(BIOC) Complaints about Flood mode - Making 343i know

Hey Hubbers,

We at BIOC (check out my signature if you don't know about us) tend to play a lot of Flood, and just like the rest of you we too have our complaints with the way the gamemode is set up. Obviously it's lacking and since we're partnered with The Halo Forge Epidemic, I thought we could try and give them a list once it's finished so they could possibly show it to their associates at 343i (since they're partnered with a community focussed section of 343i). I talked to Oakley HiDef about it and he endorsed that we can get him such a list so they can pass it along. Of course this is great news. Even though this doesn't necessarily mean they'll take our complaints into account and patch it or that it'll even get looked at in the first place, it is still worth the try. Therefore, we want to offer you to join the discussion and tell us about your complaints with the mode down below. To prevent double posting I'll post the full list down below and update it every once in a while.

NB: Please be reminded that we're only talking about things that could be patched in the way Halo 4 is currently set up. We're not aiming for anything game changing since they can't and won't do that anyway. It would be useless. This also means this thread is NOT meant to post your suggestions or wishes for Halo 5's Flood/Infection mode.

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The List:
- Precision forging really needs to return. It's very hard to create aesthetics without the availability of a precision editor mode.
- Allowing to place down normal weapons instead of ordnance only. The indicators can be annoying if you have a lot of weapons on the map, and we also use weapons for other purposes such as opening up gates in Linear maps. (Using a grenade and a landmine, for instance.) Besides, it is already possible in competitive gamemodes such as Slayer, so why not enable it in Flood too? This is something the community really likes to see allowed, because we could always do it and it's extremely useful and important.
- Giving us the option to disable weapon pickup in a player trait zone. That way you can force players to leave the holdout location in order to pick up ammo from dead fellows elsewhere in the map. Just to name a way of using it. (This was a possibility in Safe Havens too.)
- We should be able to change the skin color of humans, and possibly also of Flood players. (Although the latter isn't that relevant.) A lot of people have been complaining about the lemon green.
- We should be able to change the loadouts of the Flood, as well as the names. (Right now the "Hunter", "Stalker" and "Lurker" aren't even present among the human's loadout names.
- We should be able to disable sprint for humans, and
- we should be able to enable sprint for Flood
- Flood should be able to carry other weapons than the flood claw. If this can't be done properly with the flood skin, than we should also have the option to give them normal spartan skins.
- Player trait zones should be able to work for only one team instead of all players as how it works at the moment. Why did you remove the Safe Haven option if we can't even recreate its function using player trait zones? It was also really useful for minigames.
- We need Safe Havens to make a return in general, or have an update for the player trait zone options, because it was really useful to have a separate scoring system for the humans whilst inside of the safe haven. Also, unlike in PTZ's as I mentioned before, we did have the option to change all traits for humans including the choice of whether or not being able to pick up weapons when you're inside of the haven. Besides, Safe Havens were just really useful in general for both infection maps and minigames. And we don't have the option to give a vehicle special traits like we used to be by turning it into a movable Safe Haven.
- Player trait zones should have all default options set on "Unchanged" instead of specified options like they are now. That way, desired effects such as "fall damage at 0% but at the same time don't change the length of the shield bar" won't have to be changed manually. Also, it seems they auto reset every time when playing a custom game. That's another reason why they all need to be set on "Unchanged": otherwise, if this glitch keeps happening, you can never use them effectively.
- We need to be able to enable or disable sprinting in player trait zones. Obviously, this means flood should be able to sprint in the first place and there should be an option to disable the sprint of humans in general too (already mentioned these two things earlier in the list)
- We need an option where we can make the Alpha Flood remain the Alpha Flood after he dies, so he will keep his original traits. Again, this was also available in Reach as well as in Halo 3, so why remove this option?
- We should be able to change the ammo in the ordnance drops. You don't always want to give a human over 9000 shotgun bullets when picking up a shotgun. Having to think twice about every bullet you use is an essential part of making Flood maps more intense. This is another reason why we need normal weapons on the map as well: so we can give weapons the desired amount of extra clips.
- We should be able to forge in the water on Erosion and Ravine. It was a big part of Infection forging in Reach to implement water areas into our maps.
- There needs to be an option to enable weapon pickup from personal ordnance drop (or even from initial or random ordnance on the map itself), but not from fallen allies. That way you can force players to work up to their own streak in order to earn weapons instead of taking it from dead human players.
- A complaint we received from many community members is that the flood have a super long lunge distance, which makes it hard to get the flood in shotgun distance because he can lunge at you from so far away. Maybe give us an option to change the distance of this length, like being able to choose between certain amounts of distances like we already can with the motion sensors.
- When turning off team killing, this should also disable EMPing or plasma grenading friendly vehicles, or there should at least be an option to do this.
- We absolutely need the Falcon to return!! It's a great vehicle with a unique feel, and unlike the Banshee it's heavily based on teamwork. It's the flying variant of the Warthog, another community favorite. Please bring it back!
- In Forge mode, when the respawn time of a movable or breakable object is set on "never" to respawn and you break it, it will no longer appear when starting a new round. This is extremely annoying when you're testing if it works properly, so please fix that as this problem wasn't present in Halo Reach's Forge.
- Weapons, vehicles and objects despawn too quickly. A couple of our community members tried adding a destroyed warthog for aesthetics to our map, and it despawned only 5 seconds after blowing up. We are aware that this is more of a core gameplay issue than Flood, as weapons despawn this fast in all of Matchmaking, but it seems to show a bit worse in Flood. Lots of linear maps make use of breaking objects and destroyed vehicles, and it just looks sloppy if they disappear as soon as they break.
- Most of the time, teleporters don't show up as linked. When in reality, they are. The blue glowing teleporter orb doesn't show up. Makes teleporters less appealing and less visible. Teleporters are very important for linear infection.
- We need the power ups to return: overshield, active camouflage and especially custom power ups! This was essential for minigame forging, for example by giving either humans or zombies temporary special traits by giving them the option to pick up a custom powerup.
- In most game modes, when giving the players infinite ammo, both with reloading still enabled as well as disabled/unnecessary, it will still show a particular number of bullets on the HUD. It looks a bit awkward given the fact that you actually do have infinite bullets instead of the count that shows up, and it's also hard to tell whether or not you have unlimited bullets or not in the first place.
- Please fix the lack of dynamic lighting in Theater. We understand why it was probably removed (the files would get used if it still were to be present, we're guessing) but then simply give us the option to enable or disable it. That way, we can still take screenshots with dynamic lighting on the map to share these. It's unbelievably annoying trying to take screenshots or capture gameplay on a map that's supposed to look dark but isn't in Theater mode.
- Last but definitely not least: We'd like to see the old gamechat mechanics from Halo 3's Infection making a return. They worked according to teambased gameplay: the zombies could only talk to each other and couldn't hear the humans and vice versa. This was really useful for a couple of reasons:
1) You could discuss tactics with your fellow humans/zombies, making the gameplay more competitive, instense and realistic.
2) It was really thrilling hearing someone's voice screaming in his microphone and then suddenly dropping out, because he got infected. This was another reason why it got more intensifying and more stunning. This feeling reached its climax once you became last man standing and had nobody left to talk to.
3) It made the discussions after the game had ended very exciting because everyone wanted to tell each other how epic that one moment was where e.g. he heard the other guy getting infected / was really scared when he ended up alone / etc. It made custom games and the after-game chatting a lot more fun in general!
The absolute perfect option would be if we can choose for ourselves to either enable or disable teamchat. For instance, have it set on FFA gamechat as default, but give us the option to switch it to teamchat so the two parties (humans vs zombies) can only talk to their teammates and not hear the other party.

- Appendix -
Red stripes (-) mean that the community considers these to be extra important. We want to see those recommended changes being applied more than any of the other listed ones!

 

That is indeed not an official option in the official gametype. We're aiming for changes in the actual flood gametype by asking 343 Industries if they can apply those desired changes after the list is done. Do you have any suggestions?

 

Have that one already but thanks anyway! We're aiming for a title update fix, since these are all things they could change in Halo 4 with ease.

Thanks! I'm not sure if they could or would change that in Halo 4, but I will add it to the list as one of the complaints some of us have had.

 

I thought of new ones myself.

- Player trait zones should have all default options set on "Unchanged" instead of specified options like they are now. That way, desired effects such as "fall damage at 0% but at the same time don't change the length of the shield bar" won't have to be changed manually. Also, it seems they auto reset every time when playing a custom game. That's another reason why they all need to be set on "Unchanged": otherwise, if this glitch keeps happening, you can never use them effectively.
- We need to be able to enable or disable sprinting in player trait zones. Obviously, this means flood should be able to sprint in the first place and there should be an option to disable the sprint of humans in general too (already mentioned these two things earlier in the list)

 

Thanks, that is all very helpful! I will add it all to the list. Once again, thank you for your input.

And I just came up with another one myself, which will probably not be fixed in Halo 4 but should definitely return in Halo 5: We. Need. The. Falcon. Back!

 

Added the following one to the list:

In Forge mode, when the respawn time of a movable or breakable object is set on "never" to respawn and you break it, it will no longer appear when starting a new round. This is extremely annoying when you're testing if it works properly, so please fix that as this problem wasn't present in Halo Reach's Forge.

 

Added both. Thanks guys.