Completely the opposite, actually. Say you're a Microsoft exec who is managing the resources and money spent on the game. With millions and millions of dollars invested in this game, are you A) gonna prioritize a feature that the majority of your target audience barely uses? Or are you B) gonna spend that money and time on other things that are proven to sell better in games like the wildly successful Call of Duty, like campaign setpieces and ads that you can show on national TV in front of hundreds of thousands of potential customers? (here's a hint: If you chose A, than you're most likely gonna be fired for being an incompetent idiot with no business sense) Would I LIKE a better editor? sure. But is it rational to expect that such a huge game would be catered to a minute fraction of it's target audience? Of course not.
That is not the claim I made at all. This is rather insulting to me, as I am currently trying to make my way towards the game industry to become a level designer. I certainly am trying to take myself to a higher level. Forge was my launching point, expecting it to be the main place I design for much longer would be ludicrous. This goes the same for any level editing system. Forge is meant to help people get started and to be user friendly, should it change that because a few thousand people got really good with it and decide they don't want to move on? No, they should move on. Forge isn't going to change for a few people, it's going to stick to what it was designed for. It is also entirely your opinion that a more competitive game is better. The average player is not truly competitive, and this does not make them lesser players, nor does it make the game lesser for reacting to this. Halo is a big title, it doesn't have the freedom of an Indie Game to do whatever it wants. If an Indie game fails it is a big deal to the developers. If Halo fails it is a colossal issue for one of the largest companies in the world. You can't compare the two when the player base of one is exponentially larger than the other.
Ding-dong-del. The game has been leaked, pirated, e.c.t. Video leaks will be released through the next few weeks. And so begins the leaked content prohibition.
Let me get this ranking system straight... so it's Reach v2. Also, I won't be able to use AA in matchmaking until I've leveled up twice. What a joke.
You're making it sound like it takes thousands of dollars and work hours to give us a color/texture selection, and FLAT natural geometry. [br][/br]Edited by merge: Then their game will suffer, considering how important forge was to the lackluster Reach matchmaking experience. I'm usually fine with agreeing to disagree, but not for this. EVERYTHING that is geared towards casual players/general population suffers in quality: Music (Lil' Wayne), Games (CoD), TV Shows (Jersey Shore), Movies (Ted), etc. Casual=flashier, gimmicky, slow, less skill, and less thought. All to make the game "fun". Halo was once geared towards competitive playstyle, NOT hardcore or casual crowd. Halo 1 and 2 multiplayer were designed to be fun, competitive, and unique.
Can you expect that Halo would have kept growing if they had made only small improvements with each iteration? If large new changes had not been tried out would the game have kept selling iteration after iteration? In the end it boils down to this: no matter what they have to sell their game to the largest population or die out. If the game appeals to a wider range of players this way, is it really worse? Can you make the argument that anything is really bad if a very large population prefers it? I think a lot more people would disagree with you if given the option than the meagre percentage represented on the internet. What is good/ bad in the first place? As for the forge part, there is no doubt in my mind that equal or better maps can be made with this new forge, even for BTB. That's a claim I suppose I will be helping to back up for the next few years. The map set for Halo 4 looks much better than Reach, and the forge system gives players more options, especially for smaller maps. Regardless what others say they did indeed improve it. I don't see how the game will suffer for it. If the intent was to make the game for really in depth design they would do it, it's not a technical limitation. The reason, as I stated earlier, for forge is that it is user friendly and allows less experienced players to get started and have fun while also allowing more experienced players to enjoy it to some extent. We are not the target audience for forge. We may have been when we started, but a lot of us are not now. You can't expect it to grow with you. And with that I need some sleep. I'm not going to take this much further because I feel it is going nowhere for either of us, but I will reply once more. But on the whole I feel you are not looking at the largest possible picture of the situation.
I was almost gonna have a fit for the ranking system being like COD but then I saw this: I was like **** YEERR. Halo has always been about the teamwork and objectives, at least thats staying. Successfully defending a teammate holding the flag now has more reward (hopefully).
Fantastic point that can be applied to most of the halo experience. When you first started playing Halo would you have been hooked in by the game you want Halo to be now? We were all casuals once, in forge and in competitiveness. That is not to say we shouldn't raise issues we have, but don't start blaming 343 for ruining Halo. I have seen nothing in forge that has dumbed it down from it orignal iteration. It is way more advanced than Halo 3's (imagine if we hadn't had the floating object glitch, let alone anything else). Although I have to say not all of the identified issues can be rebutted by the above. For example the complete lack of a ranking system, leaving only progression, is worrying. At least Reach tried to have a ranking system. Halo 3's 1-50 made ranked and social fundamentally different experiences, and now it seems we're stuck with a mesh of the two. Anyone know anything about moveable objects (palettes, those long pole things etc.) making a return to forge?
"..one thing you guys might notice is these cool purple volumes. They are grav volumes. So they'll affect anything from players to physics crates to vehicles" I can only assume by physics crates he means moveable objects. Also [noparse]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VaXtnB7TUJI#t=540s[/noparse] A bunch of moveable objects. One more unnecessary pop-up on the screen to distract the hell out of me. At this rate Halo 5 will probably have "You Crouched" Medals to reward plays who managed to successfully crouch.
Don't really get your point. The "next level" isn't always why people do creative things. My dad likes to play guitar, but he's not looking for a record deal. He has a good job that he likes already, and acoustic guitarists that can play for a living are maybe one a million or less; on top of that, he didn't pick up the instrument until he was in his 20s, and has never had the time to dedicate to making up all that lost ground by not starting earlier. In short, he plays guitar CASUALLY, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I find it bizarre that anyone would argue otherwise. Halo was always made for casual players. Its success as a competitive game was basically an accident, and Bungie made a point of proving that in every subsequent title, when basically all the additions and alterations they made were aimed at the casual fanbase. You can argue whether that's a loss of "greatness" or whatever, but the idea that Halo was ever intended to be "great" in that way and then lost its path is just a misconception.
Individual medals aren't the point. The fact there is some attempt to put more emphasis on winning over K/D is a good sign. There will probably be a huge K/D counter everywhere and giving way more EXP for K/D or something that in game people will care more about K/D then winning but at least there trying. As for halo been a team game, Yea it technically is but the META game has way to much emphasis on K/D, Other games have systems in place to make players care more about winning then K/D. Example:Not showing your K/D stat at all in any database to players(except during that actual game), Might not be right for system for Halo but still proves there is better systems that promote winning over K/D. Also isn't Team slayer the intended gametype, BR/DMR slayer was an accident because the BR was OP?
I can cite just as many counter-examples. Popular music that has been exceptionally written and made: Stevie Wonder, Elvis, the Beatles. Games: uh, Halo CE..? TV shows: Seinfeld, Cheers. etc. There's a skill to making art that is also massively popular. It's just not a skill that a lot of people have. Bungie thought they were doing the same with 3 and Reach. And I don't think they really have "competitive" players in mind when they introduced dual-wielding (mostly with automatic weapons) or the sword, or when they ditched the 3sk pistol in favor of a more limited and random BR. Those are things aimed at casual players, and they did it the very first chance they got. Yes, and that's been the case in every single Halo game. In CE the pistol was not the default starting weapon; it only became that way when people realized what a God-weapon it was. People's perception of this game series would be entirely different if Bungie hadn't included the ability to specify starting weapons in your custom game settings. That's such a minor, almost incidental thing that completely rewrote the events that unfolded in the Halo fanbase. It was also common back then to have no radar as a setting (MLG did it as did lots of less-formal LAN groups, including mine), but again, the default gametypes were ARs and motion trackers... not exactly a competitive-oriented approach. EDIT - Correction, I had to go back and check to refresh my memory. There was a "slayer pro" gametype on-disc with pistol starts, though even in it motion trackers were enabled by default. But you can make a case that Bungie was aware how the pistol was going to work out. I still see a game that was intended more for casual players with an undertone of competitive play. But competitive players have rewritten history a little bit on that one. And I say that, again, as somebody that spent a lot of time on LAN playing the most competitive gametype (pistol starts and no trackers), for a solid two years.
Considering the Reach population, no-one gives a **** about objective anymore. I guess instead of a lack of decently designed maps for one-flag / oddball/ bomb, 343 decided what was holding objective back was the amount of medals you can earn.
Eurogamer Expo 2012: Halo 4 Developer Session with Frank O'Connor - YouTube Don't lose hope for a skill-based rank system! Listen from 42:20 - 43:20. BTW, don't watch the beginning if you don't want any campaign spoiled.
If the medals where removed and you directly received more exp for helping complete objectives you would be ok with that right? I can't believe medals really annoy you that much that when they can be fun and provide stats for players otherwise unavailable. Anyone can say its a crap gametype as much as they want, But I desire for the original intent of team slayer(because I enjoy that meta game) to reach a balanced point where it can be played competitively alongside a competitively played BR slayer which would be played differently but both equal.
Getting back to forge though... I personally am disappointed in it (at least what we've seen so far) because it seems like they did the least amount possible while still being able to bill it as an upgrade. I never expected or really even hoped for a full-fledged editor in H4, but they could have improved its flexibility and power in so many ways, and so far it appears that they did almost none of it. We're going to be working with basically the same objects in basically the same type of locations (more diverse now, but also smaller), and not only does it appear that most of the maps will look about the same again - maybe falling into three general types rather than just one - they are also going to look a fair amount like Reach maps. Just less gray, and with a different backdrop. It was probably overreaching to dream of weather and time-of-day settings and re-skinnable objects and a palette double the size of Reach's, but the gap between what could have been and what is... pretty staggering. I hope somebody with the leaked game gives out some info that makes this taste a little less bitter.
Awesome! I hope there's both. I'm also curious about the "network changes" he was talking about. No more black screen?
haters gonna hate. the hate on forge is retarded. get over it you ****ing crybabies. WAAAAHHH I DIDNT GET EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED anyway, the ranking system might piss me off too, that i agree with. but i suspect that most stuff will unlock rather fast. also, like COD, a good player will probably soar through the first 15 ranks in the first hour of playing. still, it is one of the "COD changes" that kinda bugs me. but i think it will end up being cool in the end. ___ as far as the whining about not getting the ability to swap texture sets during forge... perhaps you dont know what would go into something like that behind the scenes... lets just say that not only is a LOT of work (man-hours better spent on other aspects of the game) but if you think that "loading light maps" bit is gonna be annoying, how long do you think its gonna take to load the textures of EVERY object, and then swap them back and forth on the fly. sorry, not gonna happen.
I disagree with your philosophy on the "guitar playing ”. Your father and many others may enjoy guitar casually but guitar has generally not been made much easier for casual play nor has its peak of competitive potential been capped, which is the case with halo. Removal of skill ranks, complete change in map design philosophy from the more competitive arenas to "pretty spaces", removal of balance between players. Once upon a time Halo had the ability to appeal to casual players while being a successful competitive shooter. That's been waning of late. Its all about the bottom line and I understand this is a business but from my limited experience focus solely on adding a couple bucks over focusing on your core audience tends to end badly sooner or later. Also: continuing to grow is a cop out Flying, Halo 3 outsold Reach and CoD makes MS a lot of money, why go at it so hard?