Hello Everyone,
What do you all think 343 Needs to focus on in order for Halo Infinite to be successful? I truly believe they need to focus on building a sense of community between the fans. I made a video outlining this in more detail if anyone is interested https://youtu.be/ztmp37ulx8c
What do you guys (and gals) think?
Nice video. Liked it (literally), and subscribed. I think many could argue that 343i has put huge emphasis on the community, and that changing tastes within the community are the biggest challenge. No one seems to take anything at face value anymore. Many just expect developers to cave to their demands. I think the community is much larger than the loudest voices in the room seem to make it look, and those voices are claiming that Halo has been destroyed - a perspective I disagree with.
There is no definitive reason for changing tastes but its possible that many players of the early Halo games have moved on, and new players want different things.
I agree with you that excluding huge staples from games seems pretty careless, but they are integrated now. 343i inherited Halo and should be allowed to develop their own ideas. After all, Bungie’s independent ideas created the series to begin with.
There’s a few things I think they should focus on, namely:
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> Nice video. Liked it (literally), and subscribed. I think many could argue that 343i has put huge emphasis on the community, and that changing tastes within the community are the biggest challenge. No one seems to take anything at face value anymore. Many just expect developers to cave to their demands. I think the community is much larger than the loudest voices in the room seem to make it look, and those voices are claiming that Halo has been destroyed - a perspective I disagree with.
>
> There is no definitive reason for changing tastes but its possible that many players of the early Halo games have moved on, and new players want different things.
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> I agree with you that excluding huge staples from games seems pretty careless, but they are integrated now. 343i inherited Halo and should be allowed to develop their own ideas. After all, Bungie’s independent ideas created the series to begin with.
Thank you so much, I appreciate you taking the time to respond and also for subscribing.
I agree that 343 has put a huge emphasis on the community for about the last 12 months maybe? But I definitely haven’t felt that way over the lifespan of them controlling Halo. Like I said, I think they’re trending in the right direction and are going to continue to improve.
When it comes to community demands, I feel like it just needs to be filtered. There’s good, constructive feedback intertwined with bad opinions and obviously, some pure hate. They need to look at it as a whole, and do with it as they will. It’s more of a give and take than blatantly doing what everyone says, since there are 1 million different opinions out there. At the end of the day, they are the developers and I agree they should have room to develop their own ideas into the franchise.
I think they’ve tried pretty well when it comes to creating a community, the problem is I think they need to focus on bringing the old community back. Halo may seem pretty big still, but it’s nowhere near the juggernaut it once was. I used to have a pretty sizable group of friends who I used to play Halo with daily, most played Halo 4, but nowhere near as much as they played Reach, and only one of them bought Halo 5 (out of maybe 6 or 7 people). The reason for this is that many fans of the original games just don’t think the newer games are Halo games anymore. Halo 5 is a fun game, but with all these mechanics that are so new, foreign, and that completely change how the game is played in practically all regards, with a different art style, sound design, and music, is it the Halo we used to play when we were younger? Most answer no to that question that played the original.
The newer community loves the mechanics and such of Halo 5, and I see why, it’s a very fun game, but it doesn’t have what made Halo so great. Unfortunately this portion of the community is what’s most active, so it may seem like a large portion of the community likes these changes and would like to see them in future games, and that’s fine. However the larger portion of the community (purely looking at sales, Halo 5 is the worst selling mainline Halo game, selling a little over half of Halo 4s total, and almost a third of Halo 3), they’ve just left Halo. The newer games don’t appeal to this massive fanbase that once was there. And surely some have moved on for reasons other than their joy of Halo, but pretty much anyone I know that used to play Halo regularly has left the franchise entirely because of the newer games.
My point is, 343 needs to focus on returning Halo to it’s roots. Enhanced mobility is a trend that, while fun, isn’t fit for Halo, and isn’t Halo. At least, not the Halo that so many remember and want. This returning-to-its-roots focus may help to bring back that huge amount of older fans of the franchise, and will probably keep the newer fans with the series too (just increase FOV to make people look like their moving faster, that’s really the only complaint I seem to see about the older games), albeit a little disgruntled about the changes.
Halo had a massive fanbase that, with the massive changes to gameplay, art, sound, etc., left because they didn’t feel like they were buying a Halo game anymore. 343 needs to focus on bringing this community back. It may alienate a portion of Halo’s fanbase now, but that fanbase is overall the minority of Halo fans. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
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> There’s a few things I think they should focus on, namely:
> - Finding a style of gameplay that pleases old-school players without being a direct revert back to the Halo 2/3 movement - Making sure the game ships with all the content a Halo game needs to have a successful launch (i.e. making sure Forge and Infection don’t get left behind again) - Tweaking the Prometheans to make them more dynamic in the campaign/Firefight (imo their weapon redesigns are awesome and those can stay the way they are, it’s just the AI design that needs improvement)That’s about all I’m hoping for. Obviously the story direction & art design are important, but to me those can take a backseat since neither of them could exist without solid gameplay. I’m curious where they take the narrative, but as long as it’s not written by the guy who wrote Halo 5 I have full confidence that it’ll be a good campaign.
I agree completely. Although I prefer classic gameplay, I don’t see it happening in Infinite. And I’m very confident they’ll find a solid middle ground. Shipping the game COMPLETE is a huge factor for me as well, with the new standard in the industry being “we’ll finish it later” and Halo 5 being no exception. I’m pretty excited to see more gameplay/news in 2019
-Focus on classic movement.
-Focus on what got Halo successful in the first place.
-Focus on the reasons Halo 2 and 3 had such humongous populations and why people would camp outside of Best Buy for a ridiculous amount of time just to get their hands on a first release copy.
-Focus on the fact that Halo was once a shooter that was a unique, one-of-a-kind game that resembled almost nothing else, and that their implementation of game features and mechanics from other franchises was the biggest mistake in Halo development -and possibly gaming- history.
-Focus on making a game for Halo fans first and stop prioritizing the reeling in people who have never played and will not play Halo even if you do implement features from games they do like.
If a person likes Call of Duty, they’re going to play Call of Duty.
If a person likes Destiny, they’re going to play Destiny.
If a person likes Gears of War, they’re going to play Gears of War.
If a person likes Rainbow Six, they’re going to play Rainbow Six.
So if a person wants to play Halo, then let them play Halo.
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> I think they’ve tried pretty well when it comes to creating a community, the problem is I think they need to focus on bringing the old community back. Halo may seem pretty big still, but it’s nowhere near the juggernaut it once was. I used to have a pretty sizable group of friends who I used to play Halo with daily, most played Halo 4, but nowhere near as much as they played Reach, and only one of them bought Halo 5 (out of maybe 6 or 7 people). The reason for this is that many fans of the original games just don’t think the newer games are Halo games anymore. Halo 5 is a fun game, but with all these mechanics that are so new, foreign, and that completely change how the game is played in practically all regards, with a different art style, sound design, and music, is it the Halo we used to play when we were younger? Most answer no to that question that played the original.
>
> The newer community loves the mechanics and such of Halo 5, and I see why, it’s a very fun game, but it doesn’t have what made Halo so great. Unfortunately this portion of the community is what’s most active, so it may seem like a large portion of the community likes these changes and would like to see them in future games, and that’s fine. However the larger portion of the community (purely looking at sales, Halo 5 is the worst selling mainline Halo game, selling a little over half of Halo 4s total, and almost a third of Halo 3), they’ve just left Halo. The newer games don’t appeal to this massive fanbase that once was there. And surely some have moved on for reasons other than their joy of Halo, but pretty much anyone I know that used to play Halo regularly has left the franchise entirely because of the newer games.
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> …
I too am one of the only remaining member of my high school friends that play Halo, or Xbox, anymore. I wouldn’t say they stopped buying and playing because they didn’t believe in the game, it’s because they decided to do other things with their time. One friend of mine played all the original Halo games the most out of anyone, and now doesn’t play at all because he’s pulling two jobs. I think this is where most of the population of Halo players has gone.
[Edit: maybe the friends you’re talking about weren’t playing in high school, but mine were.]That sales data is unreliable, which isn’t just my opinion, it’s noted below the chart. Furthermore, the figure for Halo 5: Guardians was tweeted 8 months after the release, so it’s likely more copies were sold before the game was added to Xbox Game Pass.
Although I’m pushing back on some of these posts I agree with the principle that you are arguing. I’m a huge Halo fan and want the series to continue to be popular.
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> > 2535418288909351;3:
> > There’s a few things I think they should focus on, namely:
> > - Finding a style of gameplay that pleases old-school players without being a direct revert back to the Halo 2/3 movement - Making sure the game ships with all the content a Halo game needs to have a successful launch (i.e. making sure Forge and Infection don’t get left behind again) - Tweaking the Prometheans to make them more dynamic in the campaign/Firefight (imo their weapon redesigns are awesome and those can stay the way they are, it’s just the AI design that needs improvement)That’s about all I’m hoping for. Obviously the story direction & art design are important, but to me those can take a backseat since neither of them could exist without solid gameplay. I’m curious where they take the narrative, but as long as it’s not written by the guy who wrote Halo 5 I have full confidence that it’ll be a good campaign.
>
> I agree completely. Although I prefer classic gameplay, I don’t see it happening in Infinite. And I’m very confident they’ll find a solid middle ground. Shipping the game COMPLETE is a huge factor for me as well, with the new standard in the industry being “we’ll finish it later” and Halo 5 being no exception. I’m pretty excited to see more gameplay/news in 2019
Unfortunately I don’t think there is a middle ground for classic gameplay. You keep spartan abilities and that retains all the problems and changes they bring to the game. You keep sprint and all the problems that brings are in the game. Really for gameplay it needs to stay the same as Halo CE-3 (movement mechanics wise, they can add some elements, as is always done with Halo games), but with an FOV increase so it doesn’t seem like you’re moving a brisk jog and are actually moving kind of fast (that’s the problem with Halo 3’s movement speed really, the FOV is pretty low). The problem being we we need to be buying a Halo game. You can make potato soup with slightly different ingredients in it (add some pepper, noodles maybe, etc.), but at the end of the day the base of a potato soup can’t be a tomato. The core gameplay in Halo needs to be the same as it always has been.
As I’ve said in my previous post this is really the only way I can see the major part of the community that left Halo after Halo 4 and 5 coming back to the game: the return of classic gameplay.
And yes, having the game shipping completed with good amounts of content and very few bugs is crucial to Halo Infinite’s release. It can’t do what Halo 5 did and release all of it’s content later. It needs to release with At least Slayer, BTB, CTF, FFA, Infection, Assault, and Grifball, as those have been in the franchise for years. I’d also like fiesta to return at launch, as well as Invasion and Dominion. The game should also come with forge at launch, and it shouldn’t be constantly rotating through new game modes.
343 needs to focus on showing us that things like this will be in the game at launch, and showing us that we’ll get what we’re expecting from the game when we buy it.
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> > 2533274909712896;5:
> > I think they’ve tried pretty well when it comes to creating a community, the problem is I think they need to focus on bringing the old community back. Halo may seem pretty big still, but it’s nowhere near the juggernaut it once was. I used to have a pretty sizable group of friends who I used to play Halo with daily, most played Halo 4, but nowhere near as much as they played Reach, and only one of them bought Halo 5 (out of maybe 6 or 7 people). The reason for this is that many fans of the original games just don’t think the newer games are Halo games anymore. Halo 5 is a fun game, but with all these mechanics that are so new, foreign, and that completely change how the game is played in practically all regards, with a different art style, sound design, and music, is it the Halo we used to play when we were younger? Most answer no to that question that played the original.
> >
> > The newer community loves the mechanics and such of Halo 5, and I see why, it’s a very fun game, but it doesn’t have what made Halo so great. Unfortunately this portion of the community is what’s most active, so it may seem like a large portion of the community likes these changes and would like to see them in future games, and that’s fine. However the larger portion of the community (purely looking at sales, Halo 5 is the worst selling mainline Halo game, selling a little over half of Halo 4s total, and almost a third of Halo 3), they’ve just left Halo. The newer games don’t appeal to this massive fanbase that once was there. And surely some have moved on for reasons other than their joy of Halo, but pretty much anyone I know that used to play Halo regularly has left the franchise entirely because of the newer games.
> >
> > …
>
> I too am one of the only remaining member of my high school friends that play Halo, or Xbox, anymore. I wouldn’t say they stopped buying and playing because they didn’t believe in the game, it’s because they decided to do other things with their time. One friend of mine played all the original Halo games the most out of anyone, and now doesn’t play at all because he’s pulling two jobs. I think this is where most of the population of Halo players has gone.
> [Edit: maybe the friends you’re talking about weren’t playing in high school, but mine were.]That sales data is unreliable, which isn’t just my opinion, it’s noted below the chart. Furthermore, the figure for Halo 5: Guardians was tweeted 8 months after the release, so it’s likely more copies were sold before the game was added to Xbox Game Pass.
>
> Although I’m pushing back on some of these posts I agree with the principle that you are arguing. I’m a huge Halo fan and want the series to continue to be popular.
Oh yeah, of course many stopped playing Halo because of other reasons like that. Halo playing differently isn’t the only reason. Many of my friends have moved to PC and such too (as have I for about 95% of the time). However I know this to be a big reason I hear of that a lot of people have stopped playing the games. And bringing back the classic style of Halo would certainly bring people back into the fold. And the friends I’m talking about stopped playing in high school. We played through grade school to high school and they stopped there.
Sales data isn’t the most reliable, but you still can’t deny that Halo 5 probably sold the worst of any mainline Halo game in the franchise, and it probably did so for a reason.
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> Oh yeah, of course many stopped playing Halo because of other reasons like that. Halo playing differently isn’t the only reason. Many of my friends have moved to PC and such too (as have I for about 95% of the time). However I know this to be a big reason I hear of that a lot of people have stopped playing the games. And bringing back the classic style of Halo would certainly bring people back into the fold. And the friends I’m talking about stopped playing in high school. We played through grade school to high school and they stopped there.
> Sales data isn’t the most reliable, but you still can’t deny that Halo 5 probably sold the worst of any mainline Halo game in the franchise, and it probably did so for a reason.
I see. What do you say to the new-wave Halo players that don’t know anything before Halo: Reach, or later, and haven’t experienced such a dramatic change in style? Won’t they feel like they’re playing a game they aren’t used to?
I appreciate your willingness to discuss this civilly.
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> **I see. What do you say to the new-wave Halo players that don’t know anything before Halo: Reach, or later, and haven’t experienced such a dramatic change in style? Won’t they feel like they’re playing a game they aren’t used to?**I appreciate your willingness to discuss this civilly.
this is currently the dilemma that Halo Infinite faces. I don’t think anyone can truly answer the question with 100% certainty, but there are definitely ideas out there that people have. This video discusses the exact question you just asked in detail with some big names in Youtube Halo, I suggest you take a looksie and see if it introduces you to some new perspectives.
I am on board with Act Man and believe that the movement should be like the classic Halos, but armor abilities like thrust, spartan charge, and ground pound can’t be neglected for the sake of new fans, so they can be implemented as pick up items similar to how Halo 3 did it. Will it satisfy everyone? probably not, but that’s pretty much impossible.
I watched the video and I think it’s great that so many unique ideas are held among members of the community.
Really, it’s a rhetorical question. True fans are likely to accept the game no matter how it’s released.
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> I see. What do you say to the new-wave Halo players that don’t know anything before Halo: Reach, or later, and haven’t experienced such a dramatic change in style? Won’t they feel like they’re playing a game they aren’t used to?
>
> I appreciate your willingness to discuss this civilly.
That’s the problem with Halo at the moment: if you keep the games as they are now you make one group angry, you keep change it back to the way it was and you make another group angry. However despite this, I believe that the newer “generation” of Halo players that prefer the newer gameplay is the minority of Halo fans, so if you’re going to have to anger one group of people, I think that would be the lesser evil.
However looking away from the amount of people who would or wouldn’t agree with a revert back to classic mechanics, those mechanics are just better than current for a variety of reasons (which is why classic Halo is looked back so fondly upon). Disregarding any rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, the benefits are as such (not as in depth as I could go):
As many wrongly suggest, sprint doesn’t decrease travel time. Map designers will want you to be able to cross a certain gap within a certain amount of time (5 seconds), with or without sprint, it will take you 5 seconds to cross this gap (compare Midship from H2 to Truth from H5. Truth is an enlarged remake of Midship, however it takes the same about of time to traverse any two points on the map in H5 when sprinting, as it does in H2). The only difference is that in a game with sprint this gap is larger. Maps in general are larger to accommodate for sprint. Same goes for clamber allowing you to make higher jumps, it doesn’t. If you’re not wanted to be able to make a jump, you won’t be able to regardless of whether or not clamber is a thing. As a result of this your positioning is less important (It was a pretty important thing in CE-3). One spot out of ten to stand at is of greater significance than one spot out of a hundred.
Sprint also creates a lull in combat. As you aren’t able to shoot while sprinting, you can’t engage targets while traversing the map at the speed required to traverse areas in the intended time gap. All this does is slow down combat artificially. You’re not really in combat when you could be in previous games due to having to sprint to reasonably cover a distance without exposing you too much. This constant running and gunning at the same time is what made classic Halo so fun in the first place.
Thruster packs and such also take away risk by giving you a “get out of jail free card” in some cases. Enemy lobs a grenade that’s about to stick you? Thrust out of the way, no big deal. It just removes the punishment for bad positioning, while also decreasing the reward for it.
All these also complicate the game more, making it harder for new players to pick up as they have to learn how a lot more new abilities and such mesh together to play effectively, whereas before there was much less to learn.
Lastly, Halo is still designed around classic movement for the most part. This is most prevalent in the campaign. To compensate for the increased speed and unpredictability of the player, enemies’ weapons fire faster projectiles that also track you for a large part. This makes them harder to avoid and causes you to take cover more often. Which just slows the game down even more. Engagement distances are longer too to compensate for sprint, so longer range weapons become more prevalent (also in MP).
Now, I know you didn’t ask for a long ramble about classic movement, and I’m sorry about that. But it just goes to show that even though more of the newer “generation” of Halo players may want and enjoy the gameplay of Halo 5, classic Halo is just better in a more objective sense (Though Halo 5 is still really fun, it’s just not as good). So while they may prefer modern Halo, they’ll be treated to better gameplay with classic Halo, which hopefully they’ll enjoy too.
First of all, thanks for using paragraphs. Second, although I admit I maintain a different point of view, I’ll leave this discussion with a quote from Voltaire: “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.”
Broadly speaking, 343 should focus on delivering an amazing feature set that pushes the series forward at launch. Flashy new game mechanics are not what keep people playing long term, it is the rich feature sets. A full map editor ala Far Cry, theater mode that takes the Halo 3 version and actually improves on it, quick easy to use file share and custom game browser, proper Firefight, ludicrous amount of custom options, campaign collectables and scoring, etc, etc. Things that really add value to the game and keep people invested
Halo 3 had what I would consider to have the weakest core gameplay of the first 3 games and I reckon from an outsiders perspective it was little more than Halo 2.5 in the gameplay department. But what made that game special and made it so successful were those new features that other devs still struggle to match to this day. There were so many ways to interact with the game at every level and things only got better over time with things Forge improvements and Firefight ala ODST. It wasn’t just filled with empty busywork like so many “live service” and/or open world games.
However a full feature set is something that needs to happen regardless of the direction 343 takes with gameplay.
As far as “bringing the community together” and all that jazz, the only way that is going to happen is if there is only one community to being with. That can’t keep halfheartedly throwing bones to one community or another. They have more or less 3 options: 1: Stay the course with Halo 5 and drop the baggage of classic Halo. 2.) Bring back classic gameplay and drop the baggage nu-Halo. Or 3.) Soft Reboot ala God of War where we drop the baggage of both entirely.
If that sounds harsh that’s because it is, but the truth is that there are just too many irreconcilable differences between these gameplay styles for them to ever come together in a single game. No amount of special playlists or design compromises are going to find that perfect solution because it doesn’t exist. There is no perfect Halo game, only perfect Halo games. Eventually either one or both sides are just going to end up disappointed.
The best thing to do is to just pick a direction and let that game be the very best version of itself it can be and just let everyone else move on.
Sidenote: Seeing people “Well 343 has to consider the newer player’s feelings” my only response is “Do they they really need to though?” I mean dropping an established audience in order to pander to and entirely different audience is something no Halo fan has experienced before right?/s. All I can say to those who worry about adjusting to a classic Halo is this: Adapt.
Making sure to be clear with fans - Shipping the game fully completed (I.e like CE to 4) - Making the story simple so the majority of halo fans can understand it (I.e CE to 3)This part is blunt soooo yeah
Making the game play like classic halo (halo 3 basically) and if people don’t like how classic halo plays they can leave or be silent
Build upon the features in Halo 5s Forge. My lord Halo 5 had a bloody amazing Forge. If there was spawnable AI and smoother movement with scripted parts it’d be complete.
Please keep vehicle variants 343