You're thinking into it too much. Falcons aren't water vehicles. Why? Because they aren't drivable on water. Who cares what similar vehicles do in real life, a water vehicle in Halo is a vehicle useable on water, and so far, there have been none.
I really would like to see a waterhog (like in the vid). It would be great for transportation and/or invasion
It was a funny fail video. It was a joke. Water vehicles just don't really appeal to me. Too limited. At least ground vehicles can get over a decent amount of things. I wouldn't be opposed to a covey vehicle that can hover over it though. You win. That's awesome
You just need one or two water-oriented maps that make water vehicles useful. How about a slightly smaller version of Paradiso (an island, in other words) with a river running straight through the middle, and bases with docks on the coastline of either side? Water vehicles would be extremely useful for a map like that. Or a mid-sized map with canals running around and through it. (I made a map like that in forge, actually, but ultimately had to allow people to run around in the canals safely - it was too expensive to build railings around all of them.) You wouldn't really find a purpose for water vehicles on most maps, but on a select two or three they would be very cool - and they could liven up a campaign that is getting a little stale: here's the warthog run level, here's the air assault level, here's the part where you get a tank, etc. I think a covie vehicle that can do land and water would be cool too. How about a revenant-type vehicle for that role?
I think that would be the way to go. Then instead of having a power weapon that's stuck in a canal (that you can't swim across), you have a power weapon that can cross the canal where only air vehicles and jetpacks would otherwise be able to. Or you could fight from the canal. If you think of it in terms of hog pathing, a water only vehicle would be like having a road set lower than the rest of your map. What would you do if you were presented with that? Try to drive the hog over the side of it and get to higher ground, or drive back and forth at the lowest point on the map with a double or triple kill awaiting anybody with rockets? Even if it was a gauss hog I can't see it being very effective down there. The only circumstance where I could see it being effective would be a bunch of structures set at water level with no way to cross between them except boats, and walkways overhead. Maybe if you dropped The cage down you could sail from sniper to rockets or something.
You instead of all this, we could have a freakin' battleship to cruise around in. Epic. EDIT Moar epicness! 200 posts yea!
The only problem with water vehicles is that when you set vehicle set to tanks, you suddenly have tanks spawning in the water. I was thinking more of an amphibious vehicle that is more useful in water. @yellow: you most certainly did not edit that. And I would never waste a landmark post talking about something as laaame as that. EDIT: ****.
I'm fairly certain you will be able to change the undersuit color separately from the armor color, there were quite a few options in the armor menu.
I've thought about how amphibious vehicles could be added to halo before, and I don't see why all covenant vehicles wouldn't be upgraded to hover over water (not just a revenant-type vehicle), since they already hover over land, and as was pointed out, their use would be so limited otherwise. Maps with water areas which are simply never meant to be traversed can easily be killzoned (not necessarily one in forge, but possibly like in water areas in previous halos) without violating the "realism/immersion" argument because there were invisible map barriers and placeable kill zones up till now just to make maps functional and not infinitely large. To avoid confusion, those water areas could be set lower. Whether any UNSC water vehicles should be amphibious or just water based is not such an easy decision; I think one water-only based vehicle would be reasonable even if not for a single MM map, because there would still be so many possibilities in a forge map, especially with a contiguous water area close to as large as can be found between large landmasses in Reach FW. As for an addition to campaign, I agree it would be nice, but I wish that I could still find any aspect of campaign as fun I did before I played H3 multiplayer. The space part of Reach seemed less fun than the banshee parts in H2. Edited by merge: If there is a cardinal-direction hit indicator or just a shield meter when you're zoomed in while using the mod, just like there is when you're zoomed out, or any hit indicator at all, there's no way that there is a disadvantage to this mod. The time interval between shots in ZB (or TU 85% crouch maximum precise ROF) is about .5 seconds, which seems like a short time unless you've actually ever tried pressed in your thumbstick to zoom out. That stick press is practically instantaneous (but I'll say a quarter of a second), and you can press it in when the stick is pointed at any angle. Right now players have to try to scope in between enemy shots at very long ranges. I'm not sure that it's possible if the enemy doesn't miss a shot, but fortunately a shot is missed in battles frequently if you strafe. The reason why it's impossible is not because the stick press itself takes so long (or as long as the interval between shots), but instead because that time is in conjunction with the time needed to aim after you just moved your reticle farther than necessary after being knocked out of scope (because the distance covered in scope would have been shorter with the same stick movement), and often when you're waiting for your bloom to reset, and the enemy might be crouching to fire faster than you. Aiming at a different target after being shot, however, would have to be done whether you zoomed out automatically or manually, so it does not count towards the added time (which would become a disadvantage to manually scoping out) that is compared to the time in between shots. The time it takes to press the stick is "probably" insignicant compared to the time it takes for you find and aim at them, in terms of its effect on the outcome of the battle. What you said seems to me to be a contrived attempt to justify the mod for the sake of justifying the mod, or perhaps a desperate guess at what they were thinking, with the presumption that they couldn't make a mistake. Then you said that they could change it anyway. They did make mistakes, though (you may not have read what I wrote about them, so if you're of a different mind I suppose it's a pointless statement). Let's hope that it won't take as long as the TU did to fix it. If we're lucky, it will be a Hemorrhage Scorpion (which I wasn't around for). Why do you say "snipers"? I bet that the potential use of the ability to stay scoped while using a sniper for 2 or 3 shots to eliminate the medium/long range counterbalance to its faster killtime would be gamechanging enough in anyone's mind (including 343) to warrant its applicability to everything other than sniper weapons, namely the BR, DMR, and the carbine. To not be familiar with how powerful this effect would be on DMRs, however, would have to entail that you have not played BTB, and do not cross-map on any small maps (the latter of which I find very unlikely). The effect of bullet magnetism on your ability to get a headshot decreases significantly before cross-map distances on most maps (just as it would be harder at a distance without bullet magnetism), to name a relatively minor advantage of scoping. Zooming in and landing a shot under fire is so difficult that when I do it (I've had a lot of practice at it) the enemy usually isn't able to fire a shot back (the ones that do are overall good players) by the time that they die or pop back into cover. If no indicator is given when being shot while zoomed in, it would be frustrating for both the mod user and victim at different times. It would mean zooming out frequently (ideally every 3 seconds, because they can kill you in less time, but users will guess at when it is likely that they will take fire and take chances at other times), but being killed in 3 seconds with no indication every once in a while because you didn't scope out is still going to be frustrating, as is losing to a mod user when not using it yourself in a long range battle.
I will be very sad if they don't let me change the undersuit. I've been wishing for that since Halo 3's customization options were announced.
Do any of you guys know if all of the controller layouts have been shown? I just saw what the Recon layout is and, to me, that seems most appealing. It has crouch on LS, zoom on RS, sprint on X, and reload on RB. If there is a layout with the sticks switched, and X and RB switched, that would be my pick for Controller layouts. (Crouch RS, Zoom LS, Reload X, Sprint RB).
It's not about the time it takes to zoom out, its about the reaction time it takes to respond to the need to zoom out (and there's been four games worth of conditioning that tells you you don't need to). After an enemy lays a blindsided shot on you, it's practically herculean if you manage to spin around and get a hit on them before they shoot you again, and that's without automatic zoom-out. If you're trying to move to cover, again, you still lose precious time with which to escape. Rogue may help you get kills sometimes, but it will get you killed. Wetworks and Tracker are the only two specializations that are at least slightly useful in every game mode and every map.
The reaction time it takes to zoom out? If there is a hit indicator while using Rogue (scoped in), the fact that you are not actually out of scope yet will be an intuitive reminder that you have to press the stick. For a short period of time, I agree that it will be plausible that reacting to this simple intuitive reminder will take about the time which allows another shot to be fired, during which (adjustment time) you will learn to do it as reflexively as you would zoom in on a distant opponent, or as reflexively as you would make a more complicated decision than pressing a button after being shot. This adjustment time would have to be shorter than getting used to a new button layout, which is more complicated of a change no matter how long you've been playing with different settings. For me, the button layout took about a week to get absolutely used to (no button mistakes). I have no idea how you could imagine that we wouldn't learn to do this reflexively, and to me the words in this statement which I italicized: "Rogue may help you get kills sometimes, but it will get you killed" made me consider for a second whether or not you were trolling, to be honest. Have you ever been in a scoped battle? Only Countdown would allow a player to never zoom in. Things like knowing when to not double melee in vanilla Reach do not even offer the same intuitive message. It might be easy to forget to melee only after the shield pops (I'm not saying that it is difficult), but seeing an arrow indicator or shield meter decrease while zoomed in will only lead you to only one conclusion: press the stick, and continue as you would. "After an enemy lays a blindsided shot on you, it's practically herculean if you manage to spin around and get a hit on them before they shoot you again, and that's without automatic zoom-out. I thought that reacting without automatic zoom-out was supposed to be harder according to you, but this sentence seems to implying that it is the easier of the two. If I were to interpret the sentence as "and that's with automatic zoom-out", it still wouldn't help your point, because you would have to react that way (or flee) with or without having to press the stick; having to press the stick does not make the spinning take longer. I actually pointed that out in my last post for a different reason, but it was clumsily worded, and I didn't want to have to expand the post into more sentences to make the reasoning clearer. As far as Wetwork (Stealth mod) being useful in all gametypes, perhaps it would be most useful in a gametype without radar. I doubt that sprinting sounds travel farther than the radar range, and even if they do the sounds would probably be mixed up with gunshots and more than one player sprinting to the point that it would be impossible to pay attention to them to determine an enemy's rough distance and direction. I expect promethean vision users to be on the lookout for outlines, especially because Wetwork will be one of two specializations released at the start. Of course, a lack of a radar would make PV, and thus Stealth, more important. As for tracker, it seems that players will get personal ordinance frequently enough(as far as I know, it seems to be a certain amount of kills not within a spree, I'm guessing 5, for about 2 a game if the average player gets 12 kills on average per game) that it will probably be useful at least every other game, but I find it funny that they had to make the new selection random- as if the first set of random choices weren't enough. Are there even more than six choices? Why make it so that you can get the same choice twice if there are at least six?