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[Syphon Filter]

I doubt 343 would make another game like this after seeing the population numbers. If Halo 5 is like this, it would probably be MS forcing them to.

I don't think they or any developer cares about population over profit.

 

[Purplemage]

They're removing stopping power to enable sprint double beatdowns instead. And charging for the privilege to do it. Halo in 2013.

I'm one of the few who's okay with that perk. Not the paywall but the perk itself. I have no problem with double melees being feasible again considering how powerful every other weapon in the game is now. It's certainly far better than getting boltshotted. And with the amount of on map power weapons in most gametypes this idea doesn't bug me at all. I highly doubt a lot of people would pick this over other perks.

Is this gonna be usable with Mobility? Because I would love to double melee some boltshotters on Adrift for once.

 

[User 73706]

If Camo bends light around the user...

Active Camo + Hardlight = ???

Could we see Camo Knights in the future or could their faces physically be unable to cloak without disappearing entirely?

Also, idea for a neat Campaign moment: give us an overclocked hardlight melee weapon that works like a strobelight in dark conditions. Proceed to tear apart Prometheans and Covenant in a nightclub frame-by-frame style.

 

[willow ve]

copying the text directly

"The Pistol is Back! 4 Shot Kill with Headshots"

obsession with shot count over actual kill time. Unless they RoF adjusted this (you do remember how fast the H2 pistol fires, right?) this is now a nightmare weapon. If you did RoF adjust it, it hast to be slower than the BR, otherwise there's no point to using the Carbine or BR. Pistols are sidearms, not mainrifles.

"The Assault Rilfe is Back! No Dual Wield, Stronger then the SMG, less spread"

So basically the SAW in Halo 2 but even worse because it's Halo 2 and now has less spread than the SMG.

"90 degree field of view"

i'll agree with this, but FOV really needs a slider. 90 is good, but some people get motion sick from it. let them slide it down to 75 if they want.

"No Auto-aim!!!"

or 'how to watch an FPS fail in one easy step'. Play a match of Slayer with everyone on the same team. Notice how un-fun it is on a controller? If you want to play on a controller, you need aim assistance.

"Less Magnetism on all weapons"

Depends on which magnetism they're talking about. If they're talking about aim friction, this is needed to make controllers work. If they're talking about the game actually pulling your bullet trajectory a bit, this is needed to make weapons work over the internet, especially hitscan weapons. Unless they remove it completely, sweep-sniping is still possible in Halo 2.

"The Shotgun is no longer the 'Slotgun'. Less spread makes for a less host advantage"

If you reduce spread on a shotty it becomes more powerful, giving the host even MORE advantage. In the Halo 2 context, it would have even MORE host advantage. The issue was with Halo 2's netcode, not really the gun itself. I think Bungie found a sweetspot with the Reach version, but they also had two generations of netcode improvement at that point too.

"No More annoying PP/BR combo! Much less homing on the Plasma Pistol charge makes this imposssible, you now have to lead you PP charges"

I've always found the combo annoying, but this was mostly addressed in Halo 3 and Reach. I always thought the proper fix though, was to prevent you from switching away an overheated Plasma Pistol (or any other overheated weapon), making avoiding overheating an actual skill and a time-cost if you want to set up the combo. It would certainly make it more of a teamshot option rather than a single-person feat.


"Thought out gameplay. Without any auto-aim, you now have to plan out your moves, it is no longer the same game of spray and pray"

Other games have had options to turn auto-aim off. Nobody clamored onto those games as pinnacles of skill, though.

"It's all about BALANCE. Every weapon has it's use. The Pistol, the Carbine and the newly useful Needler are the 3 mid-range weapons. The PR, AR, Sword and Shotgun are the 4 close range weapons. The 2 Snipers are the long-range weapons. Each of these has its own advantages in gameplay"

They don't mention the changes to the Carbine or Needler anywhere, so I don't know what they did with them. However, if the Magnum is 4SK, I don't know why I'd be using a BR for mid or an AR or even a shotgun for close range (remember the Reach customs with the ZB Magnum?). The sniper now has a closer zoom level, making it more useful than the Carbine at close range for headshots. If the Needler is buffed and still DW-able, then you have a more useful weapon at mid-range than the BR. I'm also humored by the fact that the Needler gets buffed (in the H2 context, I assume this meant increasing it's tracking) while at the same time nerfing the PP overshot tracking. One requires a second weapon to kill, the needler kills on it's own.

So at this point, on big maps I'm rolling Sniper and BR. On smaller maps I'm rolling Magnum and AR, because the magnum headshots people faster than the BR and the AR is better than the shotgun, sword, and every other weapon in the game at close range due to bleedthrough. When my AR empties, I can switch to the magnum for quick 1SKs or cleanup kills.

Nobody in this game would have any reason to pick up most of the other weapons.

"Rocket Homing drastically reduced. Can only realistically home in on the Banshee."

I'll agree with this, but was already solved in Halo 3 by splitting out the lock-on ability to the Missile Launcher. Was addressed further in Reach by revisiting the Halo 2 RL lock on but only letting you lock on to air vehicles, which is what they should have done the first time they introduced lock-on.

"Sniper Mid Range ability is Back. The 6x zoom is traded for 2x, while the 10x stays as it is"

Why should a long range weapon have a close range zoom level? It's a long range weapon. You should only be using it at 2x ranges out of desperation, not as a feature.

"Faster Running = Better Strafing"

Running will never be fast enough, no matter if they made 110% speed of the current game the standard, people will always jack it up to 110% speed in the next game because they're the Tonya Harding of Halo and prefer to ice skate while attacking other people

"Better Grenades. You can throw like a man again. You can now lure weapons twards you again or flip vehicles while moving with grenades"

Besides the rolleyes "throw like a man again", you can already throw grenades across Coag in Halo 2. Weapons flying across the map is thankfully a dropped feature, as the opening move on every map would be everyone wasting their grenades trying to launch guns back to them. New players would find all their weapons leaving their base. Matched players would just be swapping weapons. A relic of Halo 1's terrible physics model.

You WERE supposed to be able to flip vehicles in Halo 2, however there's a bug in the engine that disabled physics for anyone that was not the host. If the host was driving the hog, you could flip it with grenades. Yes, that's right, the intended version of Halo 2 had more flippy vehicles and everyone could grenade jump. One of the reasons why splitscreen Halo 2 and LAN/LIVE Halo 2 are worlds apart.

Grenades should be a personal weapon, not long range exploding sniper bullets. Crossmapping grenades should be a joke move, not a main feature of gameplay. Look at Standoff matches for an example of what would happen in the newer sandboxes.

"Underpowered weapons like the Needler and Plasma Pistol have been given a significant boost. They're now balanced with the rest of the game. Overpowered vehicles like the Banshee for example has lost it's boost. Balance is the name of the game."

Changes are not specified, addressed above. They addressed the wrong problem with the banshee, which I'll now be able to pick off with the AR easily. Halo 3 came the closest to a balanced Banshee. But the Reach falcon is what Halo needs to be thinking about for air vehicles, a shame it didn't find it's way into Halo 4.

Needed to be quoted on a new page. Should be in the OP.

 

[NobleGundam]

I'm pretty sure Certain Affinity did most of the scripting anyway.

 

[Fuchsdh]

I randomly decided to re-read the IGN Halo 4 review. Holy shit at some of these quotes.






That last one had the exact opposite effect for me

Well they lost me at "best paced game this side of Half-Life 2" because that game is an abomination in every element of its gameplay. The gravity gun stopped being fun when I was forced into tedious physics-based puzzles and "don't touch the lava!" platforming. The entire pace of that game dies after Ravenholm. There's no point to anything that happens until you get back into the city.

"Rocket Homing drastically reduced. Can only realistically home in on the Banshee."

Fyre speaks reality, if not truth, but this point entirely flummoxes me. How can you nerf the rocket homing yet still have it be effective *only* on the Banshee, a fast and maneuverable flying vehicle?

 

[Franklinator]

I like the Half-Life 2 and Episode 2 campaigns more than any Halo campaign, except for maybe Halo 3. But I feel this has been talked about a lot in this thread.

 

[User 73706]

Well they lost me at "best paced game this side of Half-Life 2" because that game is an abomination in every element of its gameplay. The gravity gun stopped being fun when I was forced into tedious physics-based puzzles and "don't touch the lava!" platforming. The entire pace of that game dies after Ravenholm. There's no point to anything that happens until you get back into the city.



Fyre speaks reality, if not truth, but this point entirely flummoxes me. How can you nerf the rocket homing yet still have it be effective *only* on the Banshee, a fast and maneuverable flying vehicle?

Most vehicles that are ground-based could out-maneuver the rocket by speeding away. The Banshee, moving in three dimensions (and having poor vertical evasion compared to, say, a Hornet) would get toasted because the rocket moves fast in every direction.

 

[Fuchsdh]

I like the Half-Life 2 and Episode 2 campaigns more than any Halo campaign, except for maybe Halo 3. But I feel this has been talked about a lot in this thread.

Probably because I rant about it reflexively every time it comes up. I still want to play HL1 at some point but HL2 for me tops the most overrated list by a high margin. Still struggling through playing it again on Orange Box, will play Ep1 and 2 at some point.

Somewhat random, but Post on HBO posted a shot from the CEA terminals in a discussion about the Graveminds that is pretty cool:

The art is even nicer than I thought; you can cheat a lot when everything's moving and compressed to hell and back so that details turn to mud. Curiously, though, considering how much detail they put into things like replicating the H3 marine armor, the pistols are really off

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

Where's my Halo Wars 2. C'mon Frank. Pls.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Where's my Halo Wars 2. C'mon Frank. Pls.

Who will they have making it?

 

[HiredN00bs]

That last one had the exact opposite effect for me

Me too. Before Halo 4 and the general Xbox One shenanigans, the next Xbox was a must-buy in my mind. Now it's a must-not-buy.

 

[User 73706]

Who will they have making it?

Collaboration by Square-Enix and the team behind Star Wars 1313.

 

[Nebula]

Halo 4 drew a huge profit, though. Unless nobody buys the XBO and by extension 5, I think our only real chance is Halo 6.

I don't even think I'm buying a next gen console anymore. I'm being sold more and more on the idea of PC Gaming. The more I think about how long this gen dragged on, and how we almost always ended up with a game that is half of what it should have been because Microsoft and Sony wanted to milk this generation as long as possible. PC gaming has been rising rapidly over the past few years and I think the numbers that are making the jump finally scared Microsoft and Sony into making the move to next gen.

Fuck sitting through that again. Games dropping into Sub 30 FPS often, more and more frequent crashes, and the shitty prices of games (which I guarantee will go up despite them saying otherwise) really wore down my patience when it comes to console gaming. I've not played an actual game on my Xbox since last week and that was 3 hours on CoD Search and Destroy. The only reason I put up with CoD anymore is because it manages to deliver a good stable 60 FPS, and functioning gameplay each year. Before that I don't think I went on it for over a week.

Fucking hell, they got me praising CoD. That's how crap Halo has become. /rant

 

[Madness]

Where's my Halo Wars 2. C'mon Frank. Pls.

At this point, they just need to focus on putting out a solid 'regular' Halo games, lest they want to become pretty much irrelevant. Look at Spartan Assault. Such a non factor of a game because of their insistence on keeping it for Windows 8 platforms only.

I love Halo Wars, started to play it again, I loved Ensemble. I don't think they can pull off a decent Halo Wars 2, especially when they have trouble getting people to play 'regular Halo.

 

[Magwik]

I randomly decided to re-read the IGN Halo 4 review. Holy shit at some of these quotes.






That last one had the exact opposite effect for me

Man, I must have played the wrong game on launch then judging by those quotes.

 

[StalkerUKCG]

So WTF is the composer? Because I figured that was the ship that the Didact used but apparently that is Mantle's Approach..

 

[Enter The 36 Chambers]

Ensemble are gone, so if someone makes Halo Wars 2 it will undoubtedly be terrible.

 

[User 73706]

So WTF is the composer? Because I figured that was the ship that the Didact used but apparently that is Mantle's Approach..

Composer is one

Spoiler

of many

enlightenment-gone weaponized pieces of tech used by the Forerunners used as a mini-Halo-meets-USB-drive.

 

[Fuchsdh]

I like the Half-Life 2 and Episode 2 campaigns more than any Halo campaign, except for maybe Halo 3. But I feel this has been talked about a lot in this thread.

So WTF is the composer? Because I figured that was the ship that the Didact used but apparently that is Mantle's Approach..

The Composer was the device the humans found on Installation 03. The Mantle's Approach was the Metapod that he grabbed the Composer with.

 

[xxjuicesxx]

I believe the Composer is a Gravity Gauntlet.

 

[Ragnarok Flames]

The Composer was the device the humans found on Installation 03. The Mantle's Approach was the Metapod that he grabbed the Composer with.

http://www.halopedia.org/The_Composer

 

[HiredN00bs]

The Composer was Neil Davidge. 343 Industries used The Composer to give the illusion that the game Halo 4 would be of similar quality in gameplay as the soundtrack was in music.

 

[User 73706]

I believe the Composer is a Gravity Gauntlet.

In a way, I think everything in Halo is a Gravity Gauntlet if you look hard enough. Gravity Hammer? Gravity Gauntlet shaped like a hammer. Monitor? Just a circular Gravity Gauntlet. The Gravemind? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure we saw him teleporting people once!

 

[BigShow36]

"No Auto-aim!!!"

or 'how to watch an FPS fail in one easy step'. Play a match of Slayer with everyone on the same team. Notice how un-fun it is on a controller? If you want to play on a controller, you need aim assistance.

I despise this mindset. Unfortunately, most people (including developers) agree with you.

 

[FyreWulff]

I despise this mindset. Unfortunately, most people (including developers) agree with you.

Controllers are inferior pointing devices next to actual pointing devices like the Wiimote and a mouse.

Halo improved upon Goldeneye and Perfect Dark's autoaim to make it less apparent you were being helped, but you're still playing with a 'it mostly works' device. (Halo 2 onwards has one of the best aim acceleration models I've seen, as well)

 

[DeadNames]

The Composer was Neil Davidge. 343 Industries used The Composer to give the illusion that the game Halo 4 would be of similar quality in gameplay as the soundtrack was in music.

They were in similar quality. Like the sound track, halo 4 had some pretty good parts.

 

[Fotos]

Halo 4 is Top-Selling Microsoft Studios Game of All Time in the U.S.

:\

Just imagine if they had a public beta prior the release...

 

[Ragnarok Flames]

Just imagine if they had a public beta prior the release...

they still wouldnt have listened

 

[Steelyuhas]

Controllers are inferior pointing devices next to actual pointing devices like the Wiimote and a mouse.

Halo improved upon Goldeneye and Perfect Dark's autoaim to make it less apparent you were being helped, but you're still playing with a 'it mostly works' device. (Halo 2 onwards has one of the best aim acceleration models I've seen, as well)

Aiming in Halo 3 feels like the cursor has an anchor tied to it. Pretty smooth in Halo 2 though, and better than 3 in Reach and 4.

 

[Overdoziz]

ya'll weird
Halo 3 aiming is just like halo reach's and halo 4
stop sucking

 

[BigShow36]

Controllers are inferior pointing devices next to actual pointing devices like the Wiimote and a mouse.

Halo improved upon Goldeneye and Perfect Dark's autoaim to make it less apparent you were being helped, but you're still playing with a 'it mostly works' device. (Halo 2 onwards has one of the best aim acceleration models I've seen, as well)

That doesn't mean aim assist is a forgone conclusion and should be universally applied across all console FPS games. I would argue that Halo 4 would be a better game with no aim assist than it is in its current state (if those were our only two choices), but that's not even necessary for my point.

Look at CoD. Are you saying that series wouldn't be playable without aim assist? Using the example that its very difficult to play a game of Halo without aim assist is a pretty weak argument for the necessity of aim assist. First off, of course its going to be difficult to go from playing years of Halo with it's massive aim assists and then jumping into a game with no aim assist and expecting your aim to not be effected. That doesn't mean it's impossible to play that way, it just means that there is actually going to be a skill gap. One that will probably require a bit more practice and experience to get a good grasp on rather than just playing one game of it and throwing up your hands and saying "impossible."

The bottom line is that there are some console FPS that play better with a small (much smaller than current games have) amount of aim assists and there are those that would play better with no aim assists (Nexuiz did it, and aside from the networking issues it worked great). Unfortunately, console gamers and developers have become so attached to aim assist that any game which presents even a moderate accuracy challenge would be immediately discarded.

The only way to present it in a palatable manner to current gamers would be in a game that was so good it forced them to adjust to more difficult aiming. Halo CE did it, but Halo has become one of the grossest offenders in the aim assist travesty now that it's probably going to take an entirely new franchise to re-invigorate console FPS games.

 

[Overdoziz]

bigshow you'd get shit on without aim assist

 

[HiredN00bs]

bigshow you'd get shit on without aim assist

actually, no one would

You'd have to change so much about the game to have a controller FPS with zero assist. And Halo CE had tons of assist too.

 

[FyreWulff]

That doesn't mean aim assist is a forgone conclusion and should be universally applied across all console FPS games. I would argue that Halo 4 would be a better game with no aim assist than it is in its current state (if those were our only two choices), but that's not even necessary for my point.

Look at CoD. Are you saying that series wouldn't be playable without aim assist?

Considering part of the game's design and popularity is being able to pop into ironsights and be automatically aimed onto the target.. yes. It's part of their ironsights system.

Using the example that its very difficult to play a game of Halo without aim assist is a pretty weak argument for the necessity of aim assist. First off, of course its going to be difficult to go from playing years of Halo with it's massive aim assists and then jumping into a game with no aim assist and expecting your aim to not be effected. That doesn't mean it's impossible to play that way, it just means that there is actually going to be a skill gap. One that will probably require a bit more practice and experience to get a good grasp on rather than just playing one game of it and throwing up your hands and saying "impossible."

Of course it will be, and of course there will be a bigger skill gap between the people that spend a lot of time wrangling the controller and those that do not. However, the ultimate amount of players you'll have to play against will be tiny, and most of the people at the upper end will be playing PC shooters anyway if they're that good with a no AA controller.

The bottom line is that there are some console FPS that play better with a small (much smaller than current games have) amount of aim assists and there are those that would play better with no aim assists (Nexuiz did it, and aside from the networking issues it worked great). Unfortunately, console gamers and developers have become so attached to aim assist that any game which presents even a moderate accuracy challenge would be immediately discarded.

The only way to present it in a palatable manner to current gamers would be in a game that was so good it forced them to adjust to more difficult aiming. Halo CE did it, but Halo has become one of the grossest offenders in the aim assist travesty now that it's probably going to take an entirely new franchise to re-invigorate console FPS games.

Perfect Dark XBLA had an entire playlist with autoaim disabled. The community asked for it for weeks before 4J patched it in.

It was dead within 2 days for population. And this is a game with autoaim that actually nerfs you (it visibly pulls the gun to your target's chest, you have to manually re-aim to get headshots), In a marketplace where most people don't even change their sensitivity from 3 and don't disable auto-level, shipping with no AA is a disaster. A toggle would be neat, but you'd still have bullet magnetism and such. Nobody really takes pure inputs anymore on PC or console, there's some sort of smoothing and acceleration going on.

Here's a video of me screwing around in BLOPS2 with the Wiimote for example. It's just too damn accurate and fast compared to using a controller.

 

[Overdoziz]

actually, no one would

everybody would

 

[User 73706]

You guys are dumbasses

Just make aim assist a perk and be done with it

 

[Orochinagis]

So WTF is the composer? Because I figured that was the ship that the Didact used but apparently that is Mantle's Approach..

A decomposer organic beings energy gun for composing energy beings. funny thing the forerunner guns in Halo 4 are minicomposers too.

 

[HiredN00bs]

everybody would

no they wouldn't be

I remember making a no auto-aim gametype in Halo 3 with 3-shot pistols (mock-FFA where all people were on the same team and betrayals count as a point). A majority of shots are missed. You have people dancing around for much longer. There are no perfect encounters. Nobody is "shit on"

 

[BigShow36]

bigshow you'd get shit on without aim assist

Not if I was playing against other people who didn't have it. I excel at games with a high aiming skill gap because I have very good aim. I used to play Halo PC with a controller and did fine.

no they wouldn't be

I remember making a no auto-aim gametype in Halo 3 with 3-shot pistols (mock-FFA where all people were on the same team and betrayals count as a point). A majority of shots are missed. You have people dancing around for much longer. There are no perfect encounters. Nobody is "shit on"

Exactly, and that was in a game that wasn't designed for no aim assists. Encounters become much more interesting, strategic and varied when there is a large aiming skill gap. Hence my point about Halo 4 being a much better game with no aim assists than it is in its current state. Plus, people would become quite adept at playing with no aim assists if they put a little bit of time into it.

 

[Madness]

Quick question, so why do they add the heavy aim assist in a lot of FPS games? Lower skill gap? Or is it to offset things like lag?

I'm only asking because a while ago, someone showed this rudimentary FPS gameplay and guys like Cliffy B said it's the future of shooters.

In it, each bullet and person was independently moving. No animations or anything.

 

[Overdoziz]

Not if I was playing against other people who didn't have it. I excel at games with a high aiming skill gap because I have very good aim. I used to play Halo PC with a controller and did fine.

lol go 'toot' your own 'horn' more

 

[BigShow36]

lol go 'toot' your own 'horn' more

If you're saying I'd get "shit on," how else am I to respond?

Quick question, so why do they add the heavy aim assist in a lot of FPS games? Lower skill gap? .

Lower skill gap. Easier to immediately pick up and get results.

 

[Orochinagis]

Quick question, so why do they add the heavy aim assist in a lot of FPS games? Lower skill gap? Or is it to offset things like lag?

I'm only asking because a while ago, someone showed this rudimentary FPS gameplay and guys like Cliffy B said it's the future of shooters.

In it, each bullet and person was independently moving. No animations or anything.

I remember it was implemented for snipers in COD WaW and it was optional, then in MW2 it was implemented for all guns for helping the ones with their aim.

The bad thing is that "ability" works at close range and make the gameplay very easy.

quickscopes montages were born.

 

[Dongs Macabre]

So WTF is the composer? Because I figured that was the ship that the Didact used but apparently that is Mantle's Approach..

It transforms living beings into AI.

 

[Overdoziz]

If you're saying I'd get "shit on," how else am I to respond?

You could acknowledge the fact that you're getting shit on.

 

[OdysseusVA]

lol go 'toot' your own 'horn' more

You dropped a neg bomb, bro

 

[BigShow36]

Of course it will be, and of course there will be a bigger skill gap between the people that spend a lot of time wrangling the controller and those that do not. However, the ultimate amount of players you'll have to play against will be tiny, and most of the people at the upper end will be playing PC shooters anyway if they're that good with a no AA controller.

Halo CE was an immense struggle for most people when they first started out. They spent months "wrangling" the controller before they were comfortable with just the basics. That didn't stop it from launching one of the most successful FPS series of all time. Why is that? It certainly wasn't because the aiming was easy for people.

Now, gamers have had over a decade playing the console FPS control scheme, yet aim assist has gone UP, rather than down. It needs to be the opposite.

Also, aiming with a controller and aiming with a mouse are completely different. Being good with one doesn't translate to being good with another, so upper end console players wouldn't be playing PC shooters.

Here's a video of me screwing around in BLOPS2 with the Wiimote for example. It's just too damn accurate and fast compared to using a controller.

You're stating that like its a good thing. I personally think that aiming should be a skill and a challenge. An input that is easy to aim with reduces the skill gap, and in a game like CoD is the last thing we want.

 

[User 73706]

This thread's getting brassy. And that's coming from the guy who based a Promethean sentry on the Seraph who blows a trumpet to signal the coming of the apocalypse!

 

[Stackboy]

I've lurked in the Halo 4 threads for ages and hadn't played a game online for months.

Jumped back on yesterday, matchmaking is still awful but I'm really enjoying the game again.