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Halo |OT5| Believe, Again

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That was the point. The ODST Magnum was a headshot machine, and the SMG was your shield stripper. If you wanted an all around beast weapon then go track down a Carbine and make sure to keep it loaded. The weapon balance really made ODST Firefight a ton of fun. In Reach you just grab a DMR and enjoy your unlimited ammo crates. Woopeeee.

Yep, killed firefight for me.
 

Striker

Member
I'm fine with it being a secondary weapon, so long as it is reliable. Higher rof, like Reach's, 5sk/6sk MAX, 8-10 rounds, and quick reload.
Being a 5-6sk and just 8 rounds is really silly. I have a bigger issue with its tiny clip size than its bloom behavior, really.

re: useless weapons

From the whole series MP I've just really felt there were three altogether:

Halo 2 Needler, Halo 3 Magnum, and Halo 3 Spiker. Spiker would be the same in Reach (although while still not good, is slightly better than the 3 version) but they don't use it in regular MM outside a few select community variants.
 

Woorloog

Banned
I liked the look and feel of the ODST pistol, but I think it was under-powered. Getting head shots on grunts is about the only thing it was useful for, as evidenced by the clip...
Oh I agree with you there, the pistol was underpowered, but the feedback and satisfaction from getting that headshot kill...oh man.

Well, the ODST pistol was meant to be a headshotting weapon, nothing more. It was incredible for killing Grunts and Jackals (an arm shot followed by a headshot). Considering Brute packs were rarer in ODST and the common enemy patrol was a Brute leading Grunts and/or Jackals, the SMG and the pistol were adequate tools for most encounters. (And if there were Brute packs, i'd use my 'nades on them).

If the pistol were to be implemented to Halo multiplayer, it would require a buff of course. Maybe 5 shots to drop shield, 6th in the head, considering it's rate of fire, that would be okay power, though the pistol does have 4x scope... that could be reduced to 2x or 3x of course.

That said, if the pistol is ever again featured in a Halo campaign, they could buff it there a bit, as well.

That was the point. The ODST Magnum was a headshot machine, and the SMG was your shield stripper. If you wanted an all around beast weapon then go track down a Carbine and make sure to keep it loaded. The weapon balance really made ODST Firefight a ton of fun. In Reach you just grab a DMR and enjoy your unlimited ammo crates. Woopeeee.

The only problem in ODST firefight was the Tilt Skull, it practically forced Plasma Pistol + Carbine/Pistol combo, shields with Tilt were so strong...

EDIT i never understood "Countdown is like Construct" mentality. They're completly different maps, they play nothing alike really. One is about camping the grav lifts. The other is about sword and shotgun.
 

Great little site you've got there. Bookmarked.

VVVVV Rib removal perk in order to facilitate auto-fellatio?
AAs.png



I'm curious, what are your general opinions on Halo 3 Construct and Narrows?

In MM? Narrows was a map that was utterly mutilated by the decision to make it split neutral spawns. One couldn't take it seriously after that change. Construct has its detractors on here but it was in my top five Halo 3 maps. Brilliant in Team Snipers and even in Slayer it played well; plenty of ramped walkways for nade placement, it had a sniper on it (which weapons are on a map can make or break it) and each area was compartmentalised for good close to mid range BR battles, areas which facilitated team play really well. Both maps are MLG classics particularly Narrows flag and Construct King.

No way, man. It relies too heavily on those gravity lifts. Countdown is Construct but better.

Strongly disagree. If you're talking about the map in its basic most rudimentary form, merely from a design perspective then you may objectively have a point. But MM Countdown has big, big problems. Primary amongst those are the grenades. Countdown should have been the siren mounted megaphone that flagged up the plain silliness of Reach's grenades to Bungie. Tight narrow corridors and diminutive doorways make you feel their wrath more than any other map in the game. Then there's the weapon selection. It's an absolute BK Heaven, having the Sword AND Shotgun on such a constricted map, which promotes hiding around walls and sprint charge slashing. Devs might think it's a popular map because it's good ala that Battlefield anecdote about the most voted for map being the most lamented on forums. NO. The reason Countdown wins 90% of its vote polls is the same reason why Living Dead is the most populated playlist in Reach: it's imbalanced and therefore allows the shittest scrubiest BK's to rack up kills and make them feel on top of the world. GAF shits on Uncaged repeatedly but I warn you: given the option between two I'll vote Uncaged every time. Why? It has a Pro-pipe, Sniper (and Rockets). Fun weapons to use. A cutting Crew is nowhere near as fun or rewarding as a Be The Bullet. A GL triple trumps a Shotgun triple for style and play every time.

Aesthetically Construct is all Forerunner sleekness with gold and purple tubes. Visually, Countdown is right up there with the interior of a cow's anus. One grows weary of running around a cows anus after hundreds of games, it offends the sight.
Man I really hate Countdown.
 
Strongly disagree. If you're talking about the map in its basic most rudimentary form, merely from a design perspective then you may objectively have a point. But MM Countdown has big, big problems. Primary amongst those are the grenades. Countdown should have been the siren mounted megaphone that flagged up the plain silliness of Reach's grenades to Bungie. Tight narrow corridors and diminutive doorways make you feel their wrath more than any other map in the game. Then there's the weapon selection. It's an absolute BK Heaven, having the Sword AND Shotgun on such a constricted map, which promotes hiding around walls and sprint charge slashing. Devs might think it's a popular map because it's good ala that Battlefield anecdote about the most voted for map being the most lamented on forums. NO. The reason Countdown wins 90% of its vote polls is the same reason why Living Dead is the most populated playlist in Reach: it's imbalanced and therefore allows the shittest scrubiest BK's to rack up kills and make them feel on top of the world. GAF shits on Uncaged repeatedly but I warn you: given the option between two I'll vote Uncaged every time. Why? It has a Pro-pipe, Sniper (and Rockets). Fun weapons to use. A cutting Crew is nowhere near as fun or rewarding as a Be The Bullet. A GL triple trumps a Shotgun triple for style and play every time.

Aesthetically Construct is all Forerunner sleekness with gold and purple tubes. Visually, Countdown is right up there with the interior of a cow's anus. One grows weary of running around a cows anus after hundreds of games, it offends the sight.
Man I really hate Countdown.

A very good post.

Halo reaches' sandbox makes a lot of the maps just plain 'unfun'.

Thankfully, from what I have seen of H4, it has left me more than satisfied.
 

JonCha

Member
Yep, we're doing a HaloGAF Reach tourney. Each round is best of 3, in this order: TU Arena Slayer DMRs, TU CTF, and TU Arena DMRs as the tiebreaker (at least I think, still finalizing those details. May do MLG settings if a consensus is reached). I'd like to do 4v4, but we may pare it down to 3v3 to ease scheduling issues. The way teams will be decided (still sort of up in the air, but will likely be done this way) is:

I/kittens/any other volunteers will sort the players into pools based on K/D, BPR, and win percentage. Then, teams will be balanced skill wise.

We also thought about dividing into skill divisions and doing separate tourneys. We may go that route, there's over 60 signups I think.
You want in?

On this, I took my three most played playlists - Team Slayer, Team Objective and BTB - added the K/Ds and averaged it out. It came out at 1.36, so probably a more true reflection.

Edit: and checking out recarpo, who has the highest K/D in the table, his/her most played playlist is Multi Team followed by Squad Slayer.
 
Man, how can people stand Jay Leno?

Old people like him.
No we don't (unless you mean the REALLY old people, like my dad)

8 week work break, I'm jelly.
Me too. The last time I had a 'sabbatical' from work was when I had a month off to recover from surgery. :-(

Does she play a role in that show? It was on comedy central here for some time but I never really got into it.
She plays the female lead, and she's brilliant.
 
New game reactor article here.

Love this description of that SO mission.

"The fifteen minute gameplay slice jumps between attacking and defending a base, fighting our way up the three-tier Covenant lines of Grunt, Jackal and Elite. Strategising on the fly against the new enemy types. Juggling new weapons and abilities, and easily winning through the mini-Firefight climax."
 
Countdown would have been a great map in 3. The sandbox lets it down. It's a pretty cool symmetrical map. My only gripe is them having numbered floors with colours to tell the floors apart too. That's two ways to tell what y-axis you're on but there isn't anything for the x-axis.
 

Arnie

Member
I love Construct, requires so much teamwork to nail down the lifts but when everything comes together it's glorious. In my opinion it's the best example of how alternate methods of traversal can work wonders for map design. Valhalla's great, but Construct's a step above. It's the perfect 4v4 Slayer map, and it's amazing for King of the Hill.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
Countdown would have been a great map in 3. The sandbox lets it down. It's a pretty cool symmetrical map. My only gripe is them having numbered floors with colours to tell the floors apart too. That's two ways to tell what y-axis you're on but there isn't anything for the x-axis.
With a better power weapon layout, both sides having different colors and no radar Countdown would be pretty good. It's pretty enjoyable in the MLG playlist.
 
A very good post.

Halo reaches' sandbox makes a lot of the maps just plain 'unfun'.

Thankfully, from what I have seen of H4, it has left me more than satisfied.

Cheers Bam. And you're right about the sandbox in Reach. It occurred to me the other day that I wouldn't enjoy Powerhouse as much as I do if the GL wasn't on it. The exception to this rule in Reach is probably Zealot. It's a pure run n gun DMR map with the Sword and Concussion Rifle making little impact and I still enjoy it.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Bring back Boarding Action. Seeing that "open space" level remade in Halo 4 would be awesome. Of course, it would need some tweaking. Add a bit more cover, make a few cannons to get back and forth aside from the teleporters.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
Bring back Boarding Action. Seeing that "open space" level remade in Halo 4 would be awesome. Of course, it would need some tweaking. Add a bit more cover, make a few cannons to get back and forth aside from the teleporters.
A classic case of a map that's fun to play with some buddies on the couch but is terrible for online play.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
I really don't understand all the hatred of human-themed environments on GAF. They aren't *supposed* to be the most eye-catching scenery, because if it was it A) wouldn't fit the human role of more industrial, utilitarian that we've basically come to expect from every human depiction in SF except maybe Star Trek, and B) you wouldn't appreciate the other environments. The "alien" nature of Forerunner and Covenant is based partly on the differentiation between the visual styles. It's something Russell got right back in the Bungie days, and it's remained a strong core of the series.

My complaints with Reach maps (on the subject of aesthetics) were ultimately Reach didn't feel alien enough as a planet. There was a decent amount of variety in the disc maps considering the Forerunner aesthetic wasn't present.

Aesthetically Construct is all Forerunner sleekness with gold and purple tubes. Visually, Countdown is right up there with the interior of a cow's anus. One grows weary of running around a cows anus after hundreds of games, it offends the sight.
Man I really hate Countdown.

I'm just going to take your word on your familiarity with bovine ani. Point is, ignoring the quality design that went into the aesthetics of those themed maps is pretty arrogant.
 

Louis Wu

Member
Yeah...

I hope thats not final...
It's not. Josh Holmes stopped by HBO this morning to clarify.

Josh Holmes said:
Yes, it's just in the demo. We scripted that moment for the demo so that we could show 100% of the time the fact that if you kill a Watcher while he is swirling a grenade it drops and *can* take out a group of Crawlers. In the game this happens systemically and is unpredictable (sandbox!)... the trajectory of the grenade depends entirely on where it is when you kill the Watcher. We found that this didn't read properly to a first time viewer in the demo so we scripted it to always drop directly below the Watcher. In fact, in the demo we delete the original grenade and spawn a new one.

The demo is full of little tricks like this to show off moments that happen in the sandbox. They all happen in the game, but they are unpredictable so it's next to impossible to pull them all off perfectly back-to-back like you saw in the demo. The demo is basically compressing a bunch of sandbox moments into a tight 5 minute demo - the actual game is pure sandbox (punctuated with some big moments like the Knight intro).

We're not dicks. =/
She wasn't talking about you. She was talking about the dicks who call her a poser.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
A classic case of a map that's fun to play with some buddies on the couch but is terrible for online play.

I could see that. I just wish there was some way to bring it back, or remake it in such a way that it would work for online. It is so totally unlike any other Halo level. Being in space with openness between you and the other side was awesome. The verticality of it did make it tricky for objective games, but I wish we could get a successor at least.
 

Striker

Member
Countdown would have been a great map in 3. The sandbox lets it down. It's a pretty cool symmetrical map. My only gripe is them having numbered floors with colours to tell the floors apart too. That's two ways to tell what y-axis you're on but there isn't anything for the x-axis.
It would've been a grenade pit by the lifts, just like Construct (which had slightly more space, which led to camp central). I do think Countdown is better, but only marginally. Default Construct is among the worst in 3, only people look at other dogshit ilke default Foundry, Isolation, and other garbage to pile on top.

Default Countdown has color issues, which still stuns me they ship it that way regardless. Which goes to show a lot of their decisions from several years.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
I could see that. I just wish there was some way to bring it back, or remake it in such a way that it would work for online. It is so totally unlike any other Halo level. Being in space with openness between you and the other side was awesome. The verticality of it did make it tricky for objective games, but I wish we could get a successor at least.

I don't feel as much nostalgia for H:CE maps mostly because of the teleporters. Gravlifts and man-cannons offer ways to get across the map that are less camping-prone, and (I think) more fun.

I remember 1v1 games with my brother on Boarding Action where we couldn't find each other to save our lives. It was some bizarre Benny Hill-esque stuff.
 

Arnie

Member

Fuchsdh

Member
Lol'd



It's not arrogant, it's an expression of how I feel when staring at the brown, black and grey of the map. Countdown is not a quality design aesthetically imo.

Ok, "arrogant" was arrogant of me, but I still think there's a bifurcation between map design and aesthetic design--the two should intersect, but I think in some cases in Reach while the aesthetics are nice the elements funneling into assisting the map design are weak (as people are discussing, not color-coding the sides of the map the same way as the levels.)

Ultimately it is a union of the two concepts and they *should* work together, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it from a pure art standpoint either.
 

kylej

Banned
I really don't understand all the hatred of human-themed environments on GAF. They aren't *supposed* to be the most eye-catching scenery, because if it was it A) wouldn't fit the human role of more industrial, utilitarian that we've basically come to expect from every human depiction in SF except maybe Star Trek, and B) you wouldn't appreciate the other environments. The "alien" nature of Forerunner and Covenant is based partly on the differentiation between the visual styles. It's something Russell got right back in the Bungie days, and it's remained a strong core of the series.

My complaints with Reach maps (on the subject of aesthetics) were ultimately Reach didn't feel alien enough as a planet. There was a decent amount of variety in the disc maps considering the Forerunner aesthetic wasn't present.

That's some logic. It looks that way, because everything else looks that way, and because it's dingy and crappy to play in, it makes the other styles better in comparison. If humans in Halo can fight intergalactically against alien races and build massive ships that contain hologram simulation devices, I'm pretty sure they can cover their PVC pipes and move their crates out of the hallway.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
I really don't understand all the hatred of human-themed environments on GAF. They aren't *supposed* to be the most eye-catching scenery, because if it was it A) wouldn't fit the human role of more industrial, utilitarian that we've basically come to expect from every human depiction in SF except maybe Star Trek, and B) you wouldn't appreciate the other environments. The "alien" nature of Forerunner and Covenant is based partly on the differentiation between the visual styles. It's something Russell got right back in the Bungie days, and it's remained a strong core of the series.

My complaints with Reach maps (on the subject of aesthetics) were ultimately Reach didn't feel alien enough as a planet. There was a decent amount of variety in the disc maps considering the Forerunner aesthetic wasn't present.



I'm just going to take your word on your familiarity with bovine ani. Point is, ignoring the quality design that went into the aesthetics of those themed maps is pretty arrogant.
All of the human themed environments aside from Alexandria and ODST have either been a brown drab or a metallic clusterfuck of tiny details. It looks ugly and simply is too busy for multiplayer.
 

Trey

Member
Can devs get off the whole weapon role nonsense and just make the pistol a more viable weapon since that's how it started in Combat Evolved? I'm okay with weapons having roles based on range, and perhaps power (meaning how many bullets it takes to kill a player - although 6 shots to kill with a precision weapon in a FPS is just the dumbest thing ever). But I'm not okay with neutering weapons by limiting their clip size. It doesn't make a bit of sense.

Why can't all weapons be a viable primary option?

The Pistol became the BR became the DMR. The "spirit" of the pistol as a weapon was preserved, so the dynamic of the actual weapon shifted from a utility weapon to that of a side arm clean up weapon. The reason why it isn't what it used to be is simply because its role was deferred. And what would giving it more bullets actually add to the game? The pistol would be just a desperation spam weapon with more bullets. Because it surely won't contend with the BR and DMR in any reasonable capacity as it is.

What role could you possibly give to the pistol that would make it relative parity with the DMR or BR or Carbine just by increasing its clip size? I would rather make it a mid range capped, low RoF, 3sK weapon with extremely low AA levels.
 
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