Halo 4, One Year Later: What Happened?

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* Why can't they bring they bring back something as harmless as backpack reloading or little "glitches" (ie: reload frames melee cancel)? They could easily make an Advanced Tutorials section detailing Halo's meta game for all types of players.

There was that "super throw" glitch when Halo 4 just came out, but they patched it pretty quickly. :(
 
I'm glad you brought this up. Allow me to break it down as to why I think Halo 1's sandbox is far greater than any other game:

  • Pistol -> All around utility weapon. The only mid-range weapon available in the game. High skill gap that not even top 1% players can consistently land 3sk's on LAN.
  • AR -> 64 shots, shoots fast, quick melee, spray like a mo' fugga. Can be used to activate Camo faster via shooting, so when you picked up power weapons while having Camo, you'd drop your Pistol. High level meta game with such an easy execution that most people had no clue about.* Gave that weapon a bigger purpose outside of just shoot-bang.
  • Plasma Rifle -> Stun. Incredibly deadly.
  • Plasma Pistol -> Stun and overcharge. Shoots fast. Incredibly deadly.
  • Shotgun -> Do I need to say more?
  • Sniper -> Easily the most skill-demanding Sniper in all of Halo. You had to lead your shots but it shot extremely fast.
  • Rocket -> This shit is a nuke.
  • Needler -> Because you need one weapon to humiliate people with ;]
  • Grenades -> Mini nukes, balanced by bouncy traits and longer fuse times.
  • Melee -> No lunge, but had a bigger hitbox. Took 3 of them to kill someone, but you could double melee (only if you had a 'nade - risk/reward)
Each one of these outclassed the Pistol in the right situation. The whole thing about the Pistol breaking the balance of H1's sandbox is ridiculous and was created by Bungie to introduce the BR; a deliberately made-to-be-inconsistent weapon to destroy the role of a utility weapon. People forget the terrible shit Bungie did to this franchise, either that or they just simply weren't as involved back then as they might be today. The internet is a different place after all..

Then you have to take into consideration the button glitches that made everything more useful. You could run out of Pistol ammo in a battle, press XXY (backpack reload) as your AR comes out. You continue fighting as you hear the Pistol reloading, sure it doesn't make SENSE, but this brought a new dimension to Halo's meta game that Bungie was so eager to crush. You run out of AR bullets and switch back to a fully loaded Pistol.

  • Backpack reloading -> Sped up the pace of the game and kept players shooting/in the action.
  • Double melee -> Risk/Reward. No lunge. You needed a 'nade so if you just spammed the double melee blindly, chances are you'd either kill yourself or waste all of your grenades.
Two harmless button combos that seriously helped with making the gameplay even more fluid than it already was.


* Why can't they bring they bring back something as harmless as backpack reloading or little "glitches" (ie: reload frames melee cancel)? They could easily make an Advanced Tutorials section detailing Halo's meta game for all types of players.

I actually agree with a fair amount of what you're saying here. Halo:CE is not as unbalanced as it has a reputation for being, but IMO it is still unbalanced.

I'll try to quantify it with scores...

You are right in that each weapon, under certain circumstances, outclasses the pistol. My issue is that the pistol's combination of versatility and power still made it more valuable and useful than any other weapon in the sandbox because of the nature of Halo's gameplay.

The pistol is, effectively, an 8/10 in every combat situation. It's not going to beat the sniper at long range, it's not going to beat the shotgun at close range, it's not going to take out a group of enemies as well as a rocket-launcher. But it's going to give you much, MUCH more than the fighting chance a utility weapon is supposed to give you.

Every other weapon may be a 10/10 in certain situations, and a 4/10 the rest of the time. But the fact is, the majority of player interaction in Halo games occurs at mid range, outside of a select few maps that have either particular areas or entire zones composed of close-quarters areas and corridors. As such, the frequency of situations where the other weapons are 10/10 usefulness are much, much, much lower than the instances where they are 4/10, while the pistol is an 8/10 constantly.

So you had a much, MUCH higher change of finding yourself in a scenario where the pistol was more effective than the alternative, than vice versa. As such, most people defaulted to the security of that consistent 8/10 weapon than risk being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with another weapon. So Halo CE matches were dominated by pistol duels, with some sniping, shotgunning and rocket-launching thrown in for good mix. That was my experience anyway, and sadly we didn't have Xbox Live at the time to track player habits at large.

There needs to be a utility weapon in Halo games. I would actually suggest that - problems with Bloom tuning aside - the DMR in Reach is actually the best, because it was incredibly effective at mid-range - where most Halo interactions take place, had to trade-off accuracy for firing rate at long range - which allowed you to keep snipers at bay without but never let you dominate across a map, and was totally vulnerable to shorter-range, automatic weapons in close.

The Halo 3 BR wasn't bad in that regard either. At mid-range, it was a beast. At long range, the spread kept it from dominating but let you ping snipers out of zoom, and at short range, the AR/melee or AR/grenade combo ate it alive.

Finally, I must say I disagree with you when it comes to the value of meta gameplay and exploits. I think games should always come down to which players are better are using the tools at their disposal within the established rule-sets. I don't really consider exploiting code and operating outside the established rule-set as a test of skill.

That said, as far as weapon balance and combat variety go, I would still rate Halo: CE near the top. I think there was less variety than Halo 3, less across-the-board weapon balance as Reach, but it was probably the strongest compromise between the two.
 
* Why can't they bring they bring back something as harmless as backpack reloading or little "glitches" (ie: reload frames melee cancel)? They could easily make an Advanced Tutorials section detailing Halo's meta game for all types of players.

That's the sort of attitude that I don't really like from segments of the competitive community, though. Stuff like BXR was a glitch. It wasn't even possible to do it in the standard PAL mode.

You can slap on any reasoning like "but it improves gameplay speed!" as much as you want, but a glitch is a glitch, and stuff like that has no place in standard matchmaking, no matter how much certain people think it "adds skill" or benefits competitive gametypes.
 
Isn't Infection one of the more popular playlists?
By that logic we'd lose almost any Objective playlist apart from BTB.

Not at all. Halo 2 had a core circulation of Oddball, Capture the flag and Slayer that stretched across various modes, including BTB. Forge maps are sterile, ugly pieces of crap that have totally ruined the matchmaking experience for me. It's not just the game modes themselves that are the issue either - I feel like the maps in Halo 2 were better designed and offered far more flexibility than the ones in later games.
 

What you said is true, but the Pistol was Halo 1's only mid-range weapon. The BR can coexist with it if it's balanced accordingly through properties like aim assist and shots to kill.

You say Reach is more balanced, but compare each of those weapons against the DMR or BR in its respective game. Halo 1's versions are far more useful than they are against the BR/DMR in later games, not to mention actually used more from what I remember. When would you ever use an SMG against a BR in Halo 2? An AR over a BR in Halo 3? A Plasma Repeater over a DMR in Reach? etc. etc. The weapons were overall more effective and rewarding in Halo 1, and in general just more fun.

That's the sort of attitude that I don't really like from segments of the competitive community, though. Stuff like BXR was a glitch. It wasn't even possible to do it in the standard PAL mode.

You can slap on any reasoning like "but it improves gameplay speed!" as much as you want, but a glitch is a glitch, and stuff like that has no place in standard matchmaking, no matter how much certain people think it "adds skill" or benefits competitive gametypes.

I'm talking about what if they made the glitches intentional and explained how to do them. Think of it like a fighting game with advanced tech.

Also, I'd rather more harmless glitches like backpack reloading over BXR any day. I'm sure you'll agree that quad-shotting was silly and should never return, but that doesn't mean NO advanced tech (I'm going to stop saying glitches because it has a negative connotation attached) should exist. Many games have sections that detail these things, not to mention the internet these days.

Wow.

If only the controls/vehicles were as tight as recent installments. Seeing as how CE's art style and map design was my favorite, I wouldn't play anything else given that.

Yeah exactly. They should've made the game tighter and faster after CE, not slower and more inconsistent..


EDIT:
That was my experience anyway, and sadly we didn't have Xbox Live at the time to track player habits at large.

Forgot to quote this, but it's the sad truth ;[
 
I'm talking about what if they made the glitches intentional and explained how to do them. Think of it like a fighting game with advanced tech.

The potential problem there is, how others have commented in the thread, is that stuff like that would remove the simplicity that had always made Halo an attractive game (just in a different sort of way that things like perks do). Part of what worked so well about the earlier games was that everyone was always more or less on an even playing field. The only thing to "learn" were the maps. Button combos shouldn't be something that plays a factor in Halo.

I wouldn't be against the notion of having stuff in there as an option that could be used in certain game modes. But I'm not sure if that's something we'd ever see, because then you run up against diminishing returns for development time invested, as you're using resources to cater to a niche/minority portion of the playerbase.
 
I could be complete wrong. But this is what I think:

What's really at the core of all the unsavory changes made to the Halo 4 is a team that wanted to do their own thing and to do the "safe" thing. Which is hilarious because they didn't make the franchise so it would never and will never be their own thing and the actual "safe" choice would have been to keep it the same instead of chasing the elusive Call of Duty dollar.

What you have at 343 is a team of people that don't really understand Halo. Sure, they like it. Many of them probably have a 10, 20, maybe 50 hours of MP playtime under their belt. But that doesn't mean you automatically "get" Halo. So these folks come in making changes to make their mark on the franchise not knowing how important some of the design decisions made by Bungie are. They gut this, they gut that, they cut this feature and cut another thinking it'll be a more refined experience (and probably because they don't have time to ensure the content and/or feature works with all the changes they made to the engine).

And hey, maybe there are some people who lobbied and maybe continue to lobby for classic Halo but they're probably not the studio heads. I don't doubt there existed a situation where company/office politics allowed the more "modern" design decisions to win out. And there's probably a greater fear of what the execs think. Hell, here's some evidence:

When Kiki and the team presented the slice to the execs, it was met with straight faces with people saying this just looks like Halo, this just plays like Halo. “Yeah, I know”, I replied proudly, “Isn’t that great? 343 can build Halo, this is huge.” The execs sat with straight faces repeating, “This just plays like Halo.” I walked my team from the room. “Was that good or bad?”, Kiki asked. “Um, good. I think they ate something bad for lunch.”

To be fair to the execs, they didn’t want to see the inside of the sausage making factory, they just wanted to know this team could not only build Halo, but take Halo forward. They wanted to see the “Wow.”

It was kind of a crazy time in the studio as we had a bunch of “wow” on paper, but really nothing in the game yet. Coming out of vertical slice, the team heard the message that it wasn’t enough. While it was in the plan to take that “wow” from paper to game, we were just getting started. Bungie wasn’t built in a day, and neither was 343.

Source: https://blogs.halowaypoint.com/Headlines/post/2012/10/03/The-Halo-Bulletin-10312-.aspx

And that ties it all back to the "modern" design decisions; the perks, weapon unlocks, weapon skins, etc. and the general dumbing down of the Halo sandbox and gameplay formula. Let's design the game in such a way that it mimics the best selling game on the market thus earning executive approval.

A lot of those decisions didn't have to swing the way they did, honestly. But they did and now what we have is a developer with what I assume is much less autonomy than Bungie had. The proof is the lack of real human responses to fan feedback and queries. There has been no discourse with fans outside of robotic PR responses and the occasional teeny tiny forum responses from Frankie and David. There's never been an explanation as to why certain decisions were made, there's never been a real detailed response to constructive fan criticisms, there's never been any real, engaging fan interaction that allows fans to understand and say, "Oh hey, I understand now". Complaining to 343 about everything continues to feel like you're talking to a wall.

What I'm left to think is that no one is allowed to actually tell fans anything. No one is allowed to actually admit mistakes or that they didn't think things through. No "insiders" have come out because 343 employees either don't want to endanger their jobs or don't give a shit about what fans think (I'm sure there's at least one person like this in the company; every company has at least one). Which I understand to a certain extent. You don't want to lose your job, you don't want to burn bridges and out yourself as a leaker of some sort in what I understand to be a very small industry. But from the fan perspective it totally sucks. It destroys the hardcore fan's relationship with the developer including trust. And it of course impacts the game. Fan feedback helps many games nowadays. That's how we get balance patches and newer content that addresses older issues (like when we couldn't bounce grenades off stairs in previous Halo games which Bungie later partially addressed with the DLC maps). That's how the game, developer and community improves.

And with 343 we're getting none of that.
 
I thought halo 4 was the most fun to play out of all of them(multi - campaign was garbage). The only thing I didn't like was how laggy it got. I don't play halo games much, so I'm guessing I'm a stupid noob whose opinion doesn't matter =P
 
A varied, balanced and USEFUL sandbox - This is where I start to diverge heavily from the super competitive crowd, because I honestly believe weapons like the AR have a place in the sandbox and SHOULD be useful/powerful. EVERY weapon should be useful/powerful under specific circumstance, and disadvantageous under other circumstances. And yet you'll hear the argument that 'it takes more skill to use a precision weapon, therefore a precision weapon should win in every circumstance'. To which I would respond, 'wow you have a fragile ego'. The BR, or DMR or pistol should not be the best option in every single fire-fight, because that will inevitably lead to 90% of fire-fights offering the exact same experience, where the exact same tactics and skill-set come to bear. By comparison, a balanced sandbox where every weapon can be used to great effect under the right circumstance ensures a great variety of combat experiences, where different tactics are put up against each other, different skillsets are put up against each other and smarts/strategy weigh just as heavily as 'I can shoot a dude in the head real good'.

One of the reasons I enjoyed Reach a great deal despite it's flaws was because I haven't played a Halo since the original where I saw a wider variety of weapons getting a ton of use throughout every match. Bloom was imperfect, but it's practical impact of forcing players to choose between range/accuracy/rate of fire helped ensure that there wasn't one default go-to weapon, and that every weapon in that arsenal felt useful depending on your playstyle or situation.

Halo 4's turbo did a lot more into making weapons more useful, but it still has a few balance issues, mainly the AR and SAW being waaaaaay too powerful. But I'd rater address your point about precision weapons versus the full sandbox. What you are arguing for is a varied skill set versus a high level skill set. I've asked the question before on various places as to why the BR/Pistol/DMR is the most skillful weapon to use. The arguments always had two sides: the precision weapon is the most difficult to perfect, and the ability to effectively use a variety of weapons was better.

I've invested a bit of research into it, and I noticed that the former was more common among hyper-competitive players and the latter among semi-competitive(MM warriors). More casual, play multiple titles gamers would lean either direction based on their aversion to either ranked or social. I've formulated a few ideas, but I think the thing that Halo CE had was that the sandbox was balanced enough to appeal to the most hyper-competitive and the most semi-competitive. Halo 3 was skewed towards the semi-competitive and Halo 2 to the competitive(although BigShow will argue that Halo 2 wasn't competitive). Reach splintered the sandbox between TU and non-TU and Halo 4 lost too many players for it to matter.

I believe, and I'm working on gathering more evidence to support my theory, that when it comes to balancing a sandbox you need a variety of weapons that all work together that can be modularized to appeal to the hyper-competitive.
 
Man, it must be SO DAMN HARD to keep their projects a secret.. I can only imagine what 343 must be saying if some of these things have long been changed for Halo 5 but they just can't talk about it yet lol.

I thought halo 4 was the most fun to play out of all of them(multi - campaign was garbage). The only thing I didn't like was how laggy it got. I don't play halo games much, so I'm guessing I'm a stupid noob whose opinion doesn't matter =P

Which multiplayer games do you spend a lot of time with, if any?
 
Thanks for the detailed analysis FyreWulff.

I personally liked Halo 4's multiplayer, but I played it fairly infrequently. It's interesting to see all the numbers though.
 
Brace yourselves for Halo 5. It will be even more removed from a true Bungie Halo product than 4 was.

If that's the case, then COD &/or Battlefield will overtake Halo's popularity even more so than they already have, & they're both multiplatform.
 
Tashi and I discussed this yesterday, but I wanted to follow on briefly. Folks at 343 such as Frankie have said they learned a lot with Halo 4 and will do better next time. I'm sure the first is absolutely true - new studio, first game - but as someone who disliked the game I was looking for signs that 343 realized their mistakes, and were taking fan reaction seriously.

Many of the problems with Halo 4 revolved around the addition of mods and the randomized outcomes they create to combat. Yet for the last piece of DLC, released over the summer, nine months after Halo 4 shipped, 343 added more armor mods, which create more randomized outcomes. And one of the mods is one of the worst yet: it lets players in vehicles survive the destruction of their ride, ejecting them automatically.

Now players will kill vehicles and have no idea if the guy inside will pop out and kill them or not. BTB was already a mess with Halo 4, but rather than repair it they added even more randomness to it. I didn't own Halo 4 by the time the DLC came out, but I was still taken aback. Clearly, lessons were not being learned on this front.
 
Agreed. I fear that Halo 5 will be more of the same. Its a shame because I'm sure it is possible to pull together a team of developers (and fans) that could really mold and shape a fantastic Halo game. You really need people who are invested in the franchise and its gameplay legacy completely and will work tirelessly to preserve it.
 
I would buy a Xbox One for a good Halo.

A GOOD Halo. One that has like, 90% approval rating from HaloGAF not including Tashi. "Yeah, it's Halo! We all start with the same weapons, power weapons on the map, no sprint but good movement speed, less randomization, the UI is good again, respawn timers with the old beep-beep-beep-boop sound, its great!"
 
Agreed. I fear that Halo 5 will be more of the same. Its a shame because I'm sure it is possible to pull together a team of developers (and fans) that could really mold and shape a fantastic Halo game. You really need people who are invested in the franchise and its gameplay legacy completely and will work tirelessly to preserve it.

But the rabid fan we are, as soon as they release a news article with buzz words like "competive gameplay" and "we need to respect halo's legacy" we will all board the "Beli343" hype train again.
 
I would buy a Xbox One for a good Halo.

A GOOD Halo. One that has like, 90% approval rating from HaloGAF not including Tashi. "Yeah, it's Halo! We all start with the same weapons, power weapons on the map, no sprint but good movement speed, less randomization, the UI is good again, respawn timers with the old beep-beep-beep-boop sound, its great!"
I'm getting it either way but I like the sound of this. So, so much. Even the beep beep boop.
 
I would buy a Xbox One for a good Halo.

A GOOD Halo. One that has like, 90% approval rating from HaloGAF not including Tashi. "Yeah, it's Halo! We all start with the same weapons, power weapons on the map, no sprint but good movement speed, less randomization, the UI is good again, respawn timers with the old beep-beep-beep-boop sound, its great!"

I'd be tempted, too. Although my XB1 would pretty much just be a Halo machine.
 
Tashi and I discussed this yesterday, but I wanted to follow on briefly. Folks at 343 such as Frankie have said they learned a lot with Halo 4 and will do better next time. I'm sure the first is absolutely true - new studio, first game - but as someone who disliked the game I was looking for signs that 343 realized their mistakes, and were taking fan reaction seriously.

Many of the problems with Halo 4 revolved around the addition of mods and the randomized outcomes they create to combat. Yet for the last piece of DLC, released over the summer, nine months after Halo 4 shipped, 343 added more armor mods, which create more randomized outcomes. And one of the mods is one of the worst yet: it lets players in vehicles survive the destruction of their ride, ejecting them automatically.

Now players will kill vehicles and have no idea if the guy inside will pop out and kill them or not. BTB was already a mess with Halo 4, but rather than repair it they added even more randomness to it. I didn't own Halo 4 by the time the DLC came out, but I was still taken aback. Clearly, lessons were not being learned on this front.

Yea this mod is pretty gross. I'm honestly shocked it's available. Not that it's something crazy for Halo 4 but it's something crazy for Halo 4 after all this time and how it has changed. But, the remaining people in Halo 4 seem to like Infinity a lot so I guess it makes sense in that sort of way. It however, obviously doesn't bode well for those looking from the outside in that form their view on the next title based on how this one is being handled. It may not be that way for me but it seems like for a lot of people, it is for them.

I think one of my biggest disappointments with sustain was the launch of the Legendary gametype. First, it came way too late. It was announced at PAX East 2013 but didn't come out until like 6 months had passed. The gametype itself is what I wish we got from the start except...it was AR starts. The playlist of course dropped in popularity right away and the playlist was removed. There were also issues with power weapons and such. I think if that gametype BR/AR start and shipped earlier, maybe with CSR in April, it could have made a larger splash and who knows, may have lead to other things.
 
Halo 4's turbo did a lot more into making weapons more useful, but it still has a few balance issues, mainly the AR and SAW being waaaaaay too powerful. But I'd rater address your point about precision weapons versus the full sandbox. What you are arguing for is a varied skill set versus a high level skill set. I've asked the question before on various places as to why the BR/Pistol/DMR is the most skillful weapon to use. The arguments always had two sides: the precision weapon is the most difficult to perfect, and the ability to effectively use a variety of weapons was better.

I've invested a bit of research into it, and I noticed that the former was more common among hyper-competitive players and the latter among semi-competitive(MM warriors). More casual, play multiple titles gamers would lean either direction based on their aversion to either ranked or social. I've formulated a few ideas, but I think the thing that Halo CE had was that the sandbox was balanced enough to appeal to the most hyper-competitive and the most semi-competitive. Halo 3 was skewed towards the semi-competitive and Halo 2 to the competitive(although BigShow will argue that Halo 2 wasn't competitive). Reach splintered the sandbox between TU and non-TU and Halo 4 lost too many players for it to matter.

I believe, and I'm working on gathering more evidence to support my theory, that when it comes to balancing a sandbox you need a variety of weapons that all work together that can be modularized to appeal to the hyper-competitive.

Shows you how long I've been out of the Halo 4 bubble, I had to google 'Halo 4 turbo' to find out it was an update.

Then I looked at the changes, and I agree, a lot of those make sense and help narrow the use of each weapon into distinct roles. BR better at short and shot-mid, light-rifle a long-range powerhouse, Carbine more accuarate at higher rate of fire, but less range and damage, and the DMR is, I guess, still the defacto standard all around ass-kicker.*

I'm actually surprised they increased the damage and decreased the spread of the automatic weapons because honestly, I thought they were balanced pretty well in Halo 4. They were useless at range, shield-shredders at close range, and mixed with a melee or a grenade, could probably get you some kills at mid-range, especially in the midst of team-chaos.

As far as your theory, I don't disagree with that at all. I would just wonder what exactly these hyper-competitive players are worried about, because there has yet to be a Halo game where the precision weapons weren't the most effective weapons in the game. They very nature of Halo - a combination of everything from walking speed, to fight duration, to expectations of map area and human/vehicle interaction - ensures that 90% of interactions between opponents happen at mid-range. There's no real effective mid-range automatic weapon. The AR and the buffed needler in Reach and Halo 4 are only effective to about short-mid range, and even then you're probably going to need a grenade with the AR to deal the damage quickly enough to walk away with the kill.

So hyper-competitive players who put the time and effort into mastering the precision weapons WILL always a strong advantage in Halo. They just won't carry that advantage into short-range situations, or extra-long range situations (sniping and mid-range precision weapons are different, tho similar skill-sets apply), or outnumbered situations (although great use of grenades and a little luck can make for some AWESOME killtactulars). In those situations, shotguns and automatic weapons, sniping weapons, and vehicles and explosive weapons are going to have the upper hand. Which is good. It means players with different play-styles and different skill-sets can also try to maneuver the battle to circumstances that play to their advantage.


*That said, you know what? If those are the differences between all the precision weapons in Halo, then they may as well just let players choose their favorite at the beginning of a match. Having people start with a Carbine or a BR or a DMR or a Light Rifle isn't exactly game-breaking so long as each has it's own plusses and minuses within that mid-range utility weapon role. It's not like letting people start with a goddamn pocket shotgun, or a plasma pistol, or a rocket launcher or anything. As long as they're balanced, I've got not problems letting people choose their personal fav utility weapon at spawn in Halo 5.

EDIT: Also, was it me, or did something feel off about both of the shotguns in Halo 4? I don't know what the hell it was, but I just could not get a read on when I was in one-shot distance ever in that game. Which made me sad, cause I LOVED the shotty in Halo 3 and Reach.
 
Tashi and I discussed this yesterday, but I wanted to follow on briefly. Folks at 343 such as Frankie have said they learned a lot with Halo 4 and will do better next time. I'm sure the first is absolutely true - new studio, first game - but as someone who disliked the game I was looking for signs that 343 realized their mistakes, and were taking fan reaction seriously.

I think Frank is being honest and that what he says is true. The problem is that I see the whole game as being such a catastrophic misunderstanding of a Halo game that it really doesn't matter if they have learnt anything, since they're starting from such an awful position.

It's all very well to say "we learned a lot", but if it took you a full release to work out the blindingly obvious stuff that there are some things that have never been part of Halo and never should be, then I don't see how anyone can believe they're right to work on the franchise.

Bungie made a huge amount of mistakes in H2 and they've been more than willing to admit to those mistakes (you're not going to find many devs allowing their employees to publicly admit they can't play their own game because they find it that bad), but it was a Halo game, and in the case of multiplayer a very good one despite its flaws. So when they claimed to have learnt from H2, I was far more prepared to give them a chance.

There's nothing that gives me any faith in 343i's abilities to make a good Halo game.
 
Oddly enough this was the first Halo game I liked enough to finish. I actually loved it. From the beginning to the end. One of my top 5 for the whole generation. But I didn't touch the multiplayer and I get that's mostly what this is about.
 
I never played Halo 1 multiplayer so I can't speak for that, but among the ones I played (2, 3, ODST, Reach) my fun was 3 > ODST Firefight > Reach >>> 2

I don't know why some people seem to hate on Halo 3's MP, I thought it was fantastically fun.
 
I never played Halo 1 multiplayer so I can't speak for that, but among the ones I played (2, 3, ODST, Reach) my fun was 3 > ODST Firefight > Reach >>> 2

I don't know why some people seem to hate on Halo 3's MP, I thought it was fantastically fun.

When did you play Halo 2 multiplayer and how much time did you put into it?

Dat master chief intro

Yeah, Steve Downes seems like a pretty chill dude. I should listen to that interview IGN had with him, get to know Le Chief.
 
When did you play Halo 2 multiplayer and how much time did you put into it?

I bought my XBOX around the time Halo 2 launched, it was actually a Halo 2 bundle with the extra controller. I played around with it for its first year and it just didn't grown on me. I had been a multiplayer FPS PC player for some time, and the multiplayer just didn't work for me. I went back to PC. Halo 3 didn't give me that feeling and I stuck with it for years.
 
I’ve posted about this in the OT, but never in the gaming section. Might as well do it here too.

There has been some notable staff changes at 343i after Halo 4 released:


<snip>
I'm almost speechless after reading those thoughts on the campaign. It's hard to understand how that guy was hired to work on a Halo game. Unbelievably out of touch. No wonder Halo 4 turned out the way it did, with people like that involved. He sounded absolutely determined to turn Halo into a different series.
 
Filling up a bar is better than losing ranks because you were having a bad day. H3 literally was stressful to me, but it was all we had.

LOL it was.

I remember I would dread playing the game after a long pause (1 or 2 weeks) because I knew I would get destroyed.

I don't think Halo 4 is a bad game. It is much better than Reach, which I honestly disliked, and almost as fun as Halo 3, but different.
I wish I played Halo 4 more, but I guess my friends and I just got old. Nowadays I don't have the patience to play a competitive game against some kid who plays videogames over 10 hours a week. Hopefully my schedule will relax in a couple years and I will be able to play the videogames I enjoy. I miss being competitive in Halo.
 
Non-Bungie Halo sucked :/

Halo's downfall started with the playlist mismanagement of Halo 3 and then Reach. In fact, I feel Reach's bloom is the sole reason for the biggest population drop. Bungie's record with Halo isn't immaculate.
 
Most people buying Halo 4 I knew didn't like Reach and were expecting 4 to be a continuation from 3 which is what should've happened. Halo 5 will not only have a lower install base, people will be a lot more skeptical before buying it. Halo needs to differentiate itself from other modern FPS games by going back to simple arena gameplay.
 
Halo's downfall started with the playlist mismanagement of Halo 3 and then Reach. In fact, I feel Reach's bloom is the sole reason for the biggest population drop. Bungie's record with Halo isn't immaculate.

Well, that's certainly a reach.

No pun intended.

Seriously though, how do you manage to rationalize that insane position?
 
Edit. The importance of a Beta next summer is vital, Just by hosting one, they'd convince people they're serious about fixing thier mistakes.
 
Tashi and I discussed this yesterday, but I wanted to follow on briefly. Folks at 343 such as Frankie have said they learned a lot with Halo 4 and will do better next time. I'm sure the first is absolutely true - new studio, first game - but as someone who disliked the game I was looking for signs that 343 realized their mistakes, and were taking fan reaction seriously.

Many of the problems with Halo 4 revolved around the addition of mods and the randomized outcomes they create to combat. Yet for the last piece of DLC, released over the summer, nine months after Halo 4 shipped, 343 added more armor mods, which create more randomized outcomes. And one of the mods is one of the worst yet: it lets players in vehicles survive the destruction of their ride, ejecting them automatically.

Now players will kill vehicles and have no idea if the guy inside will pop out and kill them or not. BTB was already a mess with Halo 4, but rather than repair it they added even more randomness to it. I didn't own Halo 4 by the time the DLC came out, but I was still taken aback. Clearly, lessons were not being learned on this front.
Agreed, if 343i really their lesson. They wouldn't think twice of scrapping the extra armor mods. The Survivor and Resistor armor abilities mods clearly show that 343i has NOT learned a single thing. The armor mod survivor is just simple cheating, for the reason you just named GhaleonEB. And the Resistor armor mod is a giant finger to the entire community. Since the release we've been begging for 343i to remove flinch, and every time they said that they couldn't remove it. And yet here we are, a new armor mod which reduces the effects flinch.... If you can change the values of flinch you can surely set those values to zero.

The Champions Bundle was a clear answer for me, 343i is still lying and hasn't learned a single thing. Which makes me all the more scared for what they might do to the next Halo.
 

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It's really nice to see that Halo fans really know what made the gameplay so...special and addictive.

It stuns me that the developers (343) don't seem to get it the way we do. I really, really hope they bring Halo 5 back to what it should be. Keep all the cool Spartan customisation, sure. But lose all the fluff. We don't need more weapons, or different "alien" versions of the same weapons. Just get the core right, and play on that.
 
It's really nice to see that Halo fans really know what made the gameplay so...special and addictive.

It stuns me that the developers (343) don't seem to get it the way we do. I really, really hope they bring Halo 5 back to what it should be. Keep all the cool Spartan customisation, sure. But lose all the fluff. We don't need more weapons, or different "alien" versions of the same weapons. Just get the core right, and play on that.

It's possible to analyse what makes Halo, Halo. But at the end of the day it's still not something you can really describe in words, in my opinion.

Sure you can mention the features and mechanics of a Halo game like the way weapons are balanced, starting players out on equal footing, or that the consequences of actions are (or should always be) predictable, but it's only by picking it up and playing it that you can tell if it's a Halo game or not. There's a certain feel to it, and it's a lot of very small things that give it its unique signature.
 
Tashi and I discussed this yesterday, but I wanted to follow on briefly. Folks at 343 such as Frankie have said they learned a lot with Halo 4 and will do better next time. I'm sure the first is absolutely true - new studio, first game - but as someone who disliked the game I was looking for signs that 343 realized their mistakes, and were taking fan reaction seriously.

Many of the problems with Halo 4 revolved around the addition of mods and the randomized outcomes they create to combat. Yet for the last piece of DLC, released over the summer, nine months after Halo 4 shipped, 343 added more armor mods, which create more randomized outcomes. And one of the mods is one of the worst yet: it lets players in vehicles survive the destruction of their ride, ejecting them automatically.

Now players will kill vehicles and have no idea if the guy inside will pop out and kill them or not. BTB was already a mess with Halo 4, but rather than repair it they added even more randomness to it. I didn't own Halo 4 by the time the DLC came out, but I was still taken aback. Clearly, lessons were not being learned on this front.
One can only hope that the last DLC was long ago planned and rolled out with gritted teeth, fully expecting backlash for adding more boneheaded perks that absolutely no one asked for.

That was the first Halo DLC that I never acquired, which is pretty depressing. Good luck 343, you've got more to prove now as the stewards of Halo than ever before.
 
Edit. The importance of a Beta next summer is vital, Just by hosting one, they'd convince people they're serious about fixing thier mistakes.

Yes, this is my make it or break it, not only for Halo 5, but for buying an Xbox One (well, so far, as a new Crackdown may be in the works.)

How long did it take for 343 to make the br 4 shot again ? 6 months? The period before that was the beta.
 
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