I was about to agree with you until you threw me under the bus. GO SHUMAN! HE'S OUR MAN, IF HE CAN'T BEAT PEG, WELL IT'S ALREADY BEEN ESTABLISHED THAT I CAN.
It's getting pretty hard jumping in and out of the conversations periodically but I'll keep trying... Perk to help snipers kill you more with ease (primarily taking away an escape strategy all together) just sounds like a bad idea. It already takes a ton of luck and reaction time to beat a sniper WITHOUT a sniper (ignoring the conversation about sniper vs. sniper, I mean, who the **** wants to watch a fair fight!?), a perk such as this will just tip the odds towards the already offset balance. And thus I vanish for a bit.
I think you guys are forgetting something. You're trying to balance the perks against the weapons, or other perks in terms of individuals. If you look at it from a team dynamic where you can have people with different perks working together they may balance out as a whole. Taking your 'cowardly sniper' example. One person with the vengence perk after dieing to a sniper can then tell the rest of the team almost exactly where he is if someone else with promethean vision hasn't already done so. Then it simply relies on someone with a perk that helps with fast movement or stealthy movement to sneak up on that sniper. It's a viewpoint that both enhances and destroys my hope for the matchmaking side of this game. On the one hand, a good team with varied skills between them and good communication will be a lot of fun to play with. On the other however it means that going into MM on your own will more than likely end up in a death fest. Me being on the other side of the world with few friends here that play, I won't be able to get too many games in with a good team,
Ha, Sarge. I love you too. Sorry, mazdak. I missed quite a few posts in here, but you make some points I feel are worth addressing. I'll separate it out in to the posts you made so it makes more sense. I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not seeking to judge the game as a whole. I'm talking about certain core aspects here and, as I've said, I don't have to play Halo 4 to know that loadouts will be loadouts. You're looking at this in black and white terms. I'm not saying it'll be unbalanced in the simple terms you're talking (ie. whether each thing has a counter). True, that's a concern, but it ALWAYS is, especially when you add more mechanics since it just makes it harder to balance. That's not particularly what I was talking about. In this sense, balance is an overly simplistic term which doesn't address certain things. The perk which gives you a hud marker for the last player that killed you, sure you can put something else in which ostensibly balances this out, but it's still promoting a kind of gameplay which can be detrimental in other ways. You talk like it's simply a case of X balances Y balances Z. Game design isn't that simple. You have to also consider how X functions in game on the off chance that Y isn't there to counter it in that circumstance. It still has to fit in, and something which is utterly dominant unless its one specific sole counter is there still falls in to the category of bad game design imo. Citation please? Also, what does "similar" mean? I know this invites a lot of argument, but why? I play Halo multiplayer as exactly that, a multiplayer game, something that I keep playing because it keeps being fun. Sorry if I sound condescending, but I don't need trinkets and shiny things dangled in front of me every 2 to 3 years to keep finding it fun, because I do and always have enjoyed the game itself. Imagine if basketball as a concept was owned and designed by one entity or company, how do you think basketball fans would feel if, every two or so years, said entity decided to do something like introduce classes? Like some players get to have super springy shoes, and some others get to have arm extension devices, and some even get jetpacks? Does basketball need to EVOLVE? I know it's slightly different, and that as distinct media releases games are bound in to this idea of having to justify each new release. But that doesn't mean you have to pander to the idea of change for change's sake, and I genuinely think that such a short attention span idea as this is a disease in the gaming community right now. As a more related but still extreme example, what if they announced that Halo was turning in to a fighter? It could still be a good game (whatever that means), just not a type of game I particularly enjoy any more. I know there's a big difference between changing the sub genre of a game and changing its overall genre, but still, Halo is changing (or, if you consider Reach, already has changed and is now completing the transformation) from a pick up shooter (thanks, Nutduster, for the term) to a loadout shooter. Can people please stop telling me that I should just decide to be OK with that? Kthnxbai See, you're still looking at it in black and white terms, good or bad, like or don't like. I prefer arena shooters to class based ones. This game is turning Halo from an arena shooter in to a class based shooter. Please don't keep on with this "just try it" crap. I've played countless class based shooters, they're fine for what they are, I'm not trying to make out that they're objectively inferior in any way, they're just not my style of shooter. The changes being made to Halo 4 are clear. Yes, playing the game will tell us more about how well they've balanced them, but the balance isn't really my concern, it's the fundamental shift from my favourite type of shooter (arena style, pick up shooter) to one I enjoy less (class based, loadout shooter). I rue the day where game devs got this idea that personal preference trumps balance. Getting pinged out of scope isn't there to be fun in itself, it's a balance mechanism. I hate getting killed by ARs and Melee, should I be able to turn that off? You're coming at this from the wrong angle. That's like saying "they haven't changed anything except for all the things they changed." Starting on an even footing, with Halo being a pickup shooter, IS one of the core principles. So no, all of the core principles are NOT intact. That's the entire point of what I'm saying. I'm fully aware that other core principles remain: -fast movement with high jumps, and maps which fit that. -non ADS style shooting -core weapon roles -trifecta of guns, melee and grenades and a whole bunch of other stuff. I have NEVER ONCE tried to make out that the entire game is changing. I have, all this time, been pointing to the core concepts which have changed, most importantly the switch from even-start to loadout style shooter. This is something I've always prized in Halo, so trying to convince me that I won't miss it when it's one of the main reasons I play the game is fruitless, don't waste your time. Whilst it's difficult to say, because there's no OED definition of an arena shooter, I think you'd be hard pushed to find ANYONE familiar with the genre who would describe a game that includes not only loadouts, not only customisable loadouts, but customisable loadouts with level based unlocks, as an arena shooter. So no, I disagree again. Threatening? That's certainly an interesting word choice. Do you think 343 need someone to stick up for them? People can buy the game or not. People can hold opinions or not. Sorry, but your language and approach to this discussion seem to point towards your real objection being that people are cynical. Not any practical objection, but on some level just taking exception to the fact that people hold a different view to you. I'm not telling you not to be excited for the game, based on your perspective I can totally see why you would be, and fair enough. Please extend me the same courtesy and don't concern yourself with forming my opinions for me. A good point, but based on current trends I don't think it's the most likely scenario. Reach struggled in comparison to former titles, arguably because of the deviations from what many considered to be the Halo formula. Did 343 take heed and move back towards it? No, they went a hell of a lot further in the direction of deviation. Not definitive by any means, I think anyone who claims to know even a little bit about the direction of Halo 5 right now is talking right out of their ass, just saying, food for thought.
Well this thread would be pretty boring if everybody was withholding judgement until release. I mean, this is a discussion thread - not just a newsfeed. We've seen quite a bit of gameplay, so it's not like we're just talking out our asses here. I mean obviously we haven't played it (or at least much - I'm sure a couple people have had a chance) but we can still form opinions from the reasonable amount of information we have. And so what if we're wrong? Has anything been lost here? A little time perhaps? I consider it a fair exchange for the entertainment. [rant]Looks awkward and slow if you ask me. As for the genius behind it, it's been around forever dude - just didn't have the little screen, so it actually took some skill. And it was annoying as hell in 1997.[/rant] (Sorry - I just really don't like mines lol)
Halo 4's gonna have Spartan Ops I'm really looking forward to that and the Forge would seem interesting too. Heres a link to the Spartan Ops thread that I made: http://www.forgehub.com/forum/halo-4-general-discussion/140597-spartan-ops.html#post1536186
You need to hear the "live at Pompeii: version of Echoes on Youtube- it's so much better that I don't know why they even put the studio version on the album.
I find it an interesting bit of hypocrisy that many Halo fans criticize Call of Duty as "the same game every year" yet get their panties in a bunch when any changes are made to their game of choice.
I think what the majority of the people who are complaining want is for Halo to progress within the bounds of it's original format. New guns, new maps, new vehicles, maybe a new grenade now and then. Even new gadgets - although I think H3 style equipment is the general preference. Or at least progress on an independent path. Following other developers isn't what made Halo amazing. It was the risks taken and the insight of the developers. Appealing to other genres' fanbases is kind of insulting to your own too - generally fans don't want to jump around in genres. Unless they're Mario fans.
I think there's some weight to this. There's a difference between tweaking your formula, even making significant additions etc, and changing one of the fundamentals of the game (ie. adding loadouts in such a big way). Imagine that the next Halo was an ADS-shooter, how many of you "change is necessary" preachers would be happy with that?
no it doesn't jun died while protecting her. NONE OF THE NOBLE TEAM IS ALIVE GODDAMMIT! it's been two years and the community can't seem to get it straight that JUN IS DEAD. so is jorge. it was a slipspace drive that teleported him to another part of space. Alive, you say? he had his helmet off. I don't understand why he couldn't have gotten one of the marines to set off the drive, though. Anyway, don't want to get off topic...
I understand George Being dead, but June, the last we saw, he was alive (unless I'm missing some fiction)
The last we saw of Jun in-game he was boarding a Pelican with Halsey. So unless somebody killed him off in one of the books and I missed it, I'm fairly certain he's alive.
Everybody knows jorge is dead. No one could have survived that explosion. Anyways I've read the books after Halsey gets off reach she runs into master chief and ( I believe it was Linda [another spartan 2 who Serves with chief] and they do stuffs.)