Do you approve of 343i's response to the "14 Day Buy and Play" fiasco?

haha... no.


they really need to start owning up to their mistakes, not trying to downplay it, or disguise them

 

lol343

When they make mistakes (which they always do) they try to make it look like it was planned when really one programmer may have just screwed up something. That's fine, it's when you try to pass it off it becomes dumb, and the consumers can see right through it. Most of them at least.

 

Although I don't fully understand the situation even now, the fact that they covered it doesn't bother me. From their prospective, covering it was the better option over telling consumers that a mistake was made no matter how blatanly obvious it was. Quite honestly, it seems as though they took advantage of the situation logically. Though it could be a double-edged blade, allowing consumers a trial period for the product would more than likely have an effect on its sales in the future.

What does bother me is the fact that they believe everybody is senseless enough to think they had this all planned out with that simple announcement. A combination of the two aforementioned options would have been ideal, IMO.

 

I don't see how a transparent lie like this (or frankly any lie at all) is the better option. Why is admitting to a mistake such a bad thing?

 

because they are having 70 year-old philanthropists (who never seem to interact personally with anyone who make less than $200,000 a year) "talking" to 21-or-so year old middle class workers

 

+1 internetz

Lying to your consumer, the people that buy your product, is a no-no. Look at the shitstorm that WarZ created with false advertising (lying).

Even though WarZ is an okay game, they took it to the next level with all the lies.

 

Well every developer has to indulge in half truths from time to time, and simply not revealing the truth on certain matters is pretty standard practice in any industry (particularly one where you have faith in your brand, and even faith of stockholders, to think about).

The War Z issue is one where the devs were (or at least very much appear to have been) lying to try and effectively trick people in to paying for something. Making your product seem better than it is is pretty obviously unscrupulous, as it's lying to get people's money.

This is more a case of lying to save face, which (whilst showing a distinct lack of faith in their audience) isn't as bad imo. But I just don't see A) how this saves face when the majority of the community (both consumer and critical) can see how much of a farce it is, and B) why saving face is even necessary. Mistakes happen, and admitting that isn't going to ruin the MS brand imo. Just seemed unnecessary and disrespectful.

 

War Z is an ok game? It's garbage. They had to lie, copy, cheat, and steal just to sell it.

 

I have no doubt in my mind that it was the men in suits who said that.

Put it like this. Frankie is the community manager. He apologised for "the mistake." He is the one who was responsible for that message. Why would he change his mind and make something up? Oh yes, microsoft made him do it.

It's a lose lose situation anyway.

If they let people keep the map pack, everybody who paid for it is ripped off.
If they take the map pack off people, people who got it for nothing, but by no right should have it get pissed off.

And frankly, if you pay more you should be given the customer service.

If they said "as a sign of good will, we will let you all keep the map pack for 2 weeks," then people would still complain. Frankly, people are just using this as an excuse to whinge. The message, the wording of the message is irrelevent. People just want something for free, and to jump on a bandwagon to feel better about themselves.

 

I don't know what is a funnier lie; this, or how "it still feels like Halo."

 

Your second part is an entirely subjective statement. To some people it does feel like Halo. Adding CoD elements does not morph the game into CoD. Since it is an entirely subjective statement, it can't be "a lie".

As far as this situation goes, some perspective is needed. The vast majority of the halo population did not get the DLC for free when the mistake happened. The vast majority of halo players do not even know a situation happened nor do they care to see what goes on on halowaypoint. The lie is specifically for the people that did get the DLC for free or were curious about the people who did and looked to waypoint for answers.

Now that some perspective has been achieved and we aren't condemning 343 into lying to every single consumer who didn't give 2 f*cks, I will say I too disagree with lying in general. I understand why they did it, and it was most likely Microsoft's execs who thought saving face at a critical time for them when they are trying to push Windows 8 stuff out the door was more important than explaining the truth, however as inconsequential the truth might have been to say.

 

In a land where opinions are expressed in the form of jokes, one man stands up against all odds to kill that buzz.


/announcervoice

 

I would like to point out that while some of the new features in Halo 4 are from CoD, these are also common elements in pretty much every modern shooter. CoD and Halo are not the only shooters in existence that use loadouts, or sprint, etc. (I don't mean to sound rude, I just hate it when Halo 4 is compared SPECIFICALLY to CoD, when it is just as similar to BF, MoH, etc.)

On topic: To be honest I don't see the point of lying when it is blatantly obvious that you are doing so. 343 isn't fooling anyone (at least I hope not), I think they would retain more respect by admitting to their mistakes, rather than trying to hide them behind a wall of transparent lies.

 

I should think the reasoning is clear.

1) It's the main competitor to Halo, thus any perceived "poaching" of ideas is going to be directed that way, since it makes the most sense to want to emulate that which provides the most competition in terms of the market.

2) It's not just Sprint and Loadouts as the Halo 4 apologists always seem to generalise. The finer nature of the loadouts are closer to CoD than any other loadout shooter, particularly in terms of dual "perk" slots. It gets even more stark when you consider how Dexterity = Sleight of Hand, Mobility = Marathon etc. The perks themselves are, in many cases, directly mimicked from CoD. And it's not just loadouts. Look at the CTF changes. They've basically emulated the CoD form of CTF almost exactly, down to the auto pickup, no drop and flagnum mechanics.

It's way too easy to downplay how specifically CoD-esque a lot of these features are when you palm it off as just "loadouts and sprint." Look deeper and it begins to make more sense.

 

Right. This conversation is meaningless now that it's pretty clear that Halo 4's dev team cribbed a lot specifically from CoD, and with an obvious motive (CoD is the most popular console multiplayer-oriented shooter there is, and is the one that snatched the XBox Live crown from Halo a couple iterations ago).

We can argue whether Halo still feels like Halo, whether the new additions are good or bad (or indifferent), etc. But at this point, if you're trying to argue that most of the changes to multiplayer in Halo 4 weren't directly and obviously inspired by Call of Duty, you're being willfully dishonest, or you just haven't taken the time to really closely compare the two titles. Frankie had some things to say about this subject before the game came out, but it seems quite clear now that he was saving face, because they couldn't just come out and admit how much they were cribbing from their biggest competitor.

 

Precisely.

You can acknowledge where the game takes its most prominent influences from (in terms of new additions, obviously) without assigning a value judgement to that. It's an observation, and what you do with that observation is subjective.

Using ideas from other games, even in such distinct and extensive ways as is true here, is a part of the industry. The level of similarity between Halo 4's changes and CoD's current setup aren't exactly common, but nor are they unheard of, and again they aren't inherently good or bad. One could argue that the decision to adapt so many features from one game, and specifically your main competitor, is a tad cynical on 343's part in terms of how they view the history of the franchise and the current audience. This isn't helped by the fact that, as you say, 343 were quite cagey about what was pretty obviously their inspiration, but I guess it's hard to do anything else in their position. But even then, that's not the same as saying that the game itself inherently suffers as a result.

I personally don't feel drawn in by the changes, but plenty of others do. I know people who enjoyed the Halo mechanics a lot, but also really liked the personal progression and customisation elements of CoD's setup. Suddenly they have their perfect game, and good for them. There's no shame in admitting why that came about, and I can appreciate their perspective whilst still staunchly holding my own.

 

Don't know if this has been said yet, but the "14 Day Buy and Play" cover-up wasn't 343's response. It was Microsoft's response forced upon 343. That said, I think 343 handled it well considering they had to take the flak while Microsoft got off scot-free.

 

It hasn't been stated because, to my knowledge, it hasn't been confirmed.

It's been discussed as the most likely scenario (an assessment I definitely agree with), but unless you have a decent source from either 343 or MS stating outright that MS came up with the idea and then forced 343 to pass it off as their own (since it was put out in an article by bs angel, with no mention of "orders from above" or suchlike) then I don't really see your point. And why would you, as MS, palm off blame to 343 and then admit it?

 

Here is a tweet from Microsoft soon after it happened, proving it was their fault in the first place. I guess I have no real proof that Microsoft actually came up with "14 Day Buy and Play" thing, but it just seems highly unlikely that 343 would willingly, without instruction from Microsoft, go out of their way to cover up something that wasn't even their problem.