The Essence of Conquest
So what is Conquest at its core? The idea that created Conquest was to re-create the feeling of large scale war by taking the concept of front lines pushing back and forth. Armies will use various strategies to push their front lines forward to gain control of territory. In essence you see an inverse tug-of-war effect.
Lol... get it? The Essence of? Nvm...
In order to create that feeling I decided that the maps that will work for Conquest must be completely linear allowing for only one choke point in order to remove flanking tactics and encourage army vs army brute force gameplay. Another concept was to have longer lasting "battles" for territories, so I chose to make players more difficult to kill. This required removing any possible chance to "one-shot" an opponent. To give more of a war feeling a large amount of territories are provided to fight over, resulting territories needing to be able to be captured quickly in order to allow for quick movement across the "country" with little or no delays. All combat is meant to be fought as a team so various mechanics are used to enforce that concept. Finally after the initial "claiming" of territories, when a team is attempting to capture a territory a new "battle" sequence must begin. Basically as a team is attempting to capture a territory they need to engage in combat against the entire opposing team at once.
Being fun to play
Many people (not all) enjoy taking the time to play Conquest with their friends. But what makes players enjoy playing Conquest more than say default territories? I feel that the main reason is the sense of teamwork that is involved. In Conquest players are all forced down one singular path instead of splitting up forcing them to fight in the same vicinity which inevitably encourages teamwork. Players also respawn when their teammates do meaning that the majority of players never travel alone. Another aspect is the building up and release of pressure in the form of traveling towards the nearest enemy territory and then clashing with the enemy team. This sends a natural rush in players as they know they are safe for now but walking towards inevitable combat around the corner. This happens constantly during rounds keeping players interested and pumped during a majority of the match. There are other aspects that make Conquest fun (such as the final rush of sudden death), but this paragraph is getting quite long... let's move on.
Changes for Reach
So Reach promises quite a few changes. The naturally higher resistance is staying around, but now that we have the ability to control melee damage it is being tuned down as well. Also immunity to assassinations is being applied to remove that one-shot capability. The new territories system allows for gaining points over time if you have a territory. This new system will help allow for closer matches in the long run and allows a more accurate representation of which teams held territories for the longest amount of time. With the health system normal spartans typically regen up to the nearest third of health. In Conquest they will act as elites and heal all of their health. Shield regeneration will be slightly faster encouraging players to utilize cover more often when shields are down. Many Conquest weapons have been lost, but new weapons will take their place. Typically the rapid fire weapons will be used as the work best in a crowded scenario. DMRs, Pistols, as well as the Sniper will still be present on maps. Finally no armor abilities will be present as they tend to have the same effect as equipment from Halo 3 or they allow for flanking (such as evade and sprint).
The near future
I could write pages upon pages of Conquest stuff, but I don't want you to just stop reading so I am wrapping it up. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next Forge Lesson. Tomorrow's lesson is about the importance of teaching players your map. Also I believe I just finished the major rework of Helix. It is massive and I think you will like it, expect to see it sometime this weekend. I am really pushing the budget for what looks to be my first map remake. Also expect to see new gametype/map previews as well as more of "The Second Coming". Hope I'm keeping you slightly busy for Reach. See yall tomorrow...
4 comments:
Nice read. I have played Conquest, thought it was ok but didn't love it. Things change, why not make some changes? Evade could be a good thing, it may not work out. I think you should try it.
Oh, are you posting these daily?
First of all I am posting these daily. As for Evade it allows you to bypass players as well as Sprint enabling flanking possibilities. Enemies should only ever come from one side. And there is also no point to having them in loadouts since part of building good territories is making them so you capture them without stopping Sprint and Evade would mean that we need MUCH larger territories to accomplish the same task. The only loadout options that will exist will be the choice between an Assault Rifle or a Plasma Repeater.
I've thought about all the armor abilities and weighed their pros and cons. They are just too game changing in Conquest and work against the focus of Conquest.
Although i like conquest, i never really played it too often so don't be offended if i don't reply much to your conquest posts.
It's all good this will be the last Conquest post for a while.