Multiplayer Balance in Campaign

Installation:

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  • []Navigate to the MCC Root Folder > halo1 > maps.

  []Backup the Campaign map files (all are titled with a letter followed by two numbers. Ex: a10.map).

  []Unzip the downloaded maps folder, then override all the files in the MCC Halo 1 maps folder with the new ones.

  []Launch MCC with anti cheat turned off.

  []Launch the Built-In Halo: CEA Campaign.

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  I made this to challenge myself in two ways:

  • []Learn how to use the Editing Kit.

  • See what the Campaign would be like if the entire thing was closer to a Multiplayer match.

    Halo: Combat Evolved is arguably the most balanced of the entire series. With that said, I wanted to see if I could change that balance to something different, but still fair. Needless to say, I got my answer. Here is what I changed.

    First is the damage scale. It makes since to have enemies deal more damage while you deal less the further up the difficulty slider you go (actually, it doesn't - but I digress). However, this would never fly in a "multiplayer" setting, so this had to go.

    Enemies also have their rate of fire scaled based on difficulty. I left this intact, because it can be argued that a skilled player would undoubtedly have a faster rate of fire than a new one. (I also needed the difficulty select to do SOMETHING).

    The Marines are borderline useless in the vanilla campaign. There is no single culprit to blame this on, just overall bad design. Since this is a Multiplayer balance, we need teammates who actually help with the objective. I started by increasing their health & armor to keep them in the fight longer. I also made them immune to friendly fire because they seemed to flag each other about as much as the Covenant.

    For some reason, Bungie decided to make Marines flinch every time they are shot. I toned down this "feature" by removing the damage bleed on their armor (damage that skips the armor and hits the health directly). Now they will only flinch after their armor is depleted. I think this is fair, considering that the Covenant only flinch on health damage as well.

    Speaking of damage, both allies and enemies alike only deal a percentage of their weapon's damage (the percentage is different depending on the actor variant). I went through every actor variant in the game and made them deal full damage with their weapons. This makes Flood Combat Forms with shotguns absolutely insane. Too insane. To be fair, you get one-tapped by shotguns in Multiplayer too. But still, I had to tune them down to half-damage to make The Library bearable. I also lowered their max firing distance, so they hopefully won't use it as a psudo-sniper anymore.

    Another exception to this is the Sentinel beam. Even with the F