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Halo |OT7| You may leave, Juices. And take Team Downer with you.

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DeadNames

Banned
So guys, Halo 4.


'Dat railgun looks sexy.


Oh and are Brutes coming back? Their weapon sandbox is my favorite.
Dual maulers 4 lyfe
 
Luke Smith: "Its totally overpowered and broken! But its so much fun!"
"It breeds this smarter combat. You'll definitely notice a difference in how the game functions."

"Right now, at this exact moment in development, Armor Lock's insane! It's super powerful, I love it!"

"It is just fucking fun."

NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET.
 

kylej

Banned
"It breeds this smarter combat. You'll definitely notice a difference in how the game functions."

"Right now, at this exact moment in development, Armor Lock's insane! It's super powerful, I love it!"

"It is just fucking fun."

NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET.

Exhibit #734 why I lol when people say "Trust [Halo developer]"
 

CyReN

Member
I wrote out this really clever come back... but read it, and it was wayyyyy too over the line lol

Well at least you and Paterno have something in common for not saying anything.

<3

Get on tonight late btw, got my capture card going finally. Going to make magic.
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
"It breeds this smarter combat. You'll definitely notice a difference in how the game functions."

"Right now, at this exact moment in development, Armor Lock's insane! It's super powerful, I love it!"

"It is just fucking fun."

NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET.
"The fans should never assume what you see in the beta is set in stone."

"The Jetpack is practically crying out for abuse."
 

BigShow36

Member
I bet he thinks CTF is this incredible revelation as well.

"Seeing a guy grab a flag, and then you killing him, and then the mad dash to return it to base, omg so kawaii~"

It's like they hire designers who just want to add whatever crap they think is cool while completely ignoring the fundamental balance that actually makes the games playable and fun.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
"You know what I'm not sure. You're thinking of new sandbox combinations we haven't even tried yet."

"new sandbox combinations we haven't even tried yet."

"we haven't even tried yet."

No one tried crouching with the hardlight shield? So did 343 not try BTB with everyone using plasma pistols and stickies?

The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do, so our scathing ripostes can't contain crackpot theories about how you work or out of context sound bites that we can build conspiracy theories on. Although I suspect Heckfu encourages beard growth by drinking unicorn blood.
 
The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do, so our scathing ripostes can't contain crackpot theories about how you work or out of context sound bites that we can build conspiracy theories on. Although I suspect Heckfu encourages beard growth by drinking unicorn blood.

So did you test stickies and PPs on BTB?
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Yeah, totally doesn't take any time or money. Which is why a 343 employee and the test team pulled late nights just to get one of the previous matchmaking updates out in 2011, when that month was scheduled to not originally have an update.

The Cartographers also generally have to have content ready to go -at the latest- 2 weeks before a MM update, although they prefer earlier, because of the lead times that updating playlists require. The process is complicated to the point that updates only occur once a month, with mid-month updates only executed in emergency cases. In very rare cases they've let us submit content to an update only a week before, and that was because it was an update to an existing map.

They have to pay the people that process the content submissions or changes, put them in, test and cert them, then deploy and stay in standby for anything that blew up when the update goes out.

And this is Reach. The Halo 3 and Halo 2 playlists updates took even more time and more manual changes to execute.

But sure, I'll go with your idea that all they do is load up a Custom Game lobby, switch a couple of settings, then upload it to a fileshare.




Thanks for the offer, but not that important. I'll just go look for a cheap copy somewhere here in Vancouver, their Craigslist listings have a ton of stuff.

I hope this whole process has changed for Halo 4. Waiting a whole month for an issue to be fixed in a map is just flat out unacceptable. I understand that there's serious testing that needs to happen, but really, that is a serious issue.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do, so our scathing ripostes can't contain crackpot theories about how you work or out of context sound bites that we can build conspiracy theories on. Although I suspect Heckfu encourages beard growth by drinking unicorn blood.
So...
Can you crouch with the Hardlight Shield?
 
To be fair Lars was the Firefight Lead, not competitive MP.
Somehow I thought you spoke to me and I was proud that I had been the Firefight Lead. But then I remembered that I did not work on Firefight or at Bungie in general and then the name Lars Bakken appears in my head.
 

DeadNames

Banned
The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do, so our scathing ripostes can't contain crackpot theories about how you work or out of context sound bites that we can build conspiracy theories on. Although I suspect Heckfu encourages beard growth by drinking unicorn blood.

How many EMP nades can you spawn with in a game of BTB?
 

OverHeat

« generous god »
Its always easy to criticise something you did not do, the real challenge is trying to make something better yourself.
Some of you guys should go in game design since it look so easy.....Introducing new gameplay mechanic to keep gameplay fresh in an already establish game series must be one of the hardest task since you cant please everybody and balancing everything out must be a nightmare since something might work at a lower skill but not at an higher and vice versa.
 
The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do

You know, Bungie did this big thing, where they let thousands and thousands of their fans test out their game and find all these exploits and crazy stuff, and fans got to play the sequel to one of their favorite games early. It was win-win for everybody.

The name escapes me...a zeta? A delta, I think.

Its always easy to critisize something you did not do, the real challenge is trying to make something better yourself.

The worst of all arguments. Nobody criticize anything until you do something better.
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do, so our scathing ripostes can't contain crackpot theories about how you work or out of context sound bites that we can build conspiracy theories on. Although I suspect Heckfu encourages beard growth by drinking unicorn blood.
Hi, please hire someone, anyone to update the Reach playlist.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Wow do you see the Element they're playing on? Green and Yellow are lit brilliantly. Very nice. It was a pretty good map.
 

TheOddOne

Member
So...
Can you crouch with the Hardlight Shield?
Serious question? Yeah, you can actually crouch with the Hardlight Shield. Granades can still kill you (in the MLG videos it happens a couple of times too).

Edit: I am wrong? Dunno, I remember reading that somewhere.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I hope this whole process has changed for Halo 4. Waiting a whole month for an issue to be fixed in a map is just flat out unacceptable. I understand that there's serious testing that needs to happen, but really, that is a serious issue.

Like I said, there's emergency fixes and then there's just fixes. If you update more frequently, it costs tons more money and time for diminishing returns. Once a month is a pretty good rate, they've been using it since Halo 3 launched and it works well.

Another problem with too frequent updating is you can get into a situation where you're chasing updates with updates.

Another thing to consider is it's never just a single map being update, it's a bunch of lists and other maps included too, so you want to roll as much updatey goodness out at the same time, and there might be a pending update to the map already. Say you see a missing weapon spawn on Powerhouse. You report it, it's known. Can't just go Forge it and then publish it though, because Powerhouse v5 is already going through testing. To change the weapon, you'd have to send the old map through the test and cert process at the same time you're pushing a totally new version of the map through the test and cert process, so you just wasted money and time. Hence why you just fold the weapon fix into the currently-in-progress version which is targeted for the next monthly update.

Now if the map is missing the spawns for Red Team entirely and puts them upside down facing backwards on Blue's spawns, then that would be a critical update to push out mid-stream. But tweaking normal stuff isn't critical level.

edit: oh, and your updates also have to be in the wild long enough to actually get useful telemetry and data off the reactions and effects it had. In something with as many moving parts as matchmaking, you don't want to make rash decisions.
 

BigShow36

Member
The advantage you guys have over developers is that we don't know what you do, so our scathing ripostes can't contain crackpot theories about how you work or out of context sound bites that we can build conspiracy theories on. Although I suspect Heckfu encourages beard growth by drinking unicorn blood.

Unfortunately, we don't need to build conspiracy theories; the results of the last 3 Halo games speak volumes about the testing and design.
 
He was in charge of FF. He's also the nicest person, aside from Tim Dadabo(sp?) I've ever met within the Halo family. :p
Right spelling. And yeah. Tim Dadabo is an amazing guy. I am totally waiting for Duncan now to tell our story from PAX last year. Pete Stacker is a nice person too! And the 343i peeps too. They really are! You can say this is slurping but then you have not met them.
 

Ramirez

Member
Right spelling. And yeah. Tim Dadabo is an amazing guy. I am totally waiting for Duncan now to tell our story from PAX last year. Pete Stacker is a nice person too! And the 343i peeps too. They really are! You can say this is slurping but then you have not met them.

Tim was a huge fan of Letter's shirt design, lol.
 
Another thing to consider with the playlists is that if they are not completely horrible when the game launches, then playlists updates won't be taken up by just trying to fix the game. Just about all of Bungie's matchmaking updates for Reach before they handed the game over were mostly attempting to fix the launch playlists and settings.

Spend more time on playlists prior to the game coming out and the playlist management post-launch will be a lot easier. Hopefully 343 has done this.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Like I said, there's emergency fixes and then there's just fixes. If you update more frequently, it costs tons more money and time for diminishing returns. Once a month is a pretty good rate, they've been using it since Halo 3 launched and it works well.

Another problem with too frequent updating is you can get into a situation where you're chasing updates with updates.

Another thing to consider is it's never just a single map being update, it's a bunch of lists and other maps included too, so you want to roll as much updatey goodness out at the same time, and there might be a pending update to the map already. Say you see a missing weapon spawn on Powerhouse. You report it, it's known. Can't just go Forge it and then publish it though, because Powerhouse v5 is already going through testing. To change the weapon, you'd have to send the old map through the test and cert process at the same time you're pushing a totally new version of the map through the test and cert process, so you just wasted money and time. Hence why you just fold the weapon fix into the currently-in-progress version which is targeted for the next monthly update.

Now if the map is missing the spawns for Red Team entirely and puts them upside down facing backwards on Blue's spawns, then that would be a critical update to push out mid-stream. But tweaking normal stuff isn't critical level.

edit: oh, and your updates also have to be in the wild long enough to actually get useful telemetry and data off the reactions and effects it had. In something with as many moving parts as matchmaking, you don't want to make rash decisions.

Right. So what would be considered an emergenzy update aside from some catastrophic event causing a game crash?
 
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