Hosts: Dust Storm & Brent Gamer
I want to start this with a quote by Bungie during the making of Halo 3 about removing the SMG as the starting weapon. "Halo is about options, you can shoot, you can throw a grenade or you can hit them with a melee. The SMG promotted dual-weilding, which removed grenades and melee."
Now in Reach, they even pushed away dual weilding even more to keep these 3 factors as current as possible in the game. So we can see that Halo is trying to move the game foward towards keeping these 3 things active.
However, the Jetpack in Reach and Halo 4 actually makes us go backwards. If I face a person with jetpack the grenade and melee option are gone since they can easily evade them without lifting high enough to make themselves an easy target. Clearly this AA hurts the basic Halo formula, and this must be considered for the franchise moving foward.
But lets not stop there, we also know that Halo is about moving up in tiers of weapons, from going from spawning weapon to the power weapons. But the jetpack removes the use of going for certain weapons such as any close-quarters weapon or any explosive power weapons. If a team all use the jetpack, the only real usefull power weapon are needlers, snipers and railguns, far too few to create an open sandbox.
If we want to look at a competitive look, jetpack removes the skill required to pull off any jumps to move around the map. Also, you can no longer get better at crosshair memory like in past games. In other words, you can't expect the high at which a player will be at when you turn the corner, before there was 2 options, spartan height and jump height. Now players can turn the corner at any high, creating a random factor for one player and not for the other. So you can't get better at expecting the ennemie.
Other then that, jet pack can also hinder map movement, since in maps like Skyline and Ambush, the jetpack will remove all possible options for cover. The only safe place to be would be hidding inside of the bases. This could cause some maps and games to play slow.
In conclusion, the jet pack hurts the Halo formula more then innovating it, and it's removal must be considered for the franchise to move foward.