-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Halo: Reach |OT6| There Are Those Who Said This Day Would Never Come
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
- Start date
The Waypoint Bulletin noted that the bloom in Reach is to slow down the pace. I have to ask, why the fuck did pace need slowing down? Halo 3 was good but slightly faster would've been better. While i'm not into MLG, Halo 3 MLG settings were fun due increased pace (and IMO Halo 3's standard sandbox would've been more balanced with those, 110% would've made Dual Wielding more useful, BR was more reliable etc).
While doing a daily in FF using Grenade Launcher i started thinking what special (including power) weapon people like most? IE something else than AR/DMR/BR/SMG/Pistol/plasma rifle/repeater/spiker. I'd include Needler as a special weapon as it is not common weapon and is rather specialised for short/mid range not really working anywhere else.
My favorite is the Grenade Launcher. It's a good all around special weapon. Ambushes, check. Anti-vehicle, check. Anti-infantry, check. Requires skill, check.
BTW, have you noticed that while using the EMP mode, the weapon's display shows a number and skull (i think)(and distance to the 'nade) if enemies are near the 'nade.
My second favorite is the Brute Shot. Useful crowd suppression, trick jumps, anti-vehicle weapon, strong melee and looked damn cool. Halo 2's bouncing 'nades were a lot of fun as well. Its successor the Concussion Rifle just isn't as cool. Slower rate of fire along with other small differences (projectile arc, splash damage) and rather boring desing compared to Brute Shot...
While doing a daily in FF using Grenade Launcher i started thinking what special (including power) weapon people like most? IE something else than AR/DMR/BR/SMG/Pistol/plasma rifle/repeater/spiker. I'd include Needler as a special weapon as it is not common weapon and is rather specialised for short/mid range not really working anywhere else.
My favorite is the Grenade Launcher. It's a good all around special weapon. Ambushes, check. Anti-vehicle, check. Anti-infantry, check. Requires skill, check.
BTW, have you noticed that while using the EMP mode, the weapon's display shows a number and skull (i think)(and distance to the 'nade) if enemies are near the 'nade.
My second favorite is the Brute Shot. Useful crowd suppression, trick jumps, anti-vehicle weapon, strong melee and looked damn cool. Halo 2's bouncing 'nades were a lot of fun as well. Its successor the Concussion Rifle just isn't as cool. Slower rate of fire along with other small differences (projectile arc, splash damage) and rather boring desing compared to Brute Shot...
Captain Blood
Member
I picked it up for ipad last night and it seems pretty rad.wwm0nkey said:
I had no idea I was the main character....
Devolution
Member
Deadly Cyclone said:
The problem isn't and never was defeating people who use it, the problem was, at least for me, that it wrecked the pace of the game. The last thing Halo needs is a stall tactic. Keep that crap in big team so you can at least save yourself from vehicle shenanigans.
The times where it really annoyed me though, were the few people who mastered spamming it so that they could melee me to death without any sort of repercussions due to the fact that the animation was off for when it kicked in and when it stopped.
squidhands
Member
I think I've quit once in Reach's MM (not counting FF), and it was on Utopie and I was getting spawn killed by the Banshee. Other than that I'll stick it out for the remainder of the match, k/d be damned. In of my earliest CTF matches in H3, my entire team quit on me. The other team, even though they dominated early, was insanely cool and literally carried me to the win. Ever since I decided to not quit a game if at all possible.Deputy Moonman said:
Gabotron ES
Member
Just read the bulletin, pretty sweet but I'm still confused. It seems like the zero bloom gametypes won't have a ROF cap, is this true?
Why would they say the NR is pretty overpowered when they could just tweak its ROF?
Why would they say the NR is pretty overpowered when they could just tweak its ROF?
Gabotron ES
Member
squidhands
Member
sympathy brofist to Gabo
Grenade Launcher, without a doubt. One of my favorite weapons in Halo.Woorloog said:
The Librarian
Banned
Pro-Pipe needs to be in all future Halo games.
I've heard this argument a lot from experienced players - but I find I have LESS fun when I play games that have been set up or designed by these players.Tashi0106 said:
We played a game on Damnation with the 3sk pistol (and no bloom) - and I had pretty much NO fun. Why? Because if 2 (or god forbid 3) opposing players are teamshooting you, you're dead before you can get your second shot off. I NEED the extra second or two to find cover, or figure out who to shoot back at - when the game's as fast-paced as that, I just don't like it.
And yet... I was told, more than once, how much more balanced it was. How everyone started with a weapon that, right off spawn, allowed them to fight back from distance.
If that's balance... fuck balance.
I'm a casual, and I give a pretty big fuck about the balance. I think Reach has some issues - and I'm happier in playlists that have limited AAs - but to me, it's the most fun I've had in multiplayer, over time (as measured by how much time I'm carving out of my life to play it).
With respect to the argument that CE was the only game that didn't hamstring expert players just to give lesser players a chance...
When I played Halo 1, I was playing against people who had at most a couple of years of Halo multiplay under their belts - and even the most dedicated of them could count their multiplayer games in the hundreds.
You give those same weapons, and same gameplay mechanics, to people with 10 years of multiplay under their belts, and game counts in the tens of thousands... and, well, it's less fun to play against them. I saw EXACTLY how it feels to play against people who are way, way, WAY better than me when chance is removed from the equation... and I didn't like it. (It means that if this becomes the norm in matchmaking, I can no longer play customs, or even in regular MM with folks on different levels than I'm on, because I NEED TrueSkill balancing to pit me against people ONLY at my level. And that sucks.)
I want balance decisions made by people who realize that players like me make up the MAJORITY of the player base, and aren't continually telling me that balancing it for the experts won't hurt me at all. (Because my experience is exactly the opposite of that.)
Deputy Moonman
Member
There is strategy in using and doing anything in a game. Camping is a strategy, but that doesn't make the game better. Host pressing standby on their modem in Halo2 was a strategy, too.Deadly Cyclone said:
Armor lock breaks the flow of the game and it has too many options available to use: Not being stuck facing the direction you were when you initiated armor lock; being able to spam it; emp blast (which was advertised as a good ability to use against vehicles. Sadly, it's even better against people on foot); lasting long enough to fully recharge your shields when the game is already dead slow because of weaker and slower weapons (+bloom); taking away people's grenade sticks; and the plain fact that people have to stand there forever waiting for it to end. This equates to a bad idea for an armor ability. Of course people like it, though. It's crazy powerful.
Personally, I think it's worse than the health generator in Halo3 and the overshield from Combat Evolved and Halo2.
Rickenslacker
Banned
I consider myself a pretty casual player too, and in that sense that's why I loved Halo CE's weapon design. Namely that you started off with a weapon that could work well enough in pretty much any scenario.Louis Wu said:
I dunno, despite that I don't feel sore when I get dominated by players that are legitimately better than me and have the game support that level of difference. I do get frustrated when I feel like the mechanics themselves are inconsistent and cheating me, or if I've been started off handicapped and need to ditch my starting arsenal.
Basically it's all about who you're competing against. I mean despite Quake 3's reputation of being some breakneck crazy hardcore FPS for ultranerds, plenty of people played it back in the day myself included in the most casual of way. Same applies here, I welcome a reliable precision weapon, but I'd like to play with people on my level.
Edit: Oh but I will agree that having a DMR under these circumstances will end up being more frustrating than a pistol. At least with a pistol there's a certain visibility of the enemy that you can count on. With a DMR they can be some sort of pixel off in the distance that I have no chance of scoping and retaliating against.
Steelyuhas said:
I disagree. There were playlists set up with MLG rules in Halo 3 that were sparsely populated precisely because the so called core mechanics of the gameplay that those settings reinforced attracted a very small audience. Well balanced it may have been, but fun for everybody it was not. It's no different with Reach's MLG settings.
I think it's more important to make the game accessible to a larger group of people than to cater to a smaller subset of competitive players who mostly want barebones gameplay. So, they add in armor abilities and plasma launchers and revenants because Reach is a sequel and people expect sequels to have more cool new shit. More new cool shit is harder to balance, obviously, but so what? Hopefully the next Halo game does a better job at satisfying everybody at launch and doesn't require a title update a year down the line to please nerds on forums.
Hypertrooper
Member
http://viewitem.eim.ebay.pt/Halo-Anniversary--MASTER-CHIEF-Halo-Combat--NEW/140599662182/item ? Seeing how expensive the price is I really should picked them up at HaloFest. $11.99 was the price at HaloFest :/ But again I thought the stuff would be re-stock on the next day.Gui_PT said:
It is confirmed. I'm officially immune to grenades. I don't know how I did it but I haven't said "fu**in' grenades" yesterday.Devolution said:
Gabotron ES
Member
ONI Sword Base I think.Schmitty said:
Edit: what gui said, Winter Contingency is pretty easy too.
You may call yourself a casual, but your overall K/D in Matchmaking is 1.5, and in some (well-played) playlists it's close to 2. (In some specialized lists it's over 3, but you don't have a lot of games in those, so that's not really a good indicator.)Rickenslacker said:
This puts you well above average.
This means that for you, TrueSkill CAN be useful - but when it breaks down (and we've all seen it break down), the failure is less relevant for you than for someone who (just for argument's sake) has a K/D of 1.05.
So while you SAY you're the same sort of player I am... you're not. You're far less affected by skill imbalances than I am, because for the most part, the percentage of players that are MUCH better than you is relatively small. (Please don't think I'm saying you can't get slaughtered - I'm sure that's happened to you. I'm saying that MOST of the time, it probably doesn't happen. Putting more determinism into individual battles will hurt you less than it hurts me.)
I LIKE playing with friends. I don't want the game to change into something that makes playing with my friends impossible.
Deputy Moonman
Member
In theory though, that shouldn't happen that often because it's not just you versus 3. Your teammates should be helping. That sounds more like an issue of having your team quit out, which isn't really any better in Reach right now, either. In Reach, if three people are shooting at you, you're still going to die (maybe not instantly, but it's coming and coming soon). Slow kill times make it nearly impossible to do anything if your whole team has quit out and you have to face 3-4 players from the opposing team on your own. By the time you've got one player almost to no shield, the rest have shown up to mop the floor with you. This is one way quicker kill times can be a benefit.Louis Wu said:
I can understand why you wouldn't like quicker kills, but my biggest gripe with the slow kill times in Reach has to do with the fact that power weapons haven't been changed a bit, which makes them even more powerful. And with Reach being a big power weapon pinata, it's not even a game/contest when I run into people with them. People using power weapons is almost constant(i can say that without even exaggerating). People in possession of the sniper rifle, or the shotgun, or the rockets, or the grenade launcher, or the concussion rifle, or the sword, or the hammer, etc. never... ever... ends. I can't stand how often I die to power weapons and players are practically helpless because it takes so long to kill someone without a power weapon.
If 343 gave me a non-power weapon playlist, but all armor abilities and bloom and weapon strengths stayed the same as they are now, I'd be in Halo heaven. I can deal with bloom(even if i'm not a huge fan), and I can deal with the slow kill times, but not with power weapons as they are in Reach.
While I'm talking about power weapons, let me say that 'Kingdom' may be my favorite map right now in Reach. It plays like an arena style map (like warlock and maybe even midship). It only has a rocket launcher in the middle and the sword. But it's open enough that killing people with rockets isn't actually easy, and rushing people with the sword is down right risky. It's a pure form of Halo that is hard to find these days, imo, and I LOVE IT. If 343 can balance everything so that power weapons aren't like candy, I'll deal with the slow kill times and be happy. I just don't see how else to make that happen, though. But at least they are still making separate playlists for the people with differing tastes.
Roughly half a million people play Reach every week, right? How many of those players have you heard complaining that you can say make up a significant amount? I can't imagine it being more than a few thousand players at most who bother to post on forums about it or send emails or whatever.
Deputy Moonman
Member
It's cheating, but it can still be considered a strategy. I was just trying to find extreme examples of what could be considered a strategy, because it sounded like deadly cyclone was saying armor lock, as a good strategy, should merit its use. But I disagree due to the consequences of how armor lock affects the flow of the game and because of all its cheap uses.Woorloog said:
EDIT:
Oh wow that's awful. Another reason why I dislike vehicles! That video is horrifying, lol.Gabotron ES said:
Louis Wu said:
The thing is, it really is a lot better in regards to balance to them. With competitive players, especially in the MLG crowd, the better team should always win. Just because you played against try hards doesn't at all mean that it isn't more balanced, it just means that you played against try hards. How would you have felt if you played the same gametype with people you play with all the time that are in your same cliche and on the same skill level? I'm betting not nearly the same, because the game would've played differently, probably to the better of your personal preference.
squidhands
Member
Please post more; I love your avatar.J10 said:
seriously
Deputy Moonman
Member
Oh man halogaf is really talkative right now. Might I offer a suggestion?
Let the hate flow through you
Let the hate flow through you
nah just kidding
I think we all have to see what the beta hoppers will be like. Those who played at PAX played an unfinished gametype. A 3sk magnum that fires as fast as the Reach one with Reach levels of auto aim is OP as hell.
If they tone down the ROF and aim assist it will be fine. But I was always more interested in how a no bloom DMR would play like.
Speaking of the DMR... A 15% bloom reduction doesn't seem that much. 85% bloom seems bigger than the h3 BR spread as well.... I'm not sure if we ever got a straight answer to this... I know there will be classic ++ gametypes... But is the 85% DMR, the AA nerfs, and bleed through planned on being put into vanilla reach?
If they tone down the ROF and aim assist it will be fine. But I was always more interested in how a no bloom DMR would play like.
Speaking of the DMR... A 15% bloom reduction doesn't seem that much. 85% bloom seems bigger than the h3 BR spread as well.... I'm not sure if we ever got a straight answer to this... I know there will be classic ++ gametypes... But is the 85% DMR, the AA nerfs, and bleed through planned on being put into vanilla reach?
Hypertrooper
Member
The majority likes the game how it is right now.Letters said:
The Real Napsta
Member
How is the CE magnum going to work?
Same rate of fire as H1
3 shot kill
5 shot kill without headshot
no bloom unless firing full auto?
Same rate of fire as H1
3 shot kill
5 shot kill without headshot
no bloom unless firing full auto?
Letters said:
Don't get it twisted; people who like the game as it is (like me) and come on the internet to praise it are in the minority too. Those of us talking about it on either side ain't shit compared to the larger population. Most people are just playing the game. Very few of us are congregating online to just talk about it, positive or negative. This thread is almost the total opposite of the vibe I get from HBO, but probably has a comparable population.
The Real Napsta
Member
FyreWulff said:
So is it just like H1, i can fire fast with no bloom as long as I don't hold the trigger down?
The Real Napsta said:
At the panel Shishka said the final version will autofire if you hold the trigger down, and bloom.
I have no idea if they're actually going to replicate the H1 bug or if it will bloom if you mash the trigger and/or hold it. It did not bloom when I used it the couple of times I played with it, and I didn't play it much after because the Halo 1 pistol games were not fun to play.
Captain Blood
Member
People gotta get those credits.....FyreWulff said:
Hypertrooper
Member
Unfortunately Shishka's heart will always belong to Louis Wu.GhaleonEB said:
Edit.: Anyone have good caps of the Halo 4 Art trailer? I want to make a new avatar...
Devolution
Member
Hypertrooper said:
I find any arguments like this dubious only because you're not actually asking people whether they think x y or z is okay or the game has room for improvement. We're just assuming one way or the other based on what exactly?
To me it doesn't really matter what a majority of players think if there is obvious stuff in the stats that can tell devs something is up. All it really takes is one game against someone who knows what they're doing with the banshee (or all vehicles on spawn) and your night is kind of ruined, even after several games of fun.
Think about armorlock, has Halo ever really needed an instance where someone was completely impervious to damage? Does any FPS really need that? Ask yourself.
As for other AAs, do you find yourself cursing them more than the ability being a god send for you? Ask yourself that too.
In a semi-competitive, or competitive small scale game there really isn't a need for extraneous stuff, especially when the core gamestyle was almost perfect. The biggest disappointment with Reach to me was Bungie all but said "to hell with that old but tried and true shit, lets gimp players mobility then balance that out with some AAs that change the whole pace of the game." Find yourself dying? Just change to another AA.
Newsflash, if I wanted fucking loadouts I'd go play CoD. What always and will forever attract me to Halo is everyone starting out on equal footing and having to fight for better shit. Which is why AAs should have been pickups from the very beginning. Then, at least, kills/escapes/positions with such things would have been earned.
/brutal honesty
Just want to chime in and say that is a terrible argument. People flock to the newest thing. Even I did despite liking my time with H3 better.FyreWulff said:The fact that there's like 5-6x the people playing Reach over 3? If Reach was so reviled, you'd see people staying back in 3 if they thought it was the better game.
Nobody's playing 3 right now anyway:
Somebody broke something
Reach did many things right in regards to matchmaking voting, netcode, hitscan... Things that make it hard to go back to H3.
Anyway, Reach is the relevant game right now, that's what people play for better or for worse. Same reason people played MW2 despite it being shit tastic with balance issues and bugs. Everyone bitched about it, but they still played it.
Devolution
Member
A27 Tawpgun said:
Right we can't assume just because so many people are playing a game that the majority thinks x, y and z is fine. Especially since we're not specifically asking them. Plus let's not forget many people socialize over the game, just as we do, by playing with buddies. Doesn't mean they're in love with the game as how it is. I remember in Halo 3 after 4-5 months of people whining about non-br starts, they added Team BRs into Social Slayer, and let me tell you it was a rare sight to see that not voted for.
Hypertrooper
Member
I'm not saying that I like the changes Bungie made in Reach. Right now 600,000 people are playing Reach and only a few wants change. tbh. People have a voice. If they don't use it, It is their fault. Everyone who plays over Xbox Live has an Internet connection. They can post on HBO, Waypoint and the other communities. (I don't mention GAF because people have to wait a year until they get apporved and then Halo 4 is already out.Devolution said:
) It is like elections: If people don't vote, they will accept that everything is okay for them. They don't have the right to complain later either. And when I play normal Slayer I see a lot of guys using Jetpack and Armour Lock. Do you think that they hate AAs?I think you can rip out every HBO user's heart. They will be even happy about it.Louis Wu said:
But how would one know that? It's pretty well known that Halo is quite unique and the majority of players will continue playing it even if they don't prefer it as they wait for the next one, because there's nothing quite like it out there and they want to be playing the latest one. From observation I've noticed that the kind of people who don't care about voicing their opinion, will just play whatever they're fed and use any tool available that makes it easier to succeed whetter they enjoying them or not. They also are completely oblivious to fairness and balance and wouldn't mind pressing a win button even if it killed a kitty somewhere else in the world.Hypertrooper said:
@fyrewulff Way more Xboxs out there.