I really would like to understand.

Games Halo 5: Guardians
#1

I’ve been playing Halo since day 1. I’ve ruined relationships from online gaming. I’ve played more Halo than any other game.

It is just lost on me why this community bashes on anything that is new or like “other” shooters. I like new features in my Halo games. I may think 90% of Halo 4’s armors look like gay robots, but to the addition of sprint I say finally! Or thank you 343i for fishstick.

AA’s are a very fun addition. Also jetpacks rocked in firefights. I messed with a lot of people with Decoy. In Reach the evade was sweet. Invis would be way better without the radar jamming.

Halo still remains behind on other gaming movement mechanics. Look at what you can do in Halo; walk, run, shoot, jump and crouch. I could do all this and more on Super Mario Bros in 1985. I could slide under blocks in that game. Things like prone, sliding, climbing, vaulting, wall running, reviving, and kicking. Some or all these are standard movements in other games the’re not Super Kill Streak Uber Actions. Even in Halo:CE you could climb a latter but Bungie took that away.

I like loadouts mainly because I like to use certain guns in certain playlists. Buts also being able to enjoy weapon challenges for xp and unlockables. Not a fan of perks/ armor mods though, except for ones that don’t effect gameplay like exp boost.

Please explain to me “Why is new bad?”

#2

New is not bad, it is how the new is handled that is. Load-outs can work if they are not the focus of the game for instance CC or BR spawns would work as they make the playing ground fair. AAs while cool always had a terrible trio, in Reach it was AC,AL and JP in 4 instead of AL it was PV, they also had a randomness problem. You can adapt but when you step back you see that what AAs do to combat you see they are bad NOW…Spartan abilities are (from what we know) the way AAs should have been.

343i is listening to us what we must do is help them understand that new is good but also a fair playing field is good too. There are some that deny this but it is true. Halo will attain a throne that Halo Reach painted grey and H4 painted silver, HMCC H2A will gold-plate said throne. H5G will make it out of hard-light.

“Do not doubt the reality…the Reclaimation has already begun”

#3

> It is just lost on me why this community bashes on anything that is new or like “other” shooters. I like new features in my Halo games. I may think 90% of Halo 4’s armors look like gay robots, but to the addition of sprint I say finally! Or thank you 343i for fishstick.

If you look at the sensible critisism you’ll notice why some things aren’t liked.

You say yes to sprint, while many others do not, and then they back it up with actual arguments as to why sprint shouldn’t be in Halo. It’s not arguments like “CoD has it therefore Halo can’t have it”, or “It’s new so it’s crap”.

> AA’s are a very fun addition. Also jetpacks rocked in firefights. I messed with a lot of people with Decoy. In Reach the evade was sweet. Invis would be way better without the radar jamming.

They were fun, and would probably have been better recieved had they been put on the map as pick ups instead of chosen from a loadout system and changeable during the game. That is, having been dropped so that players could change their AA.

AC without the radar jammer? That would have been ridiculous ingame. Haven’t you played against teams in Halo 4 who use the AC Radar jammer glitch?

> Halo still remains behind on other gaming movement mechanics. Look at what you can do in Halo; walk, run, shoot, jump and crouch. I could do all this and more on Super Mario Bros in 1985. I could slide under blocks in that game. Things like prone, sliding, climbing, vaulting, wall running, reviving, and kicking. Some or all these are standard movements in other games the’re not Super Kill Streak Uber Actions. Even in Halo:CE you could climb a latter but Bungie took that away.

Movement mechanics are not something you just throw into a game and expect them to work well from the go. For instance, what would Prone do in Halo? In other games where kill times are fast and gun accuracy isn’t good from hip-firing, prone makes you a smaller target so you’re harder to hit, it increases accuracy and you can sacrifice speed for stealth. The only thing Halo would get from this is being harder to hit, which would most likely result in everyone dropping on their chest the instance they’re engaging in a long distance fire fight. Slow movement while on ground and harder to hit, most likely strafing would go as well. I do not see that mechanic work well at all in Halo.

Bungie also removed ladders from Halo because of them being pacing stoppers and limitations to the player. Man cannons were far superior to ladders as they allowed players to shoot in whatever direction they chose, the only thing they had to do was get on the cannon. As opposed to a ladder which required the player to disengage a fight in order to use it.

> Please explain to me “Why is new bad?”

If new was bad, people would complain that Guests get to use whatever the main account has unlocked.

But let me ask you a counter question, “Why is new good?”. If you’re asking us why new is bad, then one could assume that you think new is good.

Is it good that we can’t drop the flag and are instead given a magnum to defend ourselves with?
Is it good with auto flag pickup?

Most of the time, how something is implemented is the problem. Map ordnance would most likely have been better recieved had it just been a little bit different.

Then when what’s implemented is a problem, it’s something that changes how the game is played compared to before. Sprint for instance, a good description is “run or gun” rahter than “run and gun”. Or flinch for that matter. Then there are perks as well. While not having a direct influence over how the game plays, it has an influence on the outcome of the game.

#4

New isn’t necessarily bad, but what is bad is throwing things in just for the sake of having something “new”.

Adding prone, sliding, double jumping, climbing, wall-running, kicking etc just for the sake of having something new would throw a spanner into the works of the pre-established Halo formula that people love. People enjoy ‘Classic’ Halo for a reason, and drastically changing things often doesn’t bode well.

#5

i enjoy halo because of the fiction. i also have log countless hrs in multiplayer, going back to the 16 player system link days. having that been said halo mechanics do not bring justice to the fiction. your telling me its ok that a spartan can’t grab a ledge and pull them self up. or that that they need to execute a full 5-6 meter jump to clear a object knee high. i also suppose the only have one running speed. i am an average 30 yr old male and i can do things a spartans in a halo video game can’t.

console gaming has come along way since halo 1. so should halo. i see nothing wrong with making a game that hold up to the fiction. might i remind halo multiplayer was the last second addition to game. they started with the campaign. This should be there main concern when developing a game and mechanics.

i feel like anything that brings the fiction to life is good. and taking it a way is bad.

to me halo is not a multiplayer game, it is a universe.

#6

Mechanics and features aren’t disliked simply because they are “new” or “like other shooters.” Games are a combination of various mechanics and features, just like music is a combination of various sounds and food is a combination of various tastes. Everything has to be carefully designed to work well together: not all sounds combine well with other sounds, not all tastes combine well with other tastes, and not all game mechanics combine well with other mechanics.

For examples, sprint, which separates movement from combat, does not work well in a shooter with movement-oriented combat. Loadouts, which make adjustments to players’ attributes and abilities (including effective range and potential time-to-kill), do not work will in a shooter with long kill times.

#7

> i enjoy halo because of the fiction. i also have log countless hrs in multiplayer, going back to the 16 player system link days. having that been said halo mechanics do not bring justice to the fiction. your telling me its ok that a spartan can’t grab a ledge and pull them self up. or that that they need to execute a full 5-6 meter jump to clear a object knee high. i also suppose the only have one running speed. i am an average 30 yr old male and i can do things a spartans in a halo video game can’t.
>
> console gaming has come along way since halo 1. so should halo. i see nothing wrong with making a game that hold up to the fiction. might i remind halo multiplayer was the last second addition to game. they started with the campaign. This should be there main concern when developing a game and mechanics.
>
> i feel like anything that brings the fiction to life is good. and taking it a way is bad.
>
> to me halo is not a multiplayer game, it is a universe.

MP is just as important as story.

And I hate to be the guy to say it but…

Gameplay > Canon

#8

I still don’t see what most of those modern features add to the Halo experience. ADS is meant to give you more accurate shots at the expense of slower movement, but Halo’s weapons are inherently accurate, so all ADS would so is slow the game down. Stuff like sliding I can somewhat see working if you retain your full combat capabilities, ie still being able to shoot while sliding, and not being able to spam it. Hell, I think potentially being able to slide under a Warthog to stick it from beneath would be pretty cool yet hard to pull off successfully.

#9

The second I saw the title I knew this was gonna be another damn sprint thread.

You know what all other shooters have in common? Instant kill times. You know what Halo has? Long kill times. Sprint combined with long kill times just doesn’t feel good. Especially since Halo maps now have to be extremely stretched out. Just look at the Lockout remade in Halo 4. It’s insanely huge. It barely even feels like a small map anymore.

Just read below (not my post, quotes from elsewhere). This should make anyone understand why sprint kills Halo.

> It pains me to know that there are people out there that don’t fully understand the effects that sprint have on the game.
> It goes a lot deeper than someone sprinting away one shot and not dying, it goes a lot deeper than someone sprinting off spawn to finish you off when you were still one-shot from the last battle, and it goes a lot deeper than ‘its just copying COD’
>
> It completely -Yoinks!- with scale - that is the issue. Please describe to me a perfect map for sprint, a map that would work better scaled up for sprint, instead of left normal for no sprint. Does such a thing even exist? Can a map possibly be better made for sprint and with sprint, than made for no sprint and without sprint? No, its impossible.
>
> Geometry has to be scaled to the abilities of spartans; the jump height, how far you can strafe in 1 second, how far you can throw a grenade, a grenade explosion radius, the effective range of your starting weapon, how long it takes you to move from one piece of cover to the next, all of this stuff, is extremely important to how the game plays. Yet it is all thrown to the wayside in favor of making sprint work. Maps have to be scaled up (aka overscaled in relation to all previous factors) to account for sprint.
> Gandhi has talked about this before; the lack of power positions, but he wrongfully accused the killtimes as the culprit. While slow killtimes don’t help, sprint is what really ruins power positions. I have used this example before but I will use it again:
>
> Pink on Midship in Halo 2/Heretic in Halo 3. That was a true power position and functioned as such, but no matter what we do we haven’t been able to replicate the power and feel of the power position in anything we have made since that game. Why is that? Its because of sprint, nothing else has fundamentally changed the game as much as sprint has since then. Currently not even top middle on dispatch rivals the power and counter-strategies (which are equally important to consider) that pink provided.
>
> When you held pink in H2, you had effective means of gunning down your foes as they walked from the base to pink. There was a relatively long journey to make from the cover of the base, to the cover of pink. This meant that it was dangerous as you had to expose yourself for a long period of time to be able to take the tower over. What this meant for the person holding pink, is that as long as they periodically checked the walkways to pink, they were free to shoot from pink and deal damage across map. But what happens when you add sprint? That long journey is now a quick one, you can now make it into or under pink alive even if the guy at pink was looking at you, the guy holding pink now has to constantly check the walkways to pink, instead of just periodically, which means he now cant shoot from there without the serious risk of someone backsmacking him or gunning him down from the side. He also has to have ‘internal’ battles with people sprinting at pink more often, than actually using the power position. This is why top mid of dispatch, and even pink and gold of simplex, are such cluster -Yoinks!- and pale in comparison to the gameplay that pink provided in Halo 2.
>
> The fix to this issue some say, is to scale the map up. Make those walkways to pink longer so that it is still along journey to make even with sprint. But that creates two issues:
>
> 1) Lessens the effect of shooting from pink - if the rest of the map is further away, the power position has less presence and effect on the map because you cant do as much damage or get as many angles (imagine if pink on simplex was pushed back an extra half-map length, goodbye angles into bases)
>
> 2) Over-punishes the attackers. If you make it so a distance is a long one for sprinters, that means it will be impossible to walk. it also means you cant freaking shoot while you push. It makes balancing any area of the map extremely difficult as it needs to be large enough so that you can track players and so that power positions are actually power positions, but not large enough that it disables attackers in such away (not to mention any up-scaling -Yoinks!- with the scale of all the other combat components I mentioned earlier).
> And the ‘but you get slowed down when you get shot’ argument doesnt fix ANY of these absolutely serious issues.
>
> Remove sprint now.

#10

>

Yes I like that the flag can’t be dropped now. It was very annoying listening to the announcer repeat “Flag Dropped, Flagg Taken” dozens of times. I would actually prefer it just take the place of your main weapon you know , Hold X to pick up flag drop equipped weapon. Having the Magnum makes me feel less useless while carrying the flag. Auto pick also works for me.

#11

> The second I saw the title I knew this was gonna be another damn sprint thread.
>
> You know what all other shooters have in common? Instant kill times. You know what Halo has? Long kill times. Sprint combined with long kill times just doesn’t feel good. Especially since Halo maps now have to be extremely stretched out. Just look at the Lockout remade in Halo 4. It’s insanely huge. It barely even feels like a small map anymore.
>
> Just read below (not my post, quotes from elsewhere). This should make anyone understand why sprint kills Halo.
>
>
>
> > It pains me to know that there are people out there that don’t fully understand the effects that sprint have on the game.
> > It goes a lot deeper than someone sprinting away one shot and not dying, it goes a lot deeper than someone sprinting off spawn to finish you off when you were still one-shot from the last battle, and it goes a lot deeper than ‘its just copying COD’
> >
> > It completely -Yoinks!- with scale - that is the issue. Please describe to me a perfect map for sprint, a map that would work better scaled up for sprint, instead of left normal for no sprint. Does such a thing even exist? Can a map possibly be better made for sprint and with sprint, than made for no sprint and without sprint? No, its impossible.
> >
> > Geometry has to be scaled to the abilities of spartans; the jump height, how far you can strafe in 1 second, how far you can throw a grenade, a grenade explosion radius, the effective range of your starting weapon, how long it takes you to move from one piece of cover to the next, all of this stuff, is extremely important to how the game plays. Yet it is all thrown to the wayside in favor of making sprint work. Maps have to be scaled up (aka overscaled in relation to all previous factors) to account for sprint.
> > Gandhi has talked about this before; the lack of power positions, but he wrongfully accused the killtimes as the culprit. While slow killtimes don’t help, sprint is what really ruins power positions. I have used this example before but I will use it again:
> >
> > Pink on Midship in Halo 2/Heretic in Halo 3. That was a true power position and functioned as such, but no matter what we do we haven’t been able to replicate the power and feel of the power position in anything we have made since that game. Why is that? Its because of sprint, nothing else has fundamentally changed the game as much as sprint has since then. Currently not even top middle on dispatch rivals the power and counter-strategies (which are equally important to consider) that pink provided.
> >
> > When you held pink in H2, you had effective means of gunning down your foes as they walked from the base to pink. There was a relatively long journey to make from the cover of the base, to the cover of pink. This meant that it was dangerous as you had to expose yourself for a long period of time to be able to take the tower over. What this meant for the person holding pink, is that as long as they periodically checked the walkways to pink, they were free to shoot from pink and deal damage across map. But what happens when you add sprint? That long journey is now a quick one, you can now make it into or under pink alive even if the guy at pink was looking at you, the guy holding pink now has to constantly check the walkways to pink, instead of just periodically, which means he now cant shoot from there without the serious risk of someone backsmacking him or gunning him down from the side. He also has to have ‘internal’ battles with people sprinting at pink more often, than actually using the power position. This is why top mid of dispatch, and even pink and gold of simplex, are such cluster -Yoinks!- and pale in comparison to the gameplay that pink provided in Halo 2.
> >
> > The fix to this issue some say, is to scale the map up. Make those walkways to pink longer so that it is still along journey to make even with sprint. But that creates two issues:
> >
> > 1) Lessens the effect of shooting from pink - if the rest of the map is further away, the power position has less presence and effect on the map because you cant do as much damage or get as many angles (imagine if pink on simplex was pushed back an extra half-map length, goodbye angles into bases)
> >
> > 2) Over-punishes the attackers. If you make it so a distance is a long one for sprinters, that means it will be impossible to walk. it also means you cant freaking shoot while you push. It makes balancing any area of the map extremely difficult as it needs to be large enough so that you can track players and so that power positions are actually power positions, but not large enough that it disables attackers in such away (not to mention any up-scaling -Yoinks!- with the scale of all the other combat components I mentioned earlier).
> > And the ‘but you get slowed down when you get shot’ argument doesnt fix ANY of these absolutely serious issues.
> >
> > Remove sprint now.

This quote is contradictive in one paragraph the argument is that you can’t hold power position as well solo because players can run up on you faster, in another paragraph he says “it will be impossible to walk. it also means you can’t freaking shoot while you push” with longer distance. Also if only shootouts in hallways and on walkways was so much fun why are maps like Blood Gulch and Valhalla a blast?

#12

> It was very annoying listening to the announcer repeat “Flag Dropped, Flagg Taken” dozens of times.

But is that really a good enough reason to make such a drastic change. Sure enough, all flag related announcements could probably be programmed in such a way that if the flag is constantly dropped and picked up, the announcer won’t announce each and every one of the drops and pick ups.

I could reformulate the question to ask: why is inability to drop the flag necessary? Why not some other fix that doesn’t change gameplay?

#13

> Yes I like that the flag can’t be dropped now. It was very annoying listening to the announcer repeat “Flag Dropped, Flagg Taken” dozens of times. I would actually prefer it just take the place of your main weapon you know , Hold X to pick up flag drop equipped weapon. Having the Magnum makes me feel less useless while carrying the flag. Auto pick also works for me.

They’re more rethorical questions, not meant for direct answers. They’re questions of the “Why is new good?”, in the same way you ask “why is new bad?”.

So ignoring the Flag questions, “Why is new good?”

> This quote is contradictive in one paragraph the argument is that you can’t hold power position as well solo because players can run up on you faster, in another paragraph he says “it will be impossible to walk. it also means you can’t freaking shoot while you push” with longer distance. Also if only shootouts in hallways and on walkways was so much fun why are maps like Blood Gulch and Valhalla a blast?

They can run up to you on pink because you can’t possibly on your own keep check on every area at the same time. Giving the players who are going to engange you in Pink a window to sprint up there.

Pushing generally means engaging in a fight while advancing. So if you wish to advance quickly against someone who knows you’re there you’re giving up your ability to fight back. If you’re however fight back, you can’t advance quickly.

Maps like Blood Gulch and Valhalla also have power positions, albeit different than smaller maps. Their gameplay is however different than that of smaller maps due to the more open sighlines and more importantly, vehicles. Neither Blood Gulch or Valhalla are fun, in my opinion, if you completely remove vehicles from them.

#14

> I still don’t see what most of those modern features add to the Halo experience. ADS is meant to give you more accurate shots at the expense of slower movement, but Halo’s weapons are inherently accurate, so all ADS would so is slow the game down. Stuff like sliding I can somewhat see working if you retain your full combat capabilities, ie still being able to shoot while sliding, and not being able to spam it. Hell, <mark>I think potentially being able to slide under a Warthog to stick it from beneath would be pretty cool yet hard to pull off successfully.</mark>

That’s the best idea I’ve heard this week. If an achievement were attached to this, I would die happy.

#15

To understand why we were against AAs in general, you need to first understand what Halo’s gameplay is all about:

Equal Spawns- No one has the same weapon or equipment than the other.

Equal Stats-No one hits harder, shoots faster, jump higher, moves faster than any other player.

Equal Opportunity- On games that are on symmetrical maps, both teams often have the same chance to get a power weapon or power up on the map. On asymmetrical maps, we either have the same opportunity to get a power weapon, or each side has a power weapon that favors the other team’s location.

AAs, and the Tactical and Support Packages and Grenade selections for Loadouts, broke the gameplay by making others be different from one another. While the idea of making players unique does work in other games such as CoD, Battlefield and Titanfall, those games have maps that often do not involve giving players a direct advantage such as a power weapon or power up, that can tip the scale more into your favor by controlling a certain spot. Allowing players to set up a defensive is often much more easier to create than one that can be offensive in Halo 4 because the defensive players often can get a bigger offensive advantage than anything Loadouts can provide.

I’ll leave out the Weapons part. I’m still in debate having them is good or not.

Spartan Abilities, on the other hand, are equal. No one can get a better advantage over the other because of them. That is the reason why people are looking forward to Spartan Abilities than they did with AAs. The return of equal footing to the game is also another good reason they look forward to H5.

TLDR: Unequal footing leads suck in games that demand equal footing. AAS and most of loaoduts broke against it. Halo 5’s Spartan Abilities do not go against the idea, and thus are looked forward to in comparison.

#16

where do I find info on these Spartan abilities?

#17

> where do I find info on these Spartan abilities?

Info on them is very limited. We do know the following:

1- They are not the same as Armor Abilities, as they are replacing them.

2- Everyone will have access to them from the beginning.

3- They are base player traits, similar to Boarding, reloading, Assassinations, etc.

People speculate that the Halo 5 multiplayer trailer utilizing what looked like a multi-functional Thruster Pack is what Spartan Abilities are. Though, most are holding back until real concrete info pops up later as we get closer to the Beta that is happening late December.

#18

Thinking about it, 343 changed things for no reason other than to change them and it backfired. Being able to pickup grenades off dead players. Weapons being placed on maps. Adding weapon drops. Heck the flag grab deal pissed me off to no end. I have the fondest memories of dropping the flag and out shooting players only to again pick up the flag. Why change that? 343 decided on Halo 4 they were just going to change stuff to change them and it backfired.

#19

I’ll put it simply:

New features aren’t bad, bad new features are bad.

#20

> > It is just lost on me why this community bashes on anything that is new or like “other” shooters. I like new features in my Halo games. I may think 90% of Halo 4’s armors look like gay robots, but to the addition of sprint I say finally! Or thank you 343i for fishstick.
>
> If you look at the sensible critisism you’ll notice why some things aren’t liked.
>
> You say yes to sprint, while many others do not, and then they back it up with actual arguments as to why sprint shouldn’t be in Halo. It’s not arguments like “CoD has it therefore Halo can’t have it”, or “It’s new so it’s crap”.
>
>
>
> > AA’s are a very fun addition. Also jetpacks rocked in firefights. I messed with a lot of people with Decoy. In Reach the evade was sweet. Invis would be way better without the radar jamming.
>
> They were fun, and would probably have been better recieved had they been put on the map as pick ups instead of chosen from a loadout system and changeable during the game. That is, having been dropped so that players could change their AA.
>
> AC without the radar jammer? That would have been ridiculous ingame. Haven’t you played against teams in Halo 4 who use the AC Radar jammer glitch?
>
>
>
> > Halo still remains behind on other gaming movement mechanics. Look at what you can do in Halo; walk, run, shoot, jump and crouch. I could do all this and more on Super Mario Bros in 1985. I could slide under blocks in that game. Things like prone, sliding, climbing, vaulting, wall running, reviving, and kicking. Some or all these are standard movements in other games the’re not Super Kill Streak Uber Actions. Even in Halo:CE you could climb a latter but Bungie took that away.
>
> Movement mechanics are not something you just throw into a game and expect them to work well from the go. For instance, what would Prone do in Halo? In other games where kill times are fast and gun accuracy isn’t good from hip-firing, prone makes you a smaller target so you’re harder to hit, it increases accuracy and you can sacrifice speed for stealth. The only thing Halo would get from this is being harder to hit, which would most likely result in everyone dropping on their chest the instance they’re engaging in a long distance fire fight. Slow movement while on ground and harder to hit, most likely strafing would go as well. I do not see that mechanic work well at all in Halo.
>
> <mark>Bungie also removed ladders from Halo because of them being pacing stoppers and limitations to the player. Man cannons were far superior to ladders as they allowed players to shoot in whatever direction they chose, the only thing they had to do was get on the cannon. As opposed to a ladder which required the player to disengage a fight in order to use it.</mark>

I always did wonder what ever happened to ladders. They were fun while they lasted, but I ultimately don’t miss them enough to have them back. I grav lift will do the job better. Learn somethin new every day. I honestly didn’t even realize they were gone when Halo 2 was in effect… Hmm well now I don’t remember if Halo 2 had ladders. Man MCC needs to launch quicker…