it may not be as inherent of a name as grenade, but i am fairly sure in the actual military, at least in the U.S., a mission with a specific objective is called an "op" by soldiers.
True. There was definitely a logical reason for CoD calling it something Ops, but the idea of having a distinct "Campaign" (the standard shooter name for story mode other than, well, Story Mode) and then another thing which is similar but geared towards co-op is definitely something coined by CoD. Surely you can see why people are focusing on the similarity, not just in name.
Dated mechanics, at least from a Halo sense. Fast paced action from Halo 2 was possible without these things, bringing them back slowed the game down again. Yes, I realize CE was still a fun LAN game. So were PD and GE. However, both have dated mechanics that don't necessarily fair well when played with a large audience that learns to abuse and exploit them online. PD arcade is a great example of how the same game feels massively different when played on live. GE..well, the version they "remade" have some changes but a lot of the mechanics just plain didn't transfer well either. @Peg: I played a lot of Halo 2 as well and while I agree that most of what I mentioned was better in H2, the changes to H3 were still minuscule by comparison to Reach. The only thing not so would have been the aim acceleration being overdone in Halo 3..which may have been their counter for no hit scan, which I still don't exactly understad why they left it out of Halo 3 (though I prefer that they did). Halo 2 wasn't without its flaws either. I hardly think button combos in a shooter are a good thing, this isn't SF. There was rampant hacking and modding, which honestly made the skill gap hard to judge and made the ranking system hard to judge. Generally, the weapon sandbox was better but things like the sword may have been a bit too much. The big difference was that Halo 3 still played fast paced. Not as fast as Halo 2, but I doubt anyone would argue that. Reach however, never did. No bloom made it better but it still didn't repair so many other things. As for the maps? There are a few okay ones..but I certainly won't be crying for a Powerhouse, Countdown or Zealot remake in Halo 4.
Aim acceleration was, AFAIK, introduced to counter the trade-off choice of look sensitivity. In CE/2 you were forced to choose between easier fine aiming (lower sensitivity) or quick turning (higher sensitivity). Aim acceleration allows you to have the finer aiming (for long range fights or against tight strafing opponents) of a given sensitivity, but it accelerates when held for longer meaning you can still whip your reticle around fast for when you get caught out, or for melee combat/CQC in general. The fact is, however, that it feels horrible, and whilst the standard aiming of CE/2 did involve a tradeoff, that isn't totally a bad thing imo, and it also meant that there was the potential for those who could still do fine aiming even on higher sensitivities, as they have the best of both worlds due to their skill (see: Pistola playing on 5 and still having utterly ridiculous aim). Also, I maintain that ZBNS Reach (ie. current MLG settings) plays way faster than H3 did, and is the best competitive experience since CE (yes, better than H2), probably even the best competitive 4v4 experience overall, though I still do admit that maps could be better for this to be universally the case. I know this is a significant deviation from vanilla settings, and I only mention it because you said that ZB made it somewhat better but didn't fix it entirely in comparison to H3, which I disagree with if we're talking about customised versions of the game. And yes, H2 definitely had its flaws. Bullet magnetism and hitboxes were worse than Reach (which is saying something), and button combos weren't perfect. I actually think that they're alright in principle, even though I agree it's a little SF, it does increase the skill gap. Aside from BXB, which imo is way too easy and just kills CQC, but BXR and double shot were difficult enough to warrant the reward imo. Also, CE had button combos too. It had BLB (BXB but harder due to the melee mechanics in CE, and with the downside of chucking a nade so you have to have one in the first place and also get the hell out of there), and even more awesome stuff like backpack reload. 3 certainly had things going for it, even though I stand by my criticism. If you ignore the dropped shots/bloodsplats that we saw with Sniper due to poor net code (and I'm talking even on LAN, which is just.....urgh), the Sniping in general was a great return to something like CE form. Bullet magnetism was lower than H2 and Reach, and head hitboxes were significantly smaller than either of those games as well. Harder sniping is a big deal imo. Also it did nades perfectly. I know that sounds like a small thing, but goddamn did I love my H3 frags, perfect balance between damage and bounce/trajectory. To a certain extent I'm playing devil's advocate here, and I do think that vanilla Reach is noticeably worse in basic competitive terms than vanilla H3, but I don't think the difference is unheard of when thinking about the previous transitions, especially from CE to 2. Imo the defining change was to eat away at the even playing field gameplay with AA loadouts, the other stuff you're talking about is standard game to game change as far as I'm concerned.
1. What evidence is there that fall damage or health packs "slow the game down"? Particularly in the case of the former, I don't see it at all. Being stunned or hurt for a second is more likely to get you killed; that speeds the game along just as much as the physical slowdown in movement slows it. 2. Is it more important to make the game fast, or add skill-based mechanics? What I like about fall damage is that it adds a skill to the game (actually multiple skills, at least in CE - not only did you have to know how far you could fall without taking damage/getting stunned, but you also could time a crouch to minimize or avoid both effects). Health packs are less obviously skillful, but there is an element of map knowledge (knowing where the health packs are) and also skill in knowing when you can risk going out in the open to get one, vs. when you should just rely on your shields. And if the map design is good, health packs should be placed in areas that involve risk - thereby speeding the game up to an extent by drawing wounded players out into high traffic areas, and initiating more conflict. Is there any hard evidence (like stats) indicating that Reach actually plays significantly slower than previous Halo games? And I'm not talking about general arguments like "Sprint lets you run away from fights!" I mean actual proof of some sort. I'd love to see remakes of any of those three. I think they'll be more fondly remembered once we're not playing them constantly.
Agreed. I know some people really hate me for this, but I think Zealot is up there with some of the best Halo arena maps of all time. Countdown does room based map design pretty damn well, and whilst I sometimes find it pretty frustrating because it's so CQC focused, I think this is largely down to power weapon choice and the design itself is very solid imo. I think Powerhouse is just an all around great default map, and Boardwalk takes the principle of High Ground and improves upon it tenfold. Oh, and Ridgeline is genuinely standout. It actually manages to do 'Hog gameplay well, which is a real challenge in Reach, and the design is just beautiful overall for on-foot combat.
I'm not as much of a fan of Boardwalk - I like it just fine but it does have some issues (at least the way I play it, which is not very well). I agree with you on the others though. Zealot is a badly misunderstood map that most people just play poorly. Once they added the soft kill to space (though I wish it were 15 seconds and not 10) it became one of my favorite maps, even despite the fact that Reach's crappy grenades are more-than-normally annoying on Zealot. Countdown is a really good design that suffers just a bit from the weapon set and sprint/sword - though even that I don't find too bad, because I *love* the way the concussion rifle ****s up people using any CQC power weapon, and sword in particular. And Powerhouse is just a solid, enjoyable map that plays well for several different gametypes. Really underrated, I think.
I just love sniping on Boardwalk so damn much lol, soooo many good times. It's also got pretty nice ranges of engagement for DMR as well tbh, I love it for both Slayer and 1 Flag really, and there are even enough DMR spawns to make it one of the more playable maps for AR starts. I can definitely see how it's a very particular taste though, plenty of my friends just hate it. Like High Ground before it (and Narrows in a slightly different way) it can definitely suffer from being what is essentially a very blunt design principle. Agreed about all the rest, Concussion Rifle is incredibly fun.
SPOILERS FOR CAMPAIGN Don't know if this is all common knowledge by now or what, but I'll type it up anyways. I read it all out of a game magazine, of which I don't remember the name. I read it yesterday, so I have no source of what I'm telling you, but If you choose not to believe anything I write, tis just silly. Anyways, the campaign starts much like the trailer we got from E3. You wake up to Cortana's urgent pleas, and come out of the pod. Instead of instantly blasting out of the room and blowing up doors and stuff, she explains to you that it's been 4 years, 7 months and 10 days since the ending of Halo 3. During that time, she's taken the time to update your armor and Hud to be more useful. Then she explains that she woke you up because someone or something is boarding the ship. You must then take her inside your helmet and travel up 4 floors to some part of the ship that I can't remember. Probably the observation deck or something. You climb up the elevator shaft and as you reach the top, and elite lunges at you with his energy sword (probably where the screenshot comes from with the blue elite). You grapple with him and defeat him, and take out a few more stragglers. Cortana asks why they attacked you, you say something like "Why don't you ask them that?". She says something witty about how at least you only ran into a small rogue group, and then comes to find out you're surrounded by a **** ton of covenant ships. End of demo. Additional information is that the big thing they are approaching in the trailer is a planet encased in a protective armor, much like the forerunner Shield worlds. This planet is called Requiem, and the forerunners used it to hide from the flood and protect themselves in the event that the rings ever go off, ensuring their survival. It is confirmed that there will be an entire set of new enemies, but they won't confirm that they are forerunner. So there will be a bunch of new enemy types that are not covenant.
Wish multiquote worked. Fall damage: I don't believe it adds skill, it only adds a limitation. There is a difference. For example: I can't point blank shoot a rocket at someone without taking damage. This doesn't mean I have to be all that more skillful,maybe marginally smarter with where I shoot but it's not altogether a learning curve. It's the same thing for fall damage. So you jump a few times and figure out the height at which you generally do or don't take damage. In most situations you won't jump if it's going to hurt unless you have no options or no one is around so the small shield damage barely matters. It's not as if every battle takes place on a tightrope and you need to have amazing balance in addition to aim while shooting someone. You're just prevented from taking routes, either completely or with some trade off. Nothing skillful about it. However, it forces you take longer routes, it prevents you from dropping down in certain areas, there is a small stun when you land. There isn't anything overly good about it. Health packs: The take you out of the fight unnecessarily. You end up with two choices: a) run away from the action to get on, stranding your teammates a man down or b) fight at a slight disadvantaged. Most times people choose B as the way the shields were set up you had to pop to kill with most weapons anyway and that little bit of health only benefitted you if the person you fought sucked and missed multiple headshots. Going to get one lengthens the time between encounters for you and the enemy team and just generally isn't fun. The heartbeat is so annoying in a headset though that sometimes you have to go grab one. It's an unnecessary mechanic when Halo 2/Halo 3's mechanics would have worked just fine. Hell, even 343 who so far has taken everything bad possible from Reach has left out health packs lol. I cannot provide you with stats of kill times and such, no. However, vanilla Reach is most certainly slower. The movement speed is slower, jump height is lower (which prevents some jumps that would have been attainable with H3), not using Sprint forces players to move at that slow movement speed, Sprint allows players to run away increasing kill times, Bloom DMR that's longer to kill than 4-shot BR, armor lock slows down kill times, shield popping slows kill times. I should have actually even compared no bloom Reach at all since really that's comparing MLG settings to default settings of Halo 3 and I'd sure as hell hope MLG would be more competitive lol. @Peg: I forget what we're even discussing anymore but I have to say two of my favorite things about Halo 3 were its difficult sniping and excellent nades. I do think that H3 has some underrated factors to it and I feel like the perfect Halo game is somewhere in between Halo 3 and Halo 2. I am a BR purist so the DMR is bleh to me, my main problem with the DMR being that it is good at all ranges, where even the BR was not so great a real long range. However, if this all pertains to Halo 4 (since that's what this topic is about) it still worries me that they're not taking a design philosophy from Halo 3 and previous games and are rather focusing heavily on the Reach philosophy. I do believe Halo 3 is the line in the sand because, as I said, if you melded H2 and H3 together, you'd get the perfect Halo. Even throwing in the DMR for those who want it. The only thing really necessary from Reach is the improved netcode. With Reach, it really comes down to the character models. They just don't feel right and no matter how you customize the settings you still have a too short spartan who jumps awkwardly , can't strafe right and has a camera on top of his head.
Do you see it now? There a four shapes of the same size. The top left one looks like a radar-style grenade.
Dude the bottom two in that picture are the number 0, they represent that the player has 0 of those type of grenade. The way it reads from left to right: The number 2 with nothing above it, the number 0 with your aparent "radar" grenade, the number 0 with some diamond grenade, and then a number 2 with a large drag grenade. Isn't it a coincidence that the player has 2 frag grenades and that missing icon grenade also has two? It's because I believe they are using the method I've previously described 3 times already.
Oh so when I make the long winded response saying the same things being said about Halo 4 and Reach before that people said about Halo 3 being a grand departure of what was "Halo" when it first released and that people down play the hell out of that now because of hind sight bias, more time with a product to acclimate, etc, I get vilified. When pegasi makes the same argument just with more specifics about competitive gameplay changes we have a civil discussion. Must be me then. Also, for the billionth time Chris will you stop saying "good players" and "casuals" like the two are exclusive zones. Casual =/= bad and "competitive" =/= good. Say what you mean, MLG players or players that aspire to be MLG. Casual is simply not playing the game like your life depends on it.
Lol it's cool bro. This method sounds pretty cool IMO cause it's unique. I'm anxious to see that the diamond represents. I think that radar looking one looks like a plasma grenade.
Why's it matter? You know exactly what I mean so why would I bother to say the same thing in more words. Casuals: people who don't care about game mechanics and don't still with games long term. Hardcore: players who do care about mechanics and dedicate time to the games they play. Any similar words infer the same meanings.
It matters because hardcore does not necessarily mean good. It is also an untrue generalization to say casual fans do not care about mechanics or what makes their game fun. The sheer amount of entitlement in that statement is mind boggling. I care deeply about the mechanics of every game I play, if they are not handled well then I don't play the game. However, that doesn't mean I'm quick to declare paradigm shift every time a detail like the jump height is .05 feet higher or a gun is a different color, etc.
Sure is off-topic in here. So, does anyone have any speculation about the plot/campaign? What happens after the chief lands; what does he find? Are the Flood still a threat? Are Forerunners the new enemies? Will we see the return of the Heretics and the Arbiter?