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How about a 'Team Ordnance Drop'?
Posted By: RC Master	Date: 6/17/12 4:14 p.m.
Also on my site. Skip to and read just Section 5 if you're already familiar with what these things are and the common complaints against the Personal Ordnance Drop system. In this post I'm going to briefly outline the design of the 'Person Ordnance Drops' (or pODs), which will be a feature of Halo 4's 'Infinity Slayer' gametype, and my critique of that system. Based upon that critique I will then offer an alternative system in the same vein that I have dubbed the 'Team Ordnance Drop' (tOD) which shares many of the features but promotes cooperation directly rather than delivering personal and selfish rewards. 1. On-map Weapons in Halo One of 343i's big focuses for Halo 4 has been rethink a lot of the design of the past Halo games: keeping what is undoubtedly good and quintessentially Halo, and dropping or altering that which is not. One of the things they identified as requiring improvement was the way in which additional weapons (and items) are delivered to the battlefield during the course of a match. Through the newly expanded Custom Loadout system, a much greater range of weaponry is available for the player to spawn with - so on-map item spawns will be largely restricted to more powerful and larger weapons such as Rocket Launchers and Sniper Rifles. In Halo: Combat Evolved to Halo: Reach, on-map weapons spawned at the start of the match in pre-determined locations and then respawned there at regular intervals. Whether this was after their initial spawn, after they were picked up, or after they were dropped after use, varied from game to game and the exact way in which maps were set up. But they all required a large amount of map-specific knowledge to utilise properly: where exactly each weapon spawns, how much ammo it would have, and often it will spawn anew. This was one of the barriers to entry to the multiplayer for new players: who found it frustrating to be killed repeatedly by weapons they didn't know exist, don't know whey they spawn, and have no idea how often they come back. 2. gODs and pODs The main solution in Slayer that 343i have come up with for this problem is the 'Global Ordnance Drop' (or gOD): map weapons are selected randomly from a small selection and spawned at a random location at a random time interval. To prevent the match descending into utter chaos, these weapons are highlighted with a Waypoint visible to all players (this description is the answer to one of the questions here). I defended the general motivating premise of gODs in an earlier post. I am still unsure how well their implementation works - the uncertainty may end up being frustrating, and if they spawn in without warning it will confer advantage to a random team as well - but we'll see how that plays out. In addition to these gODs an alternative system known as the 'Personal Ordnance Drop' (pOD) will exist in parallel in Halo 4 in a gametype known as 'Infinity Slayer.' Again you can find their description in this interview. This system shares a lot with the 'Kill Streaks,' or latterly the 'Point Streaks,' available in the Call of Duty series - leading to a fair amount of ire from anti-COD fanboys on that count alone. Each player has a meter which is filled by getting kills, scoring points, earning medals etc. Once that meter is filled the player gets a choice between three items (which may be weapons or equipment line an overshield). Once they choose one it spawns in immediately a small way in front of them and they get a Waypoint indicating it's location. No other players are informed of this pOD arrival unless they see it directly or hear it. Subsequent pODs require slightly more points to call in. 3. So what is the problem with pODs? Like Kill-Streaks, pODs are direct force-multipliers and promote a selfish point-hoarding style of play. Rather than the time-dependant drops of previous Halos which were self-limiting, with pODs, more kills directly equates to more weapons. Once you have those more powerful weapons you can use them to more effectively kill and build up towards another pOD and get yet more weapons and kills. Kills=guns. Guns=kills. A direct cycle. People who are effective at getting kills and medals are directly rewarded for that in the form of pODs - rather than having to utilise those skills to effectively control specific parts of the map, and then grab weapons when they respawn. An element of map control is lost here as players can simply call in the fresh weapons wherever they are, and even retreat to safe locations to get them - rather than having to risk exposure to get the desirable weapons. There is no longer any real contest over the weapons - as has been in Halo previously - since other players aren't directly alerted and have no real way to tell when and were a player is calling one in. It is a very selfish style of drop - these are specifically your reward, for your kills, that you get to choose what, where and when to call it in and only you will be allowed to pick it up for a short time! This selfishness seems counter to the type cooperation that you would have thought Team modes were designed to promote innately. When team-mates take a drop that another player called in, the whole design reinforces that that drop has been 'stolen' rather than shared: as it's use then counts towards the teammate's next drop rather than your own. It would be theoretically possible to construct a system of point rewards towards the pODs that did, when optimally exploited, amount to good team play. Mechanisms that could all help are: awarding every team member a small boost for a team's kills, points for assists, shots on target and sharing points from a shared Ordnance Drop item. However these would seem to amount to only patches on a system which ends with rewards that are selfish. For example, if a player A is an exceptionally good sniper, and player B has just got a pOD with an option for a Sniper Rifle, then it would be optimal (for the benefit of the team) to call it in and let player A pick it up. However, the proposed mechanism of restricting the pick-up of pODs to the caller for a time would prevent teams from sharing the weapon immediately - costing time or a sub-optimal utilisation of available weapons. The point threshold required for a pOD increasing each subsequent time is potentially problematic as well - or at least may confuse the strategy. If a player A is interested in going for the team's win, and they have just received their first pOD, then the team as a whole will get another OD more quickly if they let Player B (who has not yet got their first pOD) get the available kills, points or medals. A team that works together for the win in Infinity Slayer may find themselves trying to optimise the 'payout' of ODs from their points by directing the action towards specific members rather than playing to what is optimal towards the score. This may be difficult to understand and is certainly difficult to explain: rather than a player simply taking any chance they can to advance the score, they will try to manipulate the situation so that whoever is closest to their next pOD gets awarded the points on their team instead. In any case, it alters player behaviour and strategy in ways which may not be favourable. 4. Are there any Benefits? The obvious benefit which carries over from the gOD paradigm is the lessened burden of map-specific knowledge - apart from the locations of initial map weapons, all subsequent weapons drops are in the hands of the player to earn, choose, and then pick-up. It might be argued that this gametype is good for new players: who would be able to try out Ordnance-class weapons with little fear of direct competition for these from either team-mates or foes. On this basis players might prefer it in that they will definitely get the chance to use a few Ordnance-class weapons in a game as long as they get a few points - but this implicitly undermines the promotion of teamwork and might ultimately be better suited for a pure FFA match. Unless the gametype is featured exceptionally prominently and chosen for newer players on purpose, the reality is that many players will encounter the gOD style in standard Slayer much more often (unless of course Infinity Slayer becomes very popular). Additionally, it could be argued that there is ample opportunity to get familiar with weapons in the lower-pressure environments of Campaign and Spartan Ops. Using myself as an example, I honed my own skills in campaign to the point that when I got Xbox Live at the end of 2007 I shot straight to level 40 in Halo 3's Lone Wolves and Team Slayer playlists (and then subsequently couldn't be bothered to go any further :P ). 5. A Team & Skill-Orientated Alternative If you wanted promote team work more and still use the mechanics of earning ODs through points and getting to call them in, then you could utilise what I'm going to call a Team Ordnance Drop (tOD) system. Instead of each player on a team having their own Ordnance Drop meter, the entire team would share one: every action any player does goes into the pool towards the next OD. The point threshold would likely be higher than for a pOD to curb the rate. Once that threshold has been reached, the entire team would get the chance to vote on what to call in. As soon as the first member of a team has voted, a countdown would start (only 10-15 seconds) indicating the period of time in which other members get a chance to vote before the Ordnance is called in anyway. This would be so that one uncooperative or ignorant team-mate could not prevent the entire team from calling in an OD. Between a choice of 3, a team a 4 players should At the end of the voting period, or when all team-mates have voted (whichever is sooner), the spawn location would be chosen roughly in the middle of where the team members are. This location would be marked for all players in the game and a second countdown (10-15 seconds) would begin until the drop actually spawns in. Once the ordnance arrives, anyone from any team would be able to grab and use it immediately. This method of ordnance drop would reward teamwork and the team as a whole directly - it doesn't matter who gets kills or points as long as someone does since they all count towards the next drop. There would be no tactical weirdness from increased point thresholds on subsequent ODs since anyone getting more points would directly contribute to the same pool. Like the count-in for the hill-based Ordnance Drops in Invasion Slayer in Reach, the time-delay gives the opposing team a chance (however small) to contest possession of the ordnance and the waypoint at least gives them warning about what they are going up against (unlike pODs). Team's earning tODs would get the tactical benefit of getting to choose what to call in and it's location will be largely under their control - but they will have to continue to demonstrate their skill while protecting the drop site. Opposing teams would get forewarned about what they are going up against, and have the chance to contest the drop site and potentially take the drop for themselves - turning the tables. This seems to me like it would play a little more like 'Halo' and less like CoD: teams would need to demonstrate more cooperation and organisation to use and contest the tODs effectively. 6. Summary 343 Industries have identified the massive amount map-specific knowledge required in Halo to succeed as a problem worth addressing with the design of their PvP gametypes in Halo 4 - a problem I agree is worth doing something about. One of the ways in which they are doing this is the Global Ordnance Drop (gOD) system in the new Slayer gametype which delivers random new weapons to the map at random locations and at random times. It may have it's issues but the system I am more concerned about is the 'Personal Ordnance Drops' (pOD) in the new Infinity Slayer gametype - player-selectable items are delivered close-by on the map to each player after they cross a personal point threshold. I have concerns that pODs will promote a fundamentally selfish style of play in opposition to the team-based nature of the gametype it appears in. As an alternative to this system, while sharing many of the same mechanics, I propose a system that I call a 'Team Ordnance Drop' (tOD). Rather than individual OD meters, teams earn progress to new weapons as a group. They then have a small window of time to vote on the exact choice of OD. The spawn location is chosen similarily to pODs but with reference to the location of the entire team, and a global waypoint and short timer starts - at the end of which the ordnance spawns and can be taken by anyone. I feel this would promotes teamwork directly, and give opposing teams a fighting chance at contesting an ordnance before it being used against them. The team that earns the OD would still retain a tactical choice of exactly what, where and precisely when an ordnance came. If you've seen some of my other posts you'll know I love talking about gametype design - so I welcome feedback on this idea. Let me know! [small but pervasive spelling error fixed -lwu]

Message Index

How about a 'Team Ordnance Drop'?	RC Master	6/17/12 4:14 p.m.
Re: How about a 'Team Ordinance Drop'?	PerseusSpartacus	6/17/12 6:32 p.m.
Re: How about a 'Team Ordinance Drop'?	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	6/17/12 9:50 p.m.
D'oh!	RC Master	6/18/12 5:53 a.m.