The Living Tribunal
Member
They removed armor lock.
You say that like it's somehow a bad thing.
They removed armor lock.
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.
Have you even played the previous installments for more than a week? I doubt it.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.
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.
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.
Other M.
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.
When Halo 3 was made free for all gold users, how did it's player population compare with Halo 4?
Bingo.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 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.
xxjuicesxx said: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.
Bungie has the magic touch.
The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.
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.
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).
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.
It was one of the worst additions.The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.
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....
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nah, they should've taken 60fs with simpler graphics. Sprint was a terrible addition.The only thing Halo 4 got right was adding sprinting. That's the only thing they should've taken from other games.
You say that like it's somehow a bad thing.
"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.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 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.
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.
It was extremely easy to fight against armour lock.
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.
It's moved on to Destiny.
I'll just leave this here.