shinobi602
Member
Did any of you guys watch the video? Gun looked awful lol.
Did you even read the article? The title is just click bait if you read the actual thing.
Really? You make a huge generalization and say everything is less sci-fi. Either you didn't read the whole article or you just basing this on only the title.Yeah it seems that scifi wasn't fitting the accessible nature of the game...
Did any of you guys watch the video? Gun looked awful lol.
Interesting OP. It makes me a little sad that all AAA games have to have almost zero learning and have to be instantly recognizable to players with zero frustration.
It pretty much ensures that AAA games are going to boring going forward.
Should've cut almost every single Promethean weapon if that's the case.Cut because it was too sci fi?
Wish they would have just said they cut it because it was a broken weapon.
Should've cut almost every single Promethean weapon if that's the case.
Really? You make a huge generalization and say everything is less sci-fi. Either you didn't read the whole article or you just basing this on only the title.
Nope, not even used in the original OP. You are conflicting the whole notion of accessibility with weapons not being used. Two separate issues.I don't get what you're missing. Their whole is accessibility. Play tests showed that players didn't like their more scifi weapons because no ease of use. Learning curves and all that shit. Yes, play testers are at fault, but 343s philosophy affected this too.
Did any of you guys watch the video? Gun looked awful lol.
Nope, not even used in the original OP. You are conflicting the whole notion of accessibility with weapons not being used. Two separate issues.
That is 343s fault for not seeing or understanding why people avoided using it or what could have made it better.
"Unfortunately, the more sci-fi concepts didn't resonate with players. "What we found as we were testing these weapons with players, the really deep sci-fi approach wasn't relatable. As a result, they weren't really gravitating to these weapons."
What am I missing? I am mad at 2 things. 343 not standing by what they feel is right and playtesters pulled straight from Modern shooter games voicing their opinion on scifi.
Boltshot - a one-shot kill weapon off spawn; the nerf did not fix this issueElaborate?
I wasnt even disagreeing with you. I am just noting that you are pushing two trains of though just to make one point more clearer and sound more harsher, while not looking at the situation and evaluating that. My takeaway is that not the designs of the weapons were problems, but making it clear to the players what they were. There are multiple ways to do it, lets people play with the new weapons only, do Covenant weapons vs new weapons, UNSC weapons vs new weapons etc."Unfortunately, the more sci-fi concepts didn't resonate with players. "What we found as we were testing these weapons with players, the really deep sci-fi approach wasn't relatable. As a result, they weren't really gravitating to these weapons."
What am I missing? I am mad at 2 things. 343 not standing by what they feel is right and playtesters pulled straight from Modern shooter games voicing their opinion on scifi.
Boltshot - a one-shot kill weapon off spawn; the nerf did not fix this issue
Binary Rifle - a sniper rifle that kills in one shot anywhere on the body
Incineration Cannon - Rocket Launcher on steriods, splash damage is hilariously large
Scattershot - Halo 2 Shotgun spread, apparently by design
Three of these are far too strong and the other is far too inconsistent. The Lightrifle is okay the way it is, perhaps too weak compared to the DMR. Same can be said for the Suppressor. Might not be my optimal close quarters weapon, but it isn't frustrating like those four are.
RIP Plasma Launcher
Boltshot - a one-shot kill weapon off spawn; the nerf did not fix this issue
Binary Rifle - a sniper rifle that kills in one shot anywhere on the body
Incineration Cannon - Rocket Launcher on steriods, splash damage is hilariously large
Scattershot - Halo 2 Shotgun spread, apparently by design
Three of these are far too strong and the other is far too inconsistent. The Lightrifle is okay the way it is, perhaps too weak compared to the DMR. Same can be said for the Suppressor. Might not be my optimal close quarters weapon, but it isn't frustrating like those four are.
RIP Plasma Launcher
Honestly the only Promethean weapon I have an issue with is the Boltshot. If they'd nerf the charge shot a bit more it'd be fine. I enjoy the binary rifle so long as it's handled like a power weapon and dropped sparingly.
The light rifle is great. Used it quite a bit. I also enjoy the scattershot, but it could use a slight range boost. The human shotgun demolishes it.
"Unfortunately, the more sci-fi concepts didn't resonate with players. "What we found as we were testing these weapons with players, the really deep sci-fi approach wasn't relatable. As a result, they weren't really gravitating to these weapons."
What am I missing? I am mad at 2 things. 343 not standing by what they feel is right and playtesters pulled straight from Modern shooter games voicing their opinion on scifi.
I see where you're coming from, but they're two separate things. You had your shields, then you're health, which was measured in health bars.
Shields are not what we were talking about when it comes to regenerative health.
It's a videogame.
With guns.
Aircrafts.
And Aliens.
In the space.
You don't want it to be sci-fi.
WHAT THE FUCK
The guy just outlined why I so passionately despised Promethean weapons. Even covenant weapons were better than their reskinned human weapons.
Fuck relatability of a small play test group. This way the developers themselves perpetuate stagnation to play it safe.
So, between this, the loadouts, the non-cosmetic unlocks, the sprinting, the killcams, and the need to make things familiar to people coming from other series, what 343 is saying is...
"We want the CoD audience."
I don't think it's been mentioned - that stasis gun is still hidden in the game's code.
It looks unbelievably annoying to deal with in multiplayer when your mobility is the one defense you have in open areas.
(of course, if the reason for cutting it was that it was annoying to deal with, then by that same token the Boltshot, Binary Rifle, and Incineration Cannon shouldn't have made it into the game either)
So, between this, the loadouts, the non-cosmetic unlocks, the sprinting, the killcams, and the need to make things familiar to people coming from other series, what 343 is saying is...
"We want the CoD audience."
Oh, I don't think the statis gun as presented is a very good idea. It needed a lot of development work.
But what we ended up with were just derivative copies of existing human weapons.
Heck, there's not even anything as different and interesting as the Sentinel Beam.
I wasnt even disagreeing with you. I am just noting that you are pushing two trains of though just to make one point more clearer and sound more harsher, while not looking at the situation and evaluating that. My takeaway is that not the designs of the weapons were problems, but making it clear to the players what they were. There are multiple ways to do it, lets people play with the new weapons only, do Covenant weapons vs new weapons, UNSC weapons vs new weapons etc.
Eh, maybe Im just tired of everybody going hyperbole and avoiding some reasonable aspects.
Fantastic post. Agree.One of the main things I like about science fiction is the sense of mystery and the unknown. There isn't a problem with the user not knowing how the gun works the first time they use it, that adds to the unknown and makes the world feel foreign. The only issue then is giving the weapon a visual identity (which is something I think 4 did really well).
The problem with the weapons in Halo 4 isn't that they said "lol modern military, let's make some COD dollars", it's that the weapons they added didn't flesh out the sandbox in any meaningful way. The nice thing about human vs covenant was human weapons hurt flesh, covenant damage shields. It's simple but it means that you can have two weapons fill the same role in terms of range but ultimately have different use cases. Even bungie watered down this design ethic as the games progressed but for the most part, each weapon had a distinguished purpose. The Promethean weapons in 4 (with the exception of the grenades) aren't unique, they're just different flavours of what we already had in the same way that its the minutia that separates two fully automatic weapons in modern military shooters. It's a completely different design mentality to what I really enjoyed about the Halo formula and it's what puts me off 4 on a fundamental level without even going into things like ordinance or the boltshot or whatever.
I don't know if I should attribute it to them saying "let's make the game less sci-fi due to accessibility issues" but it certainly seems like they didn't take advantage of the leeway they have with a setting as broad as Halo's. It feels more like they took the easy way out and made everything aesthetically sci-fi instead of mechanically sci-fi.
I don't know if I should attribute it to them saying "let's make the game less sci-fi due to accessibility issues" but it certainly seems like they didn't take advantage of the leeway they have with a setting as broad as Halo's. It feels more like they took the easy way out and made everything aesthetically sci-fi instead of mechanically sci-fi.
The OP mistakenly assumes in the OP that Josh was solely talking about "focus testing" as the reason for cutting the stasis pistol. The "players" that Josh mentioned are mostly internal staffers who provided consistent feedback throughout development of our weapon sandbox.
We talked about this entire process (including the stasis pistol) in an episode of our studio podcast (343 Sparkast) BEFORE Halo 4 shipped. Also to fully understand how we User Research works at Microsoft, I recommend the feature Matt Leonne did at Polygon.
From my recollection, the stasis pistol was cut because it was more frustrating than fun. Imagine an entire team using these to continually bubble you in place. The team felt that valuable production time was better spent working on the rest of the sandbox than spending more time on a weapon that likely would've become our Armor Lock. That's not to say it couldn't have become a worthwhile addition, there simply wasn't enough time to take that particular road.
We certainly could've done a better balancing job on some weapons (see Boltshot) but we're continuing to work on making the game a better experience post-launch than day one. And that's pretty much all I'm going to say. But by all means, don't let me stop you from working out your internal issues by attacking people personally.
We talked about this entire process (including the stasis pistol) in an episode of our studio podcast (343 Sparkast) BEFORE Halo 4 shipped.
-snip-
But by all means, don't let me stop you from working out your internal issues by attacking people personally.
Good post. TBH the shields/health thing was only really important in Halo 1 and diverged quite quickly afterwards, but in team multiplayer it still had influence.One of the main things I like about science fiction is the sense of mystery and the unknown. There isn't a problem with the user not knowing how the gun works the first time they use it, that adds to the unknown and makes the world feel foreign. The only issue then is giving the weapon a visual identity (which is something I think 4 did really well).
The problem with the weapons in Halo 4 isn't that they said "lol modern military, let's make some COD dollars", it's that the weapons they added didn't flesh out the sandbox in any meaningful way. The nice thing about human vs covenant was human weapons hurt flesh, covenant damage shields. It's simple but it means that you can have two weapons fill the same role in terms of range but ultimately have different use cases. Even bungie watered down this design ethic as the games progressed but for the most part, each weapon had a distinguished purpose. The Promethean weapons in 4 (with the exception of the grenades) aren't unique, they're just different flavours of what we already had in the same way that its the minutia that separates two fully automatic weapons in modern military shooters. It's a completely different design mentality to what I really enjoyed about the Halo formula and it's what puts me off 4 on a fundamental level without even going into things like ordinance or the boltshot or whatever.
I don't know if I should attribute it to them saying "let's make the game less sci-fi due to accessibility issues" but it certainly seems like they didn't take advantage of the leeway they have with a setting as broad as Halo's. It feels more like they took the easy way out and made everything aesthetically sci-fi instead of mechanically sci-fi.
Also a good post.The OP mistakenly assumes in the OP that Josh was solely talking about "focus testing" as the reason for cutting the stasis pistol. The "players" that Josh mentioned are mostly internal staffers who provided consistent feedback throughout development of our weapon sandbox.
We talked about this entire process (including the stasis pistol) in an episode of our studio podcast (343 Sparkast) BEFORE Halo 4 shipped. Also to fully understand how we User Research works at Microsoft, I recommend the feature Matt Leonne did at Polygon.
From my recollection, the stasis pistol was cut because it was more frustrating than fun. Imagine an entire team using these to continually bubble you in place. The team felt that valuable production time was better spent working on the rest of the sandbox than spending more time on a weapon that likely would've become our Armor Lock. That's not to say it couldn't have become a worthwhile addition, there simply wasn't enough time to take that particular road.
We certainly could've done a better balancing job on some weapons (see Boltshot) but we're continuing to work on making the game a better experience post-launch than day one. And that's pretty much all I'm going to say. But by all means, don't let me stop you from working out your internal issues by attacking people personally.
From my recollection, the stasis pistol was cut because it was more frustrating than fun. Imagine an entire team using these to continually bubble you in place. The team felt that valuable production time was better spent working on the rest of the sandbox than spending more time on a weapon that likely would've become our Armor Lock. That's not to say it couldn't have become a worthwhile addition, there simply wasn't enough time to take that particular road.
I get the feeling Halo 4 was rushed, it would certainly explain why so many corners were cut with the gameplay.
It probably would have involved Promethean Knights in some form. We know that 343 Industries utilized a lot of core ideas for Halo 4 that Bungie was going with before they decided to go with Reach as their final project, namely the nature of Requiem and Forerunner forces being a primary antagonist. Other than that, who knows.I think Halo 4 is a pretty good example off how to poorly transition a franchise between developers, the was what seemed to be a tonne of passion behind it but it feels like they didn't know if they wanted to stay true to what Bungie made or create their own unique thing and they probably failed on both fronts. I wonder if we'll ever find out what Ryan Payton's original vision for 4 was.
The OP mistakenly assumes in the OP that Josh was solely talking about "focus testing" as the reason for cutting the stasis pistol. The "players" that Josh mentioned are mostly internal staffers who provided consistent feedback throughout development of our weapon sandbox.
We talked about this entire process (including the stasis pistol) in an episode of our studio podcast (343 Sparkast) BEFORE Halo 4 shipped. Also to fully understand how we User Research works at Microsoft, I recommend the feature Matt Leonne did at Polygon.
From my recollection, the stasis pistol was cut because it was more frustrating than fun. Imagine an entire team using these to continually bubble you in place. The team felt that valuable production time was better spent working on the rest of the sandbox than spending more time on a weapon that likely would've become our Armor Lock. That's not to say it couldn't have become a worthwhile addition, there simply wasn't enough time to take that particular road.
We certainly could've done a better balancing job on some weapons (see Boltshot) but we're continuing to work on making the game a better experience post-launch than day one. And that's pretty much all I'm going to say. But by all means, don't let me stop you from working out your internal issues by attacking people personally.
Leave it in campaign but don't put in in multiplayer. I just solved your problem, took less than 1 minute.
I really wish they stressed that the weapon just didn't work out, unless this is just selective reporting or copy/pasting in the OP. Maybe the presenter had his own beef or a sort of skewed view on "Sci-fi" ("sci-fi means it's out there and a convoluted pain to use!"), but it gives the impression that anything out of a very narrow comfort zone was unacceptable, when the reality appears to be that it was just a half baked idea that needed a lot of work to be something people would want to use, and perhaps wasn't fitting in a game like this unlike, say, a tower defense.The OP mistakenly assumes in the OP that Josh was solely talking about "focus testing" as the reason for cutting the stasis pistol. The "players" that Josh mentioned are mostly internal staffers who provided consistent feedback throughout development of our weapon sandbox.
We talked about this entire process (including the stasis pistol) in an episode of our studio podcast (343 Sparkast) BEFORE Halo 4 shipped. Also to fully understand how we User Research works at Microsoft, I recommend the feature Matt Leonne did at Polygon.
From my recollection, the stasis pistol was cut because it was more frustrating than fun. Imagine an entire team using these to continually bubble you in place. The team felt that valuable production time was better spent working on the rest of the sandbox than spending more time on a weapon that likely would've become our Armor Lock. That's not to say it couldn't have become a worthwhile addition, there simply wasn't enough time to take that particular road.
We certainly could've done a better balancing job on some weapons (see Boltshot) but we're continuing to work on making the game a better experience post-launch than day one. And that's pretty much all I'm going to say. But by all means, don't let me stop you from working out your internal issues by attacking people personally.
Leave it in campaign but don't put in in multiplayer. I just solved your problem, took less than 1 minute.