Etiquette

narcogen's picture
When I began writing the High Ping Bastard's Guide to Halo, the intention was solely to discuss issues that plague those of us with high latency connections (like me). Louis Wu at HBO, among others, were kind enough to say that some of the tips were useful even for other players. In this section, some of the issues will apply only to high ping players, but some will be quite intentionally aimed at the general Halo-playing audience. Lag Etiquette If you have a slow connection and you play Halo online a lot, chances are sooner or later you're going to see lag mentioned in the chat. You're going to see players complaining that they are lagging; you're going to see players complaining that someone else is lagging the game; and at the worst, you may see one or more players complaining that you're lagging the game. You're likely going to see suggestions, cajolery, and even threats to get you to leave the game. First of all, don't get offended right away. It's easy to feel like you're being unfairly singled out. After all, nobody has a low speed connection on purpose as a lifestyle choice; for some it's a function of location, for others, budget. You may very well have language directed at you suggesting that you leave the game if you can't afford a "real" Internet connection. But before retaliating-- either with words or weapons-- do yourself a favor and become a bit better informed. Hit F1 and bring up the score overlay; in the latest patch for Halo, this screen now shows ping times. (Alas, but the end-of-game carnage screen, that shows scores, kills, assists and deaths-- does not. I dearly wish it did, as I think most players recognize that a high ping makes the game harder to play, and it'd be nice for people to see when the game is over that despite that, some high ping players still are able to be competetive and even win a game now and then.)

H/SCM - 05

Well, if you haven't already read any of my previous blog entries then you should likely not care about this one either, but just in case you were interested you can read parts 01, 02, 03 and 04 at your leisure. That being said I will continue with part 05. The focus of this final installment will be possible plot connections to the Halo storyline.

Marathon, er.. Halo Connections:

Taking into account all of the possible unknowns regarding the Halo storyline I feel that the only true suitable scenario for a mod such as this would regard the time directly after the Covenant discover (or vice-versa possibly) humans along the outlying colonies. In this manner there would be less reliance upon Spartans and upper echelon Covenant soldiers.

So far my favorite scenario would entail a small interplanetary group of civil and military humans exploring a few of the outer worlds in search of more habitable environments. In their searching they come across a small moon (one of se7en?) orbiting above a gaseous planet. As they set out to explore the moon they uncover the remains of a civilization. Without the proper means to decipher or interpret what happened to the now abandoned settlement the group decides to gather what information and artifacts they can and take them back to their colony after completing their survey mission(s).

Back upon their ship, one of the crew accidently(?) activiates one of the artifacts, which begins to transmit a subspace signal to an unknown source. As the crew frantically attempts to shut down or at least determine what the signal is transmitting, they decide it would be best to return the artifact to the planet and report directly back to their colony. With little to no mishap the crew reports back to their colony and decides to continue with their survey mission after a short hiatus.

H/SCM - 04

Continuing on Parts 01, 02 and 03, Part 04 will discuss the workings of the Covenant class structure and how it relates to the Human/Spartan Combat Model.

Covenant Class Structures:

Although creating a formal class structure would be nice, it is only possible to create classes within the guidelines provided by Halo's storyline and within the balance limits of a multiplayer match. What this means is that specific sub-races of the Covenant, such as Grunts may not be well suited for multiplayer matches (at least not within their current format). The result is that the number of classes used will be quite limited overall; mainly to the Jackal, Elite and Hunter.

The Jackal may be the most interesting multiplayer class in general provided that they meet a few key restrictions. First, they can never drop their shield; and second, they can only equip one-handed weapons (maybe even only the plasma pistol). The key strength of this class would be their shields. The Jackal shield is very resilient and is quite possibly more useful than the Spartan's energy shield due to the fact that it can resist all types of human ballistic weapons.

Another key feature to the Jackal would be the block feature. Whenever the Jackal uses the crouch funtion they hold up their shield allowing them to become defensive in nature. While in this position they can still overcharge their pistols but cannot fire them until they stand upright. As always, an overcharged plasma pistol shot will render their shield ineffective for a time so this would be a major weakness to this class.

The Elite would likely be the most similar class to the Spartan. Ideally this class would be broken down into three smaller classes: Elites, Gold Elites and Cloaked Elites. If possible it would be nice to seperate each Elite subclass as its own class provided that they have enough differences.

H/SCM - 03

Hopefully you have read my notes on the Human/Spartan Combat Model (H/SCM) previously blogged(?) in Parts 01 and 02, if not you might get a little bit lost when reading this entry. Regardless, my topic for this blog will be possible gameplay scenarios and their implementation.

Gameplay Scenarios:

The first and most obvious would be Human/Spartan teams engaged against other Human/Spartan teams. Weapon and vehicle sets could be restricted as required. So basically we have a basic yet diversified blend of players all fighting to be the few lucky Spartans, right? Maybe. The trick here is to allow each server to run with its own server restrictions. That way you could restrict access to the Spartan players in any number of ways. The most obvious being first-come, first-serve based upon the total number of players each team can support (server max / 2). Secondary means may include a max number of Spartans per team or even 1 Spartan per every X human counterparts. You might even see a few human-only servers up and running.

Which brings us to the next possible setup: human versus human. Sure it would be nice to have a few Spartan buddies to take hits for you while attacking the enemy base, but if people are going to fight over it, why not forbid the use of Spartans altogether. Besides, if you want all Spartan combat, play Halo and not this mod!

Human versus human combat would be what this mod is designed to exploit. Imagine a team of 10 human soldiers, all with various and diversified skill levels simultaneously switching roles on a continual basis in order to compensate for or assist their fellow teammates. Neat huh? (If it works.) The prime motivator would be powering up your player's proficiencies and gaining as many or very high skill levels as quickly as possible. The secondary motivator would be to actually play as a team. Sounds somewhat backwards, right? So how do you encourage teamplay above and beyond everything else? If there was a simple answer to this then clans would never exist.

H/SCM - 02

Hopefully you have read Part 01 of the Human/Spartan Combat Model (H/SCM), if not please read up. The topic of this next blog will be how gameplay will be affected via this free-form class structure.

Proficiency Based Gameplay:

Ultimately the goal of this mod is to provide players a chance to jump into combat with little to no previous experience of Halo and end up with a character customized to meet their own strengths. Weapons, vehicles, maps and gametypes will all have their own balancing factors. The bonuses that players get from these items only helps to improve their own individual characteristics when using them. What this translates to is that if a player does not use a given weapon/vehicle, expect a player that does to be much better when using it.

Unlike most Role-Playing Games (RPGs) these skills will build up rather quickly. Considering that most matches last 20-30 minutes, you would expect players to gain a proficient level when using a single weapon after a very limited time. This is not to say that higher levels would be easy to attain, but only that shorter periods of time are needed to gain the most basic upgrades.

Example: A player begins the game with a pistol and proceeds to gain a few quick kills. If the requirement for the first pistol proficiency upgrade was 5 kills using that weapon, a player could easily attain it at a rather quick pace. Note that only the killing shot must be from the pistol, so feel free to use any other weapon to weaken your opponent first. After reaching 5 kills the player goes from skill 0 (zero) to skill 1 with the pistol and a bonus, such as an extra clip of ammunition is added to the pistol every time the player picks one up. Keep in mind that these bonuses are quite arbitrary at this point and only the general concept is important.

As a player's proficiency increases with a given item, it would be easier for them to gain that next skill level when using that item. Of course, the curve for attaining the top levels will be much harder than the more basic ones, so the rewards or benefits will be much better as well.

Human/Spartan Combat Model - 01

After posting a few of my personal viewpoints in a recent thread, I have finally decided to catalogue my ideas for public opinion. These ideas will be formed from an ongoing series of blogs that will be refined and broken down into simple sequences of information. Refining and extrapolating of individual ideas will occur on a regular basis, but hopefully I can maintain a focussed and informative dialog from my ramblings.

Overview:

The basic idea is to create a realistic combat modification (mod) that places human soldiers fighting alongside Spartan class models. The difference here is that human soldiers lack shields and would likely be more vulnerable to death. Likewise they would also be faster than your normal Spartan. Spartans act exactly like the Master Chief, but are limited to say 1 per every 4 players on the Human/Spartan side (possible server-side setting).

As I would prefer to avoid class-based structuring I think it would be necessary to incorporate a skill based system in the game. This would work by encouraging players to assume roles and then gain improvements based upon their performance within that role.

An example would be a basic class sniper. Imagine a player that picks up a sniper rifle and then proceeds to gain kills with his new rifle. As the player gains kills using his sniper rifle, he also improves his reload time and decreases his body movement while scoped-in.

Instead of limiting the player to the class of sniper, the system works to encourage players to work together and support one another. This is not to say that upon dying you lose your abilities, so a player could and should take multiple roles upon themselves throughtout a battle in order to improve their own skills.

Pilots/drivers could allow their vehicles to take more damage before being destroyed based upon the distance they travel in them. Gunners gain more accuracy from their weapons while hitting targets from a vehicle. The structuring is somewhat free-form in this regard. If medkits could be equipped you could even add a field medic role into the mix, etc. There could even be smaller bonuses for players such as increased speed or stamina (if running is possible) for traveling a given distance on foot.

Game Types, Roles and Tactics

narcogen's picture
I'll be up-front about this: I hate Free For All (FFA) games, especially Slayer, so I don't really have much to say about them. If there are some high ping FFA players out there that are having luck with certain tactics, feel free to email me and I'll put them here. I tend to prefer team games, as well as games with non-slaying objectives like Oddball, King of the Hill, Race and Capture the Flag, so I'll comment here on how dealing with lag affects those games and your role in them. Capture the Flag You've got a choice when playing CTF as a high ping bastard: do you want to play effectively, or do you want to go for the glory and risk being hated by your teammates? There's no question that players with high pings are better suited to defending than attacking; especially if you have a vehicle such as a Ghost or Warthog, or even a Shade turret, to help you. (Teammates, of course, are even better.) Grenades are your friend while defending, if you can work out with your fellow defenders where you're going to throw so they don't rush in for a melee kill as you're lobbing one. (Work this out in advance of the battle, in the lull between attacks, not just as you throw one, unless you're using some sort of voice commo-- which for the high pingers, is pretty much ruled out as it eats up your bandwidth). If you die (which you may) in most CTF games you'll spawn relatively close to your own base, giving you another shot at the flag carrier before he makes a clean getaway. If you assume that high ping players are going to die more often (and in my experience, they do) it's better to have them defending; they know what's going on back at the base, and they know which way the attackers went, so they know how to respond when they respawn. If an attacker dies and respawns back at the base, he's not of any immediate use there unless he knows the situation, and more likely he's just going to be focused on getting back on the attack. As a high latency player, if you're involved in a coordinated attack you run the risk of upsetting the plan by dying early, driving poorly, or creating unintended friendly fire, and thereby drawing attention to your high ping in a negative way.

Weapons

narcogen's picture
As with the vehicles, the nature of each weapon sometimes makes it more or less suitable for players on slow connections. Again, in increasing order of utility: Needler This weapon is fairly useless in multiplayer anyway, barely better than the plasma pistol which is the default weapon on many maps. One good thing about it: the projectiles track, like the plasma pistol's secondary fire, meaning accuracy is not as important as with other weapons. However, the projectiles are slow and relatively easy to dodge or take cover from. If you're toe-to-toe with a single opponent, you might as well melee him with it, it'll do about as much good. If you're in a group with multiple targets, in can do damage, as your opponents won't be able to give their full attention to the miniscule threat you pose. Sniper Rifle If you're badly lagged and trying to hit someone with a sniper rifle, you'd better hope they're standing still-- because that's going to be your only chance. Most likely you're also standing more or less still while sniping; but if not, you may find yourself "warping" while zoomed in at 10x and having difficulty keeping your quarry in the crosshairs. Probably the only players you've got a chance at killing this way are either standing still with their backs to you (teammates, perhaps?) or other snipers, in which case they're probably going to react more quickly and kill you before you get off a shot (this happens a lot in the upper base lofts on Sidewinder). Add to that the small clips and long reload time, and you've got a nightmare for high ping players unless you're very well hidden. Pistol Most good players consider this the most powerful weapon in the game, and it usually is. In the right hands, even a player with full shields and health can be dropped to the ground with three accurate headshots. The problem is, if you've got a lot of lag, getting those three headshots is probably going to use up your clip. However, as a medium-range weapon the pistol can still be useful because of its scope (the sniper really isn't good for anything but long range for a high ping player, as closer in the "warp" effect plus player movement is going to keep you from drawing a bead on them). However, I suggest going for body shots to make every bullet count, rather than trying for head shots and a quick kill.

Pages