So I was originally going to post this as a second philosophical treatise blog, but figured that more productive discussion would take place here. Basically, I'll start off with some logic about how a competitive FPS game should work and then talk about its implications for Halo 4 (specifically, gametypes and power weapons). I am defining competitive as anything with potential for use at Halo 4 tournaments. Why tournaments? Simple enough - tournaments are a good source of attention for your game (take MLG Dallas) and are a good basis of how balanced your game is. So what is the "Press Button for Rocket Launcher" mentality? It's pretty much what it sounds like - you get some kind of extra power for hitting a button or performing some low-skill required action. Hence rocket launchers - they're practically free kills once you pick them up. Picking any contested item up requires skill regardless of what weapon it is - this provides a small, but insignificant baseline because competitiveness is relative. One could add an invincibility powerup on a map, and picking it up would certainly be difficult, but it has very little relative competitive value. Given this, let's examine a couple facets of Halo 4. Instant Respawn: You literally press a button to skip your entire respawn period. Sounds like a free, skill-less boost to me. Sprint: You press a button to move faster. Although it's not as bad as instant respawn because there are sprint-jumps and such on maps, and because you can't shoot while in sprint (small cooldown time), it's still a free rocket launcher. If it appeared on maps instead of being a reward for spawning, it might have worked at some competitive level. Powerups: Press a button when nearby a powerup to get it. This fulfills the basic "baseline" level of skill required (getting to a certain location at a certain time) that Instant Respawn and Sprint fail, and are competitive in varying degrees, depending on what powerup you're talking about. Damage Boost is the worst - you press a button to kill people faster. That's pretty much all of the depth you'll get out of it. Overshield is slightly better - there's some skill involved in Objective gametypes with getting your ball carrier, flag runner, or hill holder an overshield, but it still requires no skill to use - you suddenly can take more shots without dying. Speed Boost is the best of the three in Halo 4. Speed Boost allows for surprise flanks and, more importantly, creates tactical jumps. Sprint creates tactical jumps, too, but Speed Boost passes the be-in-a-location-at-a-certain-time criterion (the "baseline") for competitiveness. The best powerup is the one we're missing in Halo 4 - Camo. While camo + flag would be useless with a giant kill marker over flag carriers' heads, camo requires skill in judging when to shoot and expose yourself, getting behind the enemy team for beatdowns, and being able to see the camo player. Armor Abilities: With almost no exceptions (the sole one I can think of being Thruster Pack for the thruster jumps), armor abilities are entirely press-button for bonus. Press regen field for more health. Press jetpack for free height advantage. Press autosentry for free damage dealt to the enemy. Press promethean vision for free x-ray. Press HLS for a free glowing shield and point it at the enemy. Marginal skill. Rocketlike Weapons: We'll go from worst to best. Starting with the Incineration Cannon. Remember those occasional skilled rocket kills where you shot right next to your enemy, killing him and leaving you weak? Well, no more! Now, with the incineration cannon, you can commit suicide instead! Next, and less jokingly, the Fuel Rod Gun. Free reloads for everyone if you miss. OK, two shots in a clip (rocket launchers serve the dual purpose of dealing with vehicles as well..). But five? Really? Rockets are the best of the lot - they lack the flaws of the above, but still have that huge explosive radius that doesn't benefit you more for getting a direct hit on your enemy than landing a shot seven meters away. Still practically free kills, and it's where the name of this post comes from. TL;DR: Don't give players free stuff (be it off spawn or on the map). Notable examples of free stuff are instant respawn, sprint, armor abilities, Damage Boost and Overshield (outside of objective), and rocket-style weapons. There are others (and also examples of well-done weapons, like the Railgun and Sniper Rifle), but I won't go super into-depth for length purposes, and besides, you get the point anyway. There's a reason MLG never used bottomless clip rockets at tournaments.
Well I hate instant respawn and it shouldn't be in matchmaking (in my opinion). I think it should have just been an option to enable or disable for custom games. All I use is the Thruster armor ability (in all 5 loadouts, since Halo 4 came out). It seems to suit my playstyle the best. My question is... What is a "Thruster Jump"? I'm interested in learning everything that can be done with the Thruster Pack, and not sure if I know what that is. Although I probably do it, I just want to make sure.
Thruster jumps are tac jumps using the thruster pack. For instance, on Haven, you can get from the lifts to the area directly above the lift by turning around while on the lift and thrusting at the right time.
As much as I would like to agree with you on here, I don't. Instant Respawn is not press button for rocket launcher. 343's intent here as with sprint was to make gameplay faster. It's not a "free boost" when everyone has it. Neither is sprint, everyone has it. Not everyone has a rocket launcher but everyone has the two above. As for the rocket launcher and so on... it's not about free kills. It's about the team who worked to obtain the rocket launcher to earn those "free kills." There also not free kills either, once a skilled team knows the enemy has one, they play very cautiously and all deaths from a rocket launcher can be avoided. Even back to Quake days where movement was twice as fast and you had armor, insane powerups, and weapons, skill deffinitely set the other player apart. If your theory is correct, then jumping, walking, crouching, reloading, zooming, etc. should all fall under it (press button for rocket launcher) because they boost your effectiveness. ----------- Edit: Now when you overpopulate the map with power weapons, then it is much easier to obtain one and much harder for the opposing team to control them. Leaving less skill and team work involved. So technically the team didn't have to work towards obtaining one. Stuff like that I can see. Power weapons should be limited to 2-3 max on a map and that's including ordinance. The 2v2 Dust-up gametype is absolutely genious by eliminating personal power weapon drops. Radar is something everyone has as well but not having radar makes the player have to be more aware of his surroundings and allows you to sneak up on the other team more easily.
Whilst I agree with the idea that Halo is tending more towards and arbitrary reward system, I think your examples are quite odd. I'll address them in detail. I think you're looking at this the wrong way round. The idea behind instant respawn is that it's the standard, not a reward for pressing a button. The mechanic works on the principle of respawn time not being an aspect, and if you want to wait longer to view the killcam and get a little extra info then you can. The issue here is 343 think instant respawn is appropriate. The button pressing is not the issue at all. It's not an arbitrary reward for a skill-less action, it's a detrimental (imo) change to the respawn mechanic in that it gets rid of time penalties altogether. The button pressing aspect is just a way to enable kill cams and give you a little extra time if you want it (to change loadouts or something). The basic principle of sprint is that you increase movement speed but lose combat ability. You may disagree with the idea that one offsets the other, but it's not designed as a free reward system at all. Again, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. I don't like the mechanic in competitive terms, but not because it's an arbitrary reward, just because I think the balance principle behind it is detrimental. Again, your focus on this as a button pressing activity is a real stretch. How was the old Halo way of just walking in to the damn things more demanding? I honestly cannot see your point here. Just like with the Rocket Launcher, which I'll address below, the reward here is an earned advantage. Not demanding to use, but supposedly demanding to gain. Personal Ordnance hurts this, but again that's not what you're criticising, you've picked an arbitrary aspect of the mechanic and hinged your argument upon it. Sorry, don't see it. I agree with this. My main problem isn't that it only takes a button press to use (since, as I said, easy to use but powerful mechanics can work if they're a reward for skill displayed in another area), but that it only takes a button press to gain. Imo, the demand (or lack thereof) of simply selecting a loadout is not appropriate for gaining that kind of advantage. You seem to be talking at cross purposes here. In one sense, you talk about things being too easy to use, with no downside, for little demand. But then you criticise the IC because it does have a downside? The FRG is indeed broken. It has been since it popped up. The clip should be smaller, I agree, since the demand on precision skill isn't nearly enough to justify such a large clip. But again, that's just a badly balanced weapon, not really related to the "press for reward" mentality that devs seem to be more keen on nowadays. As for the Rockets, this is the issue I touched on with powerups. The idea of easy to use, but powerful, rewards is a staple of Halo, and imo contributes to the game in a big way. It's about earning the thing in the first place, not the skill required to use it. This goes out of the window when you have a bad map designer who effectively "gives" you a Rocket Launcher by not balancing the risk vs. reward properly. And, again, Personal Ordnance kicks this idea right in the nuts by actually handing you stuff for next to nothing. I'm genuinely surprised that you didn't address Personal Ordnance or Loadouts in this post, as I think they're the two key examples of what you're talking about. Instead you focus on things like Rockets, missing the point about how certain pickups are rewards rather than high skill gap weapons. There's also a reason that MLG did use Rocket pickups, Overshields, Camos in their tournaments. I'm pretty shocked that you invoke competitive play when these things are staples of the game in that sense, being fundamental to map movement, team setups and general gametype/map balance. I think you're on to something with the basic idea (though the criticism isn't really anything new), but the mechanics you actually focus on are seriously wide of the mark.
Halo 2 would easily be the most unbalanced title (superjumps, quad-shotting, bxr practically aimbotting a headshot for you) yet it sky-rocketed popularity for both Halo and MLG. I think a better discussion would be the separation arising between console 'couch' fps that favour the things at the end of your post, and more dedicated/nuanced pc fps.
So Spin, basically what you're saying is that the DMR is the only weapon/powerup that should be in the game.
I disagree, Matty. BXB was the main problem in terms of combos because it was hella easy and messed with CQC something rotten. BXR was only forgiving because of the insane assist and moon sized hit boxes. Those are core Halo 2 issues, not problems with BXR specifically. Quad shotting was difficult enough to make it not too problematic. Super jumping, yeah that wasn't great. Still, I think both Reach and H4 are worse for competitive play simply because of the slower movement diminishing movement skill as a battle factor, Reach's hitboxes being just as bad as 2, and things like descoping being taken out of Halo 4. You're right that popularity is a poor judge of game balance, but to be fair I don't think that's what he was saying. What exactly he WAS saying is a bit ambiguous, since tournaments don't inherently offer any metric for judging games and their competitive value. Dax: he's implying. You're inferring.
Haha Pegasi, I disagree. And I will respond to your post piece by.. piece. And, oh, this is quite a bit to work through. um, uh fuh. bud duh fuh. I think the OP is on the right track and you should have more patience with him is what I think. Then again you're contribution is helpful too, overall, this is a great thread. When you have to walk to something you have to remove yourself from the game AND remove yourself from helping your team, it's a cost/rewards analysis. What do you think about that, smart guy!
Lol. With Halo 4 power ups as a standalone mechanic, you have to get to them and then pick them up. The OS on Simplex is a great example. Pressing the button to call them in to your location, as opposed to having to get to them, is the issue. And again, that's nothing to do with the powerups themselves, but a problem with personal ordnance. If the powerups were placed on map as they used to be (and are by some forgers), there would be no issue.
@Pegasi I think you took the "button press" thing more literally than the "rocket launcher." By button press, I meant skill-less (it takes no skill to press a button, hence the example) and by "rocket launcher", I meant a reward (or a lack of punishment, which I used somewhat interchangeably, which seemed to lead to a lot of the points you made ) As for Incineration Cannons, I was annoyed at the lowered skill for an already lowered weapon (even more rocket launcher) because of the close-range rocket mechanics. As for powerups, lol. Shouldn't have gone after them - missed some stuff, including the whole usage / callout / objective side of powerups.. Just because everyone has it doesn't mean it's not a free boost-up. Giving everyone 100 grenades off spawn doesn't mean it works You die and get your free "rocket launcher." Also, see literal point @pegasi above Jumping, walking, etc are not pressing buttons for rocket launcher. They definitely fulfill the press-button side of the mentality, but not the rocket launcher side - they require skill to use and an incredible amount of depth. The only one I would find vaguely questionable is zoom, but for console games, that kind of thing is sometimes necessary. Hopefully I've addressed the ambiguities and poor examples in my main point. @Dax lol. That would be terrible [br][/br]Edited by merge: Expansion of OP (in response partially to Daxy): If things that require little skill to use are bad, what is good? Things like snipe, railgun, grenade launcher (back when we had it) focus rifle, and other weapons that have depth to them and individual strategies. Not to mention (lolturnaround) damage boost, etc. So the point is what we should be going after is weapons and mechanics that require skill to obtain and skill to use.
OK, Spin, fair enough. I still feel like that doesn't cover a lot my points. The instant respawn isn't a reward for no effort, it's just a (detrimental imo) change to the respawn mechanic. There's no inherent baseline for respawns, so you could argue that a 5 second respawn is a "reward" because it should be 10 seconds. It's a fruitless approach to discussing respawn times, so I don't see your point there. As for IC, I don't think having a penalty for using it at close range makes it less skilful at all. I think it helps balance the weapon by forcing you to use it at longer range (which is more difficult since it has high travel time for a projectile). It's ultimately a small change in terms of overall skill demand for the weapon, since the thing is still incredibly powerful even at longer ranges since you don't have to be precise, but still, I don't see how you can argue that having a penalty for easier use circumstances makes it less skilful. As for the idea of advantages that are hard to gain but easy (in relative terms) to use, can I ask whether you've objected to OS, Camo, Rockets etc. since you first started playing Halo, or at least started looking at it from a competitive standpoint? I'm interested because you specifically framed this discussion in terms of Halo 4, but these are things which have been fundamental to Halo since the very beginning. Also, would you agree that Personal Ordnance and Loadouts are good examples of reward for little to no effort? If you're actually addressing Halo 4 specifically, then I'd argue that they're the things worth focusing on because A) they're the changes that have actually been made for Halo 4 and B) because, even if you accept my argument that Rockets and PUps promote skill in other ways than their sheer use, I don't see how this argument could be made for Personal Ordnance or Loadouts/AAs like they exist now. They really are something for [next to] nothing.
My idea was that the more difficult rocket kills were the ones where the enemy is close enough to make suicide a big possibility. The larger radius of the IC compensates for the added time to dodge anyway. Am I making sense? I should say, I'm talking about relative skill. Of course, how skillful is "skillful" enough, we can't establish absolutely, but only relatively (most skillful weapons are prioritized on a map) I have no objection to Camo. OS would be nice if the whole charge-up abuse aspect wasn't there - make the charge up slower than it currently is (perhaps 1 - 2 seconds to fully charge) and then stop the charge up if damage is taken. That way, you have to fully control the OS point to do anything more than burn it. Which does require more skill. My objection to Rockets started after I began looking at things competitively. I wouldn't mind them so much if missing a rocket meant reloading (one shot per clip) and probable death (unless the opponent has poor aim). I'm not specifically targeting Halo 4. I'm just targeting things I see that are wrong. There are some implications of this theory that won't be popular at all among the Halo community - for instance, it implies major changes to the way shield regeneration works. I do agree, however, that Personal Ordnance is poor because there's no need for map control at all. Loadouts, I'm not sure how you would question on the basis of the above theory, but I am not a fan of spawning people with boltshots and such. I think it'd just be easier to give everyone one weapon off spawn and place appropriate minor weapons around the map as appropriate. Although it doesn't require map control, it does create map movement (which isn't really relevant to the theory unless you need to use a tac jump or skilled movement option to get to the weapon).
If talking about all halos "Loadouts" have two meanings, Halo4/cod loadouts and Reach loadouts. Reach loadouts are fine imo, Give you choose between loadouts(assuming there balanced loadouts) with there own advantages and disadvantages and adjust your gameplay accordingly (stay in jetpack friendly areas if you choose one) and you know what everyone else has so you can counter play them. -Meaning its a "button press" instant not hard to do action, But it's still a valuable skillful choice with plays/counterplays Halo 4 loadouts people just choose whatever they want, But there is no counter play because you can't realistically guess what everyone on your team and enemy team will be using, Sure you can assume DMR/Boltshot but its just that a vague assumption, considering there is at least over 200 different loadout combinations(idk the math.) -Making it a "button press" still but little counterplay making it less skillful and just a "rocket launcher" because everyone just uses there loadouts to the best they can regardless of enemy loadouts (because any attempt at countering the over 200 possible loadouts is just vague assumptions)
One thing you're trying to get at here spin, is making the game very dry. The game is still a game and the more dry you make it, the more the fun goes out the window for the masses. MLG isn't fun in my opinion. It's straight competition of pitting one's skill against another. Standard Halo includes that but adds the fun value of getting to blow the **** out of people with weapons such as the rocket launcher. It does require a certain level of skill. I remember all the way back to Halo CE and playing CTF on blood gulch, aiming at a hog that had the flag and had to "guess" the distance I had to lead and trajectory of the shot I had to make to get a good shot of connecting a rocket to the hog. When you made contact (especially from across the map), the internal reward was huge and left your teammates' jaw dropped.
Press button for rocket launcher=Do something easy for large reward. Shooting someone across map with rocket=/=something easy to do. (Specially if the rocket is a neutral spawn you had to fight for to get in the first place) so you can still have fun and competitive gametypes that aren't MLG.
Ok, then what you're saying is it has to do with the way it is used, not necessarily the rocket launcher. Everyone here is arguing in so many different ways. We need to clear it up.
I gotta disagree with Spin's main points for different reasons, but unfortunately I'm too exhausted at the moment to go into detail. So for the moment I'll just say this. The rocket launcher has been around since Halo 1, and it's been widely accepted and used as an appropriate weapon for many competitive settings, why take it out now? I'll expand upon my thoughts later, if need be