A27 Tawpgun said:
I think it's just that I believe one of Halo's core game mechanics is map control. The area to control in Reflection is sniper spawn.
You have to fight and control that top area the longest and maximize kills. This has been the case for most of the good maps in the game. Some even had different areas you could control. Like Lockout.
The game ebbed and flowed around these struggles. Going out of them for power weapons. To chase down enemies.
The maps, ivory tower's base layout, was built with these in mind. The jetpack allows users to bypass all of that. Like you said, it makes it play differently. Map control is much less of a struggle and the match is much more chaotic.
To me, that's going away from what I loved about Halo, and turning it more into something like CoD. A chaotic mess. I think that's where you and I disagree.
To you, all that isn't too important. To me it is. Of course, if I'm wrong about you, tell me.
Let me start off by saying, for the most part I hate Jet Pack. I don't ever use it. The only reason I am ok with it is because many of my friends love the damn thing and keep coming back to Reach because of it. When I complain about it and wish for its removal, they say they doubt they'd continue playing. I wonder how many out there feel the same I'm not defending Jet Pack, just sharing thoughts.
I hate constantly looking up to the skies when fighting Bumble Bees. Sometimes I end up spinning circles, then die just because I couldn't find the guy shooting me as he spaceships to the moon. I also hate on Reflection how people just seem to fly around in the center, or sit on the pillars. Even worse is when they get up on the emblem sign thing way above sniper hallway, or somehow manage to get on the tiny ledge way up over the main hall. These are all just mainly annoying since at first you don't see them, but once you know they are easy to take down.
Yes, Halo is about map control, but I've always felt Ivory Tower/Reflection's sniper hallway was bullshit. There are 2 ways in from the side and 1 from the back. If a team takes this, I think it turns into a cheap game, especially if they have a power weapon or 2. Going up the lift is probably suicide, as they'll know you are coming, and you are stuck standing still until you arrive. Going in from either side can also be suicide as the 2 hallways are narrow and it turns into a nade fest, or they just snipe and pick you off with rifles. If you do manage to make it down a hallway, there's probably a power weapon waiting to greet you. That hallway turns into such a camping bullshit fest its not even fun. I generally hang back and take out who I can without going up there.
Enter the Jet Pack. I actually think adding the Jet Pack to Reflection is one of the only maps it works well on (but all the other things I mentioned ruin it so it doesn't matter) since teams can now enter from front and back of hallway quickly, as well as that right side window. This makes the maps play out much more quickly and the hallway gets flushed out. I'm all for map control and I know that's what Halo is all about, but I think its pretty shitty map control when the ways in are limited and the map control becomes about camping. So to me, the fact that players can get up to that hallway easier actually makes the map play better and faster.
tl;dr I think Reflection's sniper hallway sucks, and Jet Packs help break up camping there and speeds up gameplay, but I still don't like Jet Packs.