The Rise of Carry Mechanics
Watching the continuing development of the Halo franchise from afar I’ve seen a number of debate topics repeatedly arise among the community, one of the most pernicious of which is the issue of sprint as a feature in Halo.
The issue is simple - should sprinting be a part of the Halo combat sandbox, or not?
If you’re inclined to say ‘yes’ - how come? After all the heyday of the franchise never featured sprinting, and purists clearly object to their inclusion now. And if you’re adamantly opposed to sprint - why? The most popular games in the FPS genre have adopted a variety of new mechanics beyond what the Halo franchise started with (for example Sprint) - so why fight their inclusion now?
Rather than jump into the debate about whether sprint is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, I got to thinking about where the desire for that mechanic came from in the first place, and why there is an impulse to include it now.
And IMO the answer is a slow, inexorable trend towards the inclusion of ‘carry mechanics’ in every game type in the industry.
Carry Culture
The term ‘carrying’ in games seems to have arisen from the culture surrounding the the classic Warcraft 2 mod Defense of the Ancients which launched an entirely new genre of game - the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or MOBA (I use the term coined by Riot Games to describe the genre with apologies to Valve that has been trying to coin the alternate term ‘action RTS’ instead)
MOBAs are built around two teams of players facing off across a complex play area. Team sizes vary, but generally each side is comprised of five players. Both teams battle for control of the map while levelling up their in-game avatar and harvesting resources to buy specific treasures to equip them for battle.
Since MOBAs have their roots in real-time strategy games the mechanics of the genre are strongly tied to stuff that used to matter in the predecessor genre - elements like clicks per minute, ‘micro’ control over units through complex keyboard & mouse controls and ‘farming’ - the act of gathering as much gold as possible during the course of play, often under complex circumstances that require precise timing and judgement.
MOBAs are team games but everyone on the squad does not have the same job - over time a number of roles evolved for each spot on the roster. Over-simplifyng them for the sake of discussion, the roles are:
Top - a tanky character capable of operating away from the rest of the team
Mid - a powerful character with abilities that allow them to affect or control the battlefield
Jungle - a poweful attacker intended to attack enemies from ambush and harvest resources
Support - primarily defensive character whose job is to increase survivability of the rest of the team
Carry - a fragile character with the potential to deal massive amounts of damage to the enemy team
It’s the last entry that has had such a profound effect on current gaming culture and design because given ample time to level up and buy needed gear and, if played skillfully - the carry role could singlehandedly defeat the entire enemy team in battle, thus ‘carrying’ your team to victory.
Can Everybody Carry?
Since the carry role was formalized, most modern games have been designed to cater to carry players - they feature game mechanics built around impossibly high skill caps, game controls require incredibly high input speeds (APMs), and game types often rely on ‘outplays’ by individual players rather than coordinated actions by teammates.
This design philosophy makes sense if the goal is to create dramatic moments in high level pro play, where individual plays can become immortalized as snippets of video, or are commemorated in games in other ways.
But the obvious problem is that most players will never have the skill or drive to become carries for their team.
Instead I would argue that the inclusion of high skill cap mechanics immediately begins to divide your player base into the small percentage of players who are suited to pursuing carry mechanics, and the much larger percentage of players who are not.
This further divides the community into players who are naturally seeking teamplay versus those who play at a high level of individual skill and are expecting other players to perform in the same manner. And anybody who has ever been yelled at over live chat for being a ‘noob’ can tell you - that disconnect is not that much fun to deal with.
Can We Fix It?
A big first step in addressing this issue is identifying the goals of the design. If a game supports a rarified level of players who specialize in ‘carrying’, it might help to identify that up front so players understand what they are getting into.
Another potential solve might be to build a design around ‘windows’ - periods of time in the game where carry players could excel by unlocking high skill cap mechanics, etc. but then returning them to a more normal form of play.
The Original Question
Which brings me full circle to the issue of sprinting in Halo.
Over time I’ve watched a number of new mechanics get introduced to the Halo combat sandbox - sprinting, mantling, grappling hook - and I would argue that all of those features contribute to creating a ‘carry culture’ in Halo where previously one did not exist.
And I think that’s at the core of the objections of the player base - Halo used to be a multiplayer experience that was primarily built for the largest segment of the player base - the median of the bell curve in terms of skill, and one that put a high emphasis on teamwork and coordination.
But a high skill carry player who can snap in and out of ADS while swinging all over the map like Spider Man, melee attacking everybody from above doesn’t need a lot of help from their team.
And I think that’s kind of a shame.