Please Keep it Simple!

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

One of the biggest defining features of Halo has been it’s simplicity.

Simplicity made the game extremely flexible, allowing players to create their own skill gap and had a no-nonsense atmosphere; meaning throughout a match, the players would generally be able to know where they could expect to see a player as they approach as opposed to coming to meet them only to see them 15 feet in the air.

The primary area’s I feel need to be kept simple are loadouts; playing Halo 3 made me realize how important it is to have the choice between AR and BR starts, but the key is to not give players everything they want, it’s akin to using cheats in a game to get something when you should not normally get it, it degrades the fun/gameplay.

Having a close and mid range weapons as primary utility weapons while placing additional different yet similar weapons on map gives players something to work for, but eliminates spawning at a severe disadvantage like in a big open area with an AR, or against an enemy that all have BR’s while your team has AR’s.

Keeping everything important on-map enforces equal gameplay, while promoting movement and rewarding teamwork. This doesn’t mean infinity-esque gameplay has no place in Halo, but it means it belongs in a sub-gametype, away from the main gameplay traditionally 4v4/BTB and objectives.

My underlining thought on any new feature is to try and keep it simple and not take away from the core values of what Halo has been a part of for 10 years; arena style games, meaning an underlining level of balance to everything.

My closing statement is: if the next Halo game still has Halo 4’s random personal ordnance & mod(perk)/loadout system, I likely won’t play it.

Besides the points I made above, to you, what do you feel is very important in a Halo game/features needed?

2

Arena games have gone down in popularity a lot in recent times. Bringing Halo back to a straight up arena game won’t do much but bring back a bunch of hardcore fans (and by hardcore, I mean the minority that would play a good Halo over any other game) who would play left Halo 4 in spite of loadouts and make the people who don’t like arena leave for other games like Destiny or Titanfall or BF4 or CoD Ghosts. 343i needs to appeal to more than one audience with their games and when I say that, I mean improve what they’ve done with Halo 4 to make it much more enjoyable and lasting and bring back the arena portion of Halo, enough said.

3

> Arena games have gone down in popularity a lot in recent times. Bringing Halo back to a straight up arena game won’t do much but bring back a bunch of hardcore fans (and by hardcore, I mean the minority that would play a good Halo over any other game) who would play left Halo 4 in spite of loadouts and make the people who don’t like arena leave for other games like Destiny or Titanfall or BF4 or CoD Ghosts. 343i needs to appeal to more than one audience with their games and when I say that, I mean improve what they’ve done with Halo 4 to make it much more enjoyable and lasting and bring back the arena portion of Halo, enough said.

The recent success (or lack there of) of H4 shows that the vast majority of the people that bought Halo 4 did not like the direction that it was going. Halo has been moving in strange directions that frankly confuse me.

They have tried to steal things from other games like CoD and Battlefield, but moved away from it at the same time. They have copied things like sprint and bloom, but then up the overall kill times. What is that?! CoD has very quick kill times and upping the kill times moves in the exact opposite direction of that.

Instead, it creates a VERY difficult way to kill someone. Sprint, large maps, etc… all work because of the very fast kill times of CoD. With those same things combined with the long kill times of recent Halos, it is moronic and not as fun to play. Also, it is very contrary to the majority of the people that they are trying to sway. Instead of being able to kill people very easily and quickly, they must now spend much longer to kill people.

The point of adding sprint and other things into the game was to increase game speed. While it does help you literally get around the map faster, it slows down kills and the overall game.

Now, slightly longer kill times are great for Halo, but they are currently too long. They need to do a better job of finding the sweet spot. What I would suggest is to decrease kill times to what they were in some of the older Halos and increase base movement speed instead of using sprint combined with smaller maps. It would achieve the same feat of speeding up the game, but also shorten the encounters.

One final thing that I would like to say is that some believe that arena shooters are on the way out, but population in H4 is pretty low. I would challenge 343 to make one more true arena style game and see how it does. If it fails, we know for sure then. I understand that some people want all the extra features like sprint, loadouts, AAs, and ordinances. So, I thought that what if they made all of those things available in custom options so that people could add things, but keep the default settings very classic. Recently they have done taken the reverse approach where they throw everything into the default settings then let people things away in custom settings. What if for H5 they try the reverse of keeping it simple in default settings then let people add things if they want them?

4

> > Arena games have gone down in popularity a lot in recent times. Bringing Halo back to a straight up arena game won’t do much but bring back a bunch of hardcore fans (and by hardcore, I mean the minority that would play a good Halo over any other game) who would play left Halo 4 in spite of loadouts and make the people who don’t like arena leave for other games like Destiny or Titanfall or BF4 or CoD Ghosts. 343i needs to appeal to more than one audience with their games and when I say that, I mean improve what they’ve done with Halo 4 to make it much more enjoyable and lasting and bring back the arena portion of Halo, enough said.
>
> The recent success (or lack there of) of H4 shows that the vast majority of the people that bought Halo 4 did not like the direction that it was going. Halo has been moving in strange directions that frankly confuse me.

Yes they tried to take from modern shooter crowd, and while that was the wrong move, it isn’t the wrong move for reasons you’re thinking.

Call of Duty is King. It’s true, it sucks, but it’s true, and has the casual market locked down so tightly nothing but an equally marketable game could beat it. It would have to be as easy and as accessible as CoD, as rewarding, but also as marketable. Halo can’t be any of those. Halo 4’s waning population isn’t because people didn’t like the direction it was going (though that is a part of it), it’s because most people don’t care.

The vast majority of Halo players were casuals, and Halo was King because it was the most popular, most marketable and most accessible game in the industry. CoD changed all of that and dethroned Halo, and all the casuals went over to CoD.

Believe it or not, most people aren’t like you or I. They don’t make conscious decisions on whether or not they like the direction of a given franchise because, again, most people simply don’t care. Gaming’s just a way to pass the time or have fun for most people, something barely worth thinking about. And how do you attract the attention of a population that doesn’t think about gaming too much? Give them a game where you don’t have to think.

CoD pretty much hands you points, and rewards you for nothing. Bad game design, but brilliant, brilliant marketing. And that’s why Halo lost and will not win again. It is no longer the most casual game, arena shooters are dead, no longer marketable, not since CoD took the throne.

Halo will remain where it is now, it will never return to its former populated glory. But then again, who cares? We can still play and enjoy our game just like any other. You think Quake fans give a damn about population or popularity? No, they just play the game they love, for fun or recreation.

Halo 4 shouldn’t have been designed the way it was, it should never have gone after CoD’s crowd because Halo can’t be like CoD, it can never be as popular or as marketable or even as casual as CoD, and CoD’s audience is too impermanent to any other game to be reliable for any other game. Now that we know this, we can go back to more traditional Halo mechanics in Halo 5, but it won’t ever bring the whole population back to the way it was. It’ll be better most likely for classic arena fans (who surly feel left out by now, such as myself) but that doesn’t mean it’ll make Halo king again.

But again, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re having fun.

5

I disagree, Halo can have that massive draw and appeal. That can be seen in that massive amount of copies that were bought at the opening of H4. Those were obviously mostly casuals that were looking to play and enjoy Halo. However, they obviously were displeased with the game and returned to CoD or some other game that is still using its’ core formula and not in the middle of an identity crisis like Halo currently is.

Halo is still very legendary game that will sell tons of copies because of its’ past. It may have lost many fans and turned many into skeptics from the last two installments, but it will still sell. What they need to do is exactly what many have said before, go back to their simple core gameplay formula. I understand wanting to copy things from other games. Other games have copied many things from Halo, but most of what they copied didn’t screw with their core gameplay. Halo should instead copy things like spectator mode, league play, custom features, similar gametypes, maybe clan tags. These are all things that are from other games, but would not mess with the game the game actually plays.

6

> > > Arena games have gone down in popularity a lot in recent times. Bringing Halo back to a straight up arena game won’t do much but bring back a bunch of hardcore fans (and by hardcore, I mean the minority that would play a good Halo over any other game) who would play left Halo 4 in spite of loadouts and make the people who don’t like arena leave for other games like Destiny or Titanfall or BF4 or CoD Ghosts. 343i needs to appeal to more than one audience with their games and when I say that, I mean improve what they’ve done with Halo 4 to make it much more enjoyable and lasting and bring back the arena portion of Halo, enough said.
> >
> > The recent success (or lack there of) of H4 shows that the vast majority of the people that bought Halo 4 did not like the direction that it was going. Halo has been moving in strange directions that frankly confuse me.
>
> Yes they tried to take from modern shooter crowd, and while that was the wrong move, it isn’t the wrong move for reasons you’re thinking.
>
> Call of Duty is King. It’s true, it sucks, but it’s true, and has the casual market locked down so tightly nothing but an equally marketable game could beat it. It would have to be as easy and as accessible as CoD, as rewarding, but also as marketable. Halo can’t be any of those. Halo 4’s waning population isn’t because people didn’t like the direction it was going (though that is a part of it), it’s because most people don’t care.
>
> The vast majority of Halo players were casuals, and Halo was King because it was the most popular, most marketable and most accessible game in the industry. CoD changed all of that and dethroned Halo, and all the casuals went over to CoD.
>
> Believe it or not, most people aren’t like you or I. They don’t make conscious decisions on whether or not they like the direction of a given franchise because, again, most people simply don’t care. Gaming’s just a way to pass the time or have fun for most people, something barely worth thinking about. And how do you attract the attention of a population that doesn’t think about gaming too much? Give them a game where you don’t have to think.
>
> CoD pretty much hands you points, and rewards you for nothing. Bad game design, but brilliant, brilliant marketing. And that’s why Halo lost and will not win again. It is no longer the most casual game, arena shooters are dead, no longer marketable, not since CoD took the throne.
>
> Halo will remain where it is now, it will never return to its former populated glory. But then again, who cares? We can still play and enjoy our game just like any other. You think Quake fans give a damn about population or popularity? No, they just play the game they love, for fun or recreation.
>
> Halo 4 shouldn’t have been designed the way it was, it should never have gone after CoD’s crowd because Halo can’t be like CoD, it can never be as popular or as marketable or even as casual as CoD, and CoD’s audience is too impermanent to any other game to be reliable for any other game. Now that we know this, we can go back to more traditional Halo mechanics in Halo 5, but it won’t ever bring the whole population back to the way it was. It’ll be better most likely for classic arena fans (who surly feel left out by now, such as myself) but that doesn’t mean it’ll make Halo king again.
>
> But again, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re having fun.

Perfectly said my fellow Spartan! The most important aspect of a game is to have fun. It shouldn’t try and be something it’s not, and dominate at what it’s great at.

And you are right, CoD is currently king, and there is no dethroning that behemoth, but we don’t have to nor should try. If Halo just stays Halo it will be great.

> I disagree, Halo can have that massive draw and appeal. That can be seen in that massive amount of copies that were bought at the opening of H4. Those were obviously mostly casuals that were looking to play and enjoy Halo. However, they obviously were displeased with the game and returned to CoD or some other game that is still using its’ core formula and not in the middle of an identity crisis like Halo currently is.
>
> Halo is still very legendary game that will sell tons of copies because of its’ past. It may have lost many fans and turned many into skeptics from the last two installments, but it will still sell. What they need to do is exactly what many have said before, go back to their simple core gameplay formula. I understand wanting to copy things from other games. Other games have copied many things from Halo, but most of what they copied didn’t screw with their core gameplay. Halo should instead copy things like spectator mode, league play, custom features, similar gametypes, maybe clan tags. These are all things that are from other games, but would not mess with the game the game actually plays.

Come next gen, Halo will have the most competition it’s ever had, it’s up against it’s very own creators, but that’s not a giant issue since the release date between the two will likely be rather large, but Halo doesn’t have the ability to grasp peoples attention like it once did.

Call of Duty is more current and lets us fight other nations which seem worse than they really are thus providing a massive hype; Halo is more fantasy now than survival or war. Halo requires attention to detail, specifically for story, to the gaming mass which has a more of an A.D.D approach, meaning if the majority can’t pick up and play in the first 5 minutes and have fun, they will gravitate to the lowest common denominator.

Halo will still have a great large appeal, but it won’t grab all the little kiddies that want to play a modern shooter and then have parents go all “RAWR these games are ruining our children! Ban’em all!”. But the point is there is no need to make the game to make them want to play, what needs to be done is to simply be what Halo is, and build off that.

With dedicated servers 343i can branch into new territory as well similar to a battlefield type playlist with it’s own unique features and playstyle. I can’t wait for the future to come.