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Halo 5: Guardians |OT5| Is HaloGAF irrelevant now?

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
I got the patch yesterday but playlists were unchanged. Is team arena getting updated as the "control" today?
 

wwm0nkey

Member
3 iterations of Halo in the making. Vehicles suck in Halo 5, major weakness of the sandbox. Everything but the Banshee and Gauss are death traps that I refuse to get into.

Vehicles were so good in Halo 2 and 3...Reach-5 just made me hate ever getting into them.

Just have an anti-vehicle weapons (H2 Rocket Launcher, Mines, Missle Pod, Splazer) so that ground forces can take them out in a few blows rather than just spraying them to death, make bullet spray and explosions slowdown/flip vehicles and tie vehicle health back to player health.

Yeah it's not as realistic but holy shit is it a lot more fun.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Vehicles were so good in Halo 2 and 3...Reach-5 just made me hate ever getting into them.

Just have an anti-vehicle weapons (H2 Rocket Launcher, Mines, Missle Pod, Splazer) so that ground forces can take them out in a few blows rather than just spraying them to death, make bullet spray and explosions slowdown/flip vehicles and tie vehicle health back to player health.

Yeah it's not as realistic but holy shit is it a lot more fun.

Eh, personally whenever I go back to H3 and earlier I remember why Bungie decided to make changes. Getting stomped with no recourse to do anything because you didn't have the right weapon sucked.

The move from health being tied to your personal health gauge, of course, was stupid. Even if people were just as lethal with vehicles as they were in the before time, you'll always feel weaker because your death feels essentially random.
 

Karl2177

Member
Eh, personally whenever I go back to H3 and earlier I remember why Bungie decided to make changes. Getting stomped with no recourse to do anything because you didn't have the right weapon sucked.

The move from health being tied to your personal health gauge, of course, was stupid. Even if people were just as lethal with vehicles as they were in the before time, you'll always feel weaker because your death feels essentially random.
It's fine in CE though because there's a UI element saying what the health of the vehicle is. At the same time, people also tended to drop Ghosts and Banshees when their health hit yellow.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
It's fine in CE though because there's a UI element saying what the health of the vehicle is. At the same time, people also tended to drop Ghosts and Banshees when their health hit yellow.

Even in CE though you're basically left with a question of when exactly that Ghost would blow, and so like you say people would bail early and often. Tying it to your health gauge makes it so much easier because there is absolutely no doubt when it will finally blow up once it's been damaged to a certain point.
 

Cranster

Banned
Vehicles in Halo 1's multiplayer were actually indestructible. In the campaign the Ghost and Banshee were the only destructible vehicles.
 
It's fine in CE though because there's a UI element saying what the health of the vehicle is. At the same time, people also tended to drop Ghosts and Banshees when their health hit yellow.

Agreed. It needs to be waaaay more visible, but I like having vehicle health be its own thing.

Also agree with monkey that they need to go back to being a lot less susceptible to small arms fire.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Eh, personally whenever I go back to H3 and earlier I remember why Bungie decided to make changes. Getting stomped with no recourse to do anything because you didn't have the right weapon sucked.

The move from health being tied to your personal health gauge, of course, was stupid. Even if people were just as lethal with vehicles as they were in the before time, you'll always feel weaker because your death feels essentially random.

That's why I want default weapons to provide a way to slow the vehicles down. They should also have vehicle damage effect the vehicle handling like they said it would in Halo 2 during the E3 previews. Also explosions really don't flip vehicles anymore and it still makes me upset, I want to see those babies fly from a well placed frag.

The current system just makes vehicles un-fun and there were ways to improve the Halo 2/3 system without doing what they did in Reach - 5
 

jem0208

Member
One thing I quite like with 5 is the specific vehicle weak points (not sure if previous titles had this).

I think you could utilize those to make vehicles a bit more interesting. Basically small arms fire against armoured areas does fuck all but you can do some damage to vehicles if you hit their weak points.
 

Juan

Member
Apart from the fact Reach vehicles were bouncing like hell, I thought they were a good compromise, even if they were easy to destroy thanks to the DMR and if you had a Sniper rifle.

I always thought vehicles in Halo 3 were really OP if you didn't had a weapon on the map to destroy them, like the Spartan Laser or the Missile launcher Pad, you couldn't do a lot to stop them.

Edit: So, are we still talking about 343 putting a human skull and teeth on everything Forerunner related?

1504712338-2060f3m.jpg
 
Vehicles were so good in Halo 2 and 3...Reach-5 just made me hate ever getting into them.

Just have an anti-vehicle weapons (H2 Rocket Launcher, Mines, Missle Pod, Splazer) so that ground forces can take them out in a few blows rather than just spraying them to death, make bullet spray and explosions slowdown/flip vehicles and tie vehicle health back to player health.

Yeah it's not as realistic but holy shit is it a lot more fun.
Small arms fire worked even in Halo 2. SMGs tore apart banshees if they got close.
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
Apart from the fact Reach vehicles were bouncing like hell, I thought they were a good compromise, even if they were easy to destroy thanks to the DMR and if you had a Sniper rifle.

I always thought vehicles in Halo 3 were really OP if you didn't had a weapon on the map to destroy them, like the Spartan Laser or the Missile launcher Pad, you couldn't do a lot to stop them.

Edit: So, are we still talking about 343 putting a human skull and teeth on everything Forerunner related?

i think halo 3's vehicles, only a bit more susceptible to being destroyed by stickies and well placed nades, would be absolutely perfect
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Small arms fire worked even in Halo 2. SMGs tore apart banshees if they got close.

Yup, BR didn't do much but an SMG? Yeah that would mess it up

Again anything is better than these glass vehicles we currently have. Only one I will call a glass cannon is the Banshee, others are just un-fun and don't last very long
 
i just got flashbacks to the Halo 3 beta warthog where it was a tank that could move fast

Even in the final game it was pretty ridiculous sometimes. Standoff was either a total blast or soul destroying, depending on whether your team got the laser (and therefore had an invincible hog).
 

jem0208

Member
Team arena is updated.


Initial impressions based on the very first game:

BR starts are painful. I really hope they've nailed the tuning for it because it's just not that fun in the current state. Way too much power at long range and it's too easy to use.

Gunfighter mag is awesome though.
 

Welfare

Member

Early 2018 is still very far away.

I still think Halo 6 will be revealed in Spring 2018 and be given the same type of marketing cycle as CoD, Destiny, and Battlefield. We will have a beta in August/September then an October release.

Don't see any reason for why Halo 6 is 2019, the way Halo 5 has been treated since late 2016, all hands have been on Halo 6 for awhile. 343 doesn't need a 4 year cycle and Halo will never not be a fall release, so no early 2019.
 

Juan

Member
I think Halo 6 will be release for 2019. The thing, I've been chatting with some members of 343 Industries, mostly engineers and artists, and they all told me they are globally retooling all their process, workflow, tools and assets.

This kind of thing usually happen during pre-production or on the go, but I don't 343 would task the risk of building their engine and tools while developing the game, they know it can be a very messy way of working leading to crunch and failure (Bungie' Halo 2 process is a good example).

Plus, some key members left the staff last year, and some employees really think the tools they used weren't up to date and were slowing the studios (plus management issues apparently).

I really think they took a year to rework a lot of thing, apart from the game itself, and they took a different schedule from what we used to have with Halo.

I believe we will have a beta during 2018, a small Halo for end of 2018 and Halo 6 in 2019.

Oh, and please 343, if we ever get the Floods back on the main FPS Halo game, instead of having a DOOM like approach, can we get something like this? That would be incredible!
 

Trup1aya

Member
Vehicles:

Why not just show vehicle health with a health bar in the HUD? Just like warzone bosses - except only show it when targeting

I think vehicles work much better when vehicle health is separate from player health and they are strong against small arms fire.

Taking out vehicles should be about killing the driver, flipping it with a grenade, or boarding it. You can't really flip a banshee, but they could let shots to the wing effect the flight And make collisions actually cause damage again.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Oh strange! Who could have predicted!

At least it's not "move a tree, spend a day rebuilding the level" Destiny-era Bungie! :)

(I don't see any real argument for technical limitations on sustain, it just seems painfully obvious 343 doesn't have enough dedicated people working on it.)
 
At least it's not "move a tree, spend a day rebuilding the level" Destiny-era Bungie! :)

(I don't see any real argument for technical limitations on sustain, it just seems painfully obvious 343 doesn't have enough dedicated people working on it.)

I dunno, my impression is that it's a difficult technical process to, for example, deploy a player-made forge map to matchmaking, which directly impacts sustain. That might be outdated, but I doubt it.
 
Vehicles:

Why not just show vehicle health with a health bar in the HUD? Just like warzone bosses - except only show it when targeting

I think vehicles work much better when vehicle health is separate from player health and they are strong against small arms fire.

Taking out vehicles should be about killing the driver, flipping it with a grenade, or boarding it. You can't really flip a banshee, but they could let shots to the wing effect the flight And make collisions actually cause damage again.

Banshees need a strong a strong anti-air weapon in the sandbox if they don't want to give 'em a massive smack with the nerfhammer. I've always wanted a dedicated air superiority vehicle too, but even Warzone is a little too small for that.
 

FyreWulff

Member
oooo! I get to make a gamedev philosophy post!

No matter how good your tools are (and developers almost always view their internal tools as not perfect), eventually the longer a game is out, the less you can change re: sustain and the more inertia buildup it takes to get an update out.

The first part of a game's release and deployment is the time to make lots of changes and try things. 2 years in, most of your playerbase has decided if they're gonna continue playing your game or not, and they're more sensitive to even small changes than at launch. This is why you generally see Halo (and other games) introduce all the major changes or new playlists in year 1, and after that is more of a refinement sustain, as the game solidifies into whatever it's gonna be into the future.

For example, changing a gun within the first 6 months significantly will be just seen as opening window churn, and everyone will re-adapt as they haven't spent too much time. You can't significantly change a gun 2 years after launch, because your playerbase is naturally a little more hardcore than what you had at launch (they're still playing your game, after all) and will have spent lots of time investing into that sandbox. If you change it in a certain way at that point you not only risk losing a chunk of your base for no real reason, but it's near impossible to pull off an update like that because changing a sandbox to that degree requires a lot of testing, and your institutional internal momentum and knowledge (it's a thing, but probably not called by that name by everyone) is gone because everyone's on the new project with it's new tech and way of doing things.

In a way, this is why you see developers 'save' big changes for a sequel. They're not intentionally holding them back, but wide sweeping changes are easier to pull off when everyone's in the engine room instead of the two mechanics left doing maintenance.

As much as I love legacy sustain, as the game's sustain tail gets longer, the less you can do even with the best tools. People move on, the existing playerbase calcifies in what they want out of it, tech sometimes straight up stops working or can't even be touched because nobody can get it to update without exploding it or hardware or the middle servers are attached with gum and gluesticks and the last person that knew how to work on it either got promoted or is working somewhere else now.
 

Trup1aya

Member
Banshees need a strong a strong anti-air weapon in the sandbox if they don't want to give 'em a massive smack with the nerfhammer. I've always wanted a dedicated air superiority vehicle too, but even Warzone is a little too small for that.

My thing is i feel like players should ALWAYS be able to defend themselves offspawn against any vehicle. I think of vehicles as big powerweapons.

And by defend i dont mean neccisarily take someone out - but i mean disrupt them enough to possibly get away, just like how you can ward off a sniper by descoping him with pistol shots.

Having to go up against a banshee with just a pistol SHOULD be a long shot, but having the right weapon shouldn't be the only way to make it out alive.

Let me throw off his plasma shots and steering by hitting his wing tips. Let me shoot the fuel rod shots out of the sky - that kind of thing.

anytime you tie defense to a weapon that has to be picked up, you are inviting snowballing. If a team gets a hold of both, its a guarunteed slaughter from that point on. Especially when soloqing.
 
At least it's not "move a tree, spend a day rebuilding the level" Destiny-era Bungie! :)

(I don't see any real argument for technical limitations on sustain, it just seems painfully obvious 343 doesn't have enough dedicated people working on it.)

Its more than just that imo. I mean, the fact that this game got this update so long after release when really, theres no chance for new players to be coming back after this long really speaks volumes to me. Why wasn't this done after the first year.....but in 2017? Come on man. Everything takes forever with 343 its crazy.

They dont seem to know whats important and what isnt. They focused on Forge maps in the playlists instead of creating real maps, they put all this effort in a server browser that i dunno anyone that actually uses it, warzone was unbalanced from the very beginning and just now did they update it to make it less "unbalanced", in late 2017. I mean theres not having enough people and theres incompetence.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Interesting post, but I'm curious if you say this because of the last Title Update balancing the sandbox, or about the 2019 possible release because of retooling & workflow changes?

games are like storms. The one coming up behind the current one is going to start absorbing the older storm's power. or something. i made an mspaint graph to illustrate the point

zDRJhZf.png


as game 1/current game goes on, it requires more days due to less manpower to do an update, so updates start getting farther and farther apart until the next game delivers the finishing blow.
 

Juan

Member
games are like storms. The one coming up behind the current one is going to start absorbing the older storm's power. or something. i made an mspaint graph to illustrate the point

zDRJhZf.png

Yeah I know, actually that's a good graph, and I also do games on my own and worked with indie teams around Paris, France. :)

But I was wondering if you post was related to the balance update and how this may not makes a lot of sense for a 2 years old game, or if it was to explain why 343 may need more times (or less, regarding the retooling stuff) for they next Halo?
 

FyreWulff

Member
Yeah I know, actually that's a good graph, and I also do games on my own and worked with indie teams around Paris, France. :)

But I was wondering if you post was related to the balance update and how this may not makes a lot of sense for a 2 years old game, or if it was to explain why 343 may need more times (or less, regarding the retooling stuff) for they next Halo?

Hmm. I wouldn't know for sure.

It may be since that they got the green light to do the 4K update for the One X, so they're already back in the deep engine code to do that update - so now the's time to do a deeper sandbox update while the train's in the station, so to speak.

2019 would make sense to me as that's a 3 year dev cycle if started in ~later 2016 which lines up with my expectations given the time major Halo 5 updates started calming down and Next Halo likely entered major preproduction. This is all armchair baseball.
 

Trup1aya

Member
Hmm. I wouldn't know for sure.

It may be since that they got the green light to do the 4K update for the One X, so they're already back in the deep engine code to do that update - so now the's time to do a deeper sandbox update while the train's in the station, so to speak.

2019 would make sense to me as that's a 3 year dev cycle if started in ~later 2016 which lines up with my expectations given the time major Halo 5 updates started calming down and Next Halo likely entered major preproduction. This is all armchair baseball.

Your graph makes perfect sense, but I think perhaps 343 is atypical when it comes to these sorts of things-

they started hinting at a big sandbox update in late Feb - early March when they reshuffled the MP team into the Sandbox team. So, I think we would have seen movement here with or without the X update - which was apparently wasn't a go until AFTER E3.
 
My thing is i feel like players should ALWAYS be able to defend themselves offspawn against any vehicle. I think of vehicles as big powerweapons.

And by defend i dont mean neccisarily take someone out - but i mean disrupt them enough to possibly get away, just like how you can ward off a sniper by descoping him with pistol shots.

Having to go up against a banshee with just a pistol SHOULD be a long shot, but having the right weapon shouldn't be the only way to make it out alive.

Let me throw off his plasma shots and steering by hitting his wing tips. Let me shoot the fuel rod shots out of the sky - that kind of thing.

anytime you tie defense to a weapon that has to be picked up, you are inviting snowballing. If a team gets a hold of both, its a guarunteed slaughter from that point on. Especially when soloqing.

Hmm, that'd be an interesting way to go for it. Right now, though, you're in a situation where a gang of dudes with pistols and BRs can take out anything that isn't a Banshee, or sometimes a Tank, and that's not really where you want to be either.
 

Trup1aya

Member
Hmm, that'd be an interesting way to go for it. Right now, though, you're in a situation where a gang of dudes with pistols and BRs can take out anything that isn't a Banshee, or sometimes a Tank, and that's not really where you want to be either.

No I don't want to be that either.

I think the vehicles should be able to take a TON of small arms fire in terms of damage.

I don't want teamshotting or widdling down health to be the primary way to nuetralize a vehicle threat.

It would be better to empower infantry, disable them (EMP), board them, or use physics against them (like flipping ground vehicles with grenades).

The banshee is tough because there's no way to really use physics against them. That's why I like the idea of shooting their wingtips to override their steering- it would be the aerial quivalent of descoping a sniper. Even with good aim you probably couldn't shoot him down, but you could back him off.
 

Juan

Member
I'm downloading Halo 5 just to give the new update a try when it will be release, and I discover the game is 3Go heavier than before?!

they added 3Go of data just to do a balance update, and it adds to the exiting game 97Go and it's now 99,8Go?!

Really, I don't know how they are handling their files and data, but oh my god this is terrible, how is this even possible?!

One of the best shooter campaigns I ever played.

Just completely blown away.

Just saw you post in the D2 OT E92. Like, really? I thought it was boring as hell and the only good thing was the Almighty level and the scenery you get when you get to the final level.
 
I'm downloading Halo 5 just to give the new update a try when it will be release, and I discover the game is 3Go heavier than before?!

they added 3Go of data just to do a balance update, and it adds to the exiting game 97Go and it's now 99,8Go?!

Really, I don't know how they are handling their files and data, but oh my god this is terrible, how is this even possible?!

It's really ridiculous. I understand games are going to keep getting larger, but H5 is absurd. 100GB of data, fucking ok lol.
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
My son (4yo) bought $20 in gold req packs. Ive since added a pass code. Stinkles, you're welcome.
 
So a friend just sent me this lol:


Interesting glitch. Last played 9/1/2014, eh?
i just got flashbacks to the Halo 3 beta warthog where it was a tank that could move fast
If a competent driver gets a Bubble Shield too, it's all over.
We already knew it would be trash with the current weapon balance... it could potentially be better next week when they turn on the tweaks
Curious to see how they'll change it. I'd rather they test a projectile 2x zoom 4sk Pistol as the starting weapon over the BR.
 
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