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Feedback:
Render distance on players and bots on performance settings is too short in halo 3.
This is in all game modes, but is particularly crippling in pvp and firefight.
Progression, Gate Keeping, and FOMO:
Especially with season 3, the challenges system punishes casual players by locking them out of seasonal unlocks (ENDURE) and weekly Season Points.
It also forces players into modes they may not enjoy in order to stay on top of the weekly SP cap and content.
FOMO and player skill exclusives should only apply to achievements, not content.
I'm willing to put up with exclusive nameplates to an extent.
Mandatory matchmaking/coop in the PVP and PVE challenges:
Matchmaking and mandatory coop are not always fun or feasible.
These challenges will conflict with increased popularity in custom/modded content.
Shrinking matchmaking population means lower quality matches.
Make challenges available in customs and not dependent on matchmaking. Only achievements should need matchmaking.
Add campaign matchmaking as an alternative for coop challenges as well.
Messy and Unfun PVP Matchmaking:
AFK/Quitting is way too common, but a symptom of the problems below.
Punishing quitters will only make it worse.
Instead consider incentives for finishing matches and offering handicaps to badly losing teams in social.
Incentives could include increased XP payouts for increasingly asymmetric matches.
Add spawn protection. End matches/allow free quitting if losing by 30+ points after 3 minutes.
For social modes, its own social playlist or merged with ar starts, consider stat buffs for the losing team while losing by 20+ points (steaktacular).
These could be boosts in damage/speed/health or even immunities as long as the team is losing heavily.
The bonuses could even scale based on how bad the team is losing.
The point is, games are played for fun and advancing progression. If players aren't having fun or gaining progression, they're going to quit.
Fix this by keeping the game engaging and rewarding even when the players are losing.
The primary factor to an enjoyable match is the people you play with and against.
Teamkillers and griefers are way too common.
This can be reduced by disabling friendly fire on players and vehicles occupied by all players on the same team.
This would be for socials or a social playlist variant as proposed above.
Bad Team Skill Balancing:
Skill constraints within and between team are way too lenient. 30 - 70 pt spreads in BTB modes.
Matching solo players against parties further exacerbates this.
These are largely population issues. Crossplay may help, but I'm not holding my breath.
Opt-in Join in progress won't fix why people quit.
Poorly Aged Map Design:
Spawn camping and spawn flipping are too common on the halo 3 maps.
Precision weapons and precision power weapons have way too much presence in social game modes.
WAYONT (Forgeworld) and Standoff (Halo 3) are particularly bad.
Multicog (Sandbox) and Spire should not be part of social BTB.
Please bring back 360 era halo 3 styled veto. Asking the composer once per match to pick another map for us is NOT the same as voting for 1 map on a list.
In fact, this could be a clever way to issue an AFK challenge to players in the lobby.
When the players are cue'd for the session. Pop up a screen mentioning the map, game, and a veto request.
The player can choose yes or no on the veto.
If the player times out on the veto prompt (10 seconds seems a good starting point), then afk boot them and cue up another player.
Already cued players at this point are only issued an afk challenge, not a second veto request.
This could increase the chances of avoiding an undesirable map while potentially avoiding the all Valhalla all the time scenario.
It would also reduce the incidental afkers and eliminate the need for lobby afk booting when searching for players.
Long Cue Times:
Display average cue times for each playlist.
Add an XP multiplier to less populated lists.
Friendly Fire Behavior:
Disabling friendly fire should not allow teammates to destroy vehicles when its passengers are all on the same team.
Likewise, drivers should not be able to splatter friendlies with their vehicles.
Challenge Deck changes:
Make all weekly challenges gold (SP rewarding) until the weekly quota has been reached. then make them blue (still give XP).
It's a quick fix and offers more flexibility for playstyles and skill levels.
4 Weekly decks of 12 instead of 2. PVP, PVE, Hardcore PVP, and Hardcore PVE.
PVP would contain basic accommodation styled challenges. Get X weapon kills, Play X Social Matches.
Hardcore PVP would contain skill based challenges. Wins, Sprees, Multikills, KDRs, competitive match challenges.
PVE would contain basic accommodation styled challenges. Get X weapon kills, kill X enemies on normal, complete X normal missions.
Hardcore PVE would range from the par score challenges and heroic difficulty runs to mini LASO runs (like OG Reach weeklies).
Each deck should still have 12 challenges each if possible.
Like the quick fix above, all challenges should be Gold until the weekly SP quota is reached.
A weekly/seasonal user generated content deck.
Forge/Theater themed challenges.
Challenge Changes:
Boss Ten Strong:
Assists should count. This is a coop mode.
Should apply to any heroic PVE mode.
These changes should also be applied to other kill x enemies challenges in the future.
Endure:
Make this challenge permanent rather than seasonal.
Provide a matchmaking playlist for it as well.
Reward it for beating the challenge in solo under the same settings as a final fall back.
A similar approach should be taken for future vidmaster-esque challenges.
Weekly Season Point Quota:
10SP per week is good as long as you are not behind.
Rollover unearned quotas. Miss a week? The cap next week increases by the amount of SP missed.
Add missed SP from expired uncompleted season challenges to the Weekly SP cap.
Cap returns to 10 once caught up.
Latecomers and returning players would have a way to catch up and keep up with content influx.
Consider this for challenge XP payouts as well, but low priority.
Alternate Unlock Method: Season 0.
Contains items normally locked behind events, seasonals, and other missable or high difficulty challenges.
Can be unlocked in any order regardless of tier, but cost 10SP or more each.
Timed exclusive, they're not available until some time has passed since their regular unlock methods went live.
This eliminates FOMO, increases accessibility, and hopefully still encourages participation in the events and challenges themselves.
Controls:
A toggle setting for dual wielding reloads. Allows double tapping reload primary to reload both weapons.
Add a unique secondary button for activating sprint in reach like we currently have for the jet packs.
Skulls:
For halo 2, please add a score reducing (but not 0x multiplier) secondary skull that removes the mandatory iron skull effect in coop legendary.
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