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Azaxx

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Posts posted by Azaxx

  1. I'll be completely blunt, no. There is no chance in hell that Halo can recover to the days of Halo 1-3, or even any era with Bungie. 343 Industries have screwed up literally every aspect of the games that they have made that the community has either abandoned them or left prior from foresight.

     

    I'll start with posting this video, take a look. It perfectly encapsulates the different philosophy of building Halo between the two parent companies, Bungie and 343i. Bungie take the mindset of "If it's not fun, we're not making it", opposed to 343i's standpoint "Intertwine everything above all else". This is why Halo died, not because of the different sets of talent between the two companies, not because of the way Microsoft interfered with the game's production, nor because of the era of which games are developed (early 2000's opposed to the 2010's).

     

    Let's deconstruct why the original trilogy (main titles) were better than the two main titles that 343i have produced.

     

    Master Chief was someone that literally everyone could relate to or see inspiration in. He was a blank slate that a person could 'self insert' (I hate that phrase but it applies here), a character that had no in-game personality, only traits such as stoic, courageous and 'gary stu-esk'. He was someone that could not lose under any circumstance because the plot desired him to be victorious after every battle. There is only one instance where this is rejected, and this is in the book Fall of Reach where Chief is born and molded into the soldier he became, however this is now considered not canon by Halo Reach when the ending of the game retconned established lore. By his definition of being a black slate, everyone could relate in a way to him because there was no reason that prevented them from doing so. This is where 343i decided to scrap that philosophy and make the Chief into a character that no person on the planet could ever hope to relate to. 343i decided to make this super soldier tormented, broken and vulnerable to his resolve being broken. In essence, making a character that no one could relate to because the character is nothing like any person alive given the circumstances that Chief went through during the main title games. You can't relate to him after his A.I. (Cortana) 'died', you can't relate to him after he sees the UNSC and ONI turn against him, and you most definitely cannot relate to him once he was reunited with the pseudo-mother whome created him. These are story aspects that 343i created in an attempt to make a character that people could relate to without actually realising that nothing of what he experienced is relateable to what we gamers have experienced in our lives. We haven't been paired with an A.I. or person 24/7 for years, we haven't been turned against by a nation, and we haven't been created as an experiment. This is how 343i failed when making a 'character' out of Chief, they ruined him by destroying the very thing that made him special.

     

     

    Second point, what the hell are those campaigns in Halo 4 and 5? Let's start with Halo CE, a simple, well scripted and ultimately well executed narrative (not discussing gameplay for the campaigns) that is remembered because it was both fresh and well designed. Halo 2 introduced a new character gave us gamers a reason to understand why we were fighting them, The Arbiter was a character that gave us both a narrative and gameplay excuse to understand the nature of the force that oppressed us in the first game. This game was ultimately rushed and resulted in a poor ending "Sir, finishing this fight". Halo 3 had a weak narrative but concluded everything well with a fitting ending for a now iconic character. Giving us the tease of a future game was a good idea with the legendary ending of the game. Now, Halo 4. Where do I begin? Didact, I thought he died on the rings? Librarian, wait what, she somehow controlled evolution of the Chief and an A.I. to be in this exact place and time to meet her? Who are the Prometheans? Oh right, you either have to read all of the books or leave the game and open the Halo Channel to understand anything of what's happening in a game. That is poor story telling. When you explain a story, you do it in the damn game, don't make us buy other products and read them before playing the game to have any context prior the opening cutscene begins.

     

    Halo 5 Guardians requires its own paragraph because I wish to discuss the gameplay alongside of the narrative. For starters. Four hours? How the hell does years of development result in a campaign playthrough lasting only four hours? For context, I was playing Normal while deliberately going out of my way to explore the levels and find any easter eggs, and it took me four hours to start the opening cutscene to watching the final cutscene play. There is no excuse in any universe that could possibly justify the fact that the story was short, rushed and poorly scripted in every possible imagination. Who are Fireteam Osiris you might ask? Don't worry, you get a line of backstory for each character in the final mission in case you were worrying. Why was the character of Buck ruined? The whole point of him being a highlight character in Halo 3 ODST was because he was an elite ODST with normal guy issues since he was human. As the quote goes "If he were any better, he'd be a Spartan", the whole point of that sentence was the fact that he was so close, but it's not something he'd reach because he was only a normal guy. Making him into a Spartan throws away the character development in his original game and is honestly an insult to the character. Moving to Blue Team, who are they? Well if you're a hardcore Halo fan who read Fall of Reach and First Strike you would understand, otherwise you get literally nothing about them in the game. Why 343i actually wrote them the way they did is beyond me. Next, 3 missions for Blue Team and 12 to Osiris. Why. Halo is about the Master Chief, if I want to play a game about Locke and his team, I'd buy a game specifically about him and his team. Halo 2 did it right, make it a more even split between the level count for the two characters to allow us time to get to know what's happening to both parties. Halo 5 Guardians' shoved Osiris down our throats and tossed Blue Team out of the park so we weren't to worry about them.

     

     

    With narrative out of the way, let's move to the gameplay, specifically the multiplayer.

    I'll be brief, I hate Halo 2's multiplayer. It was buggy, it was unbalanced and it was not fun to play against exploits which people praise because they're 'skillful'. I'm sorry, but nothing about an exploit is good when was not intended originally by design and poses a disadvantage to those who are unaware of a mechanic that was not intended. That being said, at least Halo 2 had the best fill of maps in any Halo game. Midship, Sanctuary and a Blood Gulch remake, these maps were iconic and well balanced. Most importantly, they were fun to play on and gorgeous to run around in. Name any map from Halo 4 that was like this? I can only think of Exile, it was lush green and fun for vehicles, but what if you didn't like BTB? Tough luck because all of the maps for Arena play sucked. At least Halo 5 changed that, right? Well no because the only top tier map for Halo 5 is a Halo 2 remake, Truth (and its subsequent remaster being Regret). Sure Empire is some fun, so is Coliseum, but they suffer from major issues because 343i cannot understand how to make them well balanced. Halo 4's multiplayer featured ordinances, and thank goodness that 343i removed that concept for Halo 5 Guardians. But decided to have blatantly overpowered Spartan abilities that have near to no counters (i.e. Spartan Charge + magnum combo) and horrible bugs everywhere in the game. Recently (in the past month or so) I decided to download Halo 5 Forge Bundle for the PC to see how things have changed given that I have not played Halo in some time. I thank 343i and Microsoft making it free, but honestly it deserves it. Filled with bugs such as lack of good hit registration, account sign in issues and server joining problems make it an utter night to play. You legitimately have to only play mini-games such as Minotaurs and Sumo Mongoose to enjoy yourself (I admit the fans who made these gametypes did a fantastic job and I'm glad a working File Browser is finally in the game), but if you wanted an Arena experience in customs, it's not for you as the game actively fights you when you want to have fun. I understand that 343i made this product for toying with Forge, but then I ask this, where the hell is any sort of manual in game to understand how the Forge system as a whole works? There is nothing to assist Forgers on the PC platform, let alone new comers who want to make some nifty creations. At least it's not as bad with the bugs as Halo MCC was for over an entire year right?

     

     

    I understand that my views here do not match the vast majority of current players of the game on both this forum, other forums, or no forum at all. However, when a company has shown complete lack of care and a drive to improve not only the game, but themselves, it justifies my opinion and beliefs about the company.

    343i have consistently shown blatant disregard for Halo as both a franchise and universe, lack of any care for the very basics of the narrative to the balancing and bug fixing of multiplayer have been major eye opening factors for me in realising that 343i do not have any justification to say that they will make Halo great again. I supported them once Halo 4 dropped, saying Halo MCC will be incredible. I supported them once Halo MCC dropped saying that it was a massive undertaking and they bit more than they could chew. I supported their development of Halo 5 Guardians as it seemed exciting, fresh and fun for the franchise.

     

     

    They lost my support once the game dropped.

    • Like 7
  2. Halo 5 Guardians' campaign was actual trash, it was more of an insult to the franchise and the community more than an actual campaign.

     

    • The campaign was nothing like how 343i portrayed it to be with their extensive marketing that would've cost millions for Microsoft.
    • Their initial teaser trailer at e3 in 2014 could've been for Halo 6 and we'd be none the wiser.
    • The campaign was 4 pathetic hours long with a garbage and incredibly cliche story.
    • There was no character development in the slightest. There was no reason to care for Linda, Kelly, Fred, Tanaka, Vale or Locke. Chief and Buck have had character told in multiple games, so are excused - but they got nothing in this campaign.
    • Squad A.I. was trash which hurts the game since the entire game was based on squad mechanics.
    • Halo 4's story was completely disconnected from Halo 5 Guardians' - Where did the Didact go? What happened to Earth after the Composing? Why is Cortana not dead? Reading a comic series should not be required to understand such basic questions for main titles of the series.
    • Such a heavy contradiction to canon is not addressed. The Domain is a Precursor technology - how is ANY of the Precursor technology still existing since the books which ARE canon explicitly stated that ALL Precursor technology was wiped out after the activation of the Halo rings.
    • The ending ended as abruptly, if not more-so than Halo 2 did. Pretty big blunder.
    • Everything that happened on Sanghelios was just fanservice and provided no meaningful progression to the story that was presented - same applies to the return of the Arbiter.

     

    All of those points are self explanatory with their solutions. We'll never know how anything in the campaign got past the first producer without being sent back to the drawing board.

    • Like 6
  3.  

    I honestly haven't seen that much negative criticism. Besides the lack of split-screen being the biggest problem, I don't see why many think the game is not a success. It's a definite improvement from Halo 4 (which wasn't that bad IMO). Could you please list the key points in which Halo 5 'failed'?

     

     

    • Seriously a 4 hour campaign that wasn't well made.
    • Awful character development.
    • Hunt the Truth advertisements having nothing to do with the actual story.
    • Lack of memorable characters.
    • Lack of memorable multiplayer maps at launch.
    • Bad Forge maps used in DLC map packs.
    • Lack of varied gametypes in Matchmaking.
    • Fundamental spawn faults.
    • Horrid textures in every portion of the game.
    • Game built upon the idea of 60fps and no Splitscreen or LAN.
    • Forge coming out over a month after launch.
    • Forge not having a tutorial despite it being completely different to the prior iterations of Forge.
    • The game literally requires XBL Gold to play.
    • Horrible 'reward' system.
    • Also it's the worst selling main title Halo game in the franchise, evidently a failure. It hasn't even sold half of what Halo 4 did.

    Those are the main points, but I could go on with other minor issues.

    • Like 3
  4. The campaign to be well told in both the story and how the gameplay explains the game itself in a long and extended campaign. Halo 2 and ODST did well on this, having some of the best campaigns in the series. When you think about it, Halo 2 was the first campaign to allow you to switch characters to explain different sides of the story. In doing so, it gave both main characters a lengthy amount of time to give a depth of character to both. Granted Chief at the time had jack all to his character, but his role in his fight against the Covenant and later the Flood was explored in a 'final stand' sense. The Arbiter on the other hand was given backstory before the gameplay even started and showed a large change in character as the campaign progressed.

    ODST was similar in the sense that the characters were given their own short stories, with Rookie searching in a dark, desolate and quiet metropolis. The detective style of gameplay obviously isn't everyone's favourite way to play a game, but it's undeniable that way it was presented allowed the pretty poor story in ODST to seem so much better just by playing in such an unusual style.

     

    Halo 5 Guardians failed in the style that Halo 2 conquered, the story is left up for debate for who likes it. However it's excusable on how short it was, the story given was presented in such a lazy way with missions that if removed from the game would've left very little difference to the campaign. The first two missions in particular, if those were removed it would've had absolutely no impact on the game at all. Dr Halsey has no impact on the story in any regard other than confirming what Lasky already knew, Chief is chasing after Cortana. Argent Moon also has zero impact on the story, that Covenant fleet had no backstory in any official material 343i has stamped nor was given any mention thereafter in the game. Blue Team could've easily had a mission that had any relevance to the story other than "I'm defying your order, AWOL now".

    Additionally the entire story arc on Sanghelios was completely pointless, the only reason you played on that game was because it was fanservice from 343i just to get you on a Guardian after spending missions doing crap all. Kraken fight? What's the point of it, you're given no information to what it is doing on the planet nor what relevance it has with a Covenant assault force. That entire arc could've been scrapped for story that was related entirely to the Guardians, which is the title of the game, not Halo 5 Sanghelios, which albeit sounds pretty fun.

     

    Arbiter spin-off game when?

     

     

    Moving on from the actual missions that are 'related' to the main story, the gameplay was atrocious. When you meet and fight the Warden for the first, maybe even the second time, there is a sense of "wow, now this is a boss that seems cool for Halo". Actually having a mechanic on how to kill him is rather different to how we've fought previously in Halo and ties in well with the new mechanics for Prometheans. Then you meet him for the third time, then the fourth, oh boy here we go, then the fifth, then the sixth. What on Earth was 343i thinking? Answer, they weren't. The pathetic excuse of "He has a single mind but a million bodies" was such a lazy way to excuse the fact that 343i could not think of varied combat environments without having to resort to the wave after wave of Promethean forces. When thinking back on it, the only fun missions in H5G were the ones that didn't even have Prometheans, because the combat was actually different and fun due to the way the Covenant work. I thought Halo 4 was boring in how the Prometheans were handled in a rinse and repeat environment, but at least it had one fun mission being in the Broadsword. H5G's was just laziness and uninspired environments that seemed to be copy pasted everywhere in terms of gameplay design.

     

    Then you have the characters, Blue Team was completely and utterly wasted. One of the favourite set of characters in the extended universe put into the game, for what? To stand there for a few missions with zero impact on both the story and Chief's character? They had no character development and explained nothing about them while out of combat. For me the only purpose that they served was for getting Linda's Sniper Rifle. Speaking of teams, Osiris was a disgrace. You play through 12 missions with them for you to only get a backstory on each character in the final mission from Cortana going through the Service Records. I'm sorry, but that is not how you explain backstory on any main character regardless of their importance to the story. When you introduce a character, you introduce, the character. They were empty shells (other than Buck) for 93.3% of the game, then to have their Service Records just read to them as a last ditch effort to explain who they were. It's like 343i completely forgot that they didn't explain who anyone was and had to find a crappy way to give any ray of light on a character by that point. Hell, even the corrupting AI on a colony world had more backstory and character than 6 of the 8 main characters did for the entire game. Buck and Chief were the only characters that had anything known about them from playing the games from Halo. Buck had been in 2 previous games and Chief obviously being in every main title. Everyone else, whelp you're not getting any backstory about them from playing games alone.

     

    I could go into depth about how poor the basic functions of multiplayer are, or the 'reward' system works, or even how you literally need XBL gold to play solo Custom games. Such poor decisions by 343i have negatively impacted the most fundamental qualities of Halo in such a heavy degree that if you compare H5G to any other Halo game, they feel nothing alike. That being said the actual gameplay for H5G feels similar to the original 3, but that's it. The maps are poor, the lighting isn't good and the hit detection is not on par with what Halo should be by now. These issues are incredibly easily fixed though, just look at the original trilogy maps and see what made them great. Look at Halo 3 and see how well lit everything is. If you're going to decrease aim assist, actually ensure that you're rewarded when you do hit shots then.

     

    These issues are so much easier to fix compared to the issues of the campaign listed above. The only way I can see 343i fixing the campaign is by replacing staff that worked on it. They failed two main series titles in a row, they showed what their best is and it's clearly subpar for what Halo should be expected of by now. Halo's campaign should be grand in scale and indepth with story, and Halo 4 failed on the scale and H5G failed in the story, if things remain the same, Halo 6 will fail in both.

    • Like 5
  5. This story is a bit of a catch 22. For years Halo players in vast numbers had been calling for a better visual appearance, what we know to be standard on PC, this is 60fps at 1080p. While splitscreen is fun, it is visually taxing on the engine that runs the game to a point where it is blatantly visible to how bad the refresh rate gets.

    To counter this 343i designed a clever system to preserve 60fps at all costs, even if that reduced sprite animation refresh rate, texture quality and splitscreen itself. On consoles, you just cannot have 60fps and splitscreen, it's one or the other. And in this modern era of competitive gaming, as much as people don't like it, frame rate is objectively more important than splitscreen.

  6. Those sales numbers include the price of consoles or game bundles which included Halo 5. That is the number that Microsoft cares about. They made a hell of a lot of money on Halo 5, not really on the game, but on the merchandising. 

     

     

    Yes, but after some delving, it was found that only 1.3M (iirc) units were sold. That's down 6 million from Halo 4.

     

  7. It affects every playlist by skins and armor, ask any pro player. Armor is a major factor in deaths. And it can't be an add-on, it was in the game at launch.

     

    Senseless extermination and Objective gameplay are two different things. If you really don't think there is then you're one of those people who just go for kills then. No, there may be no game mechanic but no radar and no shields is what makes SWAT what it is. They don't need game mechanics, its great as it is.

     

    As for spawns, nope. CE you spawn IN and ON grenades not two seconds to react. Two seconds is enough to hightail it.

     

    Yes I did, they still have your money.

     

    I can compete with pro players, that's not a factor, trust me. Anyone who thinks that armour makes a difference in a gun fight is just flat out wrong with no real experience, and that's not being bias either, it literally makes no difference to skill. If you blame armour on making a difference to gameplay, then you lack skill to backup your game.

     

    SWAT - no shields/radar, first to 50 wins. Slayer - shields/radar/weapon pickup, first to 50 wins. Sorry, but they're the same game in terms of mechanics and objective gameplay. You can win SWAT and regular Slayer with the exact same play style, you cannot do that with something like CTF which is a completely different beast.

     

    Games do not recognise where a grenade is for spawn points, bad spawns are defined by how they place you in comparison to other people and the maps geometry. Not from someone through a grenade or fired a rocket. That's called spawn controlling, and is a completely different scenario.

     

    Evidently not, you don't understand anything on how H5G was sold. It's the worst selling game in the franchise. That was the whole point to the argument, no one cares if 343i got money or not, it's about the amount. Their "profit" was very low in comparison to any other Halo game sold, especially seeing as this is the first standalone game on the Xbox One.

  8. REQS are content in regard to game play. You wear them and use them in Warzone.....how are Scorpions not part of gameplay?

     

    It was actually Team Arena, Slayer, SWAT, Breakout and Free for All. If you really think Slayer and SWAT are the same then you really need to play them. They are two unique gametypes. The ranking gives you incentive to play unlike all previous Halos.

     

    Spawning the worst? Hahaha, you haven't played CE have you? Spawning beside enemies and in the middle of gun fights happened all the time.

     

    It's still 400 million in profit so 343 don't care if you don't like the game, they already have their money.

     

    Because the REQ system can only affect one playlist, that is not overall content, infact it's more like an add-on to the game in the first place.

     

    Team Slayer and Slayer are the same thing, one just has the other gametypes included in it, you're splitting hairs there. SWAT is also practically identical to Slayer, name one mechanic that is different between them two. And no, lack of shields is not a mechanic, so you cannot name a thing.

     

    Halo CE's spawns were also vastly superior to Halo 5 Guardians', in H5G you will spawn directly infront of an enemy, constantly. In Halo CE it was just considered bad luck that happened time to time. Additionally Halo CE is taken with a grain of salt, the coding was new and didn't have much testing, H5G did thus is worse due to the huge amount of failed testing involved.

     

    400 million is not the profit from Halo 5 Guardians, did you even read what I said?

  9. Personally I would ignore the nutter.  Not every one plays with friends or even a team, and in some cases you get ignored.  A lot of grief can be given and taken in online games, social gaming is not really social any more.

    On with the post, internet connections are usually the biggest culprit here, and not skill.  Remember you are playing with people from around the world, some with slow connections speeds and some with faster speeds, all this comes together in to the servers where the problem starts to go for you or against you.  Lag, cause by these competing speeds, one has to slow down so the slower connections can keep up, it all takes a toll.  Ever been in a game where people are teleporting around the map, and then you get cheaters using lag switches, this is just some one messing around with the speed of their connection speed.  In my honest opinion, there should be a minimum speed for certain games, if you can not keep up, you are either not even allowed to play, get booted or are teamed up only with slow connection speedsters.

    Skill as a whole, is not a good enough reason because every one has their peak.  And then you have to factor in also moods, you are not going to play well if your not feeling well, stressed or just plain not in to it, and on good days you play like a pro.

     

    Due to the nature of dedicated serves, you will not be paired with someone across the other side of the world, you're paired with people in the same region you are. That's the very idea of how dedicated servers work, additionally lag is put to an absolute minimum so it not a factor for 9/10 games you'd play while on the servers.

     

    What P34nut said is correct, if you expect to win games in the ranked Arena, you bring a team. It is suicide to expect you're going to win without one, that is basic knowledge with competitive games such as Halo. If someone states otherwise, they're flat out wrong and know nothing about how competitive games work. Your team doesn't even need to be that top tier, so long as there is a unique and good synergy between yourself and the buddies you're playing with.

    On the chance you have absolutely no friends to play with, we live in an era where the internet is so accessible that you can find anyone to play with in an instant, all it requires is a minimal amount of effort.

  10. Short of content? At launch multiplayer alone had about 600 hours of playtime needed to 100% it. Then you have campaign and customs. Literally no lack of content there. 

     

    Whats incomplete about the multiplayer by the way? It has arena and warzone....

     

    If someone stopped playing Halo 5 already because of the lack of content they are ridiculous. Halo 5 launched a little more than a month ago, it has already had dlc releases. Not to mention that people who've been playing since day one constantly are still unlocking things. New playlists every week are also a thing that 343 is doing to keep Arena fresh.

     

    May I add that Halo 5 had the largest launch in Halo history? Made 400 million at launch AND pushed the franchise to 5 billion dollars. 

     

    REQ system is NOT content, regardless if you think it's a good loot system or not, that is not content in any regard to actual gameplay. Playlists and modes are.

    At launch there were only 5 modes in Arena; Slayer, CTF, Strongholds, SWAT and Breakout. Then you had one large player mode which was Warzone. If you call that "variety" or "content" then you are objectively wrong in literally every way imaginable by comparison to what any other Halo game provided on launch. Hell, even Halo 4 had more playlists, granted not all of them were actually good, but there was variety in how each of the gametypes play out. In Halo 5 Guardians there are really only 4 modes, because Slayer and SWAT are the same thing in terms of mechanics. That is lack of content, REQ's do not make up for that. So your idea that you need to play "600 hours" to achieve 100% is completely irrelevant and wrong in terms of gameplay.

     

    Regarding the incompletion of the multiplayer, may I refer you to the spawn system. Halo 5 Guardians hands down has the worst spawn system and spawn placements in the entire franchise. There is no such thing as weighted spawns, which means you're more likely to spawn with your team. That simply does not exist, also the spawns for SWAT were so infamously bad that the population died so hard in that playlist.

     

    New playlists every week is also nothing something unique to 343i, that has existed since the early days of online Halo multiplayer. 343i also cannot grasp that idea that social/casual playlists NEED to be implemented into the game as soon as possible. There is only one casual playlist currently and that's Warzone. BTB is not casual, it's currently a ranked playlists.

     

    In addition, Halo 5 Guardians did NOT make 400 million at launch, that was a sneaky statistic Microsoft gave out to the public to make Halo 5 Guardians seem impressive. That statistic included every Xbox One bundle sold, so you now remove the price of the Xbox One from that statistic and you have very low sales in comparison to the rest of the franchise.

    • Like 1
  11. It's using Dynamic Resolution. What that means is in order to preserve 60fps in surround visuals, the game must sacrifice textures and model animation rates to keep the game at a solid 60fps.

    While this is a smart system for consoles, it's very noticeable here due to the art that the textures are formed from in the first place.

    So what that means, being point blank offers the best textures, as soon as you start taking a foot back from the object, you're going to notice drop offs in quality.

    • Like 1
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