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343: Halo 4 is best/fastest selling game in series, will do better on quality 4 Halo5

Red_Man

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
They better do a better job on the next one. They ruined the MP in Halo 4. I've played every Halo game religiously, including Reach up until the Halo 4 launch, and quit playing Halo 4 after a month. Haven't touched the DLC or the game in over 2 months. They ruined the MP. SP was fun though.
 
Why multiplayer sucks:

Melee and grenades are completely nerfed. In terms of damage done they might be the same but the levels are bigger, you have the option of starting with powerful long range weapons, promethean vision gives away position, assault rifle is buffed.

Thus the "golden triangle" of melee-grenade-weapon, which is the basis of Halo, is completely destroyed.

Halo becomes primarily a weapons game. They also stole tons of things from CoD, which not surprisingly is also primarily a weapons game. Loadouts, experience system, points system, tons of stupid mini achievements, kill streaks, etc etc.

The whole thing just feels like a money grab. The devs are obv fans of Halo but CoD is making so much more money than Halo so they ripped off as much as they could from it.
 

Red_Man

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
Why multiplayer sucks:

Melee and grenades are completely nerfed. In terms of damage done they might be the same but the levels are bigger, you have the option of starting with powerful long range weapons, promethean vision gives away position, assault rifle is buffed.

Thus the "golden triangle" of melee-grenade-weapon, which is the basis of Halo, is completely destroyed.

Halo becomes primarily a weapons game. They also stole tons of things from CoD, which not surprisingly is also primarily a weapons game. Loadouts, experience system, points system, tons of stupid mini achievements, kill streaks, etc etc.

The whole thing just feels like a money grab. The devs are obv fans of Halo but CoD is making so much more money than Halo so they ripped off as much as they could from it.
You left out the biggest reason they broke their own game : Boltshot + Camo

AA's were bad enough, but whoever thought that having a mini shotgun as a starter was a good idea should be fired along with whoever green lighted the idea. It's made the game unplayable for me. Along with every single person having a power weapon. The game is not nearly the thinking mans game it once was now that every single person has shot guns /rockets / sniper / etc
 

Havok

Member
I'm so going to get evicerated for this, but here goes. I'll be honest that I was really, really late to online multiplayer gaming even though I've been gaming since the Atari 2600 days. I think my first experience with competitive online MP was Unreal Tournament in college that the PC gamers next door in my quad installed on my school PC back then. Having never played a shooter with a mouse and keyboard before it was ugly. Fast forward to Halo 3 for the 360. This was my first console online shooter experience. Call it a bad first impression or that it was my first online shooter, but no matter how hard I tried to get better I felt like the MP was impenetrable. I felt like I was playing against MLG guys who knew respawn rates for power weapons down to the milisecond even in social, unranked playlists.

Now with Reach I actually started to get okay at Halo and had fun, but the whole power weapon memorization and camping thing was still there for casual players like myself.
Do you think the solution they came to, Global Ordnance, really fixes that issue without disrupting the fundamentals of what Halo MP was before, though? Personally, I don't think so. As a player who doesn't memorize weapon spawns and timers, what would you think of the system Gears 3 has, where before a match starts a map overlay comes up with the locations of each weapon spawn location? If you'd like, add in a HUD waypoint when the weapon spawns in to notify everyone it's in play. As a hardcore veteran player, I feel like this would be a decent compromise of allowing the classic Halo map pace to exist while giving newer players the information they need.

As for the rest of that post, I don't think anyone is against making changes around the edges to help new players out. I think it's always been a mistake that Halo hasn't ever had a true tutorial for the multiplayer, which is baffling considering the H4 MP team was trying to make "Halo for Everyone." But I also don't think that fundamentally changing the core design to make it more accessible (ex: gametype design in H4) makes for long-term success, because I have a feeling that those players weren't going to stick around anyway.

Also, I hear people bemoan the loss of firefight, but, am I crazy, or is Spartan Ops essentially firefight with objectives?
Spartan Ops has zero customization options, is often the victim of Halo 4's relatively poor AI (hello, Elites standing there doing nothing while you blast them in the face), and has some of the worst encounter design in the entire series. Putting it on Normal and blasting through the enemies is dumb fun because you can overcome the stupidity of every other enemy spawn wave being what was essentially a Boss Wave from ODST Firefight, but it's a pretty poor replacement. Which is a shame, because the initial idea they had for it, which was basically a series of randomized objectives in a Firefight setting, sounds like it would have been way better than the set, unchanging mode we have now.
 
I try to love multi for what it is... yeah i'd prefer halo 2/3 multi but whinging won't make it happen.

I enjoy halo 4 multi casually, it's fun
 
You left out the biggest reason they broke their own game : Boltshot + Camo

AA's were bad enough, but whoever thought that having a mini shotgun as a starter was a good idea should be fired along with whoever green lighted the idea. It's made the game unplayable for me. Along with every single person having a power weapon. The game is not nearly the thinking mans game it once was now that every single person has shot guns /rockets / sniper / etc

I do agree that the Boltshot is the worst thing about mp. I love the mp for Halo 4 but man it is frustrating to get killed over and over by that damn gun. Especially for objective games like CTF, people just camo and hide with boltshots. I just wish the recharge timer was much slower with that gun. Even if you somehow manage to avoid the first shot they can charge up and get a 2nd off so fast.
 

Striker

Member
Halo becomes primarily a weapons game. They also stole tons of things from CoD, which not surprisingly is also primarily a weapons game. Loadouts, experience system, points system, tons of stupid mini achievements, kill streaks, etc etc.

The whole thing just feels like a money grab. The devs are obv fans of Halo but CoD is making so much more money than Halo so they ripped off as much as they could from it.
Did you play Halo MP before Halo 3?

The BR in Halo 3 had spread which led to many circumstances of missing one bullet in your burst, and was wildly inaccurate if you were not on a decent connection. The bloom in Halo Reach in its shipped condition was almost all over the place, and became too random. I'm guessing here you're talking about players spawning with a DMR (long ranged rifle), because it reduced the bloom considerably and is hardly a factor in your shots, and it's hitscan unlike the Halo 3 BR. So with those fluky elements out of the fray for the most part, players are more keen to shoot faster and further without any repercussion.

I'm one of those people who doesn't like the DMR's long ranged tendencies, and would do a couple things to reduce its impact from such a distance. Though, the ability to shoot without any pause or worry about a bullet no registering is refreshing -- which seems to be your problem with it. Melee is still too powerful, two smacks to kill is outrageous and with so many people I've encountered still trying to do it is baloney. You have a gun in your hands, stop trying to double melee. It won't be changed, I'm sure of it but melee is one of the main things I still have a big issue with in the core gameplay.
I've been killed by the boltshot 30 times out of 400 Slayer games.
Just because you aren't killed by the Boltshot a lot doesn't mean the issue doesn't exist.
 
I've been killed by the boltshot 30 times out of 400 Slayer games.
Except for the corner crouchers and camo users, which is honestly most of them, you can hear and spot the boltshot being charged up if you're paying attention. Its still too powerful for a spawn weapon though.
 
Having finished Reach earlier today, I'd like to revise my campaign ranking:

Halo 3 > Halo: CE > Reach = Halo 2 > ODST

It went down from being tied with Halo: CE in the second spot to being tied with Halo 2 in the third. It's still a great campaign chock full of content, but perhaps even a bit too long. There are many fantastic moments, but others feel like filler, like Bungie wanted to show off everything they've learned over their run on Halo. It's understandable, but some restraint would've resulted in a better game, I think. I also miss all those bright colors and Halo 3's godly HDR, not to mention Chief and Cortana (I even miss dual-wielding, which is not something I thought I would ever say). Overall, the tech is clearly more advanced, and there are some gorgeous vistas to be found, but I actually prefer the way Halo 3 looked. Slowdowns and ghosting also left a somewhat sour taste.

Anyway, next week is reserved for Halo 4, finally.
 

stktt

Banned
Except for the corner crouchers and camo users, which is honestly most of them, you can hear and spot the boltshot being charged up if you're paying attention. Its still too powerful for a spawn weapon though.


Oh I agree that it needs adjustment. I just don't see it as a very prevalent threat.
 

LosDaddie

Banned
I haven't had much problem with the Boltshot, but a starting weapon should never be one-shot-kill. It needs to be nerfed similar to the PP where the 1st shot takes down your shields.

I also haven't had much of a problem the netcode/lag in Halo 4, either. Some games are laggy, yes, but overall the game runs smooth for me online. Spartan Ops is where I've encountered the most lag, though.


This is actually not true.

There is actually a lot of truth in his/my statement, even if it is a bit overgeneralized. The features added after Halo 2 are the things most bemoaned by HaloGAF. Such is essentially the gist of very-common statements like these:

343 could also help by adding classic playlist and resetting the setting to a core, without much of the added extras. .

that TU with the anniversary maps had pure Halo playlists (until they removed some of them) No AAs, Great Pistol, Better movement and Better jump height. That's when Reach became playable to me.

Personally, while I (and my friends) do very much enjoy Halo 4, I wouldn't mind if 343 scaled back the CoD-ification for Halo 5. Maybe keep the load outs, but scrap the ordinance drops. Halo should be about map control with static weapon spawns.
 

RedAssedApe

Banned
Campaign was decent but then again I can't really not have fun in most campaigns that do co-op. The multi-player has completely gone off the rails since Halo 3 though.

We innovated in storytelling

heehee
 
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