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Halo |OT15| Beta-tested, GAF approved

With Extraction I think it has to have an odd number of points to encourage combat. If there's one to fight over then you have to control the one point, if there are three to fight over it's a fight to control the third point or prevent your opponent from extracting two points at once. If it's two points then it's a race to see who can get their point to extract the fastest.

With two points you run the risk of losing your point if you engage the enemy. If you started extracting your point before your opponent started extracting theirs you have absolutely no reason to attack their point. It's much safer just to defend your point and then capture the next point that spawns than it is to attack their point and risk dying, which then gives them an advantage in attacking your point.

I agree, though I think 343 changed it to 2 so there will be close matches, which there are now. Most games turn out to be one team choosing a point and defending it until the 5th point arrives. At least half of my Extraction games in Majestic are decided by the 5th extraction. A third extraction point is more dynamic but can lead to larger margin between team scores.
 

IHaveIce

Banned
That's what happens whenever I play with people from HaloGAF. I always just assume that their skill level is significantly higher than mine.
Yep same for me, when I'm playing alone I'm pretty decent but when playing with HaloGAF peeps I'm usually not so good :(
 

Fuchsdh

Member
That's what happens whenever I play with people from HaloGAF. I always just assume that their skill level is significantly higher than mine.

Agreed. Now it's nice to know I'm slightly better than Wahrer.*

*Assuming Wahrer is blackscreening half the game.
 
Apparently I haven't been getting any popups for achievements for the Majestic Achievements. I just checked my list and I already got the jetpack/PV/Close Call achievements but was never notified of it.
 
Agreed. Now it's nice to know I'm slightly better than Wahrer.*

*Assuming Wahrer is blackscreening half the game.

Like I said last night, I have a bizarre niche on teams - I can get kills that nobody else can get. If a sniper's pinning everyone down? I'll find a way. If a Mantis just took out our Warthog? I'll find a way. If some guy just got an Incineration Cannon and Speed Boost? I'll find a fucking way.

However, the downside is that I usually won't get the kills everyone else can get, though. Generally I'm an assist machine.
 

Blueblur1

Member
I dunno if this was discussed already, but I remember someone from Bungie commenting that they spent a significant amount of development resources getting Long Night of Solace working in Reach. At the time it didn't really make sense because it was just one level, but I guess now that we know players will be flying around in Destiny, it's another highlight on how forward thinking they are with the things they build. LNoS was just one level of one game, and the technology behind that one level is potentially a game-wide feature on their next project.

I also remember people digging through the Reach beta code and finding a gametype option called Dogfight. I guess that would be the multiplayer component of their flight sim tech that they either held back or hadn't quite finished in time for Reach's launch. I wouldn't be surprised if that reemerged as a multiplayer mode in Destiny.
Good point! I also expect we'll see Dogfight debut in Destiny.
 

Booties

Banned
Yeah, I've jumped on a bunch of games during this sale. Can't wait for MGS HD to go on sale too!

I bought that way back. So good.

Damn those are some good choices. As someone who only has Dead Island, which game should I buy?

I'm thinking RDR, or Batman.

I think I might get both of them. I should buy bioshock or something else just cause.

Jump off the ledge.

no

Be a bad kid

yes
 
I wish the DMR wasn't the best gun in this game. It's so boring and is not fun to use.

Honestly though, in the smaller maps of the map pack its not nearly as effective. Ive been using the AR just to get that 30k xp challenge and i noticed that the dmr people dont even have time to react when you turn a corner with an AR and start emptying bullets into them. Its good on the big maps, on small maps, its a lot harder to use.
 
They should fix the DMR so that it's basically the Halo CE Pistol 2.0 and fix loadouts so that Infinity has primary rifle starts, while Pro has only DMR starts.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
I swear by the "BK Bonanza" loadout.

Assault Rifle, Magnum, 3x frags, Jetpack, Explosives.

Spawn, throw 3x grenades, triple kill.
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
I swear by the "BK Bonanza" loadout.

Assault Rifle, Magnum, 3x frags, Jetpack, Explosives.

Spawn, throw 3x grenades, triple kill.

i havent played around with explosives - do you really find it makes a significant difference in the amount of grenade or grenade related kills you get?
 
My Spartan Ops loadout can also kill a Mantis one-on-one.

DMR
Plasma Pistol
Jetpack
Plasma Grenades
Grenadier
Explosives

1. EMP Mantis to remove shields
2. Stick it three times
3. Halo
 
DMR is the most fun weapon to use IMO. Not sure why people complain about DMR usage anymore. Must tryhards use the BR these days anyway.

People complain about the DMR because it has ridiculous aim assist, a 3x scope, and is incredibly easy to five shot across a map with, especially when players move as slow as they do in Halo 4.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
i havent played around with explosives - do you really find it makes a significant difference in the amount of grenade or grenade related kills you get?

It may just be a placebo effect, but it feels like I pop shields or get a kill much more often when I'm using it.
 

DeadNames

Banned
People complain about the DMR because it has ridiculous aim assist, a 3x scope, and is incredibly easy to five shot across a map with, especially when players move as slow as they do in Halo 4.

And the fact that as long as the reticle is on the enemy, it's a guaranteed hit. The BR could miss 1/3 of the burst. Same goes for the LR. The Carbine's aim assist should be swapped with the DMR's.
 

Booties

Banned
Since they nerfed the boltshot I just use firepower and always have an AR. I mostly stick to hologram, thruster, and jetpack.
 
I'm not quite understanding what you're referring to here. Hit detection? Aiming sensitivity? Magnetism?

Late back to this but I mean the general responsiveness from analog stick to reticle, lack of aim acceleration and a smoothness that I find lacking in 4.

The engineering team at 343 did pretty well with the visuals and netcode. The foundation was there, but the piece of the puzzle that doesn't make sense is how the multiplayer starting going in this shaky direction, and how everything else ended up so half-baked. I can't speculate much on the non-multiplayer portions, I'm sure that was a tangled web of employee departures and missed deadlines and scrapped plans, but for the multiplayer; do I think the team at 343 felt passionately about shoving COD features into Halo? Nah. To me, Halo 4 has all the telltale signs of being designed by executives and focus tested into oblivion, which is something we're feeling more and more as industry sales are generally down with this extended console lifespan and publishers are trying to scrape together a decent ROI. I'm sure some higher-ups looked at COD financials, studied the psychological components of what makes COD a success, looked at what they had (Halo), and issued some large directives - a purely business decision which I can certainly respect - to try to keep up. I guess it worked, it's a shame that once again the true, longtime hardcore Halo fans are the ones who get squeezed.

There's a lot in this and one can chart certain milestones in the flip flopping of the multiplayer's base direction from the clumsy info dumps we got in the lead up to release. Take the Game Informer reveal; it was the first mooting of the Global Ordnance concept in which weapons would spawn at preset destinations in a random fashion. It is presented as a new approach to the concept of map movement and control....

Then, about 3 months or so later, without fanfare, notification (or even acknowledgement from 343 for some time) we start hearing reports from selected community members (I believe it was Wu that posted about it here) who played the game at a closed off event that they were presented with an option, on the in-game UI, to choose from a selection of weapons, kill streak style. I distinctly remember the confusion in his post; I got the impression that whoever was representing 343 at the event wasn't particularly forthcoming with information about this extremely significant, watershed, paradigm shifting moment within the Halo multiplayer experience. This very public unveiling of the Global Ordnance system in a nationally distributed magazine points to a reasonable probability that it was something worked on internally by 343 for a considered amount of time. The clandestine, almost 'I'll just leave this here' fashion in which personal ordnance was dropped into the Halo fans consciousness smacks of a late intervention from an 'executive consultant' externally drafted in by MS to ensure Halo isn't undermining itself by ignoring genre industry trends.

Another example of the confused multiplayer direction stems again from the GI reveal. I think the magazine said that the weapons due to drop in Global Ordnance would have a countdown waypoint appear sometime in advance of the weapon drop so both teams could mount an assault over the anticipated booty....

What we got was Global Ordnance but with no global heads up to anticipate the incoming drop. Weapons fall at the whim of a dice roll and the only determinate on whether or not you acquire the all important power weapon is if you chanced to be standing next to the random drop. So what happened? The heads up waypoint for an incoming weapon drop was annexed to an individual 'specialisation', something only accessible to a player who had sunk a significant amount of hours into its EXP, time-based investment system. It reeks of another executive decision, attenuating the composite piece as much as possible without dismantling the game completely, in order to justify an industry trend, gameplay altering unlock system.

I've had this vision for some time now. This vision of an executive MS employee sitting in the room with a clip pad and pen. He doesn't say anything. But he listens and watches everything the designers are saying and doing at 343. He notes things down on his pad when 343 are discussing multiplayer ideas. A 343 employee asks what he's writing down. He replies "Oh, nothing important, please, carry on as if I wasn't here". Then 343 get E-mails from MS exec directors the same evening warning against ideas they floated that working day.
 

Ghazi

Member
I've had this vision for some time now. This vision of an executive MS employee sitting in the room with a clip pad and pen. He doesn't say anything. But he listens and watches everything the designers are saying and doing at 343. He notes things down on his pad when 343 are discussing multiplayer ideas. A 343 employee asks what he's writing down. He replies "Oh, nothing important, please, carry on as if I wasn't here". Then 343 get E-mails from MS exec directors the same evening warning against ideas they floated that working day.

Then that same executive gets to look at the daily peak numbers and see that he fucked up.
 

Ghazi

Member
And then he looks at units sold and is like, "LOL we got this!"

My guess is that when the next Halo launches people aren't going to be as easily bought with hype. It had been nearly 5 years since the last MC numbered title and everyone was probably a little tired from Reach.
 
Then that same executive gets to look at the daily peak numbers and see that he fucked up.

Na i don't think it was an executive decision at all. If anything, it was to me a sign of how gamers are not playing games today they way they used to in the past. Maybe Halo4 did make some mistakes, but it was all by design. One thing that COD has done since COD4 is change the way casuals play games online. And those casuals are the people who made Halo2 huge back in the day. The reason they play COD now is because in that game, everyone can be good. Get a few kills, get a lot of points, call in a UAV, a chopper, a turret, whatever. The game helps the gamer be better at the game and in the end, its an ultimately more gratifying experience to them than Halo is. Get 5 kills, unlock a scope, camo, etc.. its constant "instant gratification" in that game. And it does that very VERY well.

Notice how the huge games all have a lot of "instant gratification" in them now. Thats what 343i tried to do with 4, give more incentive to the people who arent that good at Halo to be good at Halo.
 

J10

Banned
And then he looks at units sold and is like, "LOL we got this!"

Then the camera pans up as the chair swivels around and we see

iV6mBQFdVpxnX.gif


Cue maniacal laughter.
 

Ghazi

Member
Na i don't think it was an executive decision at all. If anything, it was to me a sign of how gamers are not playing games today they way they used to in the past. Maybe Halo4 did make some mistakes, but it was all by design. One thing that COD has done since COD4 is change the way casuals play games online. And those casuals are the people who made Halo2 huge back in the day. The reason they play COD now is because in that game, everyone can be good. Get a few kills, get a lot of points, call in a UAV, a chopper, a turret, whatever. The game helps the gamer be better at the game and in the end, its an ultimately more gratifying experience to them than Halo is. Get 5 kills, unlock a scope, camo, etc.. its constant "instant gratification" in that game. And it does that very well.

Notice how the huge games all have a lot of "instant gratification" in them. Thats what 343i tried to do with 4, give more incentive to the people who arent that good at Halo to be good at Halo.

And that's why I don't like CoD's multiplayer, it's trying to be too flashy and rewarding. The only feeling of reward I need is when I outsmart an opponent in Halo, that's why I keep coming back to 4 as much as I don't like it. Sure I could go play CoD and have some fun, but it's all mindless fun. In CoD all I do is run laps around the map, kill anybody I see, repeat and it's way too easy and routine. I don't find that enjoyable, but I'd rather be playing with my friends and they've all abandoned Halo 4. I keep wanting to enjoy my time with 4, but every time I go back to give it another chance I get slapped in the face and it becomes rage inducing. My desire to be gaming has slowly been reducing as I see what it's becoming and it's completely depressing to be feeling this way.
 
I've had this vision for some time now. This vision of an executive MS employee sitting in the room with a clip pad and pen. He doesn't say anything. But he listens and watches everything the designers are saying and doing at 343. He notes things down on his pad when 343 are discussing multiplayer ideas. A 343 employee asks what he's writing down. He replies "Oh, nothing important, please, carry on as if I wasn't here". Then 343 get E-mails from MS exec directors the same evening warning against ideas they floated that working day.

Heh, this scenario reminds me of the MS executive that tried to remove the chainsaw from the lancer in GOW because 'they didn't get it'.

If memory recalls it was in a Cliffy B interview with Edge.
 
And that's why I don't like CoD's multiplayer, it's trying to be too flashy and rewarding. The only feeling of reward I need is when I outsmart an opponent in Halo, that's why I keep coming back to 4 as much as I don't like it. Sure I could go play CoD and have some fun, but it's all mindless fun. In CoD all I do is run laps around the map, kill anybody I see, repeat and it's way too easy and routine. I don't find that enjoyable, but I'd rather be playing with my friends and they've all abandoned Halo 4. I keep wanting to enjoy my time with 4, but every time I go back to give it another chance I get slapped in the face and it becomes rage inducing. My desire to be gaming has slowly been reducing as I see what it's becoming and it's completely depressing to be feeling this way.

Its going to be very interesting to see what the support for 4 is going to bring in the future and the overall direction of 5 is going to be.

Honestly, to me its very simple: add the features you feel are going to make a better game, but give the option for gamers to turn it off or customize it. Its really not that complicated.

Had 343i added the new flag mode where i "have to" pick up the flag and not drop it, but still have given me the option to create my own flag mode with that off, (or one flag ability) people wouldn't be bitching as much. But its forced down your throat and the old way cant even be created or modified for custom games anymore! Of course Halo fans are going to be angry. Shit, if you wanna add a new game-type like extraction, fine add it. But give me options and the ability to modify that game-type as i see fit. And dont remove the old proven ones like Assault that play differently than anything you have in this game.

To me the big problem in this game is not what they added, its what they removed. Theres a lot less customizable options for game-types in this game and thats what hurts it imo.
 
And then he looks at units sold and is like, "LOL we got this!"

This is the problem right here. The name sold this game.

My guess is that when the next Halo launches people aren't going to be as easily bought with hype. It had been nearly 5 years since the last MC numbered title and everyone was probably a little tired from Reach.


This is the other problem. This is going to be their huge nextbox title and a lot of people are going to take a wait and see approach, especially since they need to buy a new console to play it.

Halo 2 HD is not moving that new console.
 
Its going to be very interesting to see what the support for 4 is going to bring in the future and the overall direction of 5 is going to be.

Honestly, to me its very simple: add the features you feel are going to make a better game, but give the option for gamers to turn it off or customize it. Its really not that complicated.

Had 343i added the new flag mode where i "have to" pick up the flag and not drop it, but still have given me the option to create my own flag mode with that off, (or one flag ability) people wouldn't be bitching as much. But its forced down your throat and the old way cant even be created or modified for custom games anymore! Of course Halo fans are going to be angry. Shit, if you wanna add a new game-type like extraction, fine add it. But give me options and the ability to modify that game-type as i see fit. And dont remove the old proven ones like Assault that play differently than anything you have in this game.

To me the big problem in this game is not what they added, its what they removed. Theres a lot less customizable options for game-types in this game and thats what hurts it imo.

Actually, if they can add 1 Extraction point to TTD then they should just put 1 flag into CTF. It has its own playlist, let people vote on it.
 
Actually, if they can add 1 Extraction point to TTD then they should just put 1 flag into CTF. It has its own playlist, let people vote on it.

Thats one option, but i dont think that its built into the custom options so they cant do that. They have to patch it in the game! Had they just added options, they could have. But they didnt.

Bungie added "everything but the kitchen sink" to their Halo games, these guys are removing them. Of course Halo fans are pissed. Its an absolute ridiculous move to give people less options, less game-types and expect them to be happier.
 
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