blue_phazon
Member
This is depressing. I hope Halo can be great again
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Halo 5: Guardians |OT5| Is HaloGAF irrelevant now?
- Thread starter sir_dany12
- Start date
This is depressing. I hope Halo can be great again
What's funny to me is that the vast majority of the franchises on this list we're around when H3 was king... but new competition is what did Halo in, not the quality of the Halo offering...
Edit : /s
The methodology is useless for the intended goal (gauging the value of Backward Compatibility) but a sample of 930k users is a valid way to approximate how popular titles are in relation to each other as a function of time spent playing.
VincentMatts
Member
I dont agree. I think the offerings are exactly why it fell. Sure, competition doesn't help it but a good game should be a good game. BF1 has no problems with competition, Overwatch either etc.
The quality of the overall games has absolutely demisihed. From the quality of the SP, to the MP maps, missing gametypes, etc. halo has had a lot of consistent problems since Bungie left.
I agree with you, I forgot my /s
Samurai G0SU
Member
but the next slide had it kinda high on the being one of the most popular titles right? Like a lot of people just log in and play 1 game. or something like that
VincentMatts
Member
Thats exactly what i do. Get my win REQS in arena, then in warzone and im out.
I got that part, I was just trying to figure out how that was related to Halo.
(Also, now whenever I hear Orinoco Flow I think of the Prodigy mashup and not the original.)
Well, yeah, that actually doesn't bode well for halo's ability to keep people interested.
What the study considers an "owner" is just any gamertags that logged into the game at least once. So halo is a top 20 most popular game in terms of "ownership"
For example, the difference between the number of gamertags that have played halo is roughly the same as the number that have played Battlefield 1, yet Battlefield has 5 times more playtime.
So people like hitting and quitting halo... and I bet the # of gamertags (which the report calls owners) is inflated by the prevelance of smurfing in H5.
VincentMatts
Member
Yeah but as ive said before, division is a game that rewards players a lot. Just like destiny. Personally i think the game is crap after youve finished the campaign but theres something to be said about being rewarded all the time. Its satisfying and this game does that just like destiny. When a bad game like division is above a great MP like Halo5, theres serious problems.
I personally believe halo really needs to be reinvented/rebooted. They cant keep shooting out the same stuff all the time and expect better results. Doing the same things and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Rebooting Halo would be terrible for this franchise. You're also assuming a rebooted Halo would be better than what we have now. If you don't agree with 343's decisions now, what gives you the confidence that a reboot would improve things?
I'm not quite sure what you're looking for, Vincent, but it probably isn't Halo lol.
I'm not quite sure what you're looking for, Vincent, but it probably isn't Halo lol.
VincentMatts
Member
No i agree, i dont think 343 will deliver even on the reboot. if it were me, id completely revamp that studio starting from the top.
I think what i want are Bungie Halo games. Good or bad, they were practically always more satisfying.
This is depressing. I hope Halo can be great again
But they added ADS and Sprint! It is modern now and no longer old fashioned. If you want Halo 2 go play Halo 2.
Halo 5 launched with little content. It had 3 warzone maps, no BTB, no campaign theatre, scoring or even checkpoints. No weekly commendations or any reason to replay campaign levels or anything. They had a few ranked playlists, no social modes. No file share, nothing. By the time they added anything, no one stuck around.
You know how much I love Halo. But it's dead jim. Halo 6 will come and go just like Halo 4 and Halo 5 did. The fact is, Xbox One owners would play like 7 different shooters over Halo says it all.
Lol, can you please tell me how they have done the same things over and over again? Halo: Reach, Halo 4 and now Halo 5. They play nothing like each other. From campaign to multiplayer. You could call each game something other than Halo and it would work. They are just arena shooters, that is their one unifying feature.
Otherwise, not since CE to Halo 3 have we had the same Halo. In Reach we were jetpacking and armor locking, in Halo 4 we were seeing through walls and instant respawning or having loadouts and personal ordnance. In H5 we are ground pounding, spartan charging etc. None of the gameplay is similar beyond you shoot things.
VincentMatts
Member
I mean not changing halos 'format'. Regular campaigns with no reason to ever replay more than once, multiplayer modes like warzone that dont promote 'grinding' to unlock stuff. Essentially, Halo has evolved in some features but hasnt given people a reason to keep grinding at it. What will you grind in halo5? Your rank lol? Most people i play with dont care about their ranks and when you do 'level' up, you get a pack with nothing but 200 points and maybe an XP boost.
Make me grind for my warzone guns through challenges, dont give them to me through a random REQ pack drop. That doesnt keep people playing. Games now a days need to give you reasons to grind through them or people will leave. And Halo doesnt do it. Its as simple as that.
edit: hell most people in here were grinding warzone to get that halo armor. People want challenges. Thats what keeps people coming back now a days.
What exactly do you mean by reinventing/rebooting. Starting the entire IP from scratch? Sounds like it would run the risk of alienating the remaining base AND not appealing to new gamers.
It sounds like the sort of thinking that gave us H4.
Unless by reboot you mean something along the lines of what Ryan Payton (they guy who got booted as H4s creative director, and somehow feels that h4 felt too much like a sequel to H3) said, in the recent behind the scenes.
Only I wouldn't just remake it. It would be an experience that championed everything Bungie did well, while also extracting some of the untapped potential Bungie left on the cutting room floor. Then I'd throw some of 343's improvements on top of it all. The Master Chiefs campaign would remain mostly untouched, but I would also add several other perspectives from the conflict on the ring. I'd turn the exploration angle up to 10, and even incorporate the exotic wildlife into the battlefield (as has often been hinted at in behind the scenes footage). I'd probably start the game from Chief's perspective on Reach, and end it as he and Blue Team arrive at earth Prior to the events of Halo2.
It would have all today's checkboxes (Warzone, custom browser, a addictive progression system, H5 forge) and all of yesterday's as well (classic gamemodes, split-screen, LAN support, niche weapon balance, clean art direction)
Oh and BTB magnum starts.
It would give the team a chance to really learn what makes Halo great, and also provide an opportunity to actually build up some of the character that are in 343i's timeline- since they didn't bother to do it in game.
VincentMatts
Member
I mean reboot by starting over the story from scratch. Go back to halo CE times, maybe even reach times and start over from the beginning.
I could get with that so long as they didn't get to liberal with the narrative. Mostly, I'd want it to be faithful, but they could take advantage of opportunities to fill in any blanks.
I also wouldn't bother retelling the whole story. I'd probably just do one game that takes place between Reach and 2, and then get back up to speed with H6.
VincentMatts
Member
Cause it worked out terribly for batman begins right?
A reboot done right would absolutely work. It would bring back all of the elements that made the franchise popular to begin with, not to mention you could relive most of the great moments again, only differently. Maybe even with new twists.
You do it right and it would absolutely work, to me its a guarantee. But it has to be done right which is something 343 dont exactly inspire confidence in.
A movie franchise is different. There is too much established lore. You would lose another subset of fans for the chance of maybe gaining new ones.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Batman Begins is sooo damn good, arguably the best in that franchise. TDK was great too, while TDKR was g a r b a g e . My inner superhero just had to share that lol.
I'd much rather they revisit Reach in some way. There's so much potential in portraying the Spartan-II program and everything leading up to Halo CE. Sure, some of those stories are told in books and other media, but we all know interactivity in gaming specifically allows you to experience stories unlike any other medium.
Definitely going back and exploring those stories makes more sense than changing the canon.
VincentMatts
Member
The problem with 343 from my perspective is they dont seem to know what to change and what not to change.
To me, the music should have never changed in 4 from previous halos, and yet it was. The MP should have never changed from 3 to 4 so drastically, and yet it was. The areas and visuals should have remained familiar, not completely revamped to make it look like a mass effect game.
If the community complained its because 343 mishandled a lot of the franchise in all of their games so far. I would do like Disney did for star wars Ep7. I would make it look familiar, sound familiar, play out familiarly but id change it just enough for it to be fresh.
Its not as complicated as they make it out to be. They overthink it way too much.
edit: if i had my own team and they gave me carte blanche with infinite money, i would totally fucking do it and all of you would play it. I promise you.
This is depressing. I hope Halo can be great again
It's not gonna change unless there will be changes in 343 direction.
I have never ever in 15 years stopped playing Halo and literally deleted because of fucking frustration till Halo 5 came along.
mhi
Member
To be fair to 343, (according to that article) Bungie wanted to be done with the franchise after H2 so Microsoft should have never forced them to make more. H3 I'd get from a business angle but to tack on Reach was too much. I know it takes a while to put a studio together but they should have delayed Reach and gave the next game to 343.
User 73706
Banned
This is something I'm implementing in my game, but I think it might be applicable as a Banshee counter as well: it'd be neat if EMP effects worked on a scale in specific situations (maybe just aircraft?), rather than a binary. That is, let's say you pelt a Banshee with uncharged Plasma Pistol shots or something else EMP-capable - this fills up an "EMP gauge" which slowly reduces the Banshee's movement speed and also slows down its cooldowns. So, at 0% EMP, the banshee bomb takes 4 seconds to recharge, while at 50% EMP it takes 6 seconds, and so on. =
I'd imagine it'd be (relatively) easy to provide the illusion of the Banshee actually providing thrust, as well - so as the Banshee gets more and more EMP'd, it becomes harder and harder to keep it in the air as nothing's "pushing" it up. At 100% EMP, it produces the usual temporarily-disabled effect and "flushes" back to 0% once it recovers. This may also necessitate more than the Plasma Pistol being able to dish out EMP damage, though - I haven't played since like January 2016 so I'm not sure what can do it at this point, but giving it to something like the Sentinel Beam or the Hydra would make the sandbox incrementally more punishing towards lax Banshee pilots, and without Halo 4-esque loadouts you don't have to worry about "EMP overinflation" as people spawn in with Plasma Pistols and completely destroy any semblance of vehicle combat.
I'd imagine it'd be (relatively) easy to provide the illusion of the Banshee actually providing thrust, as well - so as the Banshee gets more and more EMP'd, it becomes harder and harder to keep it in the air as nothing's "pushing" it up. At 100% EMP, it produces the usual temporarily-disabled effect and "flushes" back to 0% once it recovers. This may also necessitate more than the Plasma Pistol being able to dish out EMP damage, though - I haven't played since like January 2016 so I'm not sure what can do it at this point, but giving it to something like the Sentinel Beam or the Hydra would make the sandbox incrementally more punishing towards lax Banshee pilots, and without Halo 4-esque loadouts you don't have to worry about "EMP overinflation" as people spawn in with Plasma Pistols and completely destroy any semblance of vehicle combat.
I think the biggest obstacle with a system like that is it'd be pretty opaque insofar as player discovery. People understand the EMP blast. Trying to judge how much you've done to a Banshee to reach a threshold seems like it'd be a nightmare.
User 73706
Banned
That's understandable, and while I'm not a huge fan of Destiny-style enemy health bars, I think something that obtuse might warrant a HUD-based "EMP meter" that pops up if the Banshee has taken any relevant damage.
The problem with 343 from my perspective is they dont seem to know what to change and what not to change.
To me, the music should have never changed in 4 from previous halos, and yet it was. The MP should have never changed from 3 to 4 so drastically, and yet it was. The areas and visuals should have remained familiar, not completely revamped to make it look like a mass effect game.
If the community complained its because 343 mishandled a lot of the franchise in all of their games so far. I would do like Disney did for star wars Ep7. I would make it look familiar, sound familiar, play out familiarly but id change it just enough for it to be fresh.
Its not as complicated as they make it out to be. They overthink it way too much.
edit: if i had my own team and they gave me carte blanche with infinite money, i would totally fucking to it and all of you would play it. I promise you.
343 doesn't know what they're doing. Hell, they hired people that hated Halo to make it better. All they had to do was look at what Bungie did and just improve what was lacking, but no...they hate everything about Bungie and had to change everything for the worse.
If they weren't being protected by Microsoft, the studio what have been shuttered after MCC.
Halo 6 has to get rid of sprint, camber, thrust, ground pound, hovering, and just go back to being Halo. Also, no more fucking industrial maps - how about some interesting worlds?
Deputy Moonman
Member
lol that's one take. I don't think 343 hates everything that Bungie has done in the past, but they are trying to follow their own vision for Halo. About the only thing I agree with in your post is that industrial maps need to take a back seat for a while, which is so true lol.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
Once they update the game it won't work for them.
There's a patch that's going to fix that?
Gnome Scat
Member
This is depressing. I hope Halo can be great again
Good for BF1, almost beat out all three of those CoDs combined. Also R6 Siege is doing better than expected. Shame about Halo, though.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
How do you tell exactly? rate of fire or dying too quickly? Found a new Aussie mate last night in skirmish, played a few games together and got wrecked on an expanded connection against yanks with smurf accounts. We both talked about modded controllers as we died in what seemed like 3 shots, chalked it up to poor connection but now I wonder if it wasn't a modded controller as well.
FFS the guy's tag was: PiRaTa MoDzZ
I sent this message to Frankie and Tashi.
"These people are using modded controllers.
InAxtxve is the modder and he is searching with KinG prototypeD
http://xboxclips.com/Hacked/44f754df-5353-4b66-9ef5-267284a23e7b
http://xboxclips.com/Hacked/e2e8f8c8-8550-480a-946a-696b2d697ae3
And this is the match a few days ago with the same guy but with a different gamertag. I saw his friends list.
ActaVisions is the modder here
http://xboxclips.com/Hacked/b0d18027-c81a-4e01-a33f-f8b987af2a86
http://xboxclips.com/Hacked/332f2f1a-5901-4c67-8cc0-16b06b93f0fa
It's so frustrating and we keep matching them. "
Fahzgoolin
Banned
I just had the best night of Halo 5 in a year. Server performance was great. I was four shotting people with a BR and I was thinking something was wrong cuz I'm use to needing 6-7 shots. We won all of our games tonight in 2 hours of back to back games. Hope this becomes the norm.
Yeah, that's what I remember reading on WayPoint I think.
Yeah, that's what I remember reading on WayPoint I think.
Munch Poke
Member
Just had Halo Reach music play in my shuffle this morning. Those feels man. I miss that game, I don't think I'll ever put as much time into any one game as I did Reach.
I miss my Halo grind.
I miss my Halo grind.
User 73706
Banned
lmao
This might be true, but the problem with 343s approach, from the very beginning, is that they didn't honor the fact that they were stewards for a franchise that already had 10s of millions of fans.
They came in with the audacity to make halo "their own", with very little consideration for the players- who also feel like we have some ownership of this thing too.
Halo 4 quite literally deconstructed EVERYTHING about halo's core gameplay, and then peiced together something that was barely recognizable. Solid game, but there 'vision' for Halo was nothing like what fans wanted.
Halo 5 has many of those same issues. Yes, they've restored many of the beloved principles established by Bungie, but in the game that shipped, many were still absent and not replaced by something equal or better.
Taking over a franchise must be a daunting task. But if you are so interested in artistic liberty and installing your own vision that you can't respect the foundation of the title you are taking over or the emotional attachment existing fans have to all of its defining characteristics, I don't understand why you'd even want the job. Why not just make a game that isn't Halo?
Deputy Moonman
Member
I'd say yes and no. I've been a little jaded with each new Halo game. Halo 2 was a massive departure from Combat Evolved, but I grew to love it. Then Halo 3 felt like a huge departure from Halo 2. I didn't grow to love Halo 3, but I was able to tolerate the things I didn't like about the game and still enjoy playing. Halo 4 was definitely way out in left field as far as traditional halo is concerned, but to me it feels like Bungie really laid the foundation for 4's dramatic departure thanks to Reach. All those armor abilities ugh... So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't feel like what 343 did was any crazier than some of the previous changes made to Halo. You're right that Halo 5 is not exactly what a lot of fans wanted, including myself. Here's hoping 343 fine-tunes Halo 6 to be even better.
Thats the thing, I'm not against 'departures'. Halo 2 was certainly a big shift from CE, and Halo 3 to a lesser extent from 2. And Reach - wow what a difference.
But with each transition, Bungie was sure to install TONS of familiarity into each experience, which for most people made deviations feel like they were additive to the foundation, rather than replacements.
At first glance, it's easy to day that Reach laid the foundation to 4 (i've said it myself), but its really hard to support that theory after digging a bit deeper.
After absorbing the feedback regarding the asymmetric starts and armor abilities of Reach, is the next logical step to: include more disruptively asymmetric starts and even more offensive armor abilities while also removing descope, awarding random powerweapons for kills rather static ones for map control, nuking CTF, gimping forge and theater, removing skill based ranking, removing all traces of the previously established visual design language, removing firefight and crafting a strictly linear campaign experience? It doesn't add up. Mind you, 343 responded to complaints about reach in its title updates.
343i was established in 2007, the same year H3 shipped and Bungie started working on Reach, which shipped in 2010. Development of H4 began in 2009 and it was released in 2012. I can't imagine that an unfinished game would have had so much influence on H4, or that they could have possibly decided to go so far beyond what even reach was doing if they hadn't decided early on that distancing themselves from Halo was a goal.
In 2009, They headhunted a creative director who
You can't blame that on Reach.Ryan Payton said:
Hindsight is 20/20 but had 343 cane in with this approach...
Ryan Payton said:
...We'd be having a much more cheerful conversation right now.
