Vehicles

We talked about how Power Weapons can be used to create depth in your map by leading or forcing players to make decisions unrelated to the Game Play and its primary objective. I want to now talk about how we can do the same with vehicles. We already discussed how vehicles can be used to offer players additional ways to travel and engage their adversaries. Let’s look at the depth to your map that vehicles tend to offer.

Remember that depth is introduced when players are confronted with decisions to focus on objectives like Power Weapons instead of the primary objective of the game, and for the purpose of gaining advantages over their adversaries. Like Power Weapons, the more powerful the vehicle, the more important it becomes to winning the match.

Forging a Scorpion, a Wraith, or a Mantis can lead a player to make the decision should they jump in the vehicle and remain back, should they push forward, or should they not even bother with the vehicle at all? And if the vehicle is a very powerful weapon system with no real threat save the laser (as in Halo 3 Sand Trap or Valhalla), then the value of acquiring the vehicle becomes enormous (particularly the Scorpion). This last part in turn makes jacking the enemy Scorpion, Wraith, or Mantis all that much more valuable. From this value the meta game of jacking the enemy vehicle becomes a priority amongst a good segment of the population.

For me there was never any more satisfaction of jacking the enemy Banshee and successfully flying off with it on Valhala, the Scorpion on Valhala Heavy or Sand Trap Heavy, or the Gausshog or Banshee on Standoff Heavy. Those were the ultimate statement of dominance over my enemy – that I could slip in behind their lines and take a very important commodity from under their noses and turn it on them. And honestly even if they stopped me cold in my tracks, there was still an enormous satisfaction of having denied them their prize. I valued the success of this meta game way more than whether we won the game itself, because of the personal challenge it presented to me to do the unusual, the unexpected, the ultimate in surprise. The depth that this type of meta game offered was enormous.

Summary

Vehicles can offer Meta for your map just as Power Weapons can.

If both teams have the same vehicles, then jacking the enemy’s vehicles and denying them an equal advantage becomes a sport in and of itself.

The more powerful the vehicle, the more incentive there is to acquire the vehicle, or at least denying the enemy the same.