Community Discussion: Saving Halo

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Halo is one of the greatest franchises of all time. Just a few short years ago it sat atop the FPS throne. It was king.

It was perfect.

Ever aspect of the game was near flawless.

The gameplay, so simple, yet so innovative and fun. Anyone could play but the sandbox allowed so much depth and allowed mastery for those who worked for it.

The campaigns were epic, the multiplayer competitive and balanced and perfect, great community tools such as forge and theater, and most importantly a loyal Fanbase that loved its game.

Is innovation important? Absolutely.

But halo was in its golden era from 04-09

What happened? Why are the fans gone? Why has halo all but died out?

Well here are the reasons I believe so, and why we need to band together to fix it.

  1. campaign

A great story is important. And I have faith 343 can handle a good story. But let’s look at halo 3 specifically and why future campaigns should follow suite.

I’ve played through halo 3 more than any other campaign ever. Not only was the campaign just good in general, but there were so many reasons to play it multiple times.

I played through it for the story, the skulls, the terminals, legendary co op, legendary solo, for points, for Easter eggs, and hell just did one not to long ago for fun.

Halo campaigns were not codified roller coaster rides where you just walked through levels. They had so much more to them. Great secrets, achievements, and modes like scoring that allowed even more replay ability.

My suggestion is to make the experience more explorable, more replayable. Add scoring back, make skulls something you find again. Give us a reason to go back.

  1. multiplayer

Halo multiplayer was perfect. It never ever needed loadouts or perks or any sort of gimmick like that.

We played halo because it was different, so don’t make it like everything else.

No loadouts, a competitive ranking system to keep us engaged, equal and balanced starts, great maps, and a return to the classic gameplay.

This should be the core and featured gameplay of future halos.

We tried the loadouts thing and the population has tanked. I know its seems bad to go backwards but I also believe its for the best. Put your innovation in new game types and modes, more weapons, more options.

  1. a community

My third and final topic and also the most important.

For halo to survive, it needs its community back. Making halo the way it used to be is a start but more importantly giving us the content we need is crucial.

343 you kind of let us down with custom options. Custom games are dead because you took away our tools to fully customize them. Theater has progressivly gotten worse since halo 3. And halo 4s forge was severely lacking in fun creation spaces and again got cut back in features.

Your community is king 343. Halo is special. We don’t care about loadouts and gimmicks and all this stuff.

We just want halo back plain and simple.

If you agree let me know. Also add your own ideas

2

  1. No more hitscan

  2. Return to classic halo feel where there arent a million 1sk weapons, sprint, loadouts, ordinance, and inconsistant gameplay.

  3. Make armor abilities map pickups

  4. Lower aim assist and bullet magnetism.

  5. More symmetrical and interactive maps.

  6. A real map editor to get rid of those boring dull gray forge maps.

  7. Descoping

  8. Visible 1 - 50 true skill ranking system.

3

I agree for the most part, but at this point 343i has by far passed the point of no return. By making a sequel to Reach and not to Halo 3, Halo 4 doubled on Bungie’s mistakes and managed to screw up a lot of the things they did right. Loadouts will be in Halo 5, it’s unavoidable. But there are many avoidable issues:

MULTIPLAYER

  1. Custom Games and Forge: look at Halo Reach, then at Halo 4. Such a shame. Bring the community the tools to create awesome. This also applies to Forge. Halo 5 Forge should blow us away and allow us to make truly awesome things. The community alone should be able to sustain Halo 5 after launch.

  2. Gametypes: bring back all the classic gametypes (Assault, Territories, Juggernaught, One Flag CTF…) and the good ones from Reach which work in the new game (choose from Invasion, Stockpile, Headhunter) and bring us some new ones too (Dominion is fantastic).

  3. Ranked/Classic/Legendary Playlist/s: give us at least one playlist without Loadouts and with weapons on the map and expand on it later on. It shouldn’t be just Slayer, so I guess two playlists might be necessary. And hell, why not more than two? How about: Team Legendary, Legendary BTB and Legendary FFA? That seems better to me, and all playlists will have a good gametype offering (not just Slayer). Give these playlists a visible CSR too, and stricter skill matching.

  4. Weapon Tuning: remember that weapon tuning update? You should be able to do these things without a patch. Make it possible from the start so you can fix balancing issues more quickly.

CAMPAIGN

  1. More Open, Less Strict: this is the next generation. How about no more soft kill zones? How about rich, open landscapes instead of linear canyons and corridors? There should be a sense of exploration and we should be allowed to quench that thirst. No more scripted scenes- make everything we do awesome and real within the game world. Bring back things like the Scarab from Halo 3 (not the Halo 2 one) which was just a really fun gameplay element and allow us to approach situations in different ways.

  2. Reward Exploration: Skulls and Terminals should be collectibles again (and shouldn’t be too easy- make us work!), and there should be many more cool little things to do outside of the main story. Maybe some side objectives? How about this: you see a few Hornets battling a Scarab in the far landscape, having a tough time, but your main objective is in the other side of the map. So you take your Warthog out with a couple of friends and go take down that Scarab and save the Hornets, then get back on track. These things should be directly tied to achievements and in-game rewards (skins, armor and the like). Remember that scene in Reach with where you got the optional objective to kill an Elite Commander before he escapes? More of that.

  3. Expand the Sandbox: the set of enemies in Halo 4 is very straight-forward and plain. Give us more complex things to fight, and give us a lot of new, challenging forms- especially on the Promethean side. Also, being back some more Covenant enemies such as the Drones. This is the main point, but I would also like 343i to breathe new life into the Pronethean weapons (they seem a lot like reskins and not alien enough) and we definitely need more vehicles (a UNSC aircraft, a spiritual successor to the Chopper and maybe some new Firerunner stuff). Just make the Sandbox more fun and diverse.

  4. Story: take notes from Halo 2 on this one. Make the story more interesting, and make us learn new info about the universe through it. Give us exciting twists and turns like the Flood in Halo CE, and make it a memorable journey packed with epic moments (like bringing the Covenant back their bomb and the Warthog runs). Also, I think the Campaign should be a bit longer. Give us ten good missions, and we will be very pleased.

4

Every time I see these lists, all I see are features already in Halo 3. Why don’t you guys just play that?

It’s important to know the distinction between wanting improvements to Halo 4 and just wanting to play Halo 3 some more.

5

What happened ?

Developer changed, when studios change games change, it’s happened before, look at Rare, they were super creative, but they split, I’m not 100% sure but I believe Free Radical formed from Rare employees, and Time Splitters arrives, great designers make great games is what I’m getting at,

I feel the loss of Bungie along with the changes brought in Reach has had a HUGE impact, add to that the Bungie fans that will stick with them,

I said I would stick with 343i, and I will, but I don’t think this is going to be fixed for Halo 5, I hope when the next Halo launches that I’m wrong, but I think we have a long way to go.

6

There were reasons to replay Halo 3’s campaign but the story was awful, I’d say the worst Halo story yet, I made a post about it in the Halo 3 section:

I went back to Halo 3 due to Halo CE and Halo 4 making me want to play more story and I came back to Halo 3, looking back at the game it was a disappointment, the writing was bad, way too many action sequences in a row, inconsistencies like only the Elites siding with Humans even though Halo 2 set it up to be more than it was, BACKTRACKING in Crows Nest you start in one room go to point A return to start room go to point B return to start room go to point A again, awful AI, but this has been a problem with every Halo following CE, Bungie were too scared at the idea of risking doing Arbiter missions again (one of Halo 2’s redeeming factors), The Cortana/Gravemind moments just ruin the flow of the game, and most all Chief was the most boring in Halo 3, this was the biggest blow to Halo 3

Halo 4 had one of the best stories imo along with CE and ODST and I agree that they should give you a reason to replay the levels even though I find myself going back to Campaign in Halo 4 all the time

7

I was just using it as an example of features.

Its not my favorite campaign story wise either.

I’d probably go with halo 2 if I had to pick.

But I’ve played halo 3 the most