Now upon thinking about it and being less influenced by alcohol, Bungie may have made the veto system the way it is just so that they could get info back to analyze about objective games. Slayer is NEVER the first gametype. If it was only ppl who vote that count, slayer would probably get picked 4/5 times and objective games would fall by the wayside which wouldn't help them get the stats they need regarding objective gametypes.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Halo: Reach Beta Thread
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
- Start date
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
I am reading other pages in this thread. I think is the feedback loop when kiling someone and when getting shot by somebody that is not up to par with Halo 3. Pretty sure its just a couple sounds and screen cues that are missing, I am not worried that much about it.Insaniac said:
Son of Godzilla
Banned
Clear way to do it is to start sprinting into fuckers and double meleeing.godhandiscen said:
No but really, I don't see this changing. It shifts the reward towards awareness where before there was just randomness and hope. Not to mention that it offers enough protection to meaningfully offer new approaches.
NG28 said:
Well the issue with that is all the stats they would get on the objective modes are based on people who are too lazy or stupid to vote for proper slayer matches, and instead just treat the objective games like slayer matches. Stockpile is a terrible mode to go into with randoms because of this.
FlawlessCowboy
Member
Played the Beta for about 3 hours (Thanks for the code, Urk). Overall, it's a lot of fun. There are some rough edges, but the core Halo gameplay feels great and armor abilities make it a whole new ballgame.
My only real complaint is that Headhunter is one of the most frustrating game types ever.
My only real complaint is that Headhunter is one of the most frustrating game types ever.
I agree, that is why I hate this way of voting in the first place. I'm sick of being the only one on my team who actually tries to complete objectives. I was just saying that Bungie may have made it this way on purpose, which as you said may not work as intended as idiots try and just play slayer.Ten-Song said:
brokenwatch
Member
I had a bug occur where my shields did not recharge due to someone quitting while they were in the process of recharging. I hit myself with a grenade and they did eventually recharge.
Yeah, that's what I feel, too. I thought they chose Swordbase primarily for the Jetpacks.Lead Farmer said:
Powerhouse is your typical, asymmetrical map that seems nice for the occasional 1-CTF and 1-Bo... oh, we don't have Assault (yet). Swordbase has been okay for Slayer and 3 Plots, but everything else I find there is rather disposing.
But as I was saying before, we should get a better glimpse later in Invasion/Boneyard.
Son of Godzilla
Banned
No, he means the info they get from people actually playing objective games, not how much xXJOHNNIE wants to play slayer. For instance, I hope they learn that Red's circle on PH Stockpile is the worst goddamn place ever.Ten-Song said:
Deputy Moonman
Member
Thanks to the awesomeness of Bungie, I finally got my first taste of Reach tonight. It was like trying a strange new food dish where I wasn't quite sure if I enjoyed the flavor or not and getting used to the texture was taking some time.
Mostly, I just wanted to start using all the weapons and abilities and try to familiarize myself with their nuances. I see a ton of potential in the pistol, but I don't have the aim down yet and seem to always place the reticule slightly above people's heads. The clip is also a tad short. But seeing people's shields pop after so many shots was a lot of fun. I just had trouble finishing the kill. I think the trick will be getting used to it more, so that I will have more confidence in using it. As of now, I sometimes fear that I'm missing a bunch of shots and switch to another weapon or start throwing grenades.
I definitely enjoy using the needle rifle over the DMR. The few times I was able to get my hands on the sniper rifle were favorable as well. Can't decide which ability I like the most. Jet packs really surprised me. They are dead useful in getting around, which is obviously a pain in sword base. But I found that they are really nice to use even on powerhouse.
Also, I love the elites. Faster, stronger, better jumpers, and evade is a lot of fun. I think the elites feel how you would expect the spartans to play from the previous Halo games, where now the Spartans are wondering where their ups went and why they are so slow.
Assassinations are weird for me. I'm not used to them at all, and for now I don't even attempt them. When the view goes to 3rd person I always get disoriented. The focus rifle is really powerful, but if you consider how much quicker a sniper rifle can kill someone I guess it's not too bad. The plasma repeater is really cool, but I was surprised at how much ammo you get. It lasts forever, which may also be what was bothering me about the focus rifle. One last thought was on the melee beatdowns. I appreciate that you can get in a 2nd melee faster, but I think I would still just prefer not having a shield that has to be completely broken over almost always having to melee twice when in close-range of someone.
All in all, it was a good first test run for me. I look forward to jumping back in tomorrow, but for now I'm at work.
Mostly, I just wanted to start using all the weapons and abilities and try to familiarize myself with their nuances. I see a ton of potential in the pistol, but I don't have the aim down yet and seem to always place the reticule slightly above people's heads. The clip is also a tad short. But seeing people's shields pop after so many shots was a lot of fun. I just had trouble finishing the kill. I think the trick will be getting used to it more, so that I will have more confidence in using it. As of now, I sometimes fear that I'm missing a bunch of shots and switch to another weapon or start throwing grenades.
I definitely enjoy using the needle rifle over the DMR. The few times I was able to get my hands on the sniper rifle were favorable as well. Can't decide which ability I like the most. Jet packs really surprised me. They are dead useful in getting around, which is obviously a pain in sword base. But I found that they are really nice to use even on powerhouse.
Also, I love the elites. Faster, stronger, better jumpers, and evade is a lot of fun. I think the elites feel how you would expect the spartans to play from the previous Halo games, where now the Spartans are wondering where their ups went and why they are so slow.
Assassinations are weird for me. I'm not used to them at all, and for now I don't even attempt them. When the view goes to 3rd person I always get disoriented. The focus rifle is really powerful, but if you consider how much quicker a sniper rifle can kill someone I guess it's not too bad. The plasma repeater is really cool, but I was surprised at how much ammo you get. It lasts forever, which may also be what was bothering me about the focus rifle. One last thought was on the melee beatdowns. I appreciate that you can get in a 2nd melee faster, but I think I would still just prefer not having a shield that has to be completely broken over almost always having to melee twice when in close-range of someone.
All in all, it was a good first test run for me. I look forward to jumping back in tomorrow, but for now I'm at work.
Son of Godzilla said:
No, my issue was more about the style of people playing in those modes. I too often see Stockpile games devolve into people just running around the maps like idiots and not playing offense or defense at all when it comes to actually capturing the damn flags. When people are playing it for real, it's a great mode, but when paired up with randoms, it's a lot of single captures and flags never getting picked up. :/
:lol I know the feeling. On 1 flag on Powerhouse I got our flag, by myself, to within 20ft of the score zone. I thought we had it in the bag but no, my teammates were on the other side of the map the entire time playing with their dicks while I was the only one who tried to stop the defending team from re-setting the flag, which they did. I was so pissed.Ten-Song said:
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
Just played for a few hours at a friends. Here is my 2 cents
Its feels like Halo but it doesnt at the same time.
Loadouts totally change the game now. Not sure for the better or worse but you def have some very different one on one battles. Its not just who is the better shot or who can melee stick the other guy first either.
The game as opposed to H3 is very ground based. You Jump like an odst now so your not jumping all over the place or getting to where you need to by jumping as much. My guess is this is too highlight the loadouts.
Nades are overpowered but thats been covered. DMR needs to be a 4 shot...
I will play this game for sure but it is a lot different than H3.
Not sure what they were thinking with the controls. I liked having a thumb on B and my finger still on the trigger. The combination of this and the melee only dropping shields takes a little away from the close range game, it turns to a nade fest fast.
Really, they could have just made armor abilities X and that would have been fine. I hope they have that option in the final. Having B as your nade change is a waste of one of the 4 primary buttos.
Its feels like Halo but it doesnt at the same time.
Loadouts totally change the game now. Not sure for the better or worse but you def have some very different one on one battles. Its not just who is the better shot or who can melee stick the other guy first either.
The game as opposed to H3 is very ground based. You Jump like an odst now so your not jumping all over the place or getting to where you need to by jumping as much. My guess is this is too highlight the loadouts.
Nades are overpowered but thats been covered. DMR needs to be a 4 shot...
I will play this game for sure but it is a lot different than H3.
Not sure what they were thinking with the controls. I liked having a thumb on B and my finger still on the trigger. The combination of this and the melee only dropping shields takes a little away from the close range game, it turns to a nade fest fast.
Really, they could have just made armor abilities X and that would have been fine. I hope they have that option in the final. Having B as your nade change is a waste of one of the 4 primary buttos.
Son of Godzilla
Banned
See, this feels like Halo after all.Ten-Song said:
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
You can tell when you are getting shot, but you can't tell the direction from where you getting shot. I am currently looking at a replay when a person shot at me from three different angles (he was a in a jetpack) with the pistol. I can see that there is a very bleak red shadown in my screen that signals where the shot is coming from. The problem is that this shadow is way too soft. I had to pause the screen to see it. The environment is so detailed and rich in color that I couldn't notice this shadown and hence had no freaking idea where I was getting shot from. In Halo 3 this shadow was really obvious. I miss it.NG28 said:
It would be a bitch to sprint and turn if it was B.jhferry said:
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
Striker said:
Ok how about AA on RB and switch the rest back.
Son of Godzilla said:
:lol I know. It's a pain in the ass with other modes as well, but for some reason Stockpile as a mode really brings out all the issues with dumb teammates. At least as far as I'm concerned. Nothing is more infuriating the dragging a flag across the whole damn map, dropping it in your capture zone, defending it, and seeing your teammates off dicking around with jet packs while you get killed by two dudes who then take your flag uncontested to their zone with more than enough time to capture them...
Insaniac said:
This guy speaks the absolute truth.
My god man, let me explain the whole melee shield garbage. If I start shooting first, I should be at an advantage. But if I get his shields to 10 percent, and he gets my shields to 30 percent and we both melee at the same time, now our shields are gone and we are on even footing again. That makes ZERO SENSE.
The reticle is so light that I can't see it when ANYTHING starts happening. Not only that, but it's impossible to hit people now! Making an expanding reticle makes the game NOT HALO. I know you made the game, but you can't just change 4 games worth of precedent and call it Halo.
Armor lock is just SO broken, but that deserves a page on its own.
I can't believe that I actually went back and played Halo 3 when I have access to Halo Reach. I remember hearing in the vidoc Marcus Lehto said that he was so afraid of how people were going to receive the beta and I remember thinking you have nothing to worry about man. Boy was I wrong.
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
MY LONG LOST BROTHER I HAVE FOUND YOU!Phatcorns said:
Son of Godzilla
Banned
You mean Recon?jhferry said:
Yeah it seems like they made the UI indicators transparent, including your aiming reticule. When I was playing on my SDTV, I couldn't even see the pistol reticule at all. I hooked up my 360 to my computer monitor immediately after that.godhandiscen said:
As for the controls, I personally think the default works great after getting used to it. Jumping isn't as prominent, so bumper jumper isn't really necessary. My most used actions are all on the triggers, which makes everything so easy.
Spaceman Spiff
Member
Son of Godzilla said:
Only way to play for me.
I'm so glad the Halo 3 default controls were more or less intact, just under a different name.
Okay.Linkzg said:
Reach does a poor job providing feedback to the player, in a number of ways. When I get shot, I can't tell from what direction. This means I react poorly, which means I die more. In every other Halo game, turning to face (or flee) incoming fire became instinctual because the visual feedback upon receiving fire was clear, so this is no small thing. It often makes my death feel random.
When I melee or am on the receiving end, I have to look at the text in the corner to see what happened. The visual feedback is just messy and unclear. The shield delimiter - no matter how much shield is up, a melee with pop it and no more - is, for lack of a better word, stupid. It really breaks close quarters combat, and coupled with the already poor melee feedback and lack of clarity, it makes close combat feel like a complete mess. Melee fights are confusing, hectic and have what feels like arbitrary outcomes.
The shield delimiter applies to other weapons as well; it takes half a ream of needles to pop the shield, then another to pop the player beneath them. The entire idea of making the health/shield system so separated, no connection between them, disrupts combat greatly.
Some targeting reticules, such the pistol, are very hard to see in many situations; this not only makes aiming hard, but timing the rhythm of the shots difficult.
Grenade damage, and the way if blows out the sound. The fuck?
The feedback loops on the guns are entirely forgettable. Remember how great it feels to shoot the Halo 1 AR and pistol, or the Halo 2 and 3 BR? None of the guns in Reach are anywhere close. The pistol is apparently a beast, but it feels like shooting a cap gun. It's not fun to shoot in this game.
Of the two maps, I simply hate one of them. Sword Base is a poorly designed, arbitrary, bland and confusing mess of a map. I put it among the worst in the series.
Player movement feels more like Oblivion than Halo. Gone are the joyful, smooth jumps, the elegance of the strafe, the feeling of agility in close quarters movement. I feel like I have weights tied around my waist (or am constipated, as someone else said). I keep saying this, but it just does not feel anything like a Halo game to me. It's not the movement speed or the jump height, it's that they simply redid how the game plays. I don't know why and can't really articulate it. But playing Reach is simply not fun.
In all the previous Halo games, the simple act of leaping around and shooting was fun. I recall vividly my first day of playing the Halo 3 Beta, in the F&F kick off. The first thing everyone did was jump around shooting, getting a feel for the weapons. It was euphoric. Doing those things are not fun in this game. I don't feel like the game is a playground. It feels like work.
Most of the expansions to the game work well. Menus, much of the UI, the armor abilities, the audio, the graphics. Some of the abilities, like Sprint, are pretty great. Most of the stuff they added just works. But the underlying core is broken. Melee, jumping, shooting, moving. Important stuff, and none of them feel anything like Halo any more, and more importantly, they feel likes something that's not fun to play. The heart and soul of the game is just gone. I'm sitting here, after two days of playing the Beta, and I don't have a strong desire to play it again.
I feel like an ass ripping on the game so hard, but as a longtime fan of the series, and thus Bungie, I'm just crushingly disappointed. I'm clearly in the minority on this stuff, I haven't found anyone that's had as negative a reaction as myself. But that's where I am with the game. FWIW.
It's funny, I played the game on the same days as the Activision announcement. I read that, and my first thought was, "that's very un-Bungie-like." That's what the game feels like as well; this is very un-Bungie-like to me.
Self Induced
Member
I'd like to play at least just one game with traditional shield/health interaction and no reticle bloom whatsoever. It feels like these things are more like handicaps than gameplay mechanics.
edit: bloom seems to work really well for dmr and needle rifle, but its infuriating to use with the pistol >.<
edit: bloom seems to work really well for dmr and needle rifle, but its infuriating to use with the pistol >.<
â Narayan
Member
Aw Hell.
Shafto
Member
GhaleonEB said:It's funny, I played the game on the same days as the Activision announcement. I read that, and my first thought was, "that's very un-Bungie-like." That's what the game feels like as well; this is very un-Bungie-like to me.
That's probably the most damning sentence so far!
I really hope you're just on some bipolar-disorder downer or something Ghaleon, because all these reflections make for some painful reading to my poor innocent eyes
UltimaPooh
Member
Shafto said:That's probably the most damning sentence so far!
I really hope you're just on some bipolar-disorder downer or something Ghaleon, because all these reflections make for some painful reading to my poor innocent eyes
The mechanic of Halo has changed a bit. He's right on most stances but I don't think they are anything to hate. Some of the stuff could use a touching up but it is incredibly fun.
Don't let Ghaleon scare you, he is definitely in the minority here. He is also wrong about Swordbase. It's not my favorite map by any means but it's certainly better than others in the series.
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
*slow clap*GhaleonEB said:Okay.
Reach does a poor job providing feedback to the player, in a number of ways. When I get shot, I can't tell from what direction. This means I react poorly, which means I die more. In every other Halo game, turning to face (or flee) incoming fire became instinctual because the visual feedback upon receiving fire was clear, so this is no small thing. It often makes my death feel random.
When I melee or am on the receiving end, I have to look at the text in the corner to see what happened. The visual feedback is just messy and unclear. The shield delimiter - no matter how much shield is up, a melee with pop it and no more - is, for lack of a better word, stupid. It really breaks close quarters combat, and coupled with the already poor melee feedback and lack of clarity, it makes close combat feel like a complete mess. Melee fights are confusing, hectic and have what feels like arbitrary outcomes.
The shield delimiter applies to other weapons as well; it takes half a ream of needles to pop the shield, then another to pop the player beneath them. The entire idea of making the health/shield system so separated, no connection between them, disrupts combat greatly.
Some targeting reticules, such the pistol, are very hard to see in many situations; this not only makes aiming hard, but timing the rhythm of the shots difficult.
Grenade damage, and the way if blows out the sound. The fuck?
The feedback loops on the guns are entirely forgettable. Remember how great it feels to shoot the Halo 1 AR and pistol, or the Halo 2 and 3 BR? None of the guns in Reach are anywhere close. The pistol is apparently a beast, but it feels like shooting a cap gun. It's not fun to shoot in this game.
Of the two maps, I simply hate one of them. Sword Base is a poorly designed, arbitrary, bland and confusing mess of a map. I put it among the worst in the series.
Player movement feels more like Oblivion than Halo. Gone are the joyful, smooth jumps, the elegance of the strafe, the feeling of agility in close quarters movement. I feel like I have weights tied around my waist (or am constipated, as someone else said). I keep saying this, but it just does not feel anything like a Halo game to me. It's not the movement speed or the jump height, it's that they simply redid how the game plays. I don't know why and can't really articulate it. But playing Reach is simply not fun.
In all the previous Halo games, the simple act of leaping around and shooting was fun. I recall vividly my first day of playing the Halo 3 Beta, in the F&F kick off. The first thing everyone did was jump around shooting, getting a feel for the weapons. It was euphoric. Doing those things are not fun in this game. I don't feel like the game is a playground. It feels like work.
Most of the expansions to the game work well. Menus, much of the UI, the armor abilities, the audio, the graphics. Some of the abilities, like Sprint, are pretty great. Most of the stuff they added just works. But the underlying core is broken. Melee, jumping, shooting, moving. Important stuff, and none of them feel anything like Halo any more, and more importantly, they feel likes something that's not fun to play. The heart and soul of the game is just gone. I'm sitting here, after two days of playing the Beta, and I don't have a strong desire to play it again.
I feel like an ass ripping on the game so hard, but as a longtime fan of the series, and thus Bungie, I'm just crushingly disappointed. I'm clearly in the minority on this stuff, I haven't found anyone that's had as negative a reaction as myself. But that's where I am with the game. FWIW.
It's funny, I played the game on the same days as the Activision announcement. I read that, and my first thought was, "that's very un-Bungie-like." That's what the game feels like as well; this is very un-Bungie-like to me.
Phatcorns said:
But thats my point, melee isn't the better option in Reach at the moment (well unless you have sprint). If you have the drop on someone there is no reason for you to be in beat-down range. I don't understand why everyone continues to melee so much, grenades can now force attackers back and the starting weapons can even hold their own until you find replacements.