Problems and Solutions: Halo 3 (Part 2)

Welcome back. If you had the patience to sit through the first part of this Problems and Solutions session, you've already learned my opinion of Halo 3. It's a great game. It does new things, it does a lot of things very well, and it sticks to the fundamentals that made the Halo franchise one of the biggest in gaming history. It's hard to dislike this game if you were a fan of the multiplayer in Halo:CE or Halo 2.

Ultimately, a lot of the complaints you can launch toward this game help it solidify itself as an excellent title because there's so many different ways one person can appreciate it. I've been focusing exclusively on the problems that exist in Multiplayer. But, we'll quickly touch on my opinion of the campaign.

Halo's campaign was never the reason I played the games. A lot of people love them, a lot of people barely notice they are there. Halo 3's campaign, I thought, was the strongest of the series. It had interesting, new battle circumstances, and it introduced new weapons and vehicles in really cool ways.

But, Halo's campaigns have always been limited. There's no decision-making during the game other than what to shoot at. The entire campaign has always been a long hallway you have to traverse, and every battle is a small squad battle. The good gameplay of Halo really carries it along, but compared to a campaign like Half-Life 2, it pales.

The story of the games, while if pieced together is actually better than most games, is still kind of uninteresting due to the way they present a lot of it in their cutscenes.

The campaign is still good enough to go through at least once and enjoy it for what it is. It's fun, and it's even more fun when you have your friends with you!

With that said, let's get back to more issues that could have been easily addressed and corrected during the development of Halo 3.

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Problem: Non-Scientific Ways of Measuring Health

In Halo 3, your shields are shown on your screen. When they are depleted, you have health to resist further damage. The only problem with this is that a player never has any idea how much health they have, even though the game keeps track of it. It seems like very confused design. Typically when you keep track of something in a game that is going to be important to somebody, you display it so they have that knowledge.

In Halo:CE, there was never any doubt. You could always see both your shields and your health at all times. But, for whatever reason, Halo 2 got rid of displaying health. Halo 3 doesn't display health. And even in Halo:ODST, once your shields (stamina, as they called it) runs out, you still have to rely on an imprecise method of knowing what your health is. It might as well be random as far as the player is concerned, because they don't know. They can only estimate.

It's not that it's really that big of a problem once the game is going on, because usually experienced players get a sense for health levels, but if it's already being kept track of in the code, why isn't it ever displayed? It doesn't really make any sense. It's about the same as keeping track of how much extra ammo somebody has but never displaying it on somebody's screen. I always thought that was strange.

You could very easily display health via a small, red bar underneath the player's shields. Development time would be maybe an hour.

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Problem: Balancing Vehicles in Matchmaking

Honestly, I find the most fun part of the Halo series the interaction with Vehicles. It set the bar for what kind of vehicular combat should exist in a multiplayer shooter. The Warthog is legendary. Every vehicle over the course of a series has had a great place.

The only problem with vehicles in matchmaking is that the developers make destroying a vehicle far too easy, or far too difficult, depending on what weaponry is available.

There's a particular list I used to love (Social Big Team) where Vehicles were the backbone of any game you'd play. For a while it was a large library of vehicles with modest weaponry to police these (usually a Missile Pod or two, a Spartan Laser, Rockets, etc).

Then, Bungie introduced their "Heavy" variations of maps that included ridiculously powerful vehicles like Scorpions and Gauss Warthogs. I'm sure their thought process was "Wow, these vehicles are crazy. We're going to need some serious weaponry to keep these things under control." As a result, on came anywhere from 2-4 additional Spartan Lasers scattered around the map to keep those vehicles in check.

The HUGE problem this introduces is that now there's no incentive to get into a vehicle, particularly one that's not a Gauss Warthog or a Scorpion. The Spartan Laser is THE most powerful weapon in the game. There's no other weapon that even comes close. Putting 4 to 6 Spartan Lasers on the map essentially says "if you don't have a Spartan Laser, you have no chance at surviving when a Spartan Laser is being pointed at you."

Based on what I've learned after hundreds of hours of designing, testing and refining Custom Games and Maps in Halo 2 and Halo 3 is that you need to create balance among your weaponry by allowing each weapon and vehicle to control itself, rather than having one vehicle or weapon that was the alpha weapon, undeniably more powerful than every other weapon available.. like you're constantly playing a game of Juggernaut. This should be applied whether it's vehicles, weapons, even grenades and equipment. The Spartan Laser, however, is the worst wrench in the gears of that rule I've seen among the series, and there's not another weapon that's even close.

Just as an experiment, I went into Social Big Team one night in an attempt to prove how ridiculously overpowered the Spartan Laser is. My strategy was to get the Spartan Laser to start the game, use up the ammo and then return back to the spawn point of it and grab it again, while never using any other weapon unless I was being attacked (which was rare, because I'd go hide in a corner). Over the course of those games (I don't have it written down or anything, but these estimates are pretty accurate), I had 75+ kills, and 5-7 deaths. Pulling nearly a 10:1 Kill/Death ratio while only using one single weapon the entire game proves how overpowered the weapon is. If you don't believe me, head into Social Big Team, camp a Spartan Laser spawn that is near cover, grab it, use it, then go back to the spawn point and wait. For best results, try on Avalanche Heavy.

I'd also prove points of Spartan Laser dominance by getting into a Banshee on Standoff Heavy and count how many seconds it took for me to get lasered. Typically 3-6 seconds is average.

I know, I know.. it's fun to blow stuff up. But against a Spartan Laser, you have no chance if you're in a vehicle. Their way of indicating somebody is looking at you with a Spartan Laser and charging up is almost impossible to see unless you're looking right at them, and even still evading the shot is also almost impossible. Weapons should be both fun to kill people with, and be killed with.

So, if you have the most powerful weapon in the game scattered across the map, why make yourself a big target by getting into a vehicle? The only way getting into a vehicle will work well is if your team controls all of the lasers, the person using the laser on the other team misses a lot or doesn't notice you, or if you just plain get lucky. Most of the time though, you're dead before you can make a full or even half a lap around the map in a Warthog.

Let's address the other side of the problem while we're at it.

In Halo, the armor of your vehicle is not scientifically measured (or not scientifically displayed, which might as well be the same thing). When you get in, you don't die and your vehicle doesn't blow up unless you run out of shields.

First of all, that doesn't even make sense. Your shields only protect you, not the vehicle. I don't see the vehicle's shields flicker when it's shot.

I know that a vehicle actually does have armor and it nullifies a percentage of damage based on what you're hit by and how badly it's damaged. But that's just the problem. Why don't vehicles have their own health bar? It makes needing a Laser to deal with a Scorpion or Gauss Warthog almost necessary, which in turn makes every other weapon and vehicle in the map horribly underpowered.

If vehicles had their own health bar, then you'd already be going a long way to police the dominance of vehicles on the map. If you hit it with a good amount of turret fire, and died, at least you made progress because it's health is now permanently lowered. The same goes for throwing 6 or 7 grenades at a tank. Under their current structure, those 6 or 7 grenades wouldn't mean anything because the driver would most likely regenerate their shields while killing the entire enemy team, which might as well be like getting a brand new tank.

So, it's a two part problem. If vehicles had their own health bar, they would be much more manageable, the same way a weapon is manageable based on it's ammo count. As a result, shooting a vehicle with nearly every weapon would be useful, instead of having weapons that are strictly labeled "anti-vehicle weapons" that overpower anything on the map. If you fixed that problem, Bungie wouldn't rush to load up a map with Spartan Lasers when there are powerful vehicles afoot, and their version of "Heavy" would be much more tolerable because you'd be able to hop into a Banshee, Warthog, Ghost or whatever else without having to get really lucky in order to survive for more than 10 seconds.

This was really a problem that Bungie totally whiffed on. It's realistic to have vehicles have their own health, it's more easily managed on several levels and it provides competitive balance. I'm not sure if the thought crossed their mind, but yet they have "armor" on the vehicles that nullifies damage.. except you can't ever tell what a vehicle's armor level is and it usually doesn't matter. I'm very confused.

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Problem: Useless Forge Objects

When the game first came out, I was so excited for Forge. It was the ultimate upgrade to Halo.. being able to build new stuff and direct exactly what goes on in your map. I start up Forge, start looking at objects and I start seeing really useless items like stools, computers, and tiny drums to.. keep oil or something? What the hell? Where are all of the boxes and objects to actually build something instead of placing a pile of stools in a corner?

To Bungie's credit, they've started correcting this with their new maps. However, here is what they should have done from the beginning.

In a game like Halo, I'm sure they have a database to store every vehicle, weapon, object and whatever else you can think of that they routinely use in the game. They store all sorts of information in this database, such as damage per shot, ammo count, or even physical dimensions. Basically, anything you can think of in Halo that you can place as an object should be or is stored in some sort of database in Halo, whether it's an actual database language they used to write it and stored it separately somewhere, or if it's somewhere in the rest of the code. The data is there somewhere, otherwise the game wouldn't work.

Typically, developers nowadays will store copies of these databases on players' console so it can be re-written and downloaded to a user's console if they need to balance gameplay later on. They'll write a patch and it'll just be a new edition of this database. They do this because they can't re-write data that's on your disc of Halo 3 or whatever other game simply because it's not possible, and having that flexibility later on is perfect if your fans start to complain about something.

So, what they should have also done is made database entries for forge objects available per map (ideally it'd be nice to have every object available on every map, but Bungie was right in restricting them for the user's own good). Let's say a map has 25 scenery objects they can place. It should check the database listed on the player's console to see what objects are currently in that record. As they update the game and make new forge objects, they can start replacing the ones available on older maps with newer, better ones to satisfy players' wild imaginations when it comes to Forging, instead of limiting the original maps to worthless objects like stools and oil drums.

I'm not exactly sure how they store these records, and chances are they wrote a lot of the Forge code without the ability to update it later. Otherwise, I think we would have seen an update by now.

Part of this problem was due to these issues being hard to predict, but come on.. somebody internally needs to be challenging ideas and wondering "why would anyone ever want to make a map and give a crap about being able to place camping stools or parking cones on the map?". It would have really opened up forging on the original set of maps and given them a lot of flexibility down the road. The more data you can store on a user's console (particularly with virtually endless space for database information on a console) the better your game will age.

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Problem: Lack of Reasonable Options in Custom Games and Forge Maps

I was a custom game connoisseur in Halo 2. I was constantly stretching the limits of gameplay and ran a rather successful group for a couple years during the reign of Halo 2. We were actually granted a playlist at one point by Bungie only about 6 months after our group's creation. It went pretty well, considering some of our most fun and popular custom games hadn't yet been invented.

I pop in Halo 3 and start browsing the custom game options when I first get it. Wait, what's this? No starting Plasma Rifles, Carbines, Sentinel Beams, etc? Why? Seriously, what is the logical, programming reason for that? The weapons obviously exist, and you can obviously carry them all during the game, and thus you can program in starting with literally any weapon if you can use it, even dismounted turrets or oddballs! As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no reason (other than poor design decisions) as to why the custom game's starting weapons were limited.

I never read an actual explanation from Bungie as to why this was limited. Maybe it's somewhat answered in the next section...

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Problem: Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles that Exist, but are Never Used

Actually, I do recall a reason as to why a lot of weaponry isn't in use on typical builds of maps in matchmaking. Bungie's reasoning was that some weaponry, if used in heavy quantities, bogs down framerates and game performance. And actually, that's true, to an extent.

There are a lot of things that bog down performance in the game. Wraiths, Needlers and Fusion Coils are actually the most performance-robbing items in the game as far as I can tell from standard observation, and even rigorous in-game testing.

But, during my days of custom gaming, I played plenty of games where there was an abundance of Sentinel Beams, Fuel Rod Guns, Plasma Turrets, Firebomb Grenades and all sorts of wacky stuff and most of the time (unless you really went overboard) the game performed just like you'd see in a matchmade game.

I don't see why Bungie completely avoids using a lot of the weapons they create in matchmade games, so long as they are used in moderation. It seems like a waste to develop weapons like the Fuel Rod Gun (which is actually very unique and fun to use) or the Firebomb Grenade and cast them aside, blaming performance.

The weapon variety on a lot of maps leaves a lot to be desired anyway. I'm the kind of guy that will find the stupidest weapons on the map and try to win with them. I've even killed a few people in a heads up fight with a single plasma pistol. But when I finish a game and see 95% of the kills in a game are Battle Rifle, Assault Rifle and Melee kills.. it begs the question: where's the variety?

Some maps actually have excellent weapon variety. Guardian in particular has a really good array of weapons available to use. But for the most part, you can load up any given map and know that it has the following weapons on it: Assault Rifle, Battle Rifle, Brute Shot, Sniper, Rockets and a Shotgun on it, with very few exceptions. It starts to get old only being able to use a handful of different weapons, and it really makes me wonder why so many weapons get cast aside even though they are balanced, don't bog down performance as much as Bungie would like to claim, and are actually more fun to use than their counterparts. The Sentinel Beam, in particular, is amazing for taking down Banshees, and is a great on-foot weapon.

There's even more obscure things like Deployable Covers that are never used. I don't understand why, either. I've had as many as 8 deployable covers in use at the same time on a map, before, and there were absolutely no performance problems. It's a fun, defensive equipment. Why isn't it ever used? Why make something and then toss it aside? It might as well not even be there. The worst part is that most of the stuff they don't use are actually really fun ideas.

What's even more interesting about Bungie's claim that certain weapons bog down performance is that it not only heavily affects system performance, but it drags down network performance like crazy, too. I guess that's all the proof I need to say that their network coding is put on low priority in favor of rendering things like graphics. By the way, I addressed network latency in the first part of this article.

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Whew! Lots and lots of confusing decisions Bungie made along the way, as you can see. Keep in mind, I'm no expert. I've never developed a huge title and for that matter I'm actually an amateur when it comes to programming compared to professionals, but my fundamentals of programming are sound enough to know what's possible and not possible within reason. My opinions are my own, and you can disagree if you want. That's the point of game design - not everybody will see it your way and it'll hopefully get refined so the best decision gets made.

But the reality is that most of the issues nowadays in gaming are from a design perspective rather than an artwork or programming perspective. I've been playing video games faithfully for almost 20 years. When I play a game, I examine everything and I challenge decisions made in design, even though I have no control over them. The only way people are going to make good games nowadays is to learn from the mistakes that other people make and move forward with them.

Halo 3 is an excellent game, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe that they had a lot of arguments about design. In the end, they made a lot of good decisions, but a lot of really confusing ones, too. I guess no game will ever be perfect, and polarizing opinions will influence something for the better and for the worse sometimes.

The only thing I hope is that Bungie moves on with a progressive mindset and challenges every idea, instead of skipping over things that only take a second to realize.

Thanks for reading, and I welcome any comments below.