg of fun" to Halo was an inherently bad idea. The problem has always been implementation(as well as specific abilities). Loadouts were always the main problem with AA's not the abilities themselves. Instead of doing the obvious and making them map pickups in Halo 4 they doubled down on loadouts and made the problem even worse.

They we get Halo 5 and instead of doing the obvious and placing things on the map they just let everyone spawn with 6 lesser abilities. I'd much rather pick up a Jetpack on map and have a concrete impact on my gameplay than have a constant ability to ledge-grab.

The opportunity for creating interesting sandbox interactions is just so much greater when you don't have to account for absolutely everyone on the map having access to certain abilities.

WerepyreND wrote:

I H4Q3R I wrote:

WerepyreND wrote:

Conceptually, I never had a problem with AA's as they were introduced in Reach. I never thought that adding a "fourth leg of fun" to Halo was an inherently bad idea. The problem has always been implementation(as well as specific abilities). Loadouts were always the main problem with AA's not the abilities themselves. Instead of doing the obvious and making them map pickups in Halo 4 they doubled down on loadouts and made the problem even worse.

They we get Halo 5 and instead of doing the obvious and placing things on the map they just let everyone spawn with 6 lesser abilities. I'd much rather pick up a Jetpack on map and have a concrete impact on my gameplay than have a constant ability to ledge-grab.

The opportunity for creating interesting sandbox interactions is just so much greater when you don't have to account for absolutely everyone on the map having access to certain abilities.

Yea I think thrust and clamber should be available at spawn, then sprint, ground pound and spartan charge should be pick ups but sprint should be unlimited and have a cooldown.

I can't say I agree. I don't think most of the abilities introduced into H5 are terribly interesting or necessary. Clamber is just vertical sprint, it justifies its own existence by stretching vertical map geometry to make itself useful. I don't think that ground pound and spartan charge are interesting enough on their own to merit their inclusion and spartan charge specifically is pretty bad.

Thrust is arguably even worse than sprint in terms of dragging out gunfights so while I wouldn't mind it as a pickup as a starting ability it can be problematic.

I don't think it is strictly necessary to have a starting ability but if you were to stick a gun to my head and say you must include a starting ability that can be swapped and some form of sprint must be present then I would pitch this:

Sprint is replaced with the "Boost" ability, essentially it would be the limited duration, guns up sprint from Half-Life 2. After that some other potential abilities might include: Thrust, Jetpack, Jackal Shield, Camo(Halo 2 Arbiter style, normal camo powerup still present), Drop Shield, Hologram, etc.(Keep in mind these are not all necessarily for competitive multiplayer, some being campaign/co-op/Forge only). These would be on map and clearly visible on player models. I can't say I'm attached to any of the abilities I just mentioned specifically, they are mostly just used as an example.

I have just wanted to see what Reach/Halo 4 style armor abilities would be like if they were implemented properly as pickups.

Mr Sir 81 wrote:

Spartans are super soldiers. We should have abilities right off the spawn. Yet there should be special abilities that you can pick up, ie. Camo, over shield, damage boost, sprint... But the Jet Pack, Armor Lock, type things... I don't know how I feel about that.

Small duck weed wrote:

I can't say I really agree but for the discussion I'll say that you should start with Sprint, clamber, and ground pound. Then put all of the other AA's as pickups.

The problem I have with this though is that you would bloat the map with pickups. Just having 2 on map was kinda over kill. I liked camo and overshield in H5 because it made one team more powerful than the other and because of the rush to control it. If you bloated the maps with these powerups you wouldn't have people trying to fight for these abilities.

Also how would you balance all of these things out? Say there is 1 jetpack in the middle of the map. A person picks it up and starts to fly around and notices he keeps getting killed with it because he keeps flying up into open air with no cover. So do you add another level to the map that is unreachable except for by jetpack or do something else? Overall just trying to balance 1 ability is hard enough, I can't imagine doing anything more than camo and overshield.

I H4Q3R I wrote:

Small duck weed wrote:

I can't say I really agree but for the discussion I'll say that you should start with Sprint, clamber, and ground pound. Then put all of the other AA's as pickups.

The problem I have with this though is that you would bloat the map with pickups. Just having 2 on map was kinda over kill. I liked camo and overshield in H5 because it made one team more powerful than the other and because of the rush to control it. If you bloated the maps with these powerups you wouldn't have people trying to fight for these abilities.

Also how would you balance all of these things out? Say there is 1 jetpack in the middle of the map. A person picks it up and starts to fly around and notices he keeps getting killed with it because he keeps flying up into open air with no cover. So do you add another level to the map that is unreachable except for by jetpack or do something else? Overall just trying to balance 1 ability is hard enough, I can't imagine doing anything more than camo and overshield.

I think the pick ups from halo 3 should return, I also there should be only 3 starting spartan abilities(sprint,clamber and slide)

AhaloAskewed wrote:

I H4Q3R I wrote:

Golden Ranger wrote:

I like the abilities as well and would like to see most of them return. I'm ok with spartan charge going to file 13, but I like ground pound. The splash damage needs to be removed though. IMO it should be a direct hit to kill, no matter how weak your opponents shields are. I'm ok with unlimited sprint as well. If spartan charge is removed, sprint users will be more vulnerable than ever, so I don't see it as overpowered

I was at the sprint discussion thread and had an idea of sprint being a pick up ability like bubble shield. Sounds cool right

Horrible idea. We need movement mechanics to be even starts. No movement ability should ever be a pickup item. They should be innate.

In your OP, you say design the maps around playstyle, not movement mechanics. Could you elaborate?

Simply saying playstyle isn't enough, or sufficient enough to grasp the idea you're trying to portray. What playstyle? Who's playstyle? You understand many players have different playstyles right?

The maps must be made with movenent mechanics in mind. I can't really see any way around that. The discussions usually "what movement mechanics = bad over compensating map design?"
Example of an argument is
"Why sprint and make maps bigger? Why not just boost BMS and make maps a traditional size. Spartans cover maps pretty equally when you realize in sprint designed maps, ideally they're just made bigger to compensate how fast you can get back to the fight."

Or

"Sprint has other uses, like sliding, charging, and now triggering button combos like extended charge."

Etc. I got up really early. I'll reread your OP incase I misunderstood.

I H4Q3R I wrote:

Small duck weed wrote:

I H4Q3R I wrote:

Small duck weed wrote:

I can't say I really agree but for the discussion I'll say that you should start with Sprint, clamber, and ground pound. Then put all of the other AA's as pickups.

The problem I have with this though is that you would bloat the map with pickups. Just having 2 on map was kinda over kill. I liked camo and overshield in H5 because it made one team more powerful than the other and because of the rush to control it. If you bloated the maps with these powerups you wouldn't have people trying to fight for these abilities.

Also how would you balance all of these things out? Say there is 1 jetpack in the middle of the map. A person picks it up and starts to fly around and notices he keeps getting killed with it because he keeps flying up into open air with no cover. So do you add another level to the map that is unreachable except for by jetpack or do something else? Overall just trying to balance 1 ability is hard enough, I can't imagine doing anything more than camo and overshield.

I think the pick ups from halo 3 should return, I also there should be only 3 starting spartan abilities(sprint,clamber and slide)

Sprint, clamber, and slide would work really well as the base movement mechanics.

i know that too but for some reason many people dislike it alot, and I cant really see a 2018 game without sprint etc