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Halo |OT15| Beta-tested, GAF approved

H

Hypertrooper

Member
Sai-kun said:
some dude in this programming class of mine is browsing neogaf

he is also wearing a bungie shirt

hi dude in my programming class this is the creepiest post i've ever made
Click to expand...
Take a note paper, sign it with "Carlos 'Sai-kun'", stand up, go to the guy, give it to him and say "hey, I have a GAF account, I am famous and that's why you are getting an Autograph, Bungie.net kid!"
 
O

orznge

Banned
The Henery said:
Oh yes, absolutely, 100 percent, without question. The other day I was going to make a quick post: "Every time I hop on Halo 4, I'm repeatedly astonished at the continuing success of Infinity Big Team Slayer". Once I thought about it however, I realised that iBTB's success makes complete sense. Its continued success, population-wise, is the residual effect of Halo 4's launch physique.

There are vast, vast, numerous amounts of videogamers who enjoyed the original Halo trilogy. The PS2 dominated that console generation but had it not been for Halo CE's foundational pillar in the Xbox's lauch, and Xbox Live's perfect launch partner in Halo 2 then the Xbox would have gone the way of the Sega Saturn or Jaguar, forgotton and completely stomped into anonymity by the PS2. Halo 3's years at the top of the Live charts and respectable (for a years old game) subsequent tussle with COD releases bore out that there were still many, many gamers who enjoyed normal Halo gameplay.

Then Halo Reach happened and a lot of gamers who had nine years worth of gameplay muscle memory invested in Halo are thrown by having to stop shooting in the middle of a battle in order for their shots to be accurate. They have moments of dizzying frustration when a player they would have killed in a given situation in the previous three titles suddenly activates an invincibility button. They are killed by players who can suddenly fly over their heads from spawn and the game doesn't offer them a Y axis sensitivity to accomodate these new features. They enter Team Slayer, a safe bet of a playlist in the previous two titles and half of the maps are a turgid, mono-grey eyesore that are all visually alike and don't play particularly well. They go to BTB, a favourite for so many in H2 and H3 and there is not a single, non-forge map custom built for the mode, instead playing on built-for-an-entirely-different-mode horror shows like Spire and Boneyard. They actually get put into BTB SWAT on Boneyard, spawn Red stairs, and are repeatedly spawn killed in the open by a 3x zoom, single shot precision rifle.

These players think Halo Reach is not a very fun Halo game. They don't like the changes, they don't like the poor selection of maps, amongst other things. They look around for other places to put their gaming time; Black Op's releases on the back of three successful predecessors and, crucially, doesn't mess around with what made those games popular in the first place. It identify's a rivals strength of meta-features (Halo's theatre and social file sharing capabilities) and implements its own theatre which in many ways improves upon Halo's version and then offers players the social sharing side of it, not on a dev website or by jumping through hoops in game but through free rendered uploads to probably the most visited website on Earth in Youtube. Many of the gamers put off by Halo's strange new direction (no 1-50 wtf? Timing shots and no BR wtf? You can spawn with camo now wtf?) decide to go where a lot of their friends went, a safe, you know what you're getting deal in COD. Lots of them also get into Battlefield 3, a game that knows what it does best, very large scale military battles, is somewhat unique in the FPS landscape and sticks to it.

Fast forward to October 2012 and these players who loved the original trilogy but checked out with Reach, they see the Halo 4 PR train in full swing. "Oh hey, look, the Master Chief's back" they say. They remember paying the same price for ODST as they did for Halo 3 but ODST didn't have proper multiplayer nor the Chief. They remember paying full price the following year for Reach, which again didn't have the Chief, and being put off by the weird, unexpected things in the multiplayer. So they see the Chief and they associate him with the last game he was in, Halo 3, that game that they and their friends had lots of awesome times with. So they look forward to Halo 4's release because hey, Chief's back, so Halo will be normal again right?

This is where one goes back to the point about Halo 4's launch 'physique'. The launch state of a game is arguably its most important. It is where the vast majority of players who don't read forums and gaming press etc get their idea of a games identity and the game developers intent for the series. Many of those players that Reach lost are back for Halo 4 in launch week, eager to give the franchise another shot.

They load up the game and tentatively enter War Games ("I think this is the multi, guys"). The party lead and their buddies look for a playlist they remember loving, Team Slayer, but there is no sign of it. "Just pick the top one, come on party leader!". So they enter Infinity Slayer. They play five hypothetical games. The voting for these five games goes 'Adrift, Complex, Complex, Adrift, Abandon'. The maps quality don't seem very high and now it appears everyone has a power weapon at some point, and that guy they just killed pressed X to spawn without punishment and cleaned them up while they waited for their shields to recharge, completely unfairly. Weapons are confusingly spawning at random, with no explanation as to why that is happening (it didn't happen in the ten years they played Halo before). They play another bunch of Infinity Slayer and soon come to realise that there's only four 4v4 maps and two of them are objectively poor for Slayer. So they venture over to Infinity BTB and, while the gameplay problems remain from their 4v4 experience, at least there are more maps on offer.

So what happens to this hypothetical party of four a week after Halo 4's release? Three of them go to Black Op's 2 or back to Battlefield 3 (COD does weapon unlocks and instant respawn far better than Halo ever will and BF3 is built around large scale combat and, crucially, let's you drive a vehicle more than five meters without getting stunned by a spawn weapon). One stays (the opening populations were around 400, 000 and then dropped to a quarter of that). The one who stays motivation for doing so is as multitudinous as Halo's confused identities. It might be a love of heavy BTB gameplay, it might be because that player is one of those who is an absolute sucker for levelling systems no matter what the gameplay and wishes to reach SR 130. It might be that they fucking love the party gametype Regicide. But the question isn't why so few stayed it's why so many chose to leave...

Halo 4 sold so many copies because it it had an 11 year established base of users and previous customers right? For 9 of those years Halo was about equal starts, checks, balances and largely reasonable design. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that many of that established user base came to Halo 4 expecting a direct, regular Master Chief sequel to Halo 3, Reach being the equivalent of an experimental off-shoot branch, not the foundation for Halo 4. Those players came to Halo, experienced instant respawn, random weapon drops, camo sniping, camo boltshotting, their favourite Warthog being stunned every three seconds by an unlocked spawn weapon, no ranked/social choice and realised they had to play for hours in order to unlock a perk so they didn't frequently run out of ammo (weapons vanishing every 12 seconds as they do). They probably realised at that point that all these things that were making Halo not feel like the game they'd enjoyed for a decade were being done better in other games in which they made sense. And so, they went to those other games.

So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market. People who bought or rented Halo 4 to see if it was normal again have disappeared. They won't be back five months from launch when it's announced in a corner of an internet forum that Team Throwdown, a normal-ish Halo playlist is coming to Halo 4! After that opening week they've made their mind up and you've lost them forever. Well, at least until Halo 5 rolls around but even then they might not bother. See, next time, Halo won't have the 'Master Chief wasn't in those games so it doesn't count' excuse. Master Chief, along with the Halo name, is now tainted.
Click to expand...

.
 
E

EagleBurnn

Banned
The Henery said:
So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market.
Click to expand...

What annoys me is that market is still open. No shooter dominates it like Halo 2 & 3 did. There's a chance that Halo 5 will retake it, but it won't.
 
U

User 73706

Banned
Sai-kun said:
some dude in this programming class of mine is browsing neogaf

he is also wearing a bungie shirt

hi dude in my programming class this is the creepiest post i've ever made
Click to expand...

Maybe you're just pulling a Fight Club and you have a bunch of alts on here.

Alternatively: Chicago to change its motto to "we'll bang ok"
 
E

EagleBurnn

Banned
heckfu said:
uhhhhh cod dominates. let's not play dumb.
Click to expand...

Re-read what I quoted

The Henery said:
So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market.
Click to expand...
 
U

User 73706

Banned
I'd love for Halo to expand to 16v16 next-gen.

Only problem is, how do you maintain all the different player counts? Ideally there'd only be FFA, 2v2, 4v4, 8v8, and 16v16, but I still feel like that has the potential to eat up a lot of resources.
 
O

Obscured

Member
While I don't think The Henery's post needs to be reposted over and over, the thought and intent put into it is something I would like to see over and over. Even though I don't completely agree with everything he wrote, it is clear his stance on the game, what he sees is lacking and his points are well made.

One of the biggest things I felt 4 was missing was the custom options. I don't think it was malice it wasn't there though, I think it had more to do with scheduling. Even though I'd like to believe a game with the resources Halo 4 had would be allowed the leeway to push a timeframe to ensure the absolute best product that is probably not the case.

I'm hopeful enough of a base was created to do awesome things for the next iteration, though typically when you get into crunch mode that is not when the most reusable code is created.
 
T

Tawpgun

Member
Obscured said:
While I don't think The Henery's post needs to be reposted over and over, the thought and intent put into it is something I would like to see over and over. Even though I don't completely agree with everything he wrote, it is clear his stance on the game, what he sees is lacking and his points are well made.

One of the biggest things I felt 4 was missing was the custom options. I don't think it was malice it wasn't there though, I think it had more to do with scheduling. Even though I'd like to believe a game with the resources Halo 4 had would be allowed the leeway to push a timeframe to ensure the absolute best product that is probably not the case.

I'm hopeful enough of a base was created to do awesome things for the next iteration, though typically when you get into crunch mode that is not when the most reusable code is created.
Click to expand...

Posts like his have been made by a lot of HaloGAF's members. The problem is, the game not only takes a while to fix, but some of the fixes we want are impossible, not on the priority list, or just against the new design philisophy. But its hard to take no for an answer on a franchise we love.

And its tiring making all these well thought out megaposts when they accomplish nothing. It's why you see so much meta jokes, and halo sucks, save halo, rip halo. It's easier, it gets your dissatisfaction across.

It doesn't help that there's little other Halo stuff to talk about considering a lot of people here don't play it anymore.
 
Y

YourExWife

Member
Obscured said:
While I don't think The Henery's post needs to be reposted over and over, the thought and intent put into it is something I would like to see over and over.
Click to expand...

Then you should go read every OT since release. Pretty much every regular here has made at least 1 such post (usually multiple times) detailing their issues/likes/dislikes/rage/praise/etc for the game. Many have done it multiple times. Maybe it's just me, but that time has passed and basically everyone knows these points already. I don't feel *that* much has changed to negate many of the issues that people have with the game or to change the opinions of those that enjoy it.

EDIT: Fuck my work internet. Stawpgun...
 
M

MaximumFlipFlop

Banned
YourExWife said:
Then you should go read every OT since release. Pretty much every regular here has made at least 1 such post (usually multiple times) detailing their issues/likes/dislikes/rage/praise/etc for the game. Many have done it multiple times. Maybe it's just me, but that time has passed and basically everyone knows these points already. I don't feel *that* much has changed to negate many of the issues that people have with the game or to change the opinions of those that enjoy it.
Click to expand...

Hey sexy lady when we playing majestic together?
 
G

GrizzNKev

Banned
DeadNames said:
what does he say?
Click to expand...

He said they were surprised that people had difficulty understanding the Didact's motivations. That an ancient alien waking from a cryptum hellbent on destroying humanity was clear and straightforward.

I was just as surprised anyone could have thought that was understandable at all. He seems to have forgotten that in the Halo universe prior to 4, Forerunners had been presented as caretakers of the galaxy who had made a big mistake and would have no reason to want to use military force to wipe out any species.

It's a dumb idea, but it does really make me wonder if most of the staff actually had played the original trilogy. How could anyone have made the assumption that we wouldn't be confused by a Forerunner being evil if we hadn't read the books written to set up Halo 4?
 
Z

Zeouterlimits

Member
DeadNames said:
what does he say?
Click to expand...
Fans largely connected, save for those who thought his motivations weren't, which surprised them. Largely blamed the Terminals not being in game.

I realised some people think this'd have fixed the problem, but I completely disagree. Terminals included, the narrative of the Forerunners [or anyone but Chief and Cortana].
xxjuicesxx said:
Yes please cliffnotes, almost nobody should spend an hour of their day watching Halo breakdowns.
Click to expand...

I'm a bit too tired to write one up honestly, but I googled for a summary and found Ghal's response:

GhaleonEB said:
Finished watching it, finally. It was both disappointing and illuminating, though I think most of the illumination for me was not what was intended. Since giving away Halo 4, I've kept up on 343's tending to the game and been looking for some signals as to where they might take things down the road. I disliked the game, but I won't rule out coming back to the series so long as I see signs that 343 recognized some of the mistakes with Halo 4.

The talk was enough to tell me that they, as least so far, have not. Granted the scope was pretty narrow, being mostly about the story. But in the Q&A as well as some of the side comments, Josh seemed to feel pretty strongly that things like the perk/unlocking system were something fans wanted. When in reality, the lack of those things were one of the defining aspects of Halo. The game was successful in part because it did not feature that stuff, not despite not featuring them. It's antithetical to what Halo is about. They still don't get that.

The entire discussion about the need to make the combat more accessible was dismaying. Halo has long been known for attracting a very diverse array of players. Any game that sells the millions it did needs to do that. As Juices once said over in HaloGAF threads, 343 is turning off Halo fans by chasing an audience they will never catch.

A few random observations:

Josh talked about "Creativity" as one of the goals for the game. To paraphrase, it was about empowering users to tell stories and share experiences. Which made the loss of theater mode in Campaign and Spartan Ops even more odd, since that was a big part of how Bungie facilitated that.

One of the pillars of the game was, "Total Combat Freedom". Which made me wonder how so many linear vehicle gauntlet set pieces made it into campaign.

So, the narrative was an onion. And also, a narrative pyramid. At the start of the talk, Josh talked about the challenge of taking on so many narrative threads, such as the books and comics and Forward Unto Dawn web series. And then spent some time talking about how messy it was to tie all that together. What wasn't mentioned was, maybe spinning all that complexity out and then tethering the game to it wasn't a good idea in the first place. He mentioned how they needed to make sure the stories were self contained, near the end, though without elaboration. My hope is they really treat the games as standalone entities, tied most closely to one another.

On the development front, they went down the path of new, experimental sci-fi weapons, and then pulled back and had the Promethean weapons mirror the standard classes (rifle, pistol, rockets, sniper, automatic bullet hose, shotgun). I thought that was a significant development failure and was interested to hear the conclusions drawn, when Josh called that success. I was surprised to see that kind of fall back called successful; I thought it showed a lack of creativity which only lead to redundant weaponry and a cluttered combat sandbox. But it did allow for more unlocks. (This was my view after playing the campaign, not just after watching the video.)

"First person interactions with the world." Is that what those 850 button presses were?

Also: QTE's are by definition not immersive. They are immersion breaking when used so jarringly and out of step with our accustomed interactions with the game.

The folks at 343 are passionate people who clearly care about Halo. But I think they've taken it down the wrong path, and I didn't see any signs they recognized that. Bummer.
Click to expand...
 
T

Tunavi

Banned
The Henery said:
Oh yes, absolutely, 100 percent, without question. The other day I was going to make a quick post: "Every time I hop on Halo 4, I'm repeatedly astonished at the continuing success of Infinity Big Team Slayer". Once I thought about it however, I realised that iBTB's success makes complete sense. Its continued success, population-wise, is the residual effect of Halo 4's launch physique.

There are vast, vast, numerous amounts of videogamers who enjoyed the original Halo trilogy. The PS2 dominated that console generation but had it not been for Halo CE's foundational pillar in the Xbox's lauch, and Xbox Live's perfect launch partner in Halo 2 then the Xbox would have gone the way of the Sega Saturn or Jaguar, forgotton and completely stomped into anonymity by the PS2. Halo 3's years at the top of the Live charts and respectable (for a years old game) subsequent tussle with COD releases bore out that there were still many, many gamers who enjoyed normal Halo gameplay.

Then Halo Reach happened and a lot of gamers who had nine years worth of gameplay muscle memory invested in Halo are thrown by having to stop shooting in the middle of a battle in order for their shots to be accurate. They have moments of dizzying frustration when a player they would have killed in a given situation in the previous three titles suddenly activates an invincibility button. They are killed by players who can suddenly fly over their heads from spawn and the game doesn't offer them a Y axis sensitivity to accomodate these new features. They enter Team Slayer, a safe bet of a playlist in the previous two titles and half of the maps are a turgid, mono-grey eyesore that are all visually alike and don't play particularly well. They go to BTB, a favourite for so many in H2 and H3 and there is not a single, non-forge map custom built for the mode, instead playing on built-for-an-entirely-different-mode horror shows like Spire and Boneyard. They actually get put into BTB SWAT on Boneyard, spawn Red stairs, and are repeatedly spawn killed in the open by a 3x zoom, single shot precision rifle.

These players think Halo Reach is not a very fun Halo game. They don't like the changes, they don't like the poor selection of maps, amongst other things. They look around for other places to put their gaming time; Black Op's releases on the back of three successful predecessors and, crucially, doesn't mess around with what made those games popular in the first place. It identify's a rivals strength of meta-features (Halo's theatre and social file sharing capabilities) and implements its own theatre which in many ways improves upon Halo's version and then offers players the social sharing side of it, not on a dev website or by jumping through hoops in game but through free rendered uploads to probably the most visited website on Earth in Youtube. Many of the gamers put off by Halo's strange new direction (no 1-50 wtf? Timing shots and no BR wtf? You can spawn with camo now wtf?) decide to go where a lot of their friends went, a safe, you know what you're getting deal in COD. Lots of them also get into Battlefield 3, a game that knows what it does best, very large scale military battles, is somewhat unique in the FPS landscape and sticks to it.

Fast forward to October 2012 and these players who loved the original trilogy but checked out with Reach, they see the Halo 4 PR train in full swing. "Oh hey, look, the Master Chief's back" they say. They remember paying the same price for ODST as they did for Halo 3 but ODST didn't have proper multiplayer nor the Chief. They remember paying full price the following year for Reach, which again didn't have the Chief, and being put off by the weird, unexpected things in the multiplayer. So they see the Chief and they associate him with the last game he was in, Halo 3, that game that they and their friends had lots of awesome times with. So they look forward to Halo 4's release because hey, Chief's back, so Halo will be normal again right?

This is where one goes back to the point about Halo 4's launch 'physique'. The launch state of a game is arguably its most important. It is where the vast majority of players who don't read forums and gaming press etc get their idea of a games identity and the game developers intent for the series. Many of those players that Reach lost are back for Halo 4 in launch week, eager to give the franchise another shot.

They load up the game and tentatively enter War Games ("I think this is the multi, guys"). The party lead and their buddies look for a playlist they remember loving, Team Slayer, but there is no sign of it. "Just pick the top one, come on party leader!". So they enter Infinity Slayer. They play five hypothetical games. The voting for these five games goes 'Adrift, Complex, Complex, Adrift, Abandon'. The maps quality don't seem very high and now it appears everyone has a power weapon at some point, and that guy they just killed pressed X to spawn without punishment and cleaned them up while they waited for their shields to recharge, completely unfairly. Weapons are confusingly spawning at random, with no explanation as to why that is happening (it didn't happen in the ten years they played Halo before). They play another bunch of Infinity Slayer and soon come to realise that there's only four 4v4 maps and two of them are objectively poor for Slayer. So they venture over to Infinity BTB and, while the gameplay problems remain from their 4v4 experience, at least there are more maps on offer.

So what happens to this hypothetical party of four a week after Halo 4's release? Three of them go to Black Op's 2 or back to Battlefield 3 (COD does weapon unlocks and instant respawn far better than Halo ever will and BF3 is built around large scale combat and, crucially, let's you drive a vehicle more than five meters without getting stunned by a spawn weapon). One stays (the opening populations were around 400, 000 and then dropped to a quarter of that). The one who stays motivation for doing so is as multitudinous as Halo's confused identities. It might be a love of heavy BTB gameplay, it might be because that player is one of those who is an absolute sucker for levelling systems no matter what the gameplay and wishes to reach SR 130. It might be that they fucking love the party gametype Regicide. But the question isn't why so few stayed it's why so many chose to leave...

Halo 4 sold so many copies because it it had an 11 year established base of users and previous customers right? For 9 of those years Halo was about equal starts, checks, balances and largely reasonable design. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that many of that established user base came to Halo 4 expecting a direct, regular Master Chief sequel to Halo 3, Reach being the equivalent of an experimental off-shoot branch, not the foundation for Halo 4. Those players came to Halo, experienced instant respawn, random weapon drops, camo sniping, camo boltshotting, their favourite Warthog being stunned every three seconds by an unlocked spawn weapon, no ranked/social choice and realised they had to play for hours in order to unlock a perk so they didn't frequently run out of ammo (weapons vanishing every 12 seconds as they do). They probably realised at that point that all these things that were making Halo not feel like the game they'd enjoyed for a decade were being done better in other games in which they made sense. And so, they went to those other games.

So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market. People who bought or rented Halo 4 to see if it was normal again have disappeared. They won't be back five months from launch when it's announced in a corner of an internet forum that Team Throwdown, a normal-ish Halo playlist is coming to Halo 4! After that opening week they've made their mind up and you've lost them forever. Well, at least until Halo 5 rolls around but even then they might not bother. See, next time, Halo won't have the 'Master Chief wasn't in those games so it doesn't count' excuse. Master Chief, along with the Halo name, is now tainted.
Click to expand...
Just to spite cyclone.

oh and because Halo 4 sucks.
 
B

Barrow Roll

Member
The Henery said:
Oh yes, absolutely, 100 percent, without question. The other day I was going to make a quick post: "Every time I hop on Halo 4, I'm repeatedly astonished at the continuing success of Infinity Big Team Slayer". Once I thought about it however, I realised that iBTB's success makes complete sense. Its continued success, population-wise, is the residual effect of Halo 4's launch physique.

There are vast, vast, numerous amounts of videogamers who enjoyed the original Halo trilogy. The PS2 dominated that console generation but had it not been for Halo CE's foundational pillar in the Xbox's lauch, and Xbox Live's perfect launch partner in Halo 2 then the Xbox would have gone the way of the Sega Saturn or Jaguar, forgotton and completely stomped into anonymity by the PS2. Halo 3's years at the top of the Live charts and respectable (for a years old game) subsequent tussle with COD releases bore out that there were still many, many gamers who enjoyed normal Halo gameplay.

Then Halo Reach happened and a lot of gamers who had nine years worth of gameplay muscle memory invested in Halo are thrown by having to stop shooting in the middle of a battle in order for their shots to be accurate. They have moments of dizzying frustration when a player they would have killed in a given situation in the previous three titles suddenly activates an invincibility button. They are killed by players who can suddenly fly over their heads from spawn and the game doesn't offer them a Y axis sensitivity to accomodate these new features. They enter Team Slayer, a safe bet of a playlist in the previous two titles and half of the maps are a turgid, mono-grey eyesore that are all visually alike and don't play particularly well. They go to BTB, a favourite for so many in H2 and H3 and there is not a single, non-forge map custom built for the mode, instead playing on built-for-an-entirely-different-mode horror shows like Spire and Boneyard. They actually get put into BTB SWAT on Boneyard, spawn Red stairs, and are repeatedly spawn killed in the open by a 3x zoom, single shot precision rifle.

These players think Halo Reach is not a very fun Halo game. They don't like the changes, they don't like the poor selection of maps, amongst other things. They look around for other places to put their gaming time; Black Op's releases on the back of three successful predecessors and, crucially, doesn't mess around with what made those games popular in the first place. It identify's a rivals strength of meta-features (Halo's theatre and social file sharing capabilities) and implements its own theatre which in many ways improves upon Halo's version and then offers players the social sharing side of it, not on a dev website or by jumping through hoops in game but through free rendered uploads to probably the most visited website on Earth in Youtube. Many of the gamers put off by Halo's strange new direction (no 1-50 wtf? Timing shots and no BR wtf? You can spawn with camo now wtf?) decide to go where a lot of their friends went, a safe, you know what you're getting deal in COD. Lots of them also get into Battlefield 3, a game that knows what it does best, very large scale military battles, is somewhat unique in the FPS landscape and sticks to it.

Fast forward to October 2012 and these players who loved the original trilogy but checked out with Reach, they see the Halo 4 PR train in full swing. "Oh hey, look, the Master Chief's back" they say. They remember paying the same price for ODST as they did for Halo 3 but ODST didn't have proper multiplayer nor the Chief. They remember paying full price the following year for Reach, which again didn't have the Chief, and being put off by the weird, unexpected things in the multiplayer. So they see the Chief and they associate him with the last game he was in, Halo 3, that game that they and their friends had lots of awesome times with. So they look forward to Halo 4's release because hey, Chief's back, so Halo will be normal again right?

This is where one goes back to the point about Halo 4's launch 'physique'. The launch state of a game is arguably its most important. It is where the vast majority of players who don't read forums and gaming press etc get their idea of a games identity and the game developers intent for the series. Many of those players that Reach lost are back for Halo 4 in launch week, eager to give the franchise another shot.

They load up the game and tentatively enter War Games ("I think this is the multi, guys"). The party lead and their buddies look for a playlist they remember loving, Team Slayer, but there is no sign of it. "Just pick the top one, come on party leader!". So they enter Infinity Slayer. They play five hypothetical games. The voting for these five games goes 'Adrift, Complex, Complex, Adrift, Abandon'. The maps quality don't seem very high and now it appears everyone has a power weapon at some point, and that guy they just killed pressed X to spawn without punishment and cleaned them up while they waited for their shields to recharge, completely unfairly. Weapons are confusingly spawning at random, with no explanation as to why that is happening (it didn't happen in the ten years they played Halo before). They play another bunch of Infinity Slayer and soon come to realise that there's only four 4v4 maps and two of them are objectively poor for Slayer. So they venture over to Infinity BTB and, while the gameplay problems remain from their 4v4 experience, at least there are more maps on offer.

So what happens to this hypothetical party of four a week after Halo 4's release? Three of them go to Black Op's 2 or back to Battlefield 3 (COD does weapon unlocks and instant respawn far better than Halo ever will and BF3 is built around large scale combat and, crucially, let's you drive a vehicle more than five meters without getting stunned by a spawn weapon). One stays (the opening populations were around 400, 000 and then dropped to a quarter of that). The one who stays motivation for doing so is as multitudinous as Halo's confused identities. It might be a love of heavy BTB gameplay, it might be because that player is one of those who is an absolute sucker for levelling systems no matter what the gameplay and wishes to reach SR 130. It might be that they fucking love the party gametype Regicide. But the question isn't why so few stayed it's why so many chose to leave...

Halo 4 sold so many copies because it it had an 11 year established base of users and previous customers right? For 9 of those years Halo was about equal starts, checks, balances and largely reasonable design. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that many of that established user base came to Halo 4 expecting a direct, regular Master Chief sequel to Halo 3, Reach being the equivalent of an experimental off-shoot branch, not the foundation for Halo 4. Those players came to Halo, experienced instant respawn, random weapon drops, camo sniping, camo boltshotting, their favourite Warthog being stunned every three seconds by an unlocked spawn weapon, no ranked/social choice and realised they had to play for hours in order to unlock a perk so they didn't frequently run out of ammo (weapons vanishing every 12 seconds as they do). They probably realised at that point that all these things that were making Halo not feel like the game they'd enjoyed for a decade were being done better in other games in which they made sense. And so, they went to those other games.

So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market. People who bought or rented Halo 4 to see if it was normal again have disappeared. They won't be back five months from launch when it's announced in a corner of an internet forum that Team Throwdown, a normal-ish Halo playlist is coming to Halo 4! After that opening week they've made their mind up and you've lost them forever. Well, at least until Halo 5 rolls around but even then they might not bother. See, next time, Halo won't have the 'Master Chief wasn't in those games so it doesn't count' excuse. Master Chief, along with the Halo name, is now tainted.
Click to expand...
Quoting the humongo paragraph for spittin truth bombs.

Hey fat people I eat what I want and sit on my ass all day and apparently I still need to eat a fucking cheeseburger.
 
Z

Zeouterlimits

Member
iITP2FSHD7m4K.gif


I realise I'm hard to please, possibly impossible given their current situation, but that was quite a frustrating watch.
 
X

xxjuicesxx

Member
That post should be on the top of every page.

Someone on the inside should print hundreds of copies and run through 343 industries studio tossing them all over.
 
G

Garrett 2U

Member
I recall Joshua Holmes saying that he was the one who really pushed for custom loadouts, so it doesn't surprise me that he it displaying that choice as a success.
I really hope the rest of the design team doesn't feel that way...
 
T

Tawpgun

Member
I'd hate to push 343's and Halo's test another game but its the most fair option.

Halo 4 was their first Halo game, and they were building the studio during production.

If Halo 5 goes down the same path, even with the new power of next gen, then I wish 343 good luck on their new direction, but its not for me. Hopefully a new developer realizes the opening in the FPS market for a fair, equal, arena FPS
 
O

Overdoziz

Banned
Tawpgun said:
I'd hate to push 343's and Halo's test another game but its the most fair option.

Halo 4 was their first Halo game, and they were building the studio during production.

If Halo 5 goes down the same path, even with the new power of next gen, then I wish 343 good luck on their new direction, but its not for me. Hopefully a new developer realizes the opening in the FPS market for a fair, equal, arena FPS
Click to expand...
And there it is.
 
T

Twilight Gap

Member
Garrett 2U said:
I recall Joshua Holmes saying that he was the one who really pushed for custom loadouts, so it doesn't surprise me that he it displaying that choice as a success.
I really hope the rest of the design team doesn't feel that way...
Click to expand...

I don't really mind the concept of custom loadouts, but I think it could have been balanced better. Boltshot, Plasma Pistol, perks, all these grenades and such just made it too random. It's nice that the Carbine got more screentime and there were no more AR starts, but the other issues ultimately outweighed its benefits.
 
G

GhaleonEB

Member
The Henery said:
Oh yes, absolutely, 100 percent, without question. The other day I was going to make a quick post: "Every time I hop on Halo 4, I'm repeatedly astonished at the continuing success of Infinity Big Team Slayer". Once I thought about it however, I realised that iBTB's success makes complete sense. Its continued success, population-wise, is the residual effect of Halo 4's launch physique.

There are vast, vast, numerous amounts of videogamers who enjoyed the original Halo trilogy. The PS2 dominated that console generation but had it not been for Halo CE's foundational pillar in the Xbox's lauch, and Xbox Live's perfect launch partner in Halo 2 then the Xbox would have gone the way of the Sega Saturn or Jaguar, forgotton and completely stomped into anonymity by the PS2. Halo 3's years at the top of the Live charts and respectable (for a years old game) subsequent tussle with COD releases bore out that there were still many, many gamers who enjoyed normal Halo gameplay.

Then Halo Reach happened and a lot of gamers who had nine years worth of gameplay muscle memory invested in Halo are thrown by having to stop shooting in the middle of a battle in order for their shots to be accurate. They have moments of dizzying frustration when a player they would have killed in a given situation in the previous three titles suddenly activates an invincibility button. They are killed by players who can suddenly fly over their heads from spawn and the game doesn't offer them a Y axis sensitivity to accomodate these new features. They enter Team Slayer, a safe bet of a playlist in the previous two titles and half of the maps are a turgid, mono-grey eyesore that are all visually alike and don't play particularly well. They go to BTB, a favourite for so many in H2 and H3 and there is not a single, non-forge map custom built for the mode, instead playing on built-for-an-entirely-different-mode horror shows like Spire and Boneyard. They actually get put into BTB SWAT on Boneyard, spawn Red stairs, and are repeatedly spawn killed in the open by a 3x zoom, single shot precision rifle.

These players think Halo Reach is not a very fun Halo game. They don't like the changes, they don't like the poor selection of maps, amongst other things. They look around for other places to put their gaming time; Black Op's releases on the back of three successful predecessors and, crucially, doesn't mess around with what made those games popular in the first place. It identify's a rivals strength of meta-features (Halo's theatre and social file sharing capabilities) and implements its own theatre which in many ways improves upon Halo's version and then offers players the social sharing side of it, not on a dev website or by jumping through hoops in game but through free rendered uploads to probably the most visited website on Earth in Youtube. Many of the gamers put off by Halo's strange new direction (no 1-50 wtf? Timing shots and no BR wtf? You can spawn with camo now wtf?) decide to go where a lot of their friends went, a safe, you know what you're getting deal in COD. Lots of them also get into Battlefield 3, a game that knows what it does best, very large scale military battles, is somewhat unique in the FPS landscape and sticks to it.

Fast forward to October 2012 and these players who loved the original trilogy but checked out with Reach, they see the Halo 4 PR train in full swing. "Oh hey, look, the Master Chief's back" they say. They remember paying the same price for ODST as they did for Halo 3 but ODST didn't have proper multiplayer nor the Chief. They remember paying full price the following year for Reach, which again didn't have the Chief, and being put off by the weird, unexpected things in the multiplayer. So they see the Chief and they associate him with the last game he was in, Halo 3, that game that they and their friends had lots of awesome times with. So they look forward to Halo 4's release because hey, Chief's back, so Halo will be normal again right?

This is where one goes back to the point about Halo 4's launch 'physique'. The launch state of a game is arguably its most important. It is where the vast majority of players who don't read forums and gaming press etc get their idea of a games identity and the game developers intent for the series. Many of those players that Reach lost are back for Halo 4 in launch week, eager to give the franchise another shot.

They load up the game and tentatively enter War Games ("I think this is the multi, guys"). The party lead and their buddies look for a playlist they remember loving, Team Slayer, but there is no sign of it. "Just pick the top one, come on party leader!". So they enter Infinity Slayer. They play five hypothetical games. The voting for these five games goes 'Adrift, Complex, Complex, Adrift, Abandon'. The maps quality don't seem very high and now it appears everyone has a power weapon at some point, and that guy they just killed pressed X to spawn without punishment and cleaned them up while they waited for their shields to recharge, completely unfairly. Weapons are confusingly spawning at random, with no explanation as to why that is happening (it didn't happen in the ten years they played Halo before). They play another bunch of Infinity Slayer and soon come to realise that there's only four 4v4 maps and two of them are objectively poor for Slayer. So they venture over to Infinity BTB and, while the gameplay problems remain from their 4v4 experience, at least there are more maps on offer.

So what happens to this hypothetical party of four a week after Halo 4's release? Three of them go to Black Op's 2 or back to Battlefield 3 (COD does weapon unlocks and instant respawn far better than Halo ever will and BF3 is built around large scale combat and, crucially, let's you drive a vehicle more than five meters without getting stunned by a spawn weapon). One stays (the opening populations were around 400, 000 and then dropped to a quarter of that). The one who stays motivation for doing so is as multitudinous as Halo's confused identities. It might be a love of heavy BTB gameplay, it might be because that player is one of those who is an absolute sucker for levelling systems no matter what the gameplay and wishes to reach SR 130. It might be that they fucking love the party gametype Regicide. But the question isn't why so few stayed it's why so many chose to leave...

Halo 4 sold so many copies because it it had an 11 year established base of users and previous customers right? For 9 of those years Halo was about equal starts, checks, balances and largely reasonable design. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that many of that established user base came to Halo 4 expecting a direct, regular Master Chief sequel to Halo 3, Reach being the equivalent of an experimental off-shoot branch, not the foundation for Halo 4. Those players came to Halo, experienced instant respawn, random weapon drops, camo sniping, camo boltshotting, their favourite Warthog being stunned every three seconds by an unlocked spawn weapon, no ranked/social choice and realised they had to play for hours in order to unlock a perk so they didn't frequently run out of ammo (weapons vanishing every 12 seconds as they do). They probably realised at that point that all these things that were making Halo not feel like the game they'd enjoyed for a decade were being done better in other games in which they made sense. And so, they went to those other games.

So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best. Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes. 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on thaepopular area of the 4v4 market. People who bought or rented Halo 4 to see if it was normal again have disappeared. They won't be back five months from launch when it's announced in a corner of an internet forum that Team Throwdown, a normal-ish Halo playlist is coming to Halo 4! After that opening week they've made their mind up and you've lost them forever. Well, at least until Halo 5 rolls around but even then they might not bother. See, next time, Halo won't have the 'Master Chief wasn't in those games so it doesn't count' excuse. Master Chief, along with the Halo name, is now tainted.
Click to expand...

Quoting again because it's that goddamn good. A cascading wall of truth.
 
X

xxjuicesxx

Member
Custom Loadouts are for the birds. All they needed to do was make the starting weapons AR/BR for most of the gametypes in the last Halo's.

Then their "fix" to that problem was custom loadouts. Which created 312 more problems.
 
M

Madness

Member
A 3 Legged Goat said:
I don't really mind the concept of custom loadouts, but I think it could have been balanced better. Boltshot, Plasma Pistol, perks, all these grenades and such just made it too random. It's nice that the Carbine got more screentime and there were no more AR starts, but the other issues ultimately outweighed its benefits.
Click to expand...

But therein lies the problem with almost all custom loadouts games. You can't really balance it. Some weapons are inherently better and that's what everyone will pick.

In CoD, it was things like the 1887's, the SMG's, etc.

One weapon will inevitably be better and that's what everyone will use, so it completely gets rid of the point of loadouts. When you have a DMR and boltshot why use anything else, except for one or two key situations?

You switch it up with AR starts, BR starts. But you take into account the map, the game type etc.

You want to switch it up? Things like elite slayer did it. Give you only covenant weapons etc.

The battlefield determines the outcome of the match, not the menus.
 
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