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Halo |OT12| Last One Out, Get the Lights

Fuchsdh

Member
I'm surprised they axed KotH. I felt they really improved it in Halo 4. Making hill "life" based on a set number of points it can give was a great idea. Keeping hill lives short made the game less repetitive. Pair that with not being able to pick up grenades from corspes (most of the time) and it was much better than halo 3. I get they have lots of playlists and dominion is similar, but it's a classic that got the face lift it needed so why trash it? They obviously invested some time into making it work. Give it more than a month.

It really doesn't make sense to me why they got rid of assault and KotH, but kept oddball and flag. They all came from the same place, why arbitrarily cut them? At least we can still make KotH customs. RIP Assault.

It'll be back, im sure. I'd rather they axe Team Reg eventually though because Regicide fills an FFA role and doesn't get dragged down by a fool king.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
File it under other mysterious casualties such as Squad Slayer and Action Sack (Reach Edition).

I don't see how it's mysterious. They are adding like 3 playlists so they wanted to keep the number down. They looked at the least played list and took it out for a while. Seems logical to me.

I'd guess it'll be back.
 

FyreWulff

Member

Seriously, what was the point of deleting Action Sack?

It had tons of unique content.

It had the last remaining Vanilla variants of objectives.

The only issue it had was that Shotty Snipers was in it and Flag Slayer was in actual Objective. Shotty Snipers should have been in Snipes and Flag Slayer should have been in Action Sack.

I don't see how it's mysterious. They are adding like 3 playlists so they wanted to keep the number down. They looked at the least played list and took it out for a while. Seems logical to me.

I'd guess it'll be back.

This happens when you announce a playlist as temp and then keep it around, though, and now we have redundancy (wait, where did we see that before?): Team Regicide and Regicide. Streamlined matchmaking needs to strive for maximum uniqueness and this is 343's Reach support all over again.
 

IHaveIce

Banned
Surprise surprise.
Except you need it to be out of cert before anything is confirmed. Something could get caught in that process that would change the TU. And the exploits we don't want to draw more attention to pre TU aren't map items. Take that as you will.

Oh, and for those asking about SpOps locations in the second half of the season. None of them are repeats from the first half of the season.

That's good.

KOTH gone is really sad :( Liked it more than oddball and CTF.
But interesting to see the dlc playlist having all the gametypes mixed.


About the tourney again, is the real counting factor really EXP? So people with double exp will win and kids without work. Would love a ratio of games/kills/death or something like this.
 

Booties

Banned
Sorry, I enjoy Spops, would have loved FF to be in there as well, but I'm still enjoying Spops, call me crazy but playing with 4 people can lead to some great moments.

Are you playing on xbl? I can never have a smooth game of spops. I'm sure it is a lot of fun with 4 people, but the current state of it is awful.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
I hope that if we do see a Grifball playlist, it's just for a rotating weekend playlist. We don't need people to stop playing real gametypes to play that shit. Even though I think grifball is actually fun.
 

Amazing Mic

Neo Member
File it under other mysterious casualties such as Squad Slayer and Action Sack (Reach Edition).

I always had the impression that stuff like that got axed in hope the population would filter elsewhere. Same thing happened w/ Doubles Arena- seemed like it got axed hoping it'd bump up 4v4 Arena and it really didn't happen.

Seems more and more that people like what they like- it's damn near impossible to see any significant jumps in population.

Didn't play much H4 KOTH, still too much ignoring the objective- but it was fun with a full squad and I would rather have the option to play it, even if the population was low.
 

Booties

Banned
I hope that if we do see a Grifball playlist, it's just for a rotating weekend playlist. We don't need people to stop playing real gametypes to play that shit. Even though I think grifball is actually fun.

Double exp weekends were cool in halo 3. Team Ranked Team Flag was my favorite. I liked grifball in very small servings. Keep that shit in customs and select appearances in MM. Not a permanent list.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Instant respawn is awful for any competitive mode. It needs to go.
Agreed, sprint is fine but after playing No Instant Spawn I really don't want to go back.

I also hope 343 realizes that people want competitive game modes and should NOT have to rely on mods to do the job.The competitive community is an important one and we now have the settings for a competitive playlist and I hope it gets it's own playlist soon so 343 can see that people want it and that there is no shame in going back to the old formula while also having modes of their vision. We are Halo fans just like them so our opinion is important just like every other community.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Is it bad that I've barely strted Game of Thrones (book) and I already want this shirt?

636x460design_01.jpg

http://beta.threadless.com/product/3567/Adopt_A_Dire_Wolf/tab,guys/style,shirt
 

heckfu

Banned
I just think that our opinions really might be the vocal minority. It's been said before but I think I finally realized it on my own that Halo is going to way of mainstream shooters and trying to dig itself out of a hole created by Call of Duty's crazy surge to the front of the fight.

I think where we want changes that 343 is perfectly happy having and doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it maliciously but they're just doing what they need to try and stay 'relevant'.

I wish they would cater a playlist to the older fans of the franchise but I feel it may be sink or swim for this crowd.
 
I just want to express that I'm willing to wait longer to be matched up against other solo players in team games. The times that I'm able to play coupled with my non-pro abilities make it difficult to play with other people on my FL who are far better than me, since they're most likely the ones that trueskill will match against.

Quality matches should always take precedence over getting into a game as fast as possible, but I get the sense that's not the case.
 

Homeboyd

Member
I just think that our opinions really might be the vocal minority. It's been said before but I think I finally realized it on my own that Halo is going to way of mainstream shooters and trying to dig itself out of a hole created by Call of Duty's crazy surge to the front of the fight.

I think where we want changes that 343 is perfectly happy having and doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it maliciously but they're just doing what they need to try and stay 'relevant'.

I wish they would cater a playlist to the older fans of the franchise but I feel it may be sink or swim for this crowd.
Bingo.
 

Karl2177

Member
I just think that our opinions really might be the vocal minority. It's been said before but I think I finally realized it on my own that Halo is going to way of mainstream shooters and trying to dig itself out of a hole created by Call of Duty's crazy surge to the front of the fight.

I think where we want changes that 343 is perfectly happy having and doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it maliciously but they're just doing what they need to try and stay 'relevant'.

I wish they would cater a playlist to the older fans of the franchise but I feel it may be sink or swim for this crowd.

There's no reason for Halo to not follow the trend of shooters by adding neat player abilities, but there's also no reason to not cater to legacy fans via custom options. I've never really vocalized this as much, because I simply want more custom options to tune the game to how I want it to play. It's possible to create core settings that are legacy and then iterate on that to create new more "modern" gameplay. Halo 4 has that deep down, but there are no settings to get to it aside from modding, and I think that is what disappoints me.
 
There's no reason for Halo to not follow the trend of shooters by adding neat player abilities, but there's also no reason to not cater to legacy fans via custom options. I've never really vocalized this as much, because I simply want more custom options to tune the game to how I want it to play. It's possible to create core settings that are legacy and then iterate on that to create new more "modern" gameplay. Halo 4 has that deep down, but there are no settings to get to it aside from modding, and I think that is what disappoints me.

I don't think you need to shoehorn a bunch of features from the market leader to 'stay relevant'.

Develop new ideas which work with your product - you will be staying relevant and offering an enticing alternative to the market leader that way.
 
Someone needs to tell 343 that Dominion matches should go to 500. I've had so many Dominion games that are swinging around in our favor just around the 350 mark when there's basically no hope for the turnaround.

Other solution: you only earn points when you control 2 or more bases. But that'd involve an overhaul of the game, so just give me more points to work with!
 

LuchaShaq

Banned
Anyone know why halo 4 multi lost all of my customizations and 90% of my records? It still has me at level 21 but thinks I've only had like 50 kills total even though I was in the thousands...
 
Each (King, Ball) are currently sitting at just at or under 2% of the total population (880 players). I can't imagine Oddball is long for this world, either. As soon as the hardcore/MLG/whatever playlist goes up, I'd bet that Team Slayer Pro gets the axe too (1.5% population).

Even CTF is below 5%. Objectives-based Halo is in a very dangerous place right now. The changes made haven't brought any sort of population boom, and some of them might even be keeping older players away (I know that the Flag changes certainly make me lukewarm on the idea of playing CTF). Rapid changes need to be coming in to salvage what's left.

Where do you live? I've never seen a playlist dip below 2000.
 
Boltshwatguns would be incredible.



You mean like in Halo 2?

You mean like in Halo 3?

You mean like in Halo: Reach?

The individual playlists per gametype was nice to get everyone new introduced to the new objective mechanics Halo 4 had to offer, and I'm guessing, and praying, that they'll soon make Team Objective once they feel players have *gulp* adapted.

Please no. I want my CTF playlist. Don't take my favorite mode away. Not that Oddball and King aren't 100 times better now, but I'm living the dream.
 

Havok

Member
Where do you live? I've never seen a playlist dip below 2000.
This is data from Waypoint. Check it yourself at this link, if you like.

The straight numbers are okay, but not so much when you take the total population into account. I've been doing some periodic checks throughout the day, and the percentages I listed appear to be relatively stable.
 

kylej

Banned
nothing wrong with trying to evolve the franchise and stay relevant. the problem is bending over backwards to try to shove every hackeneyed feature from every other FPS into your game while doing nothing notably fresh and new on your own, cutting features that existed in previous games, releasing outright broken elements of the game, dropping a giant nutsack on the face of your oldest fanbases, and wrapping it all up in the giant weekly fluff ball of microsoft co-marketing, empty promises and <3's that is the weekly bulletin. be different, but be bold. don't pretend to elevate the franchise when all you're doing is sucking the tit of others. THAT's the problem with Halo 4.
 

Karl2177

Member
I don't think you need to shoehorn a bunch of features from the market leader to 'stay relevant'.

Develop new ideas which work with your product - you will be staying relevant and offering an enticing alternative to the market leader that way.

I agree and disagree. There are some things that will work well into Halo's combat like passive abilities. Now personally perks aren't the way to do it. But what Call of Duty did was introduce a new style of play that was different from Halo. And it built off of that difference to the juggernaut that it is today. Halo should work on advancing what it did right 10 and 7 years ago. That's where I agree with you.

Optional Killcams are a nice addition if they can work out the latency issues. Proper DLC integration would be nice. SC2 styled map vetoing would be nice. SC2 or LoL styled ranking would be nice. Spectator modes would be nice. All come from mainstream games that are beneficial to Halo's style.
 
I agree and disagree. There are some things that will work well into Halo's combat like passive abilities. Now personally perks aren't the way to do it. But what Call of Duty did was introduce a new style of play that was different from Halo. And it built off of that difference to the juggernaut that it is today. Halo should work on advancing what it did right 10 and 7 years ago. That's where I agree with you.

Optional Killcams are a nice addition if they can work out the latency issues. Proper DLC integration would be nice. SC2 styled map vetoing would be nice. SC2 or LoL styled ranking would be nice. Spectator modes would be nice. All come from mainstream games that are beneficial to Halo's style.

I totally agree with you actually - a lot of the things you are saying are good additions are actually fairly ancillary to the main gameplay experience. I don't have a problem with copying features that your product has never had if you don't have to sacrifice elements of your own product to do it.
 

CyReN

Member
Somewhat to go off Kyle said, it's all about business. It's PERFECTLY FINE to introduce new things to the franchise, but to cut off/eliminate/disable things that the community has grown to love and like. This is Business 101 here, it's nothing crazy. It's always best to keep options and attract both parties. Never alienate both.

Going into Halo 4 I had a lot of hope in the game (it's a good game) and 343 but honestly they have done a pretty piss poor job. It's starting to get to the point I have more fun thinking of ways to fix the game than play. That can't be normal.

I think another issue is 343 always had a slogan about "Made by people who love Halo". What does that mean though? We need people that KNOW Halo.
 

zlatko

Banned
So a lot more people are noticing laggy games. Is this due to the giant player base drop off, and thus it's harder to get optimal hosting situations ?

I hope CTF doesn't get taken out. It's the main game type I play that has ordnance and is objective based. I am basically doing that and SWAT as my go to game types. :)
 
This is data from Waypoint. Check it yourself at this link, if you like.

The straight numbers are okay, but not so much when you take the total population into account. I've been doing some periodic checks throughout the day, and the percentages I listed appear to be relatively stable.

Team Slayer Pro:
754

Remove that playlist. Boring Halo. :lol (but seriously)
 

FyreWulff

Member
So a lot more people are noticing laggy games. Is this due to the giant player base drop off, and thus it's harder to get optimal hosting situations ?

I hope CTF doesn't get taken out. It's the main game type I play that has ordnance and is objective based. I am basically doing that and SWAT as my go to game types. :)

TU resets the hosting records I think.

I seem to remember this happening with 3.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Anyone else expecting that Contest Playlist to just be flooded with cheaters and shit? lol. It's going to be a mess. I've registered but I probably won't really participate.

edit:alsfjasdl;fkjasdf NPD's today! No wonder we got the MS press release about 50 million Halo games sold.
 

CyReN

Member
Anyone else expecting that Contest Playlist to just be flooded with cheaters and shit? lol. It's going to be a mess. I've registered but I probably won't really participate.

edit:alsfjasdl;fkjasdf NPD's today! No wonder we got the MS press release about 50 million Halo games sold.

The last few Virgin Tourney didn't happen, I'm not holding my breath.

Once the hardcore community has a dedicated playlist, whether it's labeled MLG or not, that playlist is toast.

The competitive community consider the Slayer Pro playlist boring as hell.
 
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