- dan91bauer
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- Elder Legendary Member
My only question as of now would have to be, why can't we just have balance? Why does there need to be randomness associated with anything? Why can't the random factors be controlled by players such as "random" grenades being thrown across the map and a player being hit by one at the right moment because he was "randomly" there? That kind of randomness is fine because it's controlled by the players, not the game.
If there ever is a Halo 4 or whatever shooter Bungie decides to make (if they even make another shooter) my only wish would be that they make the guns balanced. No random properties associated with the weapons. No faulty netcode that drops bullets and decides the outcomes of firefights, etc...
I believe I've mentioned this before but Challenge Pro Mode Arena is a Quake 3 modification. It was built by players for players. One of the most interesting things that your average quake player will not notice about Q3 is that the shotgun's spread in Q3 by stock is somewhat random. What I mean is that there's roughly say...six or seven different kinds of animations for the shotgun's spread. I haven't done any real investigation into it, but I'm assuming it deals random damage as well, since the spread of the pellets are completely random each time.
In CPMA though, they fixed that. They modded the shotgun to deal a consistent spread each time it was shot. Here's the CPMA shotgun modified::
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3434/3249016680_63abb750af_o.j pg
As you see here, it's an octagon-style pattern. There's outside pellets, and then there's inside pellets. So essentially, there's two layers of pellets. Now the deviation of this weapon's spread is dictated by distance. The closer you are, the tighter the spread, and the farther you are, the larger the spacing of the bullets. This is called balance. This my friends is what the Battle Rifle or any weapon in Halo should be modeled like.
The Battle Rifle should be a weapon in Halo that on BTB maps, you shouldn't be able to four-shot someone across Sandtrap or Valhalla, but on maps such as Foundry, Guardian, and Pit, 4-shotting should be consistent in the hands of a skilled player.
The root of the entire problem though isn't just the BR spread/bullet refunding, it's the game itself.
How do you define Halo gameplay? Is it Halo CE-style, is it Halo 2, or is it Halo 3? I'd love to know why was there a need for a change between Halo CE and H2? Why duel wielding? Why have a lunging sword? Why have a plasma pistol that acts as a homing missle, and still does to some extent in Halo 3?
There's no such thing as the perfect game, but to use CPMA as an example, it is damn near the perfect game. From air-control, to rocket damage, to every single aspect of the game, it has been modified by the players for the players. Even CPMA's slogan is, "Deathmatch for players, by players." We can't say that about Halo can we?
Truth of the matter is, Bungie probably wants to make a near perfect game, but they're in restraints by Microsoft. Microsoft Studios is the worst publisher outside of EA Games. Instead of game designers actually designing the games, they have suits telling the designers what to do, which is wrong. Did anyone tell the lead designer of Super Mario Brothers how to make mario brothers? Nope. Did anyone tell the creator of Mega Man how to make mega man? Nope. God forbid that EA was to take over the franchise of Mega Man, we would never have a hard mega-man game again period.
If Halo 3 was on PC there really wouldn't be these problems, nor would there really be these discussions. Back before CPMA was built by modders, someone had to have spoken up on a game forum and said, ya know what? The Shotgun in Quake 3 isn't really consistent...well ID Software isn't gonna do anything to it...so it's up to us players to make it the way we want it to be. Gosh how I wish we could do the same for Halo.
Word of advice for a future Halo game that's going to feature random properties, please put into the custom options an option for toggling on/off or a numerical value option that allows us to shape and form the game the way we the players want to play it...not the way the MSFT Game Studio suits want.