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Halo |OT8| A Salt on the Control Room

B

Brolic Gaoler

formerly Alienshogun
Genesis Knight said:
Okay, see the losing sales thing was what I was asking earlier. You said their silence spoke volumes, and now I see where you're going with that. Sounds like they have a viable reason to keep quiet about it - they don't want to hose LE sales by revealing that it's not a great deal over normal + season pass.
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Exactly
 
H

Havok

Member
thezerofire said:
Do we know if there's stun when you get hijacked or not?
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I certainly hope not. It's basically a death sentence whenever you're boarded, and is really frustrating in combination with the prominence of EMPs.

I get what they were going for, trying to make the hijacker safe for a few seconds instead of immediately getting backsmacked which was common in Halo 2, but good lord, just turn the boardee around when he's ejected and disable the ability for him to re-board, don't put cement in his shoes.
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
Havok said:
I certainly hope not. It's basically a death sentence whenever you're boarded, and is really frustrating in combination with the prominence of EMPs.

I get what they were going for, trying to make the hijacker safe for a few seconds instead of immediately getting backsmacked which was common in Halo 2, but good lord, just turn the boardee around when he's ejected and disable the ability for him to re-board, don't put cement in his shoes.
Click to expand...
I agree. I hope it isn't in. In the light rifle video Cyren posted there's a guy who's standing still after being boarded but I think he just might be confused
 
X

xxjuicesxx

Member
Vire said:
I guess the conceit is that he or she is more accurate.
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Yes but you can still scope and miss. Where it lands matters, but being scoped in or out does not.

Nillapuddin, that makes sense then I didn't actually watch the video and see the difference.

Thats pretty cool so its got two different shots based on scoped/unscoped?

...I weigh 150! This office job is making me fat. I'm 5'11". Although yea true, lately I have not been able to drink much without getting hammered.
 
R

Redford

aka Cabbie
Ryaaan14 said:
I forgot to mention something I was daydreaming about the other day.

How amazing would it be if Spartan Ops had a mission where it begins as a round of Infinity Slayer on a particular map, obviously with AI opponents (or teammates if not doing co-op), business as usual. And after about 30 seconds of gameplay, the environment starts to become distorted and glitchy, sounds become muffled and staticy, even the announcer could get a creepy distortion in his voice. Soon after, the environment blacks out, and you actually find yourself in the simulation area of the Infinity and the ship has made impact on Requiem and disrupted the simulation system, things around you are burning and destroyed. At this point you rush to evacuate the Infinity in typical Halo fashion as Covenant or Prometheans attempt to infiltrate the ship.

Shit would be amazing.
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This is awesome. Hopefully not any less so if its actually in the game.
 
Vire

Vire

Member
Cabbie said:
This is awesome. Hopefully not any less so if its actually in the game.
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While it sounds incredibly awesome, that also sounds amazingly expensive to produce.

I doubt Spartan Ops has a budget for something that grand. Especially since there's no bots in the game.
 
F

feel

Member
GhaleonEB said:
Last bucket of thoughts on PAX stuff.

CTF Settings

I got to play CTF a couple times, but as I mentioned, they were all on Exile and I spent my time respawning thanks to the Gauss Hog and Scorpion. So I can't speak to the flag carrier traits and how it affects the game directly. So what follows is really based on what everyone else has: video and extrapolation based on what''s been announced.

On the one hand, the instant pick up solves a problem with objective games since Halo 1: there's a pile of weapons on the flag - or a Warthog lovingly parked there - and you can't pick it up on first go. I often cycle through AR's and Plasma Pistols before grabbing the flag, and that eats into critical time as the defending team converges. It'll be nice just to pick up the damn flag and go a move on.

So that's one situation where auto pick up will help. But there will be situations where you're fighting against defenders in the flag room, and strafe into the flag by accident - and are doomed for doing so. Or you're fighting alongside the carrier, and he dies, and we scoop up the flag instantly, without wanting to. And are, again, doomed. I hope the flag pick up zone is about the size of the flag pole to minimize these kinds of accidents.

Which leaves the decision to eliminate dropping the flag (giving players a magnum is probably closely related to this one). There will surely be situations where you grab the flag and round a corner to find three guys there, and you'd really like to drop it. Or you have the flag but want to drop it for a piece of heavy ordnance nearby, and so on. It also eliminates play such as tossing the flag to a lower level and covering your teammate from your position.

I've heard three reasons for the decision. The first is to eliminate flag juggling, which seems drastic considering the other options available (as with Reach's cool down). Another is that is speeds up gameplay, which could probably be accomplished through other means as well. The last is that it pushes players into dedicated roles: you're the flag carrier, and you'll behave differently once you are. This one seems the most compelling to me, an I'm interested to play it and see how it alters the game.

I wish I had a chance to play CTF more and get a feel for how it worked out. On paper, I can't say I like these changes, but I'll refrain from judging it to see how it plays out. On balance, the changes will make for a somewhat simpler game, and it eliminates a suite of coordinated flag movement options (juggling, tossing) that will make the mode more newcomer friendly. Which, combined with the added clarity to the HUD and announcer lines, is probably part of the goal. To the extent that it helps make CTF games more popular and thus voted in more often, I applaud the effort.​


Ordnance Drops

On one of those games on Exile where I was getting camped, I spawned and then had a piece of ordnance drop next to me. I grabbed it, scoped, and toasted the marauding Warthog with whatever Forerunner death ray I scooped up. Fun outcome. But it's a moment that's troubled me ever since, because I keep thinking about the implications.

The last time I played Halo 3 matchmaking was last fall, with a bunch of GAFers. We had an amazing game of Slayer on Avalanche. Our team fell behind as the other guys accumulated an advantage, toasting a few of our vehicles and pinning us down. We were behind by over a dozen kills. A plan formed, targeting specific vehicles. Rockets and power drains were acquired, players were positioned, and we executed a plan that eliminated their vehicles and we began to fight back. We ended up winning by seven kills.

This kind of comeback was made possible because of the fixed weapon placements and spawns. We knew where the tools were, and about when they would appear.

In Halo 4, we likely would have lost that game, because we could not have anticipated what ordnance would drop, or where. If we got lucky, it might have been anti-vehicle weapons, and if we were really lucky, they might have dropped near us. But the ability to put together a plan to combat a team that has a tactical advantage - be it map control or vehicle control or both - is dependent on knowing what tools you have available at your disposal. The ordnance system in Halo 4 injects a heavy dose of luck into the equation, and I predict the result is fewer come from behind victories.

I see Steely has noted the same issues in his post, so I'm not alone in this observation.

The flip side is, now and then a player will get some goodies land next to them, and they'll feel like they won the jackpot. Against a superior team with solid map control, the other team will still be able to have some goodies delivered to them by sheer luck, as the opposing team can't predict where stuff lands. As with the CTF updates, this sounds like something to make the game more accessible; randoms getting mauled by a team will still get thrown a bone from time to time, probably not turning the tide of the game but letting them get a few kills they otherwise would not. (And the reverse: a team with excellent map control and coordination will still get toasted by ordnance they can't control.)

The ordnance system in War Games, as I understand it, sounds like a very bad idea. It removes a lot of the strategy from multiplayer games, and injects a healthy dose of random luck, which runs counter to the competitive nature of the game. As I said, I think there will be fewer come from behind victories as a result, which is unfortunate.​


Music in War Games

Just a quick note here. There's music in most (all?) modes now, usually coming in at the end to ratchet up the tension. I liked it; it felt like a natural evolution from the music in Invasion and Firefight. My only worry is that it will start playing say, at the end of a CTF match. And then the game will go on for a very long time - what happens to the music then? Are we stuck with it?

At any rate, this is another departure to the series that I find quite welcome. It worked.​


Closing Thoughts

Games like Halo take time to judge properly, and it's doubly hard at public events like PAX to do so. But the game made a strong first impression on me, and I don't think that is likely to turn around after it ships. My immediate reaction to Reach was pretty negative, and looking back, it was for all the same reasons it remains so.

Halo 4 plays like Halo, with changes around the edges but not to the core of combat (which is what Reach did). The gunplay is extremely strong, and there's an emphasis on it that prevents the game from degenerating into a melee and grenade spam fest. I'm very worried about a number of elements - map set ups, ordnance, armor mods, cluttered UI and sound design - but even with all these things in the mix, the game was simply fun to play, and it played, for the most part, like Halo should; in the end, that's what really matters.

Much appreciation to the 343 folks, who put on a great show at PAX and who were great to talk with. Their passion for the game was on full display, and I think they've got a game to be proud of.​
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Great read, thanks.

I'm ready for this motherfucker, all I need now is play some console games to adjust my eyes back to 30fps during the first days of November so this doesn't look like a slideshow. Tried CSGO on xbox the other day and I could literally see frames go by, but other people seem fine with it, so it's a matter of getting my eyes used to it.
 
U

User 73706

Banned
Overdoziz said:
BY THE WAY

How many kills are there in an Energy Sword in Halo 4?
In previous games (lol Halo 2) it has always been way too much. 10 'shots' without the possibility of missing any is crazy. The Shotgun and Gravity Hammer also have a huge amount of ammo. The Shotgun has what, 20 shots in it? I don't know exactly about the Gravity Hammer but I'm pretty sure it has more juice in it than the Energy Sword. By the time that you run out of ammo with any of the CQC power weapons the next one will have a spawned already (obviously this is different with the new retarded weapon drop system).

It's pretty crazy how many kills you can get with them before you run out of ammo compared to other power weapons.
-Rockets is probably around 3 or 4 kills each time?
-Sniper would probably be similar to that (depending on the map).
-Grenade Launcher is most likely very low because everyone sucks with it so much that 343 thought it would be a good idea to remove the best weapon in Halo history and replace it with a shitty wanna-be GL that has grenade that stick to surfaces look poop and can only be used in defensive ways instead of offensive like with the most awesome weapon of all time: the Grenade Launcher.
-Focus Rifle is about -1 kills.
-Concussion Rifle around 2 killed people and 10 annoyed ones.
-Plasma Launcher maybe a vehicle and a half.

And then there's the CQC power weapons:
-Energy Sword is 10 kills every time because you can't miss any 'shots'
-Shotgun would probably be around the same area? Maybe a bit more? I'd say about 1 kill per 2-3 shots sounds about right.
-Gravity Hammer should be around the same amount too. You can waste juice but in most cases people only swing the hammer when the reticule is red anyway which ensures a kill.

If I was in charge of Halo 4...
...well if I was in charge there wouldn't be any CQC power weapons. Anyway, if I could decide the amount of ammo that CQC weapons would have I'd say that the Sword should have 4 kills in it, the Shotgun 8-10 shells and the Gravity hammer 6 swings. That sounds about right. This is mainly meant to balance it out with gametypes that use radar because it's much easier to get kills with CQC weapons with it on.



Point is: bring back the Grenade Launcher.
Click to expand...

A few things:

-Sword can have up to 120 battery now if you have the perk that gives your starting weapons/ordnance extra ammo.
-Battery per slice seems unchanged.

However...

+Sword is Ordnance only. You will know when one's out in the wild and if it's picked up, meaning less chance of someone nabbing it and getting 10 kills by camping.
+Sprint with Sword combo is confirmed by Ghaleon to be much less effective if you know they're coming. People are expecting getting shot sprinting to slow you to a ridiculous crawl, when in reality at its worst it reduces you to about 110% movement speed. Ghaleon also confirmed that it's entirely possibly to 4 (or 5)-shot people effectively with these changes.
+Sword seems to become "unsheathed" much more slowly, similar to Halo 3.

And while it's not really related, there are one or two things that you might like:
+Gravity Hammer seems to be pretty much Grifball exclusive now.
+The Concussion Rifle is just a reskinned Brute Shot now, rather than the ANNOYANCE +10 gun it was in Reach.
+The Scattershot seems to have less of an effective range of even the Shotgun, so it's role will probably be strictly EMPing (if it still does that) and banking shots around corners.


Steelyuhas said:
Well that's not true.

On a Slayer game on Adrift, I grabbed the sword from the middle and immediately proceeded to go on a sprinting sword killing spree.

Sprint Sword is nerfed, but it's far from useless for a player that chooses the right times to attack with the sword.
Click to expand...

Noted.
 
S

Steelyuhas

Member
Wahrer Machine said:
A few things:

-Sword can have up to 120 battery now if you have the perk that gives your starting weapons/ordnance extra ammo.
-Battery per slice seems unchanged.

However...

+Sword is Ordnance only. You will know when one's out in the wild and if it's picked up, meaning less chance of someone nabbing it and getting 10 kills by camping.
+Sprint with Sword combo is completely useless now, as confirmed by Ghaleon. People are expecting getting shot sprinting to slow you to a ridiculous crawl, when in reality at its worst it reduces you to about 110% movement speed. Ghaleon also confirmed that it's entirely possibly to 4 (or 5)-shot people effectively with these changes.
+Sword seems to become "unsheathed" much more slowly, similar to Halo 3.
Click to expand...

Well that's not true.

On a Slayer game on Adrift, I grabbed the sword from the middle and immediately proceeded to go on a sprinting sword killing spree.

Sprint Sword is nerfed, but it's far from useless for a player that chooses the right times to attack with the sword.
 
Z

zap

Member
Alienshogun said:
Wat? Why does that make him unable to talk about it. A lot of people Have gotten that drunk before.
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RqDKg.gif
Click to expand...
.
 
Z

Zoso Achilles

Member
xxjuicesxx said:
How does a gun do more or less damage if your Spartan puts his/her eye up to the scope?
Click to expand...
It's a different firing mode. 3 shot burst un-scoped, more powerful 1-shot scoped. Bungie wanted to do this with the H2 BR, but I feel this makes more sense since it doesn't fire "bullets." I'll have to check the vid again to see if each shot, both scoped and un-scoped only take one "bullet" out of the Light Rifle's clip.

Edit: Ok just checked: the light rifle has 12 shots per clip. When un-scoped, each one of those shots is divided into 3 parts for a 3 shot burst; when scoped, each shot is fired in full.

This means the damage of the whole is more than the sum of the damages of its parts. Also, I think this makes the light rifle the only utility weapon capable of 3 kills in one clip. I guess I just found my starting weapon.
 
J

JHall

Member
Zoso Achilles said:
It's a different firing mode. 3 shot burst un-scoped, more powerful 1-shot scoped. Bungie wanted to do this with the H2 BR, but I feel this makes more sense since it doesn't fire "bullets." I'll have to check the vid again to see if each shot, both scoped and un-scoped only take one "bullet" out of the Light Rifle's clip.
Click to expand...

It does. There are 12 shots per clip, 2 kills if unscoped and 3 kills if scoped in are potentially there.
 
H

Havok

Member
Edit: beaten to the punch.

Waterworks please. Or Terminal. Or Containment. Or a Valhalla that only vaguely resembles Valhalla.

Hopefully not Sandtrap.
 
A

Arnie

Member
Frank just confirmed that there most likely isn't a Pit remake at launch:

Halo 4 only includes one map remake. I know what it is. It is good. It will cause the least drama of any new thing. It is NOT small.
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If it isn't The Pit then I hope it's Valhalla.

EDIT: Beaten, soz.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
What is AlienShogun going on about? Some conspiracy of silence? Can someone is a single paragraph with no links to blogs ask the question I am supposed to be supressing to keep the proles at bay?

I wish it were obvious that I can't read every post or trail of threads. But I can't.
 
N

ncsuDuncan

Member
NYCC? Count me in, if there are other Gaffers going. Never been to the Big Apple, which is a shame since I'm only a short train ride away.
 
R

Ragnarok Flames

Banned
Stinkles said:
What is AlienShogun going on about? Some conspiracy of silence? Can someone is a single paragraph with no links to blogs ask the question I am supposed to be supressing to keep the proles at bay?

I wish it were obvious that I can't read every post or trail of threads. But I can't.
Click to expand...

Is the armor in the Console and LE, in-game armor or just the skins?
 
A

Arnie

Member
The paragraph is this:

Have you decided upon a skill based ranking system yet Frank? Or is the previously revealed experience system everything in terms of player investment in Halo 4?
 
Z

Zoso Achilles

Member
The only way for a remake to not cause much drama is if it's not actually a remake of a favored multiplayer map. lol I think random tag is on to something here saying Forge World.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
ncsuDuncan said:
NYCC? Count me in, if there are other Gaffers going. Never been to the Big Apple, which is a shame since I'm only a short train ride away.
Click to expand...

HOW far? NYCC has some stuff, but most importantly, it has THE BEST SCOTCH EGG RESTAURANT IN AMERICA - better in fact, than Scotland.

3uXm1.jpg


Yes people, this is a soft boiled egg (perfectly) wrapped in savory delicious sauisage meat, and deep fried in a Panko-light breadcrumb coating.
 
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