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Halo |OT14| They call it Halo
- Thread starter Overdoziz
- Start date
Yep, loved it
flag beatdown on os then the double, wow.
Thug Waffle
Member
Thanks for the article Tashi, very interesting read. Cliff Bleszinski is the man.
Another thing I always thought Halo could use from Gears was the spotting feature:
Spotting would be cool, but it's more of a necessity in games like Battlefield. I think Halo's better off with just the callouts instead. However, I mainly think that because Halo's map layouts generally lend themselves to accurate callouts no matter where an opponent is. If Halo's maps were less arcade-ish and more, I don't know, environmental (ny this, I mean they're not as heavily sanded down for simplicity and freedom of movement), then maybe I'd be more on board with that.
I just don't like the idea of, "Hey, this is exactly where this bad guy is. Watch him move from here to there."
But that's assuming the system works like that. What did you have in mind for how the spotting system would work?
User 73706
Banned
It would require a massive revision of the design philosophy but "powerups" would be entirely possible. Let's say we use my modified version of HALO: Shield and Sword's Armor Ability system. You get access to Passive and Aggressive Armor Abilities, both of which run off of a single Armor Ability meter which has a total of 30 points from the start. Once these points are exhausted, they do not recharge in Multiplayer; you would have to find an Armor Ability Node, which fully restore your meter and are located in neutral locations across the map. Armor Ability Nodes do not spawn until later into the game (such as a minute apiece) and there are only enough to be used by a single team depending on map size. For example, a small map (4v4) would only have 4 Nodes. A large map (8v8) would contain 8. In Campaign, your meter would just recharge and most likely allow you unlimited Passive use.
Passive Armor Abilities
Armor Enhancements displayed directly on your HUD. They do not require a button to activate but do feed off your universal "Armor Ability" meter. An active Passive AA eats up 2 AA points per second, meaning it is possible to use 15 full sustained seconds of one. You can cycle through them using the horizontal DPad buttons. Cycling through them works in a "full circle" fashion, with the default Sonar being the immediate option. Scrolling left activates the options above it; scrolling right activates the ones below it. It is possible to scroll directly from VISR to Flashlight or vice versa. They include:
- VISR 4.0 (ODST variant, no Promethean Vision wallhacks)
- Motion Tracker 25M
- Sonar [Default]: A 25M motion tracker that displays allies at all times, but only displays enemies on radar when they are firing or using an Aggressive Armor Ability, throwing a grenade, and so on. Vehicles will display on Sonar. The Sonar does not use any Armor Ability battery and exhausting your meter will revert your Passive Ability back to Sonar with no repercussions.
- Night Vision (Halo Reach variant)
- Flashlight (Halo CE Variant)
Aggressive Armor Abilities:
Armor Abilities that are used directly by the player to augment their combat prowess, requiring a single tap of the Armor Ability button, with the sole exception of the Jump Jet. You can cycle through them using your vertical DPad buttons. A single use of an Aggressive Ability uses 5 AA points. None are "sustained," so without Passive use you can perform an Aggressive Ability up to 6 times before your meter is depleted. Cycling through them works in a "full circle" fashion, with the default Sprint being the immediate option. Scrolling up activates the options above it; scrolling down activates the ones below it. It is possible to scroll directly from Jump Jet to Auto Turret and vice versa. They include:
- Jump Jet: Double Jump. When being used as your Aggressive Ability, simply tap the Jump button twice to perform a second leap of equal height. It should go without saying, but you have to perform a first jump to Jump Jet; there's no Melee/Brawl-style "jump in freefall to recover" mechanic.
- Thruster: Same as Halo 4, but with an increased range (about 1.5 or 2x the current distance). It also carries momentum now, meaning that Thrusting out of a Mancannon will send you farther but also doubles your gravity. You can't just use a Mancannon to launch to the enemy Ragnarok base, for example.
- Hologram: Halo 4 version.
- Sprint [Default]: Works similar to the Halo 4 version. Sprint has a Procrustean cooldown similar to Halo 4's version, but does not feed off your Armor Ability meter. Exhausting your meter will revert you to Sprint with no repercussions.
- Regeneration Field: Significant Revisions. Regeneration Field now "sticks" to your Spartan with a much more reduced range. Recharge Time Wait is reduced by half; Recharge Time Rate is doubled. The field only envelops your Spartan for five seconds, meaning that "groundhogging" is impossible like in Halo 4. It is unwise to use it in the middle of a skirmish; if teammates are all in range to get healed by it, they're also in range to be bombarded by grenades, rockets, and so on. This ability is designed mostly as a function to "reward" your surviving teammates after a skirmish. Also important is that two Regeneration Fields that come into contact with eachother will cancel both out, wasting an Armor Ability use, regardless of team affiliation. In Campaign, this ability would be replaced by a temporary Active Camo ability.
- Jackal Shield: Significantly nerfed Hardlight Shield. It's only big enough to cover your head and some of your torso. It takes about a second or two to even activate, initiated by an elaborate animation of your character flicking their wrist to turn it on, meaning you can't just whip it out to survive like Armor Lock or Hardlight Shield. It stays active for a full five seconds, and cannot be ended early, leaving you unable to shoot until it dissipates. You're stuck in third person, moving with left stick, and aiming/moving the shield with your right. It "bobs" rather than statically rotating on an axis like the Hardlight Shield, meaning you have to be careful if you want to use it successfully. It does have some advantages, however. Notably, your movement speed is unchanged. Human bullets will ricochet off it and do no damage (but can still damage your unprotected Spartan), but Plasma will disintegrate the shield pretty rapidly. The primary purpose of this ability is advancement despite being defensive. It's impossible to use it effectively or even consistently to retreat because of how much of you is unprotected. Rather, if you're in cover and need a way to get from point A to point B and survive (but still take damage, just not headshots), this ability will help you do that. It would probably be the most useful against snipers and DMR fire, meaning you can't just get pinged on big open maps. A version of this more akin to Halo 4's Hardlight Shield would show up in Campaign, requiring a full sustained 5 seconds of use and only a single button press to activate.
- Auto Turret: Buffed Halo 4 version.
In Campaign, you'd start with Sprint and Sonar. In an open world game, you'd have to explore areas to find a few key things: Intelligence, Ordnance (allows for the potential of beefy Promethean weapons), Powerups (adding to your Armor Ability rotation), and Terminals. Which, hopefully, could be a mix of the ones in Halo 4 and more abstract-style cutscenes similar to what the Librarian did in the Reclaimer cutscene. You could still have a first mission like Dawn; hell, it'd practically be mandatory. However, I would have a way different opening rather than just camera pans in the Dawn. The recap Prologue was a good idea but I think it'd also be interesting if we got nightmare-style flashbacks from when the Chief was in cryosleep, being plagued by things like the Flood, High Charity, Spark killing Johnson, etc. It ties into a later bit of my idea, but dialogue would show up too, for example "You are a child of my makers, inheritors of all they left behind. You are Forerunner. But this ring... is mine!"
The second mission would have you waking to Cortana establishing a hidden base of operations out of the wreckage; you see a few passive Engineers and Sentinels trying to help her as well. You wake up surrounded by Constructors (the little Plasma Pistol Sentinels from Sacred Icon) and an Engineer or two, who back up to give you space as you're now adorned in your new armor. She tells you she'll maintain contact remotely and your objective is to try and gather some intel but stay under cover. Walking out of the mountain, it opens up into a vast, open valley or canyon; this marks the start of your venture into the hub world.
You're allowed to do a little exploring on some mountain ridges. Doing so could find you an extra weapon or two like a DMR. Once you try and jump off, it works similar to the end of Shutdown, immediately transitioning into a cutscene after hitting a barrier; it initiates a Reach-style first-person cutscene of you sliding down the mountain similar to Nightfall and ending up by a few UNSC munitions like a Warthog and Mongoose, which are likewise surrounded by Constructors and Engineers. They "flee" save for two Constructors and an Engineer. Chief reaches for a Constructor slowly who automatically "dismantles," similar to a recharging Boltshot, and immediately reconstructs when Chief withdraws his hand. The two Constructors fly off. He looks at the Engineer.
Cortana: "I know we've encountered these things in briefings before, but I've never seen one in its natural 'habitat,' so to speak."
Chief: "Engineers."
Cortana: "Correct. It looks like after we jumped after Regret's Carrier a few years ago, a lone ODST squad found the things everywhere in New Mombasa. Intel seems to indicate that they're passive and mostly like to play with foreign technology, though I don't know that I can say the same about their creators."
Aware that it's passive, Chief lowers his weapon slightly and looks to a repaired gauntlet of his, previously damaged in an encounter. He gives the Engineer a simple pat on the head similar to Dare. It burbles and then flies off as well.
Cortana: *playfully* "I guess these things like you."
Chief: "A little too much, if Spark was right."
Chief looks to the modified vehicles.
Cortana: "You should get going, John. Shield Worlds are meant to keep things in, not let them out. I have a feeling this won't just be pushing buttons and finding comm relays."
Chief: "Understood."
Those all-too-familiar widescreen bars cover your screen for a brief moment with their subtitles.
"Requiem For A Dream."
OBJECTIVE: EXPLORE
YourExWife
Member
Everyone understands what bigshow means, but it still doesn't address the fact you start off with a weapon that can shoot across 2/3rds of every map accurately. Increasing strafe speed means that experienced players would be able to avoid shots better, zigzagging to close the distance, same for decreasing aim assist, but at its core the DMR remains broken because you have a mini sniper in your hards as a starting weapon.
Introducing bloom is not the answer, making it a pickup weapon or removing it entirely is the answer.
Moa
Member
As soon as Ninja gets on, it gets a lot more interesting to watch without a listen in, he still plays, has experience and actually has great communication skill, compared to Brad and others who were commentating.
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
Steelyuhas
Member
Don't have maps like Vahalla in Halo 4, simply as that. Lots of people in this very thread said well before they even announced Vahalla that it would be a poor map to have in Halo 4, it worked in Halo 3's sandbox, but wouldn't in Halo 4. Quite simply, maps in the past couple of Halo games have done a poor job of taking sandbox elements into consideration of the design of maps.
As for the rest, we simply disagree. Changing strafe and aim assist levels are a great way to balance weapons, and making it a pickup creates the exact same issue at AR vs BR starts.
User 73706
Banned
Stopping power is a necessary evil now that Sprint is permanent.
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
Its a range weapon though. In Reach they tried Bloom so the more you pulled the trigger the less accurate it got.
The answer is the aim assist it too high and strafe is slow even though movement (forward) is fast. The other problem (for me) is stopping power. So some cloaked fucker can not only ping me with no indication of where he is but can stop my movement too. Even if I find him I can't knock him out of scope. So for me the DMR is a problem because of a compilation of issues. Its not just the weapons fault.
I downsized my favorite ODST screenshots so they don't look that compressed. It's better than nothing I guess.
Click here for the full list.
Click here for the full list.
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
I know but Fuck that shit. It's Halo. Between that and slow strafe this is what is encouraging camping and cloaked snipers. One on one duels are majorly affected if his teammate gets a shot on you and slows you down. Especially for the Auto weapon users. Stopping power is one of the main reasons the Auto/Jetpackers are so effective.
This would make CQC ridicules.
Zoso Achilles
Member
The starting rifles need to be balanced by adjusting damage output, RoF, and aim assist properties as a function of range. It is not acomplished by introducing bloom, spread or recoil, that is stupid. The problem with H4 is that the DMR wasn't balanced properly with respect to the other starting rifles; it is simply better than the others. It has a 3x zoom, that's fine; it just must be accounted for with drastically less aim assis at range. I recall pics being posted here of the ludicrous 'red reticle' range of the DMR on H4 maps.
You say it's a mini sniper? Ok, lower the aim assist, globally increase the strafe speed and re-introduce scope knockout then see how easy it is to long-range kill opponents.
The maps in Halo 4 don't work with the halo sandbox. Exile, ragnarok, complex, etc. With the DMR sight lines, almost any open map becomes a boring affair of both sides pinging each other across distances. Coupled with personal ordnance means very little map movement.
Increasing strafe to balance DMR would completely change the game, including affecting other weapons.
Yes aim assist needs to be toned down, yes you could increase strafe speed, does that change the fact that someone with a DMR can shoot accurately across 80% of a map?
People in this thread said Valhalla wouldn't work if the DMR was still there, not that it wouldn't work at all. Playing ragnarok without personal ordnance or with BR starts is actually good. It essentially means people can't just hole up near bases and collect kills or assists.
Don't get me wrong, I think strafe could be increased, but the days of strafing from Halo:CE are long gone. You'll probably never see it implemented the way it was back then again.
If you get rid of maps like Valhalla for BTB, then all you are left with is sectioned off maps. Having only those types of maps completely neglects vehicle play though. Spawning with a DMR in BTB is the equivalent of spawning with a SAW on smaller maps. Spawning with a Plasma Pistol in BTB is the equivalent of spawning with a Boltshot on smaller maps.
Steelyuhas
Member
Make maps designed around the sandbox that you have, not the other way around.
You say "The maps in Halo 4 don't work with the halo sandbox". That is the maps fault, not the sandboxes fault. People in this thread said that given the Halo 4 sandbox, Vahalla would suck, so a map from a different game with a different sandbox is the thing that shouldn't be in the game. It's why remakes are rarely good.
I think there's somewhere between Valhalla and sectioned off maps, and also consider that changes to the DMR's aim assist, game's shitty strafe, stopping power, etc are things that would significantly impact the DMR at long range.
Pretty sure that's called Thruster.
User 73706
Banned
:lol I didn't even think about that. To be fair Reach's CQC did the same thing due to Jetpacks, Armor Lock, etc. Not to mention that in 4, you jump over someone with your first jump in the first place. If it's really that pressing of an issue it could simply not work when in proximity to an enemy or severely reduce your vertical leap if you're taking damage similar to Sprint slowdown. I'm just trying to work the features we have into something playable because we all know armor abilities are here to stay in one way or another.
Gabotron ES
Member
Knight Lancer spotted.
MaximumFlipFlop
Banned
Just make a loadout without an AA selected! You press the AA button and BAM!!!!!! Nothing happens. Also no icon on your HUD.
Rand0m TAG
Member
No, with increased strafe speed and lower aim assist, people wouldn't be able to hit you accurately. Try shooting at your teammate at a distance
EagleBurnn
Banned
Throwing the oddball is the best mechanic 343 added. Makes the game twice as exciting.
I'm sorry my Internet keeps disconnecting every 4 mins for some reason so it's hard to reply.
But my point was, globally introducing strafe speed to counteract one weapon will change the way the game plays. Sure you could lower the aim assist on the DMR but it still has a 3x scope, all you'd do is make it harder to get kills but people would become better with it.
Scope knockout won't come back because of the introduction of the flinch mechanic and the perk which counteracts it.
Maybe I'm just not getting my point across clearly, but making it harder to shoot a mini sniper doesn't make it stop being a mini sniper. Sure people could evade shots better by zigzagging with strafe, lower aim assist means head shots are going to be harder, slower rate of fire would all but make the weapon useless because people would run away or get out of sight before you got the kill.
Anyways, I've said my thoughts on the DMR though, and I completely understand what you, Steelyuhas and bigshow are saying.
EagleBurnn
Banned
Episode 10: "Palmer goes rouge"
Nobility died on Reach.
This discussion makes me sad that Halo 3's combination of high spread and poor visual response (and subsequent rather opaque gunplay feel) soured people to projectile weapons. There's a reason Halo 1 had consistant spread patterns and highly visible projectile impact graphics. (And it's a big part of why gunplay feels less responsive in Anniversary visuals than in CE's original visual design.)
Mitigating rifle effectiveness at range with a naturally-occuring game of strafe and prediction? Awesome.
Mitigating rifle effectiveness at range with a naturally-occuring game of strafe and prediction? Awesome.
Moa
Member
OXM did a review of Episode 7 already.
Ep 7 Spoilers:
A few, if not all missions take place aboard Infinity. Not re-used environments from Campaign.
lybertyboy
Thinks the Evil Empire is just misunderstood.
Interesting.
User 73706
Banned
If HaloGAF plus a few select 343 employees, MLG members, HBO crowd (the good ones like Wu and Leviathan), got unlimited cash money, an Xbox 420 devkit and whatever tools necessary to do it with a dev period of approximately 5 years I wonder what our Halo game would come out looking like. It'd just be called "HALOGAF" and require a few things:
Campaign Suite
Multiplayer Suite
"Best of Both Worlds" Suite (Firefight, Spartan Ops, etc. Whatever we decided on.)
Forge
Theater
Online functionality, website included
Sound design, soundtrack, and so on.
Any guesses?
Campaign Suite
Multiplayer Suite
"Best of Both Worlds" Suite (Firefight, Spartan Ops, etc. Whatever we decided on.)
Forge
Theater
Online functionality, website included
Sound design, soundtrack, and so on.
Any guesses?
We'd probably be too busy bitching at eachother to finish it.
I expect your only thruster overkills montage in my PMs by Friday.
Just get Platinum to make it.
I'd love a version of the giant corridor fight in the Mantis, where there are only Warthogs or no vehicles altogether. Otherwise, keep the campaign assets out.
Navidson REC
Member
gAg CruSh3r
Member
I honestly think it would work almost the same as Gears. It would have a marker on top of the players head for 3 seconds (Similar to Nemesis Armor mod which last for 5 seconds).
For the button layout it should work if your zoomed in and you hit the grenade button . Or maybe up on the D-pad?
It would just be an interactive experience of Plywood gifs, a round table discussion of adult film stars with Kyle and Juices, a lengthy dialogue intro with ZooJoo, with a weird soundtrack by Marina and the Diamonds provided by Sai.
Fascinating.
Steelyuhas
Member
Include an absurd amount of wolves and the pre-order has been made.
I don't think that is that farfetched to be honest. Assets can be used and reused to their maximum, to ease the development they could bound themselves to on disk assets too (reuse campaign assets for example). Spread out the chatter dialogue, create important audio cues for big events and make custom animation for important events. The biggest hurdle will be geometry production, that takes tons of time but also could provide the option to flex and experiment with more ambitious spaces and not be bound by the conventions.
My idea does sound nuts to some extent too though, it’s asking too much.
User 73706
Banned
:lol
Sai is also an AI aboard the UNSC Pop Rocks adorned in fairy outfit and animated like a Skullgirl.
Zoojoo and Ozzy write the campaign introduction
Kyle, Juices, Booties, and so on are your commanding officers, sending you pictures of Kate Upton and Holly Michaels plastered all over your HUD in intense firefights.
Plywood does the UI.
Over gets to design the motion tracker and pick out where the maps are ripped from campaign.
Maps outsourced to Waypoint and given access to Halo 4 Forge.
I design the weapon sandbox which comes out to a whopping total of 600 weapons (excluding Spartan Ops-exclusive Precursor weapons and Brevet Mutations per individual weapon).
Rev3rb is allowed to do an end credits track as long as it has lyrics. Must be Trap Music.
Moa runs HaloGAF.Hal
rg and hosts daily remix contests.Nowise frequently staples magnetic strips to our networking servers.
Locked 59.99 FPS.
Also, all juniors are forced to fight lions armed with nothing but dildos duct-taped to baseball bats in Basic Training before being allowed to advance.
It's rumored EazyB haunts the HaloGAF offices, causing miscellaneous hardware bugs and taking dumps in company crockpots after closing.
xxjuicesxx
Member
If its 60fps I'd play it.
NobleGundam
Banned
Even though Halo 4 focused on the A.I. Prometheans, could spartan ops season 2 start showing Storm Covenant Raiding Parties, Battle in New Pheonix, Return of Master Chief?
hahaha, I'd like to see more people's writeups on a Gaf-made halo game.