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Halo |OT12| Last One Out, Get the Lights

Can't wait for Halo 5. Shouldn't take em more than a few hours to get it done.
Hurr durr.

Yes, stuff like removing the boltshot/PP from starts as well as setting ordnance back to static or semi-random would only take a few hours. Now kindly give me a break. Thanks.
 
I choose to ignore it on the fact that those style of games have yet to impress me. What more do i need? Its Bungie? So fokin what. They made one game i really loved (CE) and spent the next decade letting me down. Now suddenly im supposed to be all excited cause theyre working on a game genre that i hate? They couldn't impress me passed CE on a genre i love let alone one i dislike.
Mikey, I never knew you were a CE purist.

Wasn't it Chris Butcher who Facebook'd that he hasn't been this excited to play a game (Destiny) since CE?
 
From the bulletin, some PM's and quickly looking at some forums I have this list so far:

1. Fixed exploit locations on Haven
2. Fixed exploit locations on Adrift
3. Introduced Ordnance drop issues on Haven (oops)
4. Fixed the final kill cams (some gametypes, still reporting bugged)
5. Can't do boltshot reload glitch
6. No more super grenade throw
7. Some matchmaking parameters, players reporting smoother games
8. DLC only working on one profile fixed
9. Launching Waypoint from Halo 4 in game menu, no more crashing (try reinstalling Waypoint if problem persists)
10. Last Strike medal fixed
 
Mikey, I never knew you were a CE purist.

I wouldn't say purist, but it did blow me away. And today, i still enjoy it. It holds up amazingly well. Halo2, 3 even Reach, ive played them sure, but i have no desire to go back to any of them except CE.

Bungie is like a woman giving me an amazing blow job once, then just fun ones. And now shes moving on to ass play. Essh, not excited one bit about this. :p

Edit: And just to say, even with all its bugs, Halo4 has impressed me more than every other halo game that came before, except CE.
 

Havok

Member
Perhaps making Dominion and Extraction into one playlist would be fine but CTF should definitely stay separated, especially in light that assault isn't in. After all the Flood & Dominion regular have the same population so I don't see your point really. Fact remains I want to select a gametype then I shouldn't have to vote between 3 different types and have approx. a 1 in 3 chance of actually playing what I want.

Further the MLG playlist and players are often the ones who enjoy Oddball and KOTH so there is some double up there and I'm sure if there's an MLG playlist those numbers will be affected/duplicated anyhow. It was absurd in Reach and it showed with the population back then. Things are better now and they should stay on that track.
Flood and Dominion consistently have nearly double the population that King and Ball do. They also have no close analogues that they could share a playlist with. I'm not saying that everything needs to be in one list (again: CTF can support itself.), but grab bag playlists are not some devil that should be avoided at all cost. If the gametypes are grouped smartly and show with proper frequency it is a nonissue. Oddball, King of the Hill, Extraction: all capture-and-hold gametypes that don't have any extraneous systems on top of them (which Dominion is chock full of). Why not group them? Team Control. None of them are going to be able to exist on their own long-term.

Again, Reach is just an example of not enough care being put into Objective playlist management. Using it as an example is just saying "when the playlist team doesn't give a shit about objective, nobody is going to play it." No shit. That is the wrong way to do it. There is a right way to do it where fringe gametypes can exist without overpowering the primary experience. And attributing the population issues that Reach TO had solely to voting distribution is laughable in the first place when it had a mountain of problems on top of that. Nobody played it because the combinations were fucking terrible for almost every gametype in the playlist, and it had horrible settings (drop shield, AR starts, forge maps, evade, camo) for 99.9% of its lifetime. Then they added garbage like 2 Flag Slayer, Speedflag and Hot Potato. It wasn't played because it was by and large a shitty playlist. Treat the playlist with respect and don't shove a bunch of crap in there and people will play it. Don't put crummy fringe garbage in there and people won't be upset when the shitty options are voted for.
 
So the perfection medal/commendation is still broken?

Or is there just not a medal anymore?

Pretty much the entire game is broken. Most aspects once you dive into them have things wrong with them. Casuals wont notice and give it a 9.8. If you really look hard though nothing works like its supposed to.
 
I didnt think the super grenade throw was a glitch. Makes sense that if you throw while sprinting the grenades are gonna go farther. Now I wish I had saved clips of the few hail mary sticks I had gotten... seriously throwing grenades farther was one of the things I really liked about the game. RIP grenades. smh...
 
Halo |OT13| Did I give you permission to bitch, soldier?
Halo |OT13| I would have been your daddy...
Halo |OT13| Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Fool! They ordered me to do it.

HaloGAF in disarray.

Thread father is gone.
Thread father's lover is gone.

RIP HaloGAF
But yeah, pretty much.
 
Enjoy having CTF as the only objective playlist in the game then, because it's the only gametype that can support a playlist on its own. Voting experiences predicted this, and now we're seeing that prediction being lived out as King is getting cut already. Ball and King are (yet again) sitting at 2% of the total online population, which isn't acceptable long-term. I predict that Ball will follow King into the guillotine soon. Dominion's population has been cut in half in the last month, but the same happened with Invasion, so it's not terribly surprising. It'll stick around in some form or another, though I hope it is drastically revised. The populations for objective playlists are fine as straight numbers now, but the game is only a month old and the population has been steadily declining. I suspect in a few months it'll be a different story unless the new maps bring a population boom (they won't).

The issues you outline can be avoided if the playlist management team properly weights the gametype/map combinations. They didn't with Reach Objective, especially not when 343 gave each gametype its own guaranteed slot using some of the worst categorization I've ever seen instead of allowing the weightings to work properly and filter those slots by math. Past Objective handling has been poor because of a lack of proper care given to those weightings, but I don't think this current model is any better. Giving filler gametypes their own playlists isn't the answer.

What would keeping KotH as a playlist take away from? I can understand if the population was deathly low and it took ages to find people, but it doesn't. It was even fast finding people to play Co-op Campaign MM in Reach.

Team Objective definitely missed out on a lot of love in past games because of experiences like this:

Ya, going back to the old method would just make me stop playing all together to be honest. Im already getting the same Ragnarok maps all the time, all i need is to get the same gametypes too and that will be enough for me to move on from the game altogether.

-and couple that with the some of the weaker changes in Objective games after Halo 2.. ;[


I wouldn't mind though if they combined only certain playlists, but definitely not like how TO was in the past. The problem here though is that would obviously require a change in the voting system which would then require a TU, no?


-EDIT-

Flood and Dominion consistently have nearly double the population that King and Ball do. They also have no close analogues that they could share a playlist with. I'm not saying that everything needs to be in one list (again: CTF can support itself.), but grab bag playlists are not some devil that should be avoided at all cost. If the gametypes are grouped smartly and show with proper frequency it is a nonissue. Oddball, King of the Hill, Extraction: all capture-and-hold gametypes that don't have any extraneous systems on top of them (which Dominion is chock full of). Why not group them? Team Control.

<3
 
EDITED - That is the wrong way to do it. There is a right way to do it where fringe gametypes can exist without overpowering the primary experience. And attributing the population issues that Reach TO had to voting distribution is laughable in the first place. Treat the playlist with respect and don't shove a bunch of crap in there and people will play it.

But that is just it, I don't want to play KOTH at all, ever. I just don't like the gametype. I also care very little to play oddball against regular practised teams. In objective lists the matching of randoms vs. team happens more often due to the matchmaking parameters having lower populations to work with.

At the end of the day I really don't understand why player toggles/filters and party leader settings aren't a far better idea than trying to manage playlists and not getting a 100% coverage or satisfactory experience.

Imagine a core 3-5 playlists and then player/party host toggles and filters do the rest for matching players, maps and games. It's like the hybrid best of custom games browsing and the matchmaking system without the developer having to manage things. Players basically manage the inputs themselves and the voting options are far more accurate and a targeted based on the player toggles for that specific game.

See this Waypoint thread for details of what I outlined. I genuinely wanted player toggles for Halo 4 matchmaking, maybe 343i will actually trial this for Halo 5. To me it's a far more elegant and dynamic solution in the matchmaking PvP environment. I also championed an extension to the Reach filters but that never got into the developer ear or attention focus.

Toggles/filters enable player choice, matching on those with optional filters and doesn't require huge amounts of developer decisions as the matching is based on dynamic player inputs. At any time a player can simply change toggles & filters to do/get what they want out of the experience in terms of gametypes, maps and similar players who like the same. You can even minify or remove voting to speed things up and reduce minorities missing out on what they want to play.

It's a far better solution by design. Below is a snippet example of player selected toggles, add in some requirements for minimum amount of selections and don't allow this for ranked play:

- Example Player Toggles -
(all YES by default unless switched off by player, min. number of selections required)

MAPS:
Boardwalk = YES
Boneyard = NO
Countdown = NO
Forge World = YES
Powerhouse = YES
Reflection = YES
Spire = YES
Sword Base = NO
Zealot = YES

GAMETYPES:
Slayer = NO
TU Slayer = YES
Multi Flag (2flag or 3 flag) = YES
One Flag = YES
Neutral Flag = YES
Assault (2bomb) = YES
One Bomb = YES
Oddball = NO
King of the Hill (KOTH) = NO

OTHER FILTERS:
Close Skill = YES
Good Connection = YES
Party matching = YES

DLC & Achievement toggles
Basically if you have the DLC maps you can toggle them on/off. So overall you set all older maps = NO and only the DLC maps = YES. Matchmaking would then only put you in veto options for those maps. You could even toggle gametypes too so you can get specific achievements.

1. Enter a very few core playlist to start matchmaking (e.g. slayer, infinity, MLG, objective, BTB)
2. Your player or party host toggles match you into a game with other similar players/parties and toggles
3. The voting is targeted to the cross referencing of the players/teams toggles.
4. Players vote on a much clearer selection instead of weights and random selections.
5. This leads to closer games, player choice, less developer management, less getting wasted votes/maps/gametypes.
6. Will reduce quitting and would still allow for JIP.
 

malfcn

Member
Beat the game on Legendary co-op with a friend. He didn't get any achievements because the game never registered a mission in the middle of the game. Poor him (and me, no bromegeddon).
 
Yay they're getting rid of one of the only things I had a ton of fun doing in matchmaking (Sticking people at super long distances with the super throw) :/
 

Tawpgun

Member
Real talk though if Ghaleon just copypastas the OP and PM's it to me I can start the new thread, ain't a problem.

Or someone else idgaf just don't want to meddle with the gaming side peasants
 

blamite

Member
Halo |OT13| Did I give you permission to bitch, soldier?
Halo |OT13| I would have been your daddy...
Halo |OT13| Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Fool! They ordered me to do it.

Time to do this again? Okay, I'll re-propose my favorite one:

Halo |OT13| In this hour of victory, we taste only defeat.
 

Havok

Member
What would keeping KotH as a playlist take away from? I can understand if the population was deathly low and it took ages to find people, but it doesn't. It was even fast finding people to play Co-op Campaign MM in Reach.

Team Objective definitely missed out on a lot of love in past games because of experiences like this:

-and couple that with the some of the weaker changes in Objective games after Halo 2.. ;[
I wouldn't mind though if they combined only certain playlists, but definitely not like how TO was in the past. The problem here though is that would obviously require a change in the voting system which would then require a TU, no?
I'm just looking forward to when the total population dips down and all of a sudden that constant 2% of the playerbase is 500 people all the time. It's trending downward already, and some consolidation is going to have to happen. Again, not saying everything needs to be in one list. CTF as a standalone has proven to work fine.The secondary gametypes, not so much. And then when you're taking into account player skill, which campaign coop did not, you've got to be extra careful. Take what worked about the old system and what works about the new system, and combine them. Nobody is asking for a repeat of the old mistakes, and I don't think we should be asking for a continuation of the current ones either.
But that is just it, I don't want to play KOTH at all, ever. I just don't like the gametype. I also care very little to play oddball against regular practised teams. In objective lists the matching of randoms vs. team happens more often due to the matchmaking parameters having lower populations to work with.

At the end of the day I really don't understand why player toggles/filters and party leader settings aren't a far better idea than trying to manage playlists and not getting a 100% coverage or satisfactory experience.

Imagine a core 3-5 playlists and then player/party host toggles and filters do the rest for matching players, maps and games. It's like the hybrid best of custom games browsing and the matchmaking system without the developer having to manage things. Players basically manage the inputs themselves and the voting options are far more accurate and a targeted based on the player toggles for that specific game.

See this Waypoint thread for details of what I outlined. I genuinely wanted player toggles for Halo 4 matchmaking, maybe 343i will actually trial this for Halo 5. To me it's a far more elegant and dynamic solution in the matchmaking PvP environment. I also championed an extension to the Reach filters but that never got into the developer ear or attention focus.

Toggles/filters enable player choice, matching on those with optional filters and doesn't require huge amounts of developer decisions as the matching is based on dynamic player inputs. At any time a player can simply change toggles & filters to do/get what they want out of the experience in terms of gametypes, maps and similar players who like the same. You can even minify or remove voting to speed things up and reduce minorities missing out on what they want to play.

It's a far better solution by design.
Yes, in an ideal world you'd have plenty of tools to choose whatever you wanted and nothing would suffer for it. I'd love to have a bunch of buttons where I could eliminate specific map/gametype combinations from the search pool. I just don't think it's realistic for them to add them, especially not post-launch. Here's where I'm coming from: these gametypes that can't hold a population by themselves existing somewhere is better than them not existing at all. Creating a Team Control with King and Ball is better than both of them being cut or only being found in a super-hardcore MLG playlist when there is a decent combined interest in them. Pie in the sky Halo 5 wishes are one thing, dealing with the realities of what Halo 4 has to work with are another, though I wish it weren't the case.
 
Halo 4 with console bundle > 3m

Halo 4 alone < 3m

Shiiiiiiiit :/

The sales figure from November 24th were listed as 4.55 million sold. Source Link

North America: 3.16m 69.4%
+ Europe: 0.94m 20.6%
+ Japan: 0.04m 0.9%
+ Rest of the World: 0.41m 9.1%
Global TOTAL = 4.55m

After XMAS will be interesting because you'd imagine COD appeals to an older demographic than Halo (more kids will get Halo 4 at XMAS) and COD buyers have blown their load so to speak, hence I expect Halo 4 sales numbers to jump up considerable again at XMAS. I also expect the population will jump once again a bit after XMAS too. Holidays, presents and more people playing.

Also I expect Halo has sold another 500,000 to 1,250,000 copies since November 24th. 343i would do well to have both their TU's and map pack out before XMAS, they should also provide a discount or code bonus for buying the game and map pack together to increase population numbers as much as possible. Let's face it they really aren't going to get another shot at this as launch and XMAS are their big sales days for Halo 4.
 
Halo 4 with console bundle > 3m

Halo 4 alone < 3m

Shiiiiiiiit :/
Well that's.. yeah.

Vibe felt that way. It's still a huge boat load of cash, and surely helped the 360's numbers, but it's far from the improvement that
a) late in the generation/number of consoles out there
b) numbered sequel, return of the Chief etc
seemed to promise.

When the November date was announced I predicted they'd (Halo & CoD) just end up damaging each other's sales.
Clearly 343 probably needed the extra month afforded by it, but still.

The sales figure from November 24th were listed as 4.55 million sold. Source Link
That banned site I'm guessing? Get out of here with that.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
Halo |OT13| Let us never forget those who journeyed into the howling dark, and did not return

Halo |OT13| Don't make GAF a promise if you know you can't keep it

Halo |OT13| Halo. It's over.
 
RIP ZooJoo

RIP Tawpgun

Also, anyone here who has Dragonborn for Skyrim, how is it? I need to get me some Skyrim in, haha.

Dragonborn is gud. like, really gud. Like, it feels like Morrowind (sorta) gud.

If you want new landmass, new dungeons, new weapons/armor, New shouts (I think?), new powers, around a 3-6 hour (difficulty disparity) main quest, then yeah, get it.

The spears are arrows, though. :/

Should I get Hearthfire? I have an extra 400 MSP left over from that just dance thing a while ago and was questioning.

If you love customization (like, a LOT) then probably, yes. If you just want a new house, though, no. Getting all of the materials and shit is too monotonous. Also, the houses look like crap on the inside because the lighting is freaking terrible.
 
I'm just looking forward to when the total population dips down and all of a sudden that constant 2% of the playerbase is 500 people all the time.

Pie in the sky Halo 5 wishes are one thing, dealing with the realities of what Halo 4 has to work with are another, though I wish it weren't the case.

I lived with the Reach objective playlist and it was disappointing mid-late in its life. Very little skill match, less teams actually playing and you'd quite literally just wipe the floor with the enemy team most games. Boring, close matches are where it's at. Do not want a repeat of those splintered low population playlists either. 343i are doing good things here though.

As for my system take a look at the toggles I edited into my larger post above. This is so simple and elegant while being very dynamic, accurate and player choice based but using all the great developments of the evolved XBL/Halo matchmaking.

At the end of the day I struggle to conceptualise or see a better matchmaking system on consoles throughout the last 10+ years of Halo. I've revisited this idea many times and have that core 4-5 playlists and then toggles/filters derives the best results at a player level, a party level and a voting level. All without the developer having to manage playlists, votes, statistics etc. The player trends do the work themselves and the minorities can wait with long search times to actually play what they want.

I'm get to see a Halo matchmaking experience deliver that, where my system consistently delivers the majority vote and does not alienate the minority tastes either.

That banned site I'm guessing? Get out of here with that.
WTF? Didn't know GAF banned ********?

Try this link (not linking due to ban filter, just for reference)
http://www.********.com/weekly/41238/Global/
They have halo 4 as 5,158,526 and BOII (360 only) as 7,449,821

These seem quite accurate if you ask me, why ban this site?
 
SpOps is free, That means it can't use environments from the 3 new map packs.

So basically.

SpOps S2 is going to be a big patch that adds in new environments (Likely the new MP maps) or its just going to re purpose Vanilla MP maps and SP environments. Neither of which I'm very interested in.

It don't know why i was under the illusion before launch that we would get new locations on a weekly basis because that's a lot of design work but so far the only NEW locations we have had are Cauldron, The snow version of the Campaign Tower and Forerunner/Jungle environment from "sacred".
A few things here:
-Spartan Ops is not free, it's part of the $60 you pay for the game. That's like saying the MP maps in the game are "free".
-We know that all the maps for SpOps are separate files on the disc, regardless of if they are War Games maps or campaign spaces, so the maps being from DLC or anywhere else is irrelevant.
All of it. You'll get a very brief sneak peak on Friday night.
Ah, that's what I assumed.
Ok GoTHaloGAF you win. This shits pretty good. On Season 2 Ep 5.
Of course, we wouldn't lead to astray.
Is it bad that I've barely strted Game of Thrones (book) and I already want this shirt?

http://beta.threadless.com/product/3567/Adopt_A_Dire_Wolf/tab,guys/style,shirt
Not at all, natural reaction.
I've almost bought that shirt probably a dozen times.
B-Team

How many times does this have to be posted?
A few more because it's not true. The only significant Bungie employees that we know of that didn't work on Reach were Jason Jones (who isn't credited with working on Halo 3 either) and Joe Staten. Pretty much every other significant employee that we know of that still worked at the studio at the time worked on Reach.

----------------------------------------------------

Halo 4 MM stuff:
-King gone? RIP Steely
-Extraction next week apparently not coming now? RIP Steely
-DLC maps only implemented into 6 of the 11 playlists? 343 doesn't want people to buy the DLC?
 
Who is going to make a Destiny OT? Lots of speculation and comments hinting at a reveal tomorrow. Duncan?

Uh, I can make a reveal thread tomorrow night, if that's what you're talking about (and if it actually happens). The OT won't get posted until 2 weeks before release...
 

heckfu

Banned
Uh, I can make a reveal thread tomorrow night, if that's what you're talking about (and if it actually happens). The OT won't get posted until 2 weeks before release...

Where did the Destiny reveal info come from? I know it's conjecture BUT WHERE ARE YOUR SOURCES.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Uhh I think Duncan should handle all things Destiny.

Also, gotta remember that Halo 4 launched within a week of CoD. Halo 3 and Halo Reach were all alone in September.

So now I'm not sure how I feel about these numbers...
 
Where did the Destiny reveal info come from? I know it's conjecture BUT WHERE ARE YOUR SOURCES.

Geoff Keighley's "That just happened" tweet is the only thing that makes me deem it plausible. The Bungie response to reveal questions has usually been "see you in 2013", but maybe that's just referring to the release date.

I'll be watching the VGAs, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
 
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