I've played 620 custom games. About 200-300 of those have been non-game battles vs. Killa KC's 420 which a lot of his has been starting up the game just to make sure things have worked. As a side note, I've played more games than they've run strenuous testing. So yeah, I think I'm ahead of them in terms of experience on their own settings. You're right, not important to the topic, just wanted to point it out. Basically, sprint won't make it more competitive. If at any time you're giving players an easier time to run away then it's less competitive. It simply is. What about other armor abilities like armor lock, hologram, and jetpack. There is already an added flow with have AA pickups, but now you're adding a complicated layer of choices that'll make things almost entirely unpredictable and that's what's missing most from reach right now. Maps have a considerable amount of control taken out of them. Teams can only lock down a portion of the map due to A) the mechanic of the DMR (Being that there's no way in hell you can out DMR two ppl, you could barely do it in H3) and mostly B) the design of the maps, which in conjunction with the DMR cause players to roam together instead of making advances on tactical locations that create angles on the map, which hardly exist. So sprint. You want as far as I see it an added dynamic to player movement. Players can collapse on a call out at greater range. Players can move to a setup faster. Players can slip in through a hole faster. Players can run away. Each of those has a flip side, but the one I can't get over is that players are given an easier time of running away. How's that competitive? It defies the essence of Halo as Lukems forever immortalized it, two men walk in the better man walks away and the other guy is stuck on re spawn. That has been driving me nuts with AL and Sprint, although AL is much worse. I get in battles with people and they turtle or run away. At least with Hologram and Jetpack they won't be running away from me or delaying there death long enough to **** me over. It's irritating. Those two armor abilities make the game easier on noobs and decrease the skill gap. And honestly, just because it's in the game doesn't mean it should be used. Bungie made us pay for the Cage. Well, it's in v2, we'll give it a run and see how things go.
I don't even care to argue sprint vs. no sprint because it seems so incredibly obvious to me that sprint makes Reach faster overall, and that the ease of running away is vastly overstated by those against it. I just prefer sprint, and I feel that any perceived loss in competitiveness is more than made up for by the increase in pace. I do want to address this though: They run offline LAN tests in their office. I don't know how many games they're running, but their staff is playing these settings together and discussing things. Plus, when the V2 playlist hits they've got plenty of time to observe and make changes before V3 and V4. Halo 3's first event ran V5 settings didn't it? I'd expect similar things to come out of Reach's settings iteration.
Bungie has just announced that they are going to make AN MLG PLAYLIST! Read all about it at: Bungie.net Weekly Update.
They already had announced they were a while ago (also griffball), but were just waiting for MLG to get them the gametypes/maps. I'm going to guess that they've submitted V2 settings/maps for the playlist.
I meant "going to" as in "they are finally working on a way now that they have the said settings" 'Cause they weren't before.
Even though I would of liked sprint to be in MLG, I very much doubt it! Because you know how much fuss there was over the Elite and spartan models in Halo 3 because the elite's gave you a "slight advantage". In Halo Reach the female character model gives you a "slight advantage" when using sprint. NOT BECAUSE OF HITBOX'S just had to make sure i was clear on that, its when your sprinting your breathing "ooooh ahhhhhhh hooooooo" and females breathing sound is quieter then the males meaning in game when sprinting as a female you can hear males voices around you and when males are sprinting they can't hear you. Giving females a "slight advantage" which MLG tends to not like.
Sprint is in MLG, there isn't really anything for you to doubt. v2 settings have officially been released, Sprint and all. And if the only problem is with female character models, why wouldn't they simply ban those (as with Elites, like you stated) rather than not including Sprint on this premise? I would expect players to be restricted to male character models only, and since they use newly created LAN profiles at each event, I don't think there's any room for armour customisation either, creating total uniformity in spartan models.
Peg, maybe you can shed some light on this for me- Why oh why is there a 'cool down' time upon respawn until you can use sprint? seems pretty counter-productive to me. You just died, the other team has your goodies plus position, and a decent idea of where you could be spawning, and for some reason you can't use sprint until however long? Seems pretty ridiculous to me. Can you offer any insight as to why they chose to make it that way?
I know I'm far from a person to consult for MLG settings, but I was wondering this exact same thing. I think it's kind of stupid.
I haven't heard official reasoning, but I think it makes reasonable sense in terms of still allowing for a spawn trap. If you work hard to spawn trap the other team and maintain map control, them being able to sprint off spawn and scatter around the map kinda negates what you've worked for. It's gonna take some getting used to for me, but I think the logic is sound in theory, much as I haven't had enough experience to say whether I agree in practice. I guess I'll find out when the playlist comes out.
Because of weapon control at the beginning of the game. Well, my theory at least. If you choose to spawn with a Jet Pack, you have just as much chance to grab the sniper as the guy on the other side who has sprint.
1. You can't spawn with a JP, it's a pickup. 2. The respawn traits are exactly that, they only take effect on respawn, not on initial spawn. Therefore all players have sprint on initial spawn and can use it right from the off.
*sigh* not you too, peg. spawn systems should be designed so you never even know they are there, and should aim to never give a player an immediate advantage. i realize that's not what most 'mlgpr0' players think in the Halo community, but that doesnt make it right. In fact, its ass backwards to what competitive gameplay should promote. "what you've worked for" was the kill. Which you got.
That eliminates almost the entire idea of map dominance. This is partly dependant on the map design (Narrows being an example of where this principle is possibly taken too far in both design and spawning terms, though the alternative is too unpleasant to even consider *shudders at thought of default Narrows spawning*), but is still an important part of team play as I see it. If a team works hard not just to kill their 4 opponents, but also (by doing so) to put themselves in a position to further control the map, they should gain this map control and not find the opposition given a ticket to taking back control by a spawn which is, essentially, random. This is not to say that spawns should be 100% predictable, otherwise you'd just end up with something that plays like Octagon, but the different possibilities in a given situation should be something that a coordinated team can get their heads around, count on, and use to their advantage if they've worked hard enough to gain said advantage. This is what sets apart one type of those kills you mentioned from another, if a team gets 4 down by pushing out and dominating the map, they should be rewarded more than if they get 4 down by waiting in their base and letting the enemy come to them. It's reward for control, and therefore should be something that can be relied upon, just the same principle as working for a power weapon, Rockets being a great example. Sure it's powerful, but that's because you worked damn hard to get that power. I'm not saying that getting a spawn trap should be easy, far from it, you should have to time your entire team's movement and positioning well, showing team skill and strategy in split second timing as well as the individual skill required to get 4 down. Nor should it be impossible or even too difficult to escape from, otherwise one decent push would ensure either the win or a decent lead for one team. But the team who just came out of an encounter worse off for displaying less skill and strategy at that time should be put at least somewhat on the back foot, this is why spawn systems in MLG are designed to promote the ability to spawn trap, but also the ability to escape from it. I think this is the reasoning behind the sprint warm up, that it makes it very difficult to design even a slightly effective spawn trap-friendly system when players can bolt off spawn. If some degree of spawn trapping wasn't possible (again, dependant on map design, Amp TS not being so suited as a design to spawn trapping as Narrows or the Pit) then map dominance would mean very little, and thus not be worth working for, meaning that the incentive to be aggressive over passive would be very little. This makes for slower games which rely more on a passive, defensive setup than an aggressive one. The fact is that high level competitive teams are never going to 'not know a spawn system is there'. If it's a properly constructed spawn system then it should work on logical terms, and these logical terms are one aspect of what a strong team will seek to understand in an attempt to win. If it doesn't work on rock solid logic, then that's introducing an aspect of randomness in to play (in a very important department as well, since spawning is a big part of chances for positioning and counter-strats), which will sometimes end up punishing the player or team who displayed more skill and effectively executed strategy in a given situation, and rewarding the player or team who just got out played.
Peg, the reward for getting those kills and gaining map control is the weapon spawns, pickups, and advantageous position (IE higher ground, defensible position, etc). The reward should NEVER be 'free' kills on an opponent you JUST killed. I've seen your argument many times (from different people), and its just taken way too far. And just because you may not know where the enemy will respawn does NOT in any way mean that they are 'rewarded' or that you are 'punished'. That's ridiculous. It just means that the respawning player isn't punished even FURTHER for dying, because that's not what FPS is about, in any sense of competitiveness.
I don't usually play 4v4's but anyway, Spawn trapping=bad no excuses. Maybe the point of no sprint is to make where you Spawn your actual Spawn location. like once you spawn you just don't run off to high ground strait away and team been like WTF i just killed you and there's no spawns up there D: Or letting them get power weapons you just killed there team so you have the map to do as you please run to power weapons high ground then spawning people have to walk meaning you lose a battle the team gets there choice of the spoils kinda thing. Just my 10second thought up reasoning behind it . I never know when talking about MLG if where talking about the LAN Pro's or just the Matchmaking game type. For LAN comps and stuff its all fine they can go by basically honor rules but in MM I didn't think there would be sprint for that reason oh well its made now, But who knows might be changed before gets put in MM.
There's a huge difference between having enough map control to manipulate and predict spawns and playing a map where spawns are as predictable as the sunrise and you can kill the instant they spawn. Nobody wants perfectly predictable spawns to such an extent that you see montage clips of Narrows snipers lining up headshots against players who haven't even spawned yet, but random spawns are terrible as well. And the only way to make a spawn system that cannot be controlled and predicted is to make a random one. Introduce all the variables you want, make it as difficult to predict as you want, but if it's not random people will solve it. As for the reasoning behind no sprint on spawn, they haven't said anything official, but I think it's stupid. Seems to me that it was supposed to help CTF function better but they applied it to the rest of the gametypes for uniformity. Personally I'd rather they just get rid of touch return so that sprinting up to the flag wasn't so effective and they didn't need to shut off sprint on spawn. I know that Halo 3's 3 second return time was intended to mimic touch return since touch was broken in Halo 3, but 3 second returns seem like they'd actually make sense in a game where a flag runner moves drastically slower than normal players.
Exactly becasue if you could set up a good spawn camp, recovery would be impossible to achieve without some luck. They still want to alow a losing team to at least have a small chance of rebounding from a deficit.