Armor Effects: Why They Served no Purpose

[Neo]

Many people among Halo: Reach love flashy effects for their Spartans. But were these effects a desperate attempt by Bungie to extend the life of the Halo fanbase among children? Personally I didn't see a true purpose of this even being implemented in the game. I'd like to hear some of the community's thoughts and responses to this. 

[Caboose The Ace]

Armour effects were there for one reason, customisation.

 

and more customisation is always fine with me.

[rrhuntington]

It really is just customization. This logic can be used the same for all armor customization and having different armor can be seen as useless because it doesn't do anything. If that's the case everyone should just be Gray Spartans and only have color distinctions when on teams. Armor effects may be useless, but with this view all customization as a whole is.

 

Customization is only there for you to make your Spartan or Elite look unique. Nothing more, Nothing less. It's never done anything. However, it is an integral part of Halo now. It extends longevity as people progress or unlock achievements for Armor. It just is what it is. Dress-up with cool armor, make'em look like you want them to look. And I have fun playing with the Super Soldier Dress up honestly, and I'm pretty sure everyone else does too.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Schpy Destruct

[BaconShelf]

Why do we have armour customisation at all?

I don't like this poll. I think they're useless, but not unneeded. a forge mode isn't needed, but it's there.

[Unease Peanut]

Anything other than a flaming helmet to show off loyalty is unneeded.

[Twinreaper]

honestly armor permutations are nothing more than memory whores.  While armor customization is nice, it has a huge drawback when it comes to netcode and resource handling.

 

Network Packet and Memory Management are 2 important key features that are of a negative consequence of having over 40+ different varying base models.  Add more to that in halo 4 and you have around what?  500+ varying combinations?  Since there is a much larger amount of permutations to load into memory in order to display any and all variations, it also taxes the rendering layer to have to display and hold in memory all these combinations.

 

Anything that taxes the engine unnecessarily is a bad thing.  I'm not saying that this is a major cause of lag or engine studdering, but it doesn't help either.  In all honesty armor permutations are quite pointless as nobody really sits there in battle and admires the configuration or has time to see it.  Most of the time you only see your player model during Theatre playbacks, Spartan Ops or on the Mainmenu.  And as of late, in the H5 multiplayer opening team sequence.  If this were a 3rd person camera perspective game, then it would serve a true purpose.

[seargent soapy]

I think armor effects serve a purpose, to make your character look cool.

They do.

[Wam]

I think armor effects serve a purpose, to make your character look cool.

They do.

 

Armor effects serve no purpose other than blatantly showing off and sugarcoating peoples' lack of skills. *Cough* 

 

If Armor Effects were to be in Halo 5, it'd really kill the mood. Don't know why. Having them in Halo: Reach, seriously affects Gameplay, especially in Objective Based Playlists and Slayer playlists including SWAT. If you want to stand out like a Crocodile at an Alligator rally, good for you. But Armor Effects will have no effect other than to [*Insert rest of post here*]