RebornYeti
Member
Anyone getting on later or on right now? I'd be down for anythin.
Anythin.
Anythin.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Halo |OT16| Oh Bungie, Where Art Thou?
- Thread starter Booties
- Start date
- Status
This makes sense, and makes for a better podcast, asking pie in the sky questions with sweeping generalizations about the future of Halo would have been much worse. Direct answers about things people are dealing with right now and in the immediate future is more important and leads to better discussion overall.
It's just my weird dream that I wish there would be some amazing insight into why Halo has gone so astray from what I loved about the series, and if I should even give a shit about the next game 343 is making.
I did the same. Jumped my 'hog into it, up to the roof, and off. It was the most fun thing I ever did in Halo 4. Shame they only captured the Halo experience once.
Also liked the podcast, but I have to agree.
Bravo gave the best respones, but I expected this, don't know why Frank and Kevin have this shtick.
And yeah the classic Halo question was also quite ... well it still doesn't paint them in good light for me, why not try to be serious about this, it is a subjective question and they could answer with their own serious opinion.
I really really hope the weapon balancing gives us some good stuff. Good Job Tashi.
Bravo gave the best respones, but I expected this, don't know why Frank and Kevin have this shtick.
And yeah the classic Halo question was also quite ... well it still doesn't paint them in good light for me, why not try to be serious about this, it is a subjective question and they could answer with their own serious opinion.
I really really hope the weapon balancing gives us some good stuff. Good Job Tashi.
It's easily the best part of SpOps.
Not perfect; the Liche's obvious reference to scarabs still gives it a bit of a sad vibe (they don't even let you try to jetpack to it, there's an invisible wall like 2 inches off the ground), and the Promethean combat is Halo 4 Promethean combat. But yeah, very good.
Hydranockz
Member
Oh pleeeease. Dudes practically gave up a few hours of their day (especially since having to re-record) and aren't allowed to make a few jokes once in a while? Because if you're ignoring the very serious answers Frank and Kevin gave, you're just being willfully ignorant to support your opinion that you don't like what they've done.
I said already last time that it is awesome that they took the time to do that, I didn't think I have to praise them everytime I talk about the podcast.
Jokes are fine, but I would prefer jokes before or after a Q&A, that isn't just with 343 so I prefer it in every interview.
Never said I ignore their other answers? Just said I prefer bravo's style of answering.
Hydranockz
Member
This paragraph is why. Especially the bolded. Come on. Was this you taking their serious answers into consideration? Sure doesn't look like it.
Edit: Don't even give me that shit about having to praise them because I sure as hell never suggested that for a second. I asked you if they couldn't make a joke once in a while. That's a yes or no answer. Nothing about giving them a pat on the back. Them taking the time to do it was more to highlight how long they were there. Worthy of praise wasn't what I was suggesting. Worthy of making a joke more like.
Twilight Gap
Member
I think the interior is a bit cooler than Scarabs at least. I just wish they'd seen more face time in both Spops and Campaign. And yea, Prometheans are Prometheans, but they died so quick in this mission that I hadn't even really noticed them. They always manage to be freakishly intimidating, but then the combat falls short.
I just want to stress that this is what Vehicle combat should be. It seems like every other map in the game has a bunch of randomass rocks everywhere forcing you to go along certain paths or make certain turns. They then add fusion coils at every choke point or junction and it just doesn't make it fun for vehicles.
Vehicle gameplay shouldn't be controlled like that, which is why Apex excels. This part part had plenty of room and jumps for vehicles to play in. It's literally vehicle heaven, and the only thing that would have made it better at that point were more vehicles. Wraiths, Tanks, Banshees - you name it.
What bothers me the most is that it's unlikely for Halo to ever be that way again. Apex shows that 343/CA are able to do it, but for some unknown reason they're holding back.
Other than taking down shield generators and boarding a Lich, they were very different. Most notably, the lack of meaningful vehicle combat in Reclaimer.
How do you mean? I know they felt similar, but I can only assume that's because the encounter itself was very similar to it's Reclaimer counterpart.
Reclaimer segment:
Drive a warthog off the mammoth, to destroy 3 shielded generators holding up shielded wall. Once the generators are blown up, you go on and a Liche flies in. You must now shoot waves of enemy ghost coming out of phantoms, and wraiths, along with enemies coming down the Liche. after fighting the enemies, you can finally go into the Liche, where you go to its core and blow it up. you escape the Liche and and Kaboom.
Episode 10 Chapter 3 on Apex:
Drive a warthog and fight some enemies to the hillside, to destroy 3 shielded generators holding up shielded wall. Once the generators are blown up, you go into the area and a Liche flies in. You must now shoot waves of enemy ghost and enemies coming out of phantoms, along with enemies coming down the Liche. after fighting the enemies, you can finally go into the Liche, where you go to its core and blow it up. You escape the Liche and and Kaboom.
That's being very generous to Halo 4's explosion effects.
It's kind of neat, but it's a column forest that doesn't produce very interesting gameplay flow. Halo 2's scarab has far more focused encounter design, and both 2 and 3 have meaningful interactions between people on scarab and people off scarab. In gameplay terms, it kind of feels like an isolated group of okay rooms compared with what Halo's 2 and 3 do.
Surface of Me
I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Anyone wanna play in about 20-30 min? I'm cool with anything, co-op, matchmaking, or custom. GT is Nightmare22m.
xxjuicesxx
Member
That gamer tag sounds soooo familiar.
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
Really nice job man. I am still not convinced Kevin Franklin has any idea what he is doing with Halo. Honestly, it looks like some of the things, Sprint, PP loadouts are a victim of the people who may now be used to using them or the maps designed around them.
I still dont agree with Frankie about ranks but nice of all the guys to sit down with you.
RebornYeti
Member
The one night where I've got nothing going on and no one is even playing. Hmmph!
I would get on if we could get at least 2 people to join us.
I would get on if we could get at least 2 people to join us.
The best part is another local lan center is bashing them.
Even on a small scale, eSports is just not profitable. So much mismanagement, and then complete dickwads steal shit from the venue that is taking it on the chin to host a Halo tournament when the scene is barely alive. Disgusting.
Surface of Me
I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Enter The 36 Chambers
Member
Setting up a LAN tournament and some financial difficulty leads to a divorce?
Ehhh no. Your relationship had serious flaws if that was all it took.
Hydranockz
Member
Yeah lol. Generally having a strong relationship is what keeps going despite the stress an event like that might bring. He's probably saying he got stressed the fuck out and she didn't like seeing him like that. Perhaps he took his anger out on the wrong peeps? Who knows.
Though I wasn't a big fan of some of the responses, the interview was a good listen, so thanks to all parties involved for taking the time to put it together - Tashi and Heckfu, you guys handled that sort of semi-formal environment really well, all things considered. I mentioned the whole Infinity-CTF/Doubles-continued-existence thing being a bummer before, but now that I've finished the whole thing there are a few more thoughts:
I can definitely understand why they deflected the classic settings question. It's a very complicated, loaded topic and no matter what they said, it'd be thrown in their faces later by jerks like me for one reason or another. They were pretty frank and open with just about everything else, so it's hard to begrudge them that question. If I were in that position, I don't know that I could have answered without putting my foot in my mouth at some point down the line.
I was, however, surprised that Kevin made a point about how removing plasma pistols from loadouts would require them to place them on the map...as if that wasn't precisely what was being asked for, I guess? It was just a situation where I was saying to myself "Okay, you get what should be done, now please do it." as I was listening. I understand the problem of messaging loadout restrictions to players, but I think it would ultimately result in a much, much better experience. The classic non-tank Halo vehicles were primarily useful for guerrilla tactics - you got in, did some damage, got out to recover. You cannot, cannot, cannot have that strategy anymore with plasma pistols and plasma grenades on spawn, or with separate vehicle health. They're boosting the damage of certain vehicles, I think that is 100% the wrong way to go. Buff durability, not short-term offensive capability. It's the same mistake that was made multiple times with the Banshee, and that vehicle is orders of magnitude less interesting now than it was before.
I think Legendary Slayer is a bad idea, flat out. We're getting a situation that is dangerously close to being identical to the Reach TU playlist disaster. A vanilla Team Slayer playlist that is mediocre, a hardcore playlist that solved a lot of the problems...and then rather than fixing the vanilla playlist, a third midway setting is being introduced? No thank you. I'll play it, people here will play it, people who are connected and invested will play it, but general adoption will be abysmal just like it was with Super Slayer. Whether it's from lack of in-game marketing, trouble with player education, or simply trying to distinguish it from everything else (the name sure isn't helping), that playlist is very likely going to have trouble finding a good audience. I was a little dismayed to hear that a "middle ground between" Infinity and Throwdown was being labeled as more competitively-oriented when before it was just regular ol' Halo.
I also think it's pretty funny that they mentioned that they don't want to saturate Halo 4 with too many Slayer modes when they introduced heavily-weighted Heavies to Reach Big Team, transitioned Big Team into a Slayer-only mode, reproduced Team Slayer almost whole hog in Reach for Super Slayer, and put Team Regicide, a Slayer-oriented gametype, into Team Objective. I mean, their whole MO has been "more Slayer!" the entire time.
It's kind of interesting (disappointing) that the DMR was mentioned specifically in a weapon balance question and "I think it's safe to say that we're going to address all of those things when we rebalance" was said, but then we get preliminary details and the DMR isn't being touched. Like I mentioned yesterday when the bulletin hit, I admire the philosophy of keeping strong weapons strong and bringing others up to match it, but firepower isn't the problem here.
Nice to hear that asymmetric gametypes might someday maybe make it into the game...but after they were handed the keys to Reach and were publicly playing around with scripting in that game, I still think it's totally unacceptable that they weren't in the shipping game, especially considering what the map pool ended up being.
The reductionism when talking about reducing melee strength was a little annoying. "So...you want to melee three times instead of two?" No, we want weapons to be viable in close quarters situations instead of simultaneous melees happening five times per game. If you played well in Halo 2, you could change up your tactics immediately when you got jumped and make it out alive instead of blindling mashing B like the CQC clusterfuck it is today. Melee should be useful, but it shouldn't be such a fast, easy nuclear option that it overrides anything else when you're within a certain range. It should be a great situational tool that you use when you need to, it shouldn't be a tactical goal (see: Sprint melee). Close combat in Halo went down the toilet once Halo 3 increased melee strength.
Thanks to Frank, Bravo, and Kevin for being as candid as you were. It's something I personally really appreciate.
I can definitely understand why they deflected the classic settings question. It's a very complicated, loaded topic and no matter what they said, it'd be thrown in their faces later by jerks like me for one reason or another. They were pretty frank and open with just about everything else, so it's hard to begrudge them that question. If I were in that position, I don't know that I could have answered without putting my foot in my mouth at some point down the line.
I was, however, surprised that Kevin made a point about how removing plasma pistols from loadouts would require them to place them on the map...as if that wasn't precisely what was being asked for, I guess? It was just a situation where I was saying to myself "Okay, you get what should be done, now please do it." as I was listening. I understand the problem of messaging loadout restrictions to players, but I think it would ultimately result in a much, much better experience. The classic non-tank Halo vehicles were primarily useful for guerrilla tactics - you got in, did some damage, got out to recover. You cannot, cannot, cannot have that strategy anymore with plasma pistols and plasma grenades on spawn, or with separate vehicle health. They're boosting the damage of certain vehicles, I think that is 100% the wrong way to go. Buff durability, not short-term offensive capability. It's the same mistake that was made multiple times with the Banshee, and that vehicle is orders of magnitude less interesting now than it was before.
I think Legendary Slayer is a bad idea, flat out. We're getting a situation that is dangerously close to being identical to the Reach TU playlist disaster. A vanilla Team Slayer playlist that is mediocre, a hardcore playlist that solved a lot of the problems...and then rather than fixing the vanilla playlist, a third midway setting is being introduced? No thank you. I'll play it, people here will play it, people who are connected and invested will play it, but general adoption will be abysmal just like it was with Super Slayer. Whether it's from lack of in-game marketing, trouble with player education, or simply trying to distinguish it from everything else (the name sure isn't helping), that playlist is very likely going to have trouble finding a good audience. I was a little dismayed to hear that a "middle ground between" Infinity and Throwdown was being labeled as more competitively-oriented when before it was just regular ol' Halo.
I also think it's pretty funny that they mentioned that they don't want to saturate Halo 4 with too many Slayer modes when they introduced heavily-weighted Heavies to Reach Big Team, transitioned Big Team into a Slayer-only mode, reproduced Team Slayer almost whole hog in Reach for Super Slayer, and put Team Regicide, a Slayer-oriented gametype, into Team Objective. I mean, their whole MO has been "more Slayer!" the entire time.
It's kind of interesting (disappointing) that the DMR was mentioned specifically in a weapon balance question and "I think it's safe to say that we're going to address all of those things when we rebalance" was said, but then we get preliminary details and the DMR isn't being touched. Like I mentioned yesterday when the bulletin hit, I admire the philosophy of keeping strong weapons strong and bringing others up to match it, but firepower isn't the problem here.
Nice to hear that asymmetric gametypes might someday maybe make it into the game...but after they were handed the keys to Reach and were publicly playing around with scripting in that game, I still think it's totally unacceptable that they weren't in the shipping game, especially considering what the map pool ended up being.
The reductionism when talking about reducing melee strength was a little annoying. "So...you want to melee three times instead of two?" No, we want weapons to be viable in close quarters situations instead of simultaneous melees happening five times per game. If you played well in Halo 2, you could change up your tactics immediately when you got jumped and make it out alive instead of blindling mashing B like the CQC clusterfuck it is today. Melee should be useful, but it shouldn't be such a fast, easy nuclear option that it overrides anything else when you're within a certain range. It should be a great situational tool that you use when you need to, it shouldn't be a tactical goal (see: Sprint melee). Close combat in Halo went down the toilet once Halo 3 increased melee strength.
Thanks to Frank, Bravo, and Kevin for being as candid as you were. It's something I personally really appreciate.
Hydranockz
Member
What really struck me was the ability to reduce ROF depending on bloom. How cray would it be if the DMR fired slower when scoped? Bravo even mentioned the cone of accuracy as a possible tweak I believe. I wonder if damage when scoped (akin to the Light Rifle) is another such possibility.
You could nerf the scoped DMR soooo hard with those :lol
You could nerf the scoped DMR soooo hard with those :lol
Orochinagis
Member
I think is the biggest map in Spartan Ops right? I remember it had a perfect layout for a possible invasion/dominion gametype.
Every time that I see someone make a comment like "Halo 3 is worse than Reach" on this forum, I feel like burning down an orphanage. I just dun get it.
What am I reading?
Are you serious? One of the best experiences you've ever had in a Halo game? One slightly better than average Spartan Ops mission (which doesn't say much as the average SO mission was bad... and it also still suffers from most of the same problems with SO) and you have a reason to keep the game in your Xbox?
What am I reading?
:\
It was a nice mission, but still far from the best a Halo game could offer, IMO. It was still terribly scripted, those purple flying things are still boring as fuck to destroy (doesn't help that how you board it is totally irrelevant as you have to do the same thing to progress anyway), enemies are literally just thrown above you, Elites with power weapons are still a thing, unlimited lives is still there, and the damage model on vehicles takes the fun out of vehicular combat.
Hydranockz
Member
Felt sorry for you when that Dorito/MtnDew joke went further south than you're used to being. It was a really funny joke.
Never feel sorry, it's how we learn to be funnier. If all the jokes hit then no one would ever craft content or delivery to be better!
Best version of Firefight.
Heart Attack
Member
You're a fool if you don't.
Why take a risk? I'm pretty sure if you ask around in Jamaica you'd be set.
Blue Ninja
Member
First time I played this mission, the Lich refused to come down closer to the ground, so we couldn't land on it. It took the host qutting out to trigger it, but we tried other stuff for half an hour at least. Kinda soured the mission for me. :lol
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
You gotta figure the only people still trying to play competitive Halo aren't very smart. So right off the bat your player pool is pure trash.
And then the ones that go through enough effort to actually get to a Halo 4 tournament. It must've been 100% suddoths.
xxjuicesxx
Member
Never been to an event like that. Dont they invest in some plastic console lockboxes like Target has?
The Real Napsta
Member
link?
User 73706
Banned
THOSE MEN WHOM I DO NOT OWN ARE A PROFESSIONAL BAND WHO COMPLETELY WILLINGLY VOLUNTEER IN MY NUCLEAR PLANT THAT RUNS ON 100% CLEAN-BURNING STYROFOAM
If Kevin Franklin jokes when asked about classic Halo...
Is classic Halo a joke to him?
OdysseusVA
Banned
Fixed that.To literally everyone.
Tonight we pie in hell.
- Status