Reach is 343i's toy now.

Games Other Halo
1

(TL:DR at bottom.)

Me and my brother were talking about this yesterday, and he brought this up.

Reach is just 343i’s toy for experimentation and new ideas for Halo 4’s multiplayer.

Think about it, if they really wanted to make Reach the experience it should have been, they would have. These Grade A devs would have took the entire Matchmaking system and just reworked it to make sense. Streamlined playlists, Arena actually meaning something, etc…

But what do we have now? We have a fragmented and shattered version of what originally Reach. We can argue on and on about how the vanilla settings were broke, but let’s not do that. Instead let’s acknowledge that before 343i took the reigns and Bungie was still in command…stuff made a little bit more sense, you know? Less playlists, and one global version of Reach.

Now with 343i coming into the picture, we have several versions of this game scattered all around the matchmaking scene. Vanilla, Zero Bloom, Title Update, Anniversary, some TU versions with different AAs, and now soon we will have another version of TU without bleedthrough. We’ll even have a version of BTB where specialty kills on foot are worth more than normal kills.

This just makes for a SO not streamlined and consistent experience. If a new player starts off in the Halo world today, they wouldn’t got a clue what would be going on. Imagine them going into Team Slayer, and thinking “Okay, this is how this game plays.”, and then after a big of that they get more ambitious and try out Big Team. If their mind is logical, they’ll think, “Okay, it’ll be like Team Slayer but with lots of people and big maps.”, wrong! Instead they’ll have to deal with super accurate rifles that can shoot all the way across the map unlike in TS, armor lock lasting two seconds, and being killed with their shields up by standard weapons.

You get the picture.

All of this feels like 343i is treating Reach like their toy to try out a lot of things, trial run them, to better implement those ideas in Halo 4. There really is no other reason, a studio like this full of such great devs dedicated to Halo wouldn’t fragment this game so much for no purpose other than their -Yoinking!- up.

I can say they are sort of -Yoinking!- up Reach, and they haven’t just started either, they have been. I myself can still find plenty of enjoyment in the game, but you know what I mean.

What do you guys think?

TL:DR: 343i is treating Reach like it’s experimentation, bastardization, and play toy to trial run elements they think of for Halo 4 because Reach isn’t truthfully their game and doing this will ensure Halo 4 won’t be messed up too bad.

2

You are the first person I have seen seeing it like I do, I always though of it like this for example, bleedthrough, lets put it in TU gametypes and then take feedback off people, how do we tweak this to make it work, not work, how well it works, should it even exist at all, same goes for the variants of bloom and other things like that, Sword Block, keep it in or remove it, change it?

I believe by the end of Reach’s cycle, we will finally get some permanent assurance and settings for certain places, remember towards the end of Halo 3, Bungie cut down on the playlist amount, I am thinking 343i will do the same and clean things up, perhaps a Vanilla, TU, Zero Bloom & Anniversary section.

I hope this opens people’s eyes as to what 343i are doing with Reach and are simply not out there to annoy you and ruin your Vanilla/TU experience, they are using this to make Halo 4’s future better.

3

Right, and hopefully through all this they’ll make Halo 4 to be loved by the original trilogy supporters and Reach supporters.

It’d have to be through all this toying, after all. Some people do get mad at the state of Reach now, I do occasionally. For example, if I want to play Vanilla I’d go to Team Slayer, vanilla in some regards has been absolutely proven by hard math it is inferior to TU, but in TS there are so many better maps, such as Chateau or Think Twice. In Squad Slayer, there are only default maps with DLC hardly showing up. It’s a choice between better maps and better gametype, you can’t have both.

And while people may realize what 343i is doing, it doesn’t change the fact their still making Reach a big mess. So if their doing this, they have to make Halo 4 appeal to everyone as a sort of “We’re sorry for screwing up Reach.” deal.

4

Does this mean Halo 4 is going to be more like Reach than anything?

I’m not implying that would be terrible.

5

Maybe, maybe not.

Just because they MAY be using Reach as their test bed now, just doesn’t ensure Halo 4 will automatically be a lot alike to Reach.

I assume they’ll have a beta eventually which will be the final test bad for all they want and then we’ll see how it plays out.

6

> Right, and hopefully through all this they’ll make Halo 4 to be loved by the original trilogy supporters and Reach supporters.
>
> It’d have to be through all this toying, after all. Some people do get mad at the state of Reach now, I do occasionally. For example, if I want to play Vanilla I’d go to Team Slayer, vanilla in some regards has been absolutely proven by hard math it is inferior to TU, but in TS there are so many better maps, such as Chateau or Think Twice. In Squad Slayer, there are only default maps with DLC hardly showing up. It’s a choice between better maps and better gametype, you can’t have both.
>
> And while people may realize what 343i is doing, it doesn’t change the fact their still making Reach a big mess. So if their doing this, they have to make Halo 4 appeal to everyone as a sort of “We’re sorry for screwing up Reach.” deal.

If they can have a bigger playlist cap and put in a bit of everything like Reach for X gamemode, they will get it right, give the ability for a Classic experience off the bat and if there are different play styles on playlists, mention it in the description or categorise them correctly.

Halo 4’s Matchmaking & Playlists will be to perfection if its like this.

7

> Right, and hopefully through all this they’ll make Halo 4 to be loved by the original trilogy supporters and Reach supporters.
>
> It’d have to be through all this toying, after all. Some people do get mad at the state of Reach now, I do occasionally. For example, if I want to play Vanilla I’d go to Team Slayer, vanilla in some regards has been absolutely proven by hard math it is inferior to TU, but in TS there are so many better maps, such as Chateau or Think Twice. In Squad Slayer, there are only default maps with DLC hardly showing up. It’s a choice between better maps and better gametype, you can’t have both.
>
> And while people may realize what 343i is doing, it doesn’t change the fact their still making Reach a big mess. So if their doing this, they have to make Halo 4 appeal to everyone as a sort of “We’re sorry for screwing up Reach.” deal.

They didn’t screw up Reach, Bungie did that by listening to the wrong people. They made the game appeal only to one group of players(the casuals) and forgot about the people who kept the series running(the competitive community.) Hopefully 343 won’t make the same mistake, and they will bring back ranked, and social. That way you please the competitive crowd and the casual crowd.

8

> > Right, and hopefully through all this they’ll make Halo 4 to be loved by the original trilogy supporters and Reach supporters.
> >
> > It’d have to be through all this toying, after all. Some people do get mad at the state of Reach now, I do occasionally. For example, if I want to play Vanilla I’d go to Team Slayer, vanilla in some regards has been absolutely proven by hard math it is inferior to TU, but in TS there are so many better maps, such as Chateau or Think Twice. In Squad Slayer, there are only default maps with DLC hardly showing up. It’s a choice between better maps and better gametype, you can’t have both.
> >
> > And while people may realize what 343i is doing, it doesn’t change the fact their still making Reach a big mess. So if their doing this, they have to make Halo 4 appeal to everyone as a sort of “We’re sorry for screwing up Reach.” deal.
>
> They didn’t screw up Reach, Bungie did that by listening to the wrong people. They made the game appeal only to one group of players(the casuals) and forgot about the people who kept the series running(the competitive community.) Hopefully 343 won’t make the same mistake, and they will bring back ranked, and social. That way you please the competitive crowd and the casual crowd.

Yes keep banging on about the dirty casuals…the people who give microsoft the vast majority of their $200 million release day sales.

So boorish. Get a new talking point.

OP, you may well be right. But then why didnt they use the beta list for all sorts of crazy settings, like they said they would?

9

I agree with you but what can we do. We are mere fans and don’t have any control over what happens whatsoever. Complaints I have to say is the best you can do to make them understand “we don’t like it, fix it in Halo 4”.