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Halo |OT15| Beta-tested, GAF approved

T

Twilight Gap

Member
Madness said:
But therein lies the problem with almost all custom loadouts games. You can't really balance it. Some weapons are inherently better and that's what everyone will pick.

In CoD, it was things like the 1887's, the SMG's, etc.

One weapon will inevitably be better and that's what everyone will use, so it completely gets rid of the point of loadouts. When you have a DMR and boltshot why use anything else, except for one or two key situations?

You switch it up with AR starts, BR starts. But you take into account the map, the game type etc.

You want to switch it up? Things like elite slayer did it. Give you only covenant weapons etc.

The battlefield determines the outcome of the match, not the menus.
Click to expand...

AR starts suck though. If we're just going to do AR/BR starts then the sandbox needs to be shrunk by 60%. There's no point in having so much redundancy if you don't ever get to use it.
 
U

User 73706

Banned
Idea for loadouts.

Battle Rifle / Assault Rifle / Frag x1 / Sprint

Carbine / Storm Rifle / Frag x1 / Thruster Pack

Light Rifle / Suppressor / Frag x1 / Double Jump
 
X

xxjuicesxx

Member
A 3 Legged Goat said:
AR starts suck though. If we're just going to do AR/BR starts then the sandbox needs to be shrunk by 60%. There's no point in having so much redundancy if you don't ever get to use it.
Click to expand...

Yea but the redundancy is mostly for campaign, why would their be Human weapons if you are super far into a Covenant ship for instance? Also if Elites are in MP you need to include the Covenant weaponset.

So yea you can spawn in with AR+BR so you can immediately defend yourself, and lets face it the first 5-10 seconds of a Halo 3 respawn you were checking around for a Battle Rifle or upgrade to that AR, and thats seconds of poor gameplay. Especially if you consider the BR and AR were and have always been the most popular weapons regardless of starting weapon choice, so just give both and you can make a better game.

Upgrades are sniper.rockets , camo, invis powerups, and then theres horizontal upgrades that are just as useful as those two starting weapons but in different situations. Like for instance perhaps you can scatter DMR if it shot slower but farther in H5 around the map so depending on the map and what kind of player you are a DMR would be better than a BR to you but other players might pass it over.

And thats where the diversity comes in. Someone might enjoy the needler over the AR, or the plasma rifle would take longer to kill with but cause a slight stun effect to slow you a bit, so theres another choice or drop it for the plasma pistol and try noob combo.
 
A

Arnie

Member
Yep, fantastic post by Henery.

The ending particularly resonated because I know, I, for one, won't be making the same mistake again. I've seen enough. I've played enough. I still feel completely robbed.
 
T

Twilight Gap

Member
You know, thinking about this talk about weapon balance and stuff just reaffirmed how apathetic I've become about the whole thing. Everything that I've wanted Halo to be is now being done in Destiny. The world, the customization, the interaction - things that either wouldn't make sense in Halo or end up messing it up now have a home.

Halo really should just stick to what made it unique. Get rid of these things that are trying to attract CoD players, because those players want the game that does it best. Keep being the best Arena shooter you can be, and if people start leaving then maybe it's because they're tired of Arena shooters.

I am.
 
Computer

Computer

Member
The Henery said:
Oh yes, absolutely, 100 percent, without question. The other day I was going to make a quick post: "Every time I hop on Halo 4, I'm repeatedly astonished at the continuing success of Infinity Big Team Slayer". Once I thought about it however, I realised that iBTB's success makes complete sense. Its continued success, population-wise, is the residual effect of Halo 4's launch physique.

There are vast, vast, numerous amounts of videogamers who enjoyed the original Halo trilogy. The PS2 dominated that console generation but had it not been for Halo CE's foundational pillar in the Xbox's lauch, and Xbox Live's perfect launch partner in Halo 2 then the Xbox would have gone the way of the Sega Saturn or Jaguar, forgotton and completely stomped into anonymity by the PS2. Halo 3's years at the top of the Live charts and respectable (for a years old game) subsequent tussle with COD releases bore out that there were still many, many gamers who enjoyed normal Halo gameplay.

Then Halo Reach happened and a lot of gamers who had nine years worth of gameplay muscle memory invested in Halo are thrown by having to stop shooting in the middle of a battle in order for their shots to be accurate. They have moments of dizzying frustration when a player they would have killed in a given situation in the previous three titles suddenly activates an invincibility button. They are killed by players who can suddenly fly over their heads from spawn and the game doesn't offer them a Y axis sensitivity to accomodate these new features. They enter Team Slayer, a safe bet of a playlist in the previous two titles and half of the maps are a turgid, mono-grey eyesore that are all visually alike and don't play particularly well. They go to BTB, a favourite for so many in H2 and H3 and there is not a single, non-forge map custom built for the mode, instead playing on built-for-an-entirely-different-mode horror shows like Spire and Boneyard. They actually get put into BTB SWAT on Boneyard, spawn Red stairs, and are repeatedly spawn killed in the open by a 3x zoom, single shot precision rifle.

These players think Halo Reach is not a very fun Halo game. They don't like the changes, they don't like the poor selection of maps, amongst other things. They look around for other places to put their gaming time; Black Op's releases on the back of three successful predecessors and, crucially, doesn't mess around with what made those games popular in the first place. It identify's a rivals strength of meta-features (Halo's theatre and social file sharing capabilities) and implements its own theatre which in many ways improves upon Halo's version and then offers players the social sharing side of it, not on a dev website or by jumping through hoops in game but through free rendered uploads to probably the most visited website on Earth in Youtube. Many of the gamers put off by Halo's strange new direction (no 1-50 wtf? Timing shots and no BR wtf? You can spawn with camo now wtf?) decide to go where a lot of their friends went, a safe, you know what you're getting deal in COD. Lots of them also get into Battlefield 3, a game that knows what it does best, very large scale military battles, is somewhat unique in the FPS landscape and sticks to it.

Fast forward to October 2012 and these players who loved the original trilogy but checked out with Reach, they see the Halo 4 PR train in full swing. "Oh hey, look, the Master Chief's back" they say. They remember paying the same price for ODST as they did for Halo 3 but ODST didn't have proper multiplayer nor the Chief. They remember paying full price the following year for Reach, which again didn't have the Chief, and being put off by the weird, unexpected things in the multiplayer. So they see the Chief and they associate him with the last game he was in, Halo 3, that game that they and their friends had lots of awesome times with. So they look forward to Halo 4's release because hey, Chief's back, so Halo will be normal again right?

This is where one goes back to the point about Halo 4's launch 'physique'. The launch state of a game is arguably its most important. It is where the vast majority of players who don't read forums and gaming press etc get their idea of a games identity and the game developers intent for the series. Many of those players that Reach lost are back for Halo 4 in launch week, eager to give the franchise another shot.

They load up the game and tentatively enter War Games ("I think this is the multi, guys"). The party lead and their buddies look for a playlist they remember loving, Team Slayer, but there is no sign of it. "Just pick the top one, come on party leader!". So they enter Infinity Slayer. They play five hypothetical games. The voting for these five games goes 'Adrift, Complex, Complex, Adrift, Abandon'. The maps quality don't seem very high and now it appears everyone has a power weapon at some point, and that guy they just killed pressed X to spawn without punishment and cleaned them up while they waited for their shields to recharge, completely unfairly. Weapons are confusingly spawning at random, with no explanation as to why that is happening (it didn't happen in the ten years they played Halo before). They play another bunch of Infinity Slayer and soon come to realise that there's only four 4v4 maps and two of them are objectively poor for Slayer. So they venture over to Infinity BTB and, while the gameplay problems remain from their 4v4 experience, at least there are more maps on offer.

So what happens to this hypothetical party of four a week after Halo 4's release? Three of them go to Black Op's 2 or back to Battlefield 3 (COD does weapon unlocks and instant respawn far better than Halo ever will and BF3 is built around large scale combat and, crucially, let's you drive a vehicle more than five meters without getting stunned by a spawn weapon). One stays (the opening populations were around 400, 000 and then dropped to a quarter of that). The one who stays motivation for doing so is as multitudinous as Halo's confused identities. It might be a love of heavy BTB gameplay, it might be because that player is one of those who is an absolute sucker for levelling systems no matter what the gameplay and wishes to reach SR 130. It might be that they fucking love the party gametype Regicide. But the question isn't why so few stayed it's why so many chose to leave...

Halo 4 sold so many copies because it it had an 11 year established base of users and previous customers right? For 9 of those years Halo was about equal starts, checks, balances and largely reasonable design. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that many of that established user base came to Halo 4 expecting a direct, regular Master Chief sequel to Halo 3, Reach being the equivalent of an experimental off-shoot branch, not the foundation for Halo 4. Those players came to Halo, experienced instant respawn, random weapon drops, camo sniping, camo boltshotting, their favourite Warthog being stunned every three seconds by an unlocked spawn weapon, no ranked/social choice and realised they had to play for hours in order to unlock a perk so they didn't frequently run out of ammo (weapons vanishing every 12 seconds as they do). They probably realised at that point that all these things that were making Halo not feel like the game they'd enjoyed for a decade were being done better in other games in which they made sense. And so, they went to those other games.

So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market. People who bought or rented Halo 4 to see if it was normal again have disappeared. They won't be back five months from launch when it's announced in a corner of an internet forum that Team Throwdown, a normal-ish Halo playlist is coming to Halo 4! After that opening week they've made their mind up and you've lost them forever. Well, at least until Halo 5 rolls around but even then they might not bother. See, next time, Halo won't have the 'Master Chief wasn't in those games so it doesn't count' excuse. Master Chief, along with the Halo name, is now tainted.
Click to expand...

This exactly. 343 pats their self on the back every chance they get about how many copies of Halo 4 sold. Halo 4 did not sale because it was a good game. Halo 4 sold because of Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3. That is why no one plays the damn game anymore. So keep pushing map packs and telling people how fun the jet pack is or speed boots with the flag. Denial is a very sad thing to observe for Halo fans.
 
G

GrizzNKev

Banned
A 3 Legged Goat said:
You know, thinking about this talk about weapon balance and stuff just reaffirmed how apathetic I've become about the whole thing. Everything that I've wanted Halo to be is now being done in Destiny. The world, the customization, the interaction - things that either wouldn't make sense in Halo or end up messing it up now have a home.

Halo really should just stick to what made it unique. Get rid of these things that are trying to attract CoD players, because those players want the game that does it best. Keep being the best Arena shooter you can be, and if people start leaving then maybe it's because they're tired of Arena shooters.

I am.
Click to expand...

To me, Halo was a trilogy with a really cool side-story and a disappointing prequel. Now, a memory.

That's the end for me. Master Chief doesn't wake up, and he doesn't inexplicably obtain new armor. The Covenant don't get angry again, and the Forerunner never fought humans in ancient times. Cortana never fell in love, and Halsey didn't get her arm cut off.

The fight was finished.
 
E

EagleBurnn

Banned
"It was a tough experience to build 343" blah blah blah

"There's a hero in all of us and Master Chief lets you express that in Halo 4."

Goes into personal life about his father and storytelling and how he became a developer

"Make Master Chief human"

"Tap into Master Chief's character that is explained outside of the games (novels and that anime show)."

Explain Cortana's rampancy. "It's the human heart of the Halo 4 campaign", compares rampancy to dementia

Talks about simplifying the story in the first missions due to it being too much to take initially

"Lasky was a successful character and well established"

Mistakes with the Didact:
Didn't explain him enough and the terminals had to be taken off the disc and onto Waypoint

7av0N7v.jpg


"In the end, we were happy on how the character turned out, but honestly, it was so painful, we could have done a much much better job in getting to an endpoint."

uJDMtuA.jpg


Stasis gun and grappel harpoon: They weren't "relatable". Testing showed no one used the weapons.

Shows the already infamous Halo handicap photo
TQNl0bg.jpg


They were surprised of how many players played Spartan Ops solo.

Mistakes:
"Halo 4 narrative wasn't self-contained."
"No clear goals for prototype [thought process when going through a story]"
"Our team is very passionate about perfection. We allowed ourselves to uniquely focus on an element of the game in isolation and try to perfect that without looking at it in context to the larger whole."

QTE: "Get the player more immersed. Was about wanting to sell a moment in the game and connect the player more directly with that moment. I understand it's controversial, which is why there were only two of them."

Love story between Master Chief and Cortana: "Members of the team were skeptical. It was challenging and we had to be committed to it."

343 and mainly Frank O'Connor is responsible for the central control of the Halo cannon across all media.

Someone wastes a question by asking why the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn was changed visually for Halo 4. Surprised he didn't ask why the DMR wasn't in Halo 1-3 if it was in Reach.

Progression system: "We had a lot of discussion about Halo always being on an even playing field, and yet, a lot of the feedback that we had from fans was how that wasn't interesting to them with a progression system. They [fans] were really looking for gameplay impacting progression."

"We knew we wanted to create a progressions system and reward loop that had a lot of impact."
 
F

Fuchsdh

Member
randomrosso said:
Two hours is a short amount of time?

...

I don't know what would make me go back to Reach. Maybe if 343i screw up BTB objective (that's coming, right?)
Click to expand...

xxjuicesxx said:
Yea but the redundancy is mostly for campaign, why would their be Human weapons if you are super far into a Covenant ship for instance? Also if Elites are in MP you need to include the Covenant weaponset.

So yea you can spawn in with AR+BR so you can immediately defend yourself, and lets face it the first 5-10 seconds of a Halo 3 respawn you were checking around for a Battle Rifle or upgrade to that AR, and thats seconds of poor gameplay. Especially if you consider the BR and AR were and have always been the most popular weapons regardless of starting weapon choice, so just give both and you can make a better game.

Upgrades are sniper.rockets , camo, invis powerups, and then theres horizontal upgrades that are just as useful as those two starting weapons but in different situations. Like for instance perhaps you can scatter DMR if it shot slower but farther in H5 around the map so depending on the map and what kind of player you are a DMR would be better than a BR to you but other players might pass it over.

And thats where the diversity comes in. Someone might enjoy the needler over the AR, or the plasma rifle would take longer to kill with but cause a slight stun effect to slow you a bit, so theres another choice or drop it for the plasma pistol and try noob combo.
Click to expand...

Human weapons appearing so far into the Covenant battle lines/locations in Halo CE is one of the things that definitely dates the game. At least with Reach, the constant health packs made a little more sense.

I like custom loadouts in that they accommodate player tastes (I love the carbine, but realize that there's no way in hell it will ever be a game-start weapon.) On the other hand, I really hate diffuse sandboxes. Halo 4 is a little better than Halo 3 was in that the weapons are a lot better balanced with no dual wielding, but it still feels like a waste. Those experimental Forerunner weapons would have been more fun to play with; it's a shame you can't get all the players to use them, but there's a point where catering to your metrics only weakens the game instead of strengthening it.

In the interests of cutting down the sandbox, the DMR or the BR need to go; give us a dual fire BR to please people like me who love single-shot weapons, but the DMR just is too problematic overall.
 
D

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Tawpgun said:
I'd hate to push 343's and Halo's test another game but its the most fair option.

Halo 4 was their first Halo game, and they were building the studio during production.

If Halo 5 goes down the same path, even with the new power of next gen, then I wish 343 good luck on their new direction, but its not for me. Hopefully a new developer realizes the opening in the FPS market for a fair, equal, arena FPS
Click to expand...

This is my opinion. I'd never fully abandon Halo, but if they don't clean up a lot in 5 it'll move to a back seat.

That is, unless they make ODST 2 or Wars 2.
 
G

Ghazi

Member
Don't tell me that this shit doesn't look amazing and mysterious, seriously I'd rather have gotten this. I like the look of the Prometheans so much more here, the HUD is a little wierd though.

uJDMtuA.jpg


Honestly, what this motherfucking game could've been still astounds me.
 
M

Madness

Member
I always thought a way to switch up gameplay, was to create night/day variants. For example, Valhalla. We've seen what it can look like with snow etc. What if in one variant, you have Carbine rifle starts, all weapons on the maps are covenant based and the sky box is night with covenant cruisers and phantoms etc.

Pretty dumb I know, but it switches up gameplay from time to time. Sort of like that Makin map from world at War, it played so differently when it was daytime.

Remember, a lot of the sandbox is created for campaign, doesn't necessarily have to transfer over to multiplayer.

I believe someone showed how certain that filters to simulate night and day can change the look of a map, maybe they can explain the covenant variant by stating that they assaulted this area in the night, set up base etc.
 
O

Omni

Member
DLC achievements don't look too bad. I'm buying a new controller next week when I get paid, so maybe I'll get some use out of ze new maps (unlike Majestic. Played maybe 10 games or something? Didn't like it at all. Infinity settings are more frustrating on small maps)
 
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