really though, what happened with rockets? Why are they never on the map? Sniper and Rockets are the most Halo power weapons, but most of the maps just seem to have needler, scattershot, and sticky det spawns.
It would be interesting to see more cycling of power weapons, like first will be Sniper/Rocket. Then Railgun/Sticky Detonator. Then Shotgun(with one clip)/Sword. All in the same spots, same times, same rotation, etc. Halo 4 has more weapons in their sandbox that are pretty fun, but all at once is a disaster (ie: Infinity).
Controlled, predictable, fair and balanced chaos. Halo.
Lol what? It's the truth. It's why the Emmy's, golden globes, are now filled with majority premium cable shows because broadcast television just can't compete with the quality being presented.
Even when Aaron Sorkin returned to television for Newsroom, he didn't go to broadcast like he did for West Wing etc.
Has nothing to do with being a hipster but to do with the fact the quality of broadcast shows is down. There's a reason people here clown on big bang theory a lot. Just because it's popular and people watch it, doesn't mean it's good.
Haven't seen community but isn't it one of the lowest rated shows on television?
What's next? Calling me a hipster because I chose not to listen to Justin Bieber songs on the radio? Lol. Bad analogy, have mercy on the comeback doc.
What aren't you getting about this? People are telling you they are just joking or playing around or being friendly and yet you still take everything as an attack.
Guy, Girl, Kid, Machine, Horse, Broom.. whatever the hell you are.. chill out. Not everyone is out to get you brehhhhhh.
And this is coming from a guy who wouldn't mind a zoojoo
Lol what? It's the truth. It's why the Emmy's, golden globes, are now filled with majority premium cable shows because broadcast television just can't compete with the quality being presented.
Even when Aaron Sorkin returned to television for Newsroom, he didn't go to broadcast like he did for West Wing etc.
Has nothing to do with being a hipster but to do with the fact the quality of broadcast shows is down. There's a reason people here clown on big bang theory a lot. Just because it's popular and people watch it, doesn't mean it's good.
Haven't seen community but isn't it one of the lowest rated shows on television?
What's next? Calling me a hipster because I chose not to listen to Justin Bieber songs on the radio? Lol. Bad analogy, have mercy on the comeback doc.
I'm with you that premium cable shows are better but you're not giving a chance to other shows based on the channel they're on.
And you caught yourself up because you compared poorly rated TV shows and Justin Bieber saying you don't watch one because of low ratings and then not listening because he's ultra popular.
When I first read your response I IMMEDIATELY thought of Arrested Development and how it's arguably one of the best shows of all time and was plagued and killed due to bad ratings but now it's back after the cult following got louder as it grew. And you mentioned the West Wing and how Sorkin came back to HBO for The Newsroom...but The West Wing is also one of the highest rated shows of all time...came on broadcast, too.
Just give things a try based on their merit alone and not a) what type of channel it comes on or b) the majority's opinion.
Because NBC are fucking morons at managing their shows. If you keep moving air times/dates around nonstop to the point that people don't know when the damn show is on, of course less people are going to watch it. Other than that, the show, like many of these cable/pay-tv dramas that have been mentioned, is so damn rewarding if you've seen the episodes prior to the current one. Imagine how much less rewarding Breaking Bad would be if you started the show in Season 4/5 and then go back to the beginning. Walter/Jessie/everyone's transformations would be less compelling since you knew where things were headed.
It doesn't do the typical sitcom method of having barely any content in hopes of being more approachable. There are easter eggs to reward fans/repeat viewings (the Beetlejuice one comes to mind), there is meaningful character development and group evolves over time, running gags that manage never to get old (Dean Pelton's outfits, anyone?), etc. The show isn't about Community college or slacking, it's about how each character is legitimately insane in their own way (except Abed, of course), but together they can do anything. They have adventures, have Seinfeld-esque discussions and arguments, not to mention pop culture parodies, topicality (the characters actually "tweeting" while the show is airing and adding more jokes to the episode, which are then built on in the show). Basically the absurdity and meticulous attention to comedic detail are quite rewarding. This is why it is currently my favorite comedy.
Season 4 premieres this Thursday by the way.
Also, Doubles Pro has finally done the impossible: Make me appreciate Abandon.
I went back and reread my massive post on Spartan Ops. Things have gotten quite a bit better than they were at the start of the season. I'm glad that they are using sections in a non-linear way now. Infinity was kinda pushing it, but the
Portal deactivation
environment was reused very well. It had the same feel for when it was previously used, but it definitely didn't feel like a rehash that most of launch SpOps was (I need to come up with a name for that other than launch SpOps. Maybe "SpOps beta"?).
Sadly, Prometheans are still being introduced to encounters via teleportation magic. It's much better to have the player recognize where an enemy is going to come from and plan ahead, rather than dumping them on top of the player. It might be an attempt at being dynamic, but I'm not really sure.
The objectives have actually become more button presses and/or holding a button. The
hold position to get the turrets online
in the latest episode was nice. I'd like more of that. Enemy design is lackluster, but there's nothing that can be done about that until Halo 5.
There are less enemies with OHK weapons, and definitely less Knights with OHK weapons. On the downside, they are giving too many enemies Needlers and not enough cover. This means that there are times where I'm just sitting waiting for my needles to pop, so I can engage again. There's no enemy scaling, which is definitely a major misstep, but it still feels really alienating for a solo player.
Still no customization. Not much can be done there. I feel like the episodic content is in the cg, rather than the gameplay. The in-game story isn't that great, and the dialogue has only marginally improved. Still no incentive to stay alive. Spawning has the opposite problem of the first half, where I'm spawning 12 miles away from the combat. The information overload isn't as bad as it was. It's still there though.
On the complete reserve, the CGI story and content is a ton better. Definitely a huge step up here. I do look forward to this aspect of SpOps every week.
With all of that being said, would I pay for a season 2? No. Is it a good replacement for Firefight? No. Should they scrap the mode in Halo 5? Yes. Should they keep the bridge between games with the CGI episodes? Yes. Should the Spartan Ops resources be dedicated to making the campaign better? Yes.
I still can't believe absolutely zero reasoning was given for it. It just fuels me to dislike a strictly matchmaking structure, as you're always at the mercy of whatever settings they wanna push.
I still can't believe absolutely zero reasoning was given for it. It just fuels me to dislike a strictly matchmaking structure, as you're always at the mercy of whatever settings they wanna push.
I'm interested to see how everyone reacted to Halo 2 (coming off A LOT of H1) and/or Halo 3 (coming off A LOT of H2) when they were released. Now only if I could find that time macheen..
In the sense that Bungie's updates were more fired from the hip and felt more organic / in response to something while 343's tend to be predetermined plans that you're either going to be part of, or.. you're not going to be part of it, but it's still going to happen.
It's the Microsoft culture, though.
Do they owe an explanation for Squad Slayer being deleted? They don't really have to explain in detail every decision. We all know the answer though, and that's the fact that losing Squad Slayer was part of the price of the TU/Vanilla split. Reach had a finite number of playlists it could support and there just wasn't room for Squad Slayer anymore.
It either didn't come back later after they deleted some lists either due to pride, or the fact that Reach's sustain updates ended sooner than previously thought. There's some later changes that I was behind that I wouldn't be now if I had known Reach MM would be stuck in the state it's in after putting them in.
Its population was fine. 1.5-3k normal days, which was normal for a non-Team Slayer/Living Dead/BTB/SWAT list.
If population was taken that seriously with their handling of Reach then Super Slayer and Squad DLC should have been cut after a month and Team Objective would have been nuked from orbit the second they took the keys.
Its population was fine. 1.5-3k normal days, which was normal for a non-Team Slayer/Living Dead/BTB/SWAT list.
If population was taken that seriously with their handling of Reach then Super Slayer should have been cut after a month and Team Objective and Squad DLC would have been nuked from orbit the second they took the keys.
Technically they did nuke Squad DLC when they took over by putting the Anniversary requirement on it at the same time they added 4-5 other lists where you were guaranteed to play Anniversary maps
Did I really read that they are improving snipers by adding shotty snipers to it? I would assume its a joke - but I wouldn't be surprised if someone at 343 thought it was fun. Hopefully it means that they are changing up the map rotation to make it play on smaller maps.
Also that variant of haven needs to replace default haven - what a difference team colours makes.
Put those fancy lights in all maps across matchmaking please I still have no call outs for most of them.
Its population was fine. 1.5-3k normal days, which was normal for a non-Team Slayer/Living Dead/BTB/SWAT list.
If population was taken that seriously with their handling of Reach then Super Slayer should have been cut after a month and Team Objective and Squad DLC would have been nuked from orbit the second they took the keys.
To be fair, a lot of the things that have happened in Halo do not make any sense.
Absurdly broken auto aim/magnetism in 2. A melee system where if you melee 2nd you win in 3. Reach. Camo staying an AA in 4. Still no Combat Evolved sequel..
...
I've figured it out.
Halo 5 continues down the path of Halo 4 and holds nothing back. Who wins with a lazy implementation of "CoD" gameplay?
Combat Evolved gets a sequel (everybody wins) and alternates releases.
Then they'll both be completed trilogies by the time we'll need another Halo trilogy.
343 when interviewed about why they decided to take this route:
Well, it all came down to this: "What is Halo?" There can never truly be a definitive answer to that question. Why? Because Halo is many things to many people.
What is more definitive however is the player's experience that defines Halo.
What was the user experience for each Halo release? How would you define gaming at the time of each game? How did they make you feel?
These are the questions that we are building this strategy on.
**It should also be noted that Combat Evolved 2 would be the more "classic" Halo being "classic" - The title Combat Evolved 2 would just be a marketing strategy like the original was, this time with the intentions of grabbing the minds of old school Halo fans WHILE OPENING THE WORLD TO "Halo being back to Halo."
I always just came to the conclusion that 343 just makes changes, not for any reason but just to set their name away from Bungie and have their own identity.
In the sense that Bungie's updates were more fired from the hip and felt more organic / in response to something while 343's tend to be predetermined plans that you're either going to be part of, or.. you're not going to be part of it, but it's still going to happen.
It's the Microsoft culture, though.
Do they owe an explanation for Squad Slayer being deleted? They don't really have to explain in detail every decision. We all know the answer though, and that's the fact that losing Squad Slayer was part of the price of the TU/Vanilla split. Reach had a finite number of playlists it could support and there just wasn't room for Squad Slayer anymore.
It either didn't come back later after they deleted some lists either due to pride, or the fact that Reach's sustain updates ended sooner than previously thought. There's some later changes that I was behind that I wouldn't be now if I had known Reach MM would be stuck in the state it's in after putting them in.
But Squad Slayer was the best playlist, dont remove the best playlist. Or else the quality of the game goes down. Remove the shit playlists and the overall level of quality goes up.
Holy shit I had a fun night in doubles. If I could get better at calling out when I get stressed (usually have a tendency to forgot how to speak when I'm shooting) and not attacking solo I'd be a lot better overall.
I just wish more people would vote for rail...such a sick map.
Endangered playlists (yesterday's peak per list): Oddball (989), Team Regicide (1081), Crimson DLC (367, immune).
For comparison's sake, the Reach "online now" population counter was at about 68,000 when it stuck at the end of October (it has since been fixed). I don't know if that's a fair comparison since I'm not sure if it's a simple sum of players in all Reach playlists (including all Firefight and Campaign Coop playlists), or if it also counted people playing campaign/firefight outside of matchmaking. In any case, you'd need to add a few thousand for those in Spartan Ops matchmaking at peak to compare.
Against my better judgment, I hope 343 sees the numbers and realizes that perhaps the way forward is to not emulate CoD every step of the way. Get rid of the loadouts and random weapon drops, invest in an engine that actually allows players to pick up dropped power weapons instead of them despawning almost immediately. Get back to an even playing ground, with a good starting weapon. Allow crazy amounts of customization in custom games, and have a fuckton of gametypes available, which you can rotate in and out of matchmaking every once in a while. Bring back Halo like it was, or at least something closer to it than whatever the hell Halo 4 was supposed to be.
The fun of Halo isn't in getting better equipment as you go along. It's in getting together with some friends, and playing some crazy stuff online.
I've seen many people use the "low" population as an argument against Halo 4, but without proper context those Halo 4 peak population numbers are pretty worthless. I remember seeing some numbers from Halo 3 that were screencapped from Bungie.net, but seeing as those are inflated compared to Reach and 4's numbers they're not that useful. Are there similar Reach population numbers available somewhere?
Against my better judgment, I hope 343 sees the numbers and realizes that perhaps the way forward is to not emulate CoD every step of the way. Get rid of the loadouts and random weapon drops, invest in an engine that actually allows players to pick up dropped power weapons instead of them despawning almost immediately. Get back to an even playing ground, with a good starting weapon. Allow crazy amounts of customization in custom games, and have a fuckton of gametypes available, which you can rotate in and out of matchmaking every once in a while. Bring back Halo like it was, or at least something closer to it than whatever the hell Halo 4 was supposed to be.
The fun of Halo isn't in getting better equipment as you go along. It's in getting together with some friends, and playing some crazy stuff online.
Against my better judgment, I hope 343 sees the numbers and realizes that perhaps the way forward is to not emulate CoD every step of the way. Get rid of the loadouts and random weapon drops, invest in an engine that actually allows players to pick up dropped power weapons instead of them despawning almost immediately. Get back to an even playing ground, with a good starting weapon. Allow crazy amounts of customization in custom games, and have a fuckton of gametypes available, which you can rotate in and out of matchmaking every once in a while. Bring back Halo like it was, or at least something closer to it than whatever the hell Halo 4 was supposed to be.
The fun of Halo isn't in getting better equipment as you go along. It's in getting together with some friends, and playing some crazy stuff online.
I've seen many people use the "low" population as an argument against Halo 4, but without proper context those Halo 4 peak population numbers are pretty worthless. I remember seeing some numbers from Halo 3 that were screencapped from Bungie.net, but seeing as those are inflated compared to Reach and 4's numbers they're not that useful. Are there similar Reach population numbers available somewhere?
Simultaneous users at moment of capture but it won't tell you the unique users between one capture and the next. From one hour to the next you could see it go 70,000-> 65,000 but 40,000 of those are new players and everyone else went afk/signed off, in theory
Against my better judgment, I hope 343 sees the numbers and realizes that perhaps the way forward is to not emulate CoD every step of the way. Get rid of the loadouts and random weapon drops, invest in an engine that actually allows players to pick up dropped power weapons instead of them despawning almost immediately. Get back to an even playing ground, with a good starting weapon. Allow crazy amounts of customization in custom games, and have a fuckton of gametypes available, which you can rotate in and out of matchmaking every once in a while. Bring back Halo like it was, or at least something closer to it than whatever the hell Halo 4 was supposed to be.
The fun of Halo isn't in getting better equipment as you go along. It's in getting together with some friends, and playing some crazy stuff online.
Aye. I think Tomb Raider has gone a similar route in trying to be Uncharted, but forgetting what made Tomb Raider great and ending up neither as good as the old Tomb Raiders or Uncharted.
I've seen many people use the "low" population as an argument against Halo 4, but without proper context those Halo 4 peak population numbers are pretty worthless. I remember seeing some numbers from Halo 3 that were screencapped from Bungie.net, but seeing as those are inflated compared to Reach and 4's numbers they're not that useful. Are there similar Reach population numbers available somewhere?
I don't think so, no - I went and checked and the "online now" stat either includes non-matchmaking players or doesn't update at the same rate, it's not just a flat sum of playlist populations. Going from memory from the last few months of Reach though, adding up what the Reach playlists were usually around gave me a little under 60k. I think I probably lowballed a few of them.
I think the trendline is more interesting than the number alone, really.
It depends. Peak or concurrent user stats are interesting because they're what's going to be impacting match quality - fewer people online at a given time, smaller pool for me to draw from, worse matches as a result (whether that be in terms of skill, latency, or matchmaking times). For a more holistic analysis, unique users per 24 hour stats are better, but peak isn't useless by any stretch. It doesn't really matter to the player if ten million people played Crimson DLC throughout the day, if only 300 of them are on at a given time, then his potential ideal matches are much harder to find.
Simultaneous users at moment of capture but it won't tell you the unique users between one capture and the next. From one hour to the next you could see it go 70,000-> 65,000 but 40,000 of those are new players and everyone else went afk/signed off, in theory
Against my better judgment, I hope 343 sees the numbers and realizes that perhaps the way forward is to not emulate CoD every step of the way. Get rid of the loadouts and random weapon drops, invest in an engine that actually allows players to pick up dropped power weapons instead of them despawning almost immediately. Get back to an even playing ground, with a good starting weapon. Allow crazy amounts of customization in custom games, and have a fuckton of gametypes available, which you can rotate in and out of matchmaking every once in a while. Bring back Halo like it was, or at least something closer to it than whatever the hell Halo 4 was supposed to be.
The fun of Halo isn't in getting better equipment as you go along. It's in getting together with some friends, and playing some crazy stuff online.
But I fear they can't change course now and it's full steam ahead. Someone pointed out to me that Microsoft won't care its the least played Halo game if it becomes the best selling and sells a ton.
Look at the reviews IGN and other sites gave them. Saying crap like they've 'out bungied-bungie!' etc. Can they honestly make a Halo 5 that won't have loadouts, perks, armor abilities. If they did, we'd love it but the people who eat up infinity slayer would be outraged. Not to mention crap sites like IGN would mention in the review that they've gone back to 'boring old bare-bones' halo. Look how much shit CoD gets for staying mostly the same.
My problem with Halo 4, is this belief that random = fun. It's like telling someone who has played chess his whole life to take up black jack or roulette. Sure there may be some skill involved if you learn the game but the outcome basically comes down to luck.
It doesn't help you have guys like Ozzy make up weird claims about how traumatized casuals were they had to learn where weapons spawned on the map and how global ordnance is great.
Where are the people who said global ordnance would open up maps, change up the matches etc. Where are these great new battles happening wherever new ordnance randomly spawns on the map? They're not happening.
Then we heard that people complained how they never got the weapons they wanted, got betrayed. How it makes it fun for everyone to get a power weapon like sniper or rockets. Except it's not fun. It's random. You can get an overkill and killing frenzy and get a needler while some guy gets 5 assists including a huge vehicle destroy assist all because he hit a warthog with a few shots and be able to call down a binary rifle. What's worse, if he's got ammo perk on a loadout, he can get double the bullets. If he has camo, he is basically an invisible spartan with a golden gun.
I don't know about you, but 343 have basically handicapped themselves to continue with this for Halo 5. Don't get me wrong, they're a better studio now when they started. Look at the improvements in spartan Ops which is actually fun to play again. But when you've created a whole new group of gamers coddled into choosing what weapons to start with, to be able to call down power weapons, use superpower abilities at will, they're not going to want to go back.
Halo as we knew it is dead, at best we can hope they throw those of us a bone in the form of things like doubles pro, an updated slayer pro. But competitive and skilled halo now feels like an afterthought when thinking about future games.
I'm just disappointing that appealing to the masses means giving a finger to game design.
When you set out to make a fun, fair, balanced game you don't make random weapon drops... Or random ordnance options...
It's even more baffling since there were ways to bring casuals up to speed with when and where weapons were dropping other than cloud the battlefield for everyone...
There's a great amount of good things that can be said about Halo 4. However, they're marred by the myriad of problems that seemed to have hindered the game's growth as it were. Zeouterlimits feels as though the game was rushed and we can all see the signs. Lack of legacy features being the biggest offence perhaps.
I don't think the game needed a beta as such but I do get the feeling that the game lacked a few cycles of internal testing. Shoot an Elite sometimes and they don't even react. Whoever programmed that knows that shit ain't right but that the code used was stable enough in the little time the had.
Even gameplay changes or acknowledgements of issues seem to have a lot of red tape that needs crossing. Week in, wee out we see bsangel remaining tight lipped on certain, arguabl important, issues whilst touting a greater Microsoft financial interest.
I think the Halo IP is a bigger beast than the game it needs to be. There is too much at steak,
L'iara
. Too much worth risking if something goes wrong. Too man potential consumers to worry about and markets to appease.
They're spinning plates. Every Halo game has added some to the collection but it just feels like the process that 343/MS have left themselves with, be it through a stringent release window or other means, have left them unable to keep some plates spinning. I don't think the wanted so many communities to get screwed over for one second.
I just think they are incredibly unfortunate and that the business model needs to change.
