Halo 4 Rant Hub

Games Other Halo
1

Hello, I’m Kernul, and today I will be talking about some things I believe need to be fixed and changed in Halo 4. These are my opinions about Halo 4, and you do not have to agree with them. If you are here to hate, troll, ect., please leave. I am not whining or begging, I am just stating my opinions.

First, I would like to take a moment to compare halo 4 with Halo 3. What’s different? Well, in a word, everything. The campaign, multiplayer, forge, and theater are completely different. Halo 4s campaign in comparison to Halo 3s is amazing. It has better cut scenes and more interactive things. I haven’t noticed many changes in theater. Forge in Halo 4 is very hard to learn, and is very confusing compared to Halo 3s. Halo Reach, in my opinion, has the best forge. Now, multiplayer, multiplayer in Halo 4 will take up the rest of this post.

Second, are weapons in Halo 4. Face it, we all love the new guns. But, did 343i go a little too far? I mean, it’s not Call of Duty. Loadouts? Weapon Skins? If I wanted to play Call of Duty, I would go play Call of Duty. In fact, I hate Call of Duty! No one, I repeat no one, cares, or pays attention to the gun skins in-game. Although loadouts come in handy, they take away from what Halo is really about, fun. Let’s say you’re playing Big Team Slayer. You finally make it to a scorpion and get into it. Except, you are greeted from bombarding blows from plasma pistols (which the enemy has spawned with in their loadout…). This ends up making you either, commit suicide by staying in the vehicle until they kill you, or getting out and dying anyway. Making it impossible to stay in any heavy vehicle for over thirty seconds! This drastically decreases the playability of the game, and makes it not fun. In addition to this, most weapons, along with vehicles, are overpowered, and should be taken down a notch.

Third, gametypes! Coming from Halo Reach, I expected flood to be better. But, I had to deal with rage quits, almost broken controllers, and I quit the game entirely for three months. Just from flood. 343i had made it impossible to get over 15 kills in one round, let alone a game! What happened to the instant kill headshots? Or the camping until you were the last man standing and waiting for the moment to rack up on those kills. That was fun. Not all this new stuff. Like, thruster packs. Now, these things make flood unplayable, I repeat, UNPLAYABLE. Basically teleporting up to players and killing them isn’t fun for the survivors. What fun is it to not be able to survive in a game type you’re supposed to survive in? 343i, tone these down or take them out! Next, action sack. That gametype that had satisfied me, along with thousands of other players around the world for years! Until lightning flag was introduced. Lightning flag can be described as “the gametype that noobs vote on to rack up on kills”. The majority of players won’t focus on the objective and just spawn kill, literally spawn kill. 343i, take this gametype out!

Fourth, ranks. Bring back actual ranks, not numbers. Also, make it a challenge to get to SR130. CSR? What’s what? It’s a meaningless number in Halo Waypoint. CSR is not accurate. If CSR is YOUR SKILL, then quitting games has nothing to do with that! Quitting games should take XP away, not numbers away from your “skill meter”. Bring back Halo 3s skill based ranking system, and combine it with Halo Reach’s ranks. This will improve the gaming experience. If this happens, people have the right to be nervous about playing high ranked people.

In conclusion, Halo 4 convinced me to not buy anything else from 343i. In fact, I am so fed up with 343i, especially when they gave out recon in Halo 3 to everyone, two months after I EARNED IT. Do you people not know what this armor means to the community? I spent THREE YEARS doing seven of “the hardest achievements” on Xbox to EARN my recon! THREE YEARS DOWN THE DRAIN. Thanks…

Please comment below if you agree with any of this, and please post any of your opinions!

2

I could not agree more with you.

3

I agree with everything you said and have wrecked one controller already on Lag rage.

The only thing I would add is a H4’s very poor host selection methodology as I described in detail here:

https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postsm2567780_Is-Halo-4-s-Netcode-Bogging-Down.aspx#post2567780

and lack of user network filters like “Best Connection” (as in Reach) and “Local Only” (for people outside the USA). I can’t play multiplayer because 70% of my games are lagged by 0.5+ seconds - whereas only 5% of my Reach BTB games lag like H4 does - same connection - same times of days.

4

I hope I don’t sound argumentative, but I must say I disagree with some of your points, OP.

> Although loadouts come in handy, they take away from what Halo is really about, fun. Let’s say you’re playing Big Team Slayer. You finally make it to a scorpion and get into it. Except, you are greeted from bombarding blows from plasma pistols (which the enemy has spawned with in their loadout…). This ends up making you either, commit suicide by staying in the vehicle until they kill you, or getting out and dying anyway. Making it impossible to stay in any heavy vehicle for over thirty seconds! This drastically decreases the playability of the game, and makes it not fun. In addition to this, most weapons, along with vehicles, are overpowered, and should be taken down a notch.

An understandable concern. But is this a problem with the loadout system, or just a problem with what’s allowed in loadouts?

In Halo 3, if you wanted a weapon that was just as useful as your starting weapon, but catered better to your play style (such as a Carbine instead of a BR), you had to waste time finding it on the map after every respawn. If your teammates happened to have similar tastes, then you had to compete with them just to get a weapon equal in power to your spawn weapon. And FSM help you if you played on AR starts.

Halo 4’s loadout system cuts out the middleman by letting us spawn with the starting weapon of our choice. The loadout weapons were imbalanced at launch, and some loadout items shouldn’t actually be loadout items, but neither of these are issues with the loadout system itself.

> Third, gametypes! Coming from Halo Reach, I expected flood to be better. But, I had to deal with rage quits, almost broken controllers, and I quit the game entirely for three months. Just from flood. 343i had made it impossible to get over 15 kills in one round, let alone a game! What happened to the instant kill headshots? Or the camping until you were the last man standing and waiting for the moment to rack up on those kills. That was fun. Not all this new stuff.

Some would argue that the old Living Dead playlists were awful when playing as a Zombie. Some would argue that you shouldn’t get to automatically do ridiculously good just because a random number generator put you on one team instead of the other. :\

That said, I agree that the Flood playlist has had some… struggles. The community always has done Infection better than the developers, but it’s good to see that 343i’s at least trying to do better than the lackluster snoozefest that was Living Dead.

> What fun is it to not be able to survive in a game type you’re supposed to survive in?

What fun is it to not have to try to survive in a gametype that you’re supposed to try to survive in?

Flood suffers from heavy situational imbalance: most of the map grants insane advantages to the Thruster Packing Flood, and the few spots that don’t will instead grant insane advantages to the Survivors, so Flood’s gameplay revolves around exploiting crippling environmental weaknesses (read: mindless camping) rather than around demonstrating skill in movement and combat. Living Dead, however, was constantly imbalanced in favor of the Survivors, demanding no skill or thought of them and almost never giving the Zombies a fair chance, and that was even worse. Even if most Living Dead games ended in Zombie Victories, it was only after each zombie suicided into an unflankable shotgun twenty times – Zombie Victories were almost always so Pyrrhic that they felt like losses.

Both Flood and Living Dead are subpar, especially compared to what the Custom Game community has produced, but at least Flood gives both teams a very small chance to do well. Living Dead matches were all exactly the same. I do hope that someday, we get a Matchmaking Infection experience that is balanced and varied in the long term.

> Fourth, ranks. Bring back actual ranks, not numbers. Also, make it a challenge to get to SR130. CSR? What’s what? It’s a meaningless number in Halo Waypoint.

CSR is a 1-50 ranking system that is skill-based. Depending on what playlist you’re in, it is affected either by win/loss, or by your performance relative to all other players in the game.

> CSR is not accurate. If CSR is YOUR SKILL, then quitting games has nothing to do with that! Quitting games should take XP away, not numbers away from your “skill meter”. Bring back Halo 3s skill based ranking system, and combine it with Halo Reach’s ranks. This will improve the gaming experience. If this happens, people have the right to be nervous about playing high ranked people.

Actually, it would have the opposite effect. If quitting reduces someone’s rank, then I can “be nervous about playing high-ranked people” because they’re less likely to cut and run: they will stick around, they will fight tooth and nail, and they will kick my -Yoink-. If quitting doesn’t reduce someone’s rank, then I can’t be as sure that a high-ranker will stick around and stay in the match, which means I’m not going to be nearly as nervous.

> In conclusion, Halo 4 convinced me to not buy anything else from 343i.

I can understand that opinion but feel that it’s a little harsh. Though 343i has some very talented people, many of them have never worked together before, so naturally their first game is going to have some issues. :\

> especially when they gave out recon in Halo 3 to everyone, two months after I EARNED IT. Do you people not know what this armor means to the community? I spent THREE YEARS doing seven of “the hardest achievements” on Xbox to EARN my recon! THREE YEARS DOWN THE DRAIN. Thanks…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that done toward the very end of Halo 3’s life cycle? And don’t you still have the Achievements themselves to show off?

This isn’t the only time that something like that has happened in Halo. Bungie gave the Star nameplate, previously given only to Forgers whose works made it into Matchmaking, to nearly all players via a special playlist. They also gave the Blue Flames, previously available only to their employees, to most players via a phone app.

You could look at them as rendering community achievements worthless. I look at it as a developer giving a parting gift to the community: 343i giving Recon to the community near the end of Halo 3, and Bungie giving the nameplate and flames to the community near the end of their ownership of the franchise. And in that light, these acts seem kind, not offensive, to me.

> Please comment below if you agree with any of this, and please post any of your opinions!

Done and done. :slight_smile:

5

Tanks in Halo: Reach exploded from a couple Plasma Grenades and no one complained.

Back in Halo 3, I remember grenades did even make Warthogs show smoke coming from the front engine. And that they still would be hard to destroy unless a Rocket Launcher or a Spartan Launcher hit it.

6

Your point of view was actually worth the read, And I couldn’t agree with you more, I liked it when you had the strive for your ranking, like in reach. I’ve been playing for around a year and I’m barely an Eclipse, and I’ve only played Halo 4 for around 8 months and have still seen no updates or “upcoming” changes in the ranking system. I know Halo 4 is something “new”, but come on, I want to feel like I’m playing HALO… not some other Franchise.

7

Your complaint about the tank situation reminds me of all of the complaints about the hog in I think it was halo 2. Remember Bungie being called bungle and people swearing they would never buy another game from them again. God the people from these forums need to get over themselves. Every game we get complaints about how this game is unplayable and the maps are broken and the last game was so great and how horrible this one is. Also I swear if I see the same person -Yoink- about how there is .05 seconds of lag in another post I am going to throw my laptop at a wall.Seriously the last ten made your point. Its a good game are there problems sure there are, there is no such thing as the perfect game. Halo 4 should have been a next gen game it beats the -Yoink- out of the 360. If you don’t want to play it don’t play it. Should people criticize a game that has problems, yes but this -Yoinking!- and whining need to stop we have multiple post complaining about the same -Yoinking!- things. 343I is a new company and this is their first game and they have fixed a -Yoink- load of the problems we have brought up. I don’t want a forum where everyone is waxing lyrical about this game. I want a forum where people can honestly criticize the game with out sounding like 4 year olds having a temper tantrum after losing a toy. If all you have to say is bad -Yoink- go to school and make a game that you would enjoy.

8

> Tanks in Halo: Reach exploded from a couple Plasma Grenades and no one complained.
>
> Back in Halo 3, I remember grenades did even make Warthogs show smoke coming from the front engine. And that they still would be hard to destroy unless a Rocket Launcher or a Spartan Launcher hit it.

The difference is that in H4 that everyone can spawns with a Plasma Pistol and 2 Sticky Plasma Grenades - making it simple to get a “Double Kill Hog” snuff instantly. Three team mates can spawn this way and with 6 tosses, take down a tank or any heavy vehicle in no time at all. So vehicle use in H4 is essentially neutered.

In Reach (which is all I play for multiplayer in Halo now) you get two USNC Grenades and NO Plasma Pistol at Spawn. You had to run around the map and find a Plasma Pistol and a Sticky Plasma grenade were usually only in singles. The only spawnable defence against vehicles (especially ghost splatters) was Armour Lock in Reach - and other than making Ghosts explode with dumb splatter drivers, it would only flip a wart hog or revenant over. I find Reach pretty balanced Vehicles versus Infantry wise, except on BTB Heavies which is just a total explosion fest (not complaining - it’s fun to just wreck stuff up sometimes).

And instead of 343 doing the smart thing of reducing plasma grenades to ONE at spawn (or removing them entirely from load outs - and make them as singles on the maps), they add in new gimmicks like Ejection, which doesn’t fix the short life span of vehicles.