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[Azar]

Party queuing, new veto, and active roster all sound fantastic. Bypassing the guide will be so very, very nice.

 

[Striker]

No one's stopping anyone from creating additional threads. It's just there's a big "HaloGAF" community that's hardcore enough to check this thread daily, all play together, and would rather not discuss Halo with the general GAF population that, as a whole, have a irrational hatred for Halo.

I wouldn't agree and say it is the game they dislike or choose to ignore. More of rather certain posters, instead.

The only speculation and theory I have heading into the beta/full game is how this Arena set-up will work. Slayer only would be mightily disappointing. It is bad enough Slayer's percentage is high as it in Halo 3's current Squad Battle playlist, and previous in RBTB, while you would think that a playlist featuring 6v6 or 8v8 would mean large battles of Capture the Flag or Bomb planting.

Now to await bleahy's transcription.

 

[kylej]

What happens if everyone selects "None of the above" during the veto process? Does it throw everyone into a random map and gametype?

 

[urk]

What happens if everyone selects "None of the above" during the veto process? Does it throw everyone into a random map and gametype?

Grifball happens.

 

[NOKYARD]

Yes. West coast editor at Shacknews. Used to be at G4tv.com.

Did you work on the Halo 3 launch event?

 

[Sean P.]

Nobody seemed to have posted about this yet

But Urks friend says he's in custom game lobby, so custom games confirmed for Beta?

 

[bleahy]

So, the piece was getting pretty long, so I'm splitting it up into 2 segments. The first is an in-depth look on the Arena & scoring system. Coming soon!

Did you work on the Halo 3 launch event?

From the office, yes. I was not there, though.

 

[Kibbles]

Nobody seemed to have posted about this yet

But Urks friend says he's in custom game lobby, so custom games confirmed for Beta?

Please please please please please.

 

[BladedExpert]

Thanks for the info, this is the first ive heard of Be so ill check them out, im not so fussed about the customization, I just want a good consistant provider so may prefer Virgin. I was looking at Sky (the deals seem good) but customer reviews wernt.

Out of interest with Virgin do they have any sort of intrusive 'customer share' program or whatever where they limit you to speeds based on number of users online? Thats what I hate most about Tiscalli, unlimited downloading should mean that!

Virgin XXL is exempt from fair usage policy, I believe. Was the last time I checked anyway.
Other packages are not exempt but even if you get shaping/a cap slapped on you, you'll still be outperforming the majority of providers' best offers.

This. I'm on XL and I think my max download per day is something like 7GB before they start to cap me. I don't think I've ever hit that. My connection does seem to suffer at peak times but never to the point where it makes games lag (any more than usual).

The XXL package, as Bagel says, is unlimited and 50mb down and 1.5mb up is the best you're gonna get in the UK. It aint cheap though :/

edit: I'm just catching up with the Shacknews stuff but it seems they've solved a lot of the issues that came up in Halo 3. Good stuff Bungie. Can't wait to try out that Arena playlist

 

[Feel the Swift]

All of these new additions are great. They should bring back a new revised clan system.

 

[Not a Jellyfish]

Grifball happens.

Yes!!!

 

[bleahy]

Grifball happens.

I love you.

 

[NOKYARD]

From the office, yes. I was not there, though.

Cool. I was the one who sent the two speed runners to the event. I had to talk to one of their mothers to verify it was an actual event, and not some creepy internet scam.

Grifball happens.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! :lol

veto veto veto veto...

 

[Kibbles]

Grifball happens.

:lol That would be awesome.

*everyone votes "None", waits...*
*silence and black screen*
Jeff Steitzer: "Grifball!"
Everyone: "ZOMG!"

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

Grifball happens.

Seriously?

:lol :lol :lol

 

[The Librarian]

So, the piece was getting pretty long, so I'm splitting it up into 2 segments. The first is an in-depth look on the Arena & scoring system. Coming soon!

Will it be up sometime today?

 

[Oozer3993]

The backgrounds in these UI shots... are they showing the

Spoiler

debris of the destroyed MAC guns above Reach

? Cause that would be awesome.

 

[Slightly Live]

Updated the OP with the latest news and I've asked to change the title slightly to reflect what's been happening.

The backgrounds in these UI shots... are they showing the

Spoiler

debris of the destroyed MAC guns above Reach

? Cause that would be awesome.

It's one nice looking debris field.

 

[bleahy]

Will it be up sometime today?

In under 15 minutes

 

[The Librarian]

In under 15 minutes

Hot stuffs.

 

[bleahy]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

 

[Tashi]

That seems like a good idea to lessen the amount of XP lost based on performance, and probably lessen the amount of XP gained based on performance(mainly because someone riding team coat tails and luck would be breaking the whole purpose of a ranking system anyway).

But I do think the losing team should get something, perhaps the credits that are mostly confirmed. A reward based system keeps people coming back and playing the game more often than a skill/ranked based system. Bungie has stated this opinion in one of their presentations(I think at 2008 GDC). People like getting a little bit of stuff whenever they play. Credits would also be more noticeable as well. An after game report would total up your credits and provide you with an incentive to play just one more to gather some more credits and maybe you could now afford that cool grenade belt(visual only, no gameplay alteration) for your Spartan.

That makes sense.

Also, thanks for the updates Brian!

edit:

At the end of the season, it goes on the back of your 'baseball card' and the next season begins fresh.

Wow. Sick

double edit: Was Reach ever confirmed to be releasing September?

For the September 2010, you're going for the best division you can by the end of that season.

...

 

[Striker]

So, Slayer all the time and kids worrying about their K/D. Ugh.

 

[Oozer3993]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

Tyson Green: Our seasons are probably going to line-up with calendar months. For the September 2010, you're going for the best division you can by the end of that season. To get there, you get rated on individual days. For example, if you need to get a rating on 5 days to get a rating for the season, that means on 5 separate days, you need to play a couple of games each night.

The 14th date is gaining steam.

 

[feel]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

 

[minasodaboy]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

thanks for all the great work. reach mp is sounding better and better all the time.

At the end of the season, it goes on the back of your 'baseball card' and the next season begins fresh.

very cool. my baseball card will have me playing for the bungie AAA affiliate, but still, very cool.

 

[advent29]

"Tyson Green: Our seasons are probably going to line-up with calendar months. For the September 2010, you're going for the best division you can by the end of that season."

Umm, September release date then?


Edit: I fail by 1 minute.

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

Amazing that despite giving everyone a blueprint on how to do multiplayer right, Bungie manages to continue raising the bar out of everyone else's reach.

 

[bathala]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

u wrote the article?


can't wait for the beta

 

[bleahy]

u wrote the article?

Yes.

 

[Not a Jellyfish]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

Yay! Just started reading and already liking it.

 

[The Librarian]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

Good news just keeps on coming.

 

[Thermite]

http://i43.tinypic.com/2i1fpdi.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/epuo4.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/210hk0g.jpg

http://i43.tinypic.com/2462pg1.jpg

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, that looks amazing. And we finally have a map and gametype veto!!

Edit: From the Shacknews article:

It's a season-based model, which [helps prevent account smurfing]. If you played a bunch in Halo 3, you'd hit around 40 [skill] and all of a sudden you're number isn't going up. Players would say, 'I guess I'm done. Do I make a second account?' The season model does some really cool things. At the end of the season, it goes on the back of your 'baseball card' and the next season begins fresh.

Fantastic. Awesome, awesome decision. IIRC, World of Warcraft handles their ranked PVP very similar to this. Maybe Bungie will pull a Blizzard and reward some of the best players with stuff like unique armor pieces or what have you at the end of each season.

2nd Edit: Oh wow, the article even mentions WoW a little later on. Should have probably read the entire article before posting in excitement. :lol

 

[Skilotonn]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62873

Bunch of details on the Arena.

Nice - reading now!

 

[RotaryAce]

Spoiler

ZOMG THE

Interface. I <3 the new-ish UI.

 

[Chinner]

the map sword base makes me hopeful that reach has a proper map editor. nothing to really base this on apart from the poor map name and the fairly ugly preview pic.

 

[feel]

I really like Sword Base as a map name. More maps should be named in that style.

Can't wait for the next article, to read how the regular non-hardcore matchmaking will work, that's probably where I'll hang out for the most part.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Worst nightmares and wildest dreams confirmed:

"The season model does some really cool things. At the end of the season, it goes on the back of your 'baseball card' and the next season begins fresh."

"If Tyson wants to play with his little brother, who isn't that good, Tyson can play with him. His brother might suck, but Tyson might be really good. He can go in and get a good rating game after game after game. This is something that our Halo 3 model did not do well."

So its a pretty individualistic model meaning selfish play - but you can finally play with friends of all skill ranges, and you wont get screwed if they do bad.

Im in two minds.

 

[Slightly Live]

So much focus on the Beta has been amazing and we’ve made some major improvements to the engine and many across multiplayer. So, now we’re beginning the shift toward focus on the campaign again. I’m super excited about giving some love to the huge number of new campaign features that have been waiting patiently for the Beta dust to settle.

Even in the absence of getting 100% engineering support, our next full campaign playtest is nearly ready to be hammered on at the labs. It is already in a state of major improvement over our last playtest, which was just a few weeks ago. This is the most fun part of a project – when all the planes circling around in development space begin landing.

nobleactual

 

[DeadFalling]

Yes.

Good shit.

"If Tyson wants to play with his little brother, who isn't that good, Tyson can play with him. His brother might suck, but Tyson might be really good. He can go in and get a good rating game after game after game. This is something that our Halo 3 model did not do well.

Play with who you want. You're going to get scored individually."

YESSSS! I hated not being able to play any ranked matches with my friends cause they sucked too much. This game's features are going to be really tough for any other game to match. Nobody has even matched Halo 3's feature list, and now they're adding to that list a TON!

 

[bleahy]

Worst nightmares and wildest dreams confirmed:

"The season model does some really cool things. At the end of the season, it goes on the back of your 'baseball card' and the next season begins fresh."

"If Tyson wants to play with his little brother, who isn't that good, Tyson can play with him. His brother might suck, but Tyson might be really good. He can go in and get a good rating game after game after game. This is something that our Halo 3 model did not do well."

So its a pretty individualistic model meaning selfish play - but you can finally play with friends of all skill ranges, and you wont get screwed if they do bad.

Im in two minds.

Except it rewards assists and hopefully other team play.

 

[Iknos]

So true, and right after I was bitching about the quality of Halo related jouranlism I get proven wrong.

Shacknews did a great job.

Some of that stuff can get confusing but the writer explained it well and in good detail.

Even if the guy with 2 scored a few more kills - the guy with the higher spread will get a better rating. The game is saying, 'You did the better job. You were playing the game better and working with your team better. This is what contributes to your overall rating.'

I know it's different in Halo but I've had experiences in CoD where a camping sniper is able to get the highest K/D and if it weren't for us guys going out to fight he would have no one to shoot at because we drew out the opponents.

These guys have seen Halo tournies and all the stats so I'm sure they know what they are talking about.

 

[enzo_gt]

Now Bungie, just tell us what the Credits can be used for, and the amazing Far Cry 2-ish map editor and I'm sold

Spoiler

as if I wasn't already

.

My hunch is that credits are persistently earned through single player and online multiplayer (perhaps even local) and can be used to purchase things/objects off of people's fileshares. Which people can now put prices on. Ofcourse this all depends on the complexity of the editor, and would only work if it was super complex and entirely new objects could be created as groups of smaller objects, and sold.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Did no one start a thread for the matchmaking articles?

 

[The Librarian]

My hunch is that credits are persistently earned through single player and online multiplayer (perhaps even local) and can be used to purchase things/objects off of people's fileshares. Which people can now put prices on. Ofcourse this all depends on the complexity of the editor, and would only work if it was super complex and entirely new objects could be created as groups of smaller objects, and sold.

That would suck.

 

[Tashi]

Great read. I really, like really hope that there's more to the ranking system than just K/D. I understand that Assists are taken into account but I feel they should have almost the same value as a kill. I see clearly now that players are ranked individually but damn, there's a chance it could go really wrong.

If Reach requires as much team work as Halo 3 did, it could be bad. It seems like Bungie is making Slayer seem like it's an individual gametype when it's far from it. Again this is all just a thought because Reach could be a more individually skill based game like Halo 2 and not more heavily team oriented like Halo 3. It's much harder to win 3v4 in Team Slayer in Halo 3 than it was in Halo 2. I'm saying this because when a team is working well together everyone's stats will reflect that, kills, deaths and assists. However, often times when the team is not working well together, maybe Tyson's little brother is just a horror to play with and can't even hold the controller, Tyson will have trouble getting kills himself, no matter what. His team will lose map control and will be overrun. Seemingly the only way to secure decent stats in a game like this would be to camp, or hide to make sure the K/D ratio is still intact.

"Play with who you want. You're going to get scored individually"

Unless Reach is drastically different from past Halo games, which I don't think it is from what we've seen, unless you don't care about your seasonal rank this won't be the case. You can't go in with some terrible player and expect to rank up as you would if you were playing with a better player even if you're scored individually.

 

[Sai-kun]

Okay, I found something I don't like about the UI D: Everything seems to be like..tilted away from the "camera". It's kinda weird. I guess I could get used to it but I would rather have it flat like Halo 3 D:

 

[user_nat]

I really don't like the Slayer only part of the arena.
CTF can be one of the most competitive game types in Halo.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Except it rewards assists and hopefully other team play.

Well theres a difference between getting a lot of assists and just being selfish.

In Halo 3 A friend of mine is a better sniper than me, and for the good of the team I let him take it. In Reach as the teams result doesnt seem to matter as much, I mightaswell take the Sniper and get those extra kills myself, even if it means risking the loss?

I also dont see anyone being willing to play a supportive role in Reach. Everyone is going to want to be the main slayer, its going to be like watching 5 year olds play football :lol

I cant complain though, this change has downsides but has a load of upsides. I do see a potential problem though. If I play with a bunch of people who have crap accounts on purpose to play weaker players I will do better and get a good daily score. Derankers and Boosters will be pretty prevalent in Reach just in terms of ensuring that friends match up with crap people.

 

[enzo_gt]

That would suck.

Free is always better. Either that or the credits are used for buying a bunch of armor and stuff that Bungie keeps adding to some sort of in-game store. And I don't think Bungie will create that much content post-launch TBH.