So can we all agree that King Joust is pretty much the coolest new medal ever?
Yeh, just got one, this is how all medals should be.
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Halo |OT12| Last One Out, Get the Lights
- Thread starter The Librarian
- Start date
Yeh, just got one, this is how all medals should be.
lmao
I've been messing with the steitzer audio clips to try and do sentence mixing. Go and have a listen, maybe it'll come in handy some day.
HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA
Hmm, so I guess King status in team games is based on total personal points (like ordnance in Infinity Slayer, meaning style medals are counted). I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but it seems to make it kind of hard to lose the crown if you get early in a game. Which may be bad.
I realized this when I became King for getting a Flyin' High (Mongoose jump with a passenger) at the beginning of a match on Complex. :lol
I realized this when I became King for getting a Flyin' High (Mongoose jump with a passenger) at the beginning of a match on Complex. :lol
Deputy Moonman
Member
Enjoyed the games all. Someday I'll play decent and contribute lulz. Anything with armor abilities and it's like my skill level drops to -12.
EDIT:
EDIT:
No big. Did you enjoy listening to me gripe before Kittens and Cabbie joined? Just like my posting in neogaf, BUT IN REAL LIFE! haha
Yeah GGs guys, fuck that lag at the end though.
Deputy Moonman
Member
Time for a bowl of cereal. If you get bored Steely I'll join you.
So, here's what Spartan Ops should have been.
It's not Firefight. But let's be honest, it's set on Firefight-sized arenas and we fight a constant stream of respawing enemies. Nearly all of these maps could be Firefight maps, or adapted to Firefight maps that feature a bit of movement from section to section.
So, take Reach's Firefight framework as a baseline. Enemies spawn in or are dropped off in waves, as needed by the map design. Just as they are in Spartan Ops. Missions can even start with the map pre-populated, similar to Spartan Ops, and the initial wave is to just clear the map (a shift that would have helped Firefight stay more fresh). Add in custom load outs and personal ordnance, and we've got a pretty nice update to Firefight.
So far that's Firefight, updated with Halo 4 game systems.
Now for the Spartan Ops part. Initially, only a few Firefight maps are available. Each week a new story-driven Mission is released. CG intro, Palmer yacking, no personal ordnance, no scoring or medals.
But each mission is set on a Firefight map, and is basically a new, designed game type. Call them Ops missions. Your custom options are limited to Difficulty, because these are crafted experiences. And once you've beaten the Ops mission on that map(s) for the week, it becomes available for use as a Firefight map for players. So we've got the usual Firefight game type options, with customization options. Or the Ops mission, which is fixed by the designer. So we can play on the map with either the scripted story based mode, or the traditional Firefight mode.
And then we don't have to lose Firefight.
It's not Firefight. But let's be honest, it's set on Firefight-sized arenas and we fight a constant stream of respawing enemies. Nearly all of these maps could be Firefight maps, or adapted to Firefight maps that feature a bit of movement from section to section.
So, take Reach's Firefight framework as a baseline. Enemies spawn in or are dropped off in waves, as needed by the map design. Just as they are in Spartan Ops. Missions can even start with the map pre-populated, similar to Spartan Ops, and the initial wave is to just clear the map (a shift that would have helped Firefight stay more fresh). Add in custom load outs and personal ordnance, and we've got a pretty nice update to Firefight.
So far that's Firefight, updated with Halo 4 game systems.
Now for the Spartan Ops part. Initially, only a few Firefight maps are available. Each week a new story-driven Mission is released. CG intro, Palmer yacking, no personal ordnance, no scoring or medals.
But each mission is set on a Firefight map, and is basically a new, designed game type. Call them Ops missions. Your custom options are limited to Difficulty, because these are crafted experiences. And once you've beaten the Ops mission on that map(s) for the week, it becomes available for use as a Firefight map for players. So we've got the usual Firefight game type options, with customization options. Or the Ops mission, which is fixed by the designer. So we can play on the map with either the scripted story based mode, or the traditional Firefight mode.
And then we don't have to lose Firefight.
Steelyuhas
Member
Team Regicide is actually pretty good, nice gametype.
Global Ordnance is broken with it though, two of the initial ordnances are phased into the floor and cannot be retrieved on Haven and there are some ordnance icons on Complex where there are no weapons.
Just hit 50, now to look up online what specialization I want to do because of course the in-game menu doesn't give me any worthwhile information...
Only going to play one more. Sorry (Dom and Ram as well).
Global Ordnance is broken with it though, two of the initial ordnances are phased into the floor and cannot be retrieved on Haven and there are some ordnance icons on Complex where there are no weapons.
Just hit 50, now to look up online what specialization I want to do because of course the in-game menu doesn't give me any worthwhile information...
Only going to play one more. Sorry (Dom and Ram as well).
Rogue.
Steelyuhas
Member
Yep, that's what I did.
Deputy Moonman
Member
That's what i ended up going after spending forever thinking about it. Did operator first for the visor color, then went rogue. Hoping the stability armor mod doesn't disappoint.
No big. Did you enjoy listening to me gripe before Kittens and Cabbie joined? Just like my posting in neogaf, BUT IN REAL LIFE! haha
Ha! I actually couldn't hear voice at all really. I just got a set of A50s and haven't figured out the right mix for game vs voice. I would have turned chat on if I could have got it right.
I did hear you upset about assassinations a few times though.
Yeah that was terrible. Lag in this game is so frustrating. It's a lot different than I ever experienced it in Reach.
This sounds good but doesn't address any of the current problems with mission design in Spartan Ops. Having Firefight saved would have been cool though.
Deputy Moonman
Member
The lag was bad on that last game. And I'm definitely getting frustrated with the accidental assassinations which always get me killed. I'll be on for most of the night if people are looking for more.Ha! I actually couldn't hear voice at all really. I just got a set of A50s and haven't figured out the right mix for game vs voice. I would have turned chat on if I could have got it right.
I did hear you upset about assassinations a few times though.
Yeah that was terrible. Lag in this game is so frustrating. It's a lot different than I ever experienced it in Reach.
bobs...onGaf
Member
I am curious if anyone in Europe knew that they where pre - order offers? 343 should have marketed that information pre release.
Hell I didn't know that and I post here daily! I knew some shops where doing it but I didn't trust them as I thought it was a LE only thing! The shops that did offer them didn't event advertise them. I remember reading it in the blurb on one of the websites for a retailer and posting it here - a bunch of people on here where confused about the fact that retailer had the as pre- order bonuses.
I have yet to see so much anti consumerist behaviour affect any one game. It really is amazing that they are clarifying pre- order bonuses post release.
Pre-order bonuses are bad enough but this whole combination of factors is making 343 look terrible.
Oh, I agree. But I wanted to put that out there partly for that reason. Not only was Spartan Ops not worth the trade off, but I don't think we had to lose Firefight in the process.
I think Firefight where the maps were pre-populated for the first wave, and personal ordnance and custom load outs were in the mix, would be pretty awesome.
Meanwhile I am not really motivated to play Spartan Ops at all right now. I could probably stay engaged if it had a better live/spawning/reward system, despite the respawning nature of the waves. Dragonborn lands tomorrow, so I probably won't touch it for another month. I'm hoping to hear the subsequent episodes are great so I have some content to look forward to.
H4 SpOps and R FF still haven't topped ODST FF, sadly.
I kind of agree, despite loving the hell out of Reach's Firefight. ODST Firefight was a true survival mode. I still remember the trailer for it - it was all about how it was going to kick your ass hard, so bring friends. And still get your ass kicked. (Just rewatched the trailer...still awesome.) Reach watered that down some, and Spartan Ops removed any hint of challenge.
ODST - SurvivalI kind of agree, despite loving the hell out of Reach's Firefight. ODST Firefight was a true survival mode. I still remember the trailer for it - it was all about how it was going to kick your ass hard, so bring friends. And still get your ass kicked. (Just rewatched the trailer...still awesome.) Reach watered that down some, and Spartan Ops removed any hint of challenge.
Reach - Shooting Range
Spartops - Baby campaign
Why did I read this as "shooting baby"
what i certainly did not know was that i can't gain any XP without having a specialization to unlock.
never would i have thought that spezializations would unlock higher ranks. silly me thought it was the other way around.
Hire Ghaleon?
Seriously though, this sounds like a much better solution. Also give us option to have limited ammo like ODST, throw in skull progression and boom. Big improvement.
But we got an hour of gameplay recycled 5 times (so far).
Spartan Ops is awful. Between that and the multitude of issues in the multiplayer, I've had my last straw with this game tonight. Considering returning it or trying to get my roommate to purchase it again.
Here's a bunch of things that are bad about Spartan Ops, why I would not feel proud about being associated with it, and my armchair designer fixes.
1. Heavy reuse of the same environments. I understand that there is a huge time and memory constraint for having brand new environments. But there are a grand total of 9 environments. 9 environments for 50 missions. Each mission will, on average, be used 5 and a half(!) times. That's not including the times you run through it in campaign and/or multiplayer. Now there are ways to make the environments seem different, but Spartan Ops hasn't done that yet(and I do mean this with full offense, but I don't think any of the mission designers at 343 are capable of doing it given the lackluster campaign encounters).
For starters, don't choose an encounter that is linear in design. It forces only 2 options when reusing it. Ignoring another issue of Spartan Ops, the only two good missions have been the Valhalla Mantis one and the first Complex one. The first one of those two was only good because it was different from shooting a bunch of aliens and pressing a bunch of buttons. The second one was good, because there were multiple points to go to on the map, and there was more than one option of positioning. The subtle player choice improves the design by quite a bit. By using non-linear maps, it also allows you to reuse it by blocking off areas of the map or providing a different incentive to move around like a power weapon or vehicle. On the downside these two encounters are also multiplayer maps, which are going to be played more often than the campaign spaces.
2. Enemy introduction is the worst I have experienced in any FPS. This isn't an exaggeration or hyperbole. Promethean design gives them the ability to teleport. This mechanic is an interesting idea to change the encounters, but it is used so poorly in them. It has been used as the laziest way to introduce an enemy to an encounter. I made a post earlier on about player mentality, enemy introduction, and how the player tackles a combat scenario*. If a player can see all of the variables, they have a better understanding on how to tackle the encounter and as a result, victory feels more rewarding while the mentality of death feels more like "if I just did a little bit better, I could succeed." Prometheans teleporting in defeats the idea of a player seeing all of the variables, especially when they are teleporting in wave after wave.
For the Covenant, the returnable drop pods are poor introduction as well. It appears out of nowhere, and is gone fairly quickly. Compare these to the individual drop pods, which change the flow of the battle as well, by creating more cover for the player. Phantoms are much better when they are balanced properly. But as it stands, the main cannon on the Phantom acts as a flak cannon, preventing the player from engaging the enemy early. There is already enough of a barrier to the player when enemies are invulnerable while inside the Phantom.
How to fix it? Introduce Prometheans similar to how Sentinels are introduced in previous games. Give them a doorway, path, or tube to come from. This gives the player a choke point to attempt and initially defend. Then if the enemies are too powerful for the player, he/she can fall back. For the Covenant, it comes into reworking the Phantoms and reintroducing personal drop pods, while also giving them pathways to follow. These were aspects that were good before Reach's sandbox meddling, and if you can't implement it properly--don't implement it at all.
3. Make the objective more than pushing buttons. There's something that Halo CE and Halo 3's campaigns did right with objectives in encounters and that is the sense that there is more to an encounter than just ending it with a button. The basic combat flow is i)stop the enemy from advancing, ii)push the enemy back, iii)chop of the enemy's head. This is shown heavily in missions like Silent Cartographer, AotCR, Sierra 117, The Ark, and many others. What this means is that at the end of an encounter, it should feel rewarding by either destroying a Brute Chieftain, a Banshee, or in general a tough opponent.
Halo 4's design in both campaign and Spartan Ops is to go from point A to button B, and kill every enemy along the way. There isn't a clear defense point at point A, nor is there a good sense of enemy defense at button B. It doesn't feel rewarding sweeping around the Valhalla base killing bullet sponge enemies, just so you can unlock the ability to push a button in the base.
In Valhalla for example, a different design that would work well is to start at one base and clear the enemies at the other. The catch is to defend both bases. If one gets overrun, it's not game over like the first mission this episode. This also works well into the focus on cooperative play. You could have two players stay back at the initial base to defend, but the trade off is that the other two players have a tougher encounter to attack. For solo players, it creates a scenario where the player goes on the offensive, but must go back on the offensive at the spawn base.
The blue lines indicate potential player movements. Include different incentives for the player to go one way over another, like a sniper, a vehicle, stealth, or a flank on the enemy. The red indicates the spawn and objective.
4. Enemy design is lackluster. This is more of a gripe with how enemies act alone and with other enemies. Knights have a multitude of issues with them. Firstly, there is no indicator to how much damage they have taken. Their shield is a faint blue that only changes when the shield is actually popped. They have animations that are difficult to distinguish and predict their next move. For example, the deploy sentry is very similar to deploy Watcher. The jump slash and the teleport slash are difficult to predict. The teleport has no clear position where they will deploy to. There isn't a clear headshot on them. You cannot tell what weapon they are holding until they fire it. You can't distinguish classes among Knights very well.
Watchers and Crawlers have clear design flaws as well. The only way to know if the Watcher is taking damage is if it folds up and flies away. Watchers have weapons while flying, which creates an enemy that can fire at you from any position. Compare this to the other Halo support unit, the Engineer. The Engineer has the sole purpose of support, and no offense. Watchers also generate turrets, regenerate Knights, and spawn Crawlers using the same animation. Their introduction by using slipspace ruptures is also poor. Crawlers have headboxes that are incredibly inconsistent. Both of these also disrupt the ability to defend by bypassing chokepoints, either by flying or crawling on walls. Now these are actually good designs when they come alone. It creates a different pace to an encounter, but when they come en masse the player can't control the 360 degrees of enemy movement, while the player is limited to two dimensions.
The disintegration effect is a neat way to clear enemies from the battlefield. It introduces a level of magic when the Watchers respawn a Knight. A way to counter this adds an incentive to using the Promethean arsenal. Killing a Knight with a Promethean weapon will disintegrate them, making them unavailable to be regenerated by the Watcher. Killing them using a standard weapon means they can be regenerated by the Watcher. This also changes up the order in which you kill Prometheans depending on the weapon you have. Knights need to have a clear distinction as to what they are holding. By changing what color the weapon is or changing what side the weapon is on allows the player to see if they should approach it from a distance or get them up close.
The Knight teleport ability should primarily be used for defense only or for re-positioning, never for attack. Still there is no way for the player to know where the Knight will teleport to. Teleporting works in multiplayer, because the input and output of the teleporter is known(one reason why Chiron is a frustrating experience). Give a blue orb where they will teleport to, similar to how it acts after they have teleported. Also, when the Knight teleports, it gives them enough time to regen their shields. When teleporting the Knight's shields should stop as if they taking damage. Their feedback needs to be more apparent; blue shields on the orange is a great decision, but it needs to be brighter and more obvious to how much shield is remaining. Make the head stand out more against the body. This will make headshots much more distinct.
Crawlers are a bit tougher to balance. Their main intent is to have them be a zerg-y unit where their numbers will overwhelm you. They succeeded in that, but they aren't fun. Mainly because their headbox is broken. A strange solution is to give them another point on their body where they can be one-shot. This would be a new and welcome introduction to Halo. Just for the fun of it, make it their butt, so when they flee or attack, they are vulnerable.
5. Only give enemies one hit kill weapons if they can be one hit killed by a default weapon. Knights with Binary Rifles or Incineration Cannons are not fun enemies to fight. There are a few exceptions to this, and that is if the player has advanced beyond enemies and it is the final part of an encounter. We could take an example using ODST. The last enemies in the final firefight are Fuel Rod Brutes and Hammer Chieftains. It was rewarding completing that because the firefight section ramped up to the final encounter.
Jackal snipers are a decent way of giving an enemy a one hit kill weapon, because they are vulnerable to a headshot that is given by the light on their head. On the other hand they aren't great because the sniper is an instant kill with no travel time. Everyone remember Sniper Alley from Halo 2. Not fun. Now giving shielded enemies such as the Knights an instant travel weapon like the Binary Rifle is even worse. Grunts with Fuel Rods are slightly better than that. There is travel time to the Fuel Rods, but for some reason on Legendary, the velocity of the projectiles is doubled. This is a step backwards. Incineration Cannons are the same way.
One thing the post-beta Focus Rifle was good for was giving the AI snipers a weapon that is fair to the player while remaining challenging. Also the Plasma Launcher was a weapon that the AI could also use that the player could avoid. Both additions to the sandbox are very welcome.
6. Characters, in-game story, and dialog are comparable to what I wrote in sixth grade. Characters like Palmer have already been driven into the ground a month after release. A good character will have backstory, motivations, intentions, and a general way of doing things. Palmer has... a dudebro way of doing things and that's about it. I guess there's a 4chan post about Palmer's relationship with her dad, but that's something else completely. Her motivations to being a Spartan are unknown. Her intentions are following orders of whatever the captain barks out is fairly one-dimensional. On the other hand Roland's intentions are clear: maintain the Infinity. His back story isn't known, but we know he has been on the Infinity. His way of doing things is very similar to Serina. His character is one that I really love after only dealing with him for maybe two missions in campaign and some in Spartan Ops.
The in-game story... oh boy... sucks. Why should I clear this base if I know that it's going to be attacked next week? Why am I pressing this button? Why am I blowing up this generator? How did the Covenant even get a generator here in the first place? The science team always shuts down their defenses. It doesn't make sense. In fact none of it has made any sense. There isn't a reason for Crimson to exist aside from cleaning up what everyone else is doing. We are the sloppy seconds of the Spartan world.
Dialogue is also bad. Eggheads. Hingeheads. Geeks. Nerds. Science team. That science allows you to exist Palmer. Without it, you might as well still be getting beaten by your 4chan created dad. So quit fucking insulting it. And Miller, they are called the Covenant. Not "the bad guys". I just don't understand how Palmer can go from, "if those freaks want to meet God, it's our duty to help them along" to "the geeks want you to recover this artifact"
7. Lack of customization is disappointing. Add skulls. Add points. Simple stuff.
8. I feel like I'm getting better episodic content from a free Old Spice flash game than I am from a $60 Halo game. I seriously come back to the Old Spice game every Monday wanting to see what the new level is and what the story is. It's all parody, but it's great. I find myself quoting that more than I do any of the Halo 4 dialogue.
9. No incentive to stay alive. In fact there is actually incentive to die. You get ammo. And you don't have to worry about running out of lives.
10. Spawning is awful. There have been multiple times where I am overrun by Crawlers and Knights spawning on top of me and it respawns me right where I died. I've shut off my Xbox multiple times because of the frustration of dying on repeat because the game decided there was only one place to spawn me in.
Another case study of Valhalla:
I've circled safe areas of spawning. They're safe because the lines of sight aren't direct to any major part of the map or they have quick access to cover. Now, it should not spawn the player anywhere within a radar's length of an enemy. So essentially what the spawning system should do is check the spawn point closest to the player's last death. Check if there are any enemies in the spawn zone. If yes, then move to the next closest spawn zone and reduce that zone's weighting. If no, check if there are any OHK enemies that can target that spawn zone. If yes to that check, then move to the next closest spawn zone and reduce the weighting on the zone. If no, then finally spawn the player in. If there is a scenario where all spawn zones are not safe, choose the zone with the highest weighting.
11. Information overload and inconsistencies. This is apparent in all of the game, but Spartan Ops is one of the worst offenders of this. I don't need to know where every single enemy is on the map. Highlighting the last few targets should be for the last few, not the last fifty. One thing done well is the damage done to certain objects like generators. Having that information is actually helpful. But on the flipside, I don't need to see everything that is labeled an enemy, even if it is a Grunt in the turret seat of a Phantom. That type of information is useless and annoying.
It becomes inconsistent when enemies use human weapons. If you play the second Complex Spartan Ops mission, a Grunt can get on a human turret. If he is one of the last thousand enemies with a waypoint over their head, his will disappear. Then shortly after, random enemies will start losing their waypoints. No idea on the cause of it, but it was annoying as hell to track down enemies that were running into corners.
-------
For anyone that went through that whole thing, I commend you. I highly recommend watching the Anatomy of Halo 3 series. Here is one on design, and watching it, you'll notice a lot of what Halo 4 did wrong. The thing with me is that I feel that 343 had the potential to fix a lot of these things before the game came out. I also feel like for future Halo games they are going to have to step it up. Making a map of Seattle and having a Grunt pick where they are going to eat isn't a smart thing to do during crunch, especially given the game turned out.
Here's a bunch of things that are bad about Spartan Ops, why I would not feel proud about being associated with it, and my armchair designer fixes.
1. Heavy reuse of the same environments. I understand that there is a huge time and memory constraint for having brand new environments. But there are a grand total of 9 environments. 9 environments for 50 missions. Each mission will, on average, be used 5 and a half(!) times. That's not including the times you run through it in campaign and/or multiplayer. Now there are ways to make the environments seem different, but Spartan Ops hasn't done that yet(and I do mean this with full offense, but I don't think any of the mission designers at 343 are capable of doing it given the lackluster campaign encounters).
For starters, don't choose an encounter that is linear in design. It forces only 2 options when reusing it. Ignoring another issue of Spartan Ops, the only two good missions have been the Valhalla Mantis one and the first Complex one. The first one of those two was only good because it was different from shooting a bunch of aliens and pressing a bunch of buttons. The second one was good, because there were multiple points to go to on the map, and there was more than one option of positioning. The subtle player choice improves the design by quite a bit. By using non-linear maps, it also allows you to reuse it by blocking off areas of the map or providing a different incentive to move around like a power weapon or vehicle. On the downside these two encounters are also multiplayer maps, which are going to be played more often than the campaign spaces.
2. Enemy introduction is the worst I have experienced in any FPS. This isn't an exaggeration or hyperbole. Promethean design gives them the ability to teleport. This mechanic is an interesting idea to change the encounters, but it is used so poorly in them. It has been used as the laziest way to introduce an enemy to an encounter. I made a post earlier on about player mentality, enemy introduction, and how the player tackles a combat scenario*. If a player can see all of the variables, they have a better understanding on how to tackle the encounter and as a result, victory feels more rewarding while the mentality of death feels more like "if I just did a little bit better, I could succeed." Prometheans teleporting in defeats the idea of a player seeing all of the variables, especially when they are teleporting in wave after wave.
For the Covenant, the returnable drop pods are poor introduction as well. It appears out of nowhere, and is gone fairly quickly. Compare these to the individual drop pods, which change the flow of the battle as well, by creating more cover for the player. Phantoms are much better when they are balanced properly. But as it stands, the main cannon on the Phantom acts as a flak cannon, preventing the player from engaging the enemy early. There is already enough of a barrier to the player when enemies are invulnerable while inside the Phantom.
How to fix it? Introduce Prometheans similar to how Sentinels are introduced in previous games. Give them a doorway, path, or tube to come from. This gives the player a choke point to attempt and initially defend. Then if the enemies are too powerful for the player, he/she can fall back. For the Covenant, it comes into reworking the Phantoms and reintroducing personal drop pods, while also giving them pathways to follow. These were aspects that were good before Reach's sandbox meddling, and if you can't implement it properly--don't implement it at all.
3. Make the objective more than pushing buttons. There's something that Halo CE and Halo 3's campaigns did right with objectives in encounters and that is the sense that there is more to an encounter than just ending it with a button. The basic combat flow is i)stop the enemy from advancing, ii)push the enemy back, iii)chop of the enemy's head. This is shown heavily in missions like Silent Cartographer, AotCR, Sierra 117, The Ark, and many others. What this means is that at the end of an encounter, it should feel rewarding by either destroying a Brute Chieftain, a Banshee, or in general a tough opponent.
Halo 4's design in both campaign and Spartan Ops is to go from point A to button B, and kill every enemy along the way. There isn't a clear defense point at point A, nor is there a good sense of enemy defense at button B. It doesn't feel rewarding sweeping around the Valhalla base killing bullet sponge enemies, just so you can unlock the ability to push a button in the base.
In Valhalla for example, a different design that would work well is to start at one base and clear the enemies at the other. The catch is to defend both bases. If one gets overrun, it's not game over like the first mission this episode. This also works well into the focus on cooperative play. You could have two players stay back at the initial base to defend, but the trade off is that the other two players have a tougher encounter to attack. For solo players, it creates a scenario where the player goes on the offensive, but must go back on the offensive at the spawn base.
The blue lines indicate potential player movements. Include different incentives for the player to go one way over another, like a sniper, a vehicle, stealth, or a flank on the enemy. The red indicates the spawn and objective.
4. Enemy design is lackluster. This is more of a gripe with how enemies act alone and with other enemies. Knights have a multitude of issues with them. Firstly, there is no indicator to how much damage they have taken. Their shield is a faint blue that only changes when the shield is actually popped. They have animations that are difficult to distinguish and predict their next move. For example, the deploy sentry is very similar to deploy Watcher. The jump slash and the teleport slash are difficult to predict. The teleport has no clear position where they will deploy to. There isn't a clear headshot on them. You cannot tell what weapon they are holding until they fire it. You can't distinguish classes among Knights very well.
They all look nearly the same in game.
Watchers and Crawlers have clear design flaws as well. The only way to know if the Watcher is taking damage is if it folds up and flies away. Watchers have weapons while flying, which creates an enemy that can fire at you from any position. Compare this to the other Halo support unit, the Engineer. The Engineer has the sole purpose of support, and no offense. Watchers also generate turrets, regenerate Knights, and spawn Crawlers using the same animation. Their introduction by using slipspace ruptures is also poor. Crawlers have headboxes that are incredibly inconsistent. Both of these also disrupt the ability to defend by bypassing chokepoints, either by flying or crawling on walls. Now these are actually good designs when they come alone. It creates a different pace to an encounter, but when they come en masse the player can't control the 360 degrees of enemy movement, while the player is limited to two dimensions.
The disintegration effect is a neat way to clear enemies from the battlefield. It introduces a level of magic when the Watchers respawn a Knight. A way to counter this adds an incentive to using the Promethean arsenal. Killing a Knight with a Promethean weapon will disintegrate them, making them unavailable to be regenerated by the Watcher. Killing them using a standard weapon means they can be regenerated by the Watcher. This also changes up the order in which you kill Prometheans depending on the weapon you have. Knights need to have a clear distinction as to what they are holding. By changing what color the weapon is or changing what side the weapon is on allows the player to see if they should approach it from a distance or get them up close.
The Knight teleport ability should primarily be used for defense only or for re-positioning, never for attack. Still there is no way for the player to know where the Knight will teleport to. Teleporting works in multiplayer, because the input and output of the teleporter is known(one reason why Chiron is a frustrating experience). Give a blue orb where they will teleport to, similar to how it acts after they have teleported. Also, when the Knight teleports, it gives them enough time to regen their shields. When teleporting the Knight's shields should stop as if they taking damage. Their feedback needs to be more apparent; blue shields on the orange is a great decision, but it needs to be brighter and more obvious to how much shield is remaining. Make the head stand out more against the body. This will make headshots much more distinct.
For Watchers, give them a bit of a damaged look when they have taken damage. Give them a bit of destruction to their hover circles. Also, never give them a weapon. It has the same issue that Jetpacking in Reach(haven't tried it in 4 yet) where the higher enemy has a clear shot on the head, while the grounded player is forced to body shot. For the Watcher spawning Crawlers, make it a clear distinction that that is what they are going to do. For example give them the binary rifle effect and have them point at the ground whre they are going to spawn them. This allows the player to preemptively throw a grenade, either distracting the Watcher to throw it back or spawn the Crawler into the grenade.
Crawlers are a bit tougher to balance. Their main intent is to have them be a zerg-y unit where their numbers will overwhelm you. They succeeded in that, but they aren't fun. Mainly because their headbox is broken. A strange solution is to give them another point on their body where they can be one-shot. This would be a new and welcome introduction to Halo. Just for the fun of it, make it their butt, so when they flee or attack, they are vulnerable.
5. Only give enemies one hit kill weapons if they can be one hit killed by a default weapon. Knights with Binary Rifles or Incineration Cannons are not fun enemies to fight. There are a few exceptions to this, and that is if the player has advanced beyond enemies and it is the final part of an encounter. We could take an example using ODST. The last enemies in the final firefight are Fuel Rod Brutes and Hammer Chieftains. It was rewarding completing that because the firefight section ramped up to the final encounter.
Jackal snipers are a decent way of giving an enemy a one hit kill weapon, because they are vulnerable to a headshot that is given by the light on their head. On the other hand they aren't great because the sniper is an instant kill with no travel time. Everyone remember Sniper Alley from Halo 2. Not fun. Now giving shielded enemies such as the Knights an instant travel weapon like the Binary Rifle is even worse. Grunts with Fuel Rods are slightly better than that. There is travel time to the Fuel Rods, but for some reason on Legendary, the velocity of the projectiles is doubled. This is a step backwards. Incineration Cannons are the same way.
One thing the post-beta Focus Rifle was good for was giving the AI snipers a weapon that is fair to the player while remaining challenging. Also the Plasma Launcher was a weapon that the AI could also use that the player could avoid. Both additions to the sandbox are very welcome.
6. Characters, in-game story, and dialog are comparable to what I wrote in sixth grade. Characters like Palmer have already been driven into the ground a month after release. A good character will have backstory, motivations, intentions, and a general way of doing things. Palmer has... a dudebro way of doing things and that's about it. I guess there's a 4chan post about Palmer's relationship with her dad, but that's something else completely. Her motivations to being a Spartan are unknown. Her intentions are following orders of whatever the captain barks out is fairly one-dimensional. On the other hand Roland's intentions are clear: maintain the Infinity. His back story isn't known, but we know he has been on the Infinity. His way of doing things is very similar to Serina. His character is one that I really love after only dealing with him for maybe two missions in campaign and some in Spartan Ops.
The in-game story... oh boy... sucks. Why should I clear this base if I know that it's going to be attacked next week? Why am I pressing this button? Why am I blowing up this generator? How did the Covenant even get a generator here in the first place? The science team always shuts down their defenses. It doesn't make sense. In fact none of it has made any sense. There isn't a reason for Crimson to exist aside from cleaning up what everyone else is doing. We are the sloppy seconds of the Spartan world.
Dialogue is also bad. Eggheads. Hingeheads. Geeks. Nerds. Science team. That science allows you to exist Palmer. Without it, you might as well still be getting beaten by your 4chan created dad. So quit fucking insulting it. And Miller, they are called the Covenant. Not "the bad guys". I just don't understand how Palmer can go from, "if those freaks want to meet God, it's our duty to help them along" to "the geeks want you to recover this artifact"
7. Lack of customization is disappointing. Add skulls. Add points. Simple stuff.
8. I feel like I'm getting better episodic content from a free Old Spice flash game than I am from a $60 Halo game. I seriously come back to the Old Spice game every Monday wanting to see what the new level is and what the story is. It's all parody, but it's great. I find myself quoting that more than I do any of the Halo 4 dialogue.
9. No incentive to stay alive. In fact there is actually incentive to die. You get ammo. And you don't have to worry about running out of lives.
10. Spawning is awful. There have been multiple times where I am overrun by Crawlers and Knights spawning on top of me and it respawns me right where I died. I've shut off my Xbox multiple times because of the frustration of dying on repeat because the game decided there was only one place to spawn me in.
Another case study of Valhalla:
I've circled safe areas of spawning. They're safe because the lines of sight aren't direct to any major part of the map or they have quick access to cover. Now, it should not spawn the player anywhere within a radar's length of an enemy. So essentially what the spawning system should do is check the spawn point closest to the player's last death. Check if there are any enemies in the spawn zone. If yes, then move to the next closest spawn zone and reduce that zone's weighting. If no, check if there are any OHK enemies that can target that spawn zone. If yes to that check, then move to the next closest spawn zone and reduce the weighting on the zone. If no, then finally spawn the player in. If there is a scenario where all spawn zones are not safe, choose the zone with the highest weighting.
11. Information overload and inconsistencies. This is apparent in all of the game, but Spartan Ops is one of the worst offenders of this. I don't need to know where every single enemy is on the map. Highlighting the last few targets should be for the last few, not the last fifty. One thing done well is the damage done to certain objects like generators. Having that information is actually helpful. But on the flipside, I don't need to see everything that is labeled an enemy, even if it is a Grunt in the turret seat of a Phantom. That type of information is useless and annoying.
It becomes inconsistent when enemies use human weapons. If you play the second Complex Spartan Ops mission, a Grunt can get on a human turret. If he is one of the last thousand enemies with a waypoint over their head, his will disappear. Then shortly after, random enemies will start losing their waypoints. No idea on the cause of it, but it was annoying as hell to track down enemies that were running into corners.
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For anyone that went through that whole thing, I commend you. I highly recommend watching the Anatomy of Halo 3 series. Here is one on design, and watching it, you'll notice a lot of what Halo 4 did wrong. The thing with me is that I feel that 343 had the potential to fix a lot of these things before the game came out. I also feel like for future Halo games they are going to have to step it up. Making a map of Seattle and having a Grunt pick where they are going to eat isn't a smart thing to do during crunch, especially given the game turned out.
xxjuicesxx
Member
Just rewatched this and my god first time I saw it during the event I never realized how nuts it was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10IvTZizDgU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10IvTZizDgU
And I just realized that I didn't even include limited lives in there.
And I just added it.
I always wondered why it wasn't fun to fight Knights.
Overall the clarity of the enemies is very poor. They all look the same and you can never tell what weapon they're holding. This is with both the Prometheans and the Covenant (and I think Ghaleon brought this up earlier). It's funny how it keeps in line with MM, where you can seldom tell what weapon the other guy has due the unpredictable nature of the game.
How does Str8 Sick strafe that quickly @15:40? I could swear that's impossible to do in Reach.
I agree on most everything outlined.
Admission, though; I do love taking out Watchers and Crawlers.
Knights are a pain in the ass, as all of them seem to have the same shield stamina. Not to mention randomly warping and seeming to gain some shields back, it's just a pain and a huge waste of ammo.
Very awesome write up, Karl.
I was going to finish this week's Spartan Ops missions tonight... but then I bought the Batman trilogy on Blu-ray. Was going to watch them in order but I've been waiting for months to see the Dark Knight Rises (Was on holiday while it was in cinemas... Completely missed out. Managed to stay spoiler free until now though )
)NullPointer
Member
Amazing post Karl, especially this idea here. And removing weaponry from watchers.
Is HaloGAF always this good at 2am? Hot damn.
Monocle
Member
Great post, Karl. You clearly described a number of Spartan Ops' major flaws, and went a step further by proposing practical solutions for each one. That's the kind of feedback that deserves to catch a developer's attention. I hope some of the guys and ladies at 343 are reading.
Yeah, I'm fed up with Spartan Ops. If this is the quality we can expect from the next season, 343 should be ashamed to charge money for it. Ashamed. Halo 4's enemy balance is broken, and Spartan Ops is just about the most scathing case anyone could assemble against the design of the Prometheans. Work this out, 343! If not in this game, then the next. This thread alone contains enough quality feedback for you to make a good start, and Bungie's Halo games are all case studies in solid enemy design (with clear exceptions like Buggers, and the Brutes and Jackal snipers of Halo 2, which are also instructive).
I would like to know this aswell.
To be honest, this is last on my list of wanted fixes.
Pop
Member
Finally received the Halo 4 Console I won from Mountain Dew, the box has been opened and there's no FOTUS code.
Lame.
hahaha
wut
Barrow Roll
Member
The box was opened and tampered with, just lie about some other important shit being missing.
Rickenslacker
Banned
Campaign gets fuckin' nuuuts, though outside of that there's unfortunately little to do.
Finally received the Halo 4 Console I won from Mountain Dew, the box has been opened and there's no FOTUS code.
Lame.
Can't trust the Dew.
Pop
Member
Yup exactly.
Kinda frustrating knowing just some minor tweaks could make h4 something special.
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Edit: Can't even trust Mountain Dew. Fucked up that they would remove fotus armor code. I guess Dew needs the extra money, probably going to sell it on ebay.
I always check, if my package is damaged or unsealed, cause sth. like this can happen. Don't know the law in Great Britain, but in Germany, you wouldn't have a chance of getting sth. afterwards. You have to check your package in front of the post man and he has to wait.
Sounds like I'm bashing you, but I'm not. Just saying, because I know this situation and it sucks.
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