Everything that was wrong with halo: Reach -343

HELP US, we just don’t get it over here at Microsoft 343, where did Bungie go wrong? Hardly anyone plays anymore, mappack sales are the lowest for any Halo in history, online player retention may be the worst of any game ever,people don’t care, don’t play, and give less than a doggie-poop about Reach Mlg. But why? We just don’t understand. Bungie tried so hard, to sell games right? Please help us understand so that Halo 4 doesn’t suck as bad as Reach does.

Finally a place for everyone who knows why Reach is the worst Halo to put down their reasons together in one easy to peruse topic.

Most everyone knows the game is bad, and it is! Without a doubt it is the least played of all the Halos. There’s like actual factual indicators that the game has been
abandoned by a vast number of gamers because of it’s overall crappiness.

Halo 3 received awards, game of the year, n crap, and then Reach is the most hated on game ever by it’s own fanbase…

That’s the first part of the topic, the second is "Why should 343 listen to you about all this?"

Be as persuasive as possible, the future of the Halo series may depend on it :wink:

I’ll go first…

A) 1-player theater. How they went backwards on the functionality of this feature is a mystery to me (probably laziness). Had I worked at Bungie I would have made sure it also should have supported viewing from inside anyone’s helmet/perspective regardless of the film’s author. Which shouldnt have been real --blam!- hard, considering that it happens randomly in the Halo 3 theater.

B)Lack of a ranking system.

C)Win/loss record not listed in XBL service record. No tangible benefit given for winning the game/less incentive to play as a team and win.

D)Credits handed out primarily for playing grunt-firefight by yourself.

E)Zero punsihment or downside whatsoever for quitting out of a game.Increased quitting. Quitting has always been an issue in Halo(and while I think Cod’s fill-up-the-game-scheme and tossing players into a half-way played game is even worse imo) ZERO punishment for quitting, more encouragement to quit, increased
occurence of pre-game, and mid-game quit-outs. Quit-ban system
an utter failure for many reasons.

F) Speaking of times Bungie didn’t listen or care… A major complaint/point of dissatisfaction among players when Halo 3 came out was the DECIDED lack of arena-style
maps compared to Halo 2. So, what do they do…naturally, in Reach there are no good arena-style maps. Unless you count Zealot, which doesn’t count. They got a great deal of feedback on that specific point, and they didn’t address it at all. Doesn’t give one much hope when it comes to anything else.

G) Obvious values shift from solid and smooth gameplay to GIMMICKS GIMMICKS GIMMICKS.

H) Error: Most of the flooring in the new Ivory Tower is polished hardwood, on which you would expect a grenade to bounce, or at least roll…much to your surprise, you’ll find it has a grass or glue texture which stops nades in about two feet, even if the the nade was thrown at a skipping angle. Failed grenade physics.

I) Armor Abilities: Call me old fashioned, but these are lousy -blam!- gimmicks which don’t belong in Halo, for good reason.

J) Invisibility is lame. Takes the power-up off the map (a staple of all 3 previous games), working to lessen the importance of map control. Allows people who really arent that great with snipes to get easy kills and to snipe unmolested.

K) Sprinting: At first, sprinting and jet packs I liked, I was fine with those, until I noticed the sad truth. This game isn’t CoD. You can’t clip someone and put them down in a half second. Unless you have a power weapon. And you are not goign to kill them unless someone is sprinting down a long hallway or across a really big opening/area, you don’t get enough time to kill them. Sprint allows people to get to positions, rush up on you and get
close to you, to get to certain areas, and otherwise move around to places on the map uncontested, and without having to do anything or play the game well to get there

(ie- They didn’t have to move around the map properly, avoid dangerous spots, work with their team, look around the correct spots as they moved, or aim/shoot well to get there). They just go, and run across openings and past places on the map without putting themself in danger. Just press X. Also allows for more general randomness and affects map control.

L) Evade: Can a spartan suddenly leap 20 feet sideways in almost an instant? Of course not, that’s -blam!- stupid. If a Spartan is going to have the ability to roll backwards or forwards to cover,
which wouldnt be totally unforgivable (though arguably un-halo-like), atelast make it look realistic as compared to the speed of the rest of the game. Instead of some glitchy almost instantaneous
ground-flopping -blammed!-up nonsense. Oh, but if the ability were slower and didn’t look and feel so -blam- limited, then it wouldn’t be powerful enough to balance out with the other armor abilities… whose effectiveness and strength were arbitrairily and incorrectly set.

M) Hologram: Stupid, throw-away, no one will ever pick this in a serious game that has the other armor abilities available.

N) Jet Pack: Interesting addition but it has too great an effect in weakening the advantage a team earned getting the superior, hard to uproot position. A poor impact on map control.

O) And the dreaded armor-lock…a brief comparison if you will (don’t forget everything else bad about it, like being able to turn and look 180* without it appearing that you are, and that you are now invulnerable to sticky grenades, and vehicle splatters, as long as you’re paying attention).

Example: Forza 4. I’m sure that some people played a lot of Gran Tourismo, then Forza’s 1 and 2, and really like them and think they are the best simulation racing games ever. While you’re playing Forza 4 on an oval track, you totally -blam!- up and head into the turn way too fast and are easily headed for the wall…but wait, fortunately you can just hold the X button and it will correct your turn, hold it long enough and you’ll
come out of the turn at the proper speed in the middle of the track.

You think Forza players would be -blam!- pissed about how -blam!- INCREDIBLY STUPID THAT WOULD BE!? ‘Oh, yeah, well so what, you can do it too, so what does it matter?’ Well, it -blam!- matters, cause it’s -blam!- lame -blam!- for bad players and children and it doesn’t belong in any shooter/racer/game ever, except some really -blam!- stupid one that sells 10k copies.

People mess up, press a button, and get bailed out. Also used in other stupid ways by children. Going in and out, using it to drop someones shield, having a team strategy that’s everyone pick armor-lock on Zealot and we’ll just all run around in a circle around the map, and whenever you get hurt just hit armorlock.

almost done…

P) Oh yeah what else…double shooting…holy -blam!- pathetic -blam!- for little children…and the actual Halo players are the cry-babies for ripping on this game…holy -blam!- you pansies… although I guess once you accept double-beatdowns this one was only logical.

I was hoping Bungie had come to their senses about the double beatdowns, espcially after a considerable forum back-lash on bungie.net in Halo 3’s prime. May have been when that game tapered off and lost to the CoD franchise, opr maybe a coincidence, no se. In Reach, in a str8 one on one with no shields, unless the person -blam!-s up, it is not possible for someone to have a slow enough reaction time not to get the beat down as well. It was bad on Halo 3, it’s even worse now.

Of course, if yur some noob -blam!- chump hole Reach fan boy who sucked at all the other Halo’s… well then I guess these two don’t bother you.

It never/doesnt mitigate host advantage anyways, ask anyone who’s played all the games and has any -blam!- clue what they are talking about. The host gets the same chance to cancel out as anyone else. And the instances in which this happens are WAY WAY beyond worse and more obvious than the apparent-wins but near-losses to other players were prior to this.

They introduced it, ostensibly to fix a “bug” according to the Wiki, cause people with a better connection to the game couldn’t be beat down. That was the story. The host couldn’t be beat-down? I never noticed this, after thousands and thousands of games…
thousands and thousands…sometimes the host and others (probably with good connections to that host) got away with questionable beat downs, but that just meant your timing would have to be better if you were going to beat-down that partiucular player. This was especially true in Halo 2.

Of course, if you have real bad reaction speed, and timing, and were constantly getting beat in melee’s by people like me (who never really had the best of internet speeds) and you just flat-out sucked at the game, the whole host-unbeatable-down thing would seems like a convienient excuse for your gaming crumminess, especially considering that you don’t really know who the host is.

I find it funny, that this supposed complaint (which I personally hadn’t been hearing in YEARS and YEARS of playing the Halo’s online) surfaced and got attention during Halo 3’s run…a game where you can never be sure who has host, unless it’s you. But this complaint never seemed to surface in any seriousness throughout the run of Halo 2…a game when you could see with 100% certainty who was hosting everytime a game started. Curious isn’t it?

Losing your sheilds constantly, even when you press it first? On your average, unimpressive DSL connection? That was bad, Bungie’s first real and obvious attempt at ruining the Halo franchise. Oh but don’t fret, who survives (-maybe- being as they lost their shields beating someone down) is often based on who had more shield at the time. So that seems reasonable…unless you think about it. You mean to tell me that the game can tell who had more shields than someone else at some given point in time, but it couldn’t tell who pressed a button first? Ask yourself that, and then ask yourself how stupid Bungie thinks you are.

Halo 3 update when they introduced the double beatdowns. Which FINALLY allowed the host to beat you down too, even when you clearly and obviously beat him. Now if you have a slow connection to a particular host, you’ll never have to worry about getting away with a beatdown again.

Of course, if you do get host, you’ll get a taste of what pre-update Halo was like. Getting away with beat-downs unscaythed, as you still manage to get beatdowns flinging people’s bodies down a hallway. But only if host…

Not only was the whole concept of double-beatdowns dubious as a solution, they were not implemented in a way that truly adressed the “problem”. Which is REALLY obvious to anyone who had been playing all the Halos.

That went on and on, sorry, but that was one of the worst thigns to ever happen to the game imo.

Q) AR damage downgraded but range increased. Noobs rejoice. I never much appreciated the re-introduction of the AR. Dual-weilding was still fun and produced interesting match-ups and situations, it worked great, and you had to be okay to do anything with a single smg. They reintro’d the AR to give the noobs a hand, obviously.

R) Can anyone explain why a grenade can finish you off from 10 feet away if you have shields in the process of recharging and are at 75%, yet to take away 75% of someones shields, the grenade has to be under their butt cheeks? And then they have all their health still?

Ok, I’ll explain: BK’s need an easier time finishing off kills they never would have before… lets make the grenade radius the whole map.

S) Whatever happened to trying to shoot as fast and as accurately as you could? Man that was so annoying, people did nothing but complain about that… Why can’t I do that anymore? Why are grenades so weak and you only get 4? Oh right, so two noobs with AR’s at 80ft can still run over me after they just walked over a frag grenade holding hands…cause I had to “pace my shots” or slow down for the last one…of -blam!- 4, and in the meantime got run over by two noobs with a long distance AR. Makes sense. That’s not annoying. That’s fun.

T) Bloom: Don’t get me started please… Master Chief can sprint and jump and -blam!- fly around, and roll around on the ground, and get shot by a concusion rifle without it affecting his accuracy AT ALL, but as soon as he fires his gun 3 times, it’s ALL OVER, and its gonna take him 2 seconds of not firing to recover his aim. BAD

Nevermind the overall terrible effects this has on gameplay. Crouching, camping, having to slow down in the middle of fights.

-Only effect it really has is that peeple who are bad=new to the game may be firing too quickly. Although close-range spamming allows for random poorly-aimed, poorly-shot, poorly-played kills, as everyone is aware of.

Often RANDOMIZES close-up 1v1 outcomes…

Ah yes, let’s go ahead and introduce randomness into DMR-battles, cause everyone was always complaining about the lack of randomness when it came to the 2 Br’s and the CE pistol. Lotta complaints about a lack of randomness in the first three Halos…

-Makes dodging shots up close harder seeing as some -blam!- noob’s reticle is going to be as big as a shotgun…and he can just put it over your body and hope for the best.

-Gives one person a HUGE, INSURMOUNTABLE disadvantage against two people in a BR skirmish. The bloom makes the disadvantage too bad. No amount of skill or grenades can save you anymore, just the other players being really super bad/new.

double thread post FTW…

refer to my post in the other thread you made with the exact same crap.

Game sucks, only frustrating and not fun for people who like good competative shooters and who were fans of Halo up until then. That’s why no one plays it. And the casual players just play a game for 6 montsh and then move on to the next online crap-fest.

U) The truth that ALMOST everything thing they changed in this game was a poor choice is shown when considering how bad, unbalanced, or broken objective play is.

Some objective types are broken, some are bad/ruined by a specific armor ability (remember when they took the bubble out of flag games haha), and almost every other objective game is unbalanced (either too easy or too hard to score flags/bombs)

Almost ALL the objective gametypes don’t balance well and don’t play right (regardless of what map is being played).

V) And yes, the warthog is practically useless now due to some of the other vehicles and the incredible weakness of all vehicles. Vehicles were always tough. They should be strong compared to a Spartan, after all they are vehicles, with a Spartan inside. I don’t think the UNSC would send their most elite warrior into battle riding inside of an egg-shell-armored drivable bomb…While kinda laughable today and ridiculous, vehicles never exploded in CE or even took damage. You had to kill the occupants to disable a vehicle, and the rocket didn’t lock on…and the sniper was not hit-scan…in other words, it took some skill, or a lucky grenade. But there also wasn’t any flying vehicles to worry about. In Reach, unlike any other Halo before it, you can banish a Banshee from the sky with a clip from a sniper rifle, and obviously that was not the right move.

Warthogs are a guaranteed death trap. Vehicles are too weak. They may have been overpowered in Halo 1, also in Halo 2 (especially tanks on some of the larger levels and the banshee on ascension), but I think most long-time players would agree that Halo 3 had gone a long ways toward balancing that out with the addition of the Spartan laser. They ruined vehicles by weakening them like they did.

W) The auto-aim on Halo 2, with the sniper too, was a little excessive. Halo 3 was better in that regard. Swiping definitely needed to be timed better. Halo 1 sniper-swiping was difficult, but correctly timing the shot, it was possible. Not sure who has noticed, but swiping doesn’t seem to work at all in Reach. Like there is an anti-swiping effect in place. It seems to work sometimes, but if you do it at a really fast speed it will never work, over some allowable speed, even if you should be shooting at that spot.

Personally, I don’t like being punished for timing a swipe well, nevermind how fast my reticle is moving. I can put it deliberately onto someone pretty well too, I don’t mind HAVING to do that, it’s just that not being able to do it really quickly is not cool sometimes. This is evidenced by the unprecedented prevalence of camping in snipes games. It’s way easier for most every noob that plays Reach to camp in one spot and wait for someone’s chunky-block-headed Master Chief to waddle through their reticle, and then pull the trigger. An acceptable sniping method/mechanic, but seems to be many players preference nowadays, When camping like that in a snipes game in the previous Halos didn’t take you near as far.

X) The Reach head-hit-box is a joke too. Way too big. Was weird to go back to Halo 3, and bein like, ‘oh damn I actually have to shoot people in the head to get a headshot.’

2nd question comign up… haha damn that was big

what’d I miss? explain poorly?

Crap Halo

> refer to my post in the other thread you made with the exact same crap.

Will do