Once BTB comes to Halo 5, I think that the game-mode could very well achieve 16v16, or, at the very least, 12v12. Warzone is 12v12 since there is so much going on with A.I.s, bosses, and objectives. But since BTB is either normal slayer or objectives (e.g. CTF), do you think it could reach a higher player-count, like 16v16?
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> Once BTB comes to Halo 5, I think that the game-mode could very well achieve 16v16, or, at the very least, 12v12. Warzone is 12v12 since there is so much going on with A.I.s, bosses, and objectives. But since BTB is either normal slayer or objectives (e.g. CTF), do you think it could reach a higher player-count, like 16v16?
I’m not so sure about that, when they said that BTB will return but as the dlc, they said the classic btw, hopefully they didn’t mean literally classic 8v8 BTB, but the well remembered/ loved BTB
Ye gods I hope not. Warzone exists so that these kinds of things don’t happen to BTB. BTB is still Arena multiplayer and bumping it above 8v8 is a terrible idea, the reason Warzone works the way it does is because you can’t just throw extra players on top of an existing formula and expect it to work out fine.
You can’t just double player count, double map size and call it a day. It requires compromises that are not at all separated from the rest of the game. 4v4 Arena has already been compromised to fit Warzone and 24 players into the overall game.
Putting that aside, 16v16 ‘BTB’ is not the same as 8v8 BTB we have had in past games. It would be like saying you will be adding doubles and then add another 4v4 playlist, its not the same. If there were to be a 16v16 gametype it would have to be separate from 8v8, not that I see any good reason to add that high a player count anyways in the core Halo titles.
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> Ye gods I hope not. Warzone exists so that these kinds of things don’t happen to BTB. BTB is still Arena multiplayer and bumping it above 8v8 is a terrible idea, the reason Warzone works the way it does is because you can’t just throw extra players on top of an existing formula and expect it to work out fine.
>
> You can’t just double player count, double map size and call it a day. It requires compromises that are not at all separated from the rest of the game. 4v4 Arena has already been compromised to fit Warzone and 24 players into the overall game.
>
> Putting that aside, 16v16 ‘BTB’ is not the same as 8v8 BTB we have had in past games. It would be like saying you will be adding doubles and then add another 4v4 playlist, its not the same. If there were to be a 16v16 gametype it would have to be separate from 8v8, not that I see any good reason to add that high a player count anyways in the core Halo titles.
I really wouldn’t lump BTB in with the rest of Arena multiplayer. The ONLY reason BTB has always been 8v8 is because that has been the maximum player capacity.
12v12 BTB would be an enhanced BTB, seeing as how the entire draw of BTB is larger teams and vehicular combat. 12v12 BTB in Halo 5 would work infinitely better than Halo 4’s 8v8 BTB because there won’t be any Plasma Grenade or Plasma Pistol starts. The increased player count will only serve to create a better balance between infantry and vehicular warfare…more players means more options, more team-based vehicles and more team-oriented gameplay, right?
4v4 Arena is compromised by more players specifically because it is a set formula based on said player count, while 8v8 BTB has only ever been ‘the best we had’. 12v12, or even 16v16 if 343i thinks that’s possible outside of Warzone, can only be seen as an improvement.
It might be fun 16v16, but I want an 8v8 because that’s what I know.
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> I really wouldn’t lump BTB in with the rest of Arena multiplayer. The ONLY reason BTB has always been 8v8 is because that has been the maximum player capacity.
> 12v12 BTB would be an enhanced BTB, seeing as how the entire draw of BTB is larger teams and vehicular combat. 12v12 BTB in Halo 5 would work infinitely better than Halo 4’s 8v8 BTB because there won’t be any Plasma Grenade or Plasma Pistol starts. The increased player count will only serve to create a better balance between infantry and vehicular warfare…more players means more options, more team-based vehicles and more team-oriented gameplay, right?
> 4v4 Arena is compromised by more players specifically because it is a set formula based on said player count, while 8v8 BTB has only ever been ‘the best we had’. 12v12, or even 16v16 if 343i thinks that’s possible outside of Warzone, can only be seen as an improvement.
How is it not Arena multiplayer? Equal starts with contestable weapons, the only difference being adding a few more players and some contestable vehicles. 8v8 is not a technical restriction, the ability to go above that player count has been technically feasible for as long as the franchise has existed. It was kept 16 players because it otherwise requires compromises to go above that. Compromises to fidelity, compromises to mechanics. Game design does not magically scale with player count/size, it requires a lot of work and adjustments that have a ripple effect through the entire product.
By that same logic 4v4 is ‘enhanced’ 2v2 and 8v8 is ‘enhanced’ 4v4. That’s not how it works. BTB’s appeal is in larger player counts than 4v4 and more vehicles, that is not the same thing as having the largest player counts and vehicles. I don’t particularly care if theoretical 12v12 BTB would be more enjoyable than Halo 4 BTB as that game has far far more pressing issues than player count.
“4v4 Arena is compromised by more players specifically because it is a set formula based on said player count” really, you don’t say… How is that any different from 8v8 BTB? Its not as if BTB was designed with 16v16 in mind and then ‘only’ had 8v8 after the fact. BTB was balanced around 8v8 in the same manor 4v4 is. Its not an ‘improvement’ just to add players without any though to balance and mechanics, in fact that would be a great way to lower overall quality of an experience.
By the way, when I say ‘compromised’ I’m talking about balance and mechanics of the overall package. Halo 5 looks and plays the way it does because of the differing needs of Arena and Warzone. The experiences are not developed in a vacuum, Arena(both 4v4 and 8v8) would not look or play the same if Warzone did not exist and likewise if Warzone had been the only experience, it would likely look quite different without having the limitations placed on it by a core of Arena multiplayer. Both experiences have aspects about them that are a result of compromises made to fit these two separate pieces together that were not made for the benefit of one or the other.
I will give 343 credit in that they understand that BTB is a separate entity and simply having higher player counts and vehicles does not automatically make a gamemode ‘BTB’, otherwise Warzone would likely just be called BTB. Saying they will add classic BTB while upping the player count would be a slap in the face on the same level of saying they are adding Doubles only to add 2v2v2v2 multiteam because technically they both have 2 player per team… Adding a separate 16v16 gamemode is a separate issue from adding ‘BTB’.
Player count is always directly related to map size. Unless they’re planning on recycling Warzone maps into the BTB playlist, then don’t expect to see higher player counts in BTB. And they’re not recycling Warzone maps into BTB. Because if they did then there would be little point in having Warzone in the first place. I’m not saying that I agree with any of this, I’m just saying that this is how it always has been in Halo, and this is how it always will be.
I’m sure they could pull that off since BTB is much smaller than Warzone and doesn’t have any A.I. It should be a variant, though, so people who prefer 8v8 BTB can still play 8v8 BTB.
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> How is it not Arena multiplayer? Equal starts with contestable weapons, the only difference being adding a few more players and some contestable vehicles. 8v8 is not a technical restriction, the ability to go above that player count has been technically feasible for as long as the franchise has existed. It was kept 16 players because it otherwise requires compromises to go above that. Compromises to fidelity, compromises to mechanics. Game design does not magically scale with player count/size, it requires a lot of work and adjustments that have a ripple effect through the entire product.
>
> By that same logic 4v4 is ‘enhanced’ 2v2 and 8v8 is ‘enhanced’ 4v4. That’s not how it works. BTB’s appeal is in larger player counts than 4v4 and more vehicles, that is not the same thing as having the largest player counts and vehicles. I don’t particularly care if theoretical 12v12 BTB would be more enjoyable than Halo 4 BTB as that game has far far more pressing issues than player count.
>
> “4v4 Arena is compromised by more players specifically because it is a set formula based on said player count” really, you don’t say… How is that any different from 8v8 BTB? Its not as if BTB was designed with 16v16 in mind and then ‘only’ had 8v8 after the fact. BTB was balanced around 8v8 in the same manor 4v4 is. Its not an ‘improvement’ just to add players without any though to balance and mechanics, in fact that would be a great way to lower overall quality of an experience.
>
> By the way, when I say ‘compromised’ I’m talking about balance and mechanics of the overall package. Halo 5 looks and plays the way it does because of the differing needs of Arena and Warzone. The experiences are not developed in a vacuum, Arena(both 4v4 and 8v8) would not look or play the same if Warzone did not exist and likewise if Warzone had been the only experience, it would likely look quite different without having the limitations placed on it by a core of Arena multiplayer. Both experiences have aspects about them that are a result of compromises made to fit these two separate pieces together that were not made for the benefit of one or the other.
>
> I will give 343 credit in that they understand that BTB is a separate entity and simply having higher player counts and vehicles does not automatically make a gamemode ‘BTB’, otherwise Warzone would likely just be called BTB. Saying they will add classic BTB while upping the player count would be a slap in the face on the same level of saying they are adding Doubles only to add 2v2v2v2 multiteam because technically they both have 2 player per team… Adding a separate 16v16 gamemode is a separate issue from adding ‘BTB’.
I never said it wasn’t Arena multiplayer. I said you shouldn’t lump BTB in with 4v4 Arena multiplayer. The main difference between 4v4 Arena and BTB is the vehicles, and I think we can both agree on that. Sure, Arena has occasionally had Ghosts and/or Mongooses in the past, but for the most part, the 4v4 Arena experience has essentially boiled down to four Spartans duking it out against four other Spartans. I’ll get back to that after I’ve addressed some of your points.
The technical feasibility of 24-plus players in earlier Halos is debatable; it certainly wasn’t feasible in Halo: CE, and the difficulty of implementing 32 player multiplayer in Halo 2 was one of the reasons Bungie scrapped the idea and why we ended up with the same player count as Halo: CE. Following Halo 2’s success, I doubt increasing the player count even entered the developers’ minds for at least Halo 3 because they wanted to consolidate what was great about the Halo 2 multiplayer experience. I think in general, before now, there would have been serious technical obstacles to adding in more players for a few reasons, some examples being the absence of dedicated servers and the ageing hardware of the Xbox 360 (the former being the greatest obstacle which, while perhaps not too difficult to overcome, would have been very expensive to overcome and you mustn’t forget that Bungie/343i/Microsoft in general prefers profit margins over improved features in their video games).
Your 2v2-being-the-same-as-4v4 analogy really falls down here: the whole point of 4v4 Arena multiplayer is that it is a wholly competitive environment and is therefore distinct from the social/casual-oriented BTB. Returning to the vehicle issue, the general balance of Halo as a competitive shooter really gets a wrench thrown in its cogs when you add in vehicles. Just look at Halo: Reach - one person in a Banshee could dominate the entire enemy team on his own. I’m not saying Halo: Reach is a bad game because of it (I actually really dug Halo: Reach), I’m just saying that BTB has never been balanced, and it has very little to do with the player count. In fact, in my own stupid head experiments based on very little data but which make sense to me so long as I don’t try to explain it too much, increasing the player count to 12v12 (or even 16v16 if you really want to go there) would actually remedy that imbalance to a certain extent, simply because it would make small groups of players in Tanks and Banshees less able to, with an astonishingly small amount of effort, control the enemy spawn zones.
Now, obviously, 12v12 BTB would have to be played on maps designed for 12v12 BTB and likewise for 16v16, but that’s pretty much a given.
Also, “simply having higher player counts and vehicles does not automatically make a gamemode ‘BTB’, otherwise Warzone would likely just be called BTB”? No, it wouldn’t. BTB is Slayer, BTB is CTF, BTB is Assault, BTB is Territories, BTB is many other things, but it is bleatingly obvious that Warzone is a wholly separate entity, and its concept is drawn from, yes, BTB, but also Firefight, and as we all know, Firefight is a very, very different thing to BTB. This particular argument can be summed up very quickly: was Invasion classified as BTB? No, so why would Warzone? All that being said, here’s a TL;DR.
TL;DR: BTB is Arena multiplayer, but it is distinctly less competitive than other forms of Arena multiplayer; 12v12 is good, and there are several reasons it hasn’t been implemented until now; the one transferrable thing from Warzone is its player count, and it’s a pretty safe bet that the transition will be beneficial and smooth.
I’m pretty sure BTB won’t be bigger than Warzone. I feel like that almost defeats the purpose of Warzone being “the biggest ever multiplayer mode in Halo”. Besides, we need a bridge between 12v12 Warzone and 4v4 Arena and 8v8 BTB fits the bill.
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> I never said it wasn’t Arena multiplayer. I said you shouldn’t lump BTB in with 4v4 Arena multiplayer. The main difference between 4v4 Arena and BTB is the vehicles, and I think we can both agree on that. Sure, Arena has occasionally had Ghosts and/or Mongooses in the past, but for the most part, the 4v4 Arena experience has essentially boiled down to four Spartans duking it out against four other Spartans. I’ll get back to that after I’ve addressed some of your points.
I’m not ‘lumping’ anything together, that’s just how it is. The items available on the map might change, but good BTB maps follow the same rules as the 4v4 ones with regards to map design and item placement, there are obvious design considerations that must be included, but that is not unique to BTB, 2v2, 4v4, 8v8 and everything in between require their own considerations to really work.
> The technical feasibility of 24-plus players in earlier Halos is debatable; it certainly wasn’t feasible in Halo: CE, and the difficulty of implementing 32 player multiplayer in Halo 2 was one of the reasons Bungie scrapped the idea and why we ended up with the same player count as Halo: CE. Following Halo 2’s success, I doubt increasing the player count even entered the developers’ minds for at least Halo 3 because they wanted to consolidate what was great about the Halo 2 multiplayer experience. I think in general, before now, there would have been serious technical obstacles to adding in more players for a few reasons, some examples being the absence of dedicated servers and the ageing hardware of the Xbox 360 (the former being the greatest obstacle which, while perhaps not too difficult to overcome, would have been very expensive to overcome and you mustn’t forget that Bungie/343i/Microsoft in general prefers profit margins over improved features in their video games).
For the sake of arguement lets ignore the original xbox, the 360 was clearly capable of going over the 8v8 limit and dedicated servers were always an option. If they really wanted to up the player count, they could have.
Also can we stop assigning the developers motives for why they chose not to pursue any player count increases? Let’s not act as if the only reason it wasn’t changed is simply because it was not feasible on OG xbox and then the developers just forgot. about it.
> Your 2v2-being-the-same-as-4v4 analogy really falls down here: the whole point of 4v4 Arena multiplayer is that it is a wholly competitive environment and is therefore distinct from the social/casual-oriented BTB. Returning to the vehicle issue, the general balance of Halo as a competitive shooter really gets a wrench thrown in its cogs when you add in vehicles. Just look at Halo: Reach - one person in a Banshee could dominate the entire enemy team on his own. I’m not saying Halo: Reach is a bad game because of it (I actually really dug Halo: Reach), I’m just saying that BTB has never been balanced, and it has very little to do with the player count. In fact, in my own stupid head experiments based on very little data but which make sense to me so long as I don’t try to explain it too much, increasing the player count to 12v12 (or even 16v16 if you really want to go there) would actually remedy that imbalance to a certain extent, simply because it would make small groups of players in Tanks and Banshees less able to, with an astonishingly small amount of effort, control the enemy spawn zones.
The level of ‘competitiveness’ of BTB as compared to 4v4 is not the issue. The point is that player count has a clear and tangible effect on the experience of a gamemode. You can’t change player count and subsequently change the map design, item layout, etc and say its the same thing. This is true of basically any multiplayer experience of any franchise. Which is why you can’t add another team(or 2)s worth of players and than consider it the same thing. Adding another set of 16(or even 8) players to BTB is the exact same thing as adding 4 or even 2 additional player to doubles just on a different scale. ‘BTB’ is just a name for 8v8 as up until now there hasn’t been anything else.
Simply because an experience is not balanced as finely as another does not mean it is without balance entirely. Good design is universal and most of Reach’s problems have to do with poor map design and the balance of specific sandbox items. Adding more players does not fix the near complete lack of contestable power weapons that might be able to deal with said Banshees and tanks, nor does it deal with the rest of the vehicles being made of paper, etc, etc. Just as good design is universal, bad design is as well, theoretical 16v16 gametypes would be just as susceptible to balance issues as any other
> Now, obviously, 12v12 BTB would have to be played on maps designed for 12v12 BTB and likewise for 16v16, but that’s pretty much a given.
>
> Also, “simply having higher player counts and vehicles does not automatically make a gamemode ‘BTB’, otherwise Warzone would likely just be called BTB”? No, it wouldn’t. BTB is Slayer, BTB is CTF, BTB is Assault, BTB is Territories, BTB is many other things, but it is bleatingly obvious that Warzone is a wholly separate entity, and its concept is drawn from, yes, BTB, but also Firefight, and as we all know, Firefight is a very, very different thing to BTB. This particular argument can be summed up very quickly: was Invasion classified as BTB? No, so why would Warzone? All that being said, here’s a TL;DR.
>
> TL;DR: BTB is Arena multiplayer, but it is distinctly less competitive than other forms of Arena multiplayer; 12v12 is good, and there are several reasons it hasn’t been implemented until now; the one transferrable thing from Warzone is its player count, and it’s a pretty safe bet that the transition will be beneficial and smooth.
The argument was not ‘Warzone is BTB’, it was that ‘BTB(8v8) is a distinct entity which is something 343 has obviously realized by saying Arena BTB is coming at a later date’. Increasing the player count on said ‘BTB’ would make it no longer ‘BTB’(aka 8v8) .
TL;DR 8v8 BTB is a distinct gameplay experience in the same way 2v2 and 4v4 is. If you want to lobby for a 16v16 playlist in addition to 8v8 be my guest, but don’t remove 8v8 and then tell me 16v16(or even 12v12) would somehow be ‘the same thing’ because it wouldn’t.
I think it should stay as 8v8.
I would absolutely love to see bigger battles! Warzone is looking to be great. But if they could have 16vs16 battles… OMG!
Maybe have Classic BTB and then War Battle or something.
I would love to see a 8v8v8v8 BTB multi team.
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> I would love to see a 8v8v8v8 BTB multi team.
That would be epic, although we’d need some real big maps.
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> That would be epic, although we’d need some real big maps.
Could utilize Warzone Maps for that I guess.
On that note, I think Warzone would benefit more from 16 v 16 than Big Team. Keep Big Team either 8v8 or increase slightly to 10v10, but Warzone would be great for 14v14 / 16v16
I Like that idea
I vote for 16v16 BTB. The more the merrier I say. I like my chaotic battlefields.
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Yeah…okay. I see where you’re coming from, and while I don’t necessarily agree with it, there is a certain logic to it.
We both got some good points in - let’s agree to disagree.
16 v 16 on regular BTB sized maps? No, please god no that would be a cluster funk.