Bregmann Roche
Member
At this point they've gone full-blown conspiracy theorist. Once someone crosses that line, they aren't coming back. See also: End of World Cults.
Super Bowl ad or tacked on to a major movie release makes the most sense to me.
-
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 |OT7| What are They to Say Now?
- Thread starter The Librarian
- Start date
At this point they've gone full-blown conspiracy theorist. Once someone crosses that line, they aren't coming back. See also: End of World Cults.
Super Bowl ad or tacked on to a major movie release makes the most sense to me.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
K
kittens
Unconfirmed Member
wtf wtf wtffffffff I don't know being this correct was even POSSIBLE.
Just kidding, your opinion is terrible.
I'm getting on for a few games, someone invite me pls. <3
The CMT guys have always done some really crazy (and cool) stuff. Anyone with Custom Edition should check out their work, even if only for the novelty. What they've managed to do technically (with stuff like Open Sauce) seems incredibly impressive.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
Used to roll with the CMT crew back in the day, while some of the design choices i dont feel capture halo as i would like its truly awesome work.
Halo CE is open sorce now?
Devolution
Member
I'm so drunk and playing SSf4 against timedog, what is this I don't even.
Barrow Roll
Member
That looks amazing. Gotta get me some of that when it's released.
Honestly with enough effort they could probably make their own Halo Anniversary (with original MP)
biosnake20
Member
xxjuicesxx
Member
Beat CE. Worst halo campaign ever. Bored the shit out of me.
Who wants an anny map pack code? Everyone in the channel already has it Ibelieve.
Who wants an anny map pack code? Everyone in the channel already has it Ibelieve.
biosnake20
Member
ill take it
Hypertrooper
Member
You are drunk at the wrong times.
YOU DIDN'T EVEN PLAY LEGENDARY
Bregmann Roche
Member
It's better this way. Unless there's a BR on Legendary he made the right choice.
I would beat your ass in SSFIV but I know it would be laggy because you're on the West Coast.
I actually watched him play. He shit on elites like recuits in Reach. No wonder it was boring
xxjuicesxx
Member
No it was the repetitive level design, backtracking through levels, fighting waves and waves and waves of the same enemy that made it shit. Not the difficulty. Heroic was fine it was tough at parts, in fact too tough at parts, it made me forced to play like a bitch when all I wanted to do was have fun and rambo through the levels, I should have done normal for the viewers pleasure because I had to play several parts too many times over.
KidA Seven
Member
Dat challenge. Stream that shit if it ever goes down.
Legendary is an entirely different game, its so god damn hard that you have to plan out your attacks like they are military strategies, thats one of the reasons why I love it so much
On another note, thanks to Zeouterlimits for inviting me to the big bash yesterday
My connection crapped out though, while freaking playing 4 hours and at that moment it happens. My luck man.
343 don't let MLG touch Halo 4, they will ruin it for themselves lol
xxjuicesxx
Member
You have to understand that as a company giving early access to a bunch of players is going to yield happy results. Did you honestly ask them to seriously contemplate and give them the time to understand the gameplay?
Or did you give them a little bit of early access and ask them if they enjoyed it? Then they got to brag about how cool the new settings and game was to everyone else who didn't play it? Only further perpetuating that the gameplay was amazing.
Juices wouldn't fall for that shit, if it sucked he would say it sucked right to your face. He would shit on you in real life. Just as he would here.
Think about it.
Or did you give them a little bit of early access and ask them if they enjoyed it? Then they got to brag about how cool the new settings and game was to everyone else who didn't play it? Only further perpetuating that the gameplay was amazing.
Juices wouldn't fall for that shit, if it sucked he would say it sucked right to your face. He would shit on you in real life. Just as he would here.
Think about it.
Keep telling yourself that
You trully speak my mind.Keep telling yourself that
It's kind of getting creepy dawg.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
Iv heard this before from urk aswell, the problem lies with letting a few pro's decide what the entire hardcore player base wants.
I understand its not optimal to test it with 100's of people and thats where the problem lies.
Do you trust the minority who are invited to test the game?
Its a no win situation. Personally i think bloom was a bad move and so are AA's. Hopefully lessons learnt i can see the appeal from a dev and a community side for a "4th leg of fun" like AA's or Equipment but i also feel that the 4th leg the majority of the time does more to distract from the core gameplay that improve it.
Equipment was less invasion that AA's and its why i think the future of halo should build upon that system. Movement based AA's for example should not carry over, despite problems that come about because of their nature they offset player equality too much when reusable.
Things like Bubble Shield, Health Regen, Camo, Overshield ect as pick ups do work and some like bubble shield could even be resuable provided they have a large enough cool down.
For me core halo is all about spawning exactly the same as the next guy and using things like map knowledge and player skill to get the advantage not getting it because i can spawn with a jetpack and fly above the crowd raining down death.
I actually considered this may of been a factor aswell.
Are you my alt account? lol
I've never had a problem with bloom because I figured out how to pace my shots properly after the first couple of days. What I think was a bad move was letting people fire the gun at the full speed without bloom.
Of course, I was told that I was overreacting when I complained about the DMR being allowed to fire at full speed with no bloom in the reveal video and, and then later it was revealed it was out of scope for the TU anyway, and ended up playing exactly like the reveal video showed. If they had decided bloom was just beyond the ability of the Halo playerbase to understand, locking the DMR at the no-bloom firing pace it already had would have been just fine and left the entire sandbox intact. But I guess it was more interesting to make the pistol impossible to figure out.
Of course, I was told that I was overreacting when I complained about the DMR being allowed to fire at full speed with no bloom in the reveal video and, and then later it was revealed it was out of scope for the TU anyway, and ended up playing exactly like the reveal video showed. If they had decided bloom was just beyond the ability of the Halo playerbase to understand, locking the DMR at the no-bloom firing pace it already had would have been just fine and left the entire sandbox intact. But I guess it was more interesting to make the pistol impossible to figure out.
StalkerUKCG
Banned
Me and Hired discussed this in your absences the other day, if its any consolation i too think a larger cap on the DMR needs to be put in place for ZBS game types. The kill time is slightly too quick.
Blue Ninja
Member
Shake Appeal
Member
Wasn't this already known? I am curious whether they played it before or after the public beta, though. Also, bloom works as intended over a LAN.
If they want no-bloom on the DMR, then it needs to be locked to the firing rate where the reticule resets and then immediately lets you pull the trigger again. No faster, no slower. What you get is a zero bloom DMR that behaves with the rest of the sandbox.
They could do the same with the ZB Pistol, and they probably could since they can adjust the pistol's ROF with the TU, but apparently not the DMR.
As it stands however, in Zero Bloom the pistol moots the DMR, the Needle Rifle becomes a power weapon on par with the Sniper Rifle and Rockets, and most of the sandbox goes down the toilet as nobody wants to pick up anything else.
edit:
I would assume it was from before. The same bullet magnetism and autoaim is in effect on LAN just like Live, and in fact both LIVE and LAN are using the same async networking with dead reckoning and all that in full effect. LAN just has a more reliable datarate, but even that wouldn't matter much since bloom is client side, not host-side. Hence why Reach 1.0 and Reach 1.1 cannot play with each other, because Reach 1.0 clients wouldn't be able to understand the CE Magnum mode or the zero bloom DMR/NR/Pistol.
(why did that part of my post disappear? quick edit don sploded)
Shake Appeal
Member
It's not a networking problem, it's a perceptual problem. As latency increases, bloom has a multiplier effect on the disconnect I feel between my actions and the results. If I am firing with no bloom, the only issue is latency, which after fifteen years of online shooters, I am more or less used to. If I am firing with a flared-out reticle, my perception of where that 'bullet' has 'gone' is worsened even further because there are now two unknown variables (where the bullet actually landed, where the target actually was when I fired) playing together.
Bungie continue to test largely over LANs and over the Internet as far as, well, other parts of Seattle. Like any developer, I imagine when they do testing of suboptimal networking conditions it's considered a networking problem, not a game design problem. The question becomes "is this a fair approximation of what the game is designed to play and feel like -- what do the numbers say -- and if not, what should we do to change or fix it?" rather than "are our design decisions fundamentally ones that do not play well with the experience of players in suboptimal (read 'typical' for those outside mainland North America) conditions, regardless of the technical 'truth' of them?" It's a qualitative problem, and most programming and networking decisions are intensely quantitative.
I love bloom in Campaign and local Firefight. I love it playing friends over a LAN. I even love it sometimes when the host is in my favour. The rest of the time, it feels like an unnecessary layer of gauze draped over an already (unavoidably) inconsistent experience. And it's the inconsistency that bothers people -- the perceived randomness.
I doubt they actually had much time to really "play" it. I may be dead wrong when I say that, but I find it hard to believe that these MLG guys actually had much of any say or had much of any time to play the game early on. It's not something they (or anyone for that matter) could just sit down and play a few games of and put their two cents in.
However, it might actually be beneficial to bring in a few of the well known MLG teams over the course of the multiplayer production, let them have a week of really playing the game against one another in their 4v4 formats or whatever, and just take their opinions on the changes/additions over the course of creating the multiplayer experience. That means that it would have made sense to bring these guys in multiple times throughout the creation process to really get a lot of good playtime in with the different multiplayer builds or whatnot.
I find it pretty silly that Urk said that to be honest. Just because they got the approval of two pros, that immediately speaks for the rest of the competitive community? It's really hard to give an opinion on this because I really have no idea how long these MLG guys got to play it beforehand, when they got to play it beforehand (as in like alpha builds or closed beta builds?), how many of these MLG guys actually got to play it, and so on. But that post by Urk made it sound like they did their best effort to really reach out to the MLG community for their feedback. I almost find that a bit disturbing that a company, such as Bungie, has to enlist help from an outside source to help create their own game... Especially after their previous two (might even be able to say three) games were so great for competitive gaming and MLG. Probably none of these MLG kids know a single thing about making a video game, and of course they are going to be awestruck when they are invited to play an early build of a new Halo game. Almost anyone in that position is going to be excited about any new changes to the game.
It is really easy to criticize now with hindsight, but if Bungie really did enlist the help of MLG for Reach, then they must have handled it pretty damn poorly. I wish we knew more of that story, but in the end how can you blame MLG? It was Bungie's game. Responsibility ultimately lands on their own shoulders.
Shake Appeal
Member
There is also a significant leap in logic that people who are skilled at Halo are necessarily going to be good at identifying and articulating gameplay changes. The best racing drivers do not also build the cars, though their feedback is doubtless useful to engineers.
Send kylej in.
edit-
I imagine the community reputation of those two "pros" being mentioned that went in and loved Reach and gave awful feedback before release is dropping at fast rates.
You don't have to tell them what sucks, just tell them what is wrong and what needs improvement. Pretty sure they would like actual feedback rather than people not telling them what is wrong with the product.
Does Juices even like any single player games? lol
It will be done.
Shake Appeal
Member
People may not be able to tell you what is wrong or needs improvement, though, or they may think the problem is something it's not. The usefulness of feedback from any source is questionable. And if the post-TU confusion demonstrates anything, it's that making a number of changes in isolation from the larger ecosystem of the game's mechanics has wacky consequences and may result in something that doesn't play the way people expect.
As much as I'd love to see a Halo game get the kind of shakedown Starcraft II did (years in development, SC pros involved in design and balancing decisions from day one to the day of release, a five month public beta that saw eighteen patches, constant rebalancing post-release, etc.), it's all but impossible in the current environment for console gaming.
Edit: and in fact we should be intensely thankful to Bungie for being consistently one of the most forward-thinking developers when it comes to promoting things that were once PC-exclusive (online multiplayer, post-release support, patches) in the console space.