Halo, Individual and Team Ceilings

With the conclusion of HCS Anaheim I wanted to take a look at a topic particularly apparent in a game like Halo. The skill ceiling is the upper limits of what is possible within a game based on the mechanics and system interactions present in gameplay. This can refer to both the perspective of the individual player, as well as a team’s ability to coordinate and enforce their will on the game and opponents. Many discussions of the skill ceiling or skill floor look at individual factors that raise and lower the skill of a game, for instance Super Smash Bros is an “easy game” with it’s simple one button special moves. However, mechanics like wave dashing in Melee prove it’s anything but. While one system in the game limits the player’s skill ceiling, it may also create complexity in the gameplay in other ways. As a result, the limits of skill ceilings in individual games is an interesting enough discussion, but I want to hone in on how mechanics focused on the individual player also define teamplay in unique ways. The impact of the individual player can make or break a team’s performance, especially when it’s a player who is pressed right up to the skill ceiling. Despite this, a team’s coordination can shut down a mechanically skilled individual just as easily as a mechanical outplay given enough drilling. Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev’s career up until recently highlights this quite clearly, since his team’s success has only recently started he had better teammates. With better individual players Navi became a better team, and that connection is key when discussing the skill ceiling for teams. Because much like individual players, there is a skill ceiling for teams as well, and the skill ceiling for a team is defined by what the individual can do within the game, for both better and worse, creating unique dynamics within a game.

To start explaining this, the best place to start is with an FPS that has been on everyone’s mind recently: Halo Infinite.  Historically the Halo franchise is known for its slow time to kill in comparison to other FPS titles. Counter Strike and Rainbow Six have one shot headshots, CoD has TTKs that can range from 2 to 0.25 seconds depending on the game and its affiliation to Warzone. Most shooters are quick, and have been trending towards being quicker. Standing against this trend is Halo. Halo’s TTK has remained slow, something that holds true with Infinite, but Halo further bucks the trend by getting even slower. Phillipgan has made a solid video explaining the effects of these changes within the context of the Halo franchise before Infinite that I would highly recommend giving a watch.

For a TLDR, the important takeaway from this is that Halo Infinite is a game where the optimal TTK and average TTK remain closer together than in other FPS’s, which has huge ramifications for the skill ceiling. When the optimal TTK is only a second or so faster than the average TTK it creates situations where players will be low health going into a second fight no matter if they aimed perfectly or just barely won the fight, meaning that it would be nigh impossible to win the second gunfight without a) some sort of advantage going in, or b) the enemy chokes and misses their shots. Now on the surface this choice by 343i limits the skill ceiling, since players can’t shoot their way out of situations consistently.  However, this design choice actually emphasizes other skills in the game because of the limits around gunskill. 

Gunskill isn’t as important because it can’t be, but positioning becomes even more critical, since you have to be able to force advantageous fights in order to account for the possibility of fighting multiple opponents. Similarly by positioning yourself well you can create opportunities to sneak in a melee, shortening your TTK, or being able escape if a second opponent shows up. In the context of a team positioning is even more important, since trade potential is a much bigger deal. Halving the time it takes to kill a spartan means shaving off a whole 1-2 seconds of time, which can prevent the opponent from securing optimal TTK. If it takes 3 seconds for optimal TTK with the Pistol, and 4.5 seconds for average, a second player on one side halves that average TTK to 2.25 seconds. It would prevent either player on that team from dying, since the opponent wouldn’t have enough time for even the optimal TTK against a single person, let alone two of them. (Those numbers are purely hypothetical, it’s probably not this drastic) So a player’s ability to position well becomes critical to the success of the team to prevent that very situation from happening to them. It forces players to ask themselves

• How often are you in positions for crossfires?
• Are teammates able to trade quickly?
• Are you taking safe and advantageous fights?

All these questions become more important to answer because of how influential the slow kill time is. In a game like Valorant you can have skilled players who only have aim, and have no idea how to actually play the game, and they can still find success despite such huge holes in their gameplay. This isn’t as possible in Halo because the TTK doesn’t allow aim to dominate a match like that. So while the individual’s gunskill is limited by the game, other aspects of their gameplay become that much more influential to the success of the team to get around that limitation.

Another aspect of the game that becomes important is the sandbox. Halo is an arena shooter, which means a core part of the gameplay is centered around items more powerful than your default weapons. Part of why the standard TTK in Halo is so slow is so that power weapons like the shotgun, sniper, and rocket launcher stand out as worthwhile items to pick up. In doing so a gunskill ends up being compartmentalized rather than being cut off at the knees. Players only have time to show off their aim while literally outgunning the opposition. Hitting those headshots becomes crucial for the sniper, but hitting a headshot with the battle rifle means nothing until shields are down. These fast killing power weapons and abilities like thrusters give players an advantage in gunfights, which as previously mentioned is critical to being able to multifrag or escape.

Going into a gunfight with an advantage increases your options, and if your opponent has no control over the sandbox they can do nothing to counter that. Because these items are so powerful, controlling the map and preventing the opponent from picking them up becomes crucial to a team’s success. Map control becomes arguably more important in arena shooters than in tac shooters, since giving up a sniper or rocket launcher can lead to a multifrag, which is inherently uncommon because of the game design. Since map control is so influential to a team’s ability to control power items, it effectively becomes the limiter on their ability to fully display mechanical ability. It’s harder to snowball one kill into another with the battle rifle, but the shotgun or overshield makes it easy to move from kill to kill to kill with no pause. Of course controlling the map is hard, and takes a high level of coordination from a team, making it a skill that the whole team has to have, not just one or two players, raising the skill ceiling and floor for the whole team. This makes teamwork a higher priority than mechanical skill than in Halo versus games like Valorant. That hotshot Valorant player I mentioned has a clear weakness despite their aim, and in a game like Halo that weakness costs a team much more than in a tac shooter. 

But Halo isn’t the only game that has systems like this, which both limit and unlock a player/team’s abilities, Overwatch is a game that limits the influence of individuals in interesting ways through the class lock. As a healer you cannot significantly influence the team’s damage output to truly turn the tide of a fight if the DPS player can’t deliver, but if you slack on healing even a little your team will lose exponentially quicker. Because of that the game becomes very dependent on teamwork, positioning, and resource management. Which forces all competitive teams to be well polished in these factors to overcome the limitations of the individual player. A weakness in the player is a weakness in the whole team. 

This is only a snapshot of how individual mechanics may not exclusively lower the skill ceiling of a game. It highlights that lowering the ceiling on a mechanic affecting an individual may not make a game easier, but simply make the complexity stem from forcing a team to overcome those limitations together rather than alone. I mean I didn’t even get into movement, which is a huge part of a player’s skill in Halo, but I simply don’t have the knowledge on that topic to talk about it beyond movement important. So what are your thoughts on Halo’s skill ceiling for players and teams? What about other games like Overwatch and Valorant? Let me know.