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Re: How...
Posted By: Leisandir <joecooperstein@hotmail.com>	Date: 11/21/12 1:36 p.m.
In Response To: How... (uberfoop) : ...is this not always the first consideration when bringing up anything in MP : game design? Or heck, SP game design for that matter: there are a lot of : factors contributing to this, but one of the great things about Halo 1 is : how the player almost always feels like they have some sort of meaningful : initiative. We often bring up the first Halo as an example of solid multiplayer game design, and for some reason we keep forgetting that it barely had multiplayer. It was good, don't get me wrong, but it has its share of flaws. And it's a very important consideration, but one which isn't really articulated. As is said early in the episode, it's a kind of duh-huh thing once you vocalize it, but if you don't, it's easy to ignore. : Yet we wind up with stuff like armour lock which, ignoring any balance : issues, messes up the otherwise decent cadence of the game and introduces : effective randomness/severely limited options for the person fighting it. : Even without active use, it drastically limits what you can do as a : player. Playing BTB slayer? Like using ghosts? You might consider : forgetting that the splatter mechanic exists, because if you try using it, : you'll quite likely randomly die! : Ugh x.x I had a different experience with armor lock than a lot of people, I think. It's frustrating, sure, but I never found it as irritating as many other players. It's actually an interesting example of counter-play: on foot, you basically lose if you get proud. An armor locking player is an insult, it says "hah, look, you can't finish killing me!" If you take the bait and stick around, you're in a lot of danger from the rest of the enemy team. If you cool off and leave him sitting there looking like a dumbass, you don't get a kill and neither do they. I understand why people dislike it, and I can certainly see the argument that it interrupts the otherwise smooth flow of gameplay, but you can't ignore that it brings new choices to the game. : I'm not sure I quite agree with everyone saying that Halo 4's PO drops are a : great solution to the issue of snowballing and player opportunity. They : actually feedback into more ordnance for people who already have it, and : the increased damage of the basic weapons gives players better chances : against PW on spawn anyway. : The PO drops are also random, so you can regularly feel cheated. It's a very : fake form of "options" whereby every once in a while you get to : hope that a random number generator tells you what you get to do. The : number of power weapons dropped onto the map also results in a moderate : amount of messy, rock-paper-scissorsy play. So even if it mitigates the : issue of too many enemy power weapons, when doing so it doesn't do a great : job of preserving a solid core gunplay. Much better, I think, would be to : just drastically drop the number of power weapons on the map, turning them : back into meaningful strategic objectives that get paid attention to. I do find it strange that we've been given full freedom to choose our opening loadouts, and yet the in-game drops are randomized. I wonder how people would feel about getting to select, say, three sets of items for weapon drops before the round starts, so that every time you get a drop, your options consist of things you've decided are useful? This is a personal thing, but I love it when the multiplayer makes sense - that is, I don't like to be fighting over a skull or glowy part of the map, I'd rather be trying to capture a fortification from an enemy in order to use it as a defensive position against a counter-attack, and so I'm actually in favor of 343 trying to connect the multiplayer to the story of the game, but I don't think they've taken it far enough. The weapon drop fits within the fiction of Halo, but the implementation doesn't. Perhaps some evolution of Invasion Slayer where capturing points on the map grants access to vehicles or equipment? I'm not really sure where the answer is. I do agree that the drops give players down on their luck a hand in defeating entrenched enemies, but I also have some problems with them.

Message Index

Counter-play	Leisandir	11/21/12 8:21 a.m.
Re: Counter-play	Ragashingo	11/21/12 10:08 a.m.
Re: Counter-play	yakaman	11/21/12 10:10 a.m.
I agree.	robofin117	11/21/12 11:16 a.m.
How...	uberfoop	11/21/12 12:26 p.m.
Re: How...	Leisandir	11/21/12 1:36 p.m.
Re: How...	Ragashingo	11/21/12 1:51 p.m.
Re: How...	Leisandir	11/21/12 3:33 p.m.
Re: How...	uberfoop	11/21/12 3:59 p.m.
Re: How...	Leisandir	11/21/12 4:05 p.m.
Re: How...	uberfoop	11/21/12 2:11 p.m.
Again Extra Credits is clueless	Cody Miller	11/22/12 3:19 a.m.
Re: Again Cody Miller is clueless	Quirel	11/22/12 11:21 a.m.
Re: Again Cody Miller is clueless	Cody Miller	11/22/12 11:25 a.m.
Re: Again Cody Miller is clueless	Quirel	11/22/12 11:51 a.m.
Re: Again Cody Miller is clueless	WhoLikesChicken	11/22/12 12:23 p.m.
Re: Again Extra Credits is clueless	Dervish	11/22/12 2:42 p.m.
This guy.	Leisandir	11/22/12 3:21 p.m.
Re: This guy.	Cody Miller	11/22/12 5:21 p.m.