ｒｅａｃｈ

Agree with Doolittle. Gambit is a good mode.

The main problem with Gambit is, unlike normal PvP, it’s not simple enough to be immediately obvious as to what you should do, and there’s no gentle onboarding (say, introducing the mechanics piecemeal) to acclimate you. They tried to make Prime to help teach people but it just ended up making people even more angry and called attention to teammates not knowing how to play.

I went on a long (like, 8 games I think?) winning streak running an optimal strategy with some friends of mine. The problem is you just have to piece the strategy together through painful trial and error, in a mode most people think you can win by just being efficient at add-clear.

As for spawn timers, that’s one of the reasons I like Doom 2016’s multiplayer a lot: it’s all about mastering the spawn timers of not only the myriad momentum-changing powerups, but also small pickups like armor shards. Map control may not be required to get a reasonable weapon loadout, but it IS required to play competently and not throw games.

I agree with everyone else re: Halo’s competitive balance, I think 1 strikes a perfect blend of goofy party game and hardcore arena shooter, and 3 is maybe the last great arena shooter. The herald of a dying genre I guess.

This is such a great point (minus the glitches part, I don’t find that to be true usually) and one I’ve thought about for years. You can see its influence in some other shooter games, but the gist is: don’t balance by making everything equal, balance by making everything strong.

In Halo, most weapons are strong in their particular niches, and mastering movement + weapon use is the way you dominate multiplayer games. Weapons are also clearly defined without much overlap, unlike games like Battlefield, Destiny, or some Call of Duty games. This gradually disappeared, particularly from Reach onwards, despite being such a great way to balance a game while ensuring people still enjoy it.

When everything is broken good, nothing is.