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Halo |OT12| Last One Out, Get the Lights

GhaleonEB

Member
Vehicle situation is worse than Reach, which has got to crushing for people that really like vehicle combat in BTB Halo. I've never lasted in a vehicle not called the Mantis for more than 10 seconds. Even something like the Wraith, which was balanced pretty well in Reach, is now completely useless.

The vehicle situation in Infinity Slayer reminds me a bit of phase 3 of Invasion, only all the time.
 

stephen08

Member
Even if Plasma Pistol were to be removed from loadouts vehicles wouldn't last much longer. Personal ordinance allows people to get Spartan Lasers and other anti vehicle weapons beamed directly to them. This is compounded by sniper weapons still doing significant damage to vehicles.

I liked Reach a lot but that was a bad decision, it makes the already useful Sniper Rifle a dominant force.
 
Wraiths are pretty OP though. They can fire a lot closer to themselves and have pretty hefty boosts too.

Disagree, I think the Wraith is fine, it's been balanced pretty well. The Gauss Hog and the Scorpion are and always have been OP as shit with their insta-death cannons across the entire map.
 
Even if Plasma Pistol were to be removed from loadouts vehicles wouldn't last much longer. Personal ordinance allows people to get Spartan Lasers and other anti vehicle weapons beamed directly to them. This is compounded by sniper weapons still doing significant damage to vehicles.

I liked Reach a lot but that was a bad decision, it makes the already useful Sniper Rifle a dominant force.

It a miracle if the warthog survives more than 2 minutes in a BTB that or the other team didnt have the chance to call a decent ordinance.

BTW, Random pic

ee8ded3ad0bc3e3298a3fa2b8db8fe73.jpg
 

Havok

Member
Gauss Hog and Scorpion still dominate. Although at least the Scorpion is modified a bit...
The Gauss changes (the rate of fire being slowed down like it has) are probably more successful in toning that vehicle down, especially against multiple players, than the Scorpion, though it still has absolutely no business being in matchmaking. The Scorpion changes are completely laughable when you take into account that the only map it's on is relatively small for that player count and can be fired across with ease.

It's just funny, some folks were convinced that slowing the shots down slightly and making them drop a hair were going to balance that thing for general play. If you actually slowed the shots and made them drop to the degree that it was balanced, you might as well just color the thing purple and call it a Wraith, because that's what you've created.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
Tonight I came across a team made up entirely of PV users on Adrift. They sat on one outside corner of the map just looking through walls waiting for my team to come at them. They did not move the entire match. Two perched on the upper platform, two below. Just constantly clicking PV and pot shotting down the hallway openings and man cannon landings. This is the kind of behavior broken Armor Abilities encourage in worst case scenarios.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING.
I've seen this happen so many times already. In the future when it happens I think I'm just going to hide in a corner with camo, go AFK, and clean my room or something. My room will be immaculate.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Gauss needs to be off BTB maps. Keep everything else though. The key with the vehicles is not to charge the middle, especially on Ragnarock. I can stay alive in a Ghost for a good long while by hanging by the base and picking people off on the outskirts of the map. It helps that the Ghost is super agile when under the control of a good driver though.
 
Disagree, I think the Wraith is fine, it's been balanced pretty well. The Gauss Hog and the Scorpion are and always have been OP as shit with their insta-death cannons across the entire map.

Sorry, I meant OP in relation to previous iterations of the Wraith. It seems faster and not having a 'blindside' up front where the shots can't reach makes sprinting up to board one very tricky.
 
Sorry, I meant OP in relation to previous iterations of the Wraith. It seems faster and not having a 'blindside' up front where the shots can't reach makes sprinting up to board one very tricky.

Oh, I would still disagree. Anytime so far I've gotten in a Wraith or someone else has in a War Games match I've been in, the Wraith is destroyed in 10 seconds.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
Oh, I would still disagree. Anytime so far I've gotten in a Wraith or someone else has in a War Games match I've been in, the Wraith is destroyed in 10 seconds.
That's not what I've seen. Vehicles usually have a pretty decent run from my experience. If anything, I'd say vehicles are too powerful (Edit : Maybe "too dominant" is the better way to put it). There are none I want to see nerfed, but I'd really like to have less in matchmaking (especially on Ragnarok, and on any map in Dominion).
 
That's not what I've seen. Vehicles usually have a pretty decent run from my experience. If anything, I'd say vehicles are too powerful (Edit : Maybe "too dominant" is the better way to put it). There are none I want to see nerfed, but I'd really like to have less in matchmaking (especially on Ragnarok, and on any map in Dominion).

Ragnarok seems to be the exception in my experience, vehicles everywhere, getting shit on by the banshee. Fun™
 
A couple missed opportunities in Halo 4's campaign: we never had a chance to fight the sentinels and I don't believe there are any scorpion-centric scenes and I'm not even sure there are any scorpions in the campaign...

Also, why no brutes? They were fun to fight and why include the gravity hammer with no one to wield it?
 

GhaleonEB

Member
A couple missed opportunities in Halo 4's campaign: we never had a chance to fight the sentinels and I don't believe there are any scorpion-centric scenes and I'm not even sure there are any scorpions in the campaign...

There are two Scorpion sections, one right before the first Mantis sequence, and one on...dunno what level. Reclaimer? Not sure. I found the first redundant and the second a shallow replay of the ending battle on The Ark, complete with call outs to advance to the next tier of Wraiths.
 
Bungie guys are really rubbing it in by throwing up videos for older Halo multiplayer. :(

Halo 2 anniversary Multiplayer needs to happen. Make it like Counter Strike Go but dont even bother polishing it that much. Just port it over, maybe get someone to do a cheap gfx update on it and maybe patch the glitches and put it on the XBLA markerplace as a multiplayer only game. Go for the cheapest route possible to cut costs.

If the netcode held up well back then surely with everyone having better network technology now it will still hold up well? Im guessing the smaller sandbox/ cheaper in game resources mean the game is less prone to lag? Im no network engineer but I imagine a game like Halo 2 wont require half as much work on netcode as a game like Halo 4 does. Is a straight port possible there?

I guess with Halo CEA they didnt want to split the userbase and so on... but theres no need to even waste money marketing it too much, just put it out as a treat for the hardcore fans. Market it in that way and make it clear its not supposed to graphically beautiful or add anything new, be bold and proclaim it as a game for the nostalgic, it will still recoup its costs if its made cheap enough.

Its never going to happen. :(
 
I don't believe there are any scorpion-centric scenes and I'm not even sure there are any scorpions in the campaign...

Right. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you didn't play the campaign.

In other news, we just had a massive Thanksgiving feast at work and there was enough food to feed at least three SR 130s. I AM SO FULL.
 
Even with PP loadouts vehicles still play a pivotal role in BTB. Gone are the days of Hog killing sprees on Standoff and "Ramboesque" Banshee blitzkriegs in Reach but with enough of a tactical approach, map awareness and some semblance of teamwork a fair amount of kills can be had. In Halo 4 they seem to be less of a dominant force and more of an extension of the weapon sandbox requiring a bit more effort to utilize effectively without matches devolving into a game of "heavies". It may not resemble the large scale mayhem that many have become accustomed to but I for one prefer it that way.

Aside from the inclusion of the Gauss Hog, I think 343 did an excellent job with the vehicle balance in Halo 4. They still provide a significant advantage but if a player manages to get careless or stuck with a piss poor driver they won't last too long. I'll take that over running for my life from a flying tank in Reach for 10+ minutes any day.

A prime example is the Mantis on Ragnarok. In IS BTB it's effective in the hands of a skilled player without being OP'd in any way while being fun as all hell to take down. CTF on other hand is a problem. One that I hope is addressed soon because I think the map itself can work for that particular gametype.
 

Trey

Member
I just replayed the first level of Halo 2 on Legendary, mostly for reference. It was admittedly fun, but there were way too many Elites, and the level design was poor (dated). If you didn't noob combo, you weren't going anywhere in that level. If you were not behind cover, you were dead. And fuck Drones, they will never be anything other than the worst enemy in any Halo campaign.

Just from that level, I much prefer Halo 4's campaign.
 

Karl2177

Member
I just replayed the first level of Halo 2 on Legendary, mostly for reference. It was admittedly fun, but there were way too many Elites, and the level design was poor (dated). If you didn't noob combo, you weren't going anywhere in that level. If you were not behind cover, you were dead. And fuck Drones, they will never be anything other than the worst enemy in any Halo campaign.

Just from that level, I much prefer Halo 4's campaign.

If you are going to play through a campaign for design purposes, play through on Heroic. Mostly because that's what the encounters were designed for. There's a good amount of Elites, and Jackal snipers aren't insta-kills.

I never understand people going through previous games to compare the toughest difficulty, because each game uses a different approach to making the enemies incredibly tough. Halo 2 and Reach it made the enemy AI ridiculous. Halo 4 throws large amounts of OHK enemies at you. Halo CE, Halo 3, and ODST made the enemies a bit more durable, and threw a few higher ranking opponents at you.(IMO perfect)
 
I never understand people going through previous games to compare the toughest difficulty, because each game uses a different approach to making the enemies incredibly tough. Halo 2 and Reach it made the enemy AI ridiculous. Halo 4 throws large amounts of OHK enemies at you. Halo CE, Halo 3, and ODST made the enemies a bit more durable, and threw a few higher ranking opponents at you.(IMO perfect)
So agreed. The reliance upon one-hit-kill weapons to add difficulty is cheap, cheap, cheap. It doesn't lead to more interesting battles, it leads to caution and relying upon a very small set of high burst damage moves.

If anything Legendary should be more resilient enemies that are more aggressive and coordinate better.
 

MrBig

Member
Bungie guys are really rubbing it in by throwing up videos for older Halo multiplayer. :(

Halo 2 anniversary Multiplayer needs to happen. Make it like Counter Strike Go but dont even bother polishing it that much. Just port it over, maybe get someone to do a cheap gfx update on it and maybe patch the glitches and put it on the XBLA markerplace as a multiplayer only game. Go for the cheapest route possible to cut costs.

Crazy wish that will never happen: MS open sourcing the Halo PC engine and sponsoring a community competition for making cool things with it

Semi relevant, Yu visited the Modacity forums a while ago and everyone posted all the great stuff they were able to do with HPC and then nothing ever came of it
 

Trey

Member
If you are going to play through a campaign for design purposes, play through on Heroic. Mostly because that's what the encounters were designed for. There's a good amount of Elites, and Jackal snipers aren't insta-kills.

I never understand people going through previous games to compare the toughest difficulty, because each game uses a different approach to making the enemies incredibly tough. Halo 2 and Reach it made the enemy AI ridiculous. Halo 4 throws large amounts of OHK enemies at you. Halo CE, Halo 3, and ODST made the enemies a bit more durable, and threw a few higher ranking opponents at you.(IMO perfect)

I played through Halo 4 on Legendary, I'm going to play through Halo 2 on Legendary. Heroic runs can come later and I will tune my opinions to that level of play as necessary. That still doesn't change the level design, and the only part I was particularly impressed with was the outer-space MAC cannon encounter with three space chickens. It's only Cairo Station, so I'm only evaluating Cairo Station.

And Drones always suck.

No pop-ins + great framerate is amazing though. Halo never was so smooth.
 

Ramirez

Member
As much as I would love a Halo 2 Multiplayer remake, I'm sure 343 would find some way to fuck the playlists up. Either copy the original good playlists from Halo 2 or don't even bother.

You mean the playlists with BTB SMG starts? lol

I can't wait for the Halo 2 remake with Live compatibility, and then hear all of you bitch and moan about how OP the PP combo is or the other 5,000 things wrong with that game, christ.

Valhalla works fine in Halo 4 too, I'd really like to get a copy of the game some of you are playing, because it's really night and day for me.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Valhalla works fine in Halo 4 too, I'd really like to get a copy of the game some of you are playing, because it's really night and day for me.

The Infinity Slayer BTB game I played on it last night wasn't very fun. The entire center of the map is a death trap now, so everyone sticks to the peremeter. I spent 100% of the game either on cave side (I had the base by the waterfalls) or over by bubble, in protracted DMR fights with guys in the choke point above their base. Vehicles got toasted in around 10 seconds of becoming active. Once, our team pushed through to the other side and got in a long DMR fight with guys in the base. Then we got pushed back and spent the rest of the game in these long ping fests.

The middle is a deathtrap in the same way the center of Hemohrrage was. Other than one or two short lived vehicle runs and our one brief push, I never saw a member of the other team cross the middle of the map, because we were engaging from such long distances. It was....really boring.

I've only played a few games on it. But I'm wondering, what are the other ways to play it?
 
Would be a good MP helmet.
Remove the horn of the FOTUS, and you'd be pretty close.

Reclaimer was fine because as I understood it, it was Guilty Spark thinking Chief was a Forerunner come back to activate the Halo rings again. He also hinted that he thought a marine that got to the Library first was also a (failed) Reclaimer. It was a generic title that he pretty much applied to any human he saw. And that was Bungie's original intention, that humans were descended from Forerunners.

I would have preferred it if he found a new suit or some sort of technology or something, like he had a choice over it. It changes the previous Halo games from "discovering new worlds/reacting to a threat" to "preordained events"

They could still keep the "Chief gets upgraded" element, just the way they went about it felt kind of creatively lazy.
Since I wasn't following the outside the game fiction, I thought
Reclaimer was more like The One, a title for a specific person and not a race as a whole. Guess I never paid close enough attention to that, heh. I'm so used to that trope used elsewhere that it doesn't bother me to see it used here, in a format that to me has had consistently lackluster writing.
 

Ramirez

Member
The Infinity Slayer BTB game I played on it last night wasn't very fun. The entire center of the map is a death trap now, so everyone sticks to the peremeter. I spent 100% of the game either on cave side (I had the base by the waterfalls) or over by bubble, in protracted DMR fights with guys in the choke point above their base. Vehicles got toasted in around 10 seconds of becoming active. Once, our team pushed through to the other side and got in a long DMR fight with guys in the base. Then we got pushed back and spent the rest of the game in these long ping fests.

The middle is a deathtrap in the same way the center of Hemohrrage was. Other than one or two short lived vehicle runs and our one brief push, I never saw a member of the other team cross the middle of the map, because we were engaging from such long distances. It was....really boring.

I've only played a few games on it. But I'm wondering, what are the other ways to play it?

Every game I've played has still revolved around fighting for the top of the hill and pushing past it with vehicles. I regularly see my teammates push up to the tree side cannon landing with a Mantis while we engage from the hill or Pelican, it feels exactly like Valhalla in Halo 3. The map was never dominated by vehicles to begin with, there's far too much cover and uneven terrain for that to happen.
 
I've only played a few games on it. But I'm wondering, what are the other ways to play it?
In general, what we do is secure the turret side or pelican side with infantry and then use vehicles to flank the enemy from the sides and break up their positions. If you can get the enemy formation to break you then quickly move to take their positions.

The best case scenario for us is a strong infantry position on the hills, or strong to one flank and weak to the other, with a Mantis to support both and ghosts/banshees swooping around from the sides to keep the other side off balance. That's checkmate right there but it takes a good amount of work to keep that going.
 

Redford

aka Cabbie
Honestly the map plays like it always did. DMR is sort of an issue but I'm usually having too good a time with the Light Rifle to care. Best map to use it!
 
I'm obviously missing something. If Promethians are Forerunners why are they called Promethians? For example, I thought the light rifle was a Promethian weapon but I've also seen it referred to as a Forerunner weapon.
 

Mayyhem

Member
Ragnarok in Halo 4 feels nothing like Valhalla in Halo 3. Global and personal ordinance coupled with DMR's alone make it way different. Whether 4's Valhalla gameplay is fun is a matter of preference. To me, it's terrible.
 

Trey

Member
I'm obviously missing something. If Promethians are Forerunners why are they called Promethians? For example, I thought the light rifle was a Promethian weapon but I've also seen it referred to as a Forerunner weapon.

Prometheans were the warrior-class Forerunners. Just like Spartans are warrior-class humans. It's a designation.

The line becomes strained a bit, I suppose, when you have bio-material from other races to fuel your robo-machines.
 

broony

Member
Spartan ops was a bit surprising how they were reusing environments from the campaign and then reusing them again in other episodes but I have to say it is fucking fun. I think there is enough there for suspension of disbelief to kick in, mostly because I am really enjoying the combat.

It is mostly just waves of enemies but the enjoyment I am getting out of it really is miles ahead of firefight for me. I'm really sold on it to be honest.

The addition of load outs is adding to the variety of gameplay and the co-op side of things. I play with my dad and my brother. We all use totally different load outs which help us all have a seperate role to play in the game. Everyone kind of knows their roles. It's got my 63 year old dad exited about spartan points and armour as well.

Good stuff, thank you 343 for adding it.

Edit* also my dad is addicted to assassinating stuff.
 

Ramirez

Member
If one team had a Warthog up and they had the laser, that was domination.

I was never dominated by a Warthog on Valhalla, I've truly entered bizarro world.

I also don't understand the hate on SpOps reusing areas, did you guys honestly expect them to be able to crank out 5 new play spaces every single week?
 
Good stuff, thank you 343 for adding it.
Yeah, loving Spartan Ops too, although mostly in co-op. My Spartan Ops loadout:

DMR
Magnum - for close range elite encounters, or to save DMR ammo when assaultingon grunts and jackals.
Frag Grenades - Get a nice bounce and its like a Bouncing Betty to take down a group of jackals/grunts and weaken the elites.
Hologram - so many tactical uses, and even more important when soloing.
Mobility - you will end up running back and forth a lot, so it helps.
Ammo - More ammo at spawn, more ammo in weapons you pick up. Works out great considering the number of enemies you tackle.
 
The Infinity Slayer BTB game I played on it last night wasn't very fun. The entire center of the map is a death trap now, so everyone sticks to the peremeter. I spent 100% of the game either on cave side (I had the base by the waterfalls) or over by bubble, in protracted DMR fights with guys in the choke point above their base. Vehicles got toasted in around 10 seconds of becoming active. Once, our team pushed through to the other side and got in a long DMR fight with guys in the base. Then we got pushed back and spent the rest of the game in these long ping fests.

The middle is a deathtrap in the same way the center of Hemohrrage was. Other than one or two short lived vehicle runs and our one brief push, I never saw a member of the other team cross the middle of the map, because we were engaging from such long distances. It was....really boring.

I've only played a few games on it. But I'm wondering, what are the other ways to play it?

Yeah the center is a no man territory, reds camp the downed pelican while the blues camps the open area where the rocket launcher spawns. Sometimes the red camps the Open area and the center area then is a spawn killing fest when they get the binary rifles and take control of the downed pelican too. Mantis are camping in the caves areas while the banshees are afraid to fly in open space waiting in theirs bases.
 
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