@cluckin Hey, I'd be fine with some new stuff in Halo 4 if they didn't keep killing the things I loved. Ranked playlists? Naw, our core isn't important. Old map design philosophy that brought some of the best maps? Naw, we'd rather have shiny gr4phix. Balanced sandbox? Naw, we'd rather have people buy our game, play it for a week then move back to the new CoD. Sure, add some fun stuff as a trial. These perks and crap coulda been a Spartan Ops thing until people cried for them in matchmaking and they could have put them in for 5. Reach wasn't a success in comparison to the other games. The active players is a pittance to what H3 still was at this point, the game has more and varied complaints than the other games combined and a large part of why people are even still playing it is only because it's all we got for Halo. That's not to say it has no merits but it certainly shouldn't be mimicked. Also, I think it's completely unfair to say "adapt", while not recognizing the fact that people played Halo because they enjoy what it was. You could say don't buy it, that'd be fair..but you can't say "change because they want you to". Well really, they don't..they just what cheap sales. See, it's what bothers me about the whole gaming industry..everybody is so obsessed with adding features, revolutionizing their games, doing something different and being "creative" (I use that term loosely), and yet the publishers force them to jam all these ideas into known IPs for more sales. Could you imagine if every time you went to play chess the rules were different? The board was a different size and the pieces moved in different ways. It would be so frustrating. Even early games..could you imagine if when you went to load up classic tetris, it was a sphere now and the pieces were different and they came in from the sides? All you wanted to do was play "chess" or "tetris", but they've changed it on you for the sake of change. Once you define something, you shouldn't change it because people buy it for what it was defined at. Look at CoD..the game has been virtually the same since CoD4. They had the luxury of a very recently new gen, a shift in perspective from history to modern, the advent of widespread live gaming and the fact that the series was worked on by two devs who could each do kind of their own thing. Hell, even the changes from 2 to 4 weren't that crazy, it was a natural progression. Now that they've nailed what works, they've stuck to it. Modified killstreaks, removed what perks didn't work, added new maps and guns, added some extra modes and gametypes but at its core it's the same game and people know what it is. It works. This is the way Halo CE-Halo 3 went. More guns, new maps, dual wielding, the removal of health packs, equipment. All incremental changes that kept the game fresh but weren't major enough to break anything. Bungie shattered this with Reach. I don't blame them though, it was there last game and they hardly cared so why not? They added too many new things, they changed the size of the character model, the completely changed their map design philosophy, they jam packed new things into the game and lost focus on improving those individuals. Had we played the adventure of the S2's on Reach with 7ft spartans, AAs for pick up on maps and maybe sprint (though I HATE it), Reach probably would have been a solid, natural progression and played out a ton better. This is my problem with Halo 4, they're going even further than bungie. AAs that didn't work? Let's bring 'em back anyway. Major changes to the sandbox balance? Okay, here are perks. Change very standard game mechanics just cause? Sure, why not. More changes to map design down the Bungie route? Okay. Halo staples like ranked? Naw, lets not bring it back. 4v4 works well? How about 6v6 anyway. It's just waaaaay too many changes, all at once and some of which seem to be made without any real reason. But the one thing that bothers me the absolute most is this idea that these changes are friendly to new players and attract them in. That's BS. All of my "casual" gamer friends that have ever played Halo with me have always found it fun. They sprayed ARs and picked up fun power weapons. They bounced around with huge jump height. They didn't care if they had AAs or the map was the Pit or Boardwalk, they literally just wanted to fire the gun and they'd play the game for a bit. But sometimes they evolve into "core" gamers. Then them, plus the core gamers already there will care about map design, sandbox balance, "gimicks" that break things. So why not cater to the people who will be here for three years and care when the casuals are going to pick up and play anyway?
Your missing out on one key aspect, Right now Halo 4 seems like the all mighty new Halo game that has to be near perfect and amazing because its new and coming out soon. But think in 5years (after 2-3 more halo's) how important Halo4's details are gonna be. Maybe Halo 5 will have completely different style maybe clone everything from TF2 who knows for Halo 6, There goal isn't to make the "Latest and greatest Halo combining best features of all previous halo's with few new features" There goal is "money"
I don't agree with this at all, at least only looking at it from a multiplayer standpoint only. AAs are the only significant change in Reach compared to all the previous games, and they're an incremental evolution from equipment which was in H3. Jetpack is nothing more than a multi-use portable grav lift, for instance, and some of the other abilities are explicitly just recycled equipment (bubble shield) or power-ups (camo). The shift from a pick-up shooter to a loadout shooter is a big one, but the actual game mechanics and game experience from 3 to Reach is not all that different; it's just like everybody having equipment or a power-up in their back pocket all the time, and the equipment itself is a little more powerful than before. The map design thing is overstated. They got lazy on using the same map spaces in campaign, invasion and multiplayer, but short of building a much bigger dev team that was probably inevitable. Invasion in particular hurt the multiplayer map set. But several of the mid-sized maps are good and don't significantly depart from Bungie's previous work, e.g. Countdown, Zealot. Halo 4 is another incremental change if you ask me. It's just that when you lay a lot of increments end to end, suddenly the shift from where you started to where you end up is vast.
im trying to stay positive and excited but i can see both sides of a lot of the arguments that have gone on here and also on other sites. certain things that people are worried about dont bother me at all (such as 6v6, new abilities) but others do (killstreak) we really just have to wait and see... but whoa whoa whoa Nutduster, jetpack is NOT like a grav lift at all, LOL. =)
How do you know an entire company's motivations for making a game? This would probably be flat out insulting to most of the developers, who from what brief amount I have seen seem to be putting their hearts and souls into this game. It's not fair at all to the people who have been working for years on this for you to call them out on not actually caring about making the game great.
I have faith in the Halo community once again, I agree with EVERYTHING!! you said. Except the quoted part, Halo 4 has to many incremental changes from reach(that seems to be COD features which makes it feel dirtyer) but who says you have to keep to a statuesque of incremental changes so it may be just, but just feels to much for me but that's just my opinion. If both where only used to ascend a single player to a place you couldn't reach by jumping its basically a multi-use grav lift. (they both have other uses but you can see how it evolved) I know they like halo and want to make a amazing halo in there own way and no doubt they put there hearts and soul into the game. Just saying there not aiming for "Halo with upgraded netcode and servers and graphics and new weapons etc, with few new features here and there" Like I'm sure a lot of us players want something like that. They want to make a awesome halo but just have it the "next halo in line" and the reasoning for that is imo is money, If they waited years and made a perfect halo that we all loved and lastest years and no halo could ever compete would be amazing but they choose to make a halo every year or two to make more money and more diverse halo experiences.
Sorry, but I have zero time for this argument, and frankly I'm as sick of hearing it as you are of hearing complaints. It's an utterly ridiculous thing to say "why can't you guys accept change?" as if we have to either be OK with any change they make, or get labelled as "not OK with change." It shows a distinct lack of thought on the matter, sorry but it's true. Why can't we judge each thing that is changed or kept the same on its own merits? I like change in potential as much as anyone, but I damn sure don't want to nod and smile along with something that detracts from what I like about the game just for the sake of getting on board with change. Sorry for being emphatic, I'm not attempting to mock, just make a point. This discussion about "change" at large is even more meaningless and puerile here than it was during the last election. You can have good discussion about things that are being changed or kept the same, but "change" as a whole is just a meaningless talking point. Look at the discussion about pinging out of scope we had recently. You had some people saying that it'd affect the game negatively, then some people saying that they think it'll help with the ranged fights issue etc. Some for the change, some against, but both judging the actual mechanic on its own merits rather than just "change is bad" or "change is good." The whole "why can't you guys accept change?" thing is a get out from actual discussion, and again sorry for being so pushy, but I'm genuinely sick of it.
Let's move away from discussing matchmaking for just a moment, shall we? What about custom games? I'm praying that 343 doesn't pull a Bungie in terms of screwing with what we could do in custom games in Reach compared to what we could do in Halo 3. Infection - Bungie didn't include vital settings to tinker with such as: how the starting zombie is chosen; starting zombies in % instead of just 1,2,4,16,etc; they didn't include alpha zombie settings at launch; they did away with the team-chat setting from Halo 3 and made it a free-for-all Juggernaut - Bungie didn't let us have the juggernaut start with a weapon other than a grav hammer Objective gametypes - Bungie didn't let us use additional scoring settings like slayer settings, at least not until they released a few gametypes later on like CTF Slayer, etc. From the attitude 343 has towards CTF and how they're not letting us have the option to drop the flag, I'm a bit worried about what we can do in terms of making custom games.
@Sam: Yeah, Halo 4 has the potential to be the absolute best possible Halo sandbox in terms of customs. For the most part, the mechanics look pretty solid. They seem to have fixed up strafe acceleration a bit, autoaim isn't crazy huge, spartans are the right size, default speed seems not to bad. So having all these options could allow for some great games, given that they don't screw us over by doing something silly like, as you said, locking the zombie start count or removing starting weapon customization from some gametypes. I also should say that there are some things I'm extremely positive on like the weapons. They all look really great, add tons of variety and I'm even not sad about the slightly higher kill times on things like the BR, because it can allow for a damage tweak in the gametype without massively shifting the sandbox too much (so maybe if weapons like the the sticky detonator are weaker, they can be beefed while simultaneously bringing the BR down to a 4sk to speed things up). Only thing I'm sad about is the grenade launcher. Such a great weapon Though it has already been said: Lol@nutduster for saying the jetpack was a multiuse grav life
No way. Jetpack completely changes the way you can traverse a map, as well as how you go about the map design process (or it should at least). It adds a whole new dimension of traversing the map that you have to take into account or else the Jetpack will almost become somewhat of a power weapon. Whereas a portable grav lift could only be used once to a gain a small advantage in positioning if used correctly. I personally despised the addition of the jetpack in reach and am sad to see it returning. I honestly think that was the single-most game-changing addition from 3 to reach. Also about the Grenade Launcher, I feel like 343 almost broke it down into two different weapons with Sticky detonator as the weaker and Railgun as the stronger. Anyone else get that feeling?
I was being a little facetious with that comment, but my basic point is that jetpack pretty clearly evolved out of the portable grav lift equipment, in my mind. The grav lift was used not merely to "gain a small advantage in positioning"; they kept it off of most maps because it was actually a substantially useful thing that had the capability to completely alter map flow and allow players to bypass sheer walls and major obstacles (sound familiar?). Obviously most people's experience of it was jumping the wall on High Ground, but had it been on more maps you would have felt its full wrath - people jumping up levels on Construct without using the designated lifts, for instance, or going up from top mid to snipe spawn on Blackout, etc. Had there been an Asylum in H3 with portable grav lifts, you could just as easily break ring control as you do on Asylum in Reach with the jet pack. Had grav lifts been on all maps, you'd need to design for them in the same way (though to a lesser extent) as you do for jetpackers. Yes, jetpack is much more versatile (you don't have to be on the ground; you can use it in more than one position, even continuing to go forward as you fly). And it's multi-use, as I stated, but that's the advantage all AAs have over all equipment. Still, the concept and how it affects gameplay was present in nascent form in the grav lift. They just amped it up by a factor of ten. I agree with you though that jetpacks were probably the single biggest change and detrimental factor in Reach. It's a map flow killer and a see-everything button combined in one. I played a lot of games with jetpacks in them but fundamentally I think they should be jettisoned from Halo; they just detract from the fun and strategy of the ground-based game much more than they add to it. I hate armor lock in vanilla Reach more, but it's actually less of a problem - I just find it personally more aggravating.
Haha, you caught me. I was understating the grav lift's advantages to make my point. But you gave the reason to why I said they weren't that advantageous in the first place: they were kept off most maps because they ruined map flow. It's a shame jetpack loadouts can't be kept off most maps, or just all of them. Or just the game entirely..
@Peg, I think you misunderstood my point; I'm not trying to say that people should just go along with whatever they try to do. I want people to give some of the changes they are making a chance. Rather than saying, "oh wow that is a terrible decision, I'm just gonna play the classic playlist," at least try it out. When people just write-off all of 343's decisions time after time is what bugs me the most. I wrote my first post early in the morning when I wasn't really with it, so I didn't really effectively get my point across.
On that we completely agree. Although I kind of like playing jetpack-fests on Uncaged... that map seems like the only one in Reach that actually improves in certain ways with the addition of the jetpack. EDIT: I take that back, I also kind of like jetpacks on Reflection, simply because that map design is (and always has been) rather dumb; and giving people a way to break top control is preferable to me over making one suicide charge after another vs. top hallway.
i wish i could throw my jetpack at someone and cause them to fly off the map on accident, like i used to in H3. that was always supreme lols. "why the **** is he throwing gravlift at meeee-aaaaiiiieeeeeeeee"
Fair enough, I can get on board with that a little more. Sorry for leaping on a turn of phrase and extrapolating it based on a misinterpretation, it just seemed like you were on the bandwagon of telling me that my apprehension about certain decisions is because I dislike change. I think there's something to be said for the power of imagination, though. If someone told you that they were gonna paint your whole house a turd brown, yellow and blue tartan pattern, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have to actually see it done to know that you're going to hate it. I know this is somewhat of an oversimplification, and that there are degrees here. There are definitely some finer balance points which are very hard to imagine and thus basically impossible to judge in terms of impact until we've not only had a chance to play the game, but also had a while to settle in to and judge properly. But still, a lot of the stuff is, at the very least, a little easier to judge. I don't mind about the "classic playlist" mentality in discursive terms, I think it's pointless getting too hung up on any kind of dissent since it has no real effect. But I do think that the classic vs. vanilla discussion has potential for harm by fragmentation once the game actually comes out. That remains to be seen, though. Classic has never been done well enough or caught on enough to actually reach that point.
I disagree. Both Sprint and the DMR had a way larger impact on the game. Jetpack was just a change that had a lot of annoying, negative implications but ultimately could be nixed without serious consequence, like Armor Lock. However, with Sprint and the DMR it was a lot more difficult to find alternatives. The maps philosophy was altered to be designed around sprint now, which is also why the AA was the most popular (that and mostly everything else was trash, got nerfed or was removed). It's very hard to find solid movement settings that work on default Reach maps and truly feel "good" in every way. Sprint is almost a necessity because of that and this large focus on sprint was more than just an incremental change (though sprint in H4 is now an incremental change from Reach, but I still disagree with the decision). The DMR altered how maps played at a range. Combined this with spread and you had a rather deadly unfun combination. The maps are now all larger due to sprint and the staple gun (lol at them pretending once again to not do a one gun set up) was best at range with a wicked scope, sniper accuracy and hitscan! That translates to fan favorites like Blood Gulch turning into the crap that was Hemorrhage. Had there been no changes to map design for sprint then the DMR might not have been so bad. Had the BR been back instead and the sprint changes were there, maybe the sprint changes wouldn't have been so bad. This isn't even counting all the other changes they made such as: changing spartan model height and movement, dropping ranked and adding arena, overhauling forge, adding the armory, returning to hitscan, overhauling the matchmaking system. My problem with this design philosophy is that with Reach they changed so much stuff, they at least broke one thing that everyone had liked on an individual level. In addition to this, they didn't seem to pay near enough mind to how these new changes affected one another. So: they dropped ranked, arena was bad and they took some time getting MLG up. This forced higher skilled players into their new matchmaking system that was less dependant on true skill to improve connection and matching times. These better players then used the combination of the larger scale maps, sprint and the DMR to beat up on the lesser players. These lesser players then had to find a way to fight back and ended up resorting to the cheap factors of Armor Lock and Jetpack to gain an advantage. Jetpack and Armor Lock prove semi-effective and catch on. The frequency of encountering players abusing them increases and the game becomes less fun. Yeah sure that's a scenario that maybe didn't happen exactly like that in its entirety, but some things still stand true. Making tons of larger changes takes away focus from the final details and these changes need to be tested to great levels to discover how they affect other elements in the game. Rather than sticking with what worked in past scenarios, these "changes for the sake of change" ended up creating problems that may have no been present or as prevalent if they had just made incremental changes to the sandbox before jumping headfirst in a new direction.
I don't feel this way at all. First of all, re: sprint, how can you not simply turn that off just like armor lock or jetpack? You don't "need" sprint in a playlist or custom game any more than you need any AA. If you turn it off, no alternative is required. But I do know that in a game with both sprint and jetpack, jetpack is the one that is more problematic to me. It alters the gameplay more and absolutely ruins many maps. Just ask yourself which of those two has made Prisoner in Reach into a festering shitpile. Pretty sure it's not the one that just makes you go faster. The DMR thing is so overblown I don't know where to begin. I really feel like this complaint comes mostly from people who started the series with H3 matchmaking as their first Halo experience. As Pegasi and I already went on about, you can do some serious long-range killing with the CE pistol and the H2 BR. Even the H3 BR is not a complete slouch when it comes to cross-mapping, except on a bad connection (though admittedly those were rampant in H3 matchmaking). Of which maps is that demonstrably true though? I feel like Boardwalk, definitely, but of most of the other midsized maps (maybe not the BTB ones) sprint is negligible, just getting you around faster, basically. Asylum is not bigger than Sanctuary; Zealot doesn't exactly dwarf its predecessor Midship. I feel like the main impact of sprint in most games/maps is that people feel like if others are using it, they need to use it too to get back to the action just as fast, and to compete for power weapons off spawn. I don't actually feel like map design changed a whole lot, at least not specifically due to sprint, though people keep saying it like it's a fact. Blood Gulch was always a mediocre map anyway, it was just a fan favorite because it was the first two-base BTB map Halo had for vehicle play. And I used to sit on one teleporter and 3- or 4-shot people on the other teleporter with a pistol in CE. So... basically I think this is bunk. None of those are remotely major changes though and all of them have some kind of precedent in the evolution between CE and 2, or 2 and 3. And if you want I'd be happy to give you lists, because I lived through all of those upgrades. Every Halo game since the first has been my most-played video game of its era. I remember suffering through the pistol being replaced with the wholly different BR, then that being replaced with a very different-behaving BR in 3. I remember the advent of dual-wielding, then the nerfing of it. I remember the various changes (some subtle, some not) to vehicles: how they went from invincible to killable, and the changes to their movement, health, and damage. Movement, jump height, and model changes in EVERY game. Tweaks to auto-aim, shot speed and bullet magnetism. Wholesale changes to matchmaking every time out - let's not forget that 3's matchmaking doesn't resemble 2's much more than it resembles Reach's.
Literally the only default Reach map that doesn't have tons a massive open spaces or ridiculous hallways is Countdown, and it is coincidentally the best original map in default Reach. Zealot has a gigantic ring around the outside completely designed for Sprint, which makes playing the map without sprint frustrating. The lower area is also quite open and sprint focused. There is Boardwalk, which is a perfect example. Every BTB map. Especially the invasion maps. The cage with its gigantic pathways everywhere. Yes, the remakes don't quite fall under this category, but they did either a choose maps that would work well with sprint (Pinnacle with it's long paths and open space) or made minor adjusts to fix for the spartan height and speed differences. Hell, even countdown has some long, sprinty areas (like the back halls), though for the most part it's a decently solid design. The reason I say sprint can't easily be removed is because of the changes they made to player movement to account for sprint. You are by default slower, and the strafe acceleration is near non-existent. While 120 speed is pretty good, it's a little skatey and not as solid as past movement settings and really makes for a subpar experience compared to past Halos. On your last paragraph: changing model height was a huge annoyance. It affected jumping and the feel of the controls, it affected remakes, it affected hitboxes (that awkward shooting out of the top of your head nonesense). This stuff was all pretty standard up until Reach. Ranked playlists? In Halo 2 and Halo 3. The BR (hitscan in one, not the other but still the same basic principal) was in both. Trying to make the argument that Halo 2->3 was the same "level" of change as Halo 3->Reach just isn't possible. Edit: but, we're quite off topic now