> 2600292642016732;37:
> I don’t follow your logic about clamber, the point is that crouch jumping is still very common in Halo 5. Any jump that didn’t require a crouch jump in previous Halo’s was “easy” as well.
The problem in Halo 5 is that there’s such a range of failures where Clamber still saves you. With Clamber, you don’t need to be precise, you just need to get close enough to the ledge to clamber up. An example of this in Halo 5 are some of the curved walls on Truth and Regret. To abuse an older term, they have ghost edges which allow you to clamber up the wall without any visible ledge. But you don’t really have to know where exactly the ledge is, because as long as you get close enough, holding down the jump button will make you snap onto the ledge and clamber up. This is in contrast to the classic ghost edges which were challenging because they required precise position to jump at. And I clarify that this is not a point about invisible ledges in particular, but an example of the way in which Clamber leaves more room for error than classic jumps.
> 2600292642016732;37:
> Tsassi did we have a discussion about this last year? Where you said that jumping in Halo 5 isn’t as “deep” or something than past Halo’s? It doesn’t look like you’ve changed your mind, which is strange, because jumping around Truth or Regret is a whole different ball game than anything from previous titles. Its an objective fact that jumping around in Halo 5 is not only harder, but has way more depth than any previous game. Just because clambering is easy doesn’t mean that skill can’t be added in other ways, which is the case in Halo 5.
I don’t know whether we did, maybe. But if it was over a year ago, I wouldn’t have known about some of these tricks. I thought I made it clear in the second paragraph that the tricks I’ve learned with Thruster Pack and Stabilizer have made me readjust my opinion on depth of movement in Halo 5. And you’d be surprised to know that I agree that some levels in Halo 5 have more interesting movement paths than levels in previous Halo games. If you were to beat it out of me, you could even get me to agree that those levels in Halo 5 also have more difficult jumps than most old Halo levels.
However, you should also be aware, that I choose my words carefully for a very good reason. Some levels in Halo 5 have more interesting movement than levels in previous Halo games, and some levels in Halo 5 have more difficult jumps than most old Halo levels. Because when it comes to movement, level design matters more than anything else. First of all, not nearly all maps in Halo 5 are deeper than maps in previous games. For example, Empire is a map that has no really challenging routes to my knowledge, and is about as interesting as any old Halo map. Then there are maps like Fathom and Coliseum, which have a few interesting jumps, and a few challenging jumps. These maps I perhaps find more interesting (in terms of jumps) than old Halo maps.
Old Halo games didn’t make full use of the movement system in level design. Many interesting jumps in old Halo games seem accidental, and intentionally designed interesting jumps are few and far between, but that doesn’t in any way mean that it’s not possible to have maps littered with interesting jumps in classic Halo. Height variation, slopes, and all sorts of small protrusions could be used to create maps with lots of interesting jumps with just the basic abilities of move, jump, and crouch, but that requires active effort to design these paths into the map in such a way that they’re not entirely obvious to the player and seem accidental.
So, what’s different with Halo 5? Is 343i simply better at map design than Bungie? Possibly, we never know, though when you consider the jumps that require precise thrusting onto an edge, and a quick jump followed by stabilization and repeated crouching to gain extra height, I find it unlikely they ever thought of that. No, it is far more likely that Halo 5 has so many interesting jumps by accident. 343i thought they knew how players could move, and designed maps according to that. But if you just look at the basic ways of movement compared to the more exotic combinations, the basic methods only get a bit over half the distance and the height of what’s possible. And now that players can use these not easy to execute methods on maps that weren’t designed with those methods in mind, the maps suddenly become smaller, and all the gaps that weren’t meant to be jumps suddenly are.
Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand my point: accidental depth is still depth. In Halo 5 it just happens to be easily realized by accident because the player can fly literally a hundred feet through the air. The classic movement system is more capable than you give it credit for, but because the range of movement is much more limited, design decisions on jumps need to be more deliberate. It might still be the case that movement in Halo 5 is inherently slightly deeper than in classic Halo, but the fact that Bungie didn’t really see jumping as such an integral part of Halo to properly design maps around it means that you’re greatly overestimating how much these new abilities actually contribute to the depth.
> 2600292642016732;37:
> About the statistics, you’re right; you can go look up old Halo MLG VODs though. In Halo 2 if you didn’t have a 4-5 shot BR you just weren’t competitive, which is a far cry from Halo 5 for example. Its not perfect, but even just watching a tournament for an hour its possible to spot the difference between games. Even guys on Team Beyond would agree that the magnum in Halo 5 is way harder to use than any BR/DMR in previous Halo games. I just saw Kell of scotts talk about this on reddit.
Sure, I could agree that the Magnum is reasonably difficult. It’s only a shame that Halo 5 has so many weapons that are easy to use. It also doesn’t help that automatics are more powerful than ever. Not to mention, if you’re really comparing Halo 5 to Halo 2, you’re just comparing one game where aiming is easy to another game where aiming is easy. Halo CE and 3 are would be better games to compare to. For example, the CE Magnum in Halo 5 just isn’t the same as the original, and feels really easy to get three shot kills with.
But as I alluded to, I always feel like discussions about difficulty of aiming don’t really get anywhere, because you have one person’s sensation and subjective experience against another. Truth be told, I don’t really know for sure that Halo 5 isn’t the most difficult Halo to aim in. I just feel like I’m having much easier time, especially with the sniper, than I should have.
