We're disappointed with forge, now let's get 343 to hear us!

I don't see why FFA Dominion would exist in the first place, that seems completely silly based on how difficult it would be to capture a base for any length of time, let alone fortify it or get resupplies.

Adding on entire sections to buildings via capturing? How would that make any sense. You capture the base and then "poof!" you have a second story? I'm sorry, but that's kind of a ridiculous expectation to have. Finally, why do you need a capture post dedicated to a team off the start? You could spawn it next to the team who is supposed to have it at the start as they do on Meltdown. Frankly I don't see any of these things as issues, as none of these things could have been expected to be in the game to begin with.

 

You missed...

-The peices don't match the maps
--This best is exampled on Ravine. All of the pieces are UNSC, and look pretty cool. The problem is that any default buildings on Ravine (namely the giant ass one) are SHINY FORERUNNER

-There isn't any good terrain areas to forge
--Other than floating open area or cliffs, there are no good terrain forging areas. Erosion is the best example. Do they really expect people to make maps on that hill? Impact has the flattest terrain area, and even that is on a slant.

-The RANDOM BUMPS or just weird decisions
--The building on Impact. The giant hole in the building on Impact. The random nook in the inside of Erosion. The giant tower on Erosion that blocks half the cliff. The random bumps, grooves or notches on almost all the items (Silo #3 on Impact is the most annoying ever). Why were any of these included?

-The borders on the maps are annoying
--This is really only on ones like Ravine, and mainly Erosion. You can't use half of the walls of the lagoon on Erosion.

 

I thanked them for replying me and got this reply...
so I don't believe they are "dismissing me" like you suggested.

I mentioned that to them... they have "communicated it upward"

 

@Legit Taco: While answering individual responses is respectable, it is mere talk until action is taken.

Faith shouldn't be restored until they show forgers that they are listening to our complaints, and that they care.

 

I agree with zamplez.

Some of the decisions they made are just so confusing or dumbfounding. Why would they make the inside of the griffball court shiny silver when all of the pieces are a brown grimy rust? Why would they make all of the pieces on Ravine UNSC when the building is clearly forerunner? It just doesn't make sense.

 

Between the missing game types/options and the glitches they sure do have their work cut out for them if they want to get things back on track. I didn't see anyone mention it when I skimmed through the thread (I may have missed it), but I am having issues with object spawning after the start of a match. It seems that you cannot spawn objects into the map if players/vehicles are nearby. If you have players or vehicles nearby you must move out of the way and sometimes it might spawn the object. I'm positive they will try to address as many of the glitches and missing items as they can, but I don't have much faith in seeing changes made to the forge mechanics (ex. bringing nudge and zoom back). Overall it seems like this version of forge is set somewhere in between Halo 3 and Reach. I feel that they took steps forward in some areas, but due to them leaving behind good tools they took more backwards. The forge community may not be the majority, but they do have an impact on the majority. It would be wise for 343i/CA to do as much as they can to make forge better. The more effort they put in to improving forge...the more they will get out of it in the end. What other game developer has so many people willing to make maps for their game (that they can use in playlists)...for FREE? I think they dropped the ball on forge and customs, but I hope they will fix most of the issues by the time the first major update rolls out. Regardless, all of this should help them become more prepared for the next game.

 

Remember there was a 'theme' option during earlier stages of the game. This is an aspect that perhaps has not been fully cut out, but couldn't be ready for release. I'd love to see 2-3 sets of themes for maps: A UNSC, a Forerunner, and a Covenant.

 

CertainAffinity directs every comment upwards, that comes up alot. I hope this is true, and this is actually useful. Because with this, maybe we can achieve somenthing. They also have an youtube channel, if you comment on that, and they find it an good mention, they reply with "We will certainly pass that upwards"

 

how long does it take for them to reply?

 

Even if they do pass all of that upward, we'll be lucky if 10% of it is addressed. Take it from someone who works in a very similar industry. There are only so many resources to deal with fixes; a lot of the requests are impractical to patch or just take lower priority than things that end up consuming the resources I referred to; and ultimately the company already has our money, and will always put more importance on making the next game than messing with the existing one (especially as they stare down the fact that the life cycles of games are just getting shorter).

 

maybe the life cycle of video games wouldn't be as short if they'd stop rushing games, and focused on supporting there current ones

what happens now

1)make game
2)people complain
3)take it into the new game that they will publish soon, due to the increased unpopularity of their current game because of said complaints
4)rush the new game, because their current game is failing faster than expected
5)game is published broken
6) repeat

what should happen

1)publish the game
2)people complain
3)complaints are addressed, and the base flourishes under a streamlined, well thought out game
4)some time later, company decides to make a new game to keep things fresh
5) repeat

 

But...but...that doesn't make as much moneys...

But in all seriousness, I agree with you but don't see why devs will change so long as the former process still draws in a lot of money. If it didn't succeed, we'd see a new approach. But so long as people buy each CoD, Halo, whatever, they will continue to be made this way.

Which is why I don't buy anything on console that I don't intend to keep playing for a long while. I didn't get Halo 4; I'm using my bro's copy.

 

I never would by a game I don't plan to play for a long time to begin with. Which is why I bought Halo 4, as I plan to play it for the next several years. Personally though I agree that I would rather they stay on the 3 year cycle for Halo, though I still think 4 is a hell of a lot better than Reach was.

 

Multiple Object Selection:

I was really hoping to see a feature where you could select multiple objects at the same time, and then either duplicate all of them (still grouped together), or move all of them at the same time. Too many times have a built an entire map, only to realize it was too close to the invisible ceiling or too close to a cliff wall, and then you have to move all objects one at a time.

Possible solution:
Instead of having to group each and every object you want to move/dupe, seems they could create a bounding sphere, cube or cylinder, in which everything within its bounds would move when you move the bounding object.


Man Cannons:

1. Would be nice to see man cannons & grav lifts with options for adjusting their strength, instead of having to choose between preset objects. This way, I can adjust them to work with my map, instead of having to adjust my map work with them.

2. Would also be nice to see man cannons & grav lifts with no base attached, so that you have more options for where to place them. For example, if I'm creating a racing map, and I want a man cannon parallel to the ground to push vehicles, the object's base often gets in the way and really limits the angle at which you can place them. The base could be an optional object, similar to how the teleporter frame is a separate object.

 

I agree I was really hoping for multi-selection that would allow us to multi-move! arghh.. just takes really careful planning to avoid problems, and even then you have to move stuff around. Magnets do occastionally make things easier.

Not to mention "Undo" WTF?

On Magnets -- I like them and it has been useful for some duplication and easy matching, but most of the time I have turned it on and the corners don't match up to other corners. It's like the magnet on the piece is in the wrong location so it doesn't match up w/ other pieces.

On Explosives/Shields and block pieces - In reach you could be very creative about placement of landmines and fusion coils to make a button trigger safe explosions to open a door or turn on some mechanism you created. Weapon dispensors and door mechanisms seem to be much harder, if not impossible to do using old methods anyways.

Here's what I experienced last night.

I'm making a grav lift inside a holo box wich is triggered by a landmine.

Before in Reach you could make just the button pop out of the wall so that you could bash or shoot it, the explosion would happen inside the wall or on the other side of the wall, causing it to explode other items you need exploded. Now, there is nothing you can do to make the button on one side of a wall or shield, but have the actual explosion occur on the other side. The botton appears to be on your side, but when you shoot it, it gives shield visual effects. It's not an issue about the precision editing either. No matter what position I placed the mines or shields, it would not work.

Explosions seem to be going through walls and shields - I tried several times on Impact to get a quad-group of fusion coils to explode without killing me even when they are inside four walls which is behind a shield, and I'm standing what seems like a huge distance away. I shoot the trigger and a moment later when the larger explosion is set off, "SUICIDE!"

Explosions cascade and compound their strength - While I can see this as a good gameplay element on its own, it ruins our ability to use explosions to safely enable mechanics. If you want to block a doorway with explosives but put a shield in front of it so that the explosions do not harm the door opener, it doesn't appear to work any longer, at least when you use multiple explosives. Maybe it has something to do with the angle.

My experiment was like this: Four 5x1 Short pieces (which are actually the really long flat piece) arranged in a four wall elevator shaft going up. Small shield door placed just above where the person would stand. Four Fusion coils placed just barely past the shield door. Because you can't bash them, and can't get through, it creates a "door" (a method I posted about in Reach a few months ago).

If I throw a grenade into the top of the elevator shaft it will explode the coils and not harm me if I stand under the shield. Great!

But when I added a landmine button to the bottom area where the player stands, to enable the elevator, then cause that to cascade outside of the shaft and up into the area where the blocking explosives are housed, like I said, even if I'm standing VERY VERY far away and put a giant shield door between us at a perpendicular angle, FULLY blocking the blast, I still die.

Something with the explosives is severely screwed up. It takes a lot of creativity out of this forge product.

I really hope that can be changed.

 

in far cry 2, some items, such as colonial fences, had a magnet function. you could easily stick them together, and even had angles of 45 or 90°.

I usually built the whole layout of the map out of those fences, which was very quick, then I just had to replace them with more fitting materials.


here you can see I built the whole map out of simple walls, and I then progresively replace them with natural rocks.

 

I'd like to see the dynamic lighting glitch fixed and open up the kill boundaries.

 

It only took 10 minutes in Forge to realize what a massive disappointment it is. Hardly any new objects, textures that don't blend well at all, no nudge, no zoom, overly strict kill boundaries, etc. The ability to duplicate is probably the only feature they added that people clamoured for.

Everything else we begged them for, like simpler texture for object blending, the ability to lock individual rotation axis, undo (I know why they didn't put this in, but I don't see why they couldn't have just made it so only the party leader could do it), and a host of other sensible additions.

I'm very disappointed and can't help but feel that 343i doesn't take Forge seriously. Putting Certain Affinity, who made the very poorly received DLC maps in Reach, in charge of this was a huge mistake.

 

Agreed on the whole. Though I do feel the textures are semi, sorta, kinda an improvement. They don't always blend (the prevalent striping is a big factor in that - then again, maps would be pretty boring looking if all the pieces were one plain color). But more objects are compatible textures than Reach, where certain objects were flat-out unusable due to either ugliness or framerate problems, and others could only really be used if you themed your entire map around their inclusion. In H4, you can use most of the palette, which is a step forward. But I actually find the textures to be rather unattractive; there's the stripe-blending issue I mentioned before which can be a pain if you need to merge objects in a way they clearly didn't intend; and the maps can look completely unappealing if you build them in such a way that dynamic lighting isn't a factor - interiors are very low-contrast and low-res looking.

Otherwise much about forge is either a step sideways or backward, and it leaves me feeling pretty uninspired. I've built one map so far but I don't feel what I felt in Reach, which was a rush of ideas that I could build one after another. Most of the obvious enhancements that could and should have been made, they appear to have not considered at all.