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Halo |OT10| The Calm Before The Storm

H

Hydranockz

Member
Conor 419 said:
Oh well boo fucking hoo. While you've all been pissing around in King's Landing fighting for your shitty ranking system, I've been Jon Snow up at the wall waiting for a Custom Game Browser which still hasn't been sent up and the launch of Halo 4 (winter) is quite literally right around the corner.

Mark my words, in 6 months time you'll all realise you were fighting the wrong battle, but by that time we'll be fucked anyway so whatever.
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If playlists only have one gametype, it really reduces the need for a Custom Browser. Maybe if there were like a load of gametypes mishmashed into one hopper but the opposite is the case.
 
M

MrDaravon

Member
wwm0nkey said:
Hoping the first TU fixes those kill cams.
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Are you referring to their existence, or the fact that they're not always accurate? If it's the latter, that's just how it works, it's been the bane of CoD fans' existence for years.


The KillCam is a log of actions rather than a video recording. When the KillCam is played, the game automatically plays back the sequence of events according to the log. As a result, the KillCam does not show certain elements that are not recorded in the playback, such as lag.
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M

MrDaravon

Member
Seriously, are the weapon sounds really loud to anyone else, or is it just me?

ALSO I MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE THE BALL

I seriously can't believe that they didn't give us options to change the volume of the announcer, good god.
 
T

Talents

Banned
Shake Appeal said:
1. Context. Visible ranks help contextualize my play, and the play of my friends and enemies, such that I can understand -- roughly, with obvious limitations -- "how good" I am relative to those friends and enemies, and the wider ecosystem of Halo players. This helps me feel I am part of a large community of players competing in the 'sport' of Halo, and gives me a sense of how I am doing, how my friends are doing, and how we are improving, within that community of players.

2. Narrative. Visible ranks tell stories. They tell me I was good last month, but did even better this month. They tell me that I got better than the friend who used to school me at the game. They tell me I overcame an obstacle, or met a personal goal. They tell me that I pushed past a previous limit, or that I finally outpaced my peers. They tell me that I got better -- or that I got worse. They ground my Halo experience across a given game's lifespan, such that I can see not just that I was playing Halo for the last year of my life, but that across that time I was continuing to play Halo better, more skillfully, more beautifully than ever before.

3. Motivation. Ranks give me one more reason to play "one more game", because there's something to be earned, and that thing is earned through my own performance, not the sheer time I have spent playing. They give me a measure, however crude, of that performance, and meanwhile goad me to do better, to learn the game's systems more thoroughly, to improve myself. Related to the 'storytelling' aspect above, ranks also set up underdog battles, where every last one of my party grits their teeth and digs in because the pregame lobby told us we were outmatched. Those victories are sweeter than any other. Unanticipated defeats, on the other hand, are both humbling and inspiring.

4. Stakes. Ranks go up when you win, sure, but they also go down when you lose. Nothing in Halo 4 will ever go down. Not one thing. Not one thing will tell me I am not meeting expectations. And nothing will ever be lost. Once I unlock something, once I hit a target, it's mine forever. There is no risk in this, and so there is no genuine reward, or at least no scarcity of reward. Ranks, on the other hand, raise the stakes on every single game. There are days I wouldn't go into TS in Halo 3 because I was worried I might lose my 45 (hint: I'm not even that good, not that 'competitive', but I still love ranks). When I did go in, I took it seriously: I played the game as well as I could, and found teammates and enemies doing the same. Every game mattered, because losing mattered -- because losing had a cost. In Halo 4, I will be showered with announcements, medals, white text, XP, commendations, challenges, armour unlocks, weapon skins, and general praise almost to the point of suffocation. Not once, however, will the game dare to tell me I should have done better. Not once will it punish me for that failure. In sport, when everyone's a winner, no one is.
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Couldn't of said any of that better myself.
 
T

ThatsMytrunks

Member
I got screwed out of going to the NYCC Halo panel. I was in a pretty good spot, but when they said we could start funneling in, there was no one guiding the snaking line, and despite my place close to the front of the lines in terms of numbers, I was further back in the actual room. They were at capacity When I was number two in line, and when the guy in front of me was about to get in, the security guard physically shoved him back. Like with his arm against the guy's chest.

When I waited by the door to get in if someone left, I was told to "get out" as they were "over capacity" and worried they were going to get shut down. It was bullshit and unfair, and not the first time I witnessed the complete ineptitude of the con's security.

So what did I miss?
 
S

Shake Appeal

Member
SailorDaravon said:
They either need to go full-on "CoD" and be willing to abandon a certain group of traditional fans to get the larger audience to accept them over CoD, or they need to stick to their guns and what made Halo popular. I just really feel like this middle ground they seem to be going for isn't going to work, and I've been saying for months that not having a public or semi-open beta for Halo 4 is going to bite them in the ass.
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Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about this when it comes to loadouts. Halo has, what, 20 perks? And five or six different starting weapons, which you can't customize? The options in CoD, the sheer amount of stuff you're bombarded with to try out, play with, reconfigure, make your own, do differently to the next guy, dwarfs Halo 4. And that's not necessarily a good thing for gameplay or a thing I even enjoy, but I can't see how that kind of My First CoD set-up would be exciting for CoD players who keep getting more and more new things to tinker with, in systems that have been tested and smoothed out across a generation.

Especially when there's no prestige system, so when players start to hit max rank in Halo 4 and have seen everything there is to offer and don't have ranks to aspire to, that's their lot. Except a few more specialization perks, which Frankie keeps promising aren't even that significant, and a few more helmet unlocks. Which are probably an ugly, ugly grind anyway.

Like, if you're going to get in the dirty water of gameplay unlocks and customization, get all the way in. Focus testing your game towards some beige middle-ground just seems a huge risk to be taking, at least with the multiplayer.

Core gameplay is going to make or break Halo 4 for me, because all the hooks outside it are either missing (visible ranks) or pretty uninteresting (everything else).
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
these Flood sounds
KuGsj.gif
 
A

Amazing Mic

Neo Member
I remember playing Arena and the higher end games were flooded w/ boosters and booters- it became a propagating problem. To say a quarter of my games were manipulated would be a fair estimate. It sucked.

That said, I had figured that some alternative would have been determined by now rather than avoiding the problem. I didn't mind the rank invisible to others. I REALLY liked the idea Max Payne used were there quarantined cheaters to their own lobby.

Even if they did Arena 2.0, it would have worked w/ a little enforcement. Enforcement in Arena 1.0 was nil- I could have given you the name of a dozen GTs if there was actually an effective means of reporting them, and the playlist would have been dramatically better.

Can't help but feeling like I'm back in kindergarten, and that snot-nosed kid stole the teacher's chalk so now none of us can have recess.
 
M

MrDaravon

Member
Oh my God at the Flood sounds. Who the hell was responsible for sound in general in this game. Fucking dying over here, it sounds like pigs fucking in Jello or something.

Edit: Holy shit at the Killcams lol
 
R

Rickenslacker

Banned
Uhh wow, that killcam view had all the Forge pieces gone. Weird.

Also those death sounds are way too repetitively distinct for how often they happen.
 
C

Conor 419

Banned
Hydranockz said:
If playlists only have one gametype, it really reduces the need for a Custom Browser. Maybe if there were like a load of gametypes mishmashed into one hopper but the opposite is the case.
Click to expand...

No, the idea of CGB is absolute flexibility. You can play any map, any gametype with any custom settings whenever you want. This'd allow for a much more networked community where good forge maps and creative gametypes can easily thrive due to accessibility. It'd also allow for better management of games, where teamkillers and trashtalkers can be booted and games can be tailored to the needs of the individual. Headset mandatory etc.
 
T

Toddler

Member
Concerning map size:

I'm probably not the first to come to this conclusion, but after watch quite a few matches it seems like the larger maps may shrink a bit due to how fast the players move.

I assume that's been compensated for, and combined with more team members that's the reason why almost every map seems like a big team map (or that there's less close quarters maps).
 
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