Here is my idea for a horde mode. This could be offline with split screen or online.
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Players select their class before launching into matchmaking.
Every player starts with no skills unlocked and no weapons (just like the opening mission of the game). At the close of every round, you unlock the next node. You only unlock nodes by completing levels (yes, this means that fireborn wouldn't be available until after you have completed 26 rounds, scrubs. use radiant skin....seriously). If you switch subclasses, the new subclass starts at zero. So, if you are halfway through sunsinger and then want to use stormcaller, you would have to level stormcaller up by completing additional rounds. You could potentially level all three subclasses completely, but that would require completing 81 rounds. Who knows if the difficulty would allow that?
For weapons, they would drop from enemies in the level. You have to melee kill in the first round, but enemies will drop engrams just like in the game. They will start dropping white engrams, but as the difficulty increases, the drop rate for higher quality gear increases. Also, the light level of dropped items will increase as the difficulty increases. Common and rare items would drop off of any enemy, legendaries would only drop off of major enemies, and exotics would only drop off of ultra enemies. Ultras would spawn at the end of certain rounds. Ultras would be guaranteed to drop a legendary for each player, but exotics would still be RNG.
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This is a very rough framework of what I think could be a very fun horde mode. Let me know what you think and what improvements could be made.
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Make it like firefight mode on halo reach