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[Devolution]

Two cents time: If you're going to throw a fit about objective holding, you might want to target those of us on HaloGAF who actually do it next time. Not throw a tantrum at those turtling until they get a better chance to arm, which there really isn't anything wrong with at all.

 

[BackdoorBeauty]

hey remember that one time when the title update came out and we got to play the beta playlist?

that was awesome

On a side note, personally, I'm (+17) Liking (+19) the playlist (+15)

85% bloom is good. It is a nice balance between rate of fire and accuracy.

0% bloom is good. I like having my shots hit where I'm aiming every time.

I'm having a hard time choosing which one I like best.

 

[reggie]

.

 

[Devolution]

See this is what I was looking for. And you make a good point. It's obviously not foolproof, but it's a suggestion to think about. With the situation where one player refuses to forfeit , obviously it wouldn't work, it's not going to be 100%, but it would surely make a difference in a lot of games. I think even the mere suggestion that the other team COULD end it at any second might make teams stop greifing and play properly.

On the idea of people prematurely ending games on purpose, I'm not sure, maybe offer bigger incentives for winning? I don't know.

Even ignoring my original idea, maybe offer better/bigger incentives to the team who scores the quickest and ends it.

This. Although there will still be those who "grief" in a sense. But it will be minimized if the act of arming/capping quicker is rewarded better.

 

[Karl2177]

Oh you people. I thought I was in the SC2 thread with the amount of qq-ing going on. If you get Objective held, too fucking bad. Play better. I think I've been objective held in Reach once, and that was because of shitty teammates being AFK. If you have people actively playing and you're getting held, either you suck or they rock.

 

[Havok]

Even ignoring my original idea, maybe offer better/bigger incentives to the team who scores the quickest and ends it.

This should have been in from the beginning. Team Objective games can and often are finished in three minutes (Zealot Neutral Bomb), and the team that demolished their opponents get 200-500 credits. People who play for the objective aren't recognized, and ultimately there's no incentive to get people who aren't part of a larger team to cooperate. They've mentioned that they couldn't institute individual rewards for players to cap flags and stuff because of griefing, but I don't see a reason there couldn't be team rewards for these things. Your team scored? Here's a bonus. Skunked the other team quickly? Double payout.

Just the other day I thought playing ctf rounds, why doesn't the opposite team have to score in the amount of time we just did?

That might be a neat variant. Time Attack CTF or something. I do feel, though, that some of the best memories I have with asymmetric objectives is when we very methodically make a setup and then the execution happens very quickly. Zanzibar Assault games were often like that. I don't want to punish people who don't get a lucky rush, but yeah, it's important to distinguish the people that don't have to throw their bodies at a flag to inch it out of a base. It's a pretty difficult situation when you think of all the moving parts involved. And a rather meaningless issue when you consider the percentage of the player base that gives a shit about objectives.

Frankly, as it is, I think that some gametype/map combinations offer too short of rounds, but that's mostly the awful way that flag contesting and Sudden Death interact. I miss having a radius to contest the flag where you'd get sudden death.

 

[Devolution]

This should have been in from the beginning. Team Objective games can and often are finished in three minutes (Zealot Neutral Bomb), and the team that demolished their opponents get 200-500 credits. People who play for the objective aren't recognized, and ultimately there's no incentive to get people who aren't part of a larger team to cooperate. They've mentioned that they couldn't institute individual rewards for players to cap flags and stuff because of griefing, but I don't see a reason there couldn't be team rewards for these things.

Just the other day I thought playing ctf rounds, why doesn't the opposite team have to score in the amount of time we just did?

 

[TheOddOne]

Psst...

Spoiler

You started it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufXf67qBcc&feature=player_detailpage#t=122s

What did I just watch? Such brilliance.

 

[thezerofire]

getting on TU, someone get on

 

[Ken]

getting on TU, someone get on

I would but it's almost midnight. ]:

 

[Booshka]

jeez, this thread, from the sounds of the Beta hoppers, I'm glad I stuck with Dark Souls all night. Great game.

 

[HiredN00bs]

Try turning off multi-kill and killstreak medals for objective games and only count slayer gametypes towards k/d stat tracking. Create more objective-centric stats and medals.

Stephen and I played a Neutral Bomb on Asylum just the other day where he had a similar complaint, and I didn't agree with him that they were necessarily avoiding the objective. They did appear to have a significant advantage over us, and they did, very slowly, push towards our base, but this is a gray area when it comes to the topic. It's simply not the same as holding cap 3 right next to the plate while your elite squad spawn-camps a handicapped team. Nor is it the same as choosing to not endlessly throw yourself into the death pit in a multi-team game of Crazy King on Swordbase.

We can all agree that "griefing" is generally a bad thing in online gaming, and those that care about the game should be opposed to it. Population directly affects match quality in Halo's MM systems, so let's try and be at the very least civil towards our fellow players. Play against others as you would have them play against you. Message others as you would have them message you. I'm saying this to myself and my friends, foremost, but these are good practices for all of us to engage in if we want to improve the community.

 

[xxjuicesxx]

Try turning off multi-kill and killstreak medals for objective games and only count slayer gametypes towards k/d stat tracking. Create more objective-centric stats and medals.

No, slaying is just as important in objective as it is in Slayer gametypes. Go try winning a game without killing. Seriously. Its hard.

 

[thezerofire]

goddammit why will no one vote for Slayer DMRs? it's all "herp derp maybe if we vote none of the above we'll get zero bloom. Nope, all Slayer."

 

[Steelyuhas]

goddammit why will no one vote for Slayer DMRs? it's all "herp derp maybe if we vote none of the above we'll get zero bloom. Nope, all Slayer."

The grass is always greener on the other side.

 

[thezerofire]

Dear Based God, save me from the randoms

 

[HiredN00bs]

No, slaying is just as important in objective as it is in Slayer gametypes. Go try winning a game without killing. Seriously. Its hard.

It's important but it's only the primary objective in Slayer, and the in-game medals are predominantly focused on multikills and killstreaks, perhaps because these are inherent to all other variants. However, I believe it has the unintended effect of detracting from the primary objective in non-Slayer variants.

What if, instead of reporting multikills, the game reported opportune times to push/defend. Like if your team had 4 alive and the other team had 2 dead, Steitzer said "advantage" to the up team and "disadvantage" to the down team. This is just a rough idea of pointing players' attention more towards the objective rather than just killing.

 

[FyreWulff]

Gettin' on like Untrademarked Kong

 

[Tunavi]

 

[stephen08]

No, slaying is just as important in objective as it is in Slayer gametypes. Go try winning a game without killing. Seriously. Its hard.

In an objective game slaying should be the means in which to advance the objective. Slaying for the sake of slaying (or in some cases in lieu of completing the objective) are not intended avenues of play unless the game is something like 2 Flag Slayer. Thus, this is something that needs to be addressed.

 

[thezerofire]

In an objective game slaying should be the means in which to advance the objective. Slaying for the sake of slaying (or in some cases in lieu of completing the objective) are not intended avenues of play unless the game is something like 2 Flag Slayer. Thus, this is something that needs to be addressed.

what then do you propose? you can't force people to play the objective, all you can do is try to add incentives for doing so. But you shouldn't take away the incentives to slay to do so.

 

[stephen08]

what then do you propose? you can't force people to play the objective, all you can do is try to add incentives for doing so. But you shouldn't take away the incentives to slay to do so.

I outlined a couple of ways to alleviate objective holding earlier. I agree that the removal of slayer based medals seems like a step in the wrong direction and would make the countermeasures more akin to failsafes if a match degenerates into a griefing situation.

 

[Devolution]

I'll be honest I don't think there is enough objective "griefing" to warrant a stripping of medals and such. Like be honest, of all of the objective games you play, how often do you run into so-called "holders." Is it really that common?

 

[thezerofire]

It seems like all you really need is a credit bonus when you score the objective, and a higher credit payout when you win in a little amount of time. Doesn't seem that difficult.

 

[wwm0nkey]

This was over on the gaming side but this picture was found in the Real Steel trailer, it has the Xbox 720 logo

Picture

I know the movie takes place in the future but all those other logos are still relevant in today.

 

[Photolysis]

In an objective game slaying should be the means in which to advance the objective. Slaying for the sake of slaying (or in some cases in lieu of completing the objective) are not intended avenues of play unless the game is something like 2 Flag Slayer. Thus, this is something that needs to be addressed.

Yet suggesting that multi kill medals be disabled is a bad idea. In fact, the notion that "hey you got a double kill but there's a flag on the map so it doesn't count" is asinine. Players like skillful play to be acknowledged, and get pissed off when it doesn't. Just like I was pissed off when my 16-0 Perfection didn't count because the game fucked up the other day.

People barely play objective games in Reach, even less than in H3 (compare that to the strong Team Skirmish playlist in H2). Why? Because of the badly designed credit system that encourages kill farming. There's no incentive to pick up the flag and cap it because there's no reward. Of course, bad gametypes with crazy AAs like drop shields don't/didn't help.

Now, if the playlist had visible ranks I'd be prepared to bet a lot of players would play more competitively and start going for objectives.

Players should get an additional reward for running the flag, but of course what will happen is players betraying to cap it themselves (or prevent them from getting their credits to grief), or shooting them to drop their shields and make them an easy target for the opposing team.

Overall this is a good lesson on how to break something that didn't really need fixing.

 

[FyreWulff]

This was over on the gaming side but this picture was found in the Real Steel trailer, it has the Xbox 720 logo

Picture

I know the movie takes place in the future but all those other logos are still relevant in today.

ggs earlier in the TUBP

 

[Nutter]

I honestly dont know why people still respond/talk to people like Stephen.

But hey what do i know, I hardly post in this Halo-Honor thread.

 

[Ramirez]

I can't be the only one that goes into the game wanting the other team to pop in CoD after we're done because of how bad I donged on them, can I?

 

[Nutter]

I can't be the only one that goes into the game wanting the other team to pop in CoD after we're done because of how bad I donged on them, can I?

No you are not alone.

 

[stephen08]

I'll be honest I don't think there is enough objective "griefing" to warrant a stripping of medals and such. Like be honest, of all of the objective games you play, how often do you run into so-called "holders." Is it really that common?

Not very often, but people here tend to be towards the upper end of the spectrum of skill. The fact that it is completely unenjoyable for half of the players involved when it does occur though is reason enough to address it.

 

[Ramirez]

Not very often, but people here tend to be towards the upper end of the spectrum of skill. The fact that's completely unenjoyable for half of the players involved when it does occur though is reason enough to address it.

How about they address people quitting, for every time I've prolonged an objective game, I've had to endure 100 games of finding 1 person who won't quit out.

 

[stephen08]

How about they address people quitting, for every time I've prolonged an objective game, I've had to endure 100 games of finding 1 person who won't quit out.

They did, with the quitter ban. But I agree, more should be done. That being said, the problem to address first is griefing. If you let people hold the flag and spawn kill but punish someone who quits out of that something is very wrong.

 

[Ramirez]

They did, with the quitter ban. But I agree, more should be done. That being said, the problem to address first is griefing. If you let people hold the flag and spawn kill but punish someone who quits out of that something is very wrong.

Not really, the quit ban does nothing, people quit out more than they did in Halo 3. Not to mention the system can't detect the difference between a quit, and a legit connection issue, nor does it track a players history. If I have 3K games of not quitting, but my connection craps out 3-4 times in a day, I should not be getting a quit ban.

Do what Gears does, deduct a chunk of those sweet sweet credits.

 

[Devolution]

Not really, the quit ban does nothing, people quit out more than they did in Halo 3. Not to mention the system can't detect the difference between a quit, and a legit connection issue, nor does it track a players history. If I have 3K games of not quitting, but my connection craps out 3-4 times in a day, I should not be getting a quit ban.

Do what Gears does, deduct a chunk of those sweet sweet credits.

Didn't some people even get penalized for Score Attack quitting? Lul.

 

[Nutter]

Didn't some people even get penalized for Score Attack quitting? Lul.

No

 

[Devolution]

No

Good. But some of the quit bans have been pretty funny. Especially since they still carry over to people who were completely abandoned by team mates.

 

[lazybones18]

Tried out the TU Beta playlist, only managed to play one match with no bloom. I guess the no bloom is alright, but I never saw the big deal with bloom anyway, or really cared for that matter

And in one of my SWAT games, one person on my team was a kill away from getting the Perfection medal

 

[stephen08]

Not really, the quit ban does nothing, people quit out more than they did in Halo 3. Not to mention the system can't detect the difference between a quit, and a legit connection issue, nor does it track a players history. If I have 3K games of not quitting, but my connection craps out 3-4 times in a day, I should not be getting a quit ban.

Do what Gears does, deduct a chunk of those sweet sweet credits.

I would disagree. It's possible more people would quit out on you now than they did in Halo 3 but that wouldn't necessarily be true for the population at large.

Also, if you are having connection issues that consistently you absolutely should get hit with it. Does it make a difference to people in the game whether you quit out or lagged out?

In general I would shy away from using the incentive system to penalize players. Mostly because I think it would be ineffective. People will still quit out if they aren't having fun and people will still be dicks and hold the objective on people. The fixes should be things that directly counter those behaviors not an attempted incentive driven behavioral modifier. Inevitably you will get instances where either A. people just don't care about the economy anymore (ie max rank or apathy towards the system in general) or B. derive more joy from the unwanted behavior than they get from the otherwise earned credits.

 

[Blue Ninja]

My solution (for well, at least part of thr problem) would be to just get rid of anything that resembles rank or credits. Have a trueskill system active behind the scenes, but have no visual indicators of it. Tie armor and other stuff to campaign achievements, cause I would ditch multiplayer achievements while I'm at it. But hey, I'm a SP nut, what do I know, right. :lol

Plus, this wouldn't deal with the pecentage of people that do this stuff nott o farm credits, but because they're goddamn jerks. I dunno, maybe catapult those fuckers into the sun, do the rest of humanity a service.

 

[FyreWulff]

My solution (for well, at least part of thr problem) would be to just get rid of anything that resembles rank or credits. Have a trueskill system active behind the scenes, but have no visual indicators of it. Tie armor and other stuff to campaign achievements, cause I would ditch multiplayer achievements while I'm at it. But hey, I'm a SP nut, what do I know, right. :lol

Plus, this wouldn't deal with the pecentage of people that do this stuff nott o farm credits, but because they're goddamn jerks. I dunno, maybe catapult those fuckers into the sun, do the rest of humanity a service.

No publisher is going to let you release an FPS in this day and age without some sort of progression system. Sad to say that Perfect Dark XBLA's online probably would have not been a ghost town even though it was the #3 selling title of 2010, outselling Monday Night Combat, if they had implemented a CoD/Reach/Gears style progression system.

 

[Blue Ninja]

Too true, sadly. The system, as is, though, seems inherently flawed to me: people will rape their own mothers just so they can increase that number or symbol beside their name.

Gears 1 didn't have a progression system, though, I seem to recall, and that managed to maintain a healthy player population for a long time. It did have a crapton of glitchers in the early days, though. Those people are catapult fodder.

 

[Photolysis]

My solution (for well, at least part of thr problem) would be to just get rid of anything that resembles rank or credits.

Ditching the credits system, I would be all over.

Have a trueskill system active behind the scenes, but have no visual indicators of it

Bad move. To be sure, having a visible rank/skill/whatever causes its own problems like cheaters and derankers, but it does have benefits as well.

Trueskill is active in 'unranked' playlists in Reach, and was also enabled for 'unranked' playlists in H3 (and H2 also had invisible ranks in those playlists), but games were far more competitive when there was a visual rank. The few times I played the Arena seemed reasonably competitive, but the ranking system was so utterly flawed (and still is AFAIK).

I think the Halo 2 system based on ELO worked best actually. You could play with higher ranked friends if you wanted without having obscene wait times because the system would raise your level for the purposes of calculation (a level 1 playing with level 25 friends would be treated as a level 20 say). Because there was no uncertainty in the system players would not continuously lose to raise this figure to a very high value, allowing them to obtain the highest rank in about 5 games of winning.

Trueskill, despite supposedly being far superior only ended up causing more problems with no real improvement.

 

[MrBig]

I'm nestled on my bed with a jug of cranberry juice and the new Sparkast. Please make this night better, Sir David of Elliston.

Am sick and taking a much needed day off. This better be good

 

[The Henery]

Yeah that's fine, as long we are dispensing with the pleasantries. I have absolutely no doubt that you were holding the objective. All of your kills occurred on your half of the map, same with master fox, same with striker.

There is simply no way your team went that positive and could not put up a plant until the last 30 seconds of sudden death. Couple that with how much of a dick you are being on here about it and I have no trouble believing that's what you did.

It's not a big deal to me since I only went -2 overall. But hey, thanks for making the game miserable for Sliced Bread, the person I came in with. That's what really annoys me about the whole situation.

Halo at the highest level plays out like this. I've seen countless MLG games on the main stage where one team outslayed the other heavily yet lost overall. Do you think Pistola see's a hundred grand winning flag cap but goes 'lol no, don't cap yet, I'm about to get a running riot!'?

 

[Blue Ninja]

Ditching the credits system, I would be all over.





Bad move. To be sure, having a visible rank/skill/whatever causes its own problems like cheaters and derankers, but it does have benefits as well.

Trueskill is active in 'unranked' playlists in Reach, and was also enabled for 'unranked' playlists in H3 (and H2 also had invisible ranks in those playlists), but games were far more competitive when there was a visual rank. The few times I played the Arena seemed reasonably competitive, but the ranking system was so utterly flawed (and still is AFAIK).

I think the Halo 2 system based on ELO worked best actually. You could play with higher ranked friends if you wanted without having obscene wait times because the system would raise your level for the purposes of calculation (a level 1 playing with level 25 friends would be treated as a level 20 say). Because there was no uncertainty in the system players would not continuously lose to raise this figure to a very high value, allowing them to obtain the highest rank in about 5 games of winning.

Trueskill, despite supposedly being far superior only ended up causing more problems with no real improvement.

perhaps have it work similarly to Halo 3 after it changed, then? Have a ranking that's only visible in certain playlists, like the Arena done right. Have no visible ranking system in the 'social' playlists.

 

[Homeboyd]

What's the deal with the golden ranger elite challenges with random cR rewards? We're getting a bunch of those lately and today's payout is about half of the norm for 343.

 

[Hypertrooper]

It's a fake, but the menu looks really good imo.

 

[FyreWulff]

That person should get a job working on UIs. But a retail game isn't going to have a Quit to Dashboard menu option, that's only for Arcade titles, and it'd say "Quit to Arcade" or "Quit to Game Library" at that.

 

[Blue Ninja]

What's the deal with the golden ranger elite challenges with random cR rewards? We're getting a bunch of those lately and today's payout is about half of the norm for 343.

I dunno, maybe they felt like those BOBs needed some exposure.

Halo Reach: BOB expansion confirmed.