After reading through countless threads on the issues of Halo 4, I came to the conclusion that classic Halo online experience as we know it will disappear if we don’t intervene. Halo 4 was a huge success financially, like it or not, so there is absolutely no reason for 343 to change how things are, and so we, loyal hard core Halo must come together and make a comprehensive list including all the aspects of Halo online experience, and how they could be improved. This list then shall serve as a guideline to 343 in the future, helping them to craft the ultimate next-gen Halo experience.
Before I start, however, I must warn you that this thread will not be short. It’s not a blind hate-thread. Unlike most other topics, I will try to gather the biggest issues, then actually make suggestions how to fix them and even improve upon them. This thread is not static as I will update the list as you leave your opinions and solutions in the comment section. While I am an advocate of free speech without any restriction, I have to ask you all to keep your cool so that we can create a truly critical but constructive, well-written, serious thread.
343 took steps both in right and wrong directions. Let me explain. The campaign/story of Halo 4 (and of the whole Halo franchise) is just amazing. 343 -in my honest opinion- is doing a much better job in the story department than Bungie did. The design (both visual and sound) and the graphics are also amazing, considering this was all achieved on a 8 years old piece of hardware. They also added interesting new weapons and vehicles. We have to give them credit for this. I think the story itself is headed to the right direction, and Halo 5 will at the very least have a decent campaign. (I know some people find the story lacking, but for me, it was the best Halo campaign experience ever.)
However, it seems 343 isn’t so amazing when it comes to the multiplayer aspect. It is apparent by now that they chose the wrong marketing strategy. They looked at what works in other shooters that sell well and tried to implement it into Halo. They tried to build an accessible/easy game for casuals and gain audience form other modern shooters. This worked, for about a week or two. You can see it by looking at the stats. While I see the logic behind the implementation of gimmicks form COD, it didn’t work. 343 targeted an audience that plays new games for a few weeks, then moves on to the next big thing, not the core Halo audience. Furthermore they failed to “steal” audience from modern shooters like COD because, honestly, why would anyone play a strange hybrid of Halo and COD when you can just play cod.
After this, we were left with a game built for people who don’t play it. The matchmaking system is casual at best and the worst thing is that while Halo became a medicore game, Black Ops II got all the features we wanted (ranking, streaming, tournaments with huge money prizes and so on). It’s almost like if we were in a strange, reversed universe, where Cod is super competitive, and Halo is the casuals’ choice.
Let’s examine now the multiplayer.
<mark>1. Matchmaking</mark>
Here are the problems I could gather and the suggestions to fix them in Halo 5:
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The mixing of the casual and the competitive community: if we want Halo to succeed and have larger population in the future, we must bring back the Social/Ranked system. Whatever you call it, we must make a distinction between casual playlists without ranks where people can just mess around, and competitive ones.
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The lack of true ranking: while 343 created CSR it’s still not a real system, and it was implemented too late. Halo 5 must have competitive ranks visible in game, and a ranking system similar to Halo 2’s or Starcraft II’s. I know the excuse for not having visible ranks was that it led to cheating and boosting, and not everyone being a winner, but this is why we need separate playlist. We also need a leaderboard.
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Random weapon and drops ordnance: while this system was implemented in a very poor way, I think it has great potential if 343 revamped it and has a place in Halo (in the social/casual playlists)
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Uneven starts: Halo was always like sport: the only advantage that you could have at the start of a match was experience and training. I think there could be playlists with custom loadouts in the social section, if everyone has access to the same abilities/weapons
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AAs: these should be pickups on the map and have limited use
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Sprint: it simply doesn’t belong to Halo. Maps are unnecessary large because they were designed with sprint in mind and it is a ‘cheap get out of jail free’ card.
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Vehicle gameplay: Halo 4 has a limited variety of vehicles, and they can easily be destroyed by a pp/plasma grenade combo. It is essential to improve the vehicles as they are key to fun BTB battles
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Add online streaming
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Bring back the red X properly
<mark>Customs:</mark>
This is where Halo 4 is lacking the most: the custom games. It seems 343 doesn’t realize that the custom gamers are the ones keeping Halo alive, and therefore, it is crucially to support them. There were a great deal of fun gametypes excluded form Halo 4, and it’s especially sad, since most of them were intended to be in the
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Flood/infection: 343 must bring back and improve the traditional infection gametype
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The ability to drop flag/disable auto pick up: perhaps the most demanded feature, yet 343 still wont give us this option
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Bring back all gametypes from Halo 2/3/Reach and create more
<mark>Forge:</mark>
Forge got huge improvements in Halo Reach, yet 343 failed to further develop it:
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Bring back fine editing
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Add new editing tools
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More diverse palette (Human, Covenant, Forerunner, Flood, Precursor)
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Add FXs like weather and time of day
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Larger budget
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Underwater forging
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More options in player trait zones
<mark>Theater</mark>
Perhaps the most neglected feature of Halo 4.
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Campaign and Spartan Ops theater
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Allow for more players in theater
These are all the problems and improvements I could think of right now, but I know this is not a complete list, so please help me by leaving your thoughts in a comment!