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Halo |OT5| Believe, Again

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F

Fracas

#fuckonami
kittens said:
I dunno. For Halo 3, I was mostly trying 7-Elevens, cause they were selling Halo 3 as a promotion (IIRC?), and I was sure one of the employees wouldn't know/care what they were doing. I tried a lot of the larger department stores, too, like Sears and Fred Meyers, hoping to find a clueless employee.
Click to expand...

A plan I was considering (I don't usually do this kind of stuff, so I'd probably suck at it)

-Go to various places that would have it until I find someone that looks like they'd have no idea when it actually comes out

-Go up to them and say "Hi, I'm looking for a copy of Halo 4." They'd say "Uh, it doesn't come out until the 6th." I reply with "What? A friend of mine bought one earlier from [some random other store]."

From here I can go in 2 different paths:

Option A. Add a contact named [other store], and use a friend's number. I call the friend, they pretend to be an employee at the other store. Have a loud conversation with them, offer to show my phone to the worker at wherever I am.

Option B. Go all out, find the boxart for Halo 4, print it out on the correct type of paper, and insert it in a 360 case. Have whoever I'm with pull it out and be like "yeah, I just bought this somewhere else".

With any luck, Halo 4 will be had.
 
Z

zap

Member
Computron said:
mbN2D.gif
Click to expand...

... Uhh have you just discovered this gif?



I feel like this is the penance for our sins trolling Waypoint. Look at them invade us now.

Welcome, juniors. Try not pull an AlienShogun and you'll be fine.

TheOddOne said:
In the Holland you have three choices: KFC, Burger King and Uncle Ronald McDonald brainwashing kids joint.

I choose KFC everytime, good enough™.
Click to expand...

Pretty much the same for NZ. It's depressing how few choices we have to eat terrible food.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
HiredN00bs said:
I see where you're coming from, but I think that the dialogue on the TU in the community shows that some prefer to play with those settings and some prefer to play without those settings. If both sets of players are being catered to, where is the harm in this?
Click to expand...

When you only have to playlists left though, it's pretty much "we hope you like Vanilla in these two specific configurations, otherwise you might as well go play TU anyway".

Like the fact that we had a choice at one point of TU BTB or Vanilla BTB, and now both of them are TU. So if you like BTB, the TU/Vanilla choice is gone.

If they had ever believed their own promise, the existing playlists from before the TU would have stayed vanilla, and all the Anniversary lists and new lists like Squad DLC should have been TU.

But when you start the TU conversions with fucking MULTI TEAM, a playlist that was AR start centric and has Rocket Hog Race as a commonly voted in gametype, implementing 85% bloom and bleedthrough in a racing gametype makes me question what a studio is doing.

As it is for me, I find Team Slayer to be a banal experience and Squad DLC has shit population.
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
HiredN00bs said:
I see where you're coming from, but I think that the dialogue on the TU in the community shows that some prefer to play with those settings and some prefer to play without those settings. If both sets of players are being catered to, where is the harm in this?

I think Super Slayer was a test. They put all the TU changes into one playlist, and made the playlist mimic the most basic and popular gametype: 4v4 Slayer. Its performance isn't dismal, but it is relatively poor when compared to TS.
Click to expand...
I think a lot of people don't know what Super Slayer is, and moreover, don't know what the TU does (I've come across a bunch of people who have said "What's TU Slayer?" so it does happen), and so stick to what they know, which is Team Slayer. If they had called Super Slayer Team Slayer instead, I think we would have seen different results.
 
M

Mister Negative

Member
Sometimes I feel like the only person in the world that doesn't notice whether a gametype is TU or not. The bloom is the only important thing to me. I can deal with everything else.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
thezerofire said:
I think a lot of people don't know what Super Slayer is, and moreover, don't know what the TU does (I've come across a bunch of people who have said "What's TU Slayer?" so it does happen), and so stick to what they know, which is Team Slayer. If they had called Super Slayer Team Slayer instead, I think we would have seen different results.
Click to expand...

The frustrating thing is they had a bad indication problem when the TU came out. One of the playlists at one point had the 100% Pistol, the 85% Pistol, and the Anniversary Pistol with very little indication of what you had until you actually used it in the game.

They fixed it by appending TU to every gametype with the TU changes, but at the same exact time they also enacted a new policy where playlists were no longer allowed to have mixed gametypes, it was TU or no TU and no middle ground. So they fixed the knowledge problem (gametypes were properly labeled), and then immediately made it pointless (a playlist was only going to have one variant of gametypes). So there isn't even hybrid lists where TU fans can vote TU and Vanilla fans can vote Vanilla.
 
F

Fracas

#fuckonami
TheOddOne said:
"Casuals" and "hardcore" are the dumbest things to come out of this generation. It's just nerd looking down upon other nerds.
Click to expand...

I don't look down on them. If I were to make the TU global, the only response that would arise from the general population would be a bunch of Waypoint threads titled "What's TU Slayer?"

The problem is that Reach's playlist management is geared towards satisfying a large portion of a userbase that doesn't even recognize the changes that are made.

edit:Also, xbox.com is down.


edit edit: Also, no one in this thread is a casual Halo player.
 
T

TheOddOne

Member
Ryaaan14 said:
Typical casual speak.
Click to expand...
Whatever nerd, I'm gonna go hard playing some scrabble.

monsterfracas said:
I don't look down on them. If I were to make the TU global, the only response that would arise from the general population would be a bunch of Waypoint threads titled "What's TU Slayer?"

The problem is that Reach's playlist management is geared towards satisfying a large portion of a userbase that doesn't even recognize the changes that are made.

edit:Also, xbox.com is down.
Click to expand...
It was more a joke on the distinction between the "two" groups. I agree that Reach playlist management is a joke.
 
B

Barrow Roll

Member
monsterfracas said:
I don't look down on them. If I were to make the TU global, the only response that would arise from the general population would be a bunch of Waypoint threads titled "What's TU Slayer?"
Click to expand...
If you made the TU global, didn't make an announcement out of it, didn't label any gametypes as TU, I bet the majority of players wouldn't even notice.
 
F

Fracas

#fuckonami
Barrow Roll said:
If you made the TU global, didn't make an announcement out of it, didn't label any gametypes as TU, I bet the majority of players wouldn't even notice.
Click to expand...

I could throw a screen that launches every time you start up Reach that detailed every single change, and at least 75% of the population would just mash the A button to get to Team Slayer.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
Barrow Roll said:
If you made the TU global, didn't make an announcement out of it, didn't label any gametypes as TU, I bet the majority of players wouldn't even notice.
Click to expand...
The only thing some people would notice is that Armor Lock doesn't shed stickies anymore. And the vast majority wouldn't even notice that.
 
F

Fracas

#fuckonami
Barrow Roll said:
The notion that Team Slayer is the most populated non-zombies list because it's still vanilla is honestly laughable.

/halogafclassic
Click to expand...

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying people still play Team Slayer because they don't know what Super Slayer even is. They see it as some weird random playlist. Why play something that you don't know?

The people that play just Team Slayer don't even seem to know what vanilla and TU mean.
 
B

Barrow Roll

Member
monsterfracas said:
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying people still play Team Slayer because they don't know what Super Slayer even is. They see it as some weird random playlist. Why play something that you don't know?

The people that play just Team Slayer don't even seem to know what vanilla and TU mean.
Click to expand...
I know, I agree with you. My statement wasn't in response to anything you said.

/halogafclassic
 
S

stephen08

Member
It has been talked to death at this point but the TU was really poorly handled. I'm not even talking about implementation so much as just the actual changes that were made. Some stuff was fine like invis and armor lock getting a nerf but then you have changes which while they might have been good attempts in spirit just resulted in a worse overall mechanic.

Two in particular I dislike are the removal of sword block and bloom reduction. Now the root issue that those changes were meant to address I agree could have been handled better.

Sword block was incredibly spotty with latency to account for which was frustrating but to just remove it and not change anything else makes the sword extremely effective especially when coupled with sprint. A far better change would have been to remove sword block but make it so that upon sprinting with the sword you have to redraw it. That makes the sword more reliable when you are playing to it's strengths (no ridiculous clashes caused by latency) but also makes it less exploitable.

As for bloom, I can sympathize with the dislike of someone spamming the trigger when you pace your shots and lose just to raw luck. I get that. But scaling every headshot weapon except the sniper rifle by the same amount was the wrong way to handle it. What should have been done was make bloom more reliable in it's previous form. If the bullets would fall only to the outer limits of the weapon scope the mechanic would feel a lot better.

It was a similar case with bleedthrough but they decided to remove that so I won't harp on it.

Then there were the changes that clearly needed to be made yet never happened. The Banshee remains completely overpowered and the hog gets torn apart relatively easily from small arms fire. The Revenant sniper exploit still works. Focus rifle and Plasma Launcher were vastly underpowered to their human counterparts.

Ultimately I don't think the TU was necessarily a bad thing, it was nice to get at least some new functionality out of it but if it was going to be done it should have been a more ambitious endeavor. This feeling is especially amplified when these TU changes were pushed to lists Bungie had set-up that didn't have armor lock in them like Squad Slayer and Objective. Before the TU was out it was glorious. 1-3 could play Squad with same size party matching, 4 would be good for Objective, 5 would be good for Squad or Premium Slayer, 6 was Premium Battle or Invasion, 7 or more was Big Team. The title update fundamentally changed all of those options (those that were not subsequently cut anyway) save for Invasion.

That's why some of us still don't care for the TU.
 
S

StalkerUKCG

Banned
TheOddOne said:
"Casuals" and "hardcore" are the dumbest things to come out of this generation. It's just nerd looking down upon other nerds.
Click to expand...

Its not this at all, Its nerd looking down on the groups of people that recently have just started gaming.

Most of us followed a pretty similar path into gaming, we are all devoted, we all have interest in other games, we all share similar tastes in media (sci fi/fantasy/ect) The Hardcore gamers are the ones that existed before the COD4/Wii video game boom.

And the casual's well thats those guys who restrict their gaming habits to CoD/Racing Game X/EA sports Game Y/Wii-DS

Frat guys and Dudebros, the extreme elderly or children these people are far from "nerds" because they take very little interest in the majority of the things that nerds like they care little about the fictionalized universe of the game or the story bookending the events they care about racing fast/killing/solving the puzzle/scoring that goal or touchdown.

You can deny that the habits of the core crowd and the habits of the casual crowd and different and thats absolutely fine, i have no issue with this crowd, i have very little interaction with this crowd and what they do effects me in no way.

However, the issues stems from the undeniable fact that the ratio of casuals to hardcore is heavily heavily weighted towards casual they outnumber us a great deal and thus they become the dominant consumer base and are marketed towards which leaves us feeling second class.

From a consumer standpoint its a issue. Nintendo hold very little esteem in the core crowd because they are more focused on children and family games and less on the titles we want to play. Microsoft and Sony are not doing a great deal better with kinect and move and the IP's they have relating to that.

However Microsoft seem to see that this is not the only way to do business things like smart glass could revolutionize gaming. Right now its a nerdy companion app you can track the location of characters in game of thrones or get waypoint on it (which looked awesome)

But tech like this could evolve into something crazy. Imagine with me for a second.

You're playing Battlefield 5(crazy graphics/huge maps ect) The M-COM is not far ahead, you and your squad are pushing up when suddenly you start getting fired on from a nearby building your pinned behind cover not going anywhere. You tap right on the d-pad and request air support.

I'm on the bus home with my tablet, SmartGlass is running in the background and i get a little pop up "TheOddOne Needs air support" SmartGlass app opens im given a control of a AC-130 thats hovering about the battlefield (just like those CoD missions) i lay down fire on the building using my Tablet as you and your team make the break past the building and to the M-COM

As all this is happening you have someone else on his Phone during a lunchbreak using a MAV-Drone flying around the battlefield tagging spotting guys for you.

And a guy at his PC laying about Flanking plans which come up on your minimap Using data from the Drone to pinpoint the location of other team and help you more recon-esq classes to avoid the fire.

While not applicable to every game a great deal of scenarios open up with a dedicated cross platform companion app. Core gamers should back something like this more.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
zap said:
Let's be honest... Team Slayer is the most recognisable brand name in Halo.
Click to expand...

Yup. Reminds me of the population snapshot I did of Halo 3 one week in February 2009:

lCx3Yl.png


Objective lovers avert your eyes:

Z8KN8l.png


The "Objective only" slice wouldn't even exist in a Reach chart :(
 
R

Ryaaan14

Banned
StalkerUKCG said:
Its not this at all, Its nerd looking down on the groups of people that recently have just started gaming.

Most of us followed a pretty similar path into gaming, we are all devoted, we all have interest in other games, we all share similar tastes in media (sci fi/fantasy/ect) The Hardcore gamers are the ones that existed before the COD4/Wii video game boom.

And the casual's well thats those guys who restrict their gaming habits to CoD/Racing Game X/EA sports Game Y/Wii-DS

Frat guys and Dudebros, the extreme elderly or children these people are far from "nerds" because they take very little interest in the majority of the things that nerds like they care little about the fictionalized universe of the game or the story bookending the events they care about racing fast/killing/solving the puzzle/scoring that goal or touchdown.

You can deny that the habits of the core crowd and the habits of the casual crowd and different and thats absolutely fine, i have no issue with this crowd, i have very little interaction with this crowd and what they do effects me in no way.

However, the issues stems from the undeniable fact that the ratio of casuals to hardcore is heavily heavily weighted towards casual they outnumber us a great deal and thus they become the dominant consumer base and are marketed towards which leaves us feeling second class.

From a consumer standpoint its a issue. Nintendo hold very little esteem in the core crowd because they are more focused on children and family games and less on the titles we want to play. Microsoft and Sony are not doing a great deal better with kinect and move and the IP's they have relating to that.

However Microsoft seem to see that this is not the only way to do business things like smart glass could revolutionize gaming. Right now its a nerdy companion app you can track the location of characters in game of thrones or get waypoint on it (which looked awesome)

But tech like this could evolve into something crazy. Imagine with me for a second.

You're playing Battlefield 5(crazy graphics/huge maps ect) The M-COM is not far ahead, you and your squad are pushing up when suddenly you start getting fired on from a nearby building your pinned behind cover not going anywhere. You tap right on the d-pad and request air support.

I'm on the bus home with my tablet, SmartGlass is running in the background and i get a little pop up "TheOddOne Needs air support" SmartGlass app opens im given a control of a AC-130 thats hovering about the battlefield (just like those CoD missions) i lay down fire on the building using my Tablet as you and your team make the break past the building and to the M-COM

As all this is happening you have someone else on his Phone during a lunchbreak using a MAV-Drone flying around the battlefield tagging spotting guys for you.

And a guy at his PC laying about Flanking plans which come up on your minimap Using data from the Drone to pinpoint the location of other team and help you more recon-esq classes to avoid the fire.

While not applicable to every game a great deal of scenarios open up with a dedicated cross platform companion app. Core gamers should back something like this more.
Click to expand...

In the perfect world my friend.
 
R

Ryaaan14

Banned
Well this was a fun game for me. Team quit out after being down 4 to 9.

gQ4m8.png


And then there was a single shed of hope for mankind. (I have NEVER received this kind of message before, ever)

YL286.png


idk, little things.
 
E

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
VivaciousJazzy said:
Need surrender option...
Click to expand...

I'm so thankful that in Halo 4 they'll be adding join in progress. One of the most annoying things in Halo is having a game go on forever because your full team quit.

Especially in BTB, the other day I had a game where everyone in my team quit but 2 people. So for about 15+ minute it was 8V3, we couldn't take a step outside our spawn without getting shot a million times.

I wish they would add an option where the less amount of players, the less time a game can go on for. That way a 8V3 game won't go on for 15 minute but 3-4 minutes or whatever.
 
T

The Henery

Member
FyreWulff said:
But when you start the TU conversions with fucking MULTI TEAM, a playlist that was AR start centric and has Rocket Hog Race as a commonly voted in gametype, implementing 85% bloom and bleedthrough in a racing gametype makes me question what a studio is doing.
Click to expand...

Why are you so hung up on the fact that Rocket Hog Race is TU? In what way does it affect it? Bloom and bleedthrough are non-factors in RHR. I'm entirely open to the possibility that I'm missing something here.

Barrow Roll said:
The notion that Team Slayer is the most populated non-zombies list because it's still vanilla is honestly laughable.

/halogafclassic
Click to expand...

Fucking hilarious isn't it? The scenario we witnessed with the Anniversary playlists puts an insuperable checkmate on this entire argument. I mean, do vanilla supporters honestly believe that Team Slayer having the most population is indicative of the population preferring vanilla to TU? Lets put this horseshit to bed right now:

Anniversary lists upon release

1. Anniversary Squad (TU settings) - 5000 players
2. blah
3. blah
4. blah
5. Anniversary Classic (three shot pistol, no AA's) - 500 players


Anniversary lists after Squad and Classic were flipped

1. Anniversary Classic (three shot pistol, no AA's) - 5000 players
2. blah
3. blah
4. blah
5. Anniversary Squad (TU settings) - 500 players

Now, if we follow the logic that people stick to Team Slayer because they prefer 100% bloom and game breaking armour lock and not because it's at the top of the playlist choices then we must also believe that the population that stick to the Anni playlists (many of whom only own CEA) suddenly preferred an environment in which they could be killed in three very fast shots. This abrupt change of heart just happened to magically coincide with the changing of Classics position from the bottom to the top of the list.

Now this, this has ramifications beyond TU vs vanilla squabbles. The frequenters of Anniversary playlists are unarguably the worst Halo players that I and many others here have ever seen in a MM environment. If these dreadfully bad players are actively making informed consumer decisions to play in three shot pistol lists then WHAT ARE 343 DOING MAKING THE BR AND DMR 5 SHOT IN HALO 4? HUH? THESE PLAYERS KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.
 
S

stephen08

Member
thee henery said:
Why are you so hung up on the fact that Rocket Hog Race is TU? In what way does it affect it? Bloom and bleedthrough are non-factors in RHR. I'm entirely open to the possibility that I'm missing something here.



Fucking hilarious isn't it? The scenario we witnessed with the Anniversary playlists puts an insuperable checkmate on this entire argument. I mean, do vanilla supporters honestly believe that Team Slayer having the most population is indicative of the population preferring vanilla to TU? Lets put this horseshit to bed right now:

Anniversary lists upon release

1. Anniversary Squad (TU settings) - 5000 players
2. blah
3. blah
4. blah
5. Anniversary Classic (three shot pistol, no AA's) - 500 players


Anniversary lists after Squad and Classic were flipped

1. Anniversary Classic (three shot pistol, no AA's) - 5000 players
2. blah
3. blah
4. blah
5. Anniversary Squad (TU settings) - 500 players

Now, if we follow the logic that people stick to Team Slayer because they prefer 100% bloom and game breaking armour lock and not because it's at the top of the playlist choices then we must also believe that the population that stick to the Anni playlists (many of whom only own CEA) suddenly preferred an environment in which they could be killed in three very fast shots. This abrupt change of heart just happened to magically coincide with the changing of Classics position from the bottom to the top of the list.

Now this, this has ramifications beyond TU vs vanilla squabbles. The frequenters of Anniversary playlists are unarguably the worst Halo players that I and many others here have ever seen in a MM environment. If these dreadfully bad players are actively making informed consumer decisions to play in three shot pistol lists then WHAT ARE 343 DOING MAKING THE BR AND DMR 5 SHOT IN HALO 4? HUH? THESE PLAYERS KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.
Click to expand...

I can appreciate the idea behind this but your example is incredibly flawed for a few reasons.

A. You are making up numbers which I am assuming you are basing on your recollection of how things were in the past.
B. Anniversary Squad & Classic never swapped titles like that. Initially Squad had both TU and Anniversary settings. It was later updated to be solely TU settings. Classic remains Anniversary only.
C. Anniversary Squad was removed at some point and thus is no longer listed.
D. The current ranking of Anniversary lists by population goes Classic, BTB, Firefight, FFA. The top 3 range from 200-300 while FFA has 80 people.

When you post something like that as evidence or an example for your argument you discredit yourself immediately to anyone who knows the situation.

I do agree there is some percentage of Halo players who are uninformed about what changes the TU brings and as a result don't really feel strongly about it either way.

The most information we have on a general community preference is from the TU vs Vanilla results 343i did awhile back. Clearly, there was no consensus reached however it was right after this that bleedthrough was removed. It then stands to reason that the TU did not do as well as expected otherwise why not make it TU?

There were and still are legitimate reasons for preferring Vanilla over TU and vice versa. Anyone saying whether or not one is clearly better than the other is arguing a preference.
 
O

Overdoziz

Banned
Reach just needs to be ZB across the board. Everybody who doesn't like the TU should stop playing AR babby mode and start using weapons that don't suck monkeybollocks.
 
D

DeadNames

Banned
neoism said:
randoms goddamn them.... this game isn't fun anymore.... can't stand it after 1 game.. :(
Click to expand...

It's the worst in BTB. So unsatisfying to stomp on 2 people while you have 7 other people on your team. Join in progress is an addition I will welcome.

And I will resize my avatar eventually.
 
T

The Henery

Member
stephen08 said:
I can appreciate the idea behind this but your example is incredibly flawed for a few reasons.

A. You are making up numbers which I am assuming you are basing on your recollection of how things were in the past.
B. Anniversary Squad & Classic never swapped titles like that. Initially Squad had both TU and Anniversary settings. It was later updated to be solely TU settings. Classic remains Anniversary only.
C. Anniversary Squad was removed at some point and thus is no longer listed.
D. The current ranking of Anniversary lists by population goes Classic, BTB, Firefight, FFA. The top 3 range from 200-300 while FFA has 80 people.

When you post something like that as evidence or an example for your argument you discredit yourself immediately to anyone who knows the situation.

I do agree there is some percentage of Halo players who are uninformed about what changes the TU brings and as a result don't really feel strongly about it either way.

The most information we have on a general community preference is from the TU vs Vanilla results 343i did awhile back. Clearly, there was no consensus reached however it was right after this that bleedthrough was removed. It then stands to reason that the TU did not do as well as expected otherwise why not make it TU?

There were and still are legitimate reasons for preferring Vanilla over TU and vice versa. Anyone saying whether or not one is clearly better than the other is arguing a preference.
Click to expand...

To point A: Yep, I'm not 343 with access to the exact numbers but those were the ballpark figures.

B: Fine but at some point Squad and Classic did change positions in the list with a practically identical exchange in population numbers too.

C and D: these points are irrelevant to the fundamental point of this discourse.

At the bolded, I don't discredit myself on my fundamental point, being that 'community preference' is a distant muffled noise compared to why the general populace play what they do the most. Branding and order in the list carry the Team Slayer numbers.

Take Team Slayer exactly as it is now, put it at the bottom of the 'Competitive' list and name it 'Vanilla Slayer' (its blurb reads "Play the definitive Halo brought to you by the people who made Halo"). Now take Super Slayer and put it top and rename it Team Slayer. What do you think would happen?
 
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