> Halo has stayed “Halo” from the very beginning, including Halo: Reach.
This. Not a fan of Reach, but it still follows the Halo forumula to an extent. And no, the reason it attracts people isn’t because it stays the same, it’s because it’s an easy game with lots of explosions that appeals to casuals.
> > There are dozens of things that define what “Halo” is, gameplay mechanics are on the bottom of the list. What makes Halo “Halo” is the universe, the story, the settings, and the characters that inhabit it, not something as petty and insignificant as gameplay mechanics.
> >
> > If 343 or someone else decided to make a 3rd-person cover-based shooter starring UNSC Marines on the frontlines vs. the Covenant, it would still be a Halo game, just like how Halo Wars is still a “Halo” game.
> >
> > I’m not the one drawing a line in the sand dividing the Halo franchise and it’s community. Those who deny that Halo: Reach is a “Halo” game are and are a detriment on the community and the franchise.
>
> Gameplay is not on the bottom of the list. How you feel when you are in control of a spartan is one of the most defining, aspects of the game that actually has an impact on the player. The most appealing aspect of the Halo has always been individual prowess and feeling like an unstoppable super soldier. The longer engagements open up more viable options to the player and add depth to the game that realistic shooter with low health can’t. Thats what give Halo its niche in the the FPS realm.
>
> If CE had the exact same setting but the player was just a weak marine it wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is today.
There is a growing misconception among modern gamers that GAMEPLAY is the least important aspect of a GAME. When i’m playing a video game I don’t give a -Yoink- about the great atmosphere, storytelling, or audio experience if the game isn’t any fun to actually PLAY. How it feels in your hands is more important than anything else. Once the developers nail what the gameplay is like, the other aspects can start feeding into that, and making it better.
Halo is Halo because of how it feels to play the game. You can have all the same characters, and locations, but as soon as you change that feel it becomes unrecognizable. When games do this, it’s comparable to what it would be like for someone to start speaking a different language mid conversation. You suddenly feel lost, even though the actual topic hasn’t really changed. Why should we all have to go learn Chinese just to finish the conversation? Especially when we went into with the perception that the entire thing was going to be in english.
No, I am not even going to reduce myself to having to read such filth. Call of Duty is the downfall of innovation in the gaming industry. Halo keeps the core feel of Halo, while always tweaking the formula and trying new things. Telling them to act like Call of Duty is a damn disgrace.
> There is a growing misconception among modern gamers that GAMEPLAY is the least important aspect of a GAME.
That’s because the game industry has evolved beyond “The ghosts are bad and you need to eat pellets to kill them”. Hate to break it to ya mate, but it’s the year 2012, not 1989.
CoD attracts players because it’s easy… Their is no other reason. People want to feel good by occasionally doing ok. Halo isn’t easy to pick up and play. CoD staying the same is actually making people quit if anything.
> No, I am not even going to reduce myself to having to read such filth. Call of Duty is the downfall of innovation in the gaming industry. Halo keeps the core feel of Halo, while always tweaking the formula and trying new things. Telling them to act like Call of Duty is a damn disgrace.
Halo’s sub-genre changed from Halo 3 to Halo:Reach and removed core formula of people spawning with equal starts. We just want Halo 4 to stick with even starts, but add things on the map that makes the experience better.
> > No, I am not even going to reduce myself to having to read such filth. Call of Duty is the downfall of innovation in the gaming industry. Halo keeps the core feel of Halo, while always tweaking the formula and trying new things. Telling them to act like Call of Duty is a damn disgrace.
>
> Halo’s sub-genre changed from Halo 3 to Halo:Reach and removed core formula of people spawning with equal starts. We just want Halo 4 to stick with even starts, but add things on the map that makes the experience better.
How the hell is Halo: Reach not giving you equal starts? You all have access to the same perks(unless your playing Invasion)! Hell, and to further drive the point home way CoD is a P.O.S game is because that game actually does allow players to spawn with crap like rocket launchers and light machine guns. And it isn’t like everyone gets access to those weapons from the start. No, you have to grind away until you can get that pretty LMG. Unlike Reach, where all players spawn with access to the same perks.
Call of Duty is a pick of go game for the casuals. It does that very well, and can be a very good game. It is popular because it appeals to the casual gamer, and is a good arcady type of shooter.
It is the casual gamer which buys COD, while Halo takes skill. Cod is basically whoever sees each other first kills him (mostly). Halo is a game which requires teamwork and skill (chest and headshots etc)
Halo can learn from Cod. Not in terms of its almost game crushing unbalanced perk system, awful maps, dull graphics and terrible audio but from its ease of its play. It is so easy just to slip into a game. Halo could do this better. In halo 3, i had games where bullets didn’t even count and the lag was awful. Plus, I have had btb which have taken tens of minutes to get into only for everyone to quit as it is on Spire! Halo does not appeal to the casual gamer, and to a certain extent it seems figures are everything.
If you want Halo to get to the top again, it will have to appeal to the casual market. Don’t fight it, accept it.
Lets look at a marketers perspective.
COD DOMINATES.
Hm…what are the masses playing?
Cod?
Lets make our game like that…so people will buy it.
TO conclude, for Halo to top the charts it will have to appeal to the casual gamer. I have friends who play COd due to its easiness and Halo is too hard for a novice player to get into to.
Change will happen to Halo 4, but there will be a classic mode. no matter how much 343 harp on about them being halo friends etc…they won’t their game to sell well. And this means putting it to the casuals.
I think COD attracts players because it focuses on and rewards the most basic game mechanic of any FPS, pointing-and-shooting. Its a game where the accurate thrive, and the inaccurate die. All other game play features, be it teamwork, communication, map knowledge, or weapons knowledge, all take a back seat to the fundamental process of lining up a shot.
COD uses a circular deadzone and has a linear relationship between joystick angle & in-game turn velocity. There are no acceleration jumps or delays. 60 frames/s provides smooth visual feedback. Hitboxes are true to image, auto-aim/aim-magnetism is not overdone, and the reticle is placed in the middle of the screen. All of this makes the player’s physical input intrinsically connected to the reticle on screen.
COD is a so-so FPS which does the basics really well, and Halo can learn from this.
> > > No, I am not even going to reduce myself to having to read such filth. Call of Duty is the downfall of innovation in the gaming industry. Halo keeps the core feel of Halo, while always tweaking the formula and trying new things. Telling them to act like Call of Duty is a damn disgrace.
> >
> > Halo’s sub-genre changed from Halo 3 to Halo:Reach and removed core formula of people spawning with equal starts. We just want Halo 4 to stick with even starts, but add things on the map that makes the experience better.
>
> How the hell is Halo: Reach not giving you equal starts? You all have access to the same perks(unless your playing Invasion)! Hell, and to further drive the point home way CoD is a P.O.S game is because that game actually does allow players to spawn with crap like rocket launchers and light machine guns. And it isn’t like everyone gets access to those weapons from the start. No, you have to grind away until you can get that pretty LMG. Unlike Reach, where all players spawn with access to the same perks.
So, if I don’t like armour lock, I’m at a disadvantage.
We should either all have AL, or all have Sprint, or all just have nothing and everything is found on the map.
> > > > No, I am not even going to reduce myself to having to read such filth. Call of Duty is the downfall of innovation in the gaming industry. Halo keeps the core feel of Halo, while always tweaking the formula and trying new things. Telling them to act like Call of Duty is a damn disgrace.
> > >
> > > Halo’s sub-genre changed from Halo 3 to Halo:Reach and removed core formula of people spawning with equal starts. We just want Halo 4 to stick with even starts, but add things on the map that makes the experience better.
> >
> > How the hell is Halo: Reach not giving you equal starts? You all have access to the same perks(unless your playing Invasion)! Hell, and to further drive the point home way CoD is a P.O.S game is because that game actually does allow players to spawn with crap like rocket launchers and light machine guns. And it isn’t like everyone gets access to those weapons from the start. No, you have to grind away until you can get that pretty LMG. Unlike Reach, where all players spawn with access to the same perks.
>
> So, if I don’t like armour lock, I’m at a disadvantage.
>
> We should either all have AL, or all have Sprint, or all just have nothing and everything is found on the map.
haha just imagine everyone using AL… What a slow and tedious game that would be.
> CoD attracts so many people because it requires relatively no skill to play;
That is interesting because COD is definitely a game where the worst player in the world could kill the best player in the world by the simple processes of lining up a shot and shooting. Every player who plays COD plays with a belief that they can achieve kills.
However, the apparent “ease” of getting kills is kind of like a carrot being dangled in front of people. When in reality, the masses are like sheep being lead to slaughter for good players. COD is a game that gives good players all the tools necessary to completely destroy their competition.
The notion that “any player can do well at COD” is actually kind of like a hood pulled over the masses heads, as good players start massacring.
The only thing COD did well was make the game to easy to play.
Most players can pick it up and get easy kills, whereas halo, not so much.
People tend to go towards the easier things, I’m a math tutor, I know.
That’s the one thing that annoys me the most about COD. Activision milk the franchise on a yearly basis, releasing what would have been back in my younger days classed as an expansion pack for full game price. They even have the nerve to charge extra for UK copies, because they know that the mindless people who like to call themselves “gamers” these days will get the damn game anyway.
Trust me, the COD franchise will run its course, just like Guitar Hero. Activision will run it into the ground. I would not like to see Halo share a similar fate by becoming a full-priced expansion pack that is released on a yearly basis. If so many people care about Halo being similar to their older game, they should start playing that game again. Halo 3 can still be played over Xbox Live. Halo CE for the PC can still be played online and it doesn’t even take a powerful computer these days to play. Halo 2 for the PC to my knowledge can still be played online.
> Here goes:
>
> It attracts players.
>
> How? By using the same formula most people know and love.
>
> This is the direction Halo needs to take. It needs to stay Halo at the core, while adding small new features. Except the transition from CoD 4 to MW2 was massive.
>
> Reach changed too much. They took too much of a step. Halo 3 is CoD4 and Reach is MW2. MW2 added more guns, “pro” perks, and a plethora of other things. But these things didn’t affect the core gameplay too much. What Reach did affected the Halo gameplay TOO much.
>
> They added things like armor abilities, OP grenades, and slow movement speed, bloom, the DMR, Credits, and other stuff. All of these affected the core gameplay of Halo. Dual wielding in MW2, not so much.
>
> inb4 SCARED OF CHANGE
> inb4 OP likes CoD.
>
> When I say Halo, I mean the gameplay. Not the universe.
Here is another thing COD does well, getting old.
COD has not always used the same formula for their games in fact the gameplay changed radically between cod 3 and cod 4 however many would not remember that because cod 4 was when the game became extremly popular.
> Wrong OP. COD attracts so many players because it is the EASIEST FPS on consoles. The amount of aim assist, bullet magnetism and camp oriented gameplay makes any inexperienced player feel like a pro when he gets those easy quickscopes.
>
> it does have to do with the same formula over and over but its MOSTLY because of the fact that cod is so incredibly easy and has nearly no skill gap.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. CoD has a skill gap. A very clear one at that.
^The very wise man above me knows.
People talking about starting as equals, the skill gap, etc. This is only a piece of Halo. Yes, the competitive community is important but so is the casual community and the noobs.
Halo needs to be like COD when you go into Social playlists. Casuals and noobs do not care about equal starts/etc. This is their playlist, put perks/killstreaks/make the gameplay faster/etc. make it easier like COD.
If you want competitive play there is MLG and Ranked. Seriously, two separate playlists. Ranked should be competitive but have some new elements and MLG will be the most competitive with a more classic feel.
Halo 4 should be designed for all in mind. I like playing Halo competitively but if all my friends are playing COD I am going to play COD…
I do not believe that Halo should stay the same each time. If I wanted to play Halo 3, then I will play Halo 3. That being said, there is something to be said for preserving gameplay mechanics. I don’t think that CoD is a bad game, but I think that never changing is the WORST thing it’s done, not the best.
But Halo needs to be it’s own game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Halo will retain that equal starts, competitive atmosphere it had, rather then the CoD method of “He Who Picks The Better Gun Wins”.
Just an opinion.
> It attracts players.
>
> How? By using the same formula most people know and love.
I don’t think 99% of the people who play CoD care about the “formula”. It’s just a casual game for casual players who fall for the hype and marketing, and buy the game because they don’t know any better.
This article pretty much sums up the CoD fanbase
"…The nephew wanted to know how many times Andy had “prestiged” in the game. Andy said, “Once, then I quit playing because I’d seen everything the game had to show me.”
The nephew looked appalled.
“Only one prestige? I thought you were cool…” he said, his voice descending into a pit of genuine disappointment. “I’ve prestiged four times, and I’m still not as cool at my friend Lawrence. He’s prestiged six times, and he’s just eleven-years-old.”…"
And now that 343 is announcing sprint, recoil, loadouts, and perks, those players will start to flock to halo 4 because that’s what they identify as “good” (once again they don’t know any better)