Search the Community

Introduction I love Halo. Halo has been my favorite video game ever since I played it first at my friend's house, when I was a child. And not without good reason. Halo CE offered an incredibly fun, balanced, and competitive first person shooter experience that could entertain for days. My friends and I always seemed to find ourselves on Blood Gulch or Sidewinder, playing slayer or capture the flag. Those were some of the best video game moments I've ever had. The fervor continued all the way through Halo 3, the height of my gaming career. I didn't have xbox live in the Halo 2 days, so most of my online and ranked Halo-ing was done in Halo 3. The ranking system combined with the general fairness of the game, and its design philosophy created a formula that always kept me coming back for more. When I won I soared on the ecstasy of victory, and when I lost, I would curse my opponents, and re-enter matchmaking to redeem myself. All of this ended when Bungie released Halo Reach, and 343 made matters even worse with Halo 4. None of this is news; at the time of this writing in April of 2014, the failures of Reach and Halo 4 are well documented: armor abilities, sprint, high aim assist, loadouts, slow movement speed, instant spawn, ordnance, bloom, shield bleed through, descope, the list is rather endless. It is quite obvious at this point that Bungie and 343 have transformed Halo into a game that conforms with the average modern shooter, ie Call of duty, Battlefield, sprint and classes, call-in rewards. Call of Duty has been immensely successful, so I think that 343 industries sought to emulate the features of this and other games in attempt to appeal to the players of those games. The ploy failed however, as the new Halo alienated its original formula and fan base, and failed to grasp the intended market for very long, because Call of Duty makes a way better Call of Duty than Halo does. So what will happen now, I wonder? I can not say. Perhaps 343 industries will release another Halo title that continues to go in the direction following in Halo 4's footsteps, with more loadout options, more customization, unlocks that affect gameplay, and the like. Perhaps they will learn from their mistakes and take a step back, to recreate the original Halo formula. The latter would of course be the better choice, but big business is a fickle and shallow thing, and its hard to say for sure what is going to happen. It is possible that 343 industries really has no control of this. Maybe this decision is made at a corporate level. You might be wondering what the purpose of this writing is then. My intention is to outline exactly my opinion on how the Halo franchise should progress onward from this point. I have been along since the beginning, and I have a firm grasp what Halo is, and what makes it fun. I have filled a fair number of notebooks with drafts of this theoretical game, and have fussed over every point of the game for months and months now, in my own mind, building Halo up from scratch, not really innovating, but trying to pull the best from all of the Halo games, and filter out the worst, mediocre, and average. I care about Halo perhaps a little too much. Regardless of whether or not my words sway any minds or have any real affect, I would like to put them out there. I hope that I can participate in a movement that pushes Halo back into a what it used to be: fun. Summary This "build" of Halo that I will share with you is not a radical step forward in any way. It is actually more of a step back into the days of Halo's CE, 2 and 3, and would play very much like one of those games. My goal in this section is to communicate to you a summary of the features that would go into my "build" of Halo. I won't pretend that all of this information is my own, most of this information has been outlined before, and often, this build does include some new ideas though. After the summary, you will find the same points, but in much greater detail. This article is extremely long. Here, I go over literally every detail I can think about to make Halo the best game it can be. I have contained the rest of the article, the more detailed section, in a spoiler below to save space. Please check it out if you feel the need, especially if you would like to see my explanation for a particular decision you might agree or disagree with. I have organized the more detailed section with clear titles, so it should be relatively easy to find what you are looking for. Bonus points if you read the whole thing. I have spent an immense amount of time on this. Please be respectful of my opinions, as I am respectful of your opinions. I intend to give you logical explanations to try and bring out thought provoking discussion. Without further adieu, here is "my" Ideal Halo 5 build. -No sprint. Sprint breaks Halo. Move and shoot! I really hope I didn't just loose most of you here. Feel free to check out my arguments in the spoiler section. -Smaller maps to account for the lack of sprint, and to keep up the action. -Fast base movement speed and acceleration for a powerful strafe, and to increase game pace. -You won't be slowed when taking fire. -Fast and deep crouch. Fast crouch walk (66% base movement speed) for improved effectiveness of the stealth function. -No reticle bloom on precision weapons. No spread on the BR. There is no reason for programmed randomness. -No custom Loadouts. No loadouts in most gametypes. Everyone will enter the game with the exact same capabilities. -All weapons benefit from headshots. Some benefit more than others. -Marksman Rifle (essentially a 4sk, no bloom, 2x scope, 16 round magazine DMR) and Assault Rifle Starts. -The Assault Rifle is vastly redesigned and improved; it is a fast collapsing bloom weapon (Halo Reach's AR and Halo 4's AR were slow collapsing bloom weapons) that can do headshot damage. Burst firing will be more effective than ever, and the skill curve of the weapon will be higher than ever. Using the AR will be about using the correct length of burst at certain ranges, and then landing accurate headshots. -Higher damage, faster kill times (somewhere between Halo CE and Halo 2,3,Reach). The marksman rifle, one of the slower killing weapons, will kill in 1.17 seconds. -All pickup weapons are balance to have the capability to kill faster than the MR, requiring some extra effort or skill to wield. -Lower Auto-Aim and Bullet Magnetism Values for increased skill gap. -No ordnance. All weapons, grenades, armor abilities, powerups and equipment spawn on the map, like in Halo CE-3 and partially, Reach. -No armor abilities off spawn. You must pick up armor abilities off of the map. -Armor abilities have fuel, limiting their use, and they can be picked up off of dead Spartans. -There will be no HUD images displaying the location of pickups on the map. -Pull out your equipment by pressing LEFT on the d-pad (the spartan will hold it in his left hand), and deploy it by pulling Left Trigger. -Many grenades have been reworked into equipment, leaving frags and plasmas as the only two grenades. -The reticle will be in the center of the screen, not slightly below center. -You will be forced out of scope upon taking damage (Descope). -No hit markers. Shield flare serves the purpose of letting a player know he hit the enemy. This is not a huge point, I would relent on this if I had to. -Experiment with a sound que to signify hits, as a possible replacement for hitmarkers. -No hit markers on grenades. These make them too useful as scouting tools. -No grenade indicators (the arrow that shows where a live grenade is in relation to your location). -15m (short range) motion tracker that can distinguish between up and down. Short range to allow for play around the motion tracker's periphery. -Shorter shield wait and recharge times (4 seconds wait and 2 seconds charge as opposed to 7 seconds wait in Halo 4) -Health will be visible, and will fully regenerate if you lose only two bars of health. If you lose almost all of your health, it will regenerate to half. There will be health packs on the map, which will begin charging your shields the moment you pick them up. If you have below half health, you are vulnerable to being one hit killed by a well placed frag grenade even with full shields. Plasma grenades have the capability to kill a full health, full shielded spartan when on the ground. You have 10 bars of health to start off with. -Your shields and health will drain from right to left, rather than from the outsides, to give more clarity as to how much of your shields and health remain. The shield and health bar will be located at the top middle of the screen. -No instant spawning. Wait 4 seconds to spawn. I changed the timer from 5 to 4 to save everyone about a second on every respawn. -Melee requires 3 hits to the front to kill, and 2 hits to the back to kill. If you land a melee to the back, a follow up melee to the front will kill. If you land a melee to the front, a follow up melee to the back will kill. -Melee will bleed through the shields into health. -When you melee, you will not move forward, or lunge towards your opponent like in Halo 2, 3, Reach, and 4. Rather, you will remain stationary like in Halo CE. The melee speed will be faster however. This does not mean that the melee will be significantly shorter range, it just means that you will not change location when meleeing, which can be annoying. The player model will appear to lean forward a large amount when meleeing. -Players cannot assassinate others by holding melee, like in Reach and Halo 4. -Instead, players must pull out their knife by pressing DOWN on the D-pad, and then they can assassinate others from behind by pressing Melee (LB) or Fire (LT). Players can unlock different knives, and knives can have skins. -Assassinating an enemy will double his respawn timer (to 8 seconds) for that respawn, adding a tactical advantage and a risk/reward element to assassinations. Assassinating in previous Halo's was a risk/risk system, only giving the players a nice aesthetic to look at. -Duel Wielding has been improved and rebalanced, and makes its return. Players can now melee and switch weapons without dropping their left weapon. Duel wield-able weapons are not found in pairs like in Halo 3, rather they are spaced out around the map, requiring a player to travel to two different locations to duel wield. Note that you do not spawn with a duel wield-able weapon. I do not predict that duel wielding will see much use, but it is an attractive feature that might help sales, and it's nice to be able to use the ability in campaign. -The weapon reload animations will make sense. In most games, the reload animation suggests that one bullet is left behind in the chamber. A fresh mag is inserted, but the extra bullet isn't accounted for. Instead of having the weapons be X+1 rounds, I want the round count to return to X, not X+1. So reload animations will show the spartan pulling the charging handle back at the beginning, which would fictionally pull the bullet out of the chamber and stick it back into the magazine. This is a point of polish of aesthetics. -Weapons will not automatically reload after the mag is empty. Players have to initiate all reloads always. This will get players to pay more attention to their ammo meter. Of course there is an option to turn this off in the options menu, but all matchmaking gametypes would have this feature. -There should be a general lack of explosive barrels in Halo. Few to none. These only serve to amplify grenade power, and cause frustration. -Improved controls and user interface options. Left handed support. Multiple HUD layouts. -Default Controls are similar to Bumper Jumper, to get everyone using the superior scheme. A bumper jumper-esque control scheme allows players to aim, melee, and jump all at the same time. -An interesting point: when a player picks up the jet pack armor ability, the controls for Jump and Armor ability will switch, so you can use jet pack and aim at the same time. There will be an on screen que to remind the player that this is happening. By default, Armor Ability is on the A button, so without this feature, you would not be able to use the look stick while jet-packing. This feature can be disabled if the player so chooses. There are also many more control schemes available, and more options to customize the player interface. -Jumping has been modified slightly. Instead of always jumping to the same height, you can preform a shorter jump by barely tapping the jump button, and preform the full height jump by holding onto the jump button ever so slightly. This helps players get up onto smaller ledges more quickly and efficiently. Of course, this feature can be disabled, and the hold time value required for the full jump can be adjusted to the players liking. Small (and quiet) jets will launch the spartan into the air when the full jump is used. -The control scheme is designed to give the player the capability to drop any item they pick up, including weapons, grenades, AA's, Equipment, and ammo. You cannot drop a powerup, or your knife. Default controls: Left Stick: Move/Crouch (click) Right Stick: Look/Zoom (click) Left Trigger: Throw Grenade/Fire Left Weapon Right Trigger: Fire Weapon, Fire Right Weapon Left Bumper: Jump/Jetpack Right Bumper: Melee A: Armor Ability Up: Flashlight B: Switch Grenade/Reload Right Weapon Down: Pull out Knife X: Reload/Reload left weapon Left: Pull out Equipment Y: Switch Weapons Right: Drop Armor Ability (hold) Hold B to drop Grenades Hold X to drop Ammo Hold Y to drop Weapon Hold Left to drop Armor Ability Hold Right to drop Equipment You cannot drop Powerups. -Completely revised and balanced weapon sandbox. -Completely revised and balanced vehicle sandbox. -Revised Objective Gametypes that fall more in line with original Halo's. You can drop the flag, no throwing of the oddball, ect. -Separate competitive ranked playlists and casual unranked playlists. -Halo 3-esque ranking system. See NakedEli's Ideal Halo 5 Ranking System. Look it up. -Fair and balanced in-game scoring system. Players earn kills (each kill is worth 1 point for the team's score meter), but they also earn personal points exactly equal to how much damage they do to the enemy. Say you do 81% damage to an enemy, and your teammate snipes him in the head for the remaining 19%. You earn 81 personal points and an assist, and your teammate earns 19 personal points and a kill. Players with higher personal point levels will be placed closer to the top in the post game stats. This is done to give a more accurate representation of how much damage a player did to the enemy team, and to help out players who frequently get their kills "stolen", or players who are more support oriented. -Revised betrayal penalties and quit penalties. If you are betrayed even once, you will be presented with a option to kill your betrayer with the press of a button, and give him a triple than normal respawn time (12 seconds). You will also have the option to excuse the incident. You will respawn instantly after making your selection. Quitters will not be allowed to re-enter matchmaking until the game they quit out of is finished. Though they will have the option to re-enter the same game that they quit out of. If you are betrayed twice by the same person, you will have the option to boot him from the game, and he will not be allowed to re-enter any games at all until the game you are playing is complete. -Long lasting and fair progression system. Customizable aesthetics, nothing that affects gameplay. -Players will not be allowed to play as elites in standard gametypes. I realize this is an unpopular decision, many of you want to play as elites, but they have different hitboxes, and are harder to headshot from behind, giving them and unfair advantage in this area, also Elites are much bigger than Spartans. Allowing players to play as elites in standard matchmaking means that not all players have the same capabilities and attributes. There could be elites in Invasion though, and we could have elite slayer as a separate playlist. -Well rounded options menu in custom games to allow for game polish and refinement. Well, thank you for reading this far. The section below is absolutely huge, and contains more detail than I think the average forum reader is interested in, or has the time to read. But please, feel free to check it out!