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Halo: Reach |OT4| This Thread is Not Your Grave, But You Are Welcome In It

Ramirez

Member
Trasher said:

Buddy has been wanting me to play with him, I always waste my time on Reach though. :p

Seriously, last two times I've played this game, I think we've had quitters in like 80% of the matches, no matter what playlist we go into, really boring.
 
Ramirez said:
Buddy has been wanting me to play with him, I always waste my time on Reach though. :p

Seriously, last two times I've played this game, I think we've had quitters in like 80% of the matches, no matter what playlist we go into, really boring.
Not sure if it's ignorance - or if I'm correct, but it seems like the population has been healthy since Bungie day. Really healthy. There also seem to be more quitters. I played 20+ matches last night - and had a quitter, quitters or betrayer in at least 4-5 of them. We also had one team of two that kept jetpacking off of pinnacle over and over. On top of that, there were a couple of matches with teams of two (splitscreening) who were AFK the whole time.

No idea why, or what sort of numbers the populations was pulling before - but there definitely seems to be more douchebags lately.
 
Blinding said:
Not that she isn't attractive, just that there are a lot of girls out there that top her attractiveness.

I'm on Halo right now if anyone wants to jump in, prolly going to be playing some MLG. GT is Blindinggggg.
Needs more g's
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Couple Firefight highlights from today.

Wraith drivers don't give a damn what's in their way. I like how the one Grunt who would have survived gets shot in the back by one of his own. My kind of teamwork!

Nothing big in this wave, other than it was just unusually intense. It struck me that when Firefight is good - and it's often good in Doubles on Unearthed - it's downright blissful. The gunplay has this hard edge to it, the explosions are going off all over the place, enemies are swarming everywhere. I wish more Firefight maps played like this more often. I hope the last Firefight map is packed to the gills with more intense fights.

Also, is anyone else who is using the Bungie nameplate getting constant friend requests in the lobby? Makes me smile every time. Guys think they just had a one in a million run it, I wonder how long it will take them to grog on.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
You know what I miss?

Header_Waterworks.jpg

&
Header_Headlong.jpg


These maps really needs to be remade.
 

Havok

Member
Karl2177 said:
Shit. I forgot this map was still in the game. Are there any team playlists that it appears in aside from multi-team?
Objective. It's much better now without the Drop Shield abuse, but the spawns and timers are still totally out of whack.
senador said:
I could care less about the rocks, but I can't help but wonder how much better Asylum might play if the sniper walkways were offset. I really miss Sanctuary's aesthetics too.
I only really play Objective these days, and those rocks don't provide the cover that Sanctuary's did to flag and bomb carriers. They're short and really sparse (link) in the same way that Hemorrhage's rock garden was poor compared to its predecessor.
GhaleonEB said:
I'm hoping beyond hope that those are the two from Halo 2. Waterworks would play very well in Reach, I think. Just remove the Banshee, if the TU doesn't nerf it.
Here's the big question: Include them in CEA or wait it out, including them in Halo 4? I'm a little torn. They'd be a nice band-aid for Reach, but that's all they'd be: a rough fix for a big problem.
 
Striker said:
Didn't know that about Gemini-Marathon. Pretty interesting. Not sure what they would opt to recreate or attempt a map from a series so far behind. Halo 1 and Halo 2 were close together and when they remade much of the maps on the game: Blood Gulch to Coagulation, Battle Creek to Beaver Creek, Wizard to Warlock, Hang 'em High to Tombstone, Derelict to Desolation, and Longest to Elongation, they all improved the past iterations. It made for faster gameplay and more access throughout the map. Derelict itself was a poor map but made decent with Desolation (still needed a BR start). The changes to Blood Gulch and Battle Creek were magnificent in the changes to the gameplay from 1-2. That's what failed with expectations for many on the changes from 2-3. Adding equipment to maps like Blackout completely neuter it. Who wanted bubble shields on Lockout?

I still fail to see how Timberland and Containment were alike. Containment was still a solid BTB map, despite the issues Bungie gave to it with the hole in the wall. Multi-CTF and Multi-Bomb gave me pretty damn good experiences on there; sneaking from underneath the rocket side to underneath the Banshee port to inside the base to arm the bomb, it was great.

This post is the straight dirty sauce truth.

Havok said:
Just popped in Halo 2 for some XBC/to run around the MP maps after some of the conversations today, and immediately I am reminded how bad Asylum is as a Sanctuary remake. So much is completely off (sniper walkways not offset, rocks).

Also, this game still looks gorgeous to me.

Also also, to 343: Add more lens flare to Halo 4. I don't care how much there is right now, just add more.

Asylum is an insult to Sanctuary. The worst part about Asylum though is the carbine bridges. The height is wrong and the base of the bridge extends much more in Sanctuary, making the lines of sight in Asylum wildly different than Sanctuary. Makes a HUGE difference when it comes to gameplay.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
wwm0nkey said:
You know what I miss?

Header_Waterworks.jpg

&
Header_Headlong.jpg


These maps really needs to be remade.
I'm hoping beyond hope that those are the two from Halo 2. Waterworks would play very well in Reach, I think. Just remove the Banshee, if the TU doesn't nerf it.
 

Hey You

Member
I thought the Reach developer commentary was only available to those who bought the Legendary Edition?

I was able to watch it on Waypoint today and I didn't get the LE.
 

Ramirez

Member
Hey You said:
I thought the Reach developer commentary was only available to those who bought the Legendary Edition?

I was able to watch it on Waypoint today and I didn't get the LE.

The LE are also super rare this go around, better preorder!
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
wwm0nkey said:
You know what I miss?

Header_Waterworks.jpg

&
Header_Headlong.jpg


These maps really needs to be remade.
Waterworks should just be remade.

But Headlong should be remade as a lush jungle/forerunner setting, think Guardian. That'd be awesome.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Plywood said:
Waterworks should just be remade.

But Headlong should be remade as a lush jungle/forerunner setting, think Guardian. That'd be awesome.
No see you where on track with the lush jungle setting, just keep the structure but make it look older, think Portal 2.
 
Kuroyume said:
I think the really simple graphics and designs of the evironments make that game look really good. Take Coagulation for instance and just look at how colorful and simple it is. Valhalla was pretty drab by comparison and I didn't like the rock structures as much. Too grey and white. While I prefer Hemmorhage over Valhalla it's easily the worst in terms of beauty and layout. I think the textures even though they're high res just look ugly. I miss the bright colors.

I also don't like the human environments after Halo 2. Bungie artists became obsessed with rust, dirt, grey and deserted industrial settings.
It's funny that you mention Valhalla, because I've always thought there was something off about Valhalla's colors that I didn't like. This has nothing to do with whether the map itself is a good map: just the colors. It was drab.

Edit: I'm tired of remakes. I want new stuff.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Kuroyume said:
I also don't like the human environments after Halo 2. Bungie artists became obsessed with rust, dirt, grey and deserted industrial settings.
This can not be said enough times, Halo 2 was great with human environments but after that they where shit.
 
GhaleonEB said:
Couple Firefight highlights from today.

Wraith drivers don't give a damn what's in their way. I like how the one Grunt who would have survived gets shot in the back by one of his own. My kind of teamwork!
This is hilarious.

Also, I didn't know GAF liked Waterworks. Usually, I had four to six people at my afterschool LAN matches, so we stayed away from it. The map was far too big for that small a number, so it took forever to find someone and people usually camped. That's probably why my view of that map is skewed.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
I played one more game before bed to push a MP Commendation up a notch. And I do, in a super intense game in Squad Slayer were we rally from ten back to win by a couple kills at the last moment. Yay.

Hit the credit limit, got almost no cR for the game. Great game, but still. :\

(Yes, I'm still grouchy about the credit limit. Bad idea, badly implemented. I've been hitting it a lot at this rank.)
I played one more game before bed to push a MP Commendation up a notch. And I do, in a super intense game in Squad Slayer were we rally from ten back to win by a couple kills at the last moment. Yay.

Hit the credit limit, got almost no cR for the game. Great game, but still. :\

(Yes, I'm still grouchy about the credit limit. Bad idea, badly implemented. I've been hitting it a lot at this rank.)

Ramirez said:
How are you guys hitting the limit? I play for about 3-5 hours on most nights and I've never hit it...
I play a lot of Firefight. Doubles pays out 7-8k cR for a 20 minute game, not including large jackpot games or Challenges.

My wife and kids are out of town, so I have had a lot more time this weekend to play. I probably won't hit it at all during the week as I'll be working on other things.

Tunavi said:
The question is why do credits even matter?
Why did ranks and XP matter?
 

Ramirez

Member
Tunavi said:
The question is why do credits even matter?

Hmm, they don't really, but I would wager without them, you could probably cut the games population by 30% or so. Hitting the max rank in anything is a huge deal these days to some people, whether that is a good or bad thing is another matter...
 

PNut

Banned
GhaleonEB said:
(Yes, I'm still grouchy about the credit limit. Bad idea, badly implemented. I've been hitting it a lot at this rank.)

What's the cap? Maybe since FF pays out more Credits that's why. Or does it? I've played regular MM for hours on end on certain days and have never hit the cap.
 

Nutter

Member
Ramirez said:
How are you guys hitting the limit? I play for about 3-5 hours on most nights and I've never hit it...
Firefight pays more than Multiplayer

Multiplayer should pay out at least 1.5 times as much as Firefight does in the same span, yet here I am, a NOVA yet I get crap for game completion and crap for everything else. I understand they didnt want to let people hit max that fast, but if you are going to implement something from COD then do it properly (let people prestige) and give them a special icon like the Bungie nameplate or something that shows others that hey this guy has played a crap ton. But alas, Reach is all about how ideas were badly implemented all around.

Those Forerunner, Reclaimer, and Inheritor ranks should have been Special Nameplates people would unlock if they maxed out their ranks 3 times (for inheritor)
 

FyreWulff

Member
There's a point to prestiging in CoD since you actually have to unlock weapons, etc, again and it only works online.

Since Halo doesn't work on weapon unlocks, prestige wouldn't really make sense in the context of the Armory, and is doubly pointless since the rank system is also available in it's complete form offline.
 

Ken

Member
FyreWulff said:
There's a point to prestiging in CoD since you actually have to unlock weapons, etc, again and it only works online.

Since Halo doesn't work on weapon unlocks, prestige wouldn't really make sense in the context of the Armory, and is doubly pointless since the rank system is also available in it's complete form offline.
Make the highest rank take less credits to get to. Add tiers of armor pieces, where a new tier is unlocked after every prestige. Of course that would mean that they'd need to create a lot more armor pieces, but it'd probably be enough to get a lot of people to prestige and keep playing. Once a tier is unlocked, you'd just grind out credits to purchase them like in the current game. Armor carries over into the next prestige.

Also, offer a reward at every prestige. Prestige once and you get a special nameplate, again for a new helmet, and again for a different nameplate or armor piece, and so on.
 

FyreWulff

Member
You'd have to be real careful to not entice boosting with that, though.

I actually like how Reach's upper ranks take long to get to. People maxed rank in Halo 2 and Halo 3 so fast that the "new car smell" ran out on the high ranks fairly quickly.


You know what was a stupid form of "boosting"? When I saw people with like 30,000 customs in Halo 3. I always informed them that starting and quitting customs did nothing to their matchmaking host record, but I guess they liked to believe they hadn't spent hours upon hours wasting their time starting and quitting custom games :lol
 

Ken

Member
FyreWulff said:
You'd have to be real careful to not entice boosting with that, though.

I actually like how Reach's upper ranks take long to get to. People maxed rank in Halo 2 and Halo 3 so fast that the "new car smell" ran out on the high ranks fairly quickly.
Add some type of anti-boosting prevention then. They can detect idlers, so boosters shouldn't be that much different. Of course, their planned system to deal with quitters didn't work so well in Reach but maybe they'll get something to work well for H4.

As for enjoying lengthy level ups, that's fine while you're ranking up. However, once you reach the max rank there's no more sense of progression since there's no where else to go aside from grinding out a few more credits for armory completion, at least in my opinion. Once you've hit 100% armory completion and filled the credit bar one last time for no reason, the entire incentive of credits, jackpots, slot machines, and armor is gone, and I wonder if people who complain about credit caps would still play as much as before if they hit max rank.
 

FyreWulff

Member
You never know, they may have something up their sleeve regarding surplus credits in the TU.

I wouldn't be surprised if they had one of those hidden helmets cost an insane amount of cR, or have something community related that uses the extra cR.

I'd LOL if you could start gifting people cR after you hit Inheritor. I'd just start randomly raining credits on pubbies.
 

Ken

Member
FyreWulff said:
I'd LOL if you could start gifting people cR after you hit Inheritor. I'd just start randomly raining credits on pubbies.
Think of the threads that would appear on 343i's forums and XBL inboxes:

"WTB 500,000 cR for 1600 MSP!!!"
"343 pls halp: my lil brother/sister/dog giftudd all my creditszzsz!!1! :("

Deputy Moonman said:
I'm definitely more partial to unlocking armor pieces by performing certain in-game requirements and achievements over a monetary system that is based solely on grinding out games.

I'm sure plenty others feel the same way, but the reality is that grinding lengthens a player's game time with a given game much longer than the former system. People will grind for that new piece of armor or rank.

With Halo 3, I wasn't as compelled to enter MM alone unless friends were on once I unlocked the armor pieces.


Ranks, XP, and credits are all just in place for a sense of progression and reward for playing the game. I'm sure the number of people playing Reach for credits and ranks far outnumbers the number of players playing Reach solely because of their undying devotion to everything Bungie.
 
Striker said:
Halo 1 and Halo 2 were close together and when they remade much of the maps on the game: Blood Gulch to Coagulation, Battle Creek to Beaver Creek, Wizard to Warlock, Hang 'em High to Tombstone, Derelict to Desolation, and Longest to Elongation, they all improved the past iterations. It made for faster gameplay and more access throughout the map. Derelict itself was a poor map but made decent with Desolation (still needed a BR start).
I never liked Tombstone and i've always thought of Derelict as the better map over Desolation. Coagulation and Blood Gulch are toss-ups because of new vehicles added to the BTB mix and a change in weapons in Halo2. I'm still a fan of certain weapons not having range restrictions, though, and i think that's what made Hang'em High and Derelict so good. Completely off topic, did anyone else ever used to say 'Derelict my balls!' when playing Halo:CE? lol that brings back LAN memories.
GhaleonEB said:
Why did ranks and XP matter?
I've never really cared for XP. XP and Credits might as well be the same thing. Ranks, on the other hand, are a reason to compete, a way to know where one stands in comparison to other players, and a status symbol that isn't just, "I've played x amount of hours look at me." I'm definitely more partial to unlocking armor pieces by performing certain in-game requirements and achievements over a monetary system that is based solely on grinding out games.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Ken said:
Think of the threads that would appear on 343i's forums and XBL inboxes:

"WTB 500,000 cR for 1600 MSP!!!"
"343 pls halp: my lil brother/sister/dog giftudd all my creditszzsz!!1! :("

LOL. I was joking about that one, but if I were to do it for serious:


1. You could only gift out a certain cap of cR per day (i'd say around 20,000cR for starters. This could be adjusted server side)

2. You could only receive a certain cap of gifted cR per day. I'd say around 5,000cR, or make it locked to your current rank. This could be adjusted server-side so it stays in line with current daily/weekly payouts.

3. You cannot be gifted cR after a certain rank. For starters, let's stop the ability after General.

4. You cannot gift until a certain minimum rank. I said Inheritor, but I could see you being able to do it starting around Eclipse or so.

5. cR gifts don't count against your daily cap.


I think that'd be fairly unboostable. The minimum and maximum ranks would make circle boosting worthless and the max daily amounts wouldn't de-entice actually completing games/dailies/weeklies.

That's probably out of reach of the Reach infrastructure though. But just a thought.


.. but then again, I'm that guy that runs around in Fable 2 gifting 5 million gold to random stranger orbs.
 

Striker

Member
FyreWulff said:
People maxed rank in Halo 2 and Halo 3 so fast that the "new car smell" ran out on the high ranks fairly quickly.
Agree about Halo 3, it was ridiculous.

I don't think many had maxed ranked in Halo 2 sans cheating. The challenge of its leveling up made players have an actual up-hill battle of getting high; at the same time you were facing off against quality opponents in MM in the typical playlist (my favorites were Team Skirmish and Big Team Battle, also shared my highest ranks in those) and with the ranks the way they were, kept having you push for more. Sure the ELO had its issues at times, but no more than what the Trueskill system has brought.

wwm0nkey said:
You know what I miss?

Header_Waterworks.jpg

&
Header_Headlong.jpg


These maps really needs to be remade.
Headlong especially has been missed in Halo 3 and Halo Reach. That one prime asymmetric map that stands alone for 1-flag and 1-bomb. Hell it was pretty damn fantastic for Slayer as well.

Waterworks is one of a kind. I felt it displayed its best assets in skirmish games, notably Assault.

I would rather those kinds of maps be re-introduced in Halo 4 rather than in the Halo CEA piece. That is, assuming Halo 4 doesn't involve any jetpacks, bubble shields, sprint, and so forth. Those work best in the classic Halo settings. Didn't somebody here mention Headlong would work better with man-cannons than the teleporters? :lol
 

FyreWulff

Member
Considering where Headlong's teleporter was, it'd probably a lot more sensible with a mancannon anyway. Especially since telefragging isn't in Reach, just like 3. It'd be way too easy to stand on the exit and block it when the offense would try to get through to the upper apartments.

I always assumed that a remake would get rid of that porter. Then you could just forge the Tele back in if you really wanted it.

Actually, if you remember, Headlong already DID have a big mancannon/airlift in the back.

Bungie always said in the vidocs around 3 that they didn't really like teleporters as they felt like a cheap/lazy solution to mobility problems. Keep in mind the last time Bungie ever put a teleporter in a new map was Relic, over 6 years ago. Highlands is the first official new Halo map with default teles in as many years.

Since then, teles only showed up in remakes of maps that already had them. And the only two remakes in Reach with teleporters are both Forge World variants (Hem and Pinnacle)

Certain Affinity actually removed the teleporters in the transition from Derelict to Desolation, and it was for the better.
 

Striker

Member
They had two airlifts in the map, one which lifted you up to the BR area behind the base, and the other was beneath the Beam Rifle spawn.

Waterwork's teleporter was a great piece as it took the person across the map to grab Rockets, but it was a single path, which is better in game scenario anyway.

EDIT: Bungie put teleporters on Avalanche, though that was supposedly a "spiritual successor" ordeal. They had tons of lifts on maps in Halo 2 if you remember.

Teleporters: Beaver Creek, Coagulation, Waterworks, Containment, Relic
Lifts: Midship, Ivory Tower, Colossus, Foundation, Backwash, Desolation, Tombstone
Both: Ascension, Headlong, Warlock, Gemini,
 
Woah, when I first read:

"WTB 500,000 cR for 1600 MSP!!!"

I thought someone was suggesting that Microsoft sell credits for MS points lol! Real money for Virtual money for even virtualer money, would be awful.


Its funny you guys are talking about gifting CR when you get to Inheritor, I had the same discussion with a mate over live just yesterday, I think I would like to see a mini game where you get to bet Cr in the pre game lobby more than I would like to see gifting CR, although that could lead to a lot of boosting and so on lol.
 
I got my Bungie Swag Bag today. My Swag Bag contained a Prophet Of Regret Limited Edition action figure. (It is a Hologram version of it), 2 Halo 3 - Finish the Fight T-shirt size XL(One is brown, one is hellgray. Are both t-shirt special? I don't know.) a Halo 3: ODST lithograph from the Seattle Fan Fest 09.21.2009, the comic con Halo Reach Forge poster, Uprising poster, Graphic Novel poster.

All stuff is worth more than 30bucks. But tbh. I'm kind of jealous to the dude, who got the art stuff. :( But it's for chartiy and it is a swag bag. And I don't regret it.
 
FyreWulff said:
Bungie always said in the vidocs around 3 that they didn't really like teleporters as they felt like a cheap/lazy solution to mobility problems. Keep in mind the last time Bungie ever put a teleporter in a new map was Relic, over 6 years ago. Highlands is the first official new Halo map with default teles in as many years.

Since then, teles only showed up in remakes of maps that already had them. And the only two remakes in Reach with teleporters are both Forge World variants (Hem and Pinnacle)

Certain Affinity actually removed the teleporters in the transition from Derelict to Desolation, and it was for the better.

There are teleporters on Paradiso which is a 'new' map.
 
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