Halo 4 wishes, do's and dont's. Constructive

Before we begin I’d like to say a few things. I’ll be quick and please do not get stuck on this prologue.
It’s what comes after it that you should comment and take a stand to. Hopefully you’ll support it.

I have faith in 343 studios. They seem to be a wicked and passionate crew.
And I hope they listen. I know Bungie did, and they did what they thought was the right thing to do.
Halo reach flopped but it wasn’t their fault. It was nobody’s fault, they listen to their fans and made a good game.
The game just wasn’t “Haloish” enough one might say. And it clearly was something different. Especially multiplayer wise.
I personally think there were 4 major changes that didn’t fit into a Halo game, multiplayer wise at least. And it’s about
multiplayer I’m going to speak of. I’m not worried about the campaign.

The changes are what follows:

*The weak slow character that you play.

*I’m not sure about some weapons but some are clearly boring. DMR and Focus Rife is clearly boring weapons.
Along with Bloom and the removal of the BR. (YES! I think this one is getting fixed. (not surprised) Yeah I began writing on this before the video release.)

*The ranking system was a Great idea but it just didn’t work. I was for individual rank ups before Halo reach but it had sick
impact on gameplay. Camping among other lame gameplay impacts.

*And lastly armor abilities and everything about them. (No no no don’t bring sprint and jetpack and other AA’s back :< …)

And then there’s stuff like melee system and nades and how you throw them and stuff… It’s like nobody can miss hitting a target with a nade.

So yeah, there you have your don’ts.

Alright, now we got that out of the way, let’s begin.

Regarding Multiplayer

I hope it takes up multiplayer from where Halo 3 multiplayer ended.
And not from where Halo reach’s multiplayer ended. Hope you catch the drift.

I hope everyone learned from Halo reach. Learned what works and doesn’t work in Halo (multiplayer).
I hope armor abilities don’t return.
I hope armor abilities don’t return in any shape or form.

Big DO here —> If jetpack have to be in it make it -blam- available for bumper jumper users…
Make is so that you have your jetpack usage on jump button (LB) once your Spartan is in the air.
(Because you can’t aim while holding X… and no I’m not going to hold X with my -blam- trigger finger.)
Then I’d say it’s alright to have jetpack in social and campaign and then it would actually be fun. But not in ranked!! (Map control remember?)

I hope the battle rifle returns (yay confirmed!). Far more enjoyable weapon than the DMR.

Big DO here → I hope the auto aim is taken off the rocket launcher because it -blam- up half of the rockets when opponents jump or it aim assist on another target. You aren’t supposed to shoot a rocket on your target, you’re supposed to shoot it at his feet.

Also, I remember back when I first played Halo 3 multiplayer. Going from Halo 2 LANs to Halo 3 was a great deal. Wooosh I enjoyed it (of course) but what really surprised me and annoyed me a lot (like my first 1000 games at the least) was the melee system.
How is it, that a weapons bullets can get absorbed by the MJOLNIR armor but not melee hits?? It annoyed me.
(What really annoyed me is what it comes down to/leads to, the ability to beat somebody down after shooting them with say, one simple brutshot round.)
But now I never even think of it anymore.

However, when we look at the changes made regarding the melee system in Halo reach we can clearly say that having even the tiniest bit of shield left makes you absorb a full melee hit, was a bad decision.

And I’ve always thought to myself, since the very day I got online on Halo 3 for the first time. “Make it take two hits to break the shield!!”
And of course make it hit-through able like in Halo 3.
And I have an idea of how it should work.

Your shield answer for 4/5th of the total damage you can take before you die.
Health without shield 1/5th. 5/5 is 100%, a fully healthy Spartan. My idea is that a melee hit should cause damage equal to two fifths of a Spartans health + shield.

Scenario 1.

(Target start on 5/5) Melee hit > 3/5 > Melee hit > 1/5 (no shield left) > Final melee hit > 0/5 > dead.

So instead of two lame melee hits right after each other to kill one another there will be 3. Sounds stupid … but I believe it will change gameplay in a very positive way.

Scenario 2.

(Target start on 4/5) Melee hit > 2/5 > Final hit > hits through shield and target dies.

If the target is however already damaged two melee hits will be enough to kill them.

I hope there will be a beta to test this out!! And of course everything else in it!!

And I couldn’t help to notice the massive hit boxes in the trailer. Just look at when he uses the BR to kill somebody at 1:55
(Full video is 4 min so almost half way in it). It doesn’t show very clear on youtube when you play and pause it and play and pause it during that second.
But here → http://halo.xbox.com/en-us/Universe/detail/making-halo-4-first-look/9a9548bc-a4bf-4112-b4a9-ff935afecb5e you can play and pause during that second far better and it clearly shows that he didn’t even hit his target. Yet his target died.

Which reminded me. The hit boxes in Halo reach are very odd. I’ve read that your armor actually attracts bullets in a way such that a bullet that where close to you and that would otherwise have missed actually hits you.
Or maybe it’s just super large hit boxes in Halo reach :S

I want none of that bull crap in Halo 4… (Aim assist is a whole different matter and shouldn’t be touched.)
In my opinion the hit boxes where perfect in Halo 3.
If bullet magnetism and large hit boxes going to be in Halo 4 there won’t be any skill distribution and without a skill distribution there’s no fun for me.

Keep reading

Regarding Networking Manipulation and Punishment

The best would be to just play against servers in my opinion… EU servers, US servers, Japanese servers etc…
But I don’t see that happening. Although Microsoft got more than enough money to spend on something like that.
It would be awesome.

Anyhow, I think people need to be giving warnings for getting suspected for network manipulation.
People need to be able to report others and when somebody got enough reports they should be looked at.

For example, say two teams in team doubles battle each other and one team got like 12 kills and the other team got 5 kills.
Then the game ends because the leading team quit out. Well, this is what the record will tell.
But in fact, they got host booted. Believe me there’s such things and it happens.
Now of course one of those games can’t get the (“losing”…) winning team banned, because the record itself doesn’t
exclude other possibilities.
However, a person that host boot that get enough reports can easily be taken a look at and then their record will give them away.

First a warning, saying they will get banned if they get caught host booting again. On second time they should be banned.
Oh yeah, and people should only be able to report others after they’ve played against them in match making.

Regarding Matchmaking

The Ranking system need to be like the ranking system in Halo 3 in my opinion, in order to boost competitive gameplay.
Halo Reach’s ranking system wasn’t much of a ranking system, sadly. The idea was good but it didn’t work.

Ranked Playlists that I’d love to see:
Lone Wolves (Don’t include oddball on maps like Snowbound, those kind of results really doesn’t reflect skill distribution among closely skilled people at all.)
Team Slayer
Team Snipers
Team Swat
Team Objective (Regarding territories, don’t let there be turns capturing and defending them, that’s sooooo boring.
Make them active and recapture able and both team will race to say 200 points. That’s super fun, just nobody knows it.)
Squad Battle
Team Doubles
MLG

Double EXP weekend playlists. (Ooh man, if you only could put that back into Halo 3, it would be flooded and flourishing again in a day)

Double EXP weekends are a great carrot to keep players active in the game, I love it.

Regarding grifball, I hate it but a lot of people seem to enjoy it. In Halo 3 grifball was running way to often so reduce that frequency please.

Regarding rocket race, let there be a ranked rocket race too? Sounds fun to me.
Secondary weapon bruteshot? Or only brute shot? Sounds like something worth trying out.

And don’t include double EXP rockets … /shivers…

Playlists I miss:
Living dead.
Fiesta.
3 Ball.

Those are the ones I felt like bringing up. Of course add more.

Before I end this post I’d like to say that it’s not that I’m not open for changes it’s just that with Halo reach we learned so much.
I don’t want armor abilities, not even sprint to end up ruining core gameplay. Leave sprint in cod…
I’m open to new weapons, new vehicles etc.
I’m glad we’re seeing the BR back in the game and that the bloom is gone. But let’s not forget about all the other stuff that went wrong in Halo reach.

TLDR: See post 28 on second page for a short summary.

THE END

Sorry for the “BLAM’s” people! Sometimes it’s hard to go around that!
Thank you for reading! And thank you for listening 343i!!
And don’t forget to hit the “Thank” button if you want 343i to notice this post!

My take on perks, which is the only thing I’m very skeptical about

Acceptable Perk Ideas
Faster weapon reloads
Faster weapon switching / pickups
Increased Strafe acceleration
Increased Jump Height
Increased Sprint Duration
Larger grenade capacity
Plasma weapon battery increase
Faster weapon firing after melee
Faster vehicle boarding
Silent movement
Faster assassinations

Bad Perk Ideas
More weapon damage in any form
Increased beatdown speed (sprint is coming back, this would cause problems)
Increased health / shields
Active Camo in any form
Armor Lock / Overshields in any form

nothing, absolutely nothing from perks is good. it ruins the game when not every last person starts on an equal playing field. its not fun.

@ o Sektor. It actually sounds nice with perks when you put it like that. But the only way I’d accept that is if there will be ranked and social match making playlists like in Halo 3. And then that is something that could be put into only social playlists.

Waow, best post I’ve ever seen. I support this 100%. I don’t know what more to say. This thread is just spot on, nothing to comment.

  1. NO armour abilities,although after seeing the trailer of chief coming out of cryo with a jet pack,even though he didn’t go in with one!?! I don’t see this wish coming true.

  2. If i’m playing a spartan then I want to feel like a spartan,not like a second rate copy as in reach,tbh if halo 4 is anything like reach then I for one will not be buying it.

Nuff said.

> My take on perks, which is the only thing I’m very skeptical about
>
>
>
>
>
> Acceptable Perk Ideas
> Faster weapon reloads
> Faster weapon switching / pickups
> Increased Strafe acceleration
> Increased Jump Height
> Increased Sprint Duration
> Larger grenade capacity
> Plasma weapon battery increase
> Faster weapon firing after melee
> Faster vehicle boarding
> Silent movement
> Faster assassinations
>
>
> Bad Perk Ideas
> More weapon damage in any form
> Increased beatdown speed (sprint is coming back, this would cause problems)
> Increased health / shields
> Active Camo in any form
> Armor Lock / Overshields in any form

I completely agree and you voiced some of my thoughts too. My original post was going to be this:

My brother and I were just discussing, perks that change core gameplay would be good (if that made sense).

Such as:
-increased movement speed
-increased jump height
-increased movement acceleration
-ability to grab on a ledge when jumping (as seen in Crysis 2) or leap over fences (as seen in Battlefield 3) would be interesting.

Of course, you’d only have one active at a time, who kows maybe even two.

Another perk would be increased radar radius. Small things that improve the core gameplay, but can have significant impacts during combat, but they arent crutches or fall back abilities that will save you from a bazillion grenades.

I also agree with the don’ts. Please don’t have perks that increase health, damage or shields.

Perks need to be subtle yet have a major impact during firefights.

They need to enhance the core gameplay of multiplayer which is:

-aiming and shooting
increase grenade throwing distance and speed (but no insta-sticks)

-map control
-controlling power weapons, vehicles
-movement

@sektor, there are many perks for movement already, but maybe we can think of more for the other 3 aspects.

  • No Papier-Mache vehicles. For the love of god.
  • A proper matchmaking system based on skill. No hyperventilating max-ranks against lower-level players.
  • A significant difference between the reward you get for winning and losing. A huge problem with Reach’s leveling system was that you’d get almost the same cR for losing as you would for winning, making the whole leveling system feel like one big Runescape-style grind at times.

> My take on perks, which is the only thing I’m very skeptical about
>
>
>
>
>
> <mark>Acceptable Perk Ideas</mark>
> <mark>Faster weapon reloads</mark>
> <mark>Faster weapon switching / pickups</mark>
> <mark>Increased Strafe acceleration</mark>
> <mark>Increased Jump Height</mark>
> <mark>Increased Sprint Duration</mark>
> <mark>Larger grenade capacity</mark>
> <mark>Plasma weapon battery increase</mark>
> <mark>Faster weapon firing after melee</mark>
> <mark>Faster vehicle boarding</mark>
> <mark>Silent movement</mark>
> <mark>Faster assassinations</mark>
>
>
> Bad Perk Ideas
> More weapon damage in any form
> Increased beatdown speed (sprint is coming back, this would cause problems)
> Increased health / shields
> Active Camo in any form
> Armor Lock / Overshields in any form

And even these are borderline-terrible.

> @ o Sektor. It actually sounds nice with perks when you put it like that. But the only way I’d accept that is if there will be ranked and social match making playlists like in Halo 3. And then that is something that could be put into only social playlists.

If they don’t do that, they are fools.

Also, whoever that was, that was not a Jet Pack, but a thruster pack built for ZERO-G maneuvering that has been with the Chief since Halo 2.

> 1. NO armour abilities,although after seeing the trailer of chief coming out of cryo with a jet pack,even though he didn’t go in with one!?! I don’t see this wish coming true.

It’s been said time and again that all Spartans, or at least Spartan-IIs, obviously I don’t know about Is and IVs, are equipped with boosters for manoeuvring through zero-G environments.

NO ARMOR ABILITIES PLEASE

> > My take on perks, which is the only thing I’m very skeptical about
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Acceptable Perk Ideas
> > Faster weapon reloads
> > Faster weapon switching / pickups
> > Increased Strafe acceleration
> > Increased Jump Height
> > Increased Sprint Duration
> > Larger grenade capacity
> > Plasma weapon battery increase
> > Faster weapon firing after melee
> > Faster vehicle boarding
> > Silent movement
> > Faster assassinations
> >
> >
> > Bad Perk Ideas
> > More weapon damage in any form
> > Increased beatdown speed (sprint is coming back, this would cause problems)
> > Increased health / shields
> > Active Camo in any form
> > Armor Lock / Overshields in any form
>
> I completely agree and you voiced some of my thoughts too. My original post was going to be this:
>
> My brother and I were just discussing, perks that change core gameplay would be good (if that made sense).
>
> Such as:
> -increased movement speed
> -increased jump height
> -increased movement acceleration
> -ability to grab on a ledge when jumping (as seen in Crysis 2) or leap over fences (as seen in Battlefield 3) would be interesting.
>
> Of course, you’d only have one active at a time, who kows maybe even two.
>
> Another perk would be increased radar radius. Small things that improve the core gameplay, but can have significant impacts during combat, but they arent crutches or fall back abilities that will save you from a bazillion grenades.
>
> I also agree with the don’ts. Please don’t have perks that increase health, damage or shields.
>
> Perks need to be subtle yet have a major impact during firefights.
>
> They need to enhance the core gameplay of multiplayer which is:
>
> -aiming and shooting
> increase grenade throwing distance and speed (but no insta-sticks)
>
> -map control
> -controlling power weapons, vehicles
> -movement
>
> @sektor, there are many perks for movement already, but maybe we can think of more for the other 3 aspects.

Core Gameplay Skills:

  1. Aim and Shooting (General combat)

-Faster weapon reloads
-Faster weapon switching / pickups
-Plasma weapon battery increase
-Faster weapon firing after melee
-Different grenade throwing techniques
-normal grenade throwing (press Throw Grenade button once)
-pegging grenades (increased grenade throwing speed, reduced range, but no insta-sticks. Press Throw Grenade button twice or something)
-cooking grenades

  1. Movement

-Increased Strafe acceleration
-Increased Jump Height
-Increased Sprint Duration
-Faster vehicle boarding
-Silent movement
-Faster assassinations
-Vaulting, leaping over obstacles (as seen in battlefield 3)
-Grabbing onto ledges you can’t straight out jump on (as seen in Crysis 2, mentioned before)

3.Map Control

-Increased radar radius

  1. Controlling Power weapons, vehicles, abilities (camo and overshield)

-increased vehicle handling, braking, acceleration, turning

I think if 343 approach perks in this way it would be better.

Perks that shouldn’t be implemented:

-More weapon/vehicle damage in any form
-Increased beatdown speed (if sprint is coming back, this would cause problems)
-Increased health / shields (to player and vehicles)
-Active Camo in any form
-Armor Lock / Overshields in any form
-“Crutch” perks such as armour lock

The above skills are explicit perks, rather than helping you perform the 4 skills more efficiently. Perks should be implicit, so if you were watching a player move on a map, it would be difficult to guess what perk/s they are using (unless it was something obvious such as climbing a ledge)

The above are all ideas and are welcome to critique.

The above was just a refined list, credit goes to sketor for many of the ideas.

Did anybody that posted about perks actually read my post? :open_mouth:

> Halo reach flopped but it wasn’t their fault.

Reach wasn’t a flop. It made $200 million in 24 hours compared to Halo 3’s 170 million. It remains in the top 5 multiplayer titles for all of XBOX live. ALL of xbox live. Halo Reach might not be top dog, but it wasn’t a flop. I’m sure there’s HUNDREDS of developers who’d love to have a game doing as well as Reach.

Just because a few hundred people on the internet hated the game (the same arguments about appealing to casuals and unbalanced gameplay existed during the Halo 2 days) it doesn’t reflect on he gaming community as a whole.

If you got shot in a bullet proof vest and then got kicked/punched in the stomach by a genetic super soldier I wonder which one would do more damage? That’s the answer to rigged melee. While spartan armour deflects bullets it does not stop overall whiplash so the body can be twisted and spines can be broken.

> > Halo reach flopped but it wasn’t their fault.
>
> Reach wasn’t a flop. It made $200 million in 24 hours compared to Halo 3’s 170 million. It remains in the top 5 multiplayer titles for all of XBOX live. ALL of xbox live. Halo Reach might not be top dog, but it wasn’t a flop. I’m sure there’s HUNDREDS of developers who’d love to have a game doing as well as Reach.
>
> Just because a few hundred people on the internet hated the game (the same arguments about appealing to casuals and unbalanced gameplay existed during the Halo 2 days) it doesn’t reflect on he gaming community as a whole.

I think what he meant is that it was a flop to its podium standard predecessors. Reach was a flop for it’s time compared to Halo 3 and Halo 2 for their time.

> > Halo reach flopped but it wasn’t their fault.
>
> Reach wasn’t a flop. It made $200 million in 24 hours compared to Halo 3’s 170 million. It remains in the top 5 multiplayer titles for all of XBOX live. ALL of xbox live. Halo Reach might not be top dog, but it wasn’t a flop. I’m sure there’s HUNDREDS of developers who’d love to have a game doing as well as Reach.
>
> Just because a few hundred people on the internet hated the game (the same arguments about appealing to casuals and unbalanced gameplay existed during the Halo 2 days) it doesn’t reflect on he gaming community as a whole.

You need to put it into perspective mate. Halo 3 had a huge active player base for many years. Halo reach’s player base is almost depleted already. The number of initial buyers of the game is irrelevant