Damn it LolShould have posted it a minute later, to match the conference time.
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Halo 4 |OT2| TURBO
- Thread starter Tashi
- Start date
lizardwizarding
Neo Member
I don't think so considering all the hours I've put in over the years. Going in by yourself is the least fun. Competitive modes are infuriating otherwise and I personally can't play the more casual playlists without people I know because I'm not there for the gametypes but for the antics that they bring.
Orochinagis
Member
Reach was a painful solo experience against full enemies teams hiding in long range spots to destroy you in your spawning zone not fun at all, randoms vs randoms was fun to force them to play at my level but overall this how online mp works when there is no sort of skill level cap
It hasn't been something to enjoy alone since Halo 3. Halo 3's strict skill matching made it good solo game even online. Reach and Halo 4 are horrible in this regard.
At least, i can't play Halo multiplayer without someone in splitscreen with me, or a party. (This is actually the major reason i haven't played Halo 4 online so much, didn't have friends visiting last year much (schools and stuff) so i didn't pay for Live so i didn't play online)
Depends on what you like. Some of the most fun I've had has been going into FFA and BTB games on my own. Yeah, the team games are sometimes ruined by bad teammates but not always. In Halo 2 you could be a one man wrecking crew and have a ton of fun.
It's a very subjective statement to make that what you think is fun is applicable to all.
Sitting on top of the lift in Sword Base with the ball waiting for people to come up one by one singlehandedly made Reach fun. So many multikills. I just want to know what goes through one's head when they see the fuckin oddball icon at the top of the lift and go up. It's even better when they halfheartedly throw a frag up there before going up. it's like lemmings marching to the sea.
HiredN00bs
Member
Nah man, it was all about locking down Operations.
You have man with the sword on the Atrium entrance on the ledge to the right, you have ball holder taunting at the yellow lift room window, you have two floaters in the open space covering both entrances. Two frags spawn in the middle, teammates respawn inside the room most of the time, and ball holder can kill people if they make the mistake of lunging through the glass.
lizardwizarding
Neo Member
It's obviously a subjective statement, and all I said was it was the least enjoyable aspect of Halo. Can you maybe suggest something you have in mind otherwise? lol
I enjoyed going in by myself in H2 and to an extent in H3 but afterwards it has been unbearable personally. Doing well has nothing to do with my enjoyment factor anymore, it's about a good match.
I agree, but it was always hard to get consistent games of 4v4 randoms in MM. Add teammates that were awful or quitting out and it's not very hard to understand why tons of people have more fun playing with a party.
BlazeBreak
Member
Starcraft 2 is pretty much the only game I can play nowadays and have confidence that a ranked game is going to actually match me with an opponent on/near my skill level. I'd love to see a FPS pull off something as good, but there are roadblocks;
The largest factor is that SC2's ranking system is ultimately based largely on your wins - the level of opponents you defeat and how consistently you do it. The problem is, this is a largely 1v1 experience, not a team game like Halo. And especially when you get into a team environment, part of the difficulty with "properly" assessing ranks is the matter of "intangibles". The game can only measure things like Assists and flag caps (I was gonna use bomb arms as my example, but lol). Halo 4 added a driver assist for flag caps, but when I was playing, found that super wonky. But even then, the game has no way of calculating the benefits of your individual performance based on sacrificing your K/D to lay yourself on the line for objectives, etc.
The other problem is simple matchmaking. SC2 can generally be very picky with its matchmaking because at any given time, there's a healthy enough pool of players, each individually looking for a match within the same pool since there are effectively no "playlists". When you start matching teams and you start narrowing options via playlists, this gets a lot harder to accomplish. Ask anyone on the PC version of Titanfall after Respawn started prioritizing trying to get evenly-skilled matchups. Halo 5 would need a population return that it may not see, to something much higher than 4's anemic population in order to facilitate proper skill-based matchmaking.
But a sort of two-tiered ranking system like SC2 might be able to work either way, but.... now that I think about it.... that's basically what Bungie tried to do with Reach's Arena. Remember how well that was received? Yeah.
Even if you remove people blinded by the nostalgia of H2 and 3's 1-50 system, is a tiered system something that the majority of an FPS crowd can get behind? I'll admit, even though I think 1-50 is far from a perfect system, there was a sort of simplicity to it (perhaps coincidentally like the simplicity that many people don't like that Halo 4 removed from the series).
Ultimately, though, I think a "perfect" ranking system is a losing battle. Never going to happen. Past Halo ranking systems have had their faults. And as I've just gotten into, trying to transcribe something like SC2's ranking system into Halo would have its own faults.
Because of that no-win scenario, I actually think going with something similar to 1-50 might be the best choice simply because it's a proven, well-liked commodity amongst the community. Especially since Reach's Arena was proof that something tier/division-based had extreme difficulty trying to gain traction among the community. But, hey, MOBAs use ranking systems similar to Starcraft, and they're all the rage nowadays. So I'd expect 343 to chase after that in another attempt to "modernize" Halo.
While the real pros didn't even let the ball get out of the center.
Orochinagis
Member
Honestly that how you need rank up by winning, not to just play well and losing and getting a reward for that like most of modern multiplayer games
Like what?
lizardwizarding
Neo Member
Good talk.
BlazeBreak
Member
I think that, based on recent entries, more emphasis does need to be put on actually winning, yeah. My big problem with Reach's progression system is that it encouraged farming. You came out with more credits (and a better K/D) if you spent 20 minutes spawn-farming the enemy team in an objective gametype rather than ending it in 5 minutes and moving on to the next game.
Though another obstacle in designing and operating any system is that, to me, it almost feels like ranked/competitive Halo has been "hijacked" by a vocal minority. To put it in the simplest of terms, certain MLG types. Plenty of people complain about how Halo 4 overcomplicated/randomized the sandbox with perks and ordinance, etc. I find the hardline vision of competitive Halo to be just as bad of an extreme by whittling down the sandbox to basically nothing but skillshot rifles, snipers, and rockets played on a limited map pool with modified player and weapon traits. It can at times feel like those people have a disproportionate sway over what I feel is a larger, but less vocal, crowd of people who want to play the game in some sort of ranked setting where they're actually playing the "full" game and not some narrow-minded vision of it.
To bring back the Starcraft 2 comparison, I think that it's another area that Blizzard manages to succeed in. The game is balanced in a way that the pros aren't playing some bizarro version of the game without certain units and with the traits of others modified. Blizzard, along with help from the community, manages to brainstorm, test, and then implement changes that are able to work with both ladder players and pros. They make intelligent choices that can address a balance issue that's being a bane for casual players without turning the pro meta on its head, as well as the vice-versa of finding a way to handle a problem that only high-level players and pros are having without making unnecessary changes that casual ladder players also have to adjust to.
Halo is admittedly a different sort of game, one that can also cater to more niches via a variety of playlists (I'm not saying that there shouldn't be some sort of MLG-style playlist catering specifically to that crowd). But I think it should still be possible to deliver some sort of a more carefully constructed overall experience.
Ragnarok Flames
Banned
Josh menke is designing the halo 5 rankings so hhopefully its closer to SC2.
This could've been remedied if there were K/D stats for specific playlists. I don't understand why that had never been added. Slayer would show K/D/A and W/L, CTF would show number of caps and W/L, etc.
Though thinking about it now, a stat for number of flag caps/bombs armed would prompt some to kill teammates for the cap. Maybe K/D/A stats would only show for different slayer gametypes. Or if it's all too complicated, just remove showing the stat altogether.
I hope they don't include a lot of things in the ranks, you get an awful imbalance that way, win/loss is the easiest to track and often the best fit for rankings imho.
We shall see Menke, we shall see.
Now what a new ranking system can do is have it so that you need to get past a certain threshold in a match to have the win count for you, like 5 kills maybe?
Gabotron ES
Member
I just uploaded some XML code from my WIP Escalation gametype (Titan gamemode from Battlefield 2142 with a Halo spin).
No actual gametype mechanics code but one of the things which more time takes, creating the language strings (English, Spanish and Mexican for my gametypes).
You can also see the User Defined Options there:
http://pastebin.com/yjk4WeZW
I suggest you to use XML Copy Editor or a similar app to view it.
Edit: I'm aware of the spelling mistakes, this is an old version.
No actual gametype mechanics code but one of the things which more time takes, creating the language strings (English, Spanish and Mexican for my gametypes).
You can also see the User Defined Options there:
http://pastebin.com/yjk4WeZW
I suggest you to use XML Copy Editor or a similar app to view it.
Edit: I'm aware of the spelling mistakes, this is an old version.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
Sorry, I;m confused. XML? What are you doing?
YourExWife
Member
Like he said, creating the language strings for the gametype.
Not sure if he wants us to proof them for him or something though.
Look at Shadowrun's player and team scoring system for some great insight on evaluating overall player performance on a per match basis. Then work that into an overall ranking and progression system.
Shadowrun gives you points for doing pretty much anything that helps your team win rounds, damage done to players, kills, healing your teammates, rezzing your teammates, grabbing flag, running flag (distance and time) and scoring flag. The minutiae in the scoreboard is amazing.
I usually have the highest score in the game, not because I kill the most players, but because I do all the things necessary to win rounds.
The example of betraying to score flag for points is already solved in Shadowrun, you get more money for running the flag to the score zone, than if you just simply score it. If you betrayed a teammate to score it, the betrayal penalty to your score would offset the score itself. Same with healing a teammate, rezzing etc. There is no real kill stealing in the game either, because you get more points for getting the majority of the damage on a player than the player that just landed the killing blow would. So you have a damage stat that is different than kills, so you can see how much someone is actually contributing to killing enemy players, it's like an Assist stat, but more detailed and fair for scoring.
All of this is tied into the in game economy used to purchase abilities and weapons round to round, so it was really well thought out.
Game is just top notch design all around.
Shadowrun gives you points for doing pretty much anything that helps your team win rounds, damage done to players, kills, healing your teammates, rezzing your teammates, grabbing flag, running flag (distance and time) and scoring flag. The minutiae in the scoreboard is amazing.
I usually have the highest score in the game, not because I kill the most players, but because I do all the things necessary to win rounds.
The example of betraying to score flag for points is already solved in Shadowrun, you get more money for running the flag to the score zone, than if you just simply score it. If you betrayed a teammate to score it, the betrayal penalty to your score would offset the score itself. Same with healing a teammate, rezzing etc. There is no real kill stealing in the game either, because you get more points for getting the majority of the damage on a player than the player that just landed the killing blow would. So you have a damage stat that is different than kills, so you can see how much someone is actually contributing to killing enemy players, it's like an Assist stat, but more detailed and fair for scoring.
All of this is tied into the in game economy used to purchase abilities and weapons round to round, so it was really well thought out.
Game is just top notch design all around.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
For Halo 4?, I never realized Megalo modding was this advanced
Gabotron ES
Member
Nah, just wanted to show you guys the proccess behind creating the gametypes.
You can also see the gametype labels there.
The gametypes are wrote into XML form and then encoded with another app which poops xbox readable data.
YourExWife
Member
best description of anything related to programming ever.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
So you can create text stings in the game? So "<player> has picked up the flag and now can't drop it because Halo 4"
Could in theory be put into a CTF game?
The strings tell the game what to do to make the game work?
Gabotron ES
Member
Yes, it'd be possible to do.
Language strings are just basically text segments which are called by the gametype whenever an action requires it, they are also the text you will see when tweaking a gametype by yourself: user changeable option, player traits and their descriptions... things like that.
Code:
<E type="Action" name="ChudMessage">
<Param type="TargetVar" targetType="Player" varRefType="ExplicitPlayerType" dataType="GlobalPlayer0" />
<Param type="SoundIndex">NONE</Param>
<Param type="Tokens2" stringIndex="String83" />
</E>This message will print "String83" into the specified player's HUD (in this case GlobalPlayer0).
The actual coding of the gametype (what the gametype will do and when to do it) is not present in the XML I uploaded, this part probably is the 80% of my XML files and is the most difficult to build.
The problem with win/loss is that one player can't carry an entire team.
There have been many times when I was the best player in the match by quite a way yet my team still lost.
You do have to account /some/ in match things but sometimes if you put too much into what counts on your rank you break the whole system and it just doesn't work right. Which is probably why you had to carry your team, you were mismatched.
Thank you that makes more sense now. Is this what you were working on spawning and despawning things for?
User 73706
Banned
Happy page 150, folks.
Ragnarok Flames
Banned
50ppp master race
HiredN00bs
Member
Hmm, care for a custom?
Yup. Also regarding objective holding, scoring the objective gives you a fuckton more points and money for you and your team than just killing the enemy. There should be a point based aesthetic progression system in Halo 5, with tons of customization. I'd also want some really cool looking armors (please have someone else design them, Halo 4 armors blew) that you need to do some impressive feats to unlock. Armors and other aesthetic things that people can be impressed with when they see you wearing them.
Kind of like the Katana from Halo 3 and Recon.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
TL;DR - The ebb and flow of map design, weapon and vehicle sandbox is what makes Halo great, specifically objective game flow regarding map and spawn design. Get ranked in and put guests out of ranked objective.
Fuck objective glitches, that's not skill at all IMO e.g. flag bouncing on Colossus, flag launching on Valhalla, throwing a neutral bomb out of the map etc. All of which were actively removed from matchmaking at every chance (it just took ages to get done). Fun yes but very short lived and not able to retain population or attract newer players to objective.
I'm all for objective mechanics generally being far more enjoyable in Halo 2/3 but the progression of anti-spawning kill farming and objective holding needs to get to the point where objective centric elements always out score slaying.
Bring back H2/3 assault, bring back 1 flag gametypes, reintroduce ricochet over stockpile or head hunter and have really skill/team based objective back at launch with a quality rank, no guests in ranked and matching system in game.
Things like warthog riding on burial mounds were a fantastic opener for objective rushes e.g. ride on a hog carrying the bomb straight to the arming location or in 1 flag ride the hog then launch yourself straight out the base window while grabbing the flag. The enemies had every chance to stop you but the teamwork, dexterity and timing to pull these sorts of things off was insanely fun and rewards.
How about Zanzibar 1 bomb where you essentially have the usual Bungie rule of 3 to go Froman, straight up the middle or bridge tower? How about choosing a warthog rush with the bomb carrier over an on foot assault? A series of perfect setups each with the attack/defense balanced e.g. laser to counter rushes. The assault carrier had plenty of routes/obstacles to make any stealth or team brute force runs as you wanted. Maps like Headlong 1 flag or 1 bomb again provided the routes, stealth or vehicle/map control to really enable objective.
For me objective has always been more about seriously high quality map design and play testing with sections of the maps appearing as mini stages if you will e.g. Valhalla attack/defend the base then get over the hill as a separate mini stage or zanzibar the base, the wall, the beach and they worked in terms of flow in both directions. I'll take maps akin to H2/3 objective over anything Reach or 4 produced. The saddening part of 4 is the current sandbox and some of the maps would play so fucking great with 1 flag or 1 bomb. Instead we got noob friendly flag waypoints, no dropping and auto-pickup.
Even with those elements how did the design team not want to put in 1 flag? Honestly at a design level ask yourself is it easier for newer players to understand 1 flag or 1 bomb over say 2 flag or neutral flag? To me the answer is obvious even with 4's accessibility design goals, round based objective is so much easier to understand for newer players and helps the random teams play together, they have automatic roles to play where a dynamic game of 2 flag takes skill, timing, practice, awareness and communication irrespective of H2 or 3 or 4's individual mechanics.
When you look at skill and team matching objective is even more lopsided than slayer, to keep players coming back spawn killing and objective holding has to go. I'm all for skills/teams being rewarded and a decent skill gap but it simply can't reward the 1% as a huge % simply don't stick with gametypes or less regular teammates to get good at a playlist. Literally the top teams destroy playlist populations are for the other team it's just not fun being on the other end of the host, the regular team and being spawn killed for 10+ minutes. I'm no slayer expert but I imagine much of those reasons are where MLG has died off population wise as objective has with each iteration of the game.
The game timer has to play into the scoring of objective games far more while reducing spawn killing e.g. imagine getting 3 caps within the first 3 minutes then your entire winning team receives magnified rewards. This should be far in excess of objective holding and spawn killing for the remaining 12 minutes. Imagine a personal best for number of flag steals per game, flag caps per game, time to win in each objective gametype. The more time left the greater the multiplier and it works for bomb, neutral, 1 flag, 2 flag etc. It drives teams and players to want to play the objective, allows for stealth and reduces objective holding.
Just look at any gametype in Halo that provided rewards for rank or progression systems, the masses and especially the hardcore dedicated flocked to it. How many farmed XP in Firefight in Reach? How many boosted ranked games in 3? My point is make objective something players and teams want to accomplish and quickly.
K/D should have a reward in objective, slaying is still important but it has to take second place with regard to scoring and objective mechanics.
Many of the ideas in Halo 4 objective are nice, the idea of scoring and other medals are solid ideas and help promote this for objective e.g. flag assist, flag defence, driving a flag carrier home etc. Provide more of these sorts of key elements and reduce the noob friendly crap to really deliver kick arse objective games please.
Many of the glitch or unintended elements of previous games should become newer mechanics e.g. flag window passing on isolation or flag passing on sidewinder or flag bouncing on colossus. The point is these mechanics are what the design teams should progress forward and enable for all players. I'd prefer to see that sort of resource investment over an attempt to make objective more accessible, it also points back to all Halo really needs is high quality map design, weapons and vehicles that enables gameplay.
Clans + in game rank + objective CE + H2/H3 + key scoring elements from H4 + H4 gunplay/movement + high quality objective based maps - H4 watered down objective = hella good, hella fun and rewarding as hell for new players or regular veteran teams.
Fuck objective glitches, that's not skill at all IMO e.g. flag bouncing on Colossus, flag launching on Valhalla, throwing a neutral bomb out of the map etc. All of which were actively removed from matchmaking at every chance (it just took ages to get done). Fun yes but very short lived and not able to retain population or attract newer players to objective.
I'm all for objective mechanics generally being far more enjoyable in Halo 2/3 but the progression of anti-spawning kill farming and objective holding needs to get to the point where objective centric elements always out score slaying.
Bring back H2/3 assault, bring back 1 flag gametypes, reintroduce ricochet over stockpile or head hunter and have really skill/team based objective back at launch with a quality rank, no guests in ranked and matching system in game.
Things like warthog riding on burial mounds were a fantastic opener for objective rushes e.g. ride on a hog carrying the bomb straight to the arming location or in 1 flag ride the hog then launch yourself straight out the base window while grabbing the flag. The enemies had every chance to stop you but the teamwork, dexterity and timing to pull these sorts of things off was insanely fun and rewards.
How about Zanzibar 1 bomb where you essentially have the usual Bungie rule of 3 to go Froman, straight up the middle or bridge tower? How about choosing a warthog rush with the bomb carrier over an on foot assault? A series of perfect setups each with the attack/defense balanced e.g. laser to counter rushes. The assault carrier had plenty of routes/obstacles to make any stealth or team brute force runs as you wanted. Maps like Headlong 1 flag or 1 bomb again provided the routes, stealth or vehicle/map control to really enable objective.
For me objective has always been more about seriously high quality map design and play testing with sections of the maps appearing as mini stages if you will e.g. Valhalla attack/defend the base then get over the hill as a separate mini stage or zanzibar the base, the wall, the beach and they worked in terms of flow in both directions. I'll take maps akin to H2/3 objective over anything Reach or 4 produced. The saddening part of 4 is the current sandbox and some of the maps would play so fucking great with 1 flag or 1 bomb. Instead we got noob friendly flag waypoints, no dropping and auto-pickup.
Even with those elements how did the design team not want to put in 1 flag? Honestly at a design level ask yourself is it easier for newer players to understand 1 flag or 1 bomb over say 2 flag or neutral flag? To me the answer is obvious even with 4's accessibility design goals, round based objective is so much easier to understand for newer players and helps the random teams play together, they have automatic roles to play where a dynamic game of 2 flag takes skill, timing, practice, awareness and communication irrespective of H2 or 3 or 4's individual mechanics.
When you look at skill and team matching objective is even more lopsided than slayer, to keep players coming back spawn killing and objective holding has to go. I'm all for skills/teams being rewarded and a decent skill gap but it simply can't reward the 1% as a huge % simply don't stick with gametypes or less regular teammates to get good at a playlist. Literally the top teams destroy playlist populations are for the other team it's just not fun being on the other end of the host, the regular team and being spawn killed for 10+ minutes. I'm no slayer expert but I imagine much of those reasons are where MLG has died off population wise as objective has with each iteration of the game.
The game timer has to play into the scoring of objective games far more while reducing spawn killing e.g. imagine getting 3 caps within the first 3 minutes then your entire winning team receives magnified rewards. This should be far in excess of objective holding and spawn killing for the remaining 12 minutes. Imagine a personal best for number of flag steals per game, flag caps per game, time to win in each objective gametype. The more time left the greater the multiplier and it works for bomb, neutral, 1 flag, 2 flag etc. It drives teams and players to want to play the objective, allows for stealth and reduces objective holding.
Just look at any gametype in Halo that provided rewards for rank or progression systems, the masses and especially the hardcore dedicated flocked to it. How many farmed XP in Firefight in Reach? How many boosted ranked games in 3? My point is make objective something players and teams want to accomplish and quickly.
K/D should have a reward in objective, slaying is still important but it has to take second place with regard to scoring and objective mechanics.
Many of the ideas in Halo 4 objective are nice, the idea of scoring and other medals are solid ideas and help promote this for objective e.g. flag assist, flag defence, driving a flag carrier home etc. Provide more of these sorts of key elements and reduce the noob friendly crap to really deliver kick arse objective games please.
Many of the glitch or unintended elements of previous games should become newer mechanics e.g. flag window passing on isolation or flag passing on sidewinder or flag bouncing on colossus. The point is these mechanics are what the design teams should progress forward and enable for all players. I'd prefer to see that sort of resource investment over an attempt to make objective more accessible, it also points back to all Halo really needs is high quality map design, weapons and vehicles that enables gameplay.
Clans + in game rank + objective CE + H2/H3 + key scoring elements from H4 + H4 gunplay/movement + high quality objective based maps - H4 watered down objective = hella good, hella fun and rewarding as hell for new players or regular veteran teams.
User 73706
Banned
Do you guys think the Scorpion's main cannon might work if it was kind of like the Railgun on steroids? Like, Railgun meets Combat Evolved Shotgun. I was thinking it might be a little more balanced but still frightening if you needed a direct hit on someone to kill them with the slug, but the blast radius was still huge otherwise. Kinda like how certain explosives in Worms will leave semi-persistent flames after, the main blast could have substantial knockback but (relatively) minimal damage, with some lingering fire that could strip shields in addition. On the flip side, the Scorpion could prove itself to be a definitive AA threat because the flames would completely envelop aircraft and eat away at it in a relatively short period of time.
The point I'm making from a gameplay perspective is that the tank's main cannon could be used to thin up the weaker numbers and shields, and then you could have your gunner use the machine gun to actually score kills.
The point I'm making from a gameplay perspective is that the tank's main cannon could be used to thin up the weaker numbers and shields, and then you could have your gunner use the machine gun to actually score kills.
It's been close to a year since Spartan Assault came out, so idgaf about the spoilers I'm about to drop. Did 343i seriously throw in a Death Star? The cutscene I just watched pretty much said, "That's no moon. That's a space station[that fires a bunch of green lasers that meet at a point in space which coalesce and destroys the planet they are pointed at]."
hahaha I don't have Gold, otherwise I still would have said no. Reach makes me weep
hahaha I don't have Gold, otherwise I still would have said no. Reach makes me weep
Poker Face
Member
I agree.
Why not just have a Cobra instead of the Scorpion?
User 73706
Banned
What faction was it manufactured by, presumably Forerunner?
Dongs Macabre
aka Daedalos42
Yeah, I would prefer if they did this with the Scorpion. Right now it pretty much beats the Wraith in every aspect.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
One thing worth noting is the dedis are going to change many elements such as gunplay, hit detection, melee and more. I like H4's feel to its guns and movement, far better than Halo 3 or Reach (I play those semi-regularly still). I really want to see other elements sped up e.g. Halo 2 style weapon switching or 4's dexterity always on for everyone.
While I'm at it, remove the plasma pistol and bolt shot from loadouts but return weak points to vehicles e.g. sniping the tank driver door cover, ghost fuel tank etc. Those elements don't require a loadout but provide skill gap, reward teamwork and vehicle/map control but allow a single player to fight back on foot still.