343's Impact on Halo

Games Other Halo
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Hey everybody.

I wanna take a second to look over 343’s additions to the Halo series, as well as their subtractions.

The idea here is that 343’s contributions to Halo will be summarized and people are able to state their opinion on the facts. Soo feel free to leave feedback and thoughts after reading the information below.

Please note: I AM ONLY POINTING OUT 343’s ORIGINAL CONCEPTS, NOT THINGS THEY CARRIED OVER FROM OTHER HALOS. ALSO, I AM NOT BASING THIS OFF OF 343’s PROMISED ADDITIONS TO THE GAME. I AM ONLY USING THE CURRENT VERSION OF HALO 4 FOR THIS.

Thank you.

Lets begin:

ORIGINAL FEATURES/IDEAS INTRODUCED BY 343:

  • An entirely new tier of weaponry (Forerunner tech)
  • New matchmaking gametypes: Regicide, Dominion, and Extraction
  • A revamped version of infection, entitled Flood
  • Magnets in Forge, making object alignment easier for forgers
  • A brand new campaign, continuing the story of Master Chief
  • Halo Waypoint, an application which allows players to access their Halo stats
  • TONS of new armor and equipment
  • The new AA, Thruster Pack.
  • Completely CUSTOMIZABLE loadouts
  • Insant Respawn in specific gametypes
  • Killcams… Not really. Halo 4 Killcams broke on Day 1.
  • New vehicle: The Mantis
  • New maps
  • Ordnance Drops
  • Specializations and along with them, Perks.
  • Spartan Ops (Spec Ops in Halo)
  • Brand new ranking system
  • Join Session in Progress
  • New pay-to-gain features and promotions (ex. the mountain dew promotion)
  • Competitive gameplay through contests, such as the Infinity Challenge

Seems like 343 has introduced plenty of new things into the Halo series, yet are they innovative and successful, or do they only hinder the game?

Lets take a look at what they’ve subtracted from the Halo series in their latest edition.

HALO FEATURES REMOVED BY 343 in HALO 4:

  • Armor Lock (THANK YOU.)
  • Numerous custom gametypes such as VIP, Juggernaut, Assault, and Infection
  • Also, removal of The Arena from Reach
  • A massive forge world
  • FIREFIGHT
  • Multiple custom game options available in prior entries
  • A working file share system
  • Quit penalties
  • Armor Effects
  • In matchmaking: Lack of Team Snipers, KoTH, Team Doubles, and Grifball (?)

According to my lists, 343 seems to have added far more than they’ve removed. The question is, are these additions benefitting the Halo series? And also, how major are these removals?

Well that my fellow forum-goers, is up to you to decide.

Feel free to discuss all of these additions and removals by 343, and state your opinions on them (and 343.)

On a sidenote, if you see anything missing from these lists, just notify me below and I’ll be happy to adjust them.

Thanks for reading, let the discussion begin!

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- RESERVED -

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No replies yet… Thoughts?

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i think everyone (even 343) knows they messed up Halo in a way that will be hard to come back from, I’m a fanboy (don’t want to say ex-fanboy yet) and if Halo 5 isn’t what I expect out of a Halo game I probably won’t get Halo 6, Halo is they game I grew up its what started me gaming, and to see the quality of Halo go downhill like this, its just pitiful

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There is still a quit ban in place and i think it lasts for an hour now.

Most of the things that 343 has implemented are a detriment.

Magnets: good idea but dont even work
Loadouts: terrible takes away from arena shooter moves towards the generic and bland genre of class based.
Campaign: while the lore was good the new enemies were boring to fight and highly repetitive and not to mention very linear levels.
Instant respawns: not gonna say anything besides no penalty for death anymore.
Kill cams: broken and gives away the position of snipers and possibly the enemy team if you didnt see them before you died.

Eh im not gonna bother commenting on the rest a vast majority of it i dislike or i feel doesnt belong in a halo game that was supposed to be a successor to halo 3.

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Now i love 343 Industries and Halo 4 is a worthy successor to the Halo franchise Bungie has left behind, but you have to admit that they made mistakes.

You list is very good, and actually i think is embodies everything 343 has done. The list they took out though while was a couple of things, they were HUGE things taken out. Custom options, Koth, grifball, classic infection, armor effects, and most importantly firefght. These things were essential to Halo 4’s LONG term success and re-playability, and the things added do not make up for their lose but they are not nessisarily bad additions.

Were it so easy to make a Halo game, but i have faith.

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other than armor lock and quit penalty, everything removed i want back! I miss Juggernaught it was awesome, also i have been told that griffball will be added to matchmacking on the 28th

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I think they’ve done a good job im enjoying this halo alot almost as much fun as I did on halo 3, they just need to sort out the playlists as you said they are missing, BTB objective games needs to come back, team snipers ( which is coming :] ), doubles and weekend specials like 3 had grifball double xp weekend was so fun,

also another major thing they really need to bring in is custom maps into the playlists,the custom maps should work via special playlists ( double xp weekend or something else) and we vote the customs we like and they get implemented into normal playlists :slight_smile:

basically 343 need to listen to the community and get involved with what we like, but I guess it’ll come :slight_smile:

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> No replies yet… Thoughts?

Eugh that’s a lot to wave through. I don’t feel like going in-depth on each one at the moment, so I’m just going to be brief.

> - An entirely new tier of weaponry (Forerunner tech)

I like the addition of Forerunner weaponry. What I don’t like is how they are for the most part just common archetypes (SMG, Rifle, Etc.)

> - New matchmaking gametypes: Regicide, Dominion, and Extraction

Dominion is good but not perfect, Team Regicide is VIP, Extraction is meh.

> - TONS of new armor and equipment

In Halo Reach I actually looked like a Spartan, and there was a ton of badass variants. I dislike most of the armor in this game though.

> - A revamped version of infection, entitled Flood

I like that you can actually look like a Flood. But that’s the ONLY thing that I like about this new gametype.

Infection was, hands down, one of the most successful and modified gametypes throughout the series. There were tons of different variants to Infection. WHY WOULD YOU REMOVE OPTIONS FROM SUCH A SUCCESSFUL GAMEMODE THAT RELIES SO HEAVILY ON OPTIONS? THAT’S INSANITY.

Sorry, had to let that out.

> The new AA, Thruster Pack.

It’s Evade with some twists. Enough said.

> Ordnance Drops

Oh man. Don’t even get me started. Just, horrible.

> Spartan Ops (Spec Ops in Halo)

The concept is great. The execution, not so much.

> Completely CUSTOMIZABLE loadouts

Too much customization and not enough fixed-loadout playlists. It’s not a horrible concept, but it has a lot of issues in the execution.

> New maps

They need to rethink their design philosophy to say the least.

There is really so, so much more I can and want to say on all of these, but I’m busy at the moment.

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Oh and I just remembered, they took out Invasion.

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The only good thing they did was remove armor lock. They added at least 20 game breakers though.

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> The only good thing they did was remove armor lock. They added at least 20 game breakers though.

Removing armor lock… absolute genius.

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Well for one thing, I lost my interest in Halo 4 (reason why I don’t play it as much as release week)

The maps are alright, but the team needs to learn what proper balance is in maps. There are more BTB maps then anything.

DMR got modified too much from Reach, that fact that it can beat a LR scoped at close range is just emabrassing.

Boltshot’s Secondary Fire was a design flaw, I don’t think the team took into consideration how much it would be abused.

They said the Vehicles were more powerful and their health matches the players. Not if a Sniper can still take down a Banshee in 4 shots. Again they didn’t take the DMR’s damage into check when they looked at the vehicle health.

No existance of an UNSC counter to the Banshee pratically pissed everyone off. I hope we get something in Halo 5.

They though Halo 4’s progression system would work. It failed the same way Reachs did.

And just an overall lack of competitiveness in Halo 4 is really where it failed at. They wanted to bring new players into Halo and they casualized the start of the new trilogy more then people liked. Team Slayer Pro isn’t even competitive to say the least, it’s SWAT with shields. Halo got casualized with Reach and why 343 decided that this was ok to start the new trilogy off with, is beyond me. I defended this title from the start and found myself hating the game.