We all know that people complain about Armor Abilities, I do too cause it strips gameplay down to rock-paper scissors while the intention was to make Gameplay more tactical. But there's actually nothing wrong with them, it's just how people use them, look at this: Sprint: Intention: Offensive gameplay, charging, rushing, breaching, call it whatever you want, but the point is that it was intended for offensive gameplay. Used for: Fleeing or to get Power Weapons first. Evade: Intention: Evade projectiles, mostly explosive. Used for: Fleeing or to get Power Weapons first. Jet Pack: Intention: Getting a temporary height advantage, surprise enemies or getting to high ground first. Used for: Fleeing, getting to Power Weapons first, getting to camping/sniper spots fast. Hologram: Intention: Confuse enemies. Used for: Confusing enemies, however, nobody uses Hologram at all. Did you know that in the middle of a firefight in, for example; Invasion, people stil fall for Holograms? Active Camo: Intention: Sneaking past enemy lines for surprise attacks, taking out snipers or completing an objective. Used for: Camping, hiding, fleeing, surprise defenses, stop objective completers. Drop Shield: Intention: Shield you and teammates in emergency situations. Used for: Camping. I have to say, the only AA asking to be used for **** was Armor Lock but the rest aren't that bad, it's just that people want to use them as defensive/camp-ish as possible. Your thoughts? Excluding AL, do you think the problem is in the AA's or the community? I think it's 20% AA's themselves and 80% community.
I think that sprint should become a permanent thing and the rest of the AAs can **** off. Equipment and powerups were fine how they were in Halo 3, bring em back.
That's an utterly senseless argument. A game designer's job involves designing and balancing mechanics such that they're as close to unexploitable as possible. You can't just say "but that's not how I meant them to be used!" People will use them in ways which they find effective. If Bungie didn't want them to be used defensively and in game slowing ways, they shouldn't have made them so effective for exactly these purposes. How any designer could look at the bast majority of AAs and not see how it's gonna end up is beyond me. EDIT: Also, the two biggest problems with JP are worse than reaching camp spots, fleeing etc. First is the way that it almost entirely negates non-room-based cover. Awesome at using the rocks on Powerhouse to stay alive whilst shots down in a battle? Doesn't matter, they can just press a button and see you. Second is the fact that it makes it much harder for you to see them when being attacked by a JPer. A JPer can be anywhere above you, at any height, and you can waste enough time for them to get two or three shots on you just looking for them. They, however, know you're going to be on a single plane, so in a situation where neither of you have sight on the other already, they're much more likely to see you before you see them. Enclosed demonstrates this perfectly. JP is just an "I can see everything now" button.
Why would you want sprint to become permanent? It gives players an option to run away, forcing the opponent to give up his/her shooting/ stopping capabilities at each corner. If you sprint around a corner just to keep pace with a sprinting enemy, you can't back off of incoming grenades or return fire without a long delay. A player could still use this, however, when they have nothing to lose (anytime someone would flee when they are losing a firefight). It is true that managing the delay when approaching corners and thinking far ahead enough to turn and sprint when fleeing (as opposed to strafing or evading away) takes some awareness, but then consider that sprint is a way to increase speed without an increase in strafe speed, which is what many competitive players want. Both a high base speed and sprint make sprint too fast. A higher base speed would also suit the very close quarters of of many 4v4 maps, so that one doesn't have to stop mid-sprint at every corner, yet still be able to evade grenades. On an MLG forum thread that someone linked to a forgehub thread they talked about how sprint made it harder to keep track of enemies' possible positions once they are out of sight; it was already enough of a competitive challenge without sprint. I think sprint would be suited for BTB. The A to B time difference isn't significant; it's crossing areas vulnerable to fire before one gets shot to death that is significant. As for the OP, how is it rock paper scissors, besides the fact that one can't know an enemy's armor ability before he/she sees it? Even that isn't the problem with AAs; if you know someone has AL or evade, you probably aren't going to be able to use that information to help you kill them, unless they had no chance of surviving even if you didn't know (i.e. no-scope headshotting them with a sniper rifle, assuming thy don't preemptively AL). I don't blame Bungie for not making the AAs more tactical or challenging to use, but rather for not seeing how overpowered they could be when used in the simplest ways, such as crouch-DMRing from a distance with AC, or jetpacking over forge-structure (especially in asylum and the cage), so that you are absurdly high above someone's head, completely defying map boundaries, before enemies can see you, without having to worry about the 10-second (much longer than it takes to kill a player) kill zone. The jetpack could have been left out of MM forge map-matched gametypes. AL could have been easily fixed in more than one way many from the start, including simply halving the charge; it's another "Hemorrhage Scorpion" or "precision weapon bloom"- something that they clearly didn't put much thought into. Unless one has a sword, sprint is not "offensive". Is using an AA to get to a weapon a problem? Why? AC could not have been intended for sneaking past enemy lines; you move way too slow while crouching (especially in a large map where there are clearly enemy lines); it was best for camping by design. The radar jammer no longer provides whatever balance or nuance it was meant to once a player keeps their distance. It's obviously the AA designer's fault; if players don't use AAs in the most effective ways possible (sometimes because a player can't do as well without it and sometimes because it gives an advantage regardless of skill without it, the latter applying to jetpack, AC, and evade) they will lose to those who do. Giving players the ability to do something the designer doesn't intend them to do is probably the result of not seeing the possibilities or ignoring them, not trust that the players will follow honor rules, because there is no way to enforce honor rules in matchmaking. AAs as pickups for small maps and as loadouts for BTB and Invasion would have been a better way to make them seem more tactical, to summarize a partial concensus reached in earlier threads, but I think that the movement AAs for BTB, equipment and powerups for for every playlist, and all AAs for customs would be my favorite possible system for H4, to summarize a point I made in more detail a different thread.
You basically seem to be implying that Bungie's intentions were good but they failed in the planning and testing phases. If that's the case, it doesn't really engender a lot of sympathy in me. Personally I think they knew about a lot or all of these problems but just rolled the dice, not quite realizing how much they would infect and control matchmaking. Also I can't agree about camo. The design of that one clearly, directly encourages camping and stasis - it works better when you don't move than when you do. That's about as blatant a design flaw as possible. I understand why they did it though - they felt it was too powerful and needed a weakness. Which is exactly why they should have ditched it completely and just used camo power-ups on their maps.
I couldn't disagree more with the OP... As Pegasi said, Bungie's intentions were to provide balance in all exploitable ways. The fact that you excluded Armour Lock just proves how biased you are on this subject. For example, you can compare every Armour Ability to another, and you can generate a list of Pros and Cons for both. Sprint for example, gives momentary speed burst in a predictable path and can make you jump further. (I actually use this AA to reach combat areas, not to flee from them, because I actually manage to kill people in combat) For most people, they use this AA to find combat and reach destinations faster to cut off opponents, therefore making this an offensive and predictable Armour Ability. Evade gives two single bursts of speed faster than sprint, regenerates faster, is unpredictable and can increase jump height and distance if used with a ramp. This one should be used to escape combat because it's priority purpose is that it is unpredictable. The reason it's excluded from most playlists is because it's purpose is to remove you from combat. Armour Lock on the other hand, which you failed to mention, has no increase of movement speed, it renders the user completely motionless, in a pre-animated state with locked shields. It's use is to primarily deflect damage from a period of time to keep them alive so a team mate can ensure their survival. If opponents get too close, the user can EMP them by diffusing the lock, and hope for at best a "Double-beatdown" scenario. The primary use of this device is to make you a 'sitting duck' (unless your opponents are retarded) and forces you and your team to work together. This AA's primary function is to promote defensive teamwork and render a player idle. Active Camoflage turns yourself invisible and jams radar. When moving, the camoflage decloaks the user so most people can detect the player easily. This ability is designed to render the user idle while causing player confusion. It's primary focus is to cause idle confusion, through illusion when out of direct combat scenarios. Hologram armour ability creates a moving illusion of your figure. It is displayed on the radar as a grey dot and can easily be mistaken for an actual target. Again, this ability is to cause confusion but does not require the player to stay idle. Instead, it works best in the event of direct combat scenarios where a player momentarily hides behind cover. Drop Shield is similar to Armour Lock, except the player loses the Idle state and can still fire and retreat if necessary. The bubble can protect allied players, as well as enemy players (if infiltrated) This Armour ability promotes Teamwork from a Non-idle point of view. Jetpack allows players to traverse otherwise unaccessible terrain. It offers no team work contributions (except possibly finishing off another opponent) and does not allow for increased movement speed. It is also predictable in terms of flight path and can be easily anticipated. The added axis of combat also requires the combatants to use more skill when using precision weapons. This (of course) removes the effect of most beatdown scenarios. So to recap; Sprint - Offensive, Non-Idle, Predictable Evade - Defensive, Non-Idle, Not Predictable Armour Lock - Defensive, Idle, Teamwork Drop Shield - Defensive, Non-Idle, Teamwork Active Camoflage - Neither, Idle, Illusion Hologram - Neither, Non-idle, Illusion Jetpack - Neither, Non-Idle, Predictable. ....All seem pretty balanced to me.
Completely untrue. In fact, this is the main advantage of it as I explained. Have you never played against JP whores on Uncaged? Unless you see them take off, you can spend half your time swinging your reticle around in the air trying to work out where the hell they are, and by the time you see them they've often got two shots up on you. It's ludicrous. Again, not really true. The person with the JP is above, thus inherently has a better view of your head than you do of theirs, this gets worse and worse the closer they get to being directly above you. This should be a good thing. It should, as you say, simply encouraged ranged encounters and the obvious skill differential they entail. But it does so whilst giving the person with the JP a significant advantage, otherwise what would be the point in using it? It's not just a movement advantage in terms of reachable areas, it gives you a direct, moment to moment advantage in battles.
I feel like no one uses hologram until I do. Theyre like "hey that guy is using hologram, so I will too!" I agree that people just don't realize its effectiveness.
Are you saying that that this was how Bungie probably viewed AAs, or do they really seem balanced to you? If the latter is true: reducing the AAs to three words cannot be used as a way to figure out if they are balanced, either with respect to each other or in terms of Halo gameplay. Explaining what the AAs do in depth was certainly more meaningful, but we all know what they do; this explanation was appropriate at around the time Reach came out. It would be more helpful to address the specific ways in which players feel that AAs are unbalanced, and explaining why they are wrong. I know that this would result in trying to objectify subjective preferences, even preferences in playstyle, but you may find that AAs do or don't affect the game negatively in ways that most can agree on. For example, you pointed out the characteristics of AL. But these characteristics would be the same regardless of how long the charge is. Do you think that any charge would be balanced? Ask yourself this question: How long does AL need to last to reward teamwork? Is teamwork shooting an enemy who is shooting your teammate? No, it involves being able to help a teammate whenever possible, which usually means staying close to that teammate. If you've ever played Reach, you'd notice that AL lasts long enough for a teammate to travel quite a long distance- when you consider that every player tends to gravitate towards the highest or central point on most maps (reflection, countdown, sword base, the cage, asylum), the chances that a teammate would stumble upon the armor locker and fight the damaged attacker is so high on these small maps, that AL often helps without teamwork. Halve it, and only teammates with the intention to help their teammates will be able to help. AL would still negate damage, and would still be devastating, even demoralizing, if used in pairs. I know I typed this in another thread, but it was so appropriate for this reply. Camo and Hologram create illusions, but which is better? If Hologram is active, it should be better, right? The jetpack isn't always predictable. In my other post I pointed out how a player can jetpack over high walls, like on Uncaged. Also, it effectively offers increased movement speed relative to sprint and evade on vertical maps such as reflection, paradiso, countdown, boneyard, and sword base. EDIT: Sorry, I didn't look at Pegasi's next post before responding to Stevo- he already mentioned jetpacks on Uncaged.
Armor Lock doesn't promote teamwork, in teamwork you work together, and it's not about each player hoping their team showing up on time but on discussing tactics. If one would go into combat, knowing his teammates are behind him, and he armor locks to draw attention, and not to become invincible, and his teammates open fire on the surprised enemies, and the guy goes out of AL and join the fight, then it's teamwork, but what mostly happens is that people just go into AL once he's about to die and hopes his teammates save him, instead of killing them himself. If he's a lucky bastard, like most, he will get saved, however, if he's unlcuky, like I am, the few times I use it, and that's why, my teammates are there but they just walk past, unaware of their surroundings. And I'm watching in third person and am like: ''The **** dude I'm over here! Hello!'' And then I look at the enemies waiting for me to get out of AL and I'm like: ''Are you ****ing blind why don't you shoot that guy while waiting for me? Seriously?'' So it all comes down to the fact that AL is mostly about situational luck.
Armor lock is only about "situational luck" if you play with randoms and don't use a mic. If you play with people you know and have even mediocre communication and teamwork, armor lock can be great for teamwork (one of the few compliments I will pay to the accursed thing). Admittedly though, 90% of the time it gets used, it's just by someone wanting not to die and hoping a teammate will randomly come along to bail them out.
You're expanding too far upon it Pegasi. I was referring to the AAs if you see the opponents start using them. If you see the jetpacker take off, you know exactly where he's going (predictable part), and it makes you fight on the extra access of vertical aiming a lot more than normal. (extra axis part) The beatdown bit is there because you can't physically reach them. Whether that's good or bad, needs to be viewed from both the user and an opponent. I was trying to keep them extremely simple. There's obviously other factors included and its dependant on the maps you play on. For the very basics, that are universal across each of the maps, what I broke it down into is the foundation of the balance between the AAs. Furthermore to everyone; I think you're all being incredibly biased against specific AAs you don't like in particular. They each have their own pros and cons... I could go into massive in depth scenarios where each Armour Ability excels, but you've all already demonstrated that... Pegasi; you stated Jetpackers getting over cover in non-room based maps to get a viewpoint over the enemy. On room based maps, this is impossible, nor rewarding which is why players don't use the jetpack in enclosed play spaces. Artifact; you mentioned Armour Lock not promoting team work. Tell me; how effective is Armour Lock if you have no team mate around and the enemy player is out of distance from the EMP (as they should be)? Not effective at all, infact, it has no use what-so-ever. The only advantage you could possibly possess with Armour Lock as your AA is to instantly react to a grenade 'ting' to server as a momentary blast shield, with that said, you can only do this twice and if you're too late, then you've had no help whatsoever, except standing still doing nothing and allowing your enemies the opportunity to get in closer quarters. Zeppy; you wrote a nice post about the combination of the above two and mentioned something about Hologram AA? The difference between the two is that Camo allows you to be concealed, and cause confusion on the radar, but you can't move. Hologram allows you to deceive the actual game (and is detectable by radar) and you can move freely to do as you please. Each Armour Ability, needs to be used in conjunction with it's actual purpose. Your tactical decision upon spawning is to think "Am I going to be offensive / defensive? Am I going to be sat with my team mate the whole time? Am I wanting to climb otherwise unaccessible objects? etc... etc..." You make the decision based on what YOU think which scenarios will occur most, and you select your Armour Ability to match. I basically use sprint, all the time. Because I know, I can get into flanking positions a lot easier with sprint. I can charge for power weapons. I can escape combat a little quicker. I can gross larger jump gaps allowing me to get in behind the enemy. I can GAIN A TACTICAL ADVANTAGE. If I use Jetpack... I run slow, I can cross paths that aren't usually accessible.. but it's slow. I'll often enter combat a lot sooner than I intended, and my Jetpack renders me useless because I play "bumper jumper" and not "recon". If I use Armour Lock, i'm without an Armour ability the entire match. It doesn't suit my playstyle and the only benefit I get out of it is if I react to grenades fast enough. I can keep listing all these scenarios over and over and over as to why each trumps the other. That is balance. Just because a few of you have had bad experiences where people have utilised the best Armour Ability for them in the right scenarios and killed you multiple times, it doesn't make it any more overpowered unless you can't adapt to the counter playstyle. And this is a prime example of why it promotes teamwork. Even if it's someone hoping another player comes along to save them... that's teamwork. Not vocal, or intentional.. but it's still two players contributing to the team score.
Nothing more fun than hearing someone jetpack above you somewhere and having to look around for ages to find him all while he's shooting you. It's even more fun because you can't adjust the sensitivity of the Y-axis. If you think jetpack is balanced you're mad.
It's situational awareness. How has he got you in that situation to start with? Why are you out in the open? Why can't you interpret the red arrow damage indicators on your screen? Why can't you see that if you're already behind cover, theres a 99.99999999% chance that he can't be shooting you from that direction, so either run that side of the cover, or look vertical? It's not hard to interpret the situation when talking about it, just like it's not hard to complain about something being unbalanced when it's completely useless on maps or regions that are enclosed. If you know the enemy team has jetpackers, stay long distance... because with you standing on solid flat ground, and them flying high in the sky with no available cover... they're easy pickings.
Jetpack is a joke. Making geometry on any map useless on any map has never been so easy. I have a hard time believing they actually designed any of Reach's maps around AA's. You could say some work, but in the end, the fault is in AA's themselves. And when it comes to jetpack in particular, the noobs who fly straight up in the air over and over again don't count. Their retarded. The reason jetpack sucks is because its the easiest to abuse. There are still so many maps that aren't properly blocked off to accommodate it. Hell, even the MLG Pit remake can be broken (w/o jetpack).
A person on the ground is limited in movement and is very predictable. There is a limited amount of paths people can take. A person with a jetpack can go literally everywhere within the boundaries of the map and is unpredictable. It's certainly easy to see where he will go the moment he is up in the air jetpacking in clear sight, but you can't predict when someone's going to jetpack or how high. It is also practically impossible to predict where jetpackers go if you can only hear them and don't see them. Also, a radar is great for checking if someone is higher than you are but you can't see how much higher that person is. Because of this the circumstances are irrelevant. The entire mechanic of jetpacking ruins the game and should never return the same shape.
I omitted some of your post to focus it. You skimmed over my post and didn't quite get the main point of it. As for the active camo hologram thing, It should be obvious that camo is better; players are rarely fooled into losing a battle by a hologram, even if they shoot once at one. I was trying to point out that your 3 word simplification did nothing but give the impression that hologram was somehow similar, and even better, because the fact that you could move with it was one third of the simplification. Saying that we don't like AAs that have been used successfully against us is arrogant- overbearingly assuming. All of the arguments that have been mentioned apply to prevalent uses of AAs. An AA isn't balanced just because it can't be used in every situation. Players have their entire game experience to realize the simple uses of AAs because they are loadouts that can be used once every several seconds after spawn. The decision of which AA to choose, on small maps (this is not true for BTB or Invasion) usually come at the start of a game, not at each death. Why? Because the map doesn't change, and the preferred playstyle doesn't change. You demonstrated this point- you use only sprint. If these loadouts were truly balanced or were influenced by conditions mid-game, wouldn't you end up switching often? Isn't that what tactics entail- some thought at every use? Exceptions to changing AAs within small map matches include sprinting for a power weapon and then switching your favorite. In the cases where weapons or enemy positions call for certain AAs, you might not be lucky enough to die and react in time. For example, if an enemy has rockets, can you die and respawn with AL before he uses them all so that you can make him waste one on you? Can you be sure to get rockets when they respawn while having jetpack? How much earlier should you choose Jetpack? In BTB/Invasion things don't change as quickly and battle lines are more easily seen; plans can be more easily drawn. You say "should I be offensive or defensive", but you can't defend your team or an objective with AL; you can only defend yourself. You are not choosing to complement or complete your team's capabilities, nor are you sacraficing your own offensive capabilities, other than when you are staying alive in situations in which you would have otherwise died so that you can continue using the same offensive capabilities that everyone can use in less time without giving up a point. The only thing you are giving up is a different gimmick, none of which are offensive in and of themselves, save for the jetpack/AC positioning/surprise capabilities. Of course, there are non-AL ways to increase your chances of staying alive. Your last paragraph on AL and teamwork is silly. If players contributing to the same score is teamwork, then anything done in a team game is teamwork. Any player would shoot an enemy forcing a teammate into AL for the same reason he would shoot an enemy in any situation. We have the notion that intentional teamwork should be rewarded in Halo because it is fun and it requires skill. It takes thought and thus one can become better at it.
I don't hate jetpack as much as some, but it does A) make designing custom maps a huge pain in the ass - I use more ceilings now than I ever really wanted to, for one thing; B) ruin some default maps completely, e.g. Uncaged (where I feel obligated to use jetpack because you're at a huge disadvantage otherwise) and frequently Asylum and Powerhouse. Other maps play OK with jetpack in my opinion because they seem like they were made to take into account, but on the whole it alters gameplay too much when most of a team uses it, or even when one guy uses it persistently and non-retardedly. For my part, I miss equipment in general, and the grav lift equipment in particular. Its full potential was never realized - the grav lift on High Ground was just a taste of how awesome that thing could have been. It's like what I would want jetpack to be - a way to get past one specific part of a map or get the drop on someone in a particular place, rather than an unlimited-use, see-everyone-anywhere button (as it was so aptly put in this thread).
**** reading the thread, too much text. I hate Sprint. I hate Armor Lock. I abhor Jetpack. This is all not because they are broken; they are very well-balanced power-weapons, for lack of a better term. But they are given to you on SPAWN, which breaks everything. If AA's were pickup, I would have no problem with them at all.