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[The Living Tribunal]

They removed armor lock.

You say that like it's somehow a bad thing.

 

[minasodaboy]

New Coke.

 

[JaggedSac]

Yeah, Halo fans should play a 6 year old game while 343 makes games for people who don't like Halo. Worked so well for them with Halo 4

If you want Battlefield, play Battlefield. If you want sci-fi battlefield, there's Battlefield 2142.

Does Halo 3 age poorly? What aged? The graphics only? Maybe 343 will release an HD version on the Bone? Did the gameplay not age well? Just curious.

 

[Defect]

343 should have went with a yearly release cadence of slight graphical tweaks and new maps taking Halo 3 as a base. That's what I like in my sequels.

Have you even played the previous installments for more than a week? I doubt it.

Halo doesn't need to add killstreaks and perks to "evolve". Small things like POWERUPS ON THE MAP drastically change how the game is played. Adding Sprint negatively impacted the design of maps (Hurray for unnecessarily large maps) and messes up combat. I'm not going to go into detail mainly because members of HaloGAF can explain it way better than I can.

Does Halo 3 age poorly? What aged? The graphics only? Maybe 343 will release an HD version on the Bone? Did the gameplay not age well? Just curious.

Netcode and playlists are garbage. Lol AR starts on Valhalla.

 

[dmg04]

Bungie had the magic touch.
Best of luck to 343 on their next game.

 

[JaggedSac]

Have you even played the previous installments for more than a week? I doubt it.

Halo doesn't need to add killstreaks and perks to "evolve". Small things like POWERUPS ON THE MAP drastically change how the game is played. Adding Sprint negatively impacted the design of maps (Hurray for unnecessarily large maps) and messes up combat. I'm not going to go into detail mainly because members of HaloGAF can explain it way better than I can.

You can check out my playtime with the Halo games. Been JaggedSac for all of them. And I don't give a damn about what HaloGaf thinks.

 

[Conor 419]

Other M.

Outsourcing to Team Ninja was not a bad move, just an unfortunate one. They will bounce back from this, as Galaxy bounced back from Sunshine, as Zelda bounced back from the Panasonic titles.

And Halo? No, it's over. The IP will never live again.

 

[SkyTurnsRed]

Great campaign, atrocious multiplayer. Gave it away after realizing I'd never touch the multiplayer again.

 

[AdrianHD]

Does Halo 3 age poorly? What aged? The graphics only? Maybe 343 will release an HD version on the Bone? Did the gameplay not age well? Just curious.

I'm with you on this discussion.

Make games with only slight adjustments and put them out as sequels, people leave because it's not innovative enough, diehards will still complain about it because X gun shoots one bullet every .003 seconds instead of .002 seconds, and the series remains frozen forever.

Make a game with differences enough to try and garner a new crowd, diehards leave and say they want the old game back when nothing's stopping them from playing the game they still want, new crowds love the new changes but leave soon because there's just way too many experiences out to just stay on one game now-a-days, and your game is crucified as the one to kill the franchise.

It's a lose-lose. People want the same thing but they don't want the same thing. Even a game like Call of Duty, which to many outsiders think the game hasn't changed in the slightest gets hammered by diehards saying the changes on the game are too much.

Personally, I liked 4 in the beginning, but I had many problems with it. I loved Halo: Reach (it's my most played game this generation). I got bored of Halo 3 in not too much time. Halo 2 is my 100% number one game of all-time. And Halo 1 is still a great game to me. What happened? Time. Eventually you gotta cater to new people because the people like me who spent so much of their teenaged years playing Halo 2 are now in their twenties and we either don't have the patience for any fixes or we now have money so we can buy a bunch of different games instead of being forced on the same one all year. I'm sure Halo 5 will be fun, but the complaints will never end.

 

[JB1981]

When Halo 3 was made free for all gold users, how did it's player population compare with Halo 4?

Pretty sure the player population was higher.

 

[jamsy]

As someone who hasn't ever played Halo in multiplayer (I've played through all the campaigns only), what exactly is so wrong with it?

Cause I really enjoyed the Halo 4 campaign for the most part (aside from the idiotic decision to put most of the story in hard to find optional terminal things).

 

[Silphonica]

They made Halo of Duty to catch the CoD crowd, but the CoD crowd went back to CoD and the Halo fanbase was alienated, thus losing everyone in the process.

Bingo.

Halo isn't halo anymore, at least the multiplayer isn't.

In a desperate attempt to push new features, everything changed. Focus changed. In all honesty it all went up the shitter.

Core gameplay mechanics such as power weapons which created unique strategy developments and differentiated the way games were played compared to other fps games, were forced to be different. Map dimensions changed thanks to sprint, even the game aesthetic changed, which compared to Halo 1 and halo 2, sucked.

You'll find just as many h3 players now as h4.

Things are going to need to radically change for halo 5.

 

[Rev3rb]

This is the bottom line.

Juices over in the Community side once said something that described the fundamental problem with what 343 did in making Halo 4. To paraphrase, they were chasing a group of players they are never going to catch - CoD - and lost Halo fans along the way. Now they've got almost no one.

I loved Halo, passionately. It was the reason, alone, I bought a 360. I put more time into Halo 3 than any other game, ever, until that time. Nightly romps in matchmaking, GAF custom game nights, picture stories (and later, video) were swapped daily. I made the GAF OT's for the Halo 3 Beta, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Reach, Halo: CEA and Halo 4.

I gave Halo 4 away for free to a GAFer a few months after it came out, after not playing it for a few months before that. (Foolishly, I had bought the LE; I never redeemed the codes that came with it, and gave those away, too.) I'm buying a PS4 for next gen and will never own a new Halo game. The game is that bad.

343's first and biggest mistake was failing utterly to understand what made Halo, Halo.

Exhibit A: Instant respawn. Halo's combat is designed around a certain pacing. There's a cadence of combat, reprieve, shield recharge, and then re-engagement. Getting cleaned up by that guy you just killed because they respawned instantly, before your shields could recharge broke that cadence entirely.

Exhibit B: Global and Personal Ordnance. Goodbye, map control. Goodbye, rallying your team by securing that rocket launcher and taking out a vehicle. Goodbye, knowing what power weapons the other team has. Goodbye, any semblance or pretension of balance. Goodbye, fun.

Exhibit C: Flinch. Through the rise of CoD, Battlefield and other shooters, Halo has always been the game that prioritized combat clarity. It was the game that didn't screw with your ability to see during combat: no aim down sights, no strawberry jelly on the screen, no visual impairment from explosions. It was also that game that didn't add layers of interference and pushback to its weapon mechanics. Targeting reticles are stable as you move, (used to be) stable when firing, and stable when you were hit. The kill was learning how to use weapons, when to use them, and how to survive encounters of longer than normal duration.

Between the long range of the DRM and the addition of flinch, much of the combat was reduced to grappling with a bucking trageting reticle. That's not fun, or balanced, in any way. It's frustrating. It's my most hated addition to the game, over and above the horribleness that is....

Exhibit D: Perks. Prior to Reach, when you shot someone, or began an action, you could expect a certain action to follow it. I know I can four shot this guy; I know a grenade will strip shields and a head shot will kill. I know this dudes movement options, and that I have him cornered. I know if I get the jump on someone I have the advantage.

Enter perks, and all that goes out the window. When I EMP this vehicle, I wonder how effective it will be? When I engage this guy with the DMR, I wonder how stable his reticle is compared to mine? I wonder how fast this guy's shields recharge, or how fast he can reload, or how many shots he takes to kill? It breaks our ability to mange combat and make smart decisions, and reduces a lot of it to dumb luck. Shucks, I didn't think he had Stability on. Oh well! Better luck next time; maybe I'll run into some dudes where my perk selections give me the leg up next time.

And then they compounded perks, as other systems introduce problems. Hmm, adding the plasma pistol to loadouts totally breaks the vehicle balance. Let's add a perk to reduce the EMP stun! Let's add a mechanic like flinch - removing de-scoping for some reason - and then bring in a perk to partly offset it. Because balance or something.

Just one layer after another of decisions diametrically opposed to Halo's core combat design. Strip all of it away, and that core is pretty good. But you don't play the core, you play it all, and it was a terrible, unfun experience. The population flight looks like throngs of people buying the game, and then recoiling from it in response.

I've ignoring the campaign, the horrible UI, the awfulness that was Spartan Ops (though to be fair I only played the first three episodes) and the gimped feature set (RIP campaign Theater), not to mention the poor post-launch support (which Fyre covered in the superb OP). But those are surely factors as well.

I hope Halo 5 goes back to Halo's roots and is aimed at Halo fans rather than trying to poach features of other games. But those DLC perks do not inspire confidence.

.

Quoting for this page, great post.

 

[Defect]

I'll just leave this here.

Whenever new leadership takes over a company or product, a lot of people are worried. The workers might be wary of what kind of new boss they get, the fans might worry about what kind of new product they will receive and this is something that the new power in control needs to be self aware of. Ultimately you only go scrapping and overhauling in large quantities when the company or product you are taking over is failing and in the same vein you don;t scoop water out of a sinking ship. However Halo was no sinking ship. So why so much change? If you made a list of Halo "features" in some spredsheet program you would realize most of the checkmarks are in Reach and Halo 4, because those two games have added the most "stuff" As Bungie's swan song Halo Reach had every right to try new things and be the most different Halo. As 343's first full Halo game (Lets not count CEA really) lets realize that they probably needed to be a bit more moderate when changing the formula that has worked so well for so many years. You know possibly test the water first. The "more traditional Halo" that they mentioned they scrapped was probably the thing they should have stuck with while increasing features and the features powers they had within Halo. Which if you notice Halo 4 has less technical features than Reach and Halo 3. For example things that come right to mind are Halo 4 scrapped campaign scoring, skull effects, campaign timing for speedrunners, campaign theater, and a visible ranking system which every Halo with XBL has had.

As another person already mentioned if you look at the games MP population you notice the sharp decline of players. Some decline is expected but you now have the game peaking at 30K. Many times if you are on at night its very very low. Last night while I was playing it hit 6K. This effects my experience through playlist search times and quality of the matchup I receive. As a knowledgeable semi-skilled Halo player the chance of me and my friends getting a quality game is very very low. We usually are just trying to see at that point how much we can beat the enemy team by, not IF we can. This leads to some very non-challenging games without a true ranking system. Alright stealth brag over. The reason is because this game has introduced elements of CoD, and this cannot be denied. Instant Respawn, More one-shot overpowered weapons to reduce the importance of Halo's Shield/Health player dynamic, Personal and Global Ordnance to introduce more randomness and take the focus off map control as traditional Halos have always rewarded map control. These things are inherent beauty spots of the game that have been removed to pander to the masses to get CoD sales. That may have worked looking at the sales figures and I will never mention Halo 4 was a failure as a product, not even as a game. It was a good game, just not a good Halo!

Now lets talk about change. Change is inevitable, in life there are factors that you cannot control. Death, the rising taxes, your gut getting larger with every night gaming session you know should be spent on the elliptical. However the gaming world is different, its a magical world where programmers can control every little knob and lever of the world we play in. You technically could release Halo 2 and just cross out the title and put Halo 3 and re-release it. While Madden adds new features, the core game is still football a game that hasn't changed in forever besides a small number of rule changes. So every year a new one releases and every year players buy the game for the new player changes, the graphical enhancements, and possibly a new feature or two. Or you have CoD, a game that's stayed sort of true to its core gameplay besides the CoD4 to MW shift, and even Blops tries to alleviate that gap. Halo has done nothing to alleviate the changes it makes, they try and shoehorn a classic mode in Reach and Halo 4 and always fall sort of flat. Mainly because the core is so warped and changed you cant set options to make it feel like the past Halo's.

They constantly talk about how to make Halo more accessible to players and new players. This ends up catering to the masses of casual players who will play Halo for awhile. They will play through the campaign maybe once or twice, play through it with friends maybe once or twice, and maybe play through it a year or two later before the next game comes out so they can remember more about the game. They will step into MP for an average of 24.5 games* (*this number is completely made up) and then they will stop after winning 20% of their games and never care to notice the intricacies of everything they've just played. Then they will say oh yea "that game was fun". Meanwhile you have hardcore players playing a game that wasnt designed with their needs in mind, and these players now probably make up a much higher percentage of the people who are still on your game night after night. The CoD players left the week after Halo 4 was released when Blops II came out, you can even see the sharp decline of players right after Blops release on the Halo population charts. You can see the Christmas spike that lasted a week and you can see other small bumps that are mostly weekend and DLC bumps, but besides these bumps its been a game of pure decline.

Another note now that players can choose loadouts with perks, AA's, and everything that is locked behind unlocks. You actually have to grind to level up and unlock gameplay altering abilities. This means a kid at SR-130 the highest experience ranking has every ability unlocked in multiple loadouts. You can switch loadouts throughout a game. So this person essentially has more things available to him in game than a player who just started does. Gameplay altering abilities should never be in Halo. The only thing keeping a player from beating another player is his knowledge and skill. If a kid comes home and gets to play eight hours of Halo 4 all week and I have to be at work come home make dinner and put the kids in bed and then I finally get two hours to sit down at night and play I shouldn't be penalized before I even pick up that controller. Unlocking of items needs to be purely aesthetic.

Also maps, because of the fact players can have two mobile AA's at once. Sprint is now default and then you can have say jetpack, you now have much more mobility and abilities all at once. This is too much. It makes larger maps feel smaller so Halo now has to have all these large maps, and what small maps are there Haven and Abandon? Then they released the first DLC which was once again all large maps!? Really!? Give us some arena maps like Halo has always had! Halo has always been about sort of knowing what your enemy can do and predicting and analysing what hes going to do based on that essential assumption. You no longer can do that though because there are so many abilities and variables players can have and you never know if they just got some random ordnance drop that gave them a sniper that can one shot even if they hit your body? Really!?, you are more playing rock paper scissors guessing what he has against what you chose at spawn. Nobody wants their gameplay that close to a gamble.

So lets stop catering to the casuals who leave because you've removed all depth and skill gap so they could play, let people learn the game figure out what works what doesnt let them evolve their skill and feel great about it, let them rank up to 50 and let them say "I am now good at Halo!" and feel proud of their accomplishment. Lets create a game with competitive players in mind. Lets release a game with a ton of smaller maps and maybe 2-3 large maps. Then your first DLC can be 2 small and 1 more large and continue in that fashion. Lets focus less on having the players fix your map problem by using Forge World and subsequently getting less than par maps into MM that effects everyone's experience when they play. Lets bring back campaign theater and scoring for communities like High Speed Halo. Lets get this game back into MLG so people can watch tournaments and play Halo professionally again. Lets have a HaloTV feature where when we dont want to play we can stop in and watch preloaded files of good games recently played, lets be able to chat about it too, lets be able to stream to JTV or Youtube from within the game. Let us remember that you can keep a game true to its roots and have great sales like Madden. Halo 2014, The next great Halo, HALO game, not CoD. Halo.

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

Personally, I was one of the people that was excited to know that a fresh team was going to be taking the Halo reins. I wanted them to try new things, and I believed that ironically the people who wanted the franchise to stay the same were the actual ones who wanted Halo to turn into Call of Duty. Stagnation, staleness and playing it safe is what Call of Duty fell into, the game is the same but the magic is gone. Sure, they found something amazing and wanted to stick with it, but that's the path I didn't want Halo to follow.

It's easy for the hardcore fans to blame those that wanted change because of the end result. Halo 4 wasn't a great game, the multiplayer was a mess.

Loadouts don't work, but for a different reason than I think most people believe. They empower the player to the point where the pickup weapons have to be more powerful. What we got as a result was horrible close quarter combat. Since the best loadout weapons were long range, the close quarter pickup weapons had to be powerful as hell to match up. Shotgun's kill range is like 15 feet as opposed to point blank, needler kills in under 2 seconds, the good loadout weapons destroyed any balance.

Which actually brings up another thing that I think the hardcore players have wrong. I think Halo is best when long range rifles are pickup only, no br's at spawn. I know that goes against the whole mlg thing, but starting with a pistol/assault rifle and keeping a limited number of long range rifles around seriously helped the balance. Maybe if they made a fun assault rifle for once, others would agree. When everyone's shooting range is 500 feet from the get-go, I think it seriously compromises the movement and close range combat of the game. I enjoyed Halo the most when players were constantly moving, able to be relatively out in the open without fear of immediate death.

I'll give the hardcore players this though, it worked to add the br starts in Bungie games because the maps were designed around close quarters combat, which happened to limit the power of longer range weapons. Halo 4 was designed around having huge open areas because of player's increased range at start, which basically screwed everything up.

Sprinting is something that I didn't disagree with. Once again though in my mind, the maps weren't designed well around it. Sprinting changes the movement dynamic which has potential to make a game more interesting, but I don't believe that potential was implemented correctly. I can't really explain why there, it just seems that the pieces didn't fit like they do in some fps's.

I'll stop there cause I know people are aware of most of the issues in Halo 4 mp. The thing is, even though I was disappointed by the game, I'm not so jaded as to think that 343 can't turn around and make a great game. They just need more of their own identity rather than splitting themselves between COD and Halo, two fps's that don't meld well because they excel at such starkly different things.

 

[LowSignal]

As a HUGE Halo fan the things that bother me about Halo 4 are

1: They tried to be like Call of Duty with perks and drop packages and it stopped being Halo (The biggest issue IMO)

2: DLC fragmented the community too much, I like how before in Halo 3, after so many months the DLC was available to everyone.

3: Single player was good but the story should have been explained better IN GAME.

 

[TacticalFox88]

The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.

 

[nictron]

Bungie has the magic touch.

Fixed that for ya.

 

[Poker Face]

The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.

lol sprint doesn't work in Halo, it's one of the WORST things they've added.

 

[Omega]

Make a game with differences enough to try and garner a new crowd, diehards leave and say they want the old game back when nothing's stopping them from playing the game they still want, new crowds love the new changes but leave soon because there's just way too many experiences out to just stay on one game now-a-days, and your game is crucified as the one to kill the franchise.

lol

Yes, so let's make a game that won't cater to the "diehards" who will continually play the game for months and years and instead let's make a game that's like every other shooter where the playerbase drops a month after release.

Maybe the diehards will bitch and complain, but guess what, we'll actually play the game. Meanwhile, while you guys get your "new experience" "(that's just a BF/CoD/etc with Halo skins) that you've been asking for, you guys leave at the first opportunity.

Most "diehards" didn't like Halo 3 because of stupid shit they did as well. But guess what? Four years after the game came out Halo 3 was still pulling at leask 40k daily. As seen by the OP, Halo 4 isn't even close to that only a year after release.

 

[AdrianHD]

As someone who hasn't ever played Halo in multiplayer (I've played through all the campaigns only), what exactly is so wrong with it?

Cause I really enjoyed the Halo 4 campaign for the most part (aside from the idiotic decision to put most of the story in hard to find optional terminal things).

• Weapon drops. The game would random spawn weapons on the map in an attempt to dissuade camping. This didn't pan out well though. Control of the map was more random and it never seemed to work in anyone's favor the way a regular fixed weapon spawn would work.
• Instant spawn. This gave players a chance to spawn back in a few seconds as opposed to a potential 5-8 seconds like previous games. It was meant to quicken the pace of the game, but instead it backfired and made a lot of encounters almost raging. You could go on a spree and kill someone only for them to come back and flank you sometimes before you can fully heal.
• Loadouts. It was meant to make the game more diverse, but it made it a guessing game as to what powers you actually had outside the loadouts. Someone could have a loadout that would make stalling their vehicle useless as it would be up before you can shoot it again. Or someone could be off the radar. Yadda yadda. I might get those wrong since I stopped playing before I could see everything there was.
• Maps. Maps were just too few and far between. I loved Haven, I'm a sucker for small symmetrical maps, but it was the most played one because it was the only of its kind. I think there were 6 or 7 maps if I recall correctly. We need more.
• Weapons. Weapons weren't balanced correctly. The boltshot, which was like a pistol but could be charged up to be as strong as shotgun pretty much demolished anyone. There was a gun that was a one-hit kill from anywhere on the body. And a few more off-balances. I don't have time to list them all.

 

[AdrianHD]

lol

Yes, so let's make a game that won't cater to the "diehards" who will continually play the game for months and years and instead let's make a game that's like every other shooter where the playerbase drops a month after release.

Maybe the diehards will bitch and complain, but guess what, we'll actually play the game. Meanwhile, while you guys get your "new experience" "(that's just a BF/CoD/etc with Halo skins) that you've been asking for, you guys leave at the first opportunity.

Most "diehards" didn't like Halo 3 because of stupid shit they did as well. But guess what? Four years after the game came out Halo 3 was still pulling at leask 40k daily. As seen by the OP, Halo 4 isn't even close to that only a year after release.

But those diehards eventually move on in general as well. And let's be fair, you release a game that is nostalgically remembered fondly to a huge crowd of millions for free, I'd be surprised if it didn't pass Halo 4. Halo 4 took a nosedive, for sure. But Halo 3 being free wasn't a big feat in pulling in the numbers it did.

 

[Defect]

The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.

It was one of the worst additions.

 

[Thug Waffle]

there are some god-tier posts in this thread but we all know that no matter how right some of you are, 343 isn't going to step up and deliver. they just won't.

i mean, these guys put flinch in halo. flinch. halo.

Spoiler

dear friggin god will someone at 343 read these posts and show them to your teammates? if not for halo's sake, then do it for the future of arena shooters. plezz.

 

[excowboy]

I can't speak to MP - I simply didn't have the time to invest in it for Halo 4, although I played my fair share of H2 and Reach. However, the campaign was really really poor for my money.

I see a number of people saying at least 343 cranked out a good looking game - and it certainly was - but there are also a number of people complaining about the lack of scale and the corridor nature of the level design, and I'm pretty sure these two things are related.

I thought the campaign was a real mess - boring levels, boring enemies, a very poor story told with even worse exposition

Spoiler

('AI's only live for X years - I'm X-1 years old!')

- when they even bothered to include any

Spoiler

('Uh-oh! It's the Didact!')

.

I was also really looking forward to Spartan Ops - I thought it could be something really forward thinking when I read about the concept. Instead it was just you on a map with infinite lives where you pressed X to spawn enemies, sandwiched with some - admittedly very pretty - cutscenes. And that was meant to replace the tactics and tension of Firefight?

As some others have said, Halo is why I owned an Xbox and why I now own a 360, but I can't see it being a reason to own an XBone

 

[Mass Effect]

Wow, that was a great OP. And I think you're right about one thing in particular; I don't think Halo will ever be as big as it once was. That's not to say it still won't be popular, it most certainly will be. But I doubt it will sell as well or have the online presence it once had.

I didn't actually mind some of the changes in Halo 4 (sprinting, the abilities that carried over from Reach), but the awful weapons balancing and streak system just awful. Yeah, they did eventually fix some of it, but by the time they did I had stopped playing and no longer really care anymore.

I have a three day weekend coming up with literally nothing planned. I'd have to get all info, dates and details for all four games (plus the PC version) in order and make sure facts are legit.

I could write a fucking Mama Robotnik thesis style OP about Gears and the growing pains it's been through. It would be overkill.

We'll see....

You should go through with it. Gears suffered a very similar fate and I'm sure it'd be a great read.

 

[Omega]

But those diehards eventually move on in general as well. And let's be fair, you release a game that is nostalgically remembered fondly to a huge crowd of millions for free, I'd be surprised if it didn't pass Halo 4. Halo 4 took a nosedive, for sure. But Halo 3 being free wasn't a big feat in pulling in the numbers it did.

Halo 3 wasn't free until 2013, 6 years after the game released. Four years after Halo 3 came out was 2011, way before Games with Gold was even a concept.

 

[cormack12]

Never really liked Halo except 1. Just came in to say it was a really well constructed and informative OP. Thank you.

 

[FunkyMunkey]

Ghaleon dropping truth bombs about Halo, as usual.

343 took a fat, steamy dump on the franchise and didn't listen to a goddamn thing the community warned them about prior to release. There were droves of people providing input and concern, only to be met with bullshit from 343 about how they "know what makes Halo, Halo" and pretty much with a 'be quiet and wait' mentality.

Well gee whiz, would you look at that. The people who have been Halo super-fans for a decade actually *GASP* have a good idea about what makes it fun. But let's not listen to them, right 343?

I could write up another wall right now, but I'll just leave it simple. The main reason I got a 360 was Halo 3. The main reason why I'm not getting an Xbox One is because of Halo 4.

Same here.

 

[Truant]

Halo 4 just was. Totally unremarkable in every way. What a shame.

 

[Conor 419]

"Maester Theomore, tell them! A thousand years before Halo 4, the promise was made, and oaths were sworn in the Ark, before the old gods and the new. When we were sore beset and friendless, hounded from our homes and in peril of our lives, Halo took us in and nourished us and protected us against our enemies. The genre is built upon the philosophies Halo gave us. In return we swore that we should always be their fans. Halo fans!” They killed Lord Hood and Lady Cortana and the Master Chief. He was our Chief! He was brave and good and 343i murdered him. If Destiny will avenge him, we should play Destiny!"

 

[LTWheels]

Game franchises rise and fall all the time. Maybe Halo's time is over?

Just like how the beginning of this generation marked the end of Medal of Honour as a top game.

Like how the appeal of COD is starting to wane as we enter the next generation.

 

[Hindle]

Game franchises rise and fall all the time. Maybe Halo's time is over?

Just like how the beginning of this generation marked the end of Medal of Honour as a top game.

Like how the appeal of COD is starting to wane as we enter the next generation.

The games will always sell 8m or 9m per game, but if MS want the series to be competitive in terms of multiplayer, then they need to start listening to the fans.

 

[Conor 419]

Game franchises rise and fall all the time. Maybe Halo's time is over?

Just like how the beginning of this generation marked the end of Medal of Honour as a top game.

Like how the appeal of COD is starting to wane as we enter the next generation.

Mario, Zelda, GTA and Metal Gear solid have never fallen and they've been around twice as long as Halo has. Why? Because they are the few IP that have responsible, ungreedy companies looking after them. Hence why Halo should be sold to Nintendo, Rockstar or Konami immediately. Even if they were to do nothing with it for 20 years, it would be better off in their hands.

Whether you're a Rare fan, a Halo fan or a fan of any Microsoft IP, Microsoft have done nothing but generate absolute cold disdain from their fans, and it WILL catch up on them with the Xbox One.

The games will always sell 8m or 9m per game, but if MS want the series to be competitive in terms of multiplayer, then they need to start listening to the fans.

We'll see with Halo 5, HAR.

 

[Karl2177]

I've written quite a few critiques of Halo 4 and 343i, if anyone wants to read them here they are:

Halo Waypoint before Halo 4's release.
Halo Waypoint about a year after release.
Halfway through Spartan Ops' first season critique.
Issues with custom classes.
My idea of what classic Halo is versus what Halo 4 is.
(If you only read one, this one pertains to this thread the most) My theories about the development of Halo 4.

I could write up another wall right now, but I'll just leave it simple. The main reason I got a 360 was Halo 3. The main reason why I'm not getting an Xbox One is because of Halo 4.

 

[TUSR]

God damn halo 3 is godly.

 

[feel]

The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.

Nah, they should've taken 60fs with simpler graphics. Sprint was a terrible addition.

 

[Recall]

You say that like it's somehow a bad thing.

It was extremely easy to fight against armour lock. Or it at least needed the player to think on their feet so yeah I can see that being a bad thing but it was always fun to go up against as an avid stealth shield user.

Halo 4 multiplayer is bland.

 

[Warm Machine]

They made a great game but 3-4 CoD games have simultaneously eaten up the MP FPS player base on 360.

You guys out way too much stock into balance and gameplay design with MP games as though people really care when they do drop in drop out MP gaming. People want to play what everyone else is playing because it ensures fast matchups. Also sci-fi is less appealing than boots on the ground face in the mud conventional warfare.

 

[Butane123]

All I know is that the thought of Halo 3 being on the 360 made the console an instant buy for me, while Halo 5 isn't even registering on my radar at all. I was just so, so disappointed with Halo 4 that it just crushed any optimism I had about the series going forward.

 

[Hydranockz]

"Maester Theomore, tell them! A thousand years before Halo 4, the promise was made, and oaths were sworn in the Ark, before the old gods and the new. When we were sore beset and friendless, hounded from our homes and in peril of our lives, Halo took us in and nourished us and protected us against our enemies. The genre is built upon the philosophies Halo gave us. In return we swore that we should always be their fans. Halo fans!” They killed Lord Hood and Lady Cortana and the Master Chief. He was our king! He was brave and good and 343i murdered him. If Destiny will avenge him, we should play Destiny!"

This thread was a lot more pleasant before you posted tripe like this. The lack of salt until now was testament to the fact that no one hates 343i. There was just looking back, acceptance of the facts and looking to the future with a sense of 'hope'. Then you waltz in and spout your shit about ODST of all games being the downfall.

 

[NullPointer]

They made Halo of Duty to catch the CoD crowd, but the CoD crowd went back to CoD and the Halo fanbase was alienated, thus losing everyone in the process.

This.

I'd also add:

- They made multiplayer much easier to jump into and experiment with for new players. But they never made removing those training wheels part of the progression system, and introduced hardcore playlists too late.

- Promethean enemies just aren't as dynamic to fight as the covenant, and AI complexity overall seems to have taken a hit.

I still loved multiplayer, and still think Halo 4 is a great game, but they did drop the ball on some things and lost some of their audience in the process.

 

[Diprosalic]

Halo 4 was so bad that sometimes i think they did it intentionally. I can't believe that humans would make Halo 4 and think it's awesome.

I mean it's like they made a chart with everything that makes Halo good and then decided to do none of those things.

 

[Conor 419]

Oh, and the crown jewel in all of this.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/32062/if-we-lose-our-way-with-halo-we-lose-our-way-with-xbox-microsoft/

"If we lose our way with Halo, we lose our way with Xbox"

Perhaps the only wise words delivered from that awful company, how poetic that Halo 4 and the Xbox One coincided so ungraciously.

This thread was a lot more pleasant before you posted tripe like this. The lack of salt until now was testament to the fact that no one hates 343i. There was just looking back, acceptance of the facts and looking to the future with a sense of 'hope'. Then you waltz in and spout your shit about ODST of all games being the downfall.

If you are looking forward now, of all times, with hope, after what has just happened with the Xbox One disaster. Then you are absolutely, unconditionally and unequivocally deluded.

 

[Timu]

I stopped playing it's MP quickly, I just seem to like Halo 3 and Halo Reach's multiplayer more.

 

[The Living Tribunal]

Mario, Zelda, GTA and Metal Gear solid have never fallen and they've been around twice as long as Halo has. Why? Because they are the few IP that have responsible, ungreedy companies looking after them. Hence why Halo should be sold to Nintendo, Rockstar or Konami immediately. Even if they were to do nothing with it for 20 years, it would be better off in their hands.

Another quality post from the guy who brought you If you think about it, isn't the Wii U more powerful than Xbox One?

Please keep your irrational BS out of the thread.

It was extremely easy to fight against armour lock.

Armor lock just completely broke the flow of gameplay, i'm not sad it's gone.

 

[hoos30]

I have clients who pay a lot of money for analysis as good as this OP.

 

[Shosai]

That seems like much adieu about nothing. The Halo 4 multiplayer dropoff seems pretty typical for any AAA shooter in this day and age.

Also, I think you're ignoring the fact that Halo 3's multiplayer community had a much longer lifespan - because 6 years ago there wasn't as much competition with other Xbox Live shooters. There weren't 5 Call of Duty games and 2 other Halo games on the 360 to keep the userbase split up.

Also, you seem weirdly hung up over the fact that a map pack was made accidentally free for a limited time, while complaining that 343 didn't admit to making a mistake-while at the same time linking to tweets in which they admit to making a mistake

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

The hyperbole is amusing in this thread. Halo has had one game that's received mixed reaction and the series is doomed. The franchise will continue to sell millions regardless of quality as the series gains new fans just as old fans leave.

Where are the new fans that are going to replace the people that left MP here?

People think big IP's can do whatever they want to and get away with it. To a large extent its true. Halo 5 will still sell crazy, GT will still sell like crazy, Smash will still sell like crazy. However why go against your fans who have stuck with you from day one. The ones that will continue playing your game years after its released despite other games like COD being released.The ones that made the franchise as popular as it is.

Feedback is essential with these long running franchises as they have to stay fresh and still accommodate their fans' wishes.

Whats happened to Halo is not irreversible but its certainly tainted right now.

It's moved on to Destiny.

I have to admit the gunplay in Halo 3 was fucking amazing. To this day I have never played a shooter that had felt so good. I hope Destiny has the same gunplay.

 

[Doran902]

I'll just leave this here.

That was a really good read, it was well thought out and I agree with it for the most part.