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Halo |OT10| The Calm Before The Storm
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
- Start date
The Henery
Member
When are people going to realise that the desire for ranked playlists doesn't just come from a militant, miniscule, MLG hardcore minority, who can apparently be quelled by having a single bone thrown at them to chew on at the bottom of a rain sodden garden while the rest of the party are lavished with a buffet in the mansion?
It's a mentality that's pervaded since the tailend of Halo 3's reign. Consider the language used by Bungie when describing those that they thought favoured ranking systems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzeR9PDTbn0&feature=player_detailpage#t=349s
Joe Tung: "Arena is a really awesome evolution for people who want to play really hardcorecompetitive multiplayer"
Luke Timmins: "Build that space where we can say if 'you're hyper competitive, you care about stats', we've made this for you"
Was the incredibly successful and bread and butter appeal of Halo 3's Team Slayer playlist indebted to it being 'Really hardcore'? Were the denizens of Halo 3's numerous ranked playlists, even Grifball and Infection, 'Hyper competitive'? Even the vast majority of whom we know populated the 1-30 skill range?
What Bungie did with Arena was shoehorn ranked matchmaking into this quarantined, scary place, this one sole intimidating playlist where all of the 'really hardcore' and 'hyper competitive' players would be sure to be localised and contained. In Halo 3 a player could gauge their proficiency in a variety of different gameplay scenarios. Hitting a wall at level 41 in Team Slayer? Let's go play Doubles, maybe push for the 45. A player could have a 50 in Team Objective and be an incredible support player and flag runner but only manage a 20 in Team Snipers. A quick flick through the different playlists to see a players trueskill number in each told you more about a player and their strengths than commendations ever will. Contrast this to Reach's Arena where you are only gauged on one portion of the game, a specified version of Team Slayer which has no social analogue playlist (one nade, certain AA's removed etc). And its only meta incentive, the hugely important visual aspect of the rank which motivated players by engaging their pride and ego, was confined to that one playlist and buried behind walls of menus deep within the UI.
Another problem with designing your ranking system around one playlist for 'really hardcore' players is that, while that sort of language and UI 'body language' will be sure to scare off the casual player looking for a meaningful game, it will prick the ears up of the guys with the 'MLG OFF HOST" gamerpic, so you'd better make sure those settings are truly hardcore, competitive and balanced. What did they get? Armour Lock, jetpacks and Red Team getting rockets on a plate off initial spawns on Reflection. So the MLG guys leave shaking their heads at the settings and simply play MLG instead. Arena is left with a pitiful population.
Don't let Arena's failure be a definitive indictment against visual, skill based ranking systems in Halo. 1-50 was a very successful system in Halo's 2 and 3. It thrived and it worked incredibly well in motivating and pushing the playerbase forward over days, months, years to continually strive to improve itself and fundamentally, to care about what happened in that particular game. Not the match in three games time where you'll finaly have enough EXP to unlock the nemesis and stealth perk.
Opened stream
See a glimpse of "MASTER CHIEF" in comment
*CLOSE CLOSE CLOSE*
Guess I'll just wait until it's all revealed officially. Don't care too much I guess.
See a glimpse of "MASTER CHIEF" in comment
*CLOSE CLOSE CLOSE*
Guess I'll just wait until it's all revealed officially. Don't care too much I guess.
Poo.
Moa
Member
It is clear that this bug was in fact the Ancient Evil.
EDIT: Works just like Reach, you turn into a Monitor for a Spartan, you are in the Spartan HUD, die as a Monitor and respawn, you're in the Monitor HUD.
Demoncarnotaur
Member
Yeah. =/
Outsourced features.
To be clear though, I dont care about harmless little things like that.. Still, Forge seems rather... Reach 2.0 rather than Forge 3.0.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
"Punch it, Chief!"
Today its all about learning what ISN'T in Halo 4. Ranks, certain vehicles, playlists, gametypes, theater improvements(or lack thereof), etc.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
bahaha beat! I was planning on making a gif outta the Tron Light Jet but got lazy..
Someone get on that shit! Would been way sexier!
I think 3 Sandbox remakes would've been amazing! Just swap out the different environments and different skyboxes..
Someone get on that shit! Would been way sexier!
I think 3 Sandbox remakes would've been amazing! Just swap out the different environments and different skyboxes..
Back when Forge was first shown at RTX, I thought it was pointed out that the UI elements were extremely placeholder? But everything we've seen of it in it's final form looks almost exactly the same...
Also, re: Forge, Based on everything I've seen, I don't want to make maps on any of these environments. :/
Also, re: Forge, Based on everything I've seen, I don't want to make maps on any of these environments. :/
Shake Appeal
Member
Core gameplay looks fun as shit.
Just some very strange, presumably focus-tested choices around that.
A lot of the 'bugs' could just be weird results of it not being played over Xbox Live.from watching that stream, game looks very buggy
The Librarian
Banned
=D
We would've never seen this problem had they implemented 1 Flag properly by stopwatching it on top not forcing you to play pointless rounds. If any flag mode needed fixing, it was 1 Flag. It's pretty disheartening that they just chucked it out instead.
from watching that stream, game looks very buggy
They are tunneling a LAN game over the Internet
They are tunneling a LAN game over the Internet
They are tunneling a LAN game over the Internet
They are tunneling a LAN game over the Internet
bobs...onGaf
Member
Core gameplay is very good - if I didn't already play the game I would have probably cancelled my pre-order and settled for Black Ops 2 based on this leaked footage though. 343 really needs to step up - shut these guys down and get proper videos out there themselves.
Shake Appeal
Member
I'm seriously looking into Black Ops 2, largely because it has leagues.
And I haven't actually bought a CoD game since 4.
Can you clarify what can and can't be posted here, in terms of streams/non spoilery caps/etc?
Tha Robbertster
Member
Campaign and spartan ops spoilers only, right? I don't think anyone in this thread minds hearing info about multiplayer, forge or theater.
In hindsight BO was the best CoD since 4, it might be worth it. Do what I'm doing and buy BO2 and Halo 4, then we can bitch about the things that the other one does wrong.
Shake Appeal
Member
Hydranockz, probably.
bobs...onGaf
Member
Black ops (the first one) - was a very good game. Competitively balanced, fun and avoided the bad mechanics that plagued the Infinity Ward CoD games. Black Ops 2 though seems to have some of the garbage introduced in Modern Warfare 3
Halo 4 is hopefully so good im tempted to say I wont have time to touch CoD. The recent news leaks have made me less confident of that, but despite the playlist set ups/ vehicles/ etc - at least I know the core gameplay is good enough to carry it through.
Demoncarnotaur
Member
Well, I mean this doesn't overrule GAFs rules, but I thought Ghaleon said anything MP related was fair game.
Shake Appeal
Member
SR-8 already. All that 'basic editing' sure adds up.
Yeah, this. Storyline reveals will get you fucked up by the Ghetto Style DJs.
bobs...onGaf
Member
Multiplayer progression spoiler (just in case)
Awesome. Can you ban people who make joke spoiler posts? They are just as annoying as the real spoiler posts. People have been pretending to have broken spoiler tags as a joke - sucks when people do that.
I imagine that 'offline' mode earns you more credits - its the same with Reach.
Im really bummed out about how weapons/ Armour abilities and perks work - you have to rank up to earn spartan tokens, then redeem tokens on unlocks. That sucks and means people wont be able to experiment with the sandbox outside of customs
Awesome. Can you ban people who make joke spoiler posts? They are just as annoying as the real spoiler posts. People have been pretending to have broken spoiler tags as a joke - sucks when people do that.
I imagine that 'offline' mode earns you more credits - its the same with Reach.
Maybe it's like Reach; didn't you get more cR in Reach when playing offline or something like that?
IxmagicmanIx
Member
A couple people said there were no improvements made to theater. Can someone please tell me whether or not you can watch films with other people online? I miss that so much from Halo 3.
For a developer seemingly chasing the carrot on a stick style of multiplayer, I find it pretty baffling that the biggest, most time investing carrot of them all won't be included in regards to 1-50.
Also the way they are going about not revealing any info and being so secretive is deplorable. They've shown whole new game types/weapons/maps/vehicles, yet they can't release one nugget of official information about the level system.
Is it because they don't want backlash or what? Or is it simply because it's a tiny fraction of the playerbase that cares, that they couldn't give a toss as they know they'll suck it up anyway since they're big fans of the game itself.
I hope I'm wrong and they have something up their ass.
Also the way they are going about not revealing any info and being so secretive is deplorable. They've shown whole new game types/weapons/maps/vehicles, yet they can't release one nugget of official information about the level system.
Is it because they don't want backlash or what? Or is it simply because it's a tiny fraction of the playerbase that cares, that they couldn't give a toss as they know they'll suck it up anyway since they're big fans of the game itself.
I hope I'm wrong and they have something up their ass.
I think this thread has been pretty fine so far
The 2 on gaming side tho... They're a minefield.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
Someone mentioned Theatre was 1 player only.
Yep, you get more Cr if you are using a local account when you play without the Live.
Multiplayer progression spoiler (just in case)Im really bummed out about how weapons/ Armour abilities and perks work - you have to rank up to earn spartan tokens, then redeem tokens on unlocks. That sucks and means people wont be able to experiment with the sandbox outside of customs
dont see this as much of a problem personally. everyone should be fairly even at the start and there are map specific loadouts to cover the biggest impacts, spawning weapons. it certainly doesnt seem as prohibitive as say CoD.
i noticeed that in one of the gamespot videos.... so yeah, dont think so...
COD carrot without 1-50 works for COD all right.
Arguably Reach's system, while similar, didn't work because it didnt' reward players "properly".
Working skill matching plus proper COD-like progression system, i reckon that will work for most people. Well, new people. Halo vets might not be so keen on it, based on HaloGAF.
I don't care for skill-ranks myself but skill matching is important.
r_c_takedown
Neo Member
Moa
Member
Worked great in Halo 3, the only issue with Halo 3's theater is fact was it wasn't possible to watch film clips with multiple people over LIVE.
It seems that there are self-shadows but only from map geometry, not player placed pieces. The lightmap created by them doesn't seem to be causing self-shadows.
At least that's how it looked to me.
timetokill
Banned
They said in one of the Forge reveals (and showed in one of the videos) that Forge pieces received AND cast shadows on the map.