- Uncle Kulikov
- |
- Fabled Legendary Member
Here’s what Luke had to say about the differences in treatment between the Spartans and Elites in Reach:
“Instead of piece-by-piece customization like the Spartans, Elite customization is a full model swap with models selected from the various Elite classes appearing throughout the Campaign. There are all kinds of reasons for this, not the least of which is our continued emphasis on the Spartan as your identity in Reach.”
I want the armor selection.
I don't want classes with different game abilities and statistics (shields, health, speed).
What I have liked since Halo 1 was that each player, on the most basic fundamental level, is the same as any other. You have the same health, armor, speed, and accuracy.
This puts more emphasis on map control, because the only physical advantages (not counting skill) you can obtain with this equal footing are obtaining superior weapons and positions.
In other games that use classes, they usually fall into 2 types of damage systems.
Call of Duty and Battlefield have a system where players have relatively little health, where only a few bullets or a headshot will kill. These are also paired with limited movement options and accuracy systems.
In these types of games, bonuses to health, accuracy and speed are more feasible because they will have a smaller effect on gameplay.
For example, in Battlefield 2, some classes had heavy armor. This slowed them down by reducing the amount of sprint stamina they had, and gave them protection against low caliber shots to the chest.
This worked because a headshot or 5 chest shots still killed a player, and most weapons had around 30 shots per magazine.
On the other hand, games where players are more powerful (like Unreal Tournament, Halo, and Quake) usually don't have class bonuses other than weapon selection. (Section 8 is a notable exception)
This is because a small change in a player's ability scores can shift the balance a large amount. For example, in Halo 3 it takes 12 BR bullets to kill someone.
Lets say that there is a class ability to increase shields by 10%. With that ability, it would then take at least 13 BR bullets to kill someone, which is an entire 5th burst.
Health and damage bonuses drastically shift weapon balance
Speed would significantly alter melee dynamics.
And these are the reasons why I don't want classes. To maintain balance, you would need to drastically shift the health, weapons and damage system.