It sounded like you have to play through the campaign to get the MP abilities?
Nah, just armor permutations; all of the purely cosmetic stuff you get to slap on your character avatar. Nothing gameplay wise (except skulls, of course) would be hidden in the single player game.
Shotgun's OS would just cement its dominance in CQC. I think you're misjudging where that ability would be used, rangewise. People would rather take the two midrange rifle shots and find easy cover and then use that ability to be invincible against anybody that comes near them than not take a slight amount of damage at range.
In retrospect, I happen to agree, and you're absolutely right in that most players would use it to make an already one-sided situation even worse. So yeah, that's a bad idea, though in my defense it was a top-of-my-head suggestion at the end of a fairly lengthy post. The "baby overshield" effect is probably better on a not-quite-amazing mid-range weapon to boost it's desirability rather than an already desirable CQC weapon that doesn't need it. Perhaps switch the AR's "Grenade Launcher" AA to the Shotgun, so that players with a Shotty have some kind of long range (but difficult to use) option? In effect, it would turn the Shotgun into a limited-use Bastard Baby of the Pro-Pipe.
Switching them would give the AR the "Baby Overshield" effect, making it feel more like a heavy advance infantry weapon. On top of that, knowing when to pop your extra shield boost while bearing down on somebody with the AR would require a great deal of skill to judge; too soon and they just chew it up, too late and they chew
you up. I kind like that, and I'll keep that in mind the next time this discussion comes around.
Grenades have been either too abundant or too powerful since Halo 3, increasing their range and speed just contributes to the problem.
I didn't suggest any changes to grenades themselves, just that one weapon-exclusive option might allow Grenades to be launched further as its special feature (see above).
A callout system for an already powerful weapon that replaces (and is better/more accurate than) an integral skill that differentiates a good team from a bad team devalues the skill of the players who are able to communicate effectively and gives a crutch to the players that can't. Giving randoms a chance to have some form of communication is all well and good, but why restrict it at that point?
I don't think it's clearly a matter of good players with great communication vs. bad players with no communication. I know when I play, I tend not to talk depending on the hour. I know quite a few friends who communicate excellently but suddenly turn mute the instant the kid is in bed. My brother has a broken headset at the moment too. There are circumstances where even good players who exhibit good team behavior simply can't.
We all know Halo is at its best when you hop into a game with players who know how to make call-outs, communicate well and work together as a team. If it means blurring the line between mute BKs and talkative dongers by giving the player a way to communicate info (and it's on a single weapon, of course), so be it. It means a better game for everyone.
I know you'd like to have playlists devoid of these, and they're certainly novel ideas, but look at the AA implementation in Reach now, as long as it's been. The no-AA playlists are so incredibly restricted.
I think that's more a fault of Reach's overall matchmaking and playlist setup than anything. With better voting options in place, there's certainly room for "Classic" and "Enhanced" playlists.
No malice intended with this post, I just don't think non-pickup, overly abundant abilities have a place in Halo multiplayer. We may just fundamentally disagree on what Halo multiplayer should be - I notice you're against utility weapons, while I'm all for them, and like having a weapon that is useful, but not the best at, whatever you're trying to do at the moment. The BR and DMR have never been the ideal weapons at anything but midrange combat, and the secondary weapon was what gave players their roles. A BR-only player was more likely to play support than be the team's heavy hitter. I could entertain an argument against the DMR, however. Its range puts it right at the edge of acceptable.
Oh, I didn't read anything close to malice in your post; I'm not married to the ideas or anything, certainly not to a point that I can't take criticism of them. I just like armchair design discussions and we're not really discussing much else at the moment now that the Epic Tale of Mike Dongblain came to a premature finish.
I feel that too many utility weapons muddy the water and that Halo's multiplayer is all about getting the weapon you like and terrorizing the other team with it. Weapon (and Map) control are, like it or not, big parts of Halo up to this point. When all of the weapons are too close to each other in performance, there's no reason to fight over a specific weapon. Part of that has been lost as we've seen Halo's maps turn from tightly-wound gametype-specific maps to more generic support-any-gametype maps. I haven't seen the kind of fights over power weapons in Reach like I did in Halo 2 or 3. There were entire matches on the Pit that were nothing more than a tense back-and-forth over rockets and sword.
The ideal setup, in my mind, is a pool of niche weapons with very little overlap in terms of function (e.g
The shotgun is THE close range weapon), with other players having to adapt their playstyle to take away the advantages of each niche with the advantages their own current weapon grants them. The starting weapon is the only real Utility weapon, but it has to be carefully balanced so it is strong enough not to feel gimpy, but weak enough that it isn't the
only weapon people use. I'm starting to blur discussion between this and the Wish List thread, so let me explain it as I did there;
As far as utility weapons go, I feel like the only "jack of all trades" type weapon should be the default weapon (because let's face it, you don't want to get respawned with a pea shooter), but that it should deliver on the second half of that phrase; "master of none." The DMR was simply too dominant across the field. Other weapons were too specialized to be useful in all situations so in most Reach games the DMR was simply the only weapon on the field.
Obviously getting it just right is practically impossible, but it's still a worthy goal. The Weapon-based abilities was one step towards that; a weapon that is somewhat middling can be given more desirability by putting a decent AA on it.
I would like to say that not every weapon would have an activated ability either, or those without one would simply have some kind of generic ability in their place.
