Hey you! This is part 2 of a 5 part transcript, be sure to view the 1st part for context Part 1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C: Yeah, one of the things that like helps with that a lot too is like something that forgers have been starting to play with a lot more recently is, uhm, I do not know if it would be considered a depth of field or like the field of view, but like just like objects in the distance and like having them look like they are 3D but making them 2D like that type of thing. If you know what I'm talking about. K: Oh, some backdrop art. C: Yeah, like backdrop art where it is not like built out or anything, it is just like just like a small little thing. A lot, a lot of Forgers have been starting to do that recently I did that a little bit on my most recent Halo 5 map as well, but there is a lot of...a lot of things that people can learn from not only just backdrop art but also like just like how they can incorporate their skybox or their uhh. K: Environmental Storytelling helps too, like actually. Like for instance, I am thinking about redoing this map I made way back in Halo 4, called Mombasa Transit. It is funny, that is how that map came into fruition was, Colson had a layout that he just up and abandoned and here I am some little like kid going “Hey, I could do something out of this.” It was like an Elongation style of map. At the time I was experimenting with gravity volumes and crates so I was like, “Oh, I can make a death train.” Gravity volumes did not work out, I used gravity lifts or man cannons and I managed to get it to where the train would go through and maybe inverse as it was an Elongation / longest style of a map so it would be the opposite. But these crates would just clink their way through high speed like Thomas the Tank Engine and smack you. Sometimes they would get stuck in the middle of the map. I fixed it once but could never fix it again. I would then people like “oh it stopped.” I am just like yeah it is a dynamic feature the train stopped is just a bullshit answer, but I am rebuilding that map there or I am trying to. I want to get it in Infinite. C: Well, hopefully, hopefully the rebuild will go well in that case for that. K: Hopefully, because I am really thinking it would be fun, it would be those Repulsors. Because imagine you are just fighting on this train platform and just hear and see the green light or whatever indicator I am going to have that will show the train is about to come in, and just like “Oh this guy is dead” and you just like and push them into the track and he is down that trench, has to jump up, and then get smacked by a high-speed train. It may not be competitive, but that should be ****ing hilarious, and that would be so fun man. Imagine playing capture the flag and some guy takes it into the center trench and gets hit and now everyone is trying to grab it and they are fighting over it, so it is kind of a delayed thing, and everyone is trying to throw their bodies at it. By the time you actually managed to grab the flag, boom, you get smacked again and the flag is still there in that trench. Holy crap would pro players lose their collective minds, but Jesus Christ would people have fun and laugh at that, like that be so much fun. It would be infuriating for the people who are trying to be competitive, but then at that point, that is why that yeah, I have other routes, you know, I mean, there is this one top route that is going to be the most contestable, that is the safest route completely over the train tracks. That way you do not have to go down there and engage that space, but, C: Yeah, like so, there are a lot of strains like when it comes to like competitive designs versus casual designs and like, especially in infinite right now we don't really have many casual designs, most of them are hyper or hybrid competitive except for like Launch Site and Behemoth; when it comes to like the four versus four type o stuff but... K: Wouldn't you consider behemoth to be one of the most competitive maps out there? The reason why I say this is if you give anybody with the good aim of a Skewer, Sniper Rifle, or a Battle rifle on that map you can lock down spawns and dominate, and for people that are being really competitive, I mean. This comes into perspective but if I want to win, that is the map I would want to play on, right? You get your guys in position. You lock down their spawn and you start having a field day. You know? (Only Joking, Crush continues the joke a bit) C: Yeah, trying to have like a Narrows type of thing or an uh, I guess a better one to like to compare it to would probably be like a The Pit style of things like where you could spawn, trap them in the mall or at the bottom of the Mauler or at the bottom of the Snipe tower, but, yeah, I kind of get what you are saying. K: Realistically, I'm not going to deny that it's bad, I will not say bad map as I actually enjoy it, but it is not the most intricate, right? It is very simplistic. I mean, I do not know, I feel like simplicity is key at times. C: It really is in a lot of ways, because that is something that some people just completely forget about, it is like they will over design something to the point of where like, yeah, it works really well, but like it is not fun to play on in that type of scenario because of how simplistic it is, but I mean, hey, it is design theory and that is the beauty about Forge is that we are always constantly evolving design theory and working on our design theories as a whole, whether that be our individual design theories or just like any group, think that we all have. K: Funny how that has evolved over time. C: Yeah, especially like since like Halo 3 all the way through now like, it is just crazy how much that... K: Do you remember Mankill25 back in like Halo 4, I played with those people, but I mean obviously most of the main Forgers we talk to now played or knew Mankill25 at one point, but I never really wanted to be in their lobby too much. Because as you know, we had our own little music group called the Vault Crusaders and we had a diverse group of people we just screwed around hosted lobbies, it was fun. It was a good group we would associate with and socialize with Mankill25 at the time, I mean obviously, Vault Crusaders died out and the Forge community stopped doing this weird hierarchy stuff altogether. I mean, it still does, but it is not a social hierarchy anymore. C: We still had things like that back then like REMkings, online nights, and like The Halo Forge Epidemic; all that stuff still too but like... K: There were a lot of tribes and factions back then. C: Yeah, I would not really say factions, but definitely like tribes I would say yeah, I guess they are similar, but not identical. Going back to the future and your plans, speaking of Infinite and like remakes and stuff, what would be one map that you would want to bring of yours forward to infinite out of all the ones that you have made? K: Probably a Big Team Battle map I made known as Deluge Grove, I have a variant of it in Halo 5 it is extremely compact, and infantry based, and I have a variant in Halo 2, which is more vehicle based where the tank is more used as a battering ram to push the assault in the front the phase line forward across the map. If I do remake that map, I am definitely going to take a lot of the concepts and ideas from Halo 5 into it, but to make it symmetrical, not inverse symmetrical, and they keep that symmetric-ality probably mess around with the map being aesthetically asymmetrical to make it easier on the eyes and you know, situational awareness little bit better but, I just, there is something about the original gameplay. Like even when we had that testing lobby went back and played on it. I was like wow this is, I mean, H2A was also a really fun game to play for the most part but I was like wow, this tank combat it is playing exactly how I wanted to. I was like 15 when I made this crap. I could definitely do better, but it is like, it is fun now that the concept is still fun, you know, pushing with those tanks it is nice. Now, does the current Big Team Battle support that? Ehhhh, you know, random vehicles are random you know random people sometimes like random drops and stuff. I don't really like that, I think the randomness is okay for that, but I enjoy the “at the beginning” vehicle stuff that is lacking at the moment in Infinite (Other than Warthogs) C: There are maps with forceful drops like high power and uh, I am pretty sure deadlock has Warthogs off the rip too. K: They have preset, like mid-tier vehicles, but the Pelican drops that dropped like the more usable vehicles, which seems to be like the working theory that the Pelicans will drop anything that actually can be a powerful vehicle, I guess. I don’t, I do not know, I mean, if I were to make a map, I would make it to where the Pelican drops...maybe if it drops the Scorpion tank, you know what I mean? If it drops it in the front yard give it to each team. because I do not think it is a bad idea for asymmetrical maps to have neutral vehicle drops, but because you know you have mutual neutral vehicle spawns in any kind of map, but I do not like the randomness of it and not being on a timer, I don't, I don't approve of. I don't like it because this might be when everybody thinks Big Team Battle, yeah it has always been casual, but it has always had the... the only set it always followed was the same set guidelines that a 44 or five at you know Team Slayer map would approach so it always had the capacity to take it more seriously. Always had the capacity to play with a higher skill level. And not saying you cannot play at the higher skill level now, but when you add that randomness factor into it, it kind of just...sure, it adds more variables, but they are not predictable ones, whereas in the past with Big Team Battle, there is plenty of random variables, but they were predictable, so I guess they were not necessarily random, but it is, you know, hey, there is a grenade launcher over there, is the person that is going to pick it up good with it? Probably not, when you are playing with randoms, right? Or he is amazing with it, and he is going to make your vehicle suffer, in Halo reach or something like that so, but at least you know there is always going to be a grenade launcher up here, or there is always going to be one at each base has these preset vehicles and in this corner of the map there is always going to be a monkeysphere transportation or something like that. C: Well, there are preset weapons and power-ups and equipment on the map that never changed and there are some dynamic ones like shock rifles and stalkers that switch out on high power and, Uhm, fragmentation, but what I have always liked personally more in Big Team Battle, just like in general is like I have always liked Heavies more personally, like honestly regular, Big Team Battle, it is good, I am not saying it's bad, but I always played regular Big Team Battle back in the day because that's all there was. There was never really a heavy playlist, so going into heavies now in all the old games, whether that be heavies in Halo 3, heavies in 4, heavies in two, etc; personally, like, I think Heavies plays better overall because it is just chaos, but it is structured chaos. K: Well, that is funny too because I think, I believe, the difference is that I do not know, but I am pretty sure the difference between heavies and normal is normal Big Team Battle is just you know what they intend the map to kind of be like, what kind of gameplay they structured around and heavies is like, but what if we add more? What if the entire team was using a bunch of scorpion tanks? You know, but it definitely prioritized fun over balance. C: Yeah, heavies, vamped up vehicles and weapons, and pretty much everything pretty much anyone would have a powerful weapon around any corner, which is, it can be fun a. As long as you are not playing like an 8 to 12 player sweat team, that is just like timing all the power weapons and locking you down in your spawn, it can be fun haha. K: That is the risky play about playing online, I hate to say it but that is that...that has always been the risk I mean, I remember playing modern Halo 3 back in the day you play one match and everyone well balanced and then you play another match and there is that one guy in the enemy team that is tearing. He keeps grabbing the sniper rifle, keeps getting up on Zanzibar, and bucking up. That was the magic to it, right is that was the diversity in gameplay. Every time there was not this preset way of play/skill gap. A bit off-topic right, but I think a lot of why people kind of get burnt out of video games now is because everything is trying to go skill-based matchmaking; so you are counting the skill-based matchmaking has always been there, that is not why people are getting burnt out, I'd say people are getting burnt out more or less because, Yes, focus right, it is more focused skill-based matchmaking because in the past it was not as focused like I wasn't as good as the guy that was one shooting me with a sniper rifle Hip fire from across the map in Halo 3. It was not as focused back then. I am not saying like ranked playlists, by the way, that that is definitely a subtraction, but like Modern Warfare, for instance, 2019 Modern Warfare. It is casual. Modes were also skill-based so you would go in and you are just constantly playing with people on your skill level, and you can never just have those matches where you are the top dog and then the next match you get completely humbled, you know. C: Well, I will say this, like one of the things as well when it comes to just gaming, in general, is like for us old guns or old dogs or whatever you want to call us. For us, when we started growing up and playing with games and stuff, we always not only got the dopamine from like being better than we were before, but we actually genuinely typically improved at something and we have been gaming for so long that Improvement is not really there unless it is a new game, and if it is a new game, we still cap out shorter than what most people would consider the highest that you can be if that makes sense. Uh, whether that be in games like Apex or heck, even Call of Duty, but to some extent, Halo can have that. I think that showed off more than Halo 5 than it did here and Infinite, but uhm, I definitely think that that is also another part of that. K: Right, and I guess it also kind of depends too and how you have kind of developed as well, because some people, maybe they can not have fun just mindlessly shooting, maybe they have to be like me when I play my friends Rainbow 6 siege, back when I did like that game, and he constantly always played ranked like playing casually was not fun at all. I guess what I was getting at was mainly at the standardization of gaming, Gary Game kind of follows a very similar guideline. On top of that, they always try to cater everything to every match you play is roughly balanced like I just thinking that...I was just making that point. You know, it is like you are always doing the same thing over and over again, relatively speaking. It just gets boring and on top of that, Halo Infinite, for instance, the challenge system being so like focused to do extremely specific tasks, not just being like, you know something super crazy to accomplish or just stuff you can do while just generally playing, but that is a bit off topic. C: Well, it was the same way with Reach’s challenges, the only difference is that like you have got more XP/progression than what is currently provided. I guess in comparison to Reach when it comes to like just playing. Well, speaking of infinite as a whole, of course, like we just talked about that, and we talked about your map, you would bring over what would be one thing that you would personally want specifically, in Infinite’s Forge, whether that be on launch or as something to be added down the road. (Since Halo 5 had some things added down the road like prefabs) K: A.I control like I am talking like actual Enemy A.Is. You know it could be any Spartans and Marines and all that kind of stuff being able to actually have those AI and then control them like patrol this area you can like set the zone for them to patrol or pathway or something. Being able to have A.Is and script their behavior, and movement is like even if it is simple that would be amazing. Because in all honesty, I would quit making multiplayer maps, I would just have single-player player experiences. There is a lot more flexibility with that so I would not quit entirely obviously like making multiplayer maps, but that is what I would want. C: Nice, I think that's honestly one of the things I'd like a lot of people have been kind of asking for a while, because like we had invited a living Mantis and dawn of the Banshee in Halo 5, which were all AI-based mini-games. But it just really did with just vehicles spawning in and then being pushed towards you with grab volumes, but even. K: Yeah, and that was that was like Firefight base two, right? Like that was a supplement because Halo 4 didn't have a Firefight mode, right? C: Halo 4 didn't but those game modes were in 5, but yeah. K: Oh, sorry, did something similar like that in Halo 4, too, didn't they? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was Part 2 of a 5 part article be sure to keep reading for all the juicy details! Part 3