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Halo |OT19| 793 Posts, And None Worth Reading

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also
Im not sure if someone here linked me to this article, but man it was really good. I enjoyed hearing about the nitty gritty from the actual art/tech guys for once



We all knew that linearity was forced to keep fidelity high, ofcourse we want open-er world but I am still impressed with the graphics they squeezed out of that old rock
Ohhh nice. Thanks for the link, Nilla!
Very interesting =D
 

Woorloog

Banned
Interesting article.
Halo 4 does encompass a nice variety of places, though i'm not a fan of the UNSC (internal) aesthetics (but then i've never been, no matter who does them). UNSC structure and spacecraft exteriors look nice though.
The FUD doesn't feel claustrophobic by the way. The hallways and rooms are way too large, and bright. The Dawn at the end of Halo 3, in the cutscene, felt more claustrophobic.
 

TheXbox

Member
So correct me if I'm wrong...y'all think a hyper competitive "balanced & very skilled" game, where the top 1-3% rule every outcome, is going to attract a massive following and retain them for years at a time?

Am I getting your Titanfall/Halo comments on the money here?

You bitch about population incessantly but concede nothing in game development or mechanics or player rewards to attract or retain "lesser" players. *shakes head
Never understood this argument. Halo is already simple as fuck. It is some basic ass shit as far as first-person shooters go. I was playing these fucking games when I was a kid. Halo has always been accessible to younger/baby/dipshit audiences, the barrier to entry is about as low as it is in CoD. Adding fluffy mechanics and rewarding idiotic play isn't bringing in any new players, it only alienates existing fans.

As for Top 3% dominating or whatever the hell that means, that's what ranks were for. Wallhacks and jetpacks don't really stop that, they only make the game dumber.
 

Duji

Member
Is this a serious post? You've heard of League of Legends, Dota II, or even Dark Souls right? Were you not there for the "flappy bird" nonsense the past few weeks?
Can this absurd and completely unsupported myth that hyper competitive games can't get a large following be put to death already? Every time I hear it I want to shoot myself.

The #1 most played multiplayer game in the world is League of Legends. If that doesn't go through your goalposts Ozzy then you have none and thus shouldn't be surprised if we can't take your opinions seriously.

With respect to levelling the playing field, which is my case in point, not randomness think about sports from school sports to social sports to competitive sports to the elite 1% professional sports. All of these have social modes/versions and hyper competitive professional versions too: F1, Golf, Tennis, Soccer etc. That's all I'm trying to discuss here, not removal of competitive modes and not 100% random either.
What are you talking about? The default and most played 'gametype' in soccer is pretty much just as competitive as the professional version. You act as if most people who play soccer flip a coin every 5 minutes to determine which team gets a free kick.

Going back to a core Halo 2 game isn't going to provide the population to sustain itself. If it did we'd still having massive followings for CE, 2 or 3. They dwindled in the modern gaming landscape, specifically the modern Halo xbox console landscape.
So a game not having massive followings 12-7 years after it comes out must mean the majority of the current gamer demographic is not interested in that game's core aspects and mechanics? I don't even know how to respond to this nonsensical argument except to say your criteria determining what kinds of games people want to play are completely absurd and impractical.

I also rebutted the DOTA & LOL comments, PC population and geographic trends for hyper competitive play. Debating is discussing and I'm not seeking to be 100% right here. I'm trying to evolve the thinking and conversation to get something useful for developers etc. I guess I ask too much.
Changing the goalposts? Yeah, that is asking too much.

This is your original position:
y'all think a hyper competitive "balanced & very skilled" game, where the top 1-3% rule every outcome, is going to attract a massive following and retain them for years at a time?

NOT this:
y'all think a hyper competitive "balanced & very skilled" Halo console game, where the top 1-3% rule every outcome, is going to attract a massive following in the USA and retain them for years at a time on?
 
ozzy is a long time Halo fan too please show some respect halogaf

Fixed that for you

@Duji - Soccer has many gametypes; without a regulation field or even goals e.g. families, kids and third world countries. There are pros/amateurs that are hired in bars in Melbourne during soccer season to show off their ball juggling skills alone, drills to practice, half courts, 5 a side, blah blah. Once again you fail to look at the overall game and the various modes it is played. I relate the overall game/modes to Halo and you cherry pick one example to support one claim. This is what I keep point out, none of those modes diminish the elite professional paid sport levels in anyway. The sport of soccer overall doesn't ridicule or remove all the other modes of play, they have a tiered system to create the upper echelons of competitiveness. I haven't even entered into derivatives like indoor soccer or beach soccer either. Your points are biased, fact.

Anyhow stay on the 1% train and never discuss anything game design related away from that. I'm sure that will work out for the next 10 years of Halo just fine.
 

DJ Gunner

Member
Going back to a core Halo 2 game isn't going to provide the population to sustain itself. If it did we'd still having massive followings for CE, 2 or 3. They dwindled in the modern gaming landscape, specifically the modern Halo xbox console landscape.

There's no precedent established to make this statement. You could never play CE online in a mass-market setting; the ability to do the same with Halo 2 hasn't existed now for almost four years. Beyond that, they don't hold up graphically compared to modern entries; its for this and other reasons most people moved on from COD4, Gears 1, etc. even though if you ask the people that have played those series hardcore from inception, they will likely tell you those first entries are the best.

An interesting side-note to this, however, is in fact the comparison between Halo Reach and Halo 4. Along with Gears Judgement, the current populations of the latest entries are equaled or exceeded by the populations of the prior entries.

You also can't use TU or Anniversary maps/settings to support that argument either. Those are not true-to-the-original remakes.

The fact is, no one really knows what would happen if Halo 2 Anniversary were released with a complete graphical upgrade to an untouched(or nearly untouched, glitch fixes etc) multiplayer mode. Personally, I would buy an Xbox One for it. I have friends who feel the exact same way. We may be in the minority, but apparently people with a positive view of current Halo multiplayer are also in the minority. Gamers have spoken very loud, and very clear on that.
 
This is an interesting article I think I've posted before, but it's still relevant (regarding FPS design evolution):

Call of Duty "has almost ruined a generation of shooter players," says Tripwire Interactive

And really, watching some of these guys play... one of the things that Call of Duty does, and it’s smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap. And the way you compress the skill gap as a designer is you add a whole bunch of randomness. A whole bunch of weaponry that doesn’t require any skill to get kills. Random spawns, massive cone fire on your weapons. Lots of devices that can get kills with zero skill at all, and you know, it’s kind of smart to compress your skill gap to a degree. You don’t want the elite players to destroy the new players so bad that new players can never get into the game and enjoy it. I’m looking at you, Dota. [laughs] Sorry.

But the skill gap is so compressed, that it’s like a slot machine. You might as well just sit down at a slot machine and have a thing that pops up an says “I got a kill!” They’ve taken individual skill out of the equation so much. So you see these guys—I see it all the time, they come in to play Red Orchestra, and they’re like “This game’s just too hardcore. I’m awesome at Call of Duty, so there’s something wrong with your game. Because I’m not successful at playing this game, so it must suck. I’m not the problem, it’s your game.” And sometimes as designers, it is our game. Sometimes we screw up, sometimes we design something that’s not accesible enough, they can’t figure it out, we didn’t give them enough information to figure out where to go... but more often than not, it’s because Call of Duty compressed their skill gap so much that these guys never needed to get good at a shooter. They never needed to get good at their twitch skills with a mouse.

Players like Elliot [Cannon, Lead Designer] and I, back in the Quake and Unreal days, you know, we had to get good at aiming. These guys don’t have to anymore. The skill gap is so compressed that like, “The game makes me feel that I’m awesome.” These guys, when I actually watch them play, they’re actually very poor FPS players. And I don’t think it’s because they’re incapable of getting good, I think it’s because they never had to get good. They get enough kills in Call of Duty to feel like they’re awesome, but they never really had to develop their FPS skills beyond that.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
Yawn, Yea CoD is so easy, no skill involved, thats why were all pros and making thousands playing it.

Article is dumb as shit.

There is a skill gap but you know as well as I do that the hook of the game is making all players feel powerful.

What CoD does better than basically every current console FPS is that the devs know this, yet allow and foster a competitive scene. Everyone wins.
 

Madness

Member
Currently on Twitch: Nowhere near a good objective metric to gauge anything, but it's one of the few to only games, where a game almost 7 years old, is beating the newest one which is barely 1 year and 3 months old.

Halo 3

419 Viewers

Halo 4

113 Viewers
 
So correct me if I'm wrong...y'all think a hyper competitive "balanced & very skilled" game, where the top 1-3% rule every outcome, is going to attract a massive following and retain them for years at a time?

Am I getting your Titanfall/Halo comments on the money here?

You bitch about population incessantly but concede nothing in game development or mechanics or player rewards to attract or retain "lesser" players. *shakes head

It worked for Halo 2 and 3.
 
There is a skill gap but you know as well as I do that the hook of the game is making all players feel powerful.

What CoD does better than basically every current console FPS is that the devs know this, yet allow and foster a competitive scene. Everyone wins.

The thing is people go 0-10 and 1-13 EVERY game I play in CoD, there is still really bad kids who cant get a kill just like in Halo.

Games that have the same ruleset between players generally are only as hard as the community that plays these games. Its like Halo SWAT. Yes one shot kills but the enemy also kills you in one shot so it becomes just as challenging when you play good players.

Its not the game, its the players. (In MP I mean, In campaign yes of course, you have to game the game)
 
Enough with the mod/waypoint crap, I'm a default objective/BTB competitive player playing at the best levels of 2/3, check my player history if you like. My points of view are as valid as everyone else. I raise this points to discuss them, not to be 100% right with this point of view. You know mature discussion, oh wait I forgot where I was posting.

Mods time to reel the usual HaloGAF BS back in please.

Also the games you mention are PC based, in 2010 for the USA alone PC gamers were listed as 170 million install base. Think about how large PC+Steam is in 2014 with respect to your comments about DOTA/LOL.


With respect to levelling the playing field, which is my case in point, not randomness think about sports from school sports to social sports to competitive sports to the elite 1% professional sports. All of these have social modes/versions and hyper competitive professional versions too: F1, Golf, Tennis, Soccer etc. That's all I'm trying to discuss here, not removal of competitive modes and not 100% random either. Going back to a core Halo 2 game isn't going to provide the population to sustain itself. If it did we'd still having massive followings for CE, 2 or 3. They dwindled in the modern gaming landscape, specifically the modern Halo xbox console landscape.

How do you know for sure it wont sustain? Is Halo 4 sustained? Not at all.You realize Halo 2 got taken offline right? And the PC version has no digital to even give it some life. How come Halo 4 only has 10k players a year later? Even Reach had 200k+ at the same time frame.
 

heckfu

Banned
My favorite part about soccer is when you can get power ups to run faster and score better than the other team because you get a random draw. I love it!!!!
 

TheXbox

Member
My favorite part about soccer is when you can get power ups to run faster and score better than the other team because you get a random draw. I love it!!!!
Complete enough passes and you'll get the choice of deploying a Zlatan, unlocking a free penalty kick, or putting on a new pair of boots.
 

Madness

Member
Fixed that for you

@Duji - Soccer has many gametypes; without a regulation field or even goals e.g. families, kids and third world countries. There are pros/amateurs that are hired in bars in Melbourne during soccer season to show off their ball juggling skills alone, drills to practice, half courts, 5 a side, blah blah. Once again you fail to look at the overall game and the various modes it is played. I relate the overall game/modes to Halo and you cherry pick one example to support one claim. This is what I keep point out, none of those modes diminish the elite professional paid sport levels in anyway. The sport of soccer overall doesn't ridicule or remove all the other modes of play, they have a tiered system to create the upper echelons of competitiveness. I haven't even entered into derivatives like indoor soccer or beach soccer either. Your points are biased, fact.

Anyhow stay on the 1% train and never discuss anything game design related away from that. I'm sure that will work out for the next 10 years of Halo just fine.

Seriously what is this? What points are you even making? I don't get it. There is only soccer/football, and the rest is not soccer/football. Removing goal posts from games or certain leagues (almost all of your points are theoretical/hypothetical), is not soccer. A pro ball juggling in a bar in Melbourne is not playing soccer.
 

Ora

Banned
Yeah Ozzie good point with the age group stuff. Tee ball was awesome when I was 5. But by the time I was 9 I had pitchers balls flying at my face. Real world hits hard.
 
Seriously what is this? What points are you even making? I don't get it. There is only soccer/football, and the rest is not soccer/football. Removing goal posts from games or certain leagues (almost all of your points are theoretical/hypothetical), is not soccer. A pro ball juggling in a bar in Melbourne is not playing soccer.

Are you actually trying to say indoor soccer or kids using trees as goals in a third world country or their own backyard furniture isn't soccer? That's like saying custom games or Grifball or Infection isn't Halo. The population of non-traditional soccer is more than traditional soccer mate. Just like Halo variety population has always exceeded MLG.

At soccer camp hosted by pros, that I personally attended for years, they had drills like soccer golf and solo ball juggling to develop their skills. It's fucking soccer and it has variety, Halo must have a variety of modes for player/buyer appeal or there won't be any population to play against to give rise to a ranking system that works.
 
The thing is people go 0-10 and 1-13 EVERY game I play in CoD, there is still really bad kids who cant get a kill just like in Halo.

Games that have the same ruleset between players generally are only as hard as the community that plays these games. Its like Halo SWAT. Yes one shot kills but the enemy also kills you in one shot so it becomes just as challenging when you play good players.

Its not the game, its the players. (In MP I mean, In campaign yes of course, you have to game the game)
Yeah, Candy Land can be pro with the right set of players.

Or...
 

Madness

Member
Are you actually trying to say indoor soccer or kids using trees as goals in a third world country or their own backyard furniture isn't soccer? That's like saying custom games or Grifball or Infection isn't Halo. The population of non-traditional soccer is more than traditional soccer mate. Just like Halo variety population has always exceeded MLG.

At soccer camp hosted by pros, that I personally attended for years, they had drills like soccer golf and solo ball juggling to develop their skills. It's fucking soccer and it has variety, Halo must have a variety of modes for player/buyer appeal or there won't be any population to play against to give rise to a ranking system that works.

"Hey guys, I'm going to complain about mature discussion here, but let me use pejoratives like "fucking" in all of my posts."

You're talking about something completely different.

Edit: I'm on mobile, I'll respond better when I'm home actually.
 

Dub117

Member
As long as theres some aspect thats not random. Yes. Yes it can.
But..stretching, but take the randomness out and see how good you or your team is versus the other. Going solo makes this hard but clans somewhat fixes this, and then this analogy becomes real. No randomness, me vs. you let's see how you stack up. That's what made a 50-49 H3 game so satisfying and made the losing team want to run it back! I agree, need more games like this. Also, yep MLG candyland

Edit: by the way i know i referenced candy land, but i was talking about modern shooters in my logic. Don't want you guys thinking I'm seriously talking bored game donging here.
 

heckfu

Banned
Funny. If you look at Grifball and Infection, they were based off of a game designed to be competitive.

original.0
 
As long as theres some aspect thats not random. Yes. Yes it can.
You obviously don't remember Candy Land very well, first of all.

Secondly, the less random, the more skillful a game. It's easier for a bad player to win against a more skilled competitor the more random (the less skillful) elements that are present. I think there's a point where there are so many random elements (but with required skill above zero) that a game is worthless in terms of competitive merit since lesser skilled players will win almost as often as skilled players. In my opinion the tension of a competition should be in the actions of the competitors, not in which way their dice rolls go.
 

Duji

Member
Going back to a core Halo 2 game isn't going to provide the population to sustain itself. If it did we'd still having massive followings for CE, 2 or 3. They dwindled in the modern gaming landscape, specifically the modern Halo xbox console landscape.
I really want to emphasize the insanity of this statement you made. I would've never thought in a million years someone would try to make an argument like this.

1) Why even bother mentioning CE? The game didn't have online. Even then, people still LAN the game quite often.

2) You don't consider other factors like hmmm, I don't know, the fact that those games are old as fuck. Despite this, Halo 3 managed to be notably close to Reach in terms of population shortly after Halo 4 came out, and even surpassed it when it was released for free.

3) Having higher base populations to begin with, Halo Reach and H4 still managed to drop in population almost astronomically faster than H2 and H3. Using your logic, going back to a core Halo 2 game -- while not ideal since Halo 2 currently doesn't have a MASSIVE player base nearly 10 years after release -- would still prove to have a much better chance to sustain itself population-wise as opposed to continuing on the trend of Halo: Reach and Halo 4. Unless you actually think Reach and H4 will have massive followings in the years to come, we are left to conclude that no previous Halo game has a good enough 'core' to be reused and implemented into a brand new Halo game. At this point I'm surprised you call yourself a Halo fan. Nonetheless I will ask you this: where should a new Halo game get its inspiration from?
 
You obviously don't remember Candy Land very well, first of all.

Secondly, the less random, the more skillful a game. It's easier for a bad player to win against a more skilled competitor the more random (the less skillful) elements that are present. I think there's a point where there are so many random elements (but with required skill above zero) that a game is worthless in terms of competitive merit since lesser skilled players will win almost as often as skilled players. In my opinion the tension of a competition should be in the actions of the competitors, not in which way their dice rolls go.

Im aware of all of this. Thanks.
 
I really want to emphasize the insanity of this statement you made. I would've never thought in a million years someone would try to make an argument like this.

Here's a simplified response.

Many claim games developers follow the easy money. If arena FPS was such a bankable commodity, now or in the last 5 years, with such a large population ready at the waiting then at least one Indie or AAA studio would have produced it by now. At least attempted to produce it by now.

So why hasn't a pure 100% arena title made it back to #1 and dominated? I'll throw a HaloGAF kickstarter $250 if it ever got serious with competent minimal staff just to prove a point the industry developers already know. Why didn't MLG buying a game studio produce the next Halo or COD killer as an arena FPS?

Forget disproving me, prove your own arguments to be true.


@NobleGundam - It was speculation for in game rank being withheld to promote sales/population for HX1 down the track. Given Frankie's more recent comments the anti-cheating dedis tech is a more likely reason, that or development time ran out for ranks to be included.
 
Here's a simplified response.

Many claim games developers follow the easy money. If arena FPS was such a bankable commodity, now or in the last 5 years, with such a large population ready at the waiting then at least one Indie or AAA studio would have produced it by now.

So why hasn't a pure 100% arena title made it back to #1 and dominated? I'll throw a HaloGAF kickstarter $250 if it ever got serious with competent minimal staff just to prove a point the industry developers already know. Why didn't MLG buying a game studio produce the next Halo or COD killer as an arena FPS?

Forget disproving me, prove your own arguments to be true.
You reminded me of your past posts "Devs purposefully made Halo (?) much lesser than the next Halo game b'cuz science & big corp. decisions." lol
 

Karl2177

Member
Here's a simplified response.

Many claim games developers follow the easy money. If arena FPS was such a bankable commodity, now or in the last 5 years, with such a large population ready at the waiting then at least one Indie or AAA studio would have produced it by now.

So why hasn't a pure 100% arena title made it back to #1 and dominated? I'll throw a HaloGAF kickstarter $250 if it ever got serious with competent minimal staff just to prove a point the industry developers already know. Why didn't MLG buying a game studio produce the next Halo or COD killer as an arena FPS?

Forget disproving me, prove your own arguments to be true.

No one even knows what you are trying to argue. One post you're saying that games shouldn't be designed for competitive play, then you say that dota isn't an American game, the next you're saying that games will fail if they don't incorporate fringe gametypes, then saying that kicking a ball between two trees isn't based on soccer, and now you're saying that arena games can't make money.

Get some sleep, come back tomorrow with a consistent argument, and bring some evidence to back up your side. It's like you went off the deep end again; failing to comprehend what other people are writing and basing your counter arguments off of your perceptions of what they wrote.
 
One reason the "arena market" doesn't exist on console right now is because games chased Halo and failed. Halo's problem was that they (Bungie/343/Microsoft) unnecessarily chased a different crowd and for some reason were expecting significantly more than the several million copies they already sold per release.

That greed. The focus should've been put on maintaining what made Halo unique while expanding the franchise elsewhere, through other genres like Halo Wars and other mediums like movies, books, etc..
NHL 14 with buddies
Score a hat trick with some scrub
Unlock Wayne Gretzky for the rest of the game
???
Profit!
616981boxart_160w.jpg
>
 
No one even knows what you are trying to argue. One post you're saying that games shouldn't be designed for competitive play, then you say that dota isn't an American game, the next you're saying that games will fail if they don't incorporate fringe gametypes, then saying that kicking a ball between two trees isn't based on soccer, and now you're saying that arena games can't make money.

Get some sleep, come back tomorrow with a consistent argument, and bring some evidence to back up your side. It's like you went off the deep end again; failing to comprehend what other people are writing and basing your counter arguments off of your perceptions of what they wrote.

Yeah I'm done, even your post here missed a bunch and misconstrued. I don't have the energy and I understand what Mark Twain was on about.
 

CyReN

Member
IW never did a lot for competitive stuff, so it's not really surprising there's no features with Titanfall from Respawn, along with the team being pretty small + new ip + new console etc.

Game plays great though, can't wait for it.
 
As usual, you're completely missing the point. No matter the population, shitty players need to be matched with shitty players, good with good, godly with godly. I'm sure those shitty players would rather wait a couple more minutes to match others instead of getting a quicker match, but playing some better team because they happened to be searching.

The concept isn't that difficult. Nothing that's been done to the franchise recently has retained "lesser" (or better for that matter) players in any amount that matters. If people are going to play it because it's called Halo, might as well make it a competitive Halo. You don't see MLB playing exhibition games against little league. Halo's matchmaking systems need to stop doing the equivalent. Then, there's no reason for these fucking ignorant "equalizing" elements to enter into the discussion.

+1
 

Chettlar

Banned
Hey guys, I needed to ask a quick question.

Got Halo 2 working just fine, and I'm getting constant headaches. Is there a mod or something to change the FOV?
 
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