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Halo |OT15| Beta-tested, GAF approved

B

Booties

Banned
Computron said:
DLC Map Impressions:​



So, I bought and played the DLC for a bit, and I mostly like what I’m seeing.

Skyline

  • I wasn't excited for this map when I first saw it, but from what I have played, it likely among the best so far in Halo 4.
  • Skyline has a great layout and quite a bit of verticality, which I appreciate.
  • It has a nice mix of cramped catwalks that spill over into medium range alleyways with decent sight lines.
  • It's fun just to move around this map and try to string together jumps into elaborate escape routes.
  • This map really works well with a lot of what the sandbox has to offer.
  • I was going on a rampage with the scattershot for the first time, and the bullet bounce of the gun was insanely effective. I think I got more kills with it in that one game than in the entirety of my time playing Halo 4.
  • The Carbine and its slight boost in aim assist work very well on this close range map. Coupled with it's cadence, which throws off a lot of opponents, the Carbine makes a fine weapon for skyline. I enjoyed picking that gun up again, its been far too long. DMR's been dominating to many maps, its nice to have variety.
  • The included Sticky det' ordnance works well on this map.

  • It is a bit confusing to figure out where you are some of the time. as I mentioned earlier, I think the lighting is a bit unfortunate toward this end.
  • The lightmaps that they have for some of these maps are a bit too low res to support some of the features they included. For example, The tiny little light fixtures that are dotted along the walls, lighting the floors, have some pretty bad looking specular highlights because of this. The interpolation of the low-res lightmaps is causing the specular to 'twist' around in weird looking ways. It’s not the only map with this issue, but other maps aren't so blatant because they don't include tons of these small lights.
  • I love the skybox. It’s a very detailed and unique like only a matte painting can be. (And its at a decent resolution on this map, probably since they can afford the extra memory with such a small map and half the skybox obscured)
  • I love the speeding traffic out in the city on the horizon, as well as the falcon. (Why do they tease us?)
  • Lots of great details.


Monolith
  • I really don’t like Monolith.
  • The layout seems to promote camping and pushes players out along the boundaries.
  • There is very little effective cover inside the map when you venture out of the platforms on the exterior, and with the exception of the initial rush for the power weapons, I don't see people use it often without getting donged, hard. I am not sure what to make of the mancannons, but they don’t promote movement to the center, which might have been more interesting.
  • The maps structure is also very cramped on the boundaries, which practically guarantees that you will often have to weed out sword wielders or boltshot users.
  • These issues make it kind of annoying just to traverse the map.
    There's no joy in actually moving around the maps since the middle is mostly not somewhere you want to be and the outsides are cramped, difficult to traverse and likely to contain campers.
  • In addition, the map is pretty dark and bland from a visual standpoint as well.
  • It is nothing we haven't seen before, and It's also a combination of the visual themes that I least enjoy from Halo 4.
  • It’s a darkly-lit, cramped space-boulder saturated with team colored flood lighting dashed with thin-bright forerunner light strips -- Which, by the way, are not only distractingly aliasing at most distances, but they also flicker a lot due to the way the low-res bloom postprocess works. For me, it’s rather distracting.
    It’s a noisy cacophony of rock and shiny nonsense. Do the forerunners ever make anything colorful? (without cheating through team colored flood lighting, that is) And it’s not like the space rock foundation is helping them.
  • Also of note, why are there little rocks, pebbles and debris floating up from the map as though there is no gravity?
    Meanwhile, all the Spartans and their gear is firmly planted by some mysterious force. That makes precisely zero sense.


Landfall

  • Landfall has a wonderful aesthetic that I wish would be explored more often.
  • Futuristic human industrial compounds have always been well done in the Halo games, and this one is no exception.
  • This particular map evokes memories of Longshore, only it’s on a sunny afternoon and 100 years in the future. Halo 3 had a lot of these kinds of maps, and they all fondly stood out among my favorites.
  • The choice of lighting is also great. When the last DLC map came out, I wrote up how much I loved the early-morning lighting style on Harvest. (Why have I not played that map in forever? The rest of the DLC come up very frequently in BTB…)
    However, Landfall is a step above the rest when it comes to lighting and atmosphere.
    It was instantly my favorite, visually, from the moment I saw it.

  • Let’s have a look at that skybox .GIF again, shall we?
    iAvoQdx1Lvhfq.gif
  • HHHHNNnngggg....

  • I have only played the map three times so far so I can’t quite comment on the layout since asymmetrical maps can be quite complex in how they play.
  • Much of the map seemed like it would go mostly unused, such as the seaside port that is littered with jumbo size Crates, but it actually seemed to work out fine.
  • What constitutes a good small scale 4v4 map in Halo is pretty different in Halo 4 if you compare it to previous Halo games, and in that light, Landfall actually seems to works pretty well. I wonder what it would be like in BTB, if that ever happens.
  • I want to play this map some more, but why does it always show up with extraction, leading everyone to veto it?

So overall, the map pack is decent and fills quite a few of the gaps in the current lineup.
Having these medium-short range maps goes a long way towards mitigating some of the complaints I have and have read from others regarding Halo 4. Its been a while since I sat down to play this game and had fun, But this managed because I think they play more to the strengths of Halo 4’s sandbox. It makes you wonder why there were so few of these maps at launch, and what's in store for April's DLC.
Click to expand...


Nerd
 
Onikaan

Onikaan

Member
Ken said:
Could be better.
Click to expand...

monsterfracas said:
General consensus: Slightly better than Reach, I guess

My opinion: Worst MP by a long shot, but getting somewhat better.
Click to expand...

StalkerUKCG said:
Has the potential to be fantastic but certain design decisions have pushed it in to more unfavorably territory.
Click to expand...

Madness said:
Not that good from a legacy/competitive standpoint though 343 is making strikes to fix it. With the new maps out that everyone seems to say are the best in a long time, it seems multiplayer will actually be fun again.

Don't get me wrong, Infinity was good to try, but there's just too much randomness and frustration.

I'd say the way they fixed spartan ops' second half, the implementation of doubles pro, team throwdown and now the Majestic map pack, means 343 is listening and trying. Plus David hinted at possible weapon fixes in an upcoming title update, so there's hope they can fix some of those issues.

If I can't get a map pack code somehow, I'll have to wait till I'm home to get points and buy the map pack and get on and see how good they really are.
Click to expand...

Interesting. My thoughts are similar.

Would any of you agree that the integration of "Tactical/Support" perks and Personal Ordinance has somewhat removed the essence of Halo Multiplayer in 4? There is now an uncertainty about combat and encounters with other players. They might have the grenade damage perk for example, you often wonder how you were killed so quickly. Was it the perk? You would never know, something visual would have helped here. Ordinance. Suddenly there's a laser show going on all over the map, Binary rifles everywhere and who knows how many rocket launchers could be around the next corner?

I felt in previous titles the balance was superior. You could learn the map, the weapon spawns and quickly workout the skilled enemy players from the bad ones. All of this going on in the back of your mind as you navigated through the match. You knew what you were up against.

Somewhat lost in 4.

I know they're trying to mix it up, trying to avoid stagnation, throw in some variety, but I'm not sure if it's Halo.

I'm sure you folks have discussed this already, so I apologise. Just saying my piece.
 
FUNKNOWN iXi

FUNKNOWN iXi

Member
Dirtbag said:
3 map packs is alot of support. Another season of Spartan ops and I'd say that's a pretty well supported 2-year long game. I just see tweaks and playlists changes after that. I dont see the return on investment on making another mappack.
Click to expand...

I don't know, in this day and age that's probably not enough to keep a healthy population over 2 years. They need something substantial to keep people interested in MP for the long haul, so something like that Anniversary map pack would help along with other significant updates.

A lot can happen in 2 years. "Pick up your new copy Halo Wars 2 for the Ecksbox 720 and get access to 7 Throwback Maps with every purchase." Day one purchase IMO.

Booties said:
Nerd
Click to expand...

So you quote that entire wall of text and simply put "Nerd" lol
 
D

Doogington

Member
The Skyline skybox is amazing. Shame the actual play area doesn't live up to it. That's not to say it isn't a well designed map. It is a nice map, but damn is it bland looking. And if the Hornet isn't coming in a future update I will never forgive you, 343.
 
S

Sai-kun

Banned
Onikaan said:
Interesting. My thoughts are similar.

Would any of you agree that the integration of "Tactical/Support" perks and Personal Ordinance has somewhat removed the essence of Halo Multiplayer in 4? There is now an uncertainty about combat and encounters with other players. They might have the grenade damage perk for example, you often wonder how you were killed so quickly. Was it the perk? You would never know, something visual would have helped here. Ordinance. Suddenly there's a laser show going on all over the map, Binary rifles everywhere and who knows how many rocket launchers could be around the next corner?

I felt in previous titles the balance was superior. You could learn the map, the weapon spawns and quickly workout the skilled enemy players from the bad ones. All of this going on in the back of your mind as you navigated through the match. You knew what you were up against.

Somewhat lost in 4.

I know they're trying to mix it up, trying to avoid stagnation, throw in some variety, but I'm not sure if it's Halo.

I'm sure you folks have discussed this already, so I apologise. Just saying my piece.
Click to expand...

Totally agree. Ghaleon made a fantastic post about this I think around PAX time last year, or maybe even earlier, I'm not sure. I'm obv too lazy to look it up, but yeah, the uncertainty of "how/why was I killed" or "how/why did that player not die" is absolutely part of my frustration with this game, and basically the reason I stopped playing CoD so many years ago, because that kind of unknown is really just fun-killing for me :/
 
FUNKNOWN iXi

FUNKNOWN iXi

Member
Sai-kun said:
Totally agree. Ghaleon made a fantastic post about this I think around PAX time last year, or maybe even earlier, I'm not sure. I'm obv too lazy to look it up, but yeah, the uncertainty of "how/why was I killed" or "how/why did that player not die" is absolutely part of my frustration with this game, and basically the reason I stopped playing CoD so many years ago, because that kind of unknown is really just fun-killing for me :/
Click to expand...

Am I the kind that's fun-inducing?

Sorry had to.. I'll walk away now.

Mindwipe said:
I managed to get three of those bloody achievements tonight, and the PV one is just a matter of grinding. But I've not actually seen anyone using a jetpack to kill yet.
Click to expand...

I can see no one using the Jet Pack so they don't "help" anyone get that achievement.
 
M

Mindwipe

Member
I managed to get three of those bloody achievements tonight, and the PV one is just a matter of grinding. But I've not actually seen anyone using a jetpack to kill yet.
 
Onikaan

Onikaan

Member
Sai-kun said:
Totally agree. Ghaleon made a fantastic post about this I think around PAX time last year, or maybe even earlier, I'm not sure. I'm obv too lazy to look it up, but yeah, the uncertainty of "how/why was I killed" or "how/why did that player not die" is absolutely part of my frustration with this game, and basically the reason I stopped playing CoD so many years ago, because that kind of unknown is really just fun-killing for me :/
Click to expand...

Unfortunately it was enough for me to put down Halo 4, for now.

Also... BravoMLG works for 343?
 
O

Orochinagis

Member
Computron said:
DLC Map Impressions:​



So, I haven't really played Halo 4 in a long time, but I bought and played the new DLC for a bit today.
I mostly like what I’m playing, and especially seeing.


Skyline

Gameplay:​

  • I wasn't excited for this map when I first saw it, but from what I have played, it likely among the best so far in Halo 4.
  • Skyline has a great layout and quite a bit of verticality, which I appreciate.
  • It has a nice mix of cramped catwalks that spill over into medium range alleyways with decent sight lines.
  • It's fun just to move around this map and try to string together jumps into elaborate escape routes.
  • This map really works well with a lot of what the sandbox has to offer.
  • I was going on a rampage with the scattershot for the first time, and the bullet bounce of the gun was insanely effective. I think I got more kills with it in that one game than in the entirety of my time playing Halo 4.
  • The Carbine and its slight boost in aim assist work very well on this close range map. Coupled with it's cadence, which throws off a lot of opponents, the Carbine makes a fine weapon for skyline. I enjoyed picking that gun up again, its been far too long. DMR's been dominating to many maps, its nice to have variety.
  • The included Sticky det' ordnance works well on this map.

    Aesthetics:

  • It is a bit confusing to figure out where you are some of the time. as I mentioned earlier, I think the lighting is a bit unfortunate toward this end.
  • The lightmaps that they have for some of these maps are a bit too low res to support some of the features they included. For example, The tiny little light fixtures that are dotted along the walls, lighting the floors, have some pretty bad looking specular highlights because of this. The interpolation of the low-res lightmaps is causing the specular to 'twist' around in weird looking ways. It’s not the only map with this issue, but other maps aren't so blatant because they don't include tons of these small lights.
  • I love the skybox. It’s a very detailed and unique like only a matte painting can be. (And its at a decent resolution on this map, probably since they can afford the extra memory with such a small map and half the skybox obscured)
  • I love the speeding traffic out in the city on the horizon, as well as the falcon. (Why do they tease us?)
  • Lots of great details.



Monolith

Gameplay:​

  • I really don’t like Monolith.
  • The layout seems to promote camping and pushes players out along the boundaries.
  • There is very little effective cover inside the map when you venture out of the platforms on the exterior, and with the exception of the initial rush for the power weapons, I don't see people use it often without getting donged, hard. I am not sure what to make of the mancannons, but they don’t promote movement to the center, which might have been more interesting.
  • The maps structure is also very cramped on the boundaries, which practically guarantees that you will often have to weed out sword wielders or boltshot users.
  • These issues make it kind of annoying just to traverse the map.
    There's no joy in actually moving around the maps since the middle is mostly not somewhere you want to be and the outsides are cramped, difficult to traverse and likely to contain campers.

    Aesthetics:

  • In addition, the map is pretty dark and bland from a visual standpoint as well.
  • It is nothing we haven't seen before, and It's also a combination of the visual themes that I least enjoy from Halo 4.
  • It’s a darkly-lit, cramped space-boulder saturated with team colored flood lighting dashed with thin-bright forerunner light strips -- Which, by the way, are not only distractingly aliasing at most distances, but they also flicker a lot due to the way the low-res bloom postprocess works. For me, it’s rather distracting.

    It’s a noisy cacophony of rock and shiny nonsense. Do the forerunners ever make anything colorful? (without cheating through team colored flood lighting, that is) And it’s not like the space rock foundation is helping them.

  • Also of note, why are there little rocks, pebbles and debris floating up from the map as though there is no gravity?
    Meanwhile, all the Spartans and their gear is firmly planted by some mysterious force. That makes precisely zero sense.

Landfall

Gameplay:​

  • I have only played the map three times so far so I can’t quite comment on the layout since asymmetrical maps can be quite complex in how they play.
  • Much of the map seemed like it would go mostly unused, such as the seaside port that is littered with jumbo size Crates, but it actually seemed to work out fine.
  • What constitutes a good small scale 4v4 map in Halo is pretty different in Halo 4 if you compare it to previous Halo games, and in that light, Landfall actually seems to works pretty well. I wonder what it would be like in BTB, if that ever happens.
  • I want to play this map some more, but why does it always show up with extraction, leading everyone to veto it?

    Aesthetics:

  • Landfall has a wonderful aesthetic that I wish would be explored more often.
  • Futuristic human industrial compounds have always been well done in the Halo games, and this one is no exception.
  • This particular map evokes memories of Longshore, only it’s on a sunny afternoon and 100 years in the future. Halo 3 had a lot of these kinds of maps, and they all fondly stood out among my favorites.
  • The choice of lighting is also great. When the last DLC map came out, I wrote up how much I loved the early-morning lighting style on Harvest. (Why have I not played that map in forever? The rest of the DLC come up very frequently in BTB…)
    However, Landfall is a step above the rest when it comes to lighting and atmosphere.
    It was instantly my favorite, visually, from the moment I saw it.

  • Let’s have a look at that skybox .GIF again, shall we?
    iAvoQdx1Lvhfq.gif
  • HHHHNNnngggg....

So overall, the map pack is decent and fills quite a few of the gaps in the current lineup.
Having these medium-short range maps goes a long way towards mitigating some of the complaints I have and have read from others regarding Halo 4. Its been a while since I sat down to play this game and had fun, But this managed because I think they play more to the strengths of Halo 4’s sandbox. It makes you wonder why there were so few of these maps at launch, and what's in store for April's DLC.
Click to expand...

pretty much my impressions too.

But Landsfall's desing fails for team deathmatch but is good for objetives gametypes
 
C

Computron

Member
thezerofire said:
Computron, it sounds like you hate Monolith for all the reasons that make it a good arena map. Maybe it's just you?
Click to expand...

What do you mean? Aside from all the other technical or subjective/aesthetic reasons I provided for why I dislike the map, I really don't know if it will be a good arena map, but it doesn't seem that way. That's mainly because of the problems I described where its really cramped and everyone is pushed out to the boundary.

I mean, occasionally you will get some people trying to crossmap with the DMR, which is alright, but otherwise the gameplay has mostly allways become slow and campy.

I would imagine that no radars could help, but again, I haven't gotten that option yet. And I have played more monolith than the other maps, which is a bit frustrating. Its always been something like regicide, KOTH, Flag or Infinity TS.

We'll see when I actually get to try it in an arena setting. In what playlist did you play it that way?

While I am still trying to play it and see what its good for, as I mentioned, the aesthetic and technical aspects are detracting from the experience and making it difficult.
 
S

StalkerUKCG

Banned
Just for anyone interested who has missed it.

Last pack of ME3 MP DLC drops tomorrow (remember all these are free)

New stuff

Characters:

Geth Juggernaut Soldier (Bigger Geth model cant be sync killed)
Turian Cabal Vanguard (Female Turian)
Alliance Infiltration Unit (EDI looking roboto)
Krogan Warlord Sentinel (Krogan with Hammer)
Talon Mercenary Engineer (Human)
Awakened Collector Adept

Weapons:

Geth Spitfire Assault Rifle
Chakram Launcher Assault Rifle
Lancer Assault Rifle
Adas Anti-Synthetic Rifle
Venom Shotgun
Blood Pack Executioner Pistol
Blood Pack Punisher SMG
 
H

Hydranockz

Member
StalkerUKCG said:
Just for anyone interested who has missed it.

Last pack of ME3 MP DLC drops tomorrow (remember all these are free)

New stuff

Characters:

Geth Juggernaut Soldier (Bigger Geth model cant be sync killed)
Turian Cabal Vanguard (Female Turian)
Alliance Infiltration Unit (EDI looking roboto)
Krogan Warlord Sentinel (Krogan with Hammer)
Talon Mercenary Engineer (Human)
Awakened Collector Adept

Weapons:

Geth Spitfire Assault Rifle
Chakram Launcher Assault Rifle
Lancer Assault Rifle
Adas Anti-Synthetic Rifle
Venom Shotgun
Blood Pack Executioner Pistol
Blood Pack Punisher SMG
Click to expand...

Amazing post release support.
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
Computron said:
What do you mean? Aside from all the other technical or subjective/aesthetic reasons I provided for why I dislike the map, I really don't know if it will be a good arena map, but it doesn't seem that way. That's mainly because of the problems I described where its really cramped and everyone is pushed out to the boundary.

I mean, occasionally you will get some people trying to crossmap with the DMR, which is alright, but otherwise the gameplay has mostly allways become slow and campy.

I would imagine that no radars could help, but again, I haven't gotten that option yet. And I have played more monolith than the other maps, which is a bit frustrating. Its always been something like regicide, KOTH, Flag or Infinity TS.

We'll see when I actually get to try it in that setting. In what playlist did you play it that way?

While I am still trying to play it and see what its good for, as I mentioned, the aesthetic and technical aspects are detracting from the experience and making it difficult.
Click to expand...
We just had a game where we posted two people up at top mid the whole game so it doesn't really push you to the edges as much as you'd think. There is actually a lot of cover in the middle of the map, you just need to know how to use it. And arena maps are all about map control, so if you don't have control and coordination of course you're going to get pushed to the edges. That's how they play. I have yet to have a slow game on Monolith.
 
B

blamite

Member
A couple of random map thoughts:

-Landfall is really great for FFA. Nice mix of open and closed spaces. Rumble Pro reminds me of old Halo.

-I like the "not perfectly symmetrical, but close enough" feeling of Skyline. Each side feels varied but not unfair.

-The FFA playlist in general is really great. I'm completely serious when I say it...
feels like Halo.

-Are those flying cars in the Skyline skybox? They look like flying cars. I hope they aren't. I do not want, and will not accept, any new flying cars in my Halo.

-Monolith seems really good. I like the different dynamics of the two side towers, and doing stupid shit on the mancannons with the thruster pack is too fun.

-I love the "slippery when wet" sign next to the grav lift on Landfall.

-I know, "who cares about the fiction," or whatever, but these are all really cool new places to visit and there's cool stuff happening on them. I like that. Except for the flying cars.

-Absolutely nobody (worth listening to) would complain if all of the Castle maps were of this same size and style.
 
E

EagleBurnn

Banned
Where is that quote from 343 of them saying they won't have weapon spawns and personal ordnance in the same gametype? I want to engrave that on Halo's gravestone.
 
D

Domino Theory

Crystal Dynamics
What do you guys think of the newest DLC so far? I won't be able to play until tonight, but I'm curious.

These maps kind of snuck up on us, to be honest. We didn't hear anything about them then there's a live stream yesterday and now they're out today so I haven't seen or heard enough from them to gauge my opinion yet.
 
E

EagleBurnn

Banned
Domino Theory said:
What do you guys think of the newest DLC so far? I won't be able to play until tonight, but I'm curious.

These maps kind of snuck up on us, to be honest. We didn't hear anything about them then there's a live stream yesterday and now they're out today so I haven't seen or heard enough from them to gauge my opinion yet.
Click to expand...

Map good, gametype bad
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
Domino Theory said:
What do you guys think of the newest DLC so far? I won't be able to play until tonight, but I'm curious.

These maps kind of snuck up on us, to be honest. We didn't hear anything about them then there's a live stream yesterday and now they're out today so I haven't seen or heard enough from them to gauge my opinion yet.
Click to expand...
probably some of the best maps in the last two halo games
 
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