Zanzibar was pretty popular for 4v4, for 1 Flag, Assault, and Slayers. But that was Halo 2. Though, SMG starts occasionally made a mess of that map. The other two were Halo 3… I think if it was Halo 2’s BR, Valhalla would actually work since it’s not too large. Sandtrap was likely too large for both games, so you are right. Anything in Halo 3 seemed large, but still, they seem smaller than the Infinite BTB-exclusive maps in my opinion.
1 Like
Ah yes non-content readyness and the one guy who love all 343 decissions ^^
1 Like
Yes, because those maps were amazing. These current maps are just okay. Not awful, not great, not good, just okay.
When you have that going for the maps, it feels much worse than it is.
The issue is not that I am biased against 343, but rather that they keep on making bad decisions and I’m willing to hold them accountable for that, while you’re not, instead looking for excuses.
I still remember “It’s the government’s fault for the state that Halo Infinite is in”.
4 Likes
Here’s the thing, buster. Halo 2 not only had 1 more map than Infinite, but those maps were significantly more interesting and unique than what we currently have AND on top of that all 11 were playable with any game type and in both custom games which had far more useful settings by the way, and many playlists of matchmaking. Now, it’s true that’s not an incredibly compelling case, so let’s move on to Halo 3:
Halo 3 had 1 more map than Infinite (all of which, just like H2, were a lot more interesting and unique compared to Infinite maps), it had a wide variety of matchmaking playlists, a wide variety of dev-made custom game variants, FORGE (and on day one I might add), and significantly more useful custom games settings than what Infinite has. Those make a huge difference.
So yes, in summary, Halo Infinite launching with not only fewer maps but also less interesting maps, fewer features, fewer modes, fewer playlists is really that bad.
4 Likes
The problem here is that MS is the investor. And they mismanaged the situation.
The entire launch could have gone better if they chose sooner to spend money on getting more and better talent to fix the game. This is 100% a talent management issue. And MS was too slow to accept that "hey, maybe we should have invested 25%-50% more.
This is especially true when they consciously chose to engage and compete in the F2P space, with the obvious end goal of raking in BILLIONS.
Fortnight is as successful as it is, 100% because Epic not only saw the potential in their product, but once they noticed the potential they invested in TALENT. They grew their team incredibly rapidly. In 2018 the team had over 700 people. They scaled based on the market demand.
MS did NOT do this with 343. They waited until they were forced to delay. And now we are in a situation where there is more then enough talent in industry, that they could easily support a team that churns out more maps, more content, and a better marketplace. But they chose to wait until they had no other choice.
And the reality? MS has likely already broke even. With how much GamePass has scaled, and the success of the marketplace, AND the sale of the campaign? (not to mention licensing and merch)I would be shocked if they aren’t already far over 500MM+.
GamePass by itself pulls in something like $270MM in revenue every month. That is the same revenue that the largest AAA games would expect during their launch month. And GamePass is just a profit monster at its current scale of adoption.
The only important question is if MS and 343 will now start re-investing to keep their game from running itself into the ground. There is no question that Halo has the potential to be in direct competition with Fortnight, Warzone, Apex, etc. They just need to put the consumer first, and then capitalize on their player base when the game has proven itself. Just like EVERY monster FPS out there right now.
Upper and lower lane help divide up the foot-traffic.
A lot of the things you’ve viewed as negative I view as positives, I think we’ve established that over the years. (Anyone who tries to twist this as me not wanting fixes for client crashes and server crashes is dense, I’m talking balance and game play.)
And my claim was that the shut downs impacted development, which is 100% true. You’re the one who twisted it into a government discussion, I was just pointing out that going full time remote (enterprise wide) without a heads up basically halted meaningful development and testing for the beginning months of the pandemic. 100%
Having a bias against the company that has broken the Golden Rule of Game Design and gotten away with it time and time again is understandable tho.
But at least now they are back-stepping back to a place closer to where the series SHOULD be… sadly there are some faults but an alcoholic going to an AA meeting isn’t something we should frown upon. So why do the same for a Game-Designers-Anonymous meeting participant?
I have scolded 343 A LOT since Halo 4 came around, but I’m surprised at how much I am defending them nowadays.
They have made great decisions but they have also made bad ones.
Good decision - Getting rid of Brian “Fanfiction” Reed
Bad decision - Crossplay only being able to be disabled for ranked.
1 Like
I love it when people compare very old games with new ones…
1 Like
I do so with narrative, soundtrack, art style, and core gameplay elements.
Halo 4 had the worst weapons sandbox to enemy ratio.
Wanna fight the Promethean Knights? Best and only reliable weapon is the Light Rifle.
Halo 2 and Halo 3 had plenty of good maps and plenty of content. Halo Infinite on the other hand has no overall interesting maps. Had similar complaints with Halo 5. Halo 2 and 3 both had 3 years development time and Halo Infinite had roughly 6 years.
To compare Halo 2 and Halo 3 like they have same content is misleading. Halo 3 came with forge with lead to an insane amount of choice due to custom made maps while Halo Infinite does not include forge.
To say that there’s not much difference to Infinite just seems like bit of a stretch. Halo Infinite has a lot of missing content at launch and no sign of basic features like splitscreen coop and forge is nowhere to be seen and this is coming from a studio that has twice as much time for half the amount of content so if anything it’s even worse.
6 Likes
An important thing that is not discussed enough is that the BTB maps that Infinite launched with are larger than average BTB maps, so those likely required more time than what regular 8v8 maps would.
1 Like
I feel like Halo Infinite’s maps are great. Sure I don’t know if I’d call them “interesting,” but Halo 2/3 set the bar really high with some of their maps. Like, I’m not sure if any specific Halo Infinite maps rise to the level of Lockout, but I don’t think any of Infinite’s maps are as abysmal as burial mounds (which I had to look up because my subconscious had completely erased that map from memory).
Well that’s not actually misleading. Forge “content” isn’t really developer made content, and I don’t think early on they really included forge stuff in any of the matchmaking, right? Pretty sure forge stuff was just something you did for you and your friends at first.
But this is a moot point because Forge is coming to Infinite, so it doesn’t really matter in the long run. If we’re talking about maps the devs made and included in the game, which we are, then Forge has zero bearing on that.
And we’re back to this really bad talking point about 6 years of dev time blah blah blah. I’ve already mentioned this a thousand times: saying that Halo Infinite took 6 years is meaningless because we don’t know how much time was spent in pre-production/prototyping.
1 Like
Fun fact this is not actually a new engine. There are bugs from halo 4 and 5 still present. This is an updated engine
1 Like
Yes… people have noted that to me a few times.
Misconceptions happened yesterday.
The people who defend 343 completely believe the propaganda of 343, and naturally think that this is a new engine, which is obviously another lie of 343.
According to the reporter’s interview with 343 departing employees, they did think about whether to replace the new engine, and after a long process, they finally chose to upgrade the old engine and upgrade the development tools of the old engine.
This is understandable,Bethesda did the same thing.
But the problem is that 343 wasted too much time, for whatever reason, this is obviously another mistake of 343, but some people use this as an excuse to defend 343, I really don’t understand.
2 Likes
How many default colors did Halo 2 and Halo 3 have?
Red, Orange, Yellow, Light Green, Dark Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple, Grey, Brown, and variants for a brighter and darker version of each.
1 Like
Actually, I wasn’t. If you look the thread up again, you’ll find that the discussion about the government’s involvement in Infinite’s development was between you and Primus_Ego_Sum.
I, on the other hand, was the one calling into question the dubious examples you gave on how remote software development works and how it is affected by the pandemic.