Blue Ninja
Member
Hooray for Holland and Belgium, I say.Tha Robbertster said:
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Halo: Reach |OT6| There Are Those Who Said This Day Would Never Come
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
- Start date
Blue Ninja
Member
I have a 48-hour Gold code from Gears 3, so I'll definitely be playing some TU customs this weekend. :lol
It's like predicting the sun will rise.wwm0nkey said:
I'll tinker with the custom game type and certainly hop in for some custom games, but I'm planning a second romp through Deus Ex (gonna get the last three endings tonight, then play again on hard setting), so I probably won't be back on Reach that much until the Beta Hopper hits.
A27_StarWolf
Banned
GhaleonEB said:
Remember those tweets you had about hating the game?
Yeah, I do
I still hate everything I said I hate about it. I don't take one of them back. The difference is, 1) the game lets you do fun things in a larger context after the first couple hours, and 2) some of the perks get rid of the stuff I hated.A27_StarWolf said:Remember those tweets you had about hating the game?
Yeah, I do
You literally can't aim straight from the start of the game. As in, you point your gun at the enemy, and the targeting reticule is floating around, making it hard to hit the target. It's a mind-boggling decision to make a stable targeting reticule a perk, much less one with multiple levels (crazy, semi-stable, and stable). Not being able to aim straight is not fun!
Imagine if bloom affecting not just the size of the reticule, but the location. That's how Deus Ex starts.
Zeouterlimits
Member
For Irish-GAF, seems it's Gamestop who has the Grunt Birthday Party Skull Pre-Order bonus, if you weren't already aware.
37.97 off the website, I'd say 40 or 45 (they tend to be douche-y) in store.
Game, well the website at least, has the mini art book out of 10 Years of Halo as the pre-order bonus.
37.97 off the website, I'd say 40 or 45 (they tend to be douche-y) in store.
Game, well the website at least, has the mini art book out of 10 Years of Halo as the pre-order bonus.
Blue Ninja
Member
It's something a lot of RPG's have done in the past, though, and as far as I can tell, Deux EX: HR is pretty much an RPG. Fallout 3 and New Vegas definitely did it, too. Not saying it's a terribly good idea, but that's the point of an RPG: making your character better.GhaleonEB said:
See, I think it's a really bad way to balance a game. A lot of games have iron sights as well, which I think are terrible and so I avoid games that feature them.Blue Ninja said:
There's not a planet in the universe on which it's fun to play game where part of the game is, "guess where your shot lands!".
With Deus Ex, you start as a component stealth character, and the perks make you an awesome one. But you start as a horrible combat character - lots of recoil, can't aim straight (seriously, the fuck?) - and the perks make you competent. The developers couldn't find a way to start us out as competent without adding the kind of penalties that I strongly detest. Their go-to solution is to make things hard to do through the mechanics and what we can see, rather than make the enemies smart or interesting.
Shoot a gun without the recoil perks? The screen shakes violently. (And even after, for some weapons.) Get shot? The screen shakes violently. Try to aim straight without the stability perk? Reticule floats around. Get shot a lot? Screen floods red.
None of those things are fun, and if I wasn't allowed to one-punch hobos and stuff ventilation ducts full of drugged cops while raiding their desks and reading their private emails, I'd have stopped playing early on. Deus Ex is a game whose combat mechanics I endure, rather than savor, because what I get to do with them is fun. But that's a really bad way to design a game.
It's the difference between balancing a weapon so it has an ideal firing range and situational usage, and making that weapon clumsy and awkward to use by making the reticule expand when you shoot it, which renders follow-up shots a crapshoot. Oh wait....
The Librarian
Banned
Predicting Thursday/Friday for the gametype.wwm0nkey said:
Edit: Gears 3 LE is really nice.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
GhaleonEB said:
Comparing DX combat to Bloom. So. Right.
So jarring that we we can have games of the calibre of DX and Halo and yet one of the same core gameplay elements they share are pretty much night and day.
bobs...onGaf
Member
Exterminations... These cant be anywhere close to the best of the bunch?
http://halo.xbox.com/en-us/intel/fe...inations/b7b0122e-566e-4a8c-9217-8708c0e47c2d
I mean the double exterm at the end only happened because of the fact 3 enemies spawned literally right in front of him, directly where he was looking. I would have been a lot more impressed if he anticipated the spawns and went running to it, rather than carried on walking forward and just shot rockets lol.
I pulled of a extermination with a couple of nades on sword base, I was actually more like wtf than proud of it, and yet this video seems to be full of 5 of those kinds of exterms. I have yet to see one which hasnt required extreme use of explosives. Someone must have a elegant extermination on Reach right? I know the MLG playlist would lend itself to something which looks better.
http://halo.xbox.com/en-us/intel/fe...inations/b7b0122e-566e-4a8c-9217-8708c0e47c2d
I mean the double exterm at the end only happened because of the fact 3 enemies spawned literally right in front of him, directly where he was looking. I would have been a lot more impressed if he anticipated the spawns and went running to it, rather than carried on walking forward and just shot rockets lol.
I pulled of a extermination with a couple of nades on sword base, I was actually more like wtf than proud of it, and yet this video seems to be full of 5 of those kinds of exterms. I have yet to see one which hasnt required extreme use of explosives. Someone must have a elegant extermination on Reach right? I know the MLG playlist would lend itself to something which looks better.
Rickenslacker
Banned
Most weapons have perfect accuracy right out of the gate, but scoping results in sway. I think it might just be the few weapons you chose to use, but the majority of them don't require any augs to be proficient with them. There aren't many scoped weapons in the game either.GhaleonEB said:
I thought the aug for stable scoping was fine, in the original you couldn't use anything worth a damn without skillpoint allocation other than explosives or melee weaponry.
I remember once in H3 me and my brother were playing Assault on Snowbound. He ended up getting an extermination using one clip of the Assault Rifle. He only had one beat-down, the rest were lucky clean-up kills with the AR. Then he died because the bomb exploded.bobs99 ... said:
It was still pretty awesome.
Just coming down from a 3 day (rental) Deus EX bender. My only complaint is related to your above post, yet with a slightly different focus.GhaleonEB said:
The developers promised that no one would be penalized for playing the game the way they wanted to play it. For my first pass i was going for 100% Stealthy/Hacker with the goal of getting the Pacifist and Foxiest of the Hounds achievements, and the maximum EXP points per mission. There wasn't a door or computer left unhacked in all of Detroit.
All was going perfectly to plan until the first BOSS BATTLE where, due to my stealthy inventory of a stun gun and a tranq rifle, i felt like i had just entered a tank battle armed with nothing but a wet rolled up newspaper, and wearing nothing but a (soon to be soiled) diaper.
I ended up having to go back 3 saves and playing the game in a completely different way than i had intended, just for the sake of one BOSS.
Rickenslacker
Banned
Yeah, it really is the stain on an otherwise incredible game. They didn't even get fleshed out as characters, so that's doubly disappointing. Contrast to the original game where you could flat out run away from boss encounters, and the one that locked you in a room was possible to bypass with a speech option.NOKYARD said:
They do leave appropriate gear within the vicinity of the bossfight if you're badly equipped, but it's lame all the same.
Disagree.Rickenslacker said:
Let me explain what I mean with an illustration.
Let's say we start out such that all weapons have iron sights, which are stable. The first Praxis in the Precision tree updates our skills from iron sights to the full-screen smartlinked scope, similar to what we see with the sniper (or Halo) weapons.
Second Praxis doubles the magnification of the scope for those weapons. That would let us start with solid aiming mechanics, but then let us gain skills to use them better.
Instead, we start with gimped aiming mechanics and the Praxis make them normal.
The difficulty in using a weapon should come from their situational usage, ammo scarcity, and the capabilities and characteristics of the enemies. Not through artificial mechanics such as a roaming reticule. This is why I love Halo, don't play most other shooters - and hate bloom in Reach.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
NOKYARD said:
The TU variant have not been confirmed for release tomorrow, only the TU itself. Last word was a few days afterwards.
And the GT is HaloWaypoint
Edit: I mean variant. As in one single gametype - which they haven't told us about (what changes it will have).
Rickenslacker
Banned
I'm alright with the way it is because I feel like it ends up being a necessity with the overarching design approach. In your case, you would suggest adding greater magnification. I feel that with the levels as they are that would be excessive. Your shots still land in the crosshair, but you end up having to finetune it a lot more because of the sway, the progression with the augs into a fixed aim ends up showing just how powerful a utility that is. But most other weapons that you ADS are already perfectly accurate from the start. Going in for straight combat you could take a pistol and aim while in cover and peek out to instantly shoot straight where you aimed for, without any augs.GhaleonEB said:
I'm fine with such concessions because I don't take it as an FPS game, and I think that significantly alters your expectations going into it. I don't see combat scenarios in the same way as I would say a Halo game where I want to just mow everything down in quick succession. In fact I find HR a tad too forgiving in a lot of cases, but that's more to do with close range encounters.
They would certainly help. You can even chuck the extinguishers at him from that area, and I believe there are siderooms in the boss encounter that have some mines and weapon lockers that you can clean out.NOKYARD said:
Hitmonchan107
Member
Paging Dr. Letters, paging Dr. Letters:
The patient just called. He said he'll be there in a day or two.
The patient just called. He said he'll be there in a day or two.
I think you lost the forest for the tree of my illustration. My objection is about muddying game mechanics in order to create a perk, rather than relying on the strength of the underlying game.Rickenslacker said:
The analog to this would be to take a side scrolling platformer and make the jumping mechanics really sloppy and hard to control, such that precision jumps are very hard to nail. And then create a perk tree that lets you upgrade those sloppy controls away.
Alternately, you could have a platformer where the jumping mechanic is nice and precise, and the game is made difficult through level design.
That is what Deus Ex does: gunplay is sloppy and imprecise, but you can make it play as a normal game plays by spending Praxis to fix the gunplay.
To broaden this out again, my objection is through adding difficulty by removing our ability to have precise game controls. I think that's a cheap, terrible way to balance games. To me, it is the opposite of fun. It's cheap because it's a lot easier to make a game difficult by screwing with our ability to aim straight than it is to make smart AI, well balanced weapons and interesting encounters. I'm so exasperated by what Deus Ex does because the BS they introduce with recoil and sway are not needed - they have a solid game to build on. But they muddy the game mechanics anyways.
And to try once again to link this back to Halo - the series never had to rely on that sort of thing because it had great encounters, well balance weapons and smart AI. Which is what makes the addition of bloom so galling.
tl;dr version: The gunplay itself should not be difficult. The difficulty should emerge from the context, not the mechanics.
You may like sloppy game mechanics, but regardless of genre, it's a cheap design crutch that I avoid like the plague.
ElRenoRaven
Member
I am in the Halo: Reach thread right?
Yes. I'm even making all of my posts on the subject dovetail directly into Reach. I've objected to bloom at length before, but have never taken the time to explain exactly why I dislike it, from a game design perspective. I was taking the opportunity that Deus Ex presented to make that point. All done now.PsychoRaven said:
(And incidentally, I've been meaning to post this in the DX thread - it just spilled out here. But now that I have the bits and pieces...)
Going to a Return to Forever concert at the Greek Theater tonight, SO EXCITED!MrBig said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3s3dne0d8Q
GhaleonEB said:
I haven't had anywhere near the same experience. The reticule movement is barely perceptible and the recoil is no more than in any other shooter. I honestly didn't even notice the reticule wander for the first hour or so until I got curious and hunkered down in one spot with my gun pointed at a couch an enemy was hiding behind. I have had zero trouble popping multiple foes in the skull in quick succession without a single point in any combat augmentation. It's one of the things I've been so impressed by in the game. I've been doing a mostly stealthy run, but I like that there's a fully functional, and fun, shooter lurking in there should I decide to play that way.
All i have to go on is the THE HALO BULLETIN: 9/14/11Dani said:
Specifically, we (AGLA/GrifballHUB) need to preview the new damage settings (shield bleed-through) in a Neutral Assault variant in order to work on the new matchmaking Grifball variant. From the above statement i can't tell which variant(s) they will be posting.
No complaints from me in that department. Likely because i have not yet fired a single bullet. I learned from the first game that you may kill every soldier in a mission only to find out later they were actually allies. All the letters of condolence i had to write after Liberty Island...GhaleonEB said:
Rickenslacker
Banned
While mulling over the platforming analogy, I don't necessarily feel it applies because that would suggest that HR would then be a pure FPS, but really you don't even need to fire a shot for just about any of the game if you choose not to.GhaleonEB said:
I think that's where the divide comes in, and HR doesn't feel or play like a traditional FPS would. Though I don't consider it sloppy to have weapon kickback or scope sway, other non-RPG FPS games incorporate those as well and to great success such as Call of Duty. The more methodical approach to HR encounters doesn't leave you doing any fast paced quick-scope sniper shots, you can spot out enemy paths, you can pace your approach accordingly. The aug comes as an added convenience, but not as a mandatory upgrade. Like I said, a lot of the weapons perform perfectly without it.
Though that isn't to say I wouldn't want the gunplay of HR to be as strong as the best in the FPS genre, or the stealth to be as strong as the Thief games, and so on. But I just haven't seen a game put so much on its plate and perform it all as competently so I can't complain y'know?
The original Deus Ex is one of my favourite games of all time, but it's not the sum of its parts either. They later patched in a competitive multiplayer mode and it's one of the worst I've ever played lol.
Also, yeah, sorry about this diversion guys I find the discussion interesting and don't know where else to put it. PM me if you want further responses I suppose?
Rickenslacker
Banned
To the Deus Ex thread.GhaleonEB said:Maybe the Deux Ex thread?
Nah.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
NOKYARD said:
Yeah dude.
Whatever shortly means. We don't know if changes like bleed-through are unique to special gametypes, as I imagined that kind of thing to be universal. Unless they are replacing every MM variant.
I believe the new features are activated within the new variants since they will be running the beta playlist alongside the regular playlist. Once the beta is complete, and the proper settings confirmed, the new variants will be replacing the existing variants.Dani said:
Suppose i could just wait till the next bulletin for my answer.
One of my teammates was caught with this illegal substance.Tunavi said:
Unless it's not popular in the beta hoppers (lol yeah right) it's very likely that it will be in every slayer/objective playlist. Just like the tweaked armor abilities and slightly reduced bloom. They won't keep old Reach around alongside a better version of it, that's just confusing and redundant.FyreWulff said:
Hydranockz
Member
What difficulty? Having trouble seeing it.Havok said: