Never really got the love of grifball and roosterteeth. Just any other halo offshoot. Sucks theyre putting so much focus on them.
Yeah. I'd rather games focus on, you know, making good gameplay? Unfortunately, the fact that Grifball and Living Dead compete with Vanilla Slayer and SWAT (which, TBH, I don't really like either) for highest population seems to indicate that good gameplay means **** to a lot of people. Add up MLG, Super Slayer and Objective and maybe you can get close to half of one of those playlists. Sigh. People suck.
im not saying grifball should completely die, i just think they should be focusing more on the core gameplay instead of catering to the favorite playlists of 8-14 year olds.
Halo is an FPS, right? So you would think that the majority of the game would be focused on shooting, right? But two of the most popular playlists focus on either zombies or hammers. Nothing but melee in one, and the other has guns for one side. Grifball is getting more attention and innovation than Assault, Territories, KotH, Theater and so on (so far). Most of the new things they're featuring focus on aesthetics and personalization (loadouts, massive armory, perks, AAs) at the potential cost of balancing and fair gameplay (in the case of the last two especially). That's my problem. I don't expect Blizzard to promote Nexus Wars (a Tug of War based mini-game that's kinda popular) and expand upon it as a legitimate mode in Starcraft II. If they want to do that, make a separate game (see TF2, DotA, etc.). Then they can really go crazy. But Halo is an FPS. Shouldn't the focus be on making the FPS better, and not sports mini-games or build-a-spartan? Devs should make the games. Let the fans make the mini-games. It's kinda sad when the fans think they have to fix the core game with big changes, like MLG or Gold Pro. Because that isn't what it looks like to me.
I see your point but without Developer support for things that the fans like then Forge would never have gone beyond moving spawn points and weapons.
I'm not saying that devs shouldn't support stuff like that. I'm saying they shouldn't make it, and design things explicitly for custom games that have nothing to do with the core game. Give the options and tools, by all means...but remember that the core game comes first. Rocket Race is the farthest I think they should go. Even that IMO was pushing it. People shouldn't be getting Halo just to play Grifball: If that's the case, make a separate game for it, because it has little or nothing to do with the core game. Don't take away options that create the mode now, obviously. EDIT: Forge is a good example for this methinks. Forge is a good tool because it improves the replay-ability: it creates maps now that can be used in any mode. Bungie saw the potential when fans used it and expanded on it. Hence, forge maps can play Slayer, or KotH, or all of the other core modes. Forge assists them. That is a good tool to develop for the community. Grifball doesn't assist the core modes. It plays entirely differently from anything else in the game. Adding tools specifically for an offshoot mode doesn't help the core at all, and it takes time away that could otherwise be used to build on how the game was designed to be played, as a First Person Shooter. Adding tools that can assist all modes, such as loadout-based traits, weapon traits, Theater expansions and so on should be promoted. But I don't want to see Hockey get full gamemode support next. Does my distinction make sense? I'm not the best at articulating my thoughts here, I apologize.
you act as if 343 is spending all of their time and effort on grifball, which is hardly the case. they have already showcased the "core" aspects of the game at e3 and through other bulletins and videos. they had the big campaign demo at e3, they had that mlg event demoing slayer, etc. now they showed one demo of grifball, probably because a lot of people play and enjoy it. i dont see how this is a bad thing. and you complain that grifball is getting more innovation than classic gametypes, but then cry when they do make changes to those modes. this doesnt make sense to me. i dont want major changes made to classic gametypes, so i hope they dont need to make videos showcasing all of the changes theyve made. id much rather have them **** around with grifball than have a video released demonstrating how theyve had the brilliant idea to incorporate teams into lone wolves
Bungie never had to demo Grifball, or Infection or (to my knowledge) Rocket Race. It shows a focus on this, it shows the mode off, if you will. In essence, they're trying to sell people with Grifball. Yes, it's not only Grifball, but come on: Putting Grifball announcements in front of Forge, or Theater, or the Covie and Forerunner weapon demos/vidocs? What does that tell you, when the big new thing at PAX is Grifball? I don't like that message. And obviously Grifball isn't all that they're working on. I get that. I'm just annoyed that so much time has been spent showing off the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself. As for the Classic gametype thing, you can't tell me you agree with no dropping the flag. The other things, I could live with. It does show attention to the mode, which I do appreciate. But when the new big announcements are all "Hey, look at these shiny helmets!", "Hey, check out these Specializations!" and "Hey, look at this fun minigame!" instead of "Hey, check out this full Assault gameplay!", "Hey, help us playtest in a beta!" or "Hey, check out this Forge vidoc!", I get a bit disappointed. It shows a reflection of what they think their fans want, and it isn't trying to sell the core game. It's fluff. It makes me think that the focus of attention is all of these factors that really don't contribute to gameplay positively. When it's what they show off, I assume it's what they are most proud of, and it worries me. I understand that I'm not above anyone else. I overreacted. I'm worried about that the series that guided me through gaming. Sorry.
I have to say I feel somewhat disappointed and alienated by this as well. I don't see why people object to this idea, it's not like this sentiment is a slight against Grifball itself or other tangential gametypes, it's about developer attitude and treating the core game as a priority, just like you say.
C'mon, we should know by now that every "improvement" they make to the game will be with the casual fanbase in mind. In my personal opinion; Halo died with Reach, and it's not getting revived with 4. Forge is all I care about. They spend all this time making an already extremely accessible editor (legos) more accessible with pointless features such as highlighting objects, and locking them into place. Is it so hard to press X to see which object you are about to interact with? Is it so hard to put an object back into place with the phasing feature? These fat americans want the editor to forge the map for them.
Not hard exactly. Both of those things are nice in that they save a very small amount of time but do so on a very regular basis. I don't like "these fat americans want the editor to forge the map for them" as an attitude, smacks of that same thing which went around when Reach came out about Forge being "too easy." But I see your point in one sense, that we have to look at what they choose to spend their limited amount of time and resources on when it comes to Forge. Some serious development in terms of functionality would have been a lot nicer, but I still think what they're doing does add to the experience in a worthwhile way.
My opinion on this whole thing: I feel like 343 is focusing too much on finding new fans and too little on keeping the old ones. At this point, if there's no option in MLG or customs to turn off these "customizations", or if they're present but no one uses them, I'm not going to be buying Halo 4. Why should I play matchmaking Reach with idiot noobs and auto pickup and no dropping when I can play other, more competitive games like Quake etc with better editors? I believe 343, in order to justify auto-pickup and no dropping, said something along the lines of "it will make you the center of attention!!!! (spam !!s for noobs)" Well, you're the center of attention anyway. All you're doing is forcing the flag carrier to wield a magnum rather than a DMR or power weapon. It's just going to stop caps and slow gameplay. "Let me use these rockets to kill these people trying to stop my flag cap" "FUUUUUU MAGNUMMMMMMMMMMM NOOOOO" *dies* Two seconds later: "FLAG RECOVERED!" *repeats process twenty times over the process of the match* the deal is, you shouldn't punish a player for accidentally walking over the flag. Say all eight players are in a firefight, and only one remains.. He goes to pick up the flag.. and gets wrecked by the other respawning team because he has a goddamn MAGNUM. Team gets nothing for winning a fight. -> Lowering skill gap I suppose you could increase the respawn times, but then there's a reason that the MLG respawn times aren't set to 90 seconds. Overconservatism.
Thank you, i don't now why they're focusing on things like mini games. yeah, there great and what largely make halo unique, but shouldn't they be focusing on things most of the community plays? [br][/br]Edited by merge: Preach on man, I'm lovin it. And to address the point of why did they spruce up forge? well i think a map editor by itself has a much larger potential than a rip-off two team ball and goal based game...IN AN FPS!
I think this discussion has regressed/devolved. Wood Wonk beat me to saying that we all know that everything 343 has done to core gameplay so far has alienated players who liked CE, H2 and H3, so that it's better if they leave those gametypes alone (as they are). I thought we agreed that the problem was that they weren't giving a pre-Reach experience, not that they offered more gametypes (similar to an FPS or not) or that they didn't come up with enough new weapons (as opposed to AAs, tac pacs and armor mods). I thought that it was a cliche' (forget the e) that they needed to put in as many options for custom gametype customization as possible, and have an efficient selection of gametypes in MM playlists, , because that would satisfy everyone, but now it seems that Scorch is saying that every popular minigame which is given time from a panel is hurting classic halo. Also, even though throwing the bomb (the other nuances they talked about besides no explosion/ auto-pickup are just a result of the ball physics, like an indestructible H3 power drain) helps Grifball tremendously, I wouldn't really consider it "focus" to think of the idea and implement it. I wouldn't be surprised if some player, whatever age, just posted the simple but good idea on a forum and a 343 employee saw it and liked it. It's not like there are balancing issues. However, it would be nonsensical to just let players discover it when they buy the game. They gave slayer gameplay first, they showcased new weapons first, and they revealed oddball and CTF changes and gameplay at the same time as grifball. Do you expect them to show us gametypes that mimicked previous halos? I prefer H3 (and from what I know of H2, H2) gameplay to Reach and H4 (from what we know), and I still say the previous sentence because it still makes sense from my perspective. Scorch's post reminds me of one of the times I went on the 343 forum, where there was a thread saying that grifball and infection should be eliminated from MM to increase the population. As if the players who were playing Grifball frequently would play FPS playlists at a high skill level if Grifball was eliminated (the problem with the populations was not that one couldn't find a game, it was that the other players would be of different, usually lower, skills). The same is true with respect to Scorch's post. Anyone who Scorch would want to play with is not going to be sucked into playing grifball at the expense of significant classic Halo game time because the "focus" has supposedly shifted. I also now wonder what Scorch's reasoning was for saying that Halo would have been better off finished after H3. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he meant that H3's population would not have been split, that the players who would have started with Reach would have played H3 and would never have had the chance to think of a bogus reason to defend bloom or AL/AC/the implementation of the other AAs, that those players would have been more likely to reject those proposed ideas if not inserted into a Halo game already, that most would be just as happy with H3, that the population (especially the high skill population) would remain large, perhaps as long as H3 had lasted after Reach actually came out. But his reasoning could have been the same as it is in his most recent post: If the game isn't what I want, it shouldn't be what anyone else wants either.
The truth is we don't know if there is anything more to the other gametypes or if they are just holding back on them to build hype for later. Keeping that info from us if there actually is info on it beyond being the same as it was is certainly getting us to talk about their game and as someone once said, there is no such thing as bad publicity. All we can do is wait to see what they do in the next few months or failing any action from them, wait until the game is released. To me the reason they are only showing things that might drag in new players is because they assume that the old fans are going to buy the game anyway as many of us are. Even if they lose a few they probably believe that the new wallets coming in will outweigh the ones leaving. Or perhaps they are just trying to emulate Bungie by building all this hype and just failing miserably.
well, your concern that they're spending too much time on grifball doesn't make much sense considering most of making the grifball gametype consisted of deleting stuff. It just kind of sucks that they had to do this because I was hoping that in halo 4, vanilla grifball could be based on assault, and grifball dash could be based on multi-bomb. That way, you could make two courts on the same map, and just set all of the pieces on each court to be gametype specific for its gametype- a grifball dash court when you play grifball dash, and a vanilla court when you play vanilla. -both with the same theme and with the convenience of being the same map.
So after watching several games of slayer and flag over the four maps, with many of the released weapons and vehicles in use along with all the little customizations and abilities, I have only 1 thing to say: It still feels like Halo to me. Are there lots of little things that have been done to change it, some even that were pretty dumb ideas? Yes. But in the big picture it still looks every bit as fun as Halo has always been. I'm not going to let the annoyances of things like not dropping the flag or a few more customizations than maybe there need to be ruin the whole package for me. Almost everyone who has played the game so far has made it clear that it plays like Halo always has and that it was extremely fun. I will reserve my full judgement until I have actually played the game (as would be expected of people for maps on this very website) but all in all the game looks great when you look at the whole, not just the parts you don't like.