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Halo |OT| HaloGAF Evolved
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
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No idea, struck me as odd too.
Invasion choked resources away from the shipping BTB maps. There was such a large hole in them, and such a lack of quality, that they had to try and fill it in with DLC. In highlighting the proportions of DLC devoted to each, you sort of proved the point. Development is a zero sum game: time and resources spent on one thing take away from another. Had the resources that went into Invasion maps been put into creating good BTB maps, BTB would have been good out of the box, instead of shipping with the worst BTB maps in series history.
I'm delighted 343 didn't try to shoehorn in Invasion into the classic maps. Would have been (another) waste of resources.
I believe she was responding to a troll.
ElzarTheBam
Member
bobs...onGaf
Member
That video just makes me want to play Metal Gear Solid. Damn you Elzar! Nice video man
Gabotron ES
Member
Damn nice vid!
ElzarTheBam
Member
I love the fan edit.
Metal gear is terrible!
Thank you.
Der Flatulator
Member
She should be good at character limit optimisations, given her role
Off/On topic. I was reading about character limits today... There's quite a lot going on behind the scenes!
ViewtifulJC
Banned
Sikamikanico
#1 Dad
StalkerUKCG
Banned
New Mombasa and New Alexandira Look AMAZING
I want to see Bro Slayer and Infection merged. It would make for some interesting gametypes, like Fat Kid.
Der Flatulator
Member
I did lol at Haunted's reply...
Edit: Replied.
Don't bother with an Invasion thread. There's a near 0% chance that you will find a map eligible for MM consideration, let alone a map good enough to actually make the cut.
There are three Invasion maps in existance that are of MM quality, and only one of them is polished. (Broadcast by HWM RJ, Overgrowth by AbleSir Thomas and Yarbird92, The Docks by Oakley HiDef)
Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Hemmorage, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla, Sandtrap (started as Invasion map), Last Resort
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Zanzibar (started as Invasion map), Coagulation, Headlong (started as Invasion map), Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder
Reach was par for the course on shipping BTB, it just so happened that Bungie actually finished and shipped the gametype intended for some of the maps this time. Invasion wouldn't have been "shoehorned" into Headlong. For multipurpose maps, Halo 2 only came with two (Coag and Waterworks), the others were only good for one sided objectives. And their remakes are still only good for one sided objectives, as Slayer Breakneck can attest to.
LOL. Cartographers having territories died once certain cartographers stopped participating. All the CCs are everywhere now.
edit: goddamnit that was supposed to be an edit into my last post. I got lost in my tabs.
That crosses over into the realm of opinion, though. If I were to start considering quality, Halo 2 would lose Burial Mounds instantly.
Zeouterlimits
Member
He did say lack of quality. And counting Boardward as a BTB map... I can't agree with that (even if officially it is considered one).
bobs...onGaf
Member
Look at the quality of Reach's BTB maps compared to the quality of BTB maps in the rest of the series. You might be right in that each game has had similar map counts in terms of BTB maps but in terms of quality Reach really dropped the ball. I would argue thats where the diverted resources really left they're mark.
There are other flaws with your argument, your pretty adamant to argue that the number of maps hasn't changed, but I dont see how that justifies anything. That sucked before and it sucks now. If anything after 3 games it makes it worse that they continued to make the same mistake instead of divert the resources into making more quality BTB maps. As it stands from the list you put out:
Only Paradiso seems like it was designed from the ground up with BTB in mind, Boneyard and Spire are clearly designed for Invasion and dont work well in BTB. Hemmorage is a remake (A pretty badly done remake). Boardwalk sort of works in BTB but its a stretch, its far from the kind of design you want or expect from a Halo BTB map. It certainly helps Ghaleons argument if Reach has dropped so low as to consider Boardwalk as a BTB map.
The Librarian
Banned
Bobs is right. To add to that, I'd take Sandtrap over any of Reach's BTB shipping maps.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
I'd happily trade all of Reach's maps, including DLC, for just Valhalla.
Boardwalk is not a BTB map. It was put there because there were not enough BTB maps. That's disingenuous at best; like calling The Pit a BTB map.
Spire and Boneyard are also not BTB maps - they are Invasion maps. They were shoehorned onto the BTB playlist because there were not enough BTB maps. Let's not pretend BTB and Invasion are the same thing, because they're not, and that's the entire problem we're talking about.
That means we're left with Hemorrhage (Halo 2 geometry rip) and Paradiso (unfinished map dressed up in Forge). That's two maps, one a geometry rip from a previous game, both set on the same space (Forge World). Two Forge World maps are not comparable to any previous Halo game; even Halo 1 had a better and more diverse pairing.
Thing is, even Invasion wasn't fully resourced: Boneyard was pulled from Campaign (a first for the series) because they didn't have enough resources to make even two Invasion maps from the ground up. It's sort of a red flag when Campaign geometry is being raided to make Multiplayer maps, especially your red hot showcase new mode. So really, we have only one Invasion map made for Invasion and one retrofitted Campaign space. When Invasion was concieved, and they realized they were only going to be able to make one Invasion map and two BTB (and only get to two by raiding Halo 2 and leveraging Forge to finish the other), the brakes on Invasion should have slammed on, hard.
Had Spire been abandoned and the resources put into making another (good) BTB map, we'd have had the same number as Halo 3 shipped with. Had Boneyard not come to be, maybe they could have spent time making Paradiso not terrible.
Even if you are charitable and lump Invasion maps into BTB, you're left with one Halo 2 geometry rip, one Campaign space, and two actual maps (one of which isn't fully built - it's dressed up in Forge!). And that's just quantity: Reach's BTB maps suck, hard, and are far and away the worst in the series. It clearly wasn't a focus in Reach, and Invasion clearly struggled to have enough content created to justify it existence.
The notion that Invasion didn't suck resources from BTB is laughable.
Tha Robbertster
Member
But most of Reach's maps sucked anyway. We have the cage, reflection and sword base, all bad maps and they aren't BTB maps.
I just think the overall quality of maps dropped with Reach. Bungie should have though about the Invasion maps playing well for other gametypes besides Invasion.
Alright. Remakes don't count?
Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla, Sandtrap
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Zanzibar, Headlong, Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder
Let's omit the maps that were made with Invasion in mind:
Reach BTB shipping maps: Paradiso, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder
For the final stroke, let's omit the ones that weren't made with BTB in mind, but were just large enough for BTB to function on them:
Reach BTB shipping maps: Paradiso
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder
The reason BTB gets less resources is because BTB is less played compared to the mainstay of Halo multiplayer, which is 4v4. Getting 10 BTB maps on the disc would be awesome, but then the 4v4 majority would be left with 2 unique maps that actually work well in 4v4. The idea that Bungie's numerous attempts at Invasion robbed us of BTB maps isn't well supported by the number of purely original BTB maps made for each game.
edit: for those playing along at home, what this post does is start with a list of maps, then eliminates more maps in each step, which is supported by Bungie's numerous Postmortems and post-release interviews. The lists are not exclusive to each other. If people are going to arbitrarily not count a Reach BTB map, then the response was to use their same restrictions on past games to see, how under the same conditions, how many maps would be counted.
lybertyboy
Thinks the Evil Empire is just misunderstood.
The point. It's way over there, bro. You're arguing against something that isn't being argued. Again.
That worked out so well for Gears of War 3..I mean it's the best game in their series and people aren't playing it. Funny thing too is a lot of their team members take a lot of feedback and implements it to the community liking and more people don't play.
(that wasn't a slam at Bungie/343i btw, 343i added NB and helped MLG and they have Ellis so I can't hate them<3)
Holy shit. :lol
You just missed every damn point on the page, and threw in some dishonest arguments on the side.
Yup.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
NVM =/
I need sleep.
I need sleep.
Uhhh, Gears doesn't have custom game browsing. Neither does it have a map editor that could be so beautifully taken advantage of with a custom game browser. Also, Gears is a less popular IP than Halo.
Wait, what. That post says Valhalla WAS intended for BTB.
I already answered this with the resources commited versus what everyone was actually playing part of my post. I'm not really interested in yelling the other side down.
That's why I embolden (I guess "Bolded" isn't proper.) dedicated servers.
Man,What I wouldn't do for that in Halo 4...
bobs...onGaf
Member
EDIT: Beaten, im just going to end this here and do something productive.
The Real Napsta
Member
OverHeat
« generous god »
You dont have the balls to do so? ;p Just kidding.
Gabotron ES
Member
My head hurts from all these discussions, can you guys leak H4 already?
The Librarian
Banned
I can't believe you just did that.
It'd be nice. But you'd have to figure out how to do it under Megalo.. or drop Megalo and have baked in gametypes. You'd have to do it by name only, pretty much.
Also, for the love of god. Don't repeat the same mistake Halo 2 Vista did and sort servers alphabetically by their gamertags by default. Unless they want a bunch of aaaa A Spam Halo 4 Server occupying the first 5 pages of results.
minasodaboy
Member
Frankie, David, 343, et.al.,
All I want for tomorrow/next week is something I can listen to on my new home theater set-up, very loudly.
Thanks and please don't disappoint.
All I want for tomorrow/next week is something I can listen to on my new home theater set-up, very loudly.
Thanks and please don't disappoint.
Gabotron ES
Member
Speaking of Megalo, it seems like 343 has all the rights over that feature (they released Team Hotshot), what are the odds they'll be using something similar to build gametypes in H4?
If they are smart, they make most of it available to the public on a per gametype basis, not how it's currently setup on a per playlist deployment basis. People like customization, and as much as Reach expanded on customization form Halo 3, it still left a lot to be wanted. Look at how many people were initially clamoring for a zone field that could set the location names by the radar. Then the stuff that isn't included out of the box could be added later via title update and demand.
User 73706
Banned
I would hope we'd get some baked-in gametypes this time like Slayer, Assault, etc. but then have a similar Megalo system to develop more Action Sack/Minigame-oriented gametypes. Which reminds me, I really hope Halo 4 introduces a bit more formal organization among maps/gametypes. It doesn't help that Forge World has most of our maps (minus things like MLG maps, etc). It'd be nice to at least be able to introduce one level of folders so we could do something like this:
MAPS:
Boardwalk
Countdown
[Forge World] (Then list the baked-in maps first):
-Asylum
-Paradiso
Aesthetic (things like the giant spartans or rube goldberg machines)
Casual (Simple gametypes that aren't outright minigames; infection, etc)
Competitive (For things like Refuge, Over's Asylum remake, custom MLG maps)
Invasion (self-explanatory)
Minigames (Action Sack sort of stuff)
[Racetracks] (Then list the maps in the folder):
Rainbow Road
Block Fort
Birdman
Even some basic, more quickly-accessible tagging system or adding a few folders for each map would be really useful, especially now that we can have pretty much a thousand Forge World maps.
I'd like to see it come back. Being able to push out new gametypes without a TU and without breaking LAN compatibility was an awesome idea.
But since 343 has no qualms about splintering LAN post-ship with TUs to add more gametypes, I'm not sure if they'd get much out of Megalo. I'd like to at least see an in-game editor for Megalo, like Timesplitter 3's campaign scripting editor. The best would be being able to build scripts on your PC and then upload to Reach or Halo 4 via XNA. Having gametypes at ship and having only those gametypes until Halo 5 comes out would feel like a step backwards in the evolution of Halo's functionality, IMO.
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