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What does the community want?


Field of Mangos

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I'm interested to know what the community would want to consider a future Halo (5 or 6) a great multiplayer experience. The general sentiment I keep hearing is "Why would Halo deviate so far from what made it successful in the first place". Some things I wanted clarification on:

 

Obviously this means that you want nothing to do with armor abilities. Probably get rid of sprinting features too. Ok, that's reasonable. Remove all that.

 

Loadouts, gonna have to remove them I suppose. Go back to arguing over AR vs BR start. Not for or against this one, but people seem to think this is a direct lift from CoD even though it's really not.

 

Minus melee and grenades, Halo 2 had about 15 guns, and Halo 3 had about 20, and Halo 4 about 26. So, we want to reduce our options, I assume? Get rid of about 10 guns?

 

Bring back Halo 2 ranking system?

______

 

I'm just spitballing ideas, because it sounds like people really want Halo 2: 2012 edition. Maybe I'm wrong on that. For the record, I think H4 MM is very good. There are aspects I don't like, sure, but with the level of whining on this site, I've yet to hear someone lay out what a great Halo game would be that doesn't borrow any features from games like CoD or BF. Please, discuss.

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Most of the complaints here are that it's not Halo 2 or 3. I don't see how that's bad as I already have Halo 2 and 3. 343 Didn't get a blank cheque to re-release an old game.

 

I think the points system works. I like the ordinance drops and sprint just....well...speeds things up! If tomorrow I wake up and decide I hate all of that, I'll play Halo 3.

 

I'm addicted to promethean vision though so I'd probably get destroyed without it.

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I agree with both points, and that's basically the subversive message I'm trying to send. I don't see the merit in creating a game that has essentially already been made (kinda adds to the CoD argument anyway: releasing the same game over and over). Halo has an amazingly large number of gamers who seem to complain just for the sake of complaining. From what I've gathered, the situation is basically like the ending of the movie, War Games - "The only way to win is to not play". lol

 

I'm nearly convinced at this point that fans would prefer for there to be no new Halo and just leave H2 and H3 online forever.

 

Honestly, I would have loved a Halo 3 with every multiplayer map from the first 3 games, but that clearly wasn't happening even though H3's final map list was impressive. If and when H2:Anniversary makes it's way out, it would be a joy to play those maps online again.

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I used to be a diehard SC fanboy and wanted SC2 to be exactly the same as the first game, and I never actually bought or played SC2 because it pissed me off how different it was. I've matured a bit more but there is a logic to wanting the game to stay the same. You say you don't see the point in releasing a game that has already been made, but my mind back then was worried that SC 1 was dying and if SC 2 wasn't the same then my favorite game would die forever as there would be no one to play it. So as you can see, Halo CE and H2 are dead because you can't play them online with a large pool of players in a thriving community. That is why people want them to re-release the same games.

 

On the other hand, I agree that the Halo community is so far divided that there really is no such thing as a Halo community. You're going to get a bunch of people who are like "I'm a die hard Halo player and have played since Halo CE and this is what I want out of Halo 4/5." And then you're going to get a few people who were also longstanding players who utterly disagree with that guy in a myriad of ways. I am a longstanding Halo player, not as competitive as the MLG players' background but a heck of a lot more than the people wanting AR starts. What I want in these games is quite different from what a lot of people seem to want, just going by forum gripes. So I head over to mlgpro.com and I also differ slightly from their views. I like armor abilities and sprint. I love sprint in fact, and think the stopping power that balances it is perfect. I also hate AR starts because I never liked that about Halo 3. When I played H2 it was always BR starts, when I played Halo CE it was always pistol starts. That was the idea behind the slayer pro gameplay of early Halo, that every player must have a utility weapon that has an out to every situation because otherwise the game's balance collapses into rock/paper/scissors and whoever wins the opening rush wins the game. I have firsthand experience of this in some of the AR start games of Halo 3 at level 50 in team doubles. Whoever won the opening rush accumulated the BR, sniper, and rockets while the two players spawning back just had AR's which they couldn't use to compete with those weapons and couldn't even move *anywhere* because map control was locked down by the power players who just won the first encounter. This happened so, SO many times where the team who gets the upper hand right off the bat goes on to win 25-0 or 50-3. Once you get people who really know how to play the game AR starts becomes the most hideous balance imaginable, it's a fake balance.

 

But that's my little rant, and as you can see, it doesn't fit the general consensus of this forum, and my liking of the abilities and "Cod" styled things shuns me from MLG forums. I love the fast pace of Halo 4 right now, although I do have problems such as the lack of spawning power weapons on each map. So yeah, I feel like it's pointless when people say they represent the Halo community or what it wants. There's a ton of differences between all of our preferred playstyles. The best we can get is different playlists and custom options which allow us to play the modes we like. I wouldn't even be against a classic Halo mode, although I'm unsure how many people would actually play it. Last time I played Halo 3 every single team slayer match would get mass voted so that the next game type would be Slayer BR's. People would rather have a crappy map with BR starts on that game than to play a good map with AR's.

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I like this game, i still think H3 is better MP wise but h4 is really fun to play..if there is one thing i want it's for them to throw in a H3 Classics playlist. No armor abilities, no classes, both basic and power weapons on map for pick up, H3 player/weapon settings.

 

Give me that and i'm good. i'm happy with the game as is apart from how unbalanced BTIS on ragnarok is but a H3 Classics playlist would be awesome

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I think the game overall is awesome, it's just insulting that there is no 8v8 Objective gameplay. That's a massive part of what made Halo great. Pretending that Halo4 cant run 8v8 is tantamount to saying Halo is basically over. Nobody wants to play Slayer all day, that's what COD is for and why it's all little kids playing it. Just give us Multi-Team and BTB-Non-Slayer and we're good. Just let matchmaking run properly. LET PEOPLE PLAY THE GAME. They can't just break us up into 4v4 because none of the development staff have more than three or four friends apiece. I mean s***, my clan is a massive crew of friends and we'd have a hard time whittling down to an 8-man let alone breaking up 8 guys into 4 or 5 man teams. Let us play together.This isn't 2004.

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I used to be a diehard SC fanboy and wanted SC2 to be exactly the same as the first game, and I never actually bought or played SC2 because it pissed me off how different it was. I've matured a bit more but there is a logic to wanting the game to stay the same. You say you don't see the point in releasing a game that has already been made, but my mind back then was worried that SC 1 was dying and if SC 2 wasn't the same then my favorite game would die forever as there would be no one to play it. So as you can see, Halo CE and H2 are dead because you can't play them online with a large pool of players in a thriving community. That is why people want them to re-release the same games.

 

On the other hand, I agree that the Halo community is so far divided that there really is no such thing as a Halo community. You're going to get a bunch of people who are like "I'm a die hard Halo player and have played since Halo CE and this is what I want out of Halo 4/5." And then you're going to get a few people who were also longstanding players who utterly disagree with that guy in a myriad of ways. I am a longstanding Halo player, not as competitive as the MLG players' background but a heck of a lot more than the people wanting AR starts. What I want in these games is quite different from what a lot of people seem to want, just going by forum gripes. So I head over to mlgpro.com and I also differ slightly from their views. I like armor abilities and sprint. I love sprint in fact, and think the stopping power that balances it is perfect. I also hate AR starts because I never liked that about Halo 3. When I played H2 it was always BR starts, when I played Halo CE it was always pistol starts. That was the idea behind the slayer pro gameplay of early Halo, that every player must have a utility weapon that has an out to every situation because otherwise the game's balance collapses into rock/paper/scissors and whoever wins the opening rush wins the game. I have firsthand experience of this in some of the AR start games of Halo 3 at level 50 in team doubles. Whoever won the opening rush accumulated the BR, sniper, and rockets while the two players spawning back just had AR's which they couldn't use to compete with those weapons and couldn't even move *anywhere* because map control was locked down by the power players who just won the first encounter. This happened so, SO many times where the team who gets the upper hand right off the bat goes on to win 25-0 or 50-3. Once you get people who really know how to play the game AR starts becomes the most hideous balance imaginable, it's a fake balance.

 

But that's my little rant, and as you can see, it doesn't fit the general consensus of this forum, and my liking of the abilities and "Cod" styled things shuns me from MLG forums. I love the fast pace of Halo 4 right now, although I do have problems such as the lack of spawning power weapons on each map. So yeah, I feel like it's pointless when people say they represent the Halo community or what it wants. There's a ton of differences between all of our preferred playstyles. The best we can get is different playlists and custom options which allow us to play the modes we like. I wouldn't even be against a classic Halo mode, although I'm unsure how many people would actually play it. Last time I played Halo 3 every single team slayer match would get mass voted so that the next game type would be Slayer BR's. People would rather have a crappy map with BR starts on that game than to play a good map with AR's.

I hear what you're saying and agree with a lot of it.

 

For full disclosure, I think I was blinded by the hype of Reach. I ate it up, loved it, raved about it to friends (and I am one of your aforementioned "Day 1 H:CE players"). I look back on it now and think, "wow, Reach was actually extremely forgettable". I put it down a couple months after release and never looked back. Almost 5000 games of Halo 3 played and less than 1000 in Reach. That says it all for me.

 

Truthfully, I had the most memories with Halo 2, but I had the most fun with Halo 3. This is not at all to say that I dislike Halo 4; again, I am a big fan so far. If Bungie had just canned the Halo series after Halo 3, and spent their time just maintaining the multiplayer and continuing to roll out new maps, I'd be behind that 100%. As a dedicated fan, it hurts a little just to admit that, but my personal preference is with the older games. However, that does not mean that I can't get behind Halo 4. It's the closest game to my personal tastes since H3, and I can recognize that the Halo series still has a lot to offer. I just have a hard time believing that so many don't see that with Halo 4 or that they're just so vehemently opposed to any new bells and whistles added into the game.

 

It sucks too how the community shrinks over time and gets crushed when a new Halo or CoD comes out. Most everyone wants to be playing the new big game, and I just don't like perfectly good games being left in the dust. I would love it in 2014 if 343 released an H2:Anniversary and brought all the maps back online. If they could keep the physics and gameplay the same, H2 would be back, for good.

 

But enough whining. My whole point is just that no one seems to be able to agree on what it would take to make a good Halo game. As much as the current game gets flamed, when the new one comes out people will say it's broken compared to the last one. The sense of entitlement is astounding sometimes. The perfect Halo game has never existed, but at least they try to change things up.

 

EDIT: If I could define what makes the perfect Halo game: I'd say combine all the maps from H2/3 and give it H3's multiplayer with the option to choose AR/BR start as your loadout, nothing more.

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Good points all around, Mangos. This only brings me back to my major point these days; So many of us just want the full number of player slots back. It feels like we can't even judge the game honestly yet, because we haven't been "allowed" to get it running fully up to speed, which for my people and all the Clans we know simply comes down to 8v8 full Objective playlist support. We just can't say how we feel about the game until we've been matchmade into a CTF with proper player support. I am simply astounded that this is the first Halo game since Halo2 that seems right on track, fresh and well designed- And then they go and drop the "you can't play with all your friends" atom-bomb and it all goes to s***. It just seems like such a focused, petty thing to do. We aren't even complaining about the game. It's just that until they "Let us all into the game" by restoring proper 8v8 objective play, the franchise is on stand-by. Amazing. Restore BTB to full status and bring back Doubles and MultiTeam so any sized team can play. ANY SIZED TEAM. And 343i needs to stop pretending that just because the majority of ADD sufferers prefer Slayer that that is all they need to support. 343i could soon be remembered specifically for this one small, CRUCIAL f***up, which is such a shame considering how right they got everything else. Just plug it in and let us play, 343... just plug it in and let us play...

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The Elites should be made playable in the next Halo. 343 spat in the faces of everyone who was in a Sangheili clan and viewed the UNSC's enemy, the Covenant, with awe. Some of you who prefer the Spartans may complain the Elites have different hit boxes, and this may be true. But heck the Elites don't even have to be in the match making just in custom games.

 

I want to be able to go into a clan meeting and see Elites wearing the Honor Guardsmen uniform standing at attention as we wait for the leaders of our rival clan to meet with us.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I love the direction that 343 has taken Halo 4, to me it is the best Halo experience since Halo 2. But I would love to see a Halo 2 anniversary that is exactly as Halo 2 was. I want the same menu screens, the ame music, the same weapons, I want everything just as it was with just better graphics. In fact, if 343 could just some how reboot the old Halo 2 servers, I would not mind that either. But I would love to see a Halo 2 anniversary, but give the fans what they want, Halo 2 to the T.

 

But on another note, I would very well like to see individual playlist ranks like Halo 2 had, that made the game super addicting, always striving to get to that 50 kept people coming back, I want to se that in Halo 4's NEAR future.

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  • 2 weeks later...

What I really want brought back to Halo 4 are Elites. In Halo 3, half of the players would play as Elites, but this number dropped drastically in Halo Reach. I believe this occurred due to the fact of the very limited customization for Elites. In Halo 3, people played as elites because they had equal customization as the Spartans. Bungie failed to balance the customization of elites and Spartans. Completely. So now, players think, " we'll the human guy has more armor than that alien dude, so I'll play as him". Do you see my point? I was hoping this would change in halo 4, but instead, the very much loved (by at least a fourth of the Halo community) are removed from multiplayer. I'm upset and disappointed.

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compromise my friend. give options and playlists for no sprint/load out/aa call it classic halo games.

 

also custom games lobby would be huge.

 

trueskill to be placed by your name. SR-130 and TR-50 being maxes.

 

instarespawn is stupid bc you can janitor your own kills. also ive had multiple killtaculars not be exterminations because of instant respawn. -_-

 

firefight was awesome better then spops

 

Either way i love the game and wont stop playing it.

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I like AAs, I think they were a good addition. Plus stuff like that doesn't go away once it's in.

 

I think sprint in a shooter with map sizes like Halo maps does two things: It empowers foot soldiers with unpredictable movement, and it lets the developers slow them down even MORE so that they're easy to shoot so long as they're not sprinting. It does the same thing in Call of Duty. In Borderlands and Battlefield 3 though the sprint is a necessary way for players to move across the truly massive maps. The difference is that Call of Duty and Halo are arena shooters where you are in a smaller map and the sprint is there to get you back to the fight faster, it speeds you up without making you any stronger or tougher.

 

I don't think sprint is going anywhere either, but it showed up in the first place because players were painfully slow in Reach. They can sprint, but when they're not sprinting they're easier to shoot because it takes them 6 years to move 6 inches. They can't strafe as well, so fights become more about getting the first shot and who will miss once.

 

I think the weapons have gotten worse and worse at killing people. 3 shots in Halo 1, 4 shots in Halo 2 & 3, and 5 shots in Reach and Halo 4. That creates a situation where you have to stay focused for just a tad bit longer, and you are more likely to make a mistake. On the flip side, it also makes mistakes you make slightly less consequential, because you've only lost 20% of the fight with a 5 shot weapon instead of 25%. The result: Averaging. The weapons average you out but taking longer to kill. If someone is a better player than me I'd have 4 shots to kill them in Halo 3, in Halo Reach and Halo 4 I have 5, which means I'm going to land more shots, probably die anyway, but they are going to be weaker for the next fight. Suddenly you can't just out-BR one person and then the next, because the first person took a greater toll on you.

 

Shields also seem to take forever to start recharging, it's something insane like 5 seconds, but I don't remember how that compares to previous games. I know that in Borderlands if you find a shield that has a 5 second recharge delay and it doesn't empower you when it's depleted, you throw it away immediately. That's against strictly NPC enemies that you throw away that 5 second recharge delay, not against actual human players who are tenacious and thousands of times more aggressive than any NPC. Once again you can't just *win* fights anymore because they all leave you in seriously crippled condition for the next fight.

 

So to sum this up: You have to spend longer fighting each person, and you can't emerge from those fights in good shape because you're slower and they just take longer. That means that even against complete newbs you can't keep fighting, you have to take breaks, and you won't get them because the game has instant respawns, everyone sprints, and all the maps give you 2-3 ways to approach every encounter. You can't hide because everyone can see through walls if they want to, and you can't run because everyone is just as fast as you and the routes through maps all loop back on themselves anyway.

 

Reach changed a lot of things, the power weapons were ridiculously powerful and every fight began and ended with grenade spam. The most important thing it changed though was the basic soldier. He was slower with a weaker gun. Halo 4 backed off the power weapons and nuclear grenades, and I'm happy about that, but I'm still a slower weaker soldier. I can go fast if I want, but I have to choose between fast movement and combat, because you can't combine them without a speed boost. They weakened the basics. That wouldn't be bad except that Halo always present a strong basic soldier. You had your shields and you had a weapon that when used properly would win you a fight before it became dangerous. That's why there were never loadouts, everyone started with the same strong template.

 

Now you're still supposedly strong but everything is slowed down so newer players can follow. The result is everyone is just a bit more average. People said the same thing about Reach when it came out, and it was true then too. They went further with the basic soldier in this one with instant respawns and everyone having sprint and loopy maps. I am seriously glad that the rocket launcher isn't an automatic 6 kills though, and that grenades aren't completley unavoidable anymore.

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