I like Halo 2 and 3 as much as anyone else here, but in reality they need a drastic change to win back the audience. They can't improve though, Halo 3 was perfection. The only way to make good changes is to make it like Halo 2 or 3 and that won't attract no one except keep the die-hard halo fans they still have. The only thing 343 has got going for them right now is the next-gen Xbox. The new technology will attract the audience back if they make full use of that technology to drastically improve Halo. If the new xbox wasn't in the close future, Halo would be officially dead.
Halo 2 also added Arbiter Campaign missions and playable elites in multiplayer, along with gametypes like Assault and Zombies. Accurate description. However you got to play as the Arbiter in Halo 2, Halo 3 just continued that. There were brutes in Reach. Few, but they were there. Remember the mission including the "Leapfrogs" ODST group? Brutes were the main enemy in that mission. Only the Brute Plasma Rifle, Brute Shot, Mauler, Flame and spike grenades were removed. Reach also added new weapons such as grenade launchers and concussion rifles (both of which were fantastic weapons, despite the rather bad game they were introduced into.) Forge world being the only Forge map made forge suffer a bit, but it wasn't awful because it actually had a decent pallet, something Halo 4 lacks. Don't forget reach had Bad maps, bad movement, Armor Lock and Jetpack, OP scorpion. The absolutely horrific BTB map we have come to know as "Hemorrhage" and various other very, very less desirable aspects. Grenade launcher wasn't brought back. Plasma Pistol was an EMP since Halo 3. ------------------------- Tired of Halo? Then how come almost every person I play with can go back and play Halo 3 and have a blast, but struggle to play Halo 4 without getting bored? The problem wasn't that people were bored of Halo, you pointed out the problem yourself. Halo 4 ****ed up everything Reach hadn't yet. People bought Halo 4 expecting a sequel to Halo 3. What they got was Halo Infinity, more of a sequel to Reach. They bought the game expecting old styled Halo with the chief, what they got was Reach styled Halo with the chief. So once they played chief, they got bored and left because they'd already been let down by Halo: Reach and didn't want to rehash all their old complaints. I'm certainly not bored of Halo, I play Halo 3 almost every day. What I'm bored of is Reach gameplay, and random dominant aspects. Except Halo 3 had 180000 on for 5 years, and certainly wasn't a dying species. Bungie was done with Halo, they wanted to work on Destiny, which is evidenced in Halo 3: ODST with the Destiny easter egg that they were already starting on a new universe. M$ on the other hand wanted more games, so bungie gave them a few games but didn't put near as much effort into them because they didn't want to make them in the first place. Call of Duty, Pokémon, Battlefield, Final Fantasy, Batman games, Lego Games, FIFA, NBA, NFL, Any racing game. Need I go on? I'm not saying they should make the game the same, but there's no reason to completely revitalize the next game. Halo CE is literally a ripoff of Aliens. It wasn't very original to begin with. One can be original without changing everything about the game. That's horse crap and you know it. This is true. Reach's campaign was fantastic in its idea to let you be your own Spartan, but it suffered because of bungies lack of enthusiasm for the game. For Halo 5 to be drastically better than all previous Halo's, it would likely have to go back to Halo 3's gameplay and build off of that, negating AA and ordinance. Otherwise, those players who left because of the new games will see those elements and immediately leave again because they know how those turned out last time. The best way for 343i to gain the old audience back would be for the first trailer of Halo 5, to release footage of classic Halo maps. So a picture of Lockout, or Guardian, or The Pit. Something to spark their interest and say "Hey, I remember that map... If they brought back the old maps, what else might they be doing?" and actually get them to pay attention to the new release. If the first thing they see is some guy jetpacking around, I guarantee most people won't give two damns, because that's not the Halo they know or want to play. It's more than likely the reason many of them became disinterested in the first place. Yeah, but did they changed the Monster formula? Did they say, "Hey guys, we know we used to be an energy drink before, but rather than adding small twists and keeping things still the same drink you feel in love with, we're going to become a Laxative to be served with cold fish cakes!" No, no they didn't. The monster they were getting was still the same, it just had some little twists added to it while keeping the main product the same. That statement cannot be used on Halo because we know that Halo 1-Reach were Arena Shooters, and Halo 4 is a Class Based shooter, with 1 arena map of the start. Sure, the basic movement is the same, but they added so many different things to it from other franchises that it became an entirely different product. Lets use Coca Cola as an example for CoD, and something like "Crush" for an example of Halo. Coca Cola is vastly more popular, but Crush is very good in itself. Now lets say that Crush started it's own line of "Coca Cola" flavoured soft drinks, and discontinued their normal products, as they tried to bring the Coca Cola fans to them. The people drinking Coke already know and love it, and will continue to love it. But those who fell in love with "Crush" have now lost their favourite drink, and don't like the new line of Crush Cola because if they had wanted Cola they'd have drank Coca Cola. Now Crush has dug it's own grave, because they've lost their drinkers and gained very little of the Coca Cola drinkers. This is almost exactly what Halo has done to itself. Halo could have dethroned CoD had 343i done their very best to make an amazing Halo game. Instead, they opted to try and take CoD's fan base, essentially shooting themselves in the foot in the process. Their lack of Classic playlist only spit the nails into the coffin, because classic players who wanted Halo had nothing to play, and CoD players were busy playing Blops 2 to give a flying ****. Halo 4 would have done much, much better had it been a Halo game with Halo Gameplay and new additions than having done what it did.
Ok, I wasn't going to go and waste my time getting all the useless facts straight. I think I got my point across and the fixes weren't needed. Thanks though for taking the time to make useless points. You have blinded yourself from reality. Make Halo 5 like Halo 3 and watch how many people come crawling back to Halo. And name one original idea that hasn't been done before in some way since you think it's 'Horse Crap.' (Characters, storyline, props) As I said, if you disagree with people wanting change, then you're just neglecting to accept the facts and I can't make you believe something you refuse to. Good Change = Good, Bad Change = Bad, No change = Bad. But eventually people will grow tired either way.
Halo 3 wasn't perfection. There's no such thing as perfect. Forge can be vastly improved, as can playlists. They could have vast amounts of custom options and gametypes. Heck, they could bring AA to the table as long as they had equal if not more playlists that didn't have AA. They could add space battles, they could add an air battles gametype into it's own menu, they could add firefight and campaign, as well as having ways to make your own campaign and firefight in forge. They could add an entirely new and improved map builder (like the one bungie uses to make the maps in the first place). They could add new vehicles, gametypes with up to 32 players. They could make MASSIVE battles, or a campaign that allowed you to choose how things turned out (not quite like mass effect, but doing different things or missions will have different effects on the story.) And they could do all this without getting rid of their roots, 4v4 slayer. Heck, they could have two campaigns (similar to Spartan ops for the second one) with the first being linear, and the second being based off of your Spartan and reactive to your decisions. Halo 3 isn't perfect, and could be improved in a vast amount of ways without changing everything about the game.
Yes they could and that's the change it needs. I'm glad you're finally seeing it my way! But none of that is original. I also meant perfection as in that's what the ultimate goals bungie wanted to achieve with Halo. Nothing is ever perfect but if you achieved everything you wanted, then yeah, it's perfect.
Well, as far as things that haven't been done before, I was meaning more in terms of mechanics and gameplay ideas as opposed to storyline and characters. There's only around 7 kinds of stories to right, how you right them, when and where they take place is what makes them original. I don't disagree that people want change, but I'm certain if you asked Halo 3 players at the time what they thought Halo 4 should be like, I guarantee the description would be anything close to what we got. I'm all for change (if you knew me on waypoint, you'd know that) but just because Halo changed doesn't mean it changed for the better. There's tons of things they could have done to change up gameplay without throwing it out the window. Halo 4 itself would have been vastly superior to what we have now had they included equal amounts of classic playlists as they did new playlists, and given us the ability to turn off things like sprint and instant spawns.
Halo 4 wasn't original either . No other console games have had all that in one package, nor have they given vast map editing abilities (I know crisis has a good map editor, but they can easily beat crisis) and a creatable campaign area. I'm not saying it's all original, but the originality derives from putting it all into one package, into one universe while still sticking to the games roots. Every game only does one thing. Halo 4 is an example of a game that only does one thing, same with CoD, Same with Battlefield. A vast amount of customizability and new gametypes while sticking to core gameplay and not drastically changing the series is something that hasn't really been done before.
Halo Reach gave us forge world and the start of the whole story. Halo 4 ruined multiplayer and 'dug' for a 'new' story. Your views on a new possible Halo are cool and well needed and may possibly get most of the Halo audience back but it probably won't happen (the changes that is). And it's still not original, nothing is. Everything is related to something else in some way. Plus I never said Halo;CE's story was original, I just said they brought a lot of new stuff to the table like you're talking about now.
Well, I guess you're right that it's not exactly original. We can definitely agree Halo 4 ruined multiplayer though. Reach was good in idea, but failed in execution in my opinion. I like the campaign but it was really weighed down because of the gameplay and lack of enthusiasm. We both know 343i will never implement those ideas, which is unfortunate. They seem too caught up in making money instead of making an astounding game. Sorry if I sounded a tad hostile there. And CE definitely did bring a lot of new stuff to the table.Sorry
Fenix. Could you explain CoD and its huge success since 4? Success that has been happening right alongside the latter half of Halo, and in stark contrast to it. The point here is that, whilst doing precisely what you say people don't want, it not only succeeded, but stole the console FPS market from Halo as it was undergoing more change than CoD itself. And you yourself admit that you aren't even particularly bothered about facts of what each game did, yet you expect us to put any real store by your perceived progression of the series and how it ties in with each title's success? You seem to be navigating by your gut here, which leaves me far from a willing passenger. It just seems odd to me that you effectively think you know people's minds better than they do. By and large they're not calling for this fundamental change, they're either calling for a return of some fundamental mechanics or are frankly satisfied with the direction Halo has taken. The fact that you're still adamant about what people want, flying right in the face of this, is very questionable. The idea that people want change, and not just change on the scale of Reach or 4 compared to previous titles, but change so fundamental as to effectively be a complete overhaul, surely undermines why people look to continuing franchises. This is common throughout media, film and books being key examples. The idea of looking to a known franchise for something known in itself is fundamentally at odds with this desire for paradigm shifting change that you say people want so much. It's at odds with what people are saying, and it's at odds with their market actions (insofar as people building investment in game series rather than constantly looking for new, vastly different titles).
Well, if the prduct's good, why change it? Halo Reach and 4 made Halo progressively worse. CoD grew better and CoD favors most people's votes b/c how easy it is to kill someone. I'm not going to dedicate a whole lot of facts and do a whole lot of research. I just don't have time to go look for the facts and really don't care, i have more important things to do (a bunch of college work). If you disagree with me, cool, but proving my point any further is no interest to me, thank you.
The amount of players that they had to "win back" from 3 to Reach aside (I don't know how much the population declined from 3's peak to just before Reach's release), there was no reason why the necessary "change for the sake of keeping interest" approach couldn't be handled with logic- AL was by far the most complained about AA, and everything about it (including duration) should have screamed "unbalanced" during production. I've already posted about my views on AAs, but I mention that as an example of how the smallest amount of cautious thought would have eliminated the single most prevalent gripe. Also, one either thought that bloom forced randomness or that it didn't. I doubt that anyone at Bungie was thinking "this randomness objectively, undeniably hurts gameplay, but if we don't change the primary weapon in whatever way we can think of, fewer people will buy this game". I think that the latter part of that reasoning was the impetus for the change, but I'm not at all convinced that they were damned if they changed in any way and damned if they didn't, such that they had to make bad changes. As SilentA89 and others have said, they could have had more (at least 4) classic playlists (4v4, 8v8, FFA, 4v4 Obj), as well as the BR alongside the DMR. EDIT (what I forgot to include yesterday): If the next-gen Xbox is the only thing that would make halo 5 attractive to a large crowd, does that mean that halo could take advantage of new console features that other shooters couldn't? Wouldn't they have a new COD or Battlefield or GoW? That isn't rhetorical; I actually don't know because I haven't been interested in anything about those games. If they did, Halo 5 would have as much competition as any previous halo, including the competition that you say gamers must flock to after getting bored of 3 halos. I can't see how Halo's gameplay could really change that much with a new console. * Other changes, like better graphics, campaign, theater, and perhaps even less lag (I don't know how, but I'll consider it for the sake of argument) and a much better forge (this is probable and would be so much better than the first three possibilities) could happen with other games if it happens with Halo. True, there are shooters without map editors, but then there's the point that you wouldn't be drawn into any Halo by the map editor alone anyway- that would only make sense if you knew you liked the gameplay. At best, it could attract forgers who would otherwise have stopped playing Halo. I know that they (roughly speaking, almost-discouraged forgers) exist from comments on this site, but in the scheme of all players and potential customers, that group is small (or so I remember reading about regular forgers on this site from this site). *With Halo 4 343 has established that they're going with the same trend as Reach towards CoD elements- customization and complete unpredictability. I'm not saying that I think it will be more extreme with halo 5 - I actually don't think it could be more extreme, what with several AAs and 2 sets of several perks, 7 primaries (4 rifles, 3 autos), 3 secondaries (vastly different) and 3 grenades. However, I don't think that it will regress (or as we see it, progress) by shedding customization, and I don't think it should from a business standpoint. They would simply alienate those who stayed with or started halo with H4. The best thing they could do is include both classic (H3) and contemporary playlists, but they would have done that in H4 if they were going to in H5 (I would say Reach as well, but AAs alone weren't really so game changing that you could justify 2 BTB playlists - I think you would need a BR in Reach to warrant a classic BTB playlist. Halo 4's BTB is so different, however, with PPs and plasmas, Regen, camo and AA efficiency, plus vehicle perks- that a classic BTB would different enough and so much better. It also has the necessary BR. While we're on the topic of Halo 3's perfection, well over a year ago I read either on here or possibly Bungie.net (which is unlikely) that the Spartan Laser almost prevented vehicle gameplay as it should be. I was not inclined to agree with criticism against H3, I eventually agreed later on (I wasn't in the discussion) that the laser wasn't a defense for infantry against vehicles, but rather a way to make sure that only one side has vehicles, or, in the case of sandtrap, that your run in a vehicle will inevitably end within about 3 minutes, almost as a "default vehicle death" option- like if vehicles were to spontaneously self destruct every few minutes. I think that the solution would be to just have the laser spawn at the beginning of each match and not respawn, so that players would be rewarded for winning the initial rush and be able to use a fun weapon, but allow vehicle-vehicle combat throughout the rest of the match. Sure, in most games players would die with the laser in the middle of the map frequently (with no teammated to retrieve it), such that there would be up to 2 minutes of vehicle usage for both teams, but no aspect should be designed to only work for newer players. In Sandtrap slayer 2 respawning lasers wouldn't be a problem; an automatic two sided respawn switch isn't as bad as no vehicles for one team. Also, and I think this may be more interesting and objective, perhaps to someone like Pegasi: The H3 BR had spread and travel time to reduce lethality at long ranges, and some think that bloom was supposed to fill the same role in Reach (it didn't with crouching)- Pegasi mentioned damage drop-off as an alternative, but what about the simple alternatives of a 2x scope and/or a loss of aim assist at a shorter range than it is currently? Landing a few successive shots outside of aim-assist range with a 3x DMR scope on hemhorrage was fun, but a kill from full shields if they weren't AFK was very, very rare for anyone (I played a ton of Hemhorrage with good opponents). Shooting scoped seemed easier than unscoped at their appropriate respective ranges in Reach and H4. If it's the case that look sensitivity is effectively lower (relative to your screen view, I guess) then that could be sped up.
To put things slightly back on topic, something they really need to do in my opinion is give a notable damage boost to Pulse Grenades, making them drop a player's shields completely if they're caught in the initial blast and possibly even score an outright kill if they're in the actual epicenter. They also need to give either a hefty damage boost to the Plasma Pistol's standard shots, or reduce the amount of overheating and/or the overall charge that each shot drains from the weapon's battery from 2% to 1% per shot. I've yet to ever actually score a kill with the Plasma Pistol even after spending a couple of games trying *just* to do that, and most all of my Pulse Grenade kills have been little more than luck resulting from someone just not paying enough attention.
I'd agree about a damage boost, but it should absolutely not be a 1hk even if you're bang in the centre. It's not meant to be a super powerful nade, but area denial. It should have greater damage if you're in the energy field for any kind of prolonged period (ie. if you move fully through it, or pause inside it at all). Having it as a 1hk nade would turn it from mostly useless in to being OP. Damage should be focused on the continuing field, not the initial explosion. That's the point of the weapon. Because that's not what it's for. It's a shield dropper and vehicle EMP weapon. That's like saying they should buff the range of the shotgun because I've never gotten a cross map kill with it. That's not its purpose, and making it an effective killing machine would make it even more powerful than the boltshot.
If I might, there will never be a Halo 3 again. I totally get why people would want that gameplay back, but Halo is just moving in a new direction, and there just isn't the need to "win back" anyone, since no matter what they do there will always be a certain part of the demographic that thinks it isn't good enough. They'll be moving "forward", not "backward" (I say that in quotes simply because it's a matter of opinion of what forward is).
That's been my biggest problem with the Plasma Pistol for a long time, actually, the fact that it's literally become nothing but an EMP. As it is, they may as well just remove the standard bolt functionality and make it like the Railgun, where it's only function is to charge up and fire an EMP bolt, because it's completely useless otherwise. Honestly, I'd almost prefer that they removed the vehicle EMP function from the thing all together and just made it more like it was in Halo 1 again.
Exactly. It didn't EMP vehicles in CE (or Halo 2, if I recall), only players shields, and the homing effect of the charge shot was significantly less in CE. Halo 2 ruined the thing by making it home better than the Needler, and Halo 3 ruined it further by making it EMP vehicles.