Leyasu
Banned
But have these been confirmed for halo yet? Because I haven't seen confirmation anywhere
Halo: Master Chief Collection Master Thread | This is it, baby. Hold me.
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But have these been confirmed for halo yet? Because I haven't seen confirmation anywhere
I'd love to meet the map designers of Halo CE, specifically the ones who made Hang'em High, Damnation, and Chillout. Can't deny those map makers had to have been Quake fans. The ones who made those maps knew exactly what they were doing.
The OS on top of the platform in Hang'em high was put there for a reason. The sniper spawn on Hang'em high...another reason...it wasn't just put there by random, that sniper is tough to get to on purpose. Damn I miss that game.
shinobi602
Member
I have mixed feelings on this, because I also feel like having players rush to the same area on each map every time the match starts creates a moshpit of chaos, just running to the same power weapons every time, resulting in both teams chucking grenades, spraying and waiting for the end result.
I feel like getting ordinances mixes up the gameplay a little, bringing in unpredictability into each match, which I do like...
You like unpredictability? Play action sack.
I agree with you that it wasn't a mistake, per se. The maps were very well thought out. But I don't think Bungie had any idea what perfect gunplay, movement and mechanical systems they had on their hands.
Edit: And we see that in the subsequent releases - Halo 2's gameplay was drastically different from CE, but it still had great maps. Maybe less Quake-inspired. But they were (mostly) still really good and well-thought out arena maps.
Havoc2049
Member
Just saying... ;-)
I always though Halo single-player and multi-player played more like Marathon than Quake, but whatever.
shinobi602
Member
I do, battling it out with an opponent, chasing after them, turning the corner and seeing a rail gun in their hands out of nowhere gave me a lot of "oh shit!" moments. I liked it.
Just saying... ;-)
I always though Halo single-player and multi-player played more like Marathon than Quake, but whatever.
Yeah, that sick one analog stick gameplay.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
And this is what helped me to "accept" that CE was the mistake Halo fans were still craving after so many years, whether they were aware of it or not. Everything we fight for, everything we argue about in terms of gameplay, it was right there, right in front of us to play over a decade ago. Halo 2 should have brought tighter controls and more additions with similar philosophies to CE. For example, the plasma stun never returning and Bungie trying their hardest to remove the vitality of a utility weapon.
Yeah, he didn't earn that railgun (I guess technically it was earned through killing other players, but there wasn't much risked involved in it). It was given to him because he had a string of kills. It's a COD-killstreak. Kill three players, get a railgun. Kill some more, get some more weapons...no risk involved!
SpartanN92
Banned
It literally destroyed the concepts of team work and map control.
There is a reason why chess is still played to this day after centuries... It isn't because of random chaos, it is precise, methodical, calculating... It is about out thinking your opponent, thinking ahead not just in the moment, and controlling the board...
A good game of Halo 1-3 is a lot like a game of Chess. There are moves, countermoves, attacks, defenses that good teams utilize... They control the map and use it to their advantage. They don't just pray the game randomly gives them a rocket launcher to turn the tide. THEY are the tide.
The best way to play Halo is an even playing field. One where every one has the same pieces, the same opportunities as the other team. It is up to the individuals (and combined a team) and their skill to win.
Not rock/paper/scissors gameplay with random armor abilities and weapon drops but honest to god skill.
Havoc2049
Member
Sega Dreamcast keyboard and mouse for the win! ;-)
shinobi602
Member
I feel that playing well by killing other players and continuing to survive is as much a risk as getting to a weapon in an area on a map, for me at least.
shinobi602
Member
I never really felt that too much when playing. The vast majority of matches ended up the same way, match starts, everyone runs to the power weapons, grenades go flying, everyone's running into the same pit, most die, one person gets the weapon, rinse and repeat. I still enjoyed it all the same. You could say the same for Halo 4 I think, everyone has the opportunity to perform well and earn their weapons.
There was a guy at Bungie, and he still may be there, Achronos was his callsign on Bungie.met. He was the Bungie website overlord.
This dude:
He once said in a forum post, and I'm paraphrasing this, it was in a conversation about SMG starts at the default starting weapon in Halo 2. This conversation took place I think about six months after Halo 2 launched. So six months into the game, I had a beef with the SMG start, it completely went backwards on the utility weapon design from HCE. Anyway, these were his thoughts:
"In Halo, your penalty of death is you lose any weapons you gained. So when you respawn, you should be penalized for dying in the first place. You should spawn with crap so that you're encouraged to get better weapons. Starting with a utility weapon discourages the need to pick up any other weapons on the map, thus makes the sandbox useless."
My take on that is this, the SMG start gave weaker players a crutch. It was based on the luck of your spawn. Take Lockout for example. If you managed to get the sniper rifle and lived to do it, you were rewarded in a sense by being able to snipe other players wielding single SMGs. They were easy pickings for a sniper. The only weapon that could fairly defend your sniping was the BR...which there were only TWO on the map. Of course close quarters combat would have been the other defense, but lets face facts, a sniper on Lockout is going to get some easy pickings of freshly respawned players holding a single SMG. Not sure where that is called fair and balanced play.
In Halo CE, if you get killed by a sniper, and you respawn...you've got your utility weapon called the scoped pistol, and you can fairly defend yourself off spawn from the sniper. At the most, you can de-scope him or throw off his aim, or better yet...actually kill him from across the map!! Genius design in my opinion. In Halo 2 though, they were like, screw that, we want to PUNISH YOU FOR DEATH!!!!!! DIEEEE!!!! SPAWN WITH CRAP!!!! DIE SOME MORE!!!!!
Achronos' logic there wasn't entirely representative of the entire Bungie team, but I'm willing to bet many of the Bungie team, specifically the lead MP designer felt the same way. I'm sure Stinkles could chime in on this if he's brave enough. I'm sure he saw it on a daily basis as he was working there at Bungie during Halo 2.
That logic of spawn with crap, die and respawn with crap...and your penalty of death is reinforced even more by not having a proper utility weapon to defend yourself off spawn...that continued with each subsequent Halo release. It's scary.
I liked this. It led to better shooting strategy and skill. Three body shots and then a head shot.
User 73706
Banned
Oh, stop. If you're going to react so extremely to stuff at least provide clarification. It's not healthy to discussion to reach a crescendo with your anecdotes in all-caps triple-exclamation-pointed run-ons or all lowercase with shittons of ellipses.
Photolysis
Banned
I think it's also worth noting that people at Bungie might genuinely have changed their minds. At one time Achronos said there would never be a Hardcore/MLG playlist, and we know how that turned out.
MrGreencastle
Member
A decent BR or Halo CE-style pistol coupled with a reasonable variant of the AR would be fine. I prefer the BR (Halo 2-style) over the pistol, personally, but I could do with either, so long as I'm not forced to start with only an auto weapon like AR or SMG - you're pretty much screwed over into tunnel vision to pick up a precision weapon in almost every case when you have to spawn with them...
Can you explain this?
vincent vega
Member
I agree with many of your opinions but I can't stand your arrogant/closed-minded tone
How does using only a single datacenter ensure that player number are kept high?
User 73706
Banned
My most recent sandbox consolidation kept loadouts, but kept them simple - you start with a Firearm and a Sidearm. BR / Magnum are Firearms, AR / Plasma Rifle are Sidearms. Firearms have identical kill times, kill-per-clip capacity and (relatively) identical ammo counts, with the only difference being between the burst-fire and single-shot firemodes. Sidearms also have near-equivalent killing potential: AR deals 2:1 health:shield damage, while Plasma Rifle deals 1:2. AR has more ammo while Plasma Rifle stuns shielded targets to a degree. I think if you get rid of the AAs / different grenade types on spawn / tac-pacs / sup-ups loadouts quit trying to push the whole class-based system and actually allow for slight customization while still keeping the variables at spawn minimal enough to keep track of in combat.
Okay.
Random BR spread did not equate to skill. No matter your skill in aiming, the random BR spread was a slot machine when it came to which bullets made impact.
I reference this Bungie weekly udpate: http://halo.bungie.net/news/content.aspx?cid=14347
"Bulletology
In Halo 3, each bullet from the Battle Rifle’s three-round burst is networked individually under the cases outlined above. Additionally, each bullet has a different margin of error, with the first round from the Battle Rifle being the most accurate of the three bullets. The first bullet can have an error between 0 and .15 degrees off of the true aiming vector. The third bullet is between 0 and 0.38 degrees, the second bullet falls somewhere between the first and third. It is a mistake to look at where the third bullet lands and assume all three bullets are that inaccurate. The outliers (0.15 on bullet 1 and 0.38 on bullet 3) are the absolute worst-case scenarios. In that context those numbers don’t mean a whole lot – but in the grand scheme thing of how the Battle Rifle operates, they are pretty meaningful.
The Battle Rifle works this way because after Halo 2 it was retuned to be a reliable headshot and anti-sniper weapon (in terms of pinging Snipers at distance from their scoped-in state). The first bullet in the burst fills this role – it is quite accurate (identical to the Halo 2 BR, but with a travel time), and will kill an unshielded unit with a headshot or ping a sniper.
Another design goal with the Battle Rifle in Halo 3 was to bring the kill-range closer. One way this was achieved was by giving bullets 2 and 3 from the BR a wider error, which makes them less likely to land outside of the BR’s intended effective range. Summarily, this reduces the BR’s effectiveness AND damage output at those ranges, without compromising its ability to finish a target at the same range."
"Aesthetic similarities aside, the Battle Rifle in Halo 3 is a far different weapon from its Halo 2 predecessor. Despite what segments of the player population believe or want to believe, it is no longer a mid-to-long range killing machine. It is an anti-long range weapon with a focus on mid-range combat that ends up being utilitarian and functional, but not optimal at close range. The reasons for this are obvious – there is no designed one-weapon-to-rule-them-all in Halo 3 and that is a decision made by design to encourage all of the aspects of the sandbox to be used in gameplay.
Much of the fervent debate comes from players who simply want the weapon to perform differently than it was designed to perform. The bullet variation in the Battle Rifle’s three-round bursts is a design choice that further defines the weapon's role in the Halo 3 sandbox."
The random BR spread was put there intentionally to make restrict the weapon to a specific range of combat. That is not good design.
NullPointer
Member
Restricting a weapon to a particular range of combat was bad design? Or specifically doing it by way of bullet spread?
User 73706
Banned
I think it's doing it by the way of randomness that he's getting at. Like, wanting to keep on-map weapon spawns fresh isn't inherently bad design - making it completely random is bad design.
I'm sorry my batsignal is set to vibrate.
I don't know the answer at this time. Or I'd answer it. The "current" answer would be whatever is in place for first party server stuff, but that could change between now and November for MCC, and certainly now and 2015.
Quake 3's Aerowalk:
.
There's nothing wrong with comparing the games, and every game takes inspiration from every previous game, but Quake wasn't even the first iD game to do this, and the example you're showing from Halo is roughly the way power ups are located in Pac-Man and every other game where power ups feature prominently. They are ALWAYS situated in risk/reward spots, and they are always (or usually) situated so that once you have them, you get some utility and satisfaction, without being able to dominate or create an unstoppable advantage.
Not arguing, just conversing.
Looks like standard Halo to me with some skilled players.
I don't see how this isn't available in the new Halos.
Also man cannons >>>> teleporters
Can't launch a warthog across the map with a teleport.
MrGreencastle
Member
This is a good point. I like this layout much more than the crazy ones you've posted
It's funny, people who prefer arena-style were constantly complaining about AR starts in Halo 3, SMG in 2, etc. Yet it was something that was even worse in BTB. AR starts in BTB is just... *smh*
Specifically by doing it by way of bullet spread.
Even at its intended range...the random spread can make or break a valid kill.
The shotgun for example, its range is obviously capped...but I don't see a random damage output in its intended range...nor do I see buckshot going off-track.
Making something intentionally random is lazy.
The point to draw from this discussion on the BR spread is that Bungie intentionally didn't want a sniper being killed from a distance by a BR player. Whereas in Halo CE, just because you had a sniper didn't give you a guarantee of victory, you still needed to earn your kills with the snipe.
In Halo 3, they basically said, you get a sniper rifle, we'll give you a crutch...you can't be harmed by long distance unless it's another sniper.
It's more than just the powerup placement though. In HCE, the timed powerups being on constant timers...that's taken from Quake...though in Quake, the pickup of the powerup triggers the respawn timer of it coming back. As the Halo series progressed, this concept disappeared, as did many other things.
I'm saying that a giant majority of games with respawning power ups, hundreds of which predate Quake, have them on a timer to reduce convenience and increase risk/control. Not even limited to shooters, as Pac-Man example was intended to demonstrate.
It's like, basic game design.
H2's BR fault was that it had too much auto-aim. You can't really 4-shot someone across Coagulation, but say base to base in Midship, you could 4-shot easily. I think the issue isn't just the BR, it was the way the entire sandbox was designed in Halo 2. The BR became the goto weapon because it was the only one that closely resembled spawning with the Halo CE pistol...you were given a fair chance to survive each time you respawned in Halo 2, with a BR. The SMG start didn't provide that whatsoever.
The Halo 3 assault rifle being the default weapon dictated the design of the BR in H3. H3's entire weapon sandbox in my opinion revolved around the AR.
But that also creates strategic points that need to be held whilst waiting for weapons to respawn and the prize for the team that manages to wait it out. Random weapon spawns was top of my list of things wrong with halo 4 multiplayer.
I get that. However, again, as Halo progressed post-HCE, that "basic game design" went out the window.
Example:
In HCE, I knew snipers spawned about every 25-30 seconds? Maybe it was ever 60 seconds, I can't exactly remember. I knew that if someone had snipes, I could eventually time it right and get one to fire back.
In H2, once someone got snipes, it wasn't respawning again until they dropped the weapon. Not quite sure what was wrong with the original timed weapons in HCE that they had to change it to what it became in H2.
User 73706
Banned
You're luring him into strawmen at this point.
shinobi602
Member
That's one way to see it, I also see it in a different light: "There's the team again, waiting in the same spot again, exciting..."
That's the hard job with Halo really, not every fan sees something the same.
I suppose. I'll rest my keystrokes.
I just love the dialog and like to understand why things became the way they did in the Halo series Nice to learn from the actual person who worked on the games.As anything gaming its always going to be subjective.
I'm of the firm opinion that choke points always aid strategy, my friends and I had matured tactics on each of the halo 2\halo 3 maps, however they change up depending on who you are playing and how they neutralise your tactics by taking weapons that we are waiting for. Either we are duking it out to hold weapons or for example getting nailed by a sniper on the pit trying to pick up the rockets, its a game of cat and mouse and that's what made halo 2 and 3 great for me. You may see it someone being on the same spot again, I see it as homing tactics accrued through playing thousands of games.
Running around changing direction constantly cut of the choke points, half the time you were too far away to benefit from a rocket drop in halo 4 and so the strategy element is lost.
The Librarian
Banned
If you say so dude.
Can't wait to fling myself through Valhalla's, Avalanche's, teleporters in Halo 3 again.
Is the bolded a comment on Quake and Halo CE, or what you feel every Halo game should be like? I ask the question because recent Halo games haven't been that way. Due to the weakness of the utility weapons, once a player gets a power weapon they can very easily dominate. Throw in the randomness of their respawning, and you have games that are determined by circumstance rather than the individual ability of the teams.
Also, how do you consider ord. dropping right at someone's feet at the press of a button "risk/reward?"
CloudyTuba
Member
Frankles,
There were some changes between the PC and Xbox versions of Halo 1 MP besides the obvious vehicles and weapons
ARE THOSE IN?
On PC the teleporter green water effect was sort of ruined. The AR was changed from shiny to matte. Same for the flag pole. Sidewinder had 1-way teleports changed to 2-way and new invisible walls (due to banshee inclusion). Overall all the textures on PC just looked lighter to me.
Which will CEA-MP take after?
NullPointer
Member
Personal ordnance doesn't literally destroy the concepts of team work and map control, as if power weapon spawns are the only way to achieve both.
Without power weapon spawns in particular locations, map control becomes about taking control of the most tactical ground. High ground, cover, good sight lines, and the geometry that allows you to best use your weaponry or that provides the most advantages.
Working as a team allows you to take and hold that ground, as it shifts. It also lets you feint and lure and focus your fires.
Halo 4 was a different type of Halo, and I can empathize with the criticisms but I still think so much of what I read mistakes different for dysfunctional.
Halo 4 removed the weapon loop - the acquire -> use -> resupply chain that was a defining feature of Halo 1, 2, 3, and Reach.
The acquire phase is your team getting and securing a power weapon (or any weapon really, but power weapons are the best demonstration of it). The power weapon should be placed in the worst place to use it when possible.
The use phase is taking the weapon from the worst spot to the best spot to use it.
The resupply phase is having to go back to the weapon's spawn to resupply the ammo. You can also choose to trade the weapon away for another one, which means you're giving the other team a chance to acquire it.
The key point is the resupply phase makes your team work as a team and cover for you while you re-supply. This also adds a natural "breather" for the other team (ie if they're getting sniped) to regroup and push back.
It also just promotes map movement in general.
What happened in Halo 4 is this critical loop disappeared. You could acquire a weapon in the best place to use it, and then you were rewarded with better weapons as you kept killing, without ever having to leave cover or the good spot. Map movement died. It was pointless to try and control the map because weapons could be spawned anywhere. It felt like when Forging a map in Halo 4, your map design no longer mattered. It was just a backdrop to how 343 wanted you to play, not how the map designer wanted you to play.
The acquire phase is your team getting and securing a power weapon (or any weapon really, but power weapons are the best demonstration of it). The power weapon should be placed in the worst place to use it when possible.
The use phase is taking the weapon from the worst spot to the best spot to use it.
The resupply phase is having to go back to the weapon's spawn to resupply the ammo. You can also choose to trade the weapon away for another one, which means you're giving the other team a chance to acquire it.
The key point is the resupply phase makes your team work as a team and cover for you while you re-supply. This also adds a natural "breather" for the other team (ie if they're getting sniped) to regroup and push back.
It also just promotes map movement in general.
What happened in Halo 4 is this critical loop disappeared. You could acquire a weapon in the best place to use it, and then you were rewarded with better weapons as you kept killing, without ever having to leave cover or the good spot. Map movement died. It was pointless to try and control the map because weapons could be spawned anywhere. It felt like when Forging a map in Halo 4, your map design no longer mattered. It was just a backdrop to how 343 wanted you to play, not how the map designer wanted you to play.
And a lot of people mistake change for improvement.
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