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[DocSeuss]

So I heard some rumors that Halo 5 was going open world with Halo 5. Would you be interested if thats the case?

I'm not sure how the 30-seconds-of-fun principle would work in an open-world game. Halo benefits from having well-designed series of combat arenas, great AI, and a great weapon selection.

Don't get me wrong, I liked ODST, and I'd happily buy ODST2 for my PC, but I'm not sure that's the direction Halo 5 should go, especially when Halo 4's level design and difficulty balance were so poorly thought out.

 

[J-Roderton]

So I heard some rumors that Halo 5 was going open world with Halo 5. Would you be interested if thats the case?

Not really an open world guy. Not sure how I'd like it for Halo. Could be cool, though. Mostly just want the multiplayer.

Completely forgot about ODST. Liked it, so hell, I don't know.

 

[Servbot24]

I'm not sure how the 30-seconds-of-fun principle would work in an open-world game. Halo benefits from having well-designed series of combat arenas, great AI, and a great weapon selection.

Don't get me wrong, I liked ODST, and I'd happily buy ODST2 for my PC, but I'm not sure that's the direction Halo 5 should go, especially when Halo 4's level design and difficulty balance were so poorly thought out.

It would probably be a web design rather than a Skyrim-empty field. Could work. If I recall correctly Metroid Prime was cited as an inspiration for Halo 4 after all.

 

[PanicFreak]

Any Halo game that allows multitudes of snipers and rockets on a map at any one time is fundamentally broken. There's no fun in not knowing who on the map has the rockets and that every player on the other team could have a power weapon for all the game cares.

Oh and DMR spawns in every game mode killed it as well. No one loves getting head shotted across the map over and over again. Swear they lowered the time to kill as well, shields felt like they were made of paper.

I agree. If you have the rockets in Halo, you really should be the baddest dude in the game. I feel like I died a ton with rockets in Halo 4.

 

[Chettlar]

I remember when Halo 4 came out, everyone was singing it's praises. After I played through it, I was baffled how high the reviews were. The campaign was horribly boring, the new enemies were annoying to fight, and the multiplayer maps lacked a certain magic that made me put the game down rather quickly. Easily the worst in the series IMO.

Thank god people finally came to their senses on this. I thought I was the only one who didn't care for it.

Hype. The amount of hype for this game was insane. Don't let anybody tell you the halo community was dead before Halo 4 came out. Nah man, it was huge.

The reviews reflected that. Had they not, they would have received a huge backlash. Doesn't justify it, but that is very likely what was going through their heads.

I really hope 343 is listening. Stinkles' statements make me hopeful, but we'll just have to wait and see.

They really ought to make the next multiplayer as a logical progression from Halo 2 and 3. The campaign ought to be big, with dozens of ways to complete objectives. Simplify the formula. No armor abilities or anything like that. 30 seconds of fun. Better maps like Bungie had. I mean, read about what Bungie did when designing their maps. They had it down to a science.

Though I've always felt that, like, during the campaign, being able to pick up a jet pack with a limited amount of battery as something you pick up just like a gun or a grenade could work. Having it as an always-available perk makes it too OP in my thinking.

 

[The Jackdog]

Any of these ideas pertain to multiplayer? If so, which?

Ricochet and constantly updated community forge playlists.

I dont love what they did with leveling, but i DO love the idea of choosing an "upgrade path" for a small amount of levels to get things like cosmetic items, skins, etc. Like the assassin engineer all that stuff.

Am I alone in thinking Ricochet was one of the most dumb fun things ive played in halo in a long time? I lovvvved that game type.

Oh and i guess the trope? The infinity kind of "simulation war games" back to just spartan v spartan im a fan of.

 

[Chitown B]

Just played some Halo 4 MP for the first time since release.

It's better, but still not good. I got bored after five or six rounds and had to turn it off.

I think a lot of my Halo like/dislike has to do with:

A) my group of friends who play - if they're not around, it's boring
B) the call outs available on the map - Reach and H4 suck in that way.
C) the symmetry and size of maps. I need small arenas to work with. Not gigantic randomly leveled BTB maps for every match.

 

[Chitown B]

I'm not sure how the 30-seconds-of-fun principle would work in an open-world game. Halo benefits from having well-designed series of combat arenas, great AI, and a great weapon selection.

Don't get me wrong, I liked ODST, and I'd happily buy ODST2 for my PC, but I'm not sure that's the direction Halo 5 should go, especially when Halo 4's level design and difficulty balance were so poorly thought out.

ODST isn't open world. The streets were just a hub.

 

[PanicFreak]

Hype. The amount of hype for this game was insane. Don't let anybody tell you the halo community was dead before Halo 4 came out. Nah man, it was huge.

The reviews reflected that. Had they not, they would have received a huge backlash. Doesn't justify it, but that is very likely what was going through their heads.

I really hope 343 is listening. Stinkles' statements make me hopeful, but we'll just have to wait and see.

They really ought to make the next multiplayer as a logical progression from Halo 2 and 3. The campaign ought to be big, with dozens of ways to complete objectives. Simplify the formula. No armor abilities or anything like that.

Though I've always felt that, like, during the campaign, being able to pick up a jet pack with a limited amount of battery as something you pick up just like a gun or a grenade could work. Having it as an always-available perk makes it too OP in my thinking.

I think armor abilities can exist in Halo MP but I think they need to be items on the map and limited in use. That way the armor ability that works best with each map can be used and you don't have four people running around with jet packs.

Speaking of which, get rid of jet packs, sprint, promethean vision, eject, and do I even have to mention armor lock?

I think they could limit it to bubble shield, regen field, invisibility (one or two uses) or a one time shield boost, depending on the map and game time, and it could be fun.

 

[J-Roderton]

Better maps like Bungie had. I mean, read about what Bungie did when designing their maps. They had it down to a science.

Daaaaaaa Pit.

 

[The Jackdog]

I think armor abilities can exist in Halo MP but I think they need to be items on the map and limited in use. That way the armor ability that works best with each map can be used and you don't have four people running around with jet packs.

Speaking of which, get rid of jet packs, sprint, promethean vision, eject, and do I even have to mention armor lock?

I think they could limit it to bubble shield, regen field, invisibility (one or two uses) or a one time shield boost, depending on the map and game time, and it could be fun.

is there a middleground of making armor abilities consumables rather than permanent ala bubble shield?

 

[JonCha]

is there a middleground of making armor abilities consumables rather than permanent ala bubble shield?

No, because it creates the same old problem: people can cheat death. About to be killed? No problem - bubble shield and team up with a buddy. Or sprint away. Or anything basically that means the better player isn't rewarded as they should be.

In short, get rid.

 

[Twilight Gap]

Better maps like Bungie had. I mean, read about what Bungie did when designing their maps. They had it down to a science.

Would you happen to have any of those links?

 

[Chettlar]

I think armor abilities can exist in Halo MP but I think they need to be items on the map and limited in use. That way the armor ability that works best with each map can be used and you don't have four people running around with jet packs.

Speaking of which, get rid of jet packs, sprint, promethean vision, eject, and do I even have to mention armor lock?

I think they could limit it to bubble shield, regen field, invisibility (one or two uses) or a one time shield boost, depending on the map and game time, and it could be fun.

Yeah, jet pack doesn't work all that well in multiplayer. But I think it could be pretty cool in campaign and firefight.

Sort of like the target locator in Reach. Doesn't exactly work all that well in multiplayer, but works just fine in campaign and firefight.

Would you happen to have any of those links?

No, because I am dumb. I also suck at searching for things even when I know what I'm looking for.

Polygon might have had something. I don't know.

I remember seeing a picture that was of how many kills were often got on a certain map, with dots representing kills from either the blue or red team. When Bungie noticed that the team starting from one side kept getting a lot of kills in a certain area, they modified the map so that that team didn't have near as much of an advantage. It was pretty cool.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

I thought it was dramatically worse, in large part because it more than doubled the engagement distance as compared to playing on Valhalla in Halo 3. There you could see players moving about the map, but required a certain proximity to engage. Flanking maneuvers could effectively bypass a poorly spread team. Not so with Ragnarok, where if you can see them, you can shoot them with the DMR. It went from home to my favorite battles in the Halo series (Halo 3) to some of the worst - long distance ping fests. That was systemic to Halo 4's combat.

Valhalla got absolutely destroyed by Halo 4's sandbox, especially the DMR.

With default sprint and the multitude of options to survive/prolong a firefight, I really never considered the DMR to be problematic in this regard, especially after complaining for years how I'd see someone by the turret from Laser Spawn, but my shots wouldn't reach them because of the BR. To me, that's not fun at all. If my shots are able to touch the enemy, I expect them to land where I aim. This wasn't the case with Halo 3 but was for Halo 4.

You guys mention/have mentioned ping fests in the past, but in practice games didn't play out much differently in Halo 4 than in Halo 3, from my experience at least. People still held the same exact positions as they did in Halo 3, but the main difference is the consistency. Sure there were ping fests that occurred, but the same ping fests were in Halo 3 except that if you were pinged, you could just keep strolling along as you knew the Halo 3 BR would never be able to kill you from those ranges. In Halo 4 however, if you were brave enough to travel in the open and get pinged, you HAD to fight back if you wanted to advance your position. That allows for more interesting gameplay IMO.

I feel that H4's loadouts are a lesson in how too many options can be a bad thing. Perks were a poor addition to the game overall and made yet another impossible way to determine your opponent's tactics until it was too late. Having close-range one-hit-kill and shield-stripping/immobilizing weapons like the Boltshot and Plasma Pistol (I'll go ahead and throw Plasma Grenades into it as well) immediately available were another huge misstep.

Plasma Pistols and Plasma Grenades in loadouts still hurt..

Your idea seems reasonable, but I'd take it one step further/back and say that loadouts should be, if they must be kept, tailored more toward the map and/or gametype and not to individual tastes.

Good idea too. Giving players the option to choose what weapons go into these pools for Custom Games would be ideal as well.

Also, a pox on 343 for bringing back a semblance of powerups (Speed/Damage Boost), but keeping invisibility as an Armor Ability.

This is one clear cut example of the fans being disregarded. I would LOVE to know what forces were responsible for Reach's most/2nd most hated AA that many thought would have been an obvious cut from future games returning in Halo 4.

-snip-

Fair enough, thanks for the response. If nothing else, this just goes to show there are still all flavors of Halo fans ready to dive into a new game :]

I've barely seen DMRs after the Turbo update. What ruins Ragnarok for me more than anything are the abundance of power weapons and vehicles. Valhalla to me was always an infantry focused map, and throwing a dozen vehicles and power weapons each on it while the map remains unchanged (worse considering the kill boundaries in Banshee space) is what tends to stagnate movement and increase spawn traps, not one gun being able to hit someone across the map. I feel as if you're saying Valhalla only worked because the H3 BR was crap. Valhalla also didn't have camo snipers...

I don't disagree with the level design aspect of it, but Ragnarok could at least play closer to its predecessor if the aforementioned vehicles and weapons mimicked the original. Flinch is also heavily to blame for the issue you bring up.

Speaking of Tempest, I wish I'd gotten to play that map more before they made the DLC scarce

Agreed. Your posts mirror my thoughts.

EDIT:

Ricochet and constantly updated community forge playlists.

I dont love what they did with leveling, but i DO love the idea of choosing an "upgrade path" for a small amount of levels to get things like cosmetic items, skins, etc. Like the assassin engineer all that stuff.

Am I alone in thinking Ricochet was one of the most dumb fun things ive played in halo in a long time? I lovvvved that game type.

Oh and i guess the trope? The infinity kind of "simulation war games" back to just spartan v spartan im a fan of.

Agree with all of this. The "upgrade path" you mention could be really cool for future games as well, or even if they do something similar to PvZ Garden Warfare and buying "packs" to unlock these items. So maybe you choose a path, get points, then use those points to unlock packs within those paths. Could be interesting.

 

[ryan299]

I really think Halo 5 needs to play like Halo 2/3 online otherwise the franchise is dead. My friends have already said they are done with Halo. They will only return if the series goes back to its roots.

 

[Chettlar]

Also, am I the only one who absolutely hates how invisibility works in Reach and 4 as opposed to 2 and 3?

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

I really think Halo 5 needs to play like Halo 2/3 online otherwise the franchise is dead. My friends have already said they are done with Halo. They will only return if the series goes back to its roots.

RIP CE. Never will the larger demographic of Halo players understand what it's like to get that 3sk and to use a Sniper that doesn't aim itself and to use a Plasma Rifle that is actually useful and and and.. ;'[

Also, am I the only one who absolutely hates how invisibility works in Reach and 4 as opposed to 2 and 3?

You are the only person on this planet who likes Halo 2/3 Camo more than Reach/4. Literally the only person. No seriously. Honestly.

Spoiler

But for real though.

Spoiler

Not a single person likes anything about the Camo in those games. Everything about them is hated, from being an AA to having that terrible trait of becoming more visible as you move.

EDIT:

It's alright

Although even with all that about "can't just repeat the old formula" I still love the old Halos, they are some of my favourite games ever. Actually they are my favourite games ever. It's just I love Halo 4 as well, even with it's quirks.

Bit of a Halo fanboy tbh :3 Bought an X1 at launch in anticipation of Halo 5...

You and me both brother.. You and me both. I don't think there will ever be a Halo game that I won't buy, and 343 knows this! They take advantage of people like us! hahah

 

[jem0208]

Fair enough, thanks for the response. If nothing else, this just goes to show there are still all flavors of Halo fans ready to dive into a new game :]

It's alright

Although even with all that about "can't just repeat the old formula" I still love the old Halos, they are some of my favourite games ever. Actually they are my favourite games ever. It's just I love Halo 4 as well, even with it's quirks.

Bit of a Halo fanboy tbh :3 Bought an X1 at launch in anticipation of Halo 5...

 

[l Zealot l]

It would probably be a web design rather than a Skyrim-empty field. Could work. If I recall correctly Metroid Prime was cited as an inspiration for Halo 4 after all.

Really? Do you have a link
Here I was thinking COD was the inspiration

Spoiler

lol

 

[ryan299]

Really? Do you have a link
Here I was thinking COD was the inspiration

Spoiler

lol

There was a leak a while back talking about it but people figured it was fake but a couple of days ago some of the "infamous gaf leakers" have said the same thing. I wont link to their twitters bc I don't think its allowed lol

 

[Shady859]

I seriously condsidered rebuying Halo 4 GOTY edition the other day new for $25. I sold mine a couple months after it released. Rebought it once used and dumped again a couple months after that. I wondered how many people actually still play though and the additional required install and hard drive space juggle on my 120gb was enough reason not to get back in. Looking at these numbers I think I made the right call. I would be playing on non-peak hours mainly and at that time it's probably people who never moved on.

 

[jem0208]

EDIT:
You and me both brother.. You and me both. I don't think there will ever be a Halo game that I won't buy, and 343 knows this! They take advantage of people like us! hahah

Pretty much, thing is I still find every single game really fun. Even if some aren't quite as good as the others.

Spoiler

But for real though.

Spoiler

Not a single person likes anything about the Camo in those games. Everything about them is hated, from being an AA to having that terrible trait of becoming more visible as you move.

Oh man, I hate how moving causes you to become more visible. It's like they thought long and hard about encouraging camping as much as possible.

 

[XShadows69]

I miss the Halo 3 days.

 

[Chettlar]

You are the only person on this planet who likes Halo 2/3 Camo more than Reach/4. Literally the only person. No seriously. Honestly.

Spoiler

But for real though.

Spoiler

Not a single person likes anything about the Camo in those games. Everything about them is hated, from being an AA to having that terrible trait of becoming more visible as you move.

For some reason it's the one thing I always mention that doesn't get a whole lot or replies ever, and when it does, it's actually for somebody who actively likes it... :/

I think the idea was to make people go slower to be more stealthy. The problem was, there was no need. That's the kind of thing you do if it's overpowered, but it wasn't, especially since you could usually see the person while they were cloaked anyway, and when you started shooting them, they also become visible normally. It worked just fine in Halo 3 the way it was.


Some of the things that bother me in the more recent Halos is change simply for the sake of change, rather than for actually improving things. More often than not, they end up making things worse.

Once you reach the top, the only direction you can move is down.

EDIT: also, what jem just said. Arena shooters and arena-styled shooters like Halo are best when they encourage movement. In fact, I'd say, pretty much all shooters are. Instead, making camo go away when you move removes that and encourages things like camping.

 

[The Jackdog]

EDIT:
Agree with all of this. The "upgrade path" you mention could be really cool for future games as well, or even if they do something similar to PvZ Garden Warfare and buying "packs" to unlock these items. So maybe you choose a path, get points, then use those points to unlock packs within those paths. Could be interesting.

if anything thats what kind of sums up halo 4 to me. i liked a lot. a lot. But....only just kinda liked it. there was some stuff that stood out as really great ideas, really great half baked ideas, and a lot of bad ideas.

Using hidden terminals to tell story and enchance universe/lore/etc: GOOD IDEA!
Using hidden terminals to tell ALLLLLLL the story: AWFUL IDEA.

And it keeps going like that,

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

For some reason it's the one thing I always mention that doesn't get a whole lot or replies ever, and when it does, it's actually for somebody who actively likes it... :/

This is probably because fans are pretty much in universal agreement that everything involved with Camo from Reach/H4 is terrible and should return to being a Power-up with traits similar to Halo 3.

I think the idea was to make people go slower to be more stealthy. The problem was, there was no need. That's the kind of thing you do if it's overpowered, but it wasn't, especially since you could usually see the person while they were cloaked anyway, and when you started shooting them, they also become visible normally. It worked just fine in Halo 3 the way it was.

Exactly. One thing to note though is that the point of Power-ups is to be unbalanced. They're something you have to earn which gives you an advantage over other players, so by definition broken. This is why I'd love for Promethean Vision to turn into a Power-up or even a type of grenade that acts as a beacon (ie: Gears Spot Grenades or even that new grenade type we saw in the new CoD trailer).

EDIT: also, what jem just said. Arena shooters and arena-styled shooters like Halo are best when they encourage movement. In fact, I'd say, pretty much all shooters are. Instead, making camo go away when you move removes that and encourages things like camping.

Sounds like you'd like sound-based radar or even no radar over the broken motion tracker ;]

 

[doomquake]

Can I play halo 4 on xbob one?

 

[HTupolev]

Same thing happened to Blood Gulch in Reach. the 3x DMR zoom made it so you could hit things at absurd distances and turned it into a bonegrinder instead of a fun experience.

For a given terrain layout, Reach still permits far more movement than Halo 4. Making long-range encounters weaker was the entire point of bloom, and it works in that capacity.

One of the things that confuses me about where Halo 4's praise is coming from is that the core shooting mechanics are being put on some kind of pedestal. They feel good because they're hitscan with high aim assist and nothing to mitigate the effectiveness with range. It might feel decent enough to fire, but it's frustrating to play against in the general flow of gameplay. It's the reason that Halo 4's maps have to choose between being literal twisted piles of trash (most of the maps) and having unfortunately locked-down gameplay (stuff like Ragnarok).

There's a reason that Halo 1's pistol is a projectile weapon with a moderate degree of spread*, that Halo 3 did the same thing, and that Reach used bloom. Were Bungie's choices and implementations always perfect? Probably not, obviously Halo 3 has issues regarding feedback and the weird spread, and Reach's bloom feels a tad weird on the firing side and takes some things out of your control. But Bungie made those kinds of decisions for reasons. Yes, it "feels good" to use Halo 4's utility weapons. But people who use Armor Lock say the exact same thing about Armor Lock, which should tell you how incomplete that line of thinking is as a justification for a design in a game where the mechanic will be used against players.
(And if Halo is going to be hosted by high-bandwidth servers, that's a great reason to switch back to projectiles.)

*Substantially more than most people admit. Assuming aim precisely at the center of the helmet, even the distance between the front base doors on Battle Creek is enough to make 3sk not a guarantee.

 

[Chettlar]

Exactly. One thing to note though is that the point of Power-ups is to be unbalanced. They're something you have to earn which gives you an advantage over other players, so by definition broken. This is why I'd love for Promethean Vision to turn into a Power-up or even a type of grenade that acts as a beacon (ie: Gears Spot Grenades or even that new grenade type we saw in the new CoD trailer).

Hm, I can dig it. I'd need to see it working well in the flesh, but I can dig the concept.

Sounds like you'd like sound-based radar or even no radar over the broken motion tracker ;]

I practically never use my rader, and in Reach especially usually have the fog skull on to up my points a lil bit.

In multiplayer I usually just glance down quickly at it to get a sense of what all is going on, which is really all I think it was meant to be for.

 

[Syphon Filter]

The big question is if 343 has the balls to not include loadouts and perks.thats the only way to come back.really hard to imagine they will do it since everyone has it these days.no one wants to be their own thing anymore.it will be the first thing to look out for when they reveal multiplayer to see if they really learned.

 

[Exploratory]

I am replaying this for first time since launch week.

I can't lie, these graphics rival some what I see on Xbox One.

Graphics and sound design were the best parts of the game. Well and voice acting.

 

[HTupolev]

I am replaying this for first time since launch week.

I can't lie, these graphics rival some what I see on Xbox One.

Halo 4 has a great animation system, high-quality assets and shading for major characters (especially during cutscenes), and a pretty high geometry allocation for non-skybox terrain.

Outside of that, the graphics are alright to meh. Especially when it comes to how the game looks and feels in action.

-Instead of the geometrically-animated water of Halo's 3 and Reach, Halo 4 uses a static surface with purely textured effects.
-Light for light, Halo 4's dynamic lighting is a huge downgrade from Halo's 3 and Reach, and actually manages to fall below the oXbox titles in many ways. Even Halo 1 supports spotlights and configurable specularity, but Halo 4 only supports diffuse point lights. This is presumably why Halo 4 doesn't feature a flashlight, and I suspect the choices behind this compromise are a big part of why Halo 4 was able to reach 720p.
-Some of the methods Halo 4 uses to add "detail" are just plain ugly. Of particular note are the black "shadow" textures which fade away as you approach, which are responsible for some of the smeary-looking areas on Requiem and the general blotchiness of Ragnarok.
-A game as bloom-heavy as Halo 4 is, with as much high-contrast scenery as Halo 4 has, could use better HDR depth.
-Textures on dynamic objects are often pretty bad.
-No motion blur or AO. (Though of course some people might argue that this isn't really a disadvantage relative to its predecessors.)
-This is a bit general, but: aggressive effects work generally sucks in Halo 4. The first time I experienced a large number of plasma grenades going off in Halo 4 was perhaps the flattest moment I've ever experienced while playing Halo. Or, just compare Scarab destruction in Halo 3 to Liche destruction in Halo 4. The former features crazy lighting alteration, huge alpha-blended transparency layers, multiple large physics objects that stick around, and some particles that delightfully smash into the ground; the latter is basically an uninspiring "poof" with a couple of cheap falling objects that quickly vanish.
-Geometric LOD is quite aggressive. Some areas in Halo 4 have a nasty case of clay blob syndrome, and this becomes appalling in split-screen.
-In terms of static lighting, objects transitioning between light levels generally don't look very natural while doing so. Going from sunlight to shadow in Halo 4 often feels like going from sunlight to slightly less bright sunlight.

As a whole, Halo 4 doesn't strike me as significantly more visually impressive than Reach. And I certainly prefer the latter's aesthetic style. :/

 

[FyreWulff]

For a given terrain layout, Reach still permits far more movement than Halo 4. Making long-range encounters weaker was the entire point of bloom, and it works in that capacity.

You're assuming unpatched Reach. Most of the hurt came when 85% and zero bloom was used on that map. Crouching in 85% gave you functional 0% when firing.

Killing. floor.

 

[Mace Griffin]

The big question is if 343 has the balls to not include loadouts and perks.thats the only way to come back.really hard to imagine they will do it since everyone has it these days.no one wants to be their own thing anymore.it will be the first thing to look out for when they reveal multiplayer to see if they really learned.

Exactly, every dev/pub is scared to of doing something different from the now well established CoD formula. Perks, loadouts, meaningless progression systems, kill streak rewards, sprint, slow clunky base movement etc etc.

While a lot of players are toiling away, unlocking gun after gun, progressing through the experience based levels/ranks they are oblivious to the lack of actual gameplay underneath it all and the general dumbed down experience.

Games used to be about challenge and improving your accuracy, movement, decision making and various other skills. Now they are about a completely false sense of achievement plastered over the actual game that the average gamer is just too dumb to realise they are wasting their time pursuing.

 

[Mace Griffin]

For a given terrain layout, Reach still permits far more movement than Halo 4. Making long-range encounters weaker was the entire point of bloom, and it works in that capacity.

One of the things that confuses me about where Halo 4's praise is coming from is that the core shooting mechanics are being put on some kind of pedestal. They feel good because they're hitscan with high aim assist and nothing to mitigate the effectiveness with range. It might feel decent enough to fire, but it's frustrating to play against in the general flow of gameplay. It's the reason that Halo 4's maps have to choose between being literal twisted piles of trash (most of the maps) and having unfortunately locked-down gameplay (stuff like Ragnarok).

There's a reason that Halo 1's pistol is a projectile weapon with a moderate degree of spread*, that Halo 3 did the same thing, and that Reach used bloom. Were Bungie's choices and implementations always perfect? Probably not, obviously Halo 3 has issues regarding feedback and the weird spread, and Reach's bloom feels a tad weird on the firing side and takes some things out of your control. But Bungie made those kinds of decisions for reasons. Yes, it "feels good" to use Halo 4's utility weapons. But people who use Armor Lock say the exact same thing about Armor Lock, which should tell you how incomplete that line of thinking is as a justification for a design in a game where the mechanic will be used against players.
(And if Halo is going to be hosted by high-bandwidth servers, that's a great reason to switch back to projectiles.)

*Substantially more than most people admit. Assuming aim precisely at the center of the helmet, even the distance between the front base doors on Battle Creek is enough to make 3sk not a guarantee.

I completely agree re the praise for the shooting mechanics is because they are so easy.

To me projectile based weapons are vastly superior to hitscan, hitscan for a lot of weapons is just way too easy. The best way to balance the ranged utility weapons in Halo would be to make them completely consistent but difficult to use at longer ranges. You could do this by removing any aim assist beyond a certain range, limiting scope range and using actual projectiles that require leading to some degree at range. This way the average kill time increases with range and the skill gap opens up as the better players can really differentiate themselves in ranged encounters with higher accuracy and unpredictable strafing.

I have more or less given up hope on 343 though as clearly they put almost no thought into creating a skill gap in the game or even worse they go out of their way to minimise the skill gap as much as possible, I can't quite make my mind up which it is.

 

[The Librarian]

Valhalla got absolutely destroyed by Halo 4's sandbox, especially the DMR.

And the sad thing is, both Ghaleon and I saw it coming, posted about it, and they still released Valhalla with zero changes into a sandbox with the DMR.

Criticisms were common with this. You two weren't the only ones.

 

[monome]

Halo 4 has a great animation system, high-quality assets and shading for major characters (especially during cutscenes), and a pretty high geometry allocation for non-skybox terrain.

Outside of that, the graphics are alright to meh. Especially when it comes to how the game looks and feels in action.

-Instead of the geometrically-animated water of Halo's 3 and Reach, Halo 4 uses a static surface with purely textured effects.
-Light for light, Halo 4's dynamic lighting is a huge downgrade from Halo's 3 and Reach, and actually manages to fall below the oXbox titles in many ways. Even Halo 1 supports spotlights and configurable specularity, but Halo 4 only supports diffuse point lights. This is presumably why Halo 4 doesn't feature a flashlight, and I suspect the choices behind this compromise are a big part of why Halo 4 was able to reach 720p.
-Some of the methods Halo 4 uses to add "detail" are just plain ugly. Of particular note are the black "shadow" textures which fade away as you approach, which are responsible for some of the smeary-looking areas on Requiem and the general blotchiness of Ragnarok.
-A game as bloom-heavy as Halo 4 is, with as much high-contrast scenery as Halo 4 has, could use better HDR depth.
-Textures on dynamic objects are often pretty bad.
-No motion blur or AO. (Though of course some people might argue that this isn't really a disadvantage relative to its predecessors.)
-This is a bit general, but: aggressive effects work generally sucks in Halo 4. The first time I experienced a large number of plasma grenades going off in Halo 4 was perhaps the flattest moment I've ever experienced while playing Halo. Or, just compare Scarab destruction in Halo 3 to Liche destruction in Halo 4. The former features crazy lighting alteration, huge alpha-blended transparency layers, multiple large physics objects that stick around, and some particles that delightfully smash into the ground; the latter is basically an uninspiring "poof" with a couple of cheap falling objects that quickly vanish.
-Geometric LOD is quite aggressive. Some areas in Halo 4 have a nasty case of clay blob syndrome, and this becomes appalling in split-screen.
-In terms of static lighting, objects transitioning between light levels generally don't look very natural while doing so. Going from sunlight to shadow in Halo 4 often feels like going from sunlight to slightly less bright sunlight.

As a whole, Halo 4 doesn't strike me as significantly more visually impressive than Reach. And I certainly prefer the latter's aesthetic style. :/

I would sum it up as Halo 4 graphics being on par with its MP, familiar yet relying more on flourish than relevant changes/additions.

 

[MarkMclovin]

Got bored about half way through on the campaign. Then after a few days of MP I got bored of that too.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

AR/Pistol starts would solve several issues.

 

[The Jackdog]

Criticisms were common with this. You two weren't the only ones.

Isnt this ALWAYS going to be a problem with recycled maps?

Bring back an old favorite, game is designed slightly differently. So you have two choices:

Put a classic map in untouched, might not work very well.
Change a classic map to make it work in new game, no longer the same as the classic map.

 

[Izayoi]

I guess I am alone in liking Dual Welding.

You and SenjutsuSage can start a bad taste fanclub together.

 

[Mace Griffin]

Isnt this ALWAYS going to be a problem with recycled maps?

Bring back an old favorite, game is designed slightly differently. So you have two choices:

Put a classic map in untouched, might not work very well.
Change a classic map to make it work in new game, no longer the same as the classic map.

Understanding the gameplay principles behind good maps is mostly what matters. Far too much for 343 to comprehend though.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Criticisms were common with this. You two weren't the only ones.

I don't think his post was "look at meeee" but rather "this was called well in advance". Of course we weren't the only ones, a lot of folks saw this coming; we just happened to also be posting in this thread on the same subject.

 

[FyreWulff]

I don't think his post was "look at meeee" but rather "this was called well in advance". Of course we weren't the only ones, a lot of folks saw this coming; we just happened to also be posting in this thread on the same subject.

This.

 

[squidhands]

a lot of folks saw this coming

RIP xxjuicesxx

 

[BreakerIBS]

I miss the days of Halo 2. The maps were some of the best I have played on any game. I don't understand why they cannot update previous maps, and release them with the new iterations of a franchise. At least the popular ones. Everyone loved playing Blood Gulch, or Coag. Burial Mounds, Relic, Zanzibar, Ascension...I could go on. I know every map made cannot be brought forward to new games, but at least a few.

As for Halo 4, it was a good game, it had some high points, but 343 just hasn't handled it like Bungie. Bungie knew what it took and when they introduced new aspect, they didn't lose sight of what made Halo, Halo.

 

[BigEvilTurtle]

I miss the days of Halo 2. The maps were some of the best I have played on any game. I don't understand why they cannot update previous maps, and release them with the new iterations of a franchise. At least the popular ones. Everyone loved playing Blood Gulch, or Coag. Burial Mounds, Relic, Zanzibar, Ascension...I could go on. I know every map made cannot be brought forward to new games, but at least a few.

As for Halo 4, it was a good game, it had some high points, but 343 just hasn't handled it like Bungie. Bungie knew what it took and when they introduced new aspect, they didn't lose sight of what made Halo, Halo.

The reason this doesn't happen is because, with each iteration of the franchise, the game changes in a way that doesn't really foster the old maps anymore. Things like jetpack, the DMR, sprint, etc. Then we have ordnance drops which turn maps into an unorganized clusterfuck.

Blood Gulch/Coagulation, Burial Mounds, Relic, Zanzibar, and Ascension would all be ruined by jetpack and the DMR. Map movement would be extremely restricted because of the DMR while, conversely, the jetpack would make it stupidly easy to storm bases (like Relic, Zanzibar, Ascension). It just doesn't work unfortunately. I wish it did.

 

[Sothpaw]

I'll throw in my perspective; I'm a PC gamer but I recently bought ODST, Reach and 4 on xbl. Not going to touch any mp because fps on controller doesn't work for me.

ODST: Fun game but the detective parts were absolutely useless. Run from point A to point B and that's it. Cringeworthy story about saving the cute little engineer that could.

Reach: Great campaign. Loved the environments, especially the early ones. Dumb part about how "the ai chose you" but whatever it's a videogame not the Malazan Empire series.

4: Just started the campaign but two initial observations. The guns sound way better in 4 than the other games. Also, the graphics are an order of magnitude better.

 

[The Librarian]

I don't think his post was "look at meeee" but rather "this was called well in advance". Of course we weren't the only ones, a lot of folks saw this coming; we just happened to also be posting in this thread on the same subject.

Ah. Well, out of curiosity I went back to see what I wrote about it. And, well, I can't believe I wrote that much.