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Halo |OT| HaloGAF Evolved

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A lot of people LOVE that game. Check out this one kid who plays a TON.

http://www.halotracker.com/Reach/ReachStats.aspx?Gamertag=jelyk

3127910+_fc058ecefbaa2f0a9f5a458347c03a72.jpeg
 

GhaleonEB

Member
That totally explains why previous Halos without Invasion had just about as many BTB maps. Bigger maps will always be more of a resource drain in terms of man hours, because they require more finishing work. From the same perspective, vehicle maps were a waste of time in Halo 1 because there was only two of them, and they took resources away from more 4v4 maps.

It was the first time around for the gametype, just like the vehicle maps in Halo 1. Invasion is complicated to set up and have it be fun. Bungie supported Invasion with a new map for it in their DLC, 343 never attempted an Invasion map in either of their two DLC packs after Bungie handed it off, which is a shame since now Invasion is a known factor, it should have had at least one map in one of the packs. Especially with Headlong, which essentially was an Invasion map before Invasion was a retail gametype.

What we end up with is a single DLC map that really showcased what Invasion was capable of, then no effort by 343 to follow up on that.

DLC for Invasion:
Breakpoint

DLC for BTB:
Tempest, Breakpoint, Highlands, Ridgeline, Headlong, High Noon

Yeah, Invasion really choked out the support for BTB there. :rolleyes People forget that Halo 3's BTB was extremely limited until BTB got a bunch of maps in DLC. Halo's bread and butter will always be 4v4, maps for other modes will always be smaller in number.
Invasion choked resources away from the shipping BTB maps. There was such a large hole in them, and such a lack of quality, that they had to try and fill it in with DLC. In highlighting the proportions of DLC devoted to each, you sort of proved the point. Development is a zero sum game: time and resources spent on one thing take away from another. Had the resources that went into Invasion maps been put into creating good BTB maps, BTB would have been good out of the box, instead of shipping with the worst BTB maps in series history.

I'm delighted 343 didn't try to shoehorn in Invasion into the classic maps. Would have been (another) waste of resources.
 
Corrine is expressing pride in the team in a twitter character limit, mostly to her colleagues. At no time will you ever hear us 'officially' represent the game in those terms. So uncrank your hype handles a couple of turns.

Like how my three year old is the cleverest girl in the world. Let us revisit my statement after she graduates from DeVry.

She should be good at character limit optimisations, given her role :p

Off/On topic. I was reading about character limits today... There's quite a lot going on behind the scenes!
 
Team Slayer submission thread on Waypoint. An Invasion one will probably appear eventually.

edit: and now on r/halo

I did lol at Haunted's reply...

Edit: Replied.

Don't bother with an Invasion thread. There's a near 0% chance that you will find a map eligible for MM consideration, let alone a map good enough to actually make the cut.

There are three Invasion maps in existance that are of MM quality, and only one of them is polished. (Broadcast by HWM RJ, Overgrowth by AbleSir Thomas and Yarbird92, The Docks by Oakley HiDef)
 

FyreWulff

Member
Invasion choked resources away from the shipping BTB maps. There was such a large hole in them, and such a lack of quality, that they had to try and fill it in with DLC. In highlighting the proportions of DLC devoted to each, you sort of proved the point. Development is a zero sum game: time and resources spent on one thing take away from another. Had the resources that went into Invasion maps been put into creating good BTB maps, BTB would have been good out of the box, instead of shipping with the worst BTB maps in series history.

I'm delighted 343 didn't try to shoehorn in Invasion into the classic maps. Would have been (another) waste of resources.

Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Hemmorage, Boardwalk

Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla, Sandtrap (started as Invasion map), Last Resort

Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Zanzibar (started as Invasion map), Coagulation, Headlong (started as Invasion map), Waterworks

Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

Reach was par for the course on shipping BTB, it just so happened that Bungie actually finished and shipped the gametype intended for some of the maps this time. Invasion wouldn't have been "shoehorned" into Headlong. For multipurpose maps, Halo 2 only came with two (Coag and Waterworks), the others were only good for one sided objectives. And their remakes are still only good for one sided objectives, as Slayer Breakneck can attest to.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I did lol at Haunted's reply...

LOL. Cartographers having territories died once certain cartographers stopped participating. All the CCs are everywhere now.

edit: goddamnit that was supposed to be an edit into my last post. I got lost in my tabs.


He did say lack of quality. And counting Boardward as a BTB map... I can't agree with that (even if officially it is considered one).

That crosses over into the realm of opinion, though. If I were to start considering quality, Halo 2 would lose Burial Mounds instantly.
 
Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Hemmorage, Boardwalk

Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla, Sandtrap (started as Invasion map), Last Resort

Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Zanzibar (started as Invasion map), Coagulation, Headlong (started as Invasion map), Waterworks

Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

Reach was par for the course on shipping BTB, it just so happened that Bungie actually finished and shipped the gametype intended for some of the maps this time. Invasion wouldn't have been "shoehorned" into Headlong. For multipurpose maps, Halo 2 only came with two (Coag and Waterworks), the others were only good for one sided objectives. And their remakes are still only good for one sided objectives, as Slayer Breakneck can attest to.



Look at the quality of Reach's BTB maps compared to the quality of BTB maps in the rest of the series. You might be right in that each game has had similar map counts in terms of BTB maps but in terms of quality Reach really dropped the ball. I would argue thats where the diverted resources really left they're mark.

There are other flaws with your argument, your pretty adamant to argue that the number of maps hasn't changed, but I dont see how that justifies anything. That sucked before and it sucks now. If anything after 3 games it makes it worse that they continued to make the same mistake instead of divert the resources into making more quality BTB maps. As it stands from the list you put out:

Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Hemmorage, Boardwalk

Only Paradiso seems like it was designed from the ground up with BTB in mind, Boneyard and Spire are clearly designed for Invasion and dont work well in BTB. Hemmorage is a remake (A pretty badly done remake). Boardwalk sort of works in BTB but its a stretch, its far from the kind of design you want or expect from a Halo BTB map. It certainly helps Ghaleons argument if Reach has dropped so low as to consider Boardwalk as a BTB map.
 

Kuroyume

Banned
I wouldn't consider Boardwalk a BTB map. Have you ever seen a Warthog or tank on there? And, I don't like the idea of including forge maps on that list either.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Hemmorage, Boardwalk.

Boardwalk is not a BTB map. It was put there because there were not enough BTB maps. That's disingenuous at best; like calling The Pit a BTB map.

Spire and Boneyard are also not BTB maps - they are Invasion maps. They were shoehorned onto the BTB playlist because there were not enough BTB maps. Let's not pretend BTB and Invasion are the same thing, because they're not, and that's the entire problem we're talking about.

That means we're left with Hemorrhage (Halo 2 geometry rip) and Paradiso (unfinished map dressed up in Forge). That's two maps, one a geometry rip from a previous game, both set on the same space (Forge World). Two Forge World maps are not comparable to any previous Halo game; even Halo 1 had a better and more diverse pairing.

Thing is, even Invasion wasn't fully resourced: Boneyard was pulled from Campaign (a first for the series) because they didn't have enough resources to make even two Invasion maps from the ground up. It's sort of a red flag when Campaign geometry is being raided to make Multiplayer maps, especially your red hot showcase new mode. So really, we have only one Invasion map made for Invasion and one retrofitted Campaign space. When Invasion was concieved, and they realized they were only going to be able to make one Invasion map and two BTB (and only get to two by raiding Halo 2 and leveraging Forge to finish the other), the brakes on Invasion should have slammed on, hard.

Had Spire been abandoned and the resources put into making another (good) BTB map, we'd have had the same number as Halo 3 shipped with. Had Boneyard not come to be, maybe they could have spent time making Paradiso not terrible.

Even if you are charitable and lump Invasion maps into BTB, you're left with one Halo 2 geometry rip, one Campaign space, and two actual maps (one of which isn't fully built - it's dressed up in Forge!). And that's just quantity: Reach's BTB maps suck, hard, and are far and away the worst in the series. It clearly wasn't a focus in Reach, and Invasion clearly struggled to have enough content created to justify it existence.

The notion that Invasion didn't suck resources from BTB is laughable.
 
Look at the quality of Reach's BTB maps compared to the quality of BTB maps in the rest of the series. You might be right in that each game has had similar map counts in terms of BTB maps but in terms of quality Reach really dropped the ball.

There are other flaws with your argument, your pretty adamant to argue that the number of maps hasn't changed, but I dont see how that justifies anything. That sucked before and it sucks now. If anything after 3 games it makes it worse that they continued to make the same mistake instead of divert the resources into making more quality BTB maps. As it stands from the list you put out:

Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Hemmorage, Boardwalk

Only Paradiso seems like it was designed from the ground up with BTB in mind.

But most of Reach's maps sucked anyway. We have the cage, reflection and sword base, all bad maps and they aren't BTB maps.
I just think the overall quality of maps dropped with Reach. Bungie should have though about the Invasion maps playing well for other gametypes besides Invasion.
 

CyReN

Member
I like Invasion somewhat, I just don't like basing a whole map around it's one playlist, if it isn't in Halo 4 I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Only Paradiso seems like it was designed from the ground up with BTB in mind, Boneyard and Spire are clearly designed for Invasion and dont work well in BTB. Hemmorage is a remake (A pretty badly done remake). Boardwalk sort of works in BTB but its a stretch.

Alright. Remakes don't count?

Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla, Sandtrap
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Zanzibar, Headlong, Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

Let's omit the maps that were made with Invasion in mind:

Reach BTB shipping maps: Paradiso, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

For the final stroke, let's omit the ones that weren't made with BTB in mind, but were just large enough for BTB to function on them:

Reach BTB shipping maps: Paradiso
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

The reason BTB gets less resources is because BTB is less played compared to the mainstay of Halo multiplayer, which is 4v4. Getting 10 BTB maps on the disc would be awesome, but then the 4v4 majority would be left with 2 unique maps that actually work well in 4v4. The idea that Bungie's numerous attempts at Invasion robbed us of BTB maps isn't well supported by the number of purely original BTB maps made for each game.

edit: for those playing along at home, what this post does is start with a list of maps, then eliminates more maps in each step, which is supported by Bungie's numerous Postmortems and post-release interviews. The lists are not exclusive to each other. If people are going to arbitrarily not count a Reach BTB map, then the response was to use their same restrictions on past games to see, how under the same conditions, how many maps would be counted.
 

CyReN

Member
Remember chums, dedicated servers and custom game browsing or HALO 4 IS DOOMED.

That worked out so well for Gears of War 3..I mean it's the best game in their series and people aren't playing it. Funny thing too is a lot of their team members take a lot of feedback and implements it to the community liking and more people don't play.

(that wasn't a slam at Bungie/343i btw, 343i added NB and helped MLG and they have Ellis so I can't hate them<3)
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Alright. Remakes don't count?

Reach BTB shipping maps: Boneyard, Spire, Paradiso, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla, Sandtrap
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Zanzibar, Headlong, Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

Let's omit the maps that were made with Invasion in mind:

Reach BTB shipping maps: Paradiso, Boardwalk
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Burial Mounds, Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

For the final stroke, let's omit the ones that weren't made with BTB in mind, but were just large enough for BTB to function on them:

Reach BTB shipping maps: Paradiso
Halo 3 BTB Shipping maps: Valhalla
Halo 2 BTB shipping maps: Waterworks
Halo 1 BTB maps: Blood Gulch, Sidewinder

The reason BTB gets less resources is because BTB is less played compared to the mainstay of Halo multiplayer, which is 4v4. Getting 10 BTB maps on the disc would be awesome, but then the 4v4 majority would be left with 2 unique maps that actually work well in 4v4. The idea that Bungie's numerous attempts at Invasion robbed us of BTB maps isn't well supported by the number of purely original BTB maps made for each game.

Holy shit. :lol

You just missed every damn point on the page, and threw in some dishonest arguments on the side.

The point. It's way over there, bro. You're arguing against something that isn't being argued. Again.

Yup.
 

Conor 419

Banned
That worked out so well for Gears of War 3...I mean it's the best game in their series and people aren't playing it. Funny thing too is a lot of their team members take a lot of feedback and implements it to the community liking.

(that wasn't a slam at Bungie/343i btw, 343i added NB and helped MLG and they have Ellis so I can't hate them<3)

Uhhh, Gears doesn't have custom game browsing. Neither does it have a map editor that could be so beautifully taken advantage of with a custom game browser. Also, Gears is a less popular IP than Halo.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Hold it right there. Do you have any sources for these claims? I've never, ever heard from anyone that Valhalla was not originally designed to be as big as it is. If you can prove Valhalla was originally not intended for BTB, I'd honestly love to know and see.

Wait, what. That post says Valhalla WAS intended for BTB.

There are other flaws with your argument, your pretty adamant to argue that the number of maps hasn't changed, but I dont see how that justifies anything. That sucked before and it sucks now. If anything after 3 games it makes it worse that they continued to make the same mistake instead of divert the resources into making more quality BTB maps.

I already answered this with the resources commited versus what everyone was actually playing part of my post. I'm not really interested in yelling the other side down.
 

CyReN

Member
Uhhh, Gears doesn't have custom game browsing. Neither does it have a map editor that could be so beautifully taken advantage of with a custom game browser. Also, Gears is a less popular IP than Halo.

That's why I embolden (I guess "Bolded" isn't proper.) dedicated servers.
 

OverHeat

« generous god »
Corrine is expressing pride in the team in a twitter character limit, mostly to her colleagues. At no time will you ever hear us 'officially' represent the game in those terms. So uncrank your hype handles a couple of turns.

Like how my three year old is the cleverest girl in the world. Let us revisit my statement after she graduates from DeVry.

You dont have the balls to do so? ;p Just kidding.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Man,What I wouldn't do for that in Halo 4...

It'd be nice. But you'd have to figure out how to do it under Megalo.. or drop Megalo and have baked in gametypes. You'd have to do it by name only, pretty much.

Also, for the love of god. Don't repeat the same mistake Halo 2 Vista did and sort servers alphabetically by their gamertags by default. Unless they want a bunch of aaaa A Spam Halo 4 Server occupying the first 5 pages of results.
 
Frankie, David, 343, et.al.,

All I want for tomorrow/next week is something I can listen to on my new home theater set-up, very loudly.

Thanks and please don't disappoint.
 
Speaking of Megalo, it seems like 343 has all the rights over that feature (they released Team Hotshot), what are the odds they'll be using something similar to build gametypes in H4?
 

Karl2177

Member
Speaking of Megalo, it seemslike 343 has all the rights over that feature (they released Team Hotshot), what are the odds they'll be using something similar to build gametypes in H4?

If they are smart, they make most of it available to the public on a per gametype basis, not how it's currently setup on a per playlist deployment basis. People like customization, and as much as Reach expanded on customization form Halo 3, it still left a lot to be wanted. Look at how many people were initially clamoring for a zone field that could set the location names by the radar. Then the stuff that isn't included out of the box could be added later via title update and demand.
 
Speaking of Megalo, it seemslike 343 has all the rights over that feature (they released Team Hotshot), what are the odds they'll be using something similar to build gametypes in H4?

I would hope we'd get some baked-in gametypes this time like Slayer, Assault, etc. but then have a similar Megalo system to develop more Action Sack/Minigame-oriented gametypes. Which reminds me, I really hope Halo 4 introduces a bit more formal organization among maps/gametypes. It doesn't help that Forge World has most of our maps (minus things like MLG maps, etc). It'd be nice to at least be able to introduce one level of folders so we could do something like this:

MAPS:
Boardwalk
Countdown
[Forge World] (Then list the baked-in maps first):
-Asylum
-Paradiso
Aesthetic (things like the giant spartans or rube goldberg machines)
Casual (Simple gametypes that aren't outright minigames; infection, etc)
Competitive (For things like Refuge, Over's Asylum remake, custom MLG maps)
Invasion (self-explanatory)
Minigames (Action Sack sort of stuff)
[Racetracks] (Then list the maps in the folder):
Rainbow Road
Block Fort
Birdman


Even some basic, more quickly-accessible tagging system or adding a few folders for each map would be really useful, especially now that we can have pretty much a thousand Forge World maps.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Speaking of Megalo, it seemslike 343 has all the rights over that feature (they released Team Hotshot), what are the odds they'll be using something similar to build gametypes in H4?

I'd like to see it come back. Being able to push out new gametypes without a TU and without breaking LAN compatibility was an awesome idea.

But since 343 has no qualms about splintering LAN post-ship with TUs to add more gametypes, I'm not sure if they'd get much out of Megalo. I'd like to at least see an in-game editor for Megalo, like Timesplitter 3's campaign scripting editor. The best would be being able to build scripts on your PC and then upload to Reach or Halo 4 via XNA. Having gametypes at ship and having only those gametypes until Halo 5 comes out would feel like a step backwards in the evolution of Halo's functionality, IMO.
 
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