I love Halo, and Halo 4 is no exception… graphics are incredible, it holds true to the classic Halo’s while adding 343’s own flavor to the mix. I love everything, with the very large exception of the multiplayer…
Lag plagues the multiplayer on Halo, and I’ve walked from the game altogether to play another multiplayer FPS, which I won’t name to keep the arguments about which is better at bay. I sometimes play for hours waiting for just a single game in which lag doesn’t screw everything up. At first I thought it was my internet, but then went to another FPS out of frustration and was amazed at how smooth the multiplayer ran. No lag, kill cams were right on, and I all worked as expected. Halo 4, completely different story… I get one-shotted with BR’s, and then watch animations of BR bullets fly over my corpse (lag); I get sniped through walls after I’ve just ducked behind them (lag); Sticky’s curve in the air (lag); Scattershots and Shotguns are one shot kills at mid-range (lag). I’ve read the forums, and I know everyone will say that the kill cam is ‘off’, and that the kills were legit… and any of you who would like to test this theory, I’d be more than happy to go capture a few gameplay videos so you can see what I’m talking about.
It’s absolutely frustrating to play such a great game and get pwned by a noob because his BR is working spot on and my DMR, after 8 consecutive headshots, is doing what appears to be nothing. I’d rather get 1 kill and die 30 times and be handed a humiliating loss than to go through the frustration of laggy game after laggy game after laggy game.
While I’m whining, I’ll add a few things :
- No Doubles in the playlist sucks!!! My girlfriend and I are tired of losing games because our teammates run out and die over and over like noobs.
- Matchmaking… let’s admit it, it sucks. Granted, previous Halo’s didn’t exactly have the best matchmaking system, but come on 343. Why, in 2013, am I playing an Infinity Slayer match with one other teammate (against 4) for the length of a game, and yet every time I try to get a game started I’m thrown into one where my new team is down 30 kills and :30 after I’m in the game is over. I program for a living, and I cannot fathom an instance in which you couldn’t program the system so that if you left your last game because you were getting pwned, you are thrown into a different losing game
- Needler: No idea what this guns problem is. I like it when it works, but half the time (possibly due to lag, not sure on this one yet) but my reticle doesn’t turn red, and leaves the needles to fly around pointlessly. Again, feel free to try and call me on this one, I can post videos
- Vehicles : Incredibly overpowered. Not so much the weapons they have, but their armor.
- Loving the new points system (ie. Revenge, Avenger, Guardian Angel, etc.) but why do they all have to be positive. Hand out kill-stealer medals to punks on the team that cannot get their own kills, hand out betrayal medals to people who try to throw the game. Make them count against the points, and while you’re in there, throw in losing points when you die (off your score, not necessarily the teams score). This only encourages novices to run out and get pwned in the hopes they’ll get a kill or two before going down so that they can earn the points necessary. I have lost count the number of times that I had a +15 KD ratio, and ended up in 3rd or 4th place because my teammates ran out solo and got pwend, but got more points than I did, even though they ended up -15. My point is, “Skill” points require no skill to achieve, and to add to it, deaths only hurt the teams score rather than the player who is constantly dying.
- Maps : More small maps. As I mentioned earlier, my girlfriend and I play local multiplayer infinity slayer constantly. I love Complex, and so does she, but it’s just too big for us to play together… the screen lags (this is, from what I can tell, a lag due to rendering too many graphics at once for the Xbox rather than internet lag… it only happens when we are both outside and the Xbox has a lot to render. We need a Doubles playlist with nothing but smaller maps (Adrift, Haven, Abandon, etc.). We want to play Capture the Flag together, as well as King of the Hill, but the maps that make it in the mix ruin it for us. We always stick to Infinity Slayer playlist since the majority of games end up on Haven or Adrift, and the xbox can handle those no problem.
- Grifball : great idea, but the lag kills it completely. Again, I’ve got the video. I’d like to add that personally I do not think K/D ratio should affect your career stats (maybe it doesn’t, haven’t actually looked into it for sure). I play Grifball because I love Halo but need a temporary change of pace, so why not play some Halo Football. I’d deal with the lag if my K/D didn’t count, but the combination of my hard-earned K/D ratio going down the tubes after I’m lag-hammered (and betrayed) repeatedly is enough for me to never want to play it again.
- For Halo 5 : Play a game or two on Haven, split-screen, on the red team, and see how many times you die because you couldn’t see the blue dude coming down the hall… beautiful map, but provides a distinct advantage to the blue team based on the textures alone… reminds me of trying to play Narrows on split screen while red. Just an opinion.
- Social : What happened to the social list. I loved Halo 3’s social list, because sometimes I want to play a little “unranked” halo while my lunch cooks in the oven or something. I’m not 100% committed to match from the get-go, I just want to kills some people and not have my career K/D go down. I want to play the new maps and learn them a bit before going into ranked and getting pwned by players who’ve had them for a month. My point, sometimes I want to play halo multiplayer without a care in the world, and the Social playlist was my go-to (especially after a few drinks), but unfortunately it is MIA.
Don’t get me wrong, you did a hell of a job with your first Halo title, but the multiplayer lag kills it for me, and I’ve been a huge fan of Halo since the first. The graphics on single-player campaign are ridiculous. The multiplayer (on the off occasion it doesn’t lag) is so much fun, especially when I know that every kill gets me closer to my Ordnance Mastery. The ability to swap loadouts mid-match is a great idea. I want to love this game, I really do, but you dropped the ball. The majority of us play Halo for the Multiplayer matches… for me there is no better thing after a long day at work to sit next to my girl on the couch while we headshot noob after noob with our BR & DMR from down the hall in Adrift, but when those headshots don’t count, we both get frustrated very quickly. We’ve been playing Split-Screen FPS games since we got our XBox, and we are far from being noobs when it comes to keeping each other alive and mowing down the enemy, but YOU make winning so damn hard. Not the people we play, but your game!
We have since moved on from Halo 4 to another FPS and I feel like a large weight has been lifted off my shoulders when I turn on my XBox and jump into multiplayer now. I get pwned (being a noob in this one), but I deserve to get pwned… I suck at it. But I’m no slouch when it comes to Halo 4.
Again, I can provide video proof.