I completely agree with OP. Sure, the areas can be hard to Reach (require extensive knowledge of trick jumping, or vehicle launching), but then they shouldn’t be blocked by any invisible walls. Letting players to explore outside the map boundaries gives campaign replay value. The latest thing I have done in Halo Reach campaign if I don’t count the occasional Nightfall speedrun to complete a challenge, is me glitching out of Tip of the Spear with my friends. Before that, my latest campaign game (again excluding the occasional Nightfall speedrun) is probably months away.
343i has to realize that easter eggs, getting out of maps, glitches are things that keep bringing people back to campaign. Heck, just few weeks ago I went back to Halo 3 and climbed on top of Floodgate. Few days before that I had went back to Halo 2 and tried to get the Scarab Gun (it ended up with my Warthog exploding before I got to launch myself).
Sure, the gameplay and story are two things that bring people back to campaign, but all the funn stuff like the afore mentioned things give the campaign even more replay value. Especially when we have the case of Reach where gameplay and story aren’t so good, glitches and easter eggs are the only thing that would bring me back, and when even they are rare, I ahve almost no reason to play campaign.
> > Kill zones are terrible. They kill the game for me. I would much rather they have the invisible walls for me, not because I want to get out of maps but because kill zones feel really lazy and out of place in any game.
>
> >implying that invisible walls aren’t equally lazy, “out of place”, and capable of breaking immersion
I never said that invisible walls can’t have the same effect. I simply stated that for me, invisible walls are better than kill zones. That may be because I’m more used to them than I am kill zones but to me, kill zones make it feel as though there is more to explore past them, they just don’t let you but invisible walls actually make me feel as though that’s where it ends. Again, personal preference.
> > Kill zones are terrible. They kill the game for me. I would much rather they have the invisible walls for me, not because I want to get out of maps but because kill zones feel really lazy and out of place in any game.
>
> Thing is kill zones are move able by the developer when make various maps on forge world. Invisible walls are not.
I don’t know where you got that from. It’s entirely possible for developers to add moveable invisible walls in Forge.
> I agree, one of the best parts of Halo 2 was exploration.
Thank you. I’m not alone.
It’s perfectly reasonable for level designers to want players to take the path they spent countless hours developing. On the other hand, I have eyes and I can see where you are supposed to go. It’s obvious - if there’s a corridor full of enemies and powerups in front of you, then that’s probably the way they want you to proceed. However, if there’s a ledge 20 feet above you that would serve as a great sniping platform where you can take out that whole corridor full of enemies, then I fully expect to be able to jump up onto that ledge without an invisible wall blocking me. Soldiers don’t wade into fierce combat if they can avoid it; they would rather shoot without being shot at. And when I see a massive Forerunner structure in the distance that someone spent a lot of time developing the models and skins for, then I would like to check it out instead of that developer having wasted their time on making parts of the level that can barely be seen.
You can keep invisible walls and killzones in Multiplayer where they belong. They belong in Multiplayer to prevent unfair camping. They do not belong in Campaign because the AI will never be offended or angered by your actions.
Invisible walls were in CE and H2. They just weren’t that close.
The real problem is placing them in ridiculously conspicuous places. That’s what H3 did and that’s what Reach did.
On LNoS, at the beginning of the mission, there seems to be an alternate path which could have let you bypass the Covies and even go to the cliffs, which would have been very convenient for ambush. I can understand them not wanting us to go to the top of levels, but they could have just put a horizontal invisible barrier at the top (like on The Covenant at Mission Start, the cliffs overlooking the beach), allowing us to utilize that space while keeping us from going far from the battlefield.
You know what’s funny. I distinctly remember a video about this.
Before Reach’s release, a lot of hype videos were released by Bungie. I remember in one of them, a game developer started talking about level exploration. He said that they remember how upset people were with Halo 3 for having so many invisible walls. He said, “With Reach, we’re tearing down all those invisible walls and re-opening the levels.”
Heh, I wonder. Do you think he ever sits at his computer and just thinks,
Yeah, Imagine if the Reach team went back and “remastered” Halo 2. They’d put up invisible walls and kill zones that would inevitably block access to every single skull.
Most halo 3 barriers you can get through easily and halo reach has some maps that are a challenge but the easter eggs and “holy falcon” can get you threw those kill-zones
But kill-zones are ever where and placed in bad spots. They should keep them out of future halo games and allow the people how know how to get pass the map barriers alone. (Or at least put the kill-zones under and at the far corners of the maps.
> You know what’s funny. I distinctly remember a video about this.
>
> Before Reach’s release, a lot of hype videos were released by Bungie. I remember in one of them, a game developer started talking about level exploration. He said that they remember how upset people were with Halo 3 for having so many invisible walls. He said, “With Reach, we’re tearing down all those invisible walls and re-opening the levels.”
>
> Heh, I wonder. Do you think he ever sits at his computer and just thinks,
>
> “Why did I say that?”
That feels vaguely familiar. I wonder if it was the employee’s intention to allow exploration, but then another employee like Sage came along and nerfed all of the fun.
OP, I do agree with you almost entirely. When H3 added invisible walls, they were annoying at first. But I felt after a while it was almost like Bungie was challenging me to get out of the levels. And they did. It was a challenge. And on most occasions, I succeeded.
Killzones however, I felt like (and still feel like) were a slap in the face. Exploring outside of levels (both campaign and multiplayer) was always one of my favorite things to do in Halo. And they made it more challenging. But not the fun kind of challenge this time. It’s obnoxiously annoying.
Especially when 90% of the killzones are WITHIN the boundry of invisible walls. On building roofs, cliffs, etc. It’s rediculous. I can understand them in multiplayer maps to rid them of cheap tactics and a large amount of camping. However, campaign in my opinion should honestly have absolutely none. And firefight? Maybe not none, but a large amount less than currently. I can’t stand on a light-post on most maps, much less a rooftop.
The most ridiculous and annoying thing ever to be put in Halo games. Killzones.
> The thing that needs to be taken out is motion blur.
I agree, I got a (HD) LED TV when I started college, looks dang good, but when halo reach came out, I felt like I was playing on a Standard TV.
Sure it looks good, when you are standing still, but even when you are watching a video part of the campaign or sometimes walking, it looks terrible.
But the main topic here is the limitations of the game. I agree that there should be boundries, but I also agree that as each game comes out, I feel more and more limited and stuck in certain areas. If anything, after beating the game on Normal, allow having the boundries removed for Normal game play, but leave the boundries for harder modes until they are beaten.
> I LOVE exploring maps, there is no reason other than bungie’s lazyness to not explore the map.
What you just said literally makes no logical sense.
Lazy is when you do nothing to address a flaw in the level design. For example, not adding invisible walls or Soft Kill Boundaries. If Bungie hadn’t taken the time to seal the map, then they would be lazy. It’s abundantly clear that they very meticulously went through their maps and fixed the bugs that allowed players to escape.
The fact that certain people enjoy glitches is not justification to vilify Bungie for fixing problems in their maps, nor is it cause to call them lazy. Glitches are not features. Expecting a game developer to deliberately treat them as such – and forgo a valid opportunity to fix them – is childish and entitled behavior.
That said, the option to be able to deactivate such boundaries is always a nice thing, for those who do have an interest in glitches. But demanding that flaws in level design be left in to appease glitchers is absurd.
> > I LOVE exploring maps, there is no reason other than bungie’s lazyness to not explore the map.
>
> What you just said literally makes no logical sense.
>
> Lazy is when you do nothing to address a flaw in the level design. For example, not adding invisible walls or Soft Kill Boundaries. If Bungie hadn’t taken the time to seal the map, then they would be lazy. It’s abundantly clear that they very meticulously went through their maps and fixed the bugs that allowed players to escape.
>
> The fact that certain people enjoy glitches is not justification to vilify Bungie for fixing problems in their maps, nor is it cause to call them lazy. Glitches are not features. Expecting a game developer to deliberately treat them as such – and forgo a valid opportunity to fix them – is childish and entitled behavior.
>
> That said, the option to be able to deactivate such boundaries is always a nice thing, for those who do have an interest in glitches. But demanding that flaws in level design be left in to appease glitchers is absurd.
Or mabe it is lazy because bungie never made anything past the death barriers so I would be deeply appreciative if you would refrain from speaking.
I understand exactly what the OP means, but I don’t think 343 should just ditch invisible walls completely and let us roam around in low-res texture land. If anything, the default play spaces should be expanded to the size of the ‘out-of-bounds’ areas in the previous games. If I can see it, I want to explore it. With that design ethic in mind, I think they’d do just fine.
But then, I really have no idea what kind of design decisions are being made with Halo 4, so we’ll have to see.
> > I LOVE exploring maps, there is no reason other than bungie’s lazyness to not explore the map.
>
> What you just said literally makes no logical sense.
>
> Lazy is when you do nothing to address a flaw in the level design. For example, not adding invisible walls or Soft Kill Boundaries. If Bungie hadn’t taken the time to seal the map, then they would be lazy. It’s abundantly clear that they very meticulously went through their maps and fixed the bugs that allowed players to escape.
>
> The fact that certain people enjoy glitches is not justification to vilify Bungie for fixing problems in their maps, nor is it cause to call them lazy. Glitches are not features. Expecting a game developer to deliberately treat them as such – and forgo a valid opportunity to fix them – is childish and entitled behavior.
>
> That said, the option to be able to deactivate such boundaries is always a nice thing, for those who do have an interest in glitches. But demanding that flaws in level design be left in to appease glitchers is absurd.
Glitches are well received by the community (in campaign of course). Developers should realize that they’re just going to upset a lot of players by making it impossible. And that players won’t give up trying to exploit the game.
The reasonable thing to do is to make it so that it’s challenging but not near impossible and absurdly conspicuous (invisible barriers in obscure places is fine but places that look accessible is ridiculous).
I had a ton of fun exploring outside maps in CE and H2, and even found many things with my exploring buddy long before they were ever posted online.
Putting secret places in death barriers just makes it a chore to go exploring. It’s supposed to be fun and light-hearted, not a job.
I understand that you need to make sure people don’t “accidentally” go the wrong way, but some of these invisible walls are completely ridiculous, in places that nobody would EVER go to unless intentionally finding a way out… why put so much extra effort into blocking these ones off? You’re just wasting your own time for no additional benefit at that point.
> Glitches are well received by the community (in campaign of course). Developers should realize that they’re just going to upset a lot of players by making it impossible.
Those players are being petty and immature.
Don’t get me wrong – I myself am an avid glitcher. I’ve practically memorized almost every single detail regarding the programming machinations that made the original MISSINGNO. possible, for example. But a glitch is a glitch – a flaw in the developer’s creation. If they want to fix it, then we, the gamers, have absolutely no right whatsoever to condemn them for it.
> And that players won’t give up trying to exploit the game.
True.
> The reasonable thing to do is to make it so that it’s challenging but not near impossible and absurdly conspicuous
The reasonable thing to do is to fix it, if it is a flaw that can be fixed and if they want to fix it.
> (invisible barriers in obscure places is fine but places that look accessible is ridiculous).
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this point. When an area looks easily-accessible, it should not be softkilled or blocked. Doing either unnecessarily breaks immersion into the game world, counters the player’s expectations (and makes the game seem less intuitive), and draws attention to the linearity of the experience.
> Or mabe it is lazy because bungie never made anything past the death barriers so Yoink!
