An Examination of Community Maps, Forge, and the future of Halo: Reach

Games Other Halo
1

First off I should say that this is obviously all my opinion and should be taken as such, none of this is fact just my observations.

Halo Reach community maps are the worst thing to happen to the Halo universe since Armor Lock (read my article about armour lock here: http://www.readyuplive.com/showthread.php/6287-The-Problem(s)-With-Armor-Lock-in-Halo-Reach-Matchmaking). They are the reason I avoid the Team Slayer playlist, and the reason I grow weary of Reach in a much shorter period of time compared to other Halo games. Let’s face the facts here, Reach is by far the worst game in the Halo franchise. Now before you jump to your keyboards with flames in your eyes remember: We are talking about the HALO franchise here, Reach is still head and shoulders above most games out there and I still LOVE playing it every day, but compared to Halo 1-3 and ODST it doesn’t stand up in my opinion. It’s kind of like having 5 beautiful women in front of you, sure they are all gorgeous but if you had to compare them one probably looks a little worse than the other 4. However beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so some of you may disagree with me, anyways lets take a look at what made Reach turn out worse than its predecessors, I think it is a combination of a few factors:

  1. Reach was pushed out on a tight development cycle
  2. It was made in order to meet the demands of a contractual obligation Bungie had to Microsoft
  3. It was never planned

So my first point is that Reach was rushed, this is evident in a number of places the most obvious being the choice to use in game environments as multiplayer maps. Sure Reach has some OK multiplayer maps but using them in the campaign was done to cut corners, plain and simple. I think a lot of things in Reach were done (or half done) so that it could be pushed out quick, but one of the most obvious ones was recycling the multiplayer maps for use in the campaign. This point isn’t so much opinion as it is math, by using the same environments twice Bungie was able to cut down on development time and get Reach done faster. Which brings me to my next point: Reach was the end of a contract, created to satisfy the demands of Microsoft and not much else, they wanted it done and done fast.

To illustrate my point lets look at the current set of Halo games as if they were a work week, that would mean that Halo:CE would be Monday, the day where you are most rested from the weekend and you do your best work. Halo 2 is Tuesday, you might be a little tired but the week has just started and you are having a good time doing what you are doing. Halo 3 is Wednesday, hump day, you might not want to be there but darn it you will still put in your best effort. ODST is Thursday, you probably don’t feel like working to hard because Friday is right around the corner, you throw something together quick to satisfy your boss, so you can head home early. Finally Friday roles around, all you want to do is go home so you lazily throw something together and drop it on your bosses desk as you head out the door towards the glorious weekend! Now I may have upset some people there, I know Bungie is the creator, the lord, and the holy spirit of Halo but I think we all know they were getting pretty sick of the big donut by year 10. Heck they said it themselves, they wanted to move on to bigger and better things. Who could blame them, working on the same series for 10 years has to be draining, I know that if I worked on the same thing for that long I would get bored. Please keep in mind this is not me bashing Bungie, I love Bungie they are a great company full of awesome people making really great….iPhone games. I am just looking at things realistically, not saying what they did is good or bad, I am just saying if this is how things went I understand the motivation.

2

Finally lets get to my last point, to a certain extent Reach was not planned. Now I know what you are going to say “but the Halo trilogy wasn’t planned either!” and that is true, kind of. Halo was an unexpected hit for sure, but after the first one was so huge the trilogy was planned out as best as it could be. However the plans stopped after Halo 3, Reach was a nice little prologue but I don’t think it was meant to be much more than that. So you mix all these ingredients together and what do you get? A studio that is rushing out a game the majority of its employees do not care that much about in order to meet a contractual agreement with a partner it was going to stop working with in the near future. To put it another way: if your wife was divorcing you, but asked you to clean up the house after you moved all your stuff out of it, would you do a good job? I didn’t think so.

Alright so what does all this have to do with custom maps? Well remember up there when I said that Reach was full of cut corners, well custom maps allowed Bungie to cut the biggest corner of them all! On the surface it is a great idea, have community members create maps and put them into the rotation for everyone to enjoy, what could be better? It worked great in Halo 3 and that means Bungie doesn’t have to create nearly as many maps to satisfy the communities thirst for variety. This seems like a good idea in theory but there are two major problems with how it turned out:

  1. The community does not consist of professional map makers
  2. Forge world pieces are boring

The main problem with most community maps is that they just do not play like ones created by Bungie or Certain Affinity or any other professional studio, sure they go through some play testing and get revised and tweaked a bit, but at the end of the day they still do not play the same as real maps. They typically play poorly and allow for a variety of exploits or offer an unbalanced advantage to one team or the other. Plus they do not stand the test of time, they might be fun once or twice when you first play on them but I find they lose there thrill pretty quickly. Now I enjoyed the community maps created in Halo 3, so that makes me wonder if the community has gone soft or perhaps the screening and implementation process has become less rigid. My guess is that the latter is more likely and that Bungie didn’t test and tweak the maps enough in order to make them play well. The other option is that the community has gone soft, and while the addition of armour abilities has made the creation of maps more difficult, I would like to believe that good maps are out there they may just be harder to find. The only forge maps I have seen that stand up even remotely well compared to the official maps are Uncaged and Asylum, and they are Bungie made forge maps!

3

This brings me to my second issue, and that is with the forge itself, Bungie made leaps and bounds with the Forge and Forge World in Reach, but it isn’t quiet enough. They knew Forge was a huge hit and they fulfilled the basic requests the community was making, but they did not innovate beyond that. There is zero variation visually in community made forge maps because every forge map is made with the same pieces, that are all the same grey blue colour. Occasionally a map comes along that looks interesting or unique, but it doesn’t take long to see past that to the same boring blue and grey pieces from every other map. Plus every forge map is made in Forge World so every outdoor environment looks exactly the same! Don’t worry though! I did not come in here just to complain about Bungie or Reach (two things I love) without offering some suggestions for improvements: Here is what I think 343 has to add to the forge in Halo 4 so community maps wont be so terrible in the future:

MULTIPLE FORGE WORLDS - This is the most obvious thing, we need at least 4 forge worlds with vastly different environments, I can think of a few options off the top of my head: desert, mountains, city, forest, covenant, forerunner, mountains, plains, valley, . On top of that we need at least 5 variation options for weather/time of day on each world: snow, rain, dusk, midday, night. Even if there were only two forge worlds in Halo 4, combining weather effects would create 8 unique outdoor environments for people to use. The difference between playing a map in the mountains at dusk, and playing a map in the mountains during a blizzard would be HUGE and really add to the variety. Also it would be nice if map creators could take photos of the map like how they can set the spawn cameras, to display when voting in matchmaking so it didn’t look so bland. I realize that is a small thing just another idea I thought I would add into the mix in order to spice things up.

DIFFERENT PIECE SETS - Each of the worlds needs interesting and unique piece sets that adapt and change based on the variation of the world. Mountain pieces during the blizzard are coated in snow and ice, during the rain they are wet and shiny. On top of that each piece should have at least 5 different selectable textures with a variety of colors to choose from. My biggest problem with forge maps is they are so freaking grey! Being able to control the texture and colour of of the pieces on the map would bring a tonne of variety, plus I think it would really help unlock the creative potential within the community.

EXPANDED ENVIRONMENT EDITING - Need a mountain? Build one! Want to make a map with sections that have no gravity? Use this field. How about animating certain objects to move at set intervals? No problem. Everything about the forge needs to grow and advance from the way we interact with the map itself to the different effects and options we have for pieces. You want the community to really get creative with that Godzilla monster they built? Give them the ability to make it walk around the map! I realize that this last point is a tall order, but I would just love to see 343 elevate the Forge beyond all of our expectations and do something truly revolutionary with it.

MAP PSYCH PROFILE - You know the psych profile in Reach that allows you to refine the type of players you are matched up with? Why not apply that concept to Multiplayer maps, allow people to choose which maps they would like to play and which ones they would like to avoid. Obviously this would not be a tough restriction and just like the psych profile their is no guarantee that you are going to get the maps you want, but I think it would be an improvement that would help people assert some control over their matchmaking experience.

I think adding just a few of my suggestions would really make the forge and matchmaking shine, plus it could give community maps the edge they need to take over match making. We already know that 343 is not rushing out Halo 4 they have been working on it for awhile, carefully crafting an incredible game. Plus they are planning a whole new trilogy of games that is going to be incredible, and I have the utmost faith that they are going to do a great job because they are the people who really care about Halo. They aren’t going to cut corners or let stuff fall through the cracks. I realize that the game is basically done now, and that realistically none of my suggestions have a chance of being implemented at this late stage. However I do hope that they add a few of the suggestions I talked about here to one of the upcoming Halo games.

TL;DR
Reach was rushed and corners were cut, I think that the community maps are sub par when compared to what we saw from the community in Halo 3. The forge needs to have multiple outdoor environments with multiple weather/time settings, different textures and colors for pieces and possibly full environment editing/creation. A Psych Profile style map ranking system where players could decide which maps they would like to see and which ones they would not like to see would be a nice touch.

4

nice post

you obviously took time to type it up,
and i applaud you for that

but IMO, reach wasn’t 100% rushed, i mean’ look at the other things in it,
the made a HUGE graphics overhaul, they made forge more easy and effective to use, and they made epic sounds also

but i do agree it WAS rushed

you bring up a good point that bungie used community “mapmakers” to cut corners and save time, but whats wrong with that? it gives Halo Reach a community friendly perspective, new maps can come out more frequently, with the expense for colors, and graphics

@ your third post;

-multiple forge worlds: great idea (not new, but great) i was thinking more of a large map with different “biomes” as we should call it, examples of them could be Flat lands (much like the current forge world), a tundra like map-space (like H3’s avalanche), jungle area, and etc. they’d be separated by some kind of small ocean, which would allow for water-based maps as well, and also such a map would be pretty useful of michinimas

-different set pieces: YES, in a nutshell, Grey is boring as hell, i mean, it works well for forerunner, or matalic-themed maps, but it doesn’t work for everything

-map editing: it would be cool, yes, they could incorporate a zero-gravity zone, that functions much like a respawn zone-like object in forge, and 343 could also add things like buttons and switches that work similarly to teliporter, having to use a “channel” to function, and “animated” objects as you said would be cool as well, make well for infection and other coustom games

-Map sync: this would make tons of Halo players happy, so they don;t have to play the same damn map over and over, especially if you don’t like how the map plays, or functions

p.s, just for the sake of lazy people, you should add a summary, or TL;DR at the bottom

again, nice post

5

I agree with everything, but I doubt they can implement all of this within a year.

At this point, you should be asking for HUGE things from Halo 5 because we can’t really do much about Halo 4.
As (I imagine) it’s already planned out with everything they want to put it, chances are they’ll even end up cutting a bit.
Even if Halo 4 is amazing, you should already begin asking for all of this in Halo 5.

Because everyone knows Halo 5 will be the best in the series :stuck_out_tongue:

6

> I agree with everything, but I doubt they can implement all this within a year.

this is true

this probably would well suit ideas on how to make Halo 4 the best Halo game yet
(this belongs in the H4 fourms, reach has had it’s time to shine)

7

> nice post
>
> you obviously took time to type it up,
> and i applaud you for that
>
>
>
> but IMO, reach wasn’t 100% rushed, i mean’ look at the other things in it,
> the made a HUGE graphics overhaul, they made forge more easy and effective to use, and they made epic sounds also
>
> but i do agree it WAS rushed
>
> you bring up a good point that bungie used community “mapmakers” to cut corners and save time, but whats wrong with that? it gives Halo Reach a community friendly perspective, new maps can come out more frequently, with the expense for colors, and graphics
>
>
>
> @ your third post;
>
>
> -multiple forge worlds: great idea (not new, but great) i was thinking more of a large map with different “biomes” as we should call it, examples of them could be Flat lands (much like the current forge world), a tundra like map-space (like H3’s avalanche), jungle area, and etc. they’d be separated by some kind of small ocean, which would allow for water-based maps as well, and also such a map would be pretty useful of michinimas
>
> -different set pieces: YES, in a nutshell, Grey is boring as hell, i mean, it works well for forerunner, or matalic-themed maps, but it doesn’t work for everything
>
> -map editing: it would be cool, yes, they could incorporate a zero-gravity zone, that functions much like a respawn zone-like object in forge, and 343 could also add things like buttons and switches that work similarly to teliporter, having to use a “channel” to function, and “animated” objects as you said would be cool as well, make well for infection and other coustom games
>
> -Map sync: this would make tons of Halo players happy, so they don;t have to play the same damn map over and over, especially if you don’t like how the map plays, or functions
>
>
> p.s, just for the sake of lazy people, you should add a summary, or TL;DR at the bottom
>
> again, nice post

Glad you liked it, I realize some of these ideas are not new I just wanted to get everything I was thinking down in one post. I would have added a TL;DR at the bottom but I think it was TL for it, hard to sum all that stuff up.

EDIT

ok I added a TL;DR and to address a point you made in the first post, I said the idea of community maps is a good one in theory, and I liked the community maps in Halo 3, however I think it was executed poorly in Reach and the community maps we got are not good. I am all about community as you can tell by the fact that I write super long articles about the games, just not all about these maps.

8

> I agree with everything, but I doubt they can implement all of this within a year.
>
> At this point, you should be asking for HUGE things from Halo 5 because we can’t really do much about Halo 4.
> As (I imagine) it’s already planned out with everything they want to put it, chances are they’ll even end up cutting a bit.
> Even if Halo 4 is amazing, you should already begin asking for all of this in Halo 5.
>
> Because everyone knows Halo 5 will be the best in the series :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah as I said in the post at this point all of these ideas are too late to be implemented if 343 has not already thought of them.

9

> > I agree with everything, but I doubt they can implement all this within a year.
>
> this is true
>
> this probably would well suit ideas on how to make Halo 4 the best Halo game yet
> (this belongs in the H4 fourms, reach has had it’s time to shine)

I couldn’t really decide where to post it, I talked a lot about Reach’s development and I felt like that set the stage for everything I was discussing. I was trying to decide between the matchmaking forum, here, and Halo 4 and decided that this might be the best middle ground. However if a mod wants to move it go right ahead!

10

I’ll simply copy and paste my post from the original thread on RUL.

If you took every custom map out of matchmaking, the game would not get any better or any worse. The maps did not “ruin” anything.

I love Bungie to death for what they have given me over the past 10 years and they are an amazing company…but in my opinion, Reach could have been SOOO much better. Not only in terms of gameplay, but in canon as well. There are holes in the story which have yet to be fully explained beyond the typical “Just because that’s the way we wanted it.” Do not get me wrong…I love Reach…it still feels like Halo and it still has a great story. One thing that really irritates me, is when people say Reach sucks simply because it isn’t EXACTLY like Halo 3 or Halo 2. The multiplayer is fun if you stop comparing it to previous games! Reach is it’s own game, with it’s own mechanics, and it’s own art style…it is NOT a Halo 3 sequel or add-on…so PLEASE, stop whining because you can’t get used to a new game.

As far as the maps go…yeah, I agree that Bungie did take the easy way out by using campaign sections as multiplayer maps. I agree that there were not enough of said maps at launch. However…when it comes to Forge…Bungie really dropped the ball. There are SOOO many games out these days that ship with 2 or more discs. Forge should have been not only it’s own separate disc, but it should have been A LOT more advanced. A complex terrain and map editor would make Forge absolutely outstanding. If anyone here has ever played Far Cry 2, you should know what I mean when I say that it CAN be done on the console. I seriously hope 343 answers the community’s cries for an editor such as this…

All in all…community maps did not “kill” Reach. Reach was never fully alive to begin with.

11

> I’ll simply copy and paste my post from the original thread on RUL.
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
> If you took every custom map out of matchmaking, the game would not get any better or any worse. The maps did not “ruin” anything.
>
> I love Bungie to death for what they have given me over the past 10 years and they are an amazing company…but in my opinion, Reach could have been SOOO much better. Not only in terms of gameplay, but in canon as well. There are holes in the story which have yet to be fully explained beyond the typical “Just because that’s the way we wanted it.” Do not get me wrong…I love Reach…it still feels like Halo and it still has a great story. One thing that really irritates me, is when people say Reach sucks simply because it isn’t EXACTLY like Halo 3 or Halo 2. The multiplayer is fun if you stop comparing it to previous games! Reach is it’s own game, with it’s own mechanics, and it’s own art style…it is NOT a Halo 3 sequel or add-on…so PLEASE, stop whining because you can’t get used to a new game.
>
> As far as the maps go…yeah, I agree that Bungie did take the easy way out by using campaign sections as multiplayer maps. I agree that there were not enough of said maps at launch. However…when it comes to Forge…Bungie really dropped the ball. There are SOOO many games out these days that ship with 2 or more discs. Forge should have been not only it’s own separate disc, but it should have been A LOT more advanced. A complex terrain and map editor would make Forge absolutely outstanding. If anyone here has ever played Far Cry 2, you should know what I mean when I say that it CAN be done on the console. I seriously hope 343 answers the community’s cries for an editor such as this…
>
> All in all…community maps did not “kill” Reach. Reach was never fully alive to begin with.

OH OH, then I get to copy and paste my reply to you that you never replied to:

Well I would argue that removing the majority of the community maps would make it more fun because then you wouldn’t have to play them as much, but again that argument is based on the fact that I do not like most of the community maps.

I think its fair to compare Reach to the original Trilogy and ODST, it exists in the same universe and was made by the same developer. If you can’t compare one thing to another then how do we know what we like and what we do not like? I would agree with your point if someone said “Reach sucked, especially compared to the first time I went sky diving, sky diving had much better graphics and improved gameplay” because the two have nothing in common. However comparing Reach to Halo 3 is as natural as comparing the apple you ate last week to the one you had with your lunch today. Having said all that I like Reach a lot, love the multiplayer and I dig a lot of the maps, just not as much as I liked the other games, and I think that is a fair statement to make. I mean going back to my original post, if you had 5 girls in front of you Drax, and I told you to pick which one was the least attractive, how would you do this without comparing the appearance of those girls?

Glad you agree with my Forge ideas though, and I agree with you that Custom Maps are not the disease, just one of the symptoms, however that still doesn’t make them any better.

12

The point I am trying to make, is that even though it is a Halo game, that doesn’t mean it has to look and feel exactly like its predecessors. Bungie stated very early on that this game was going to have it’s own style and direction. People are going to compare things to each other no matter what you do…especially when they are both part of a major franchise such as Halo. However, it’s ignorant to say that you hate something simply because it is not exactly like what you are used to.

For example:

Apple = fruit
Banana = fruit
Apple =/= Banana

If you ate an apple and really enjoyed it, then ate a banana…you wouldn’t say you hated the banana just because it didn’t taste exactly like the apple. You would judge how you felt about the banana based on it’s own features…not those of the apple. Sure, they are both fruit, but they are not the exact same thing.

13

> The point I am trying to make, is that even though it is a Halo game, that doesn’t mean it has to look and feel exactly like its predecessors. Bungie stated very early on that this game was going to have it’s own style and direction. People are going to compare things to each other no matter what you do…especially when they are both part of a major franchise such as Halo. However, it’s ignorant to say that you hate something simply because it is not exactly like what you are used to.
>
> For example:
>
> Apple = fruit
> Banana = fruit
> Apple =/= Banana
>
> If you ate an apple and really enjoyed it, then ate a banana…you wouldn’t say you hated the banana just because it didn’t taste exactly like the apple. You would judge how you felt about the banana based on it’s own features…not those of the apple. Sure, they are both fruit, but they are not the exact same thing.

don’t know if I agree here, I mean apples and Bananas are two different fruits, but Reach and Halo 1-3 are closer than that. I would say in your example would be more like this:

Orange = Halo 1-3 = Fruit = Xbox 360 Game
Blood Orange = Halo Reach = Fruit = Xbox 360 Game
Fruit = Fruit
Orange = Orange
Blood Orange =/= Orange

Sure they are different and there is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think they are as far apart as you seem to think they are.