Since the days of Halo 3, things such as Equipment and Armor Abilities have dynamically changed how Halo is played and how it can be played. Halo 5 has all but removed equipment and Armor Abilities from the game, supplementing them with Spartan Abilities. While Spartan Abilities are still fun, Halo 3, Reach and 4 were packed full of interesting game changers as well. I'll list them below. Try to pick three you would like to see make a comeback in the future and if you're feeling adventurous, explain why. Halo 3 - Equipment (One time use items that could be picked up off the map) Bubble Shield: When deployed, a small domed shield would emit from the equipment piece. While the shield itself was invincible, it only lasted a short amount of time and the emitter could be destroyed. Power Drain: This ball shaped projectile emitted an AOE of shield draining ****ery. It viciously drained the shields of all in it's AOE until it exploded at the end of it's use. Grav Lift: Straight Forward. When deployed, the emitter would shoot a grav-lift upward that allowed players to exceed normal jump heights. Trip Mine: An actual trip mine. Rather large, loud and bright. Most often used to trick enemies into attempting a splatter, only to shock them with a sudden jolt sending them high in the air. Regenerator: Once deployed, the emitter would produce an AOE of healing. Flare: Once deployed, this miniature ****ing sun would blind any poor soul unfortunate to have eye within the AOE of the emitter, The Flare was ball shaped and like the Drain, could be rolled when throw. Deployable Cover: This item is more or less the same as the covenant shield seen frequently throughout campaign. Radar Jammer: When deployed, this item would turn the 8 player match into a 146 player match according to your radar. All players within the AOE of the jammer had their radars overloaded with blips. Halo Reach - Armor Abilities (Can be both given when spawned and picked up in-game, permanent armor mods with cool downs) Sprint: Exactly what you think it is Jet Pack: When in use, players could fly high in the air as long as the jet pack had juice. Drop Shield: Very similar to the Halo 3 Bubble version, but produced no emitter that could be destroyed. This shield could be destroyed via damage as well. Hologram: When activated, an hologram would be sent in a running animation to wherever the player had their cursor set. If damaged, the hologram would flicker. The hologram would stop moving if it reached it's destination. Armor Lock: Oh boy. When activated, this armor ability granted invulnerability to the user. When active however, the player cannot move nor shoot. When the ability is deactivated, an emp burst is released that destroys shields and stuns vehicles. Attempting to splatter someone in armor lock would destroy your vehicle. Evade: When activated, players could do a combat roll in the direction desired. Active Camo: Exactly would you think it is but this AC also scrambles radars Halo 4 - Armor Abilities (These are the AA unique to Halo 4) Promethean Vision: When active, players are able to see through solid surfaces and enemies are highlighted. These effects only work while active and activating this ability reveals your location on radar. Sentry: When activated, you deploy a small stationary Promethean AI to attack enemies. Hardlight Shield: When active, the players have a personal shield projected in front of them. The shield can both be destroyed via damage and a players feet are exposed while in use. You cannot shoot with the shield active. Regen: Very similar to Halo 3's regen emitter Thruster: Man this **** sucked... A very watered down version of Evade that forced 3rd person view, slowed down player movement and could also be used to fall faster.
In my opinion, I don't see why all of these can't make a comeback. Each of them provided something unique to the Halo sandbox and although they wouldn't be ideal in Halo's current multiplayer, many forgers could potentially use these for their own creative ideas. We've seen in previous Halo games how this has been accomplished (Ex. Cloneball, Armor Walkers, etc.) I also think including equipment and AA into warzone would be very interesting as well. They could be their very own reqs (similar to power ups) where equipment can be one-time use and armor abilities could potentially be similar to how armor mods work by always having them. Of course they should be balanced where you can only have an armor mod or an armor ability, not both. Some of the equipment/armor abilities would be kind of redundant however such as sprint, thruster, and evade. Overall though, I think most of these AA's and equipment would prove to be an interesting and welcoming addition to Halo 5 and maybe Halo 6. If I had to pick three though, it'd be the jet pack, bubble shield/drop shield, and regen from halo 4
In a perfect world, customs games would feature every vehicle, weapon and power from every game. Sadly, redesigning assets over and over for constantly climbing visual demands isnt cost effective or realistic. Dreams....
When I think of stuff like this I'm so biased. I automatically base my opinion one the whole of the game. I can't look at them separately. So I love Halo 3. I won't mind seeing the equipment making it's return. When I think of the others...meh...
I wouldn't be against any of these coming back for customs, but beyond creating the assets it also adds a button inputs. If some Spartan abilities are removed, having some of these as pick ups would be preferred, but unless that happens an h5 controller is already super cluttered. I could see some of the h3 equipment be reworked as grenades: perhaps the trip mine for BTB. Or Regen could be an instant flash heal via grenade rather than a continuous power position creator. Idunno. A knock-back grenade might be fun to replace grav lift--for no harm nade jumping. If I had to choose one thing to come back for customs (and maybe a pick up) it would be jetpack.
Power Drain, Gravity Lift, Deployable Cover. The Drain is primarily an offensive item. The Lift is a unique way of traversing upward, and anyone can use it, even enemies. The Cover is a much less cheap way of blocking gunfire and grenades, and is easily countered. Boom, there you go.
I disagree about the power drain. It lasts so long, which makes it more of an area denial and thus pretty defensive. It can be used offensively but then it's not so different than a grenade.
It really would be amazing to have all them for just customs but if I had to choose one set I would have to choose Halo 3 equipment. If I had to choose one ability it would be jetpack because of what it offers to customs.
Am I the only one that hated halo 3 one time use items??? Abilities just seemed better to me. But only in war zone .
Equipment works better as the more powerful abilities, as they are one time use. Armor abilities work much better as utilities, as we all remember armor lock. All of Halo 3's equipment should return, and sprint should either be an equip able armor ability or replaced by the speed boost power-up. Armor lock should be made into an equipment, thus justifying it's ridiculousness. Flare should be made more as a sort of visor flare that only blinds enemies. Promethean vision could work, if you made the person using it visible through walls, thus adding an insane level of risk to what amounts to wall hacking, as there should be. Hardlight shield was fine and should return. Sentry was kinda weak and useless, and should really be made into a more damaging equipment. Thruster pack should stay a spartan ability, due to just how well it meshes into gunplay. Spartan charge, if it comes back, should be made an armor ability that starts slow and only deals minor knockback, to breaking shields after about 2 seconds. Players should be restricted to the ground when this happens, and their vision should drop so they could only see the floor and have to go off their radar. This also shouldn't do bonus damage, only being able to break shields. This would promote charge as a surprise tool rather than being outright broken. Ground pound should also be a separate ability that activates instantly, with damage scaling with the height you've dropped. ADS hover should just go, as it's not really useful except for one or two guns in highly specific scenarios. Regen should be an equipment. drop shield and bubble shield could actually coexist quite nicely, with them being polar opposites, down to their strengths and weaknesses. They would disrupt each other, creating long flickers that expose everyone in both shields. They could also have their self destruct timers halved, so it would never be a good idea to use both in conjunction. Active camo needs to stay a power-up. Jetpack should actually give very little vertical movement and actually boost you forward for a short time, maybe a second. This stops jetpack from giving an insane advantage of height, and instead would make a great traversal tool, and make it quite deadly with a sword or hammer. One cool equipment that could be added is a sort of gravity ball that slows down movement when walking away from its pull and outright stopping you if you're in mid-air. It could also stick to surfaces, making an excellent trap for the inattentive. One armor ability could be an invincible barrier capable of completely blocking a hallway, with a life of maybe 5 seconds. It would be see through, but everything past the barrier would be heavily, and I mean ABSOLUTELY distorted beyond all recognition besides being able to see colors and how they move. One cool power-up could have a gravity reducing effect, increasing jump height and maybe allowing you to scale short distances up walls or maybe even wall run, if very short lived. This would make you very susceptible to the gravity trap, however. SIDEBAR Some cool grenades and changes to them (since their kinda like specifically damage dealing equipment, without the utility) would include making each spike from the spike grenade a simple spiker shot that deals slightly less damage, and travels longer before going boom. A supercombine nade could work by having it set off by any nearby needle based projectile or equipment. The firebomb needs to come back. Having a smoke bomb could actually work in Halo, due to it's naturally slow pace. And finally, it would be cool if there was a sticky proximity nade, though the trip mine could serve the same purpose. TL;DR, all of it
If they just brought back the bubble shield and power drain, that would satisfy me. Those were my favorites in Halo 3. I would not be interested in seeing armor abilities that are part of your load out, unless it's part of Warzone only or something like that...As much as people whine about the Halo 5 sandbox, the thing that REALLY broke Halo 4 was the COD style load out system. The thing that separates Halo from a lot of other shooters these days is that weapons, power ups, etc are all on the map and you have to fight over them. Right? Isn't that like, the core concept of the game? Hopefully 343 learned from Halo 4 and won't go back to it for Halo 6. Every spartan should start with the same guns and abilities and any sort of 'power item' should be on the map. I like the function of the three grenades we have, including the splinters. Splinters just need to be properly balanced, but their role as area denial tools is a fine idea. It seems like firebombs would serve the same role to me. One idea I have for a new piece of equipment would be some sort of ability drain. Similar to the power drain, in that it creates an area of affect around it when thrown. Like an EMP pulse that causes your armor to overheat. Enemies caught in the effect would not be able to use spartan abilities for a short time, including sprint. Maybe you'd also lose your hud / reticle momentarily when you're hit with this ability. It could be called "Overload" or something like that.
I'm probably the only one who really misses the Hologram. Most people think it's weak or kinda useless, but I had soooo many situations where you could just fool other players for your advantage - also it's fun to watch AND those situations can help you teammates, too!
I also used that constantly in H4. But I really do think the idea of loadouts and the COD model of changing halo is bad. I really hated the jetpacks especially. I actually love the H5 abilities minus Spartan charge, becaues they offer much of the dynamism that other tools offered, but nerfed a bit, and everyone has them all the time.
Halo 3 Beta Bubble Shield. It used to be a ball so that it can roll around. Bubble Shield...I miss you!
The grav lift in Halo 3 was useful, and at times hilarious, especially when watching a warthog full of Spartans zoom right over you and into and cliff. Halo 4 resulted in a lot of auto sentry use. It kept me alive. Mostly.
I have something similar to a Shield drain combined with a Trip mine, basically finished and will be released shortly... Videos here: (Full thread & write-up coming soon) Fire-based Shield Drain in Action With new enhanced spawning Fx