Is the artificial difficulty. Specifically, the fact that the enemy health and shields are increased x50,000 and also that your shields do just as much good as a cardboard barrier. I REALLY wish they would stop doing this or at least provide an option to turn off the crazy amounts of health the enemies get and the dumb ineffectiveness of your shields. Now, I know that for some of you, all of this just adds to your narcissistic enjoyment of the difficulty. As I said though, there should be an option to turn this nonsense off.
On a much lesser, but still worthy enough to be brought up, note, the enemy counts get rather bad as well. But I don’t think this is as frustrating as the massive enemy health and your pathetic shields.
Specifically I long for a Legendary difficulty that’s difficult because the enemies are smarter rather than because all of their stat values have been increased threefold.
I want Elites who command, Jackals who use shield walls and slow advancement on the enemy, Grunts who play smart and huddle around tougher targets and provide fire support, Hunters who act like actual siege breakers, etc.
I want to see that unity breakdown when you dome the last Elite in the battle and the rest of the flock reverts to basic rudimentary tactics.
More tactical thinking on the AI would be great, but I wouldn’t want to be the one who has to program it.
I’m especially keen to see an enemy squad regroup and counter-attack after you engage them. So many engagements (especially on Legendary) revert to sniping from afar and picking off enemies piecemeal. It’s 'aight, but what if they recognized a threat and instead of taking cover, brought the fight to you? That could be intense.
There is mythic difficultly which is basically ledgendary with all skulls on, me and my friends tried to do it but we failed but it was such a challenge I loved it
Here’s MY problem with Legendary: they don’t make the enemies smarter, they just make the weapons do more damage and have lock-on. I think Legendary difficulty should mean that the enemy becomes smart, more strategic. Using flanking maneuvers, takes cover more, has a strategic placing of the pawns, then the higher ups in other areas, making us think out how we fight rather than just “find and hoard weapons that do a lot of damage or vehicles”
343 should make legendary harder. I was woken from a rude awakening when i went back to get E.O.D shoulders on Halo 3. I died many times, but it was still fun. The enemies for Halo Xbox One should be smart and more strategic plus the shields from Halo 4, which could be dropped with a plasma pistol (that little thing works wonders).
> The enemies for Halo Xbox One should be smart and more strategic plus the shields from Halo 4, which could be dropped with a plasma pistol (that little thing works wonders).
But you see, therein lies the problem. Legendary almost forces you to use certain tactics and combinations like the aforementioned PP and BR/DMR in order to be at least somewhat successful. Your nerfed shields and the enemies absurd amounts of health make it to where there’s no real freedom in how you can approach situations. And when you’re using the same tried and true tactics over and over again, it becomes a frustrating grindfest.
When enemies kill you in Legendary, you don’t feel outsmarted most of the time. You don’t feel satisfied and/or encouraged to do better. With the auto-aim, massive enemy health, and your frailty, you feel like you got cheap-shotted about 90% of the time.
I’ve heard a lot of people sing praises to Bungie for the Legendary difficulty right from the beginning, and to this day, I have no idea why.
> Is the artificial difficulty. <mark>Specifically, the fact that the enemy health and shields are increased x50,000 and also that your shields do just as much good as a cardboard barrier. I REALLY wish they would stop doing this or at least provide an option to turn off the crazy amounts of health the enemies get and the dumb ineffectiveness of your shields. Now, I know that for some of you, all of this just adds to your narcissistic enjoyment of the difficulty. As I said though, there should be an option to turn this nonsense off.</mark>
>
> On a much lesser, but still worthy enough to be brought up, note, the enemy counts get rather bad as well. But I don’t think this is as frustrating as the massive enemy health and your pathetic shields.
What do you propose to replace this to make a hard difficulty? Advanced AI in the enemy? That would only drag out levels even more due to them hiding and using tactics like we the players do.
> <mark>343 should make legendary harder.</mark> I was woken from a rude awakening when i went back to get E.O.D shoulders on Halo 3. I died many times, but it was still fun. The enemies for Halo Xbox One should be smart and more strategic plus the shields from Halo 4, which could be dropped with a plasma pistol (that little thing works wonders).
Agreed. Reach was a nice bar to set for Legendary. CE and 2 were pretty hard.
Developers have never actually been that keen on making good AI as of late. Many games suffer from that problem.
The most notorious I’ve encountered is Magic 2014, instead of making a functional AI with random hands, the AI gets a specific hand, it’s the same no matter how many times you start over, and then it gets to draw which card it wants from the deck.
For instance, there’s a creature card that gets put in the bottom of the library when it dies, my AI opponent had a grand total of three, I killed them off and they were all put in the bottom of the library. Now wasn’t I surprised when a few cards down they all started appearing again, and again and again. This happened without any shuffling of the library and 30 cards left in the library.
You also have strategy games where the enemy gets more resources than you and so forth.
I can only hope that what they talk about with enemy AI being calculated in the cloud is true, but I really hope that the developers still sit down and make a proper AI for when there’s no access to XBL and the cloud.
Yes, better AI is suggested instead of increased damage and damage resistance. Not only is it a lazy way of increasing the difficulty, it’s annoying to play, gets easily frustrating and brings the whole game down to grinding mode instead of playing.
Advanced AI wouldn’t need increased damage and so forth to make it more difficult, and it wouldn’t drag out the game any longer than the allready lazy stuff allready does. Knight teleport behind cover as soon as their shields are about to fail and elites just run up an one hit you.
I’d much rather be outsmarted than fight against damage sponges. Atleast then I get to use various tactics against their tactics.
> What do you propose to replace this to make a hard difficulty? Advanced AI in the enemy? That would only drag out levels even more due to them hiding and using tactics like we the players do.
Eh, yes and no. They should think like the Covenant/Flood/Prometheans/Whatever they are, not like players. For example, Flood loves to rush naturally. Prometheans… well technically they should be bosses IMO but that’s a conversation for a later date. For now, just ignore them. Covenant will probably employ the most varied tactics of the three, being a mixture of a bunch of different races and, therefore, different strategies. As someone so nicely pointed out, Jackals would be in shield formation. Grunts will (try) to lay down supporting fire and Elites will, of course, be leading the pack. Take off the head and then slowly mop up the remaining forces.
And you act like most firefights on Legendary DON’T drag on for minutes at a time just as it is. While that may not be accurate at all for individual battles, it’s how many times you die that really drag out the fights. And you WILL die. A lot.
> What do you propose to replace this to make a hard difficulty? Advanced AI in the enemy? That would only drag out levels even more due to them hiding and using tactics like we the players do.
Funny, the AI were using cover in the first two Halo games and then it began to decline.
The enemies stick out like sore thumbs these days and are even easier to take down as a result.
Knights on the other hand teleport to cover but often to locations that are far away from the confrontation, which is extremely cheap.
> > <mark>343 should make legendary harder.</mark> I was woken from a rude awakening when i went back to get E.O.D shoulders on Halo 3. I died many times, but it was still fun. The enemies for Halo Xbox One should be smart and more strategic plus the shields from Halo 4, which could be dropped with a plasma pistol (that little thing works wonders).
>
> Agreed. Reach was a nice bar to set for Legendary. CE and 2 were pretty hard.
You guys are asking for Wraiths that have the range and vision of snipers and know your position in an instant…
That’s just wrong.
But I will agree CE and H2 maintained a strong Legendary difficulty. But they were a lot less cheaper than Reach.
> > What do you propose to replace this to make a hard difficulty? Advanced AI in the enemy? That would only drag out levels even more due to them hiding and using tactics like we the players do.
>
> Funny, <mark>the AI were using cover in the first two Halo games and then it began to decline.</mark>
> <mark>The enemies stick out like sore thumbs these days and are even easier to take down as a result.</mark>
>
> Knights on the other hand teleport to cover but often to locations that are far away from the confrontation, which is extremely cheap.
I wouldn’t say that. There’s times they hid in cover and stay in the open is all the games. CE scenarios typically had more cover for the enemies with more structures/obstacles around them (except for the Library).
Halo 4’s legendary was bad but not for the reasons you have named.
In pretty much every shooter that i have played higher difficulty generally meant these things.
You were easier killed.
Enemies health/shields go up.
Your damage output is less (not in halo)
AI’s are “smarter.”
Asking for these things to be removed is just plain stupid. And yes on the highest difficulties you are forced to take certain strats to win. If you were able to do anything to win it wouldn’t be difficult.
Halo 4 legendary was wrong because: The knights in general. They didn’t seem to get more aggressive on higher difficulties. In fact they seemed more defensive, one could say this is to make them different then the charging elites of earlier years. The other thing about them is the ability to telaport. It’s a very neat idea but it’s rather annoying when they leave everytime you pop their shields. Which by the way it was hard enough telling when you popped them.
Another thing they boffed is the AI. They seem to imply mostly the same tactics regardless of difficulty making most enemies predictable enough to handle. I’m sure people who are more campaign savy can tell other things that i missed. All i can say is in my experience halo 4 legendary was the easiest/most frustrating halo campaign.
Things they should avoid for sure is predictable spawns (I.E sniper ally and the jackal snipers from halo 2.) snipers should be effective. As is you can’t OHK an elite on legendary to the head. even if he is just the lowest ranking one. That’s fine for mythic but not legendary.
No OP snipers. Meaning a jackal shouldn’t be able to hit me in the toe and OHK me. Wraiths and other vehicles shouldn’t be able to know where i am at all time (I.E wraith snipers in reach.) AI’s should have several paths and options they are able to take. But instead of coding a direct response with a direct action the AI should be free to choose between all of it’s actions on how to react to the player.
The enemies should learn from the player both in play throughs and on the fly. Like how Gears of war judgment had the “smart system” It would take the data from the last time you walked in that area and use it to make it harder the next time you play there. EX: -say you fought a bunch of wretches and fended them off at close range with the gnasher. The next time you play there the wretches would be a different enemy and they would tactically play different.- The system had a set amount of responses to the situations it’s faced with and was free to choose between them.
As far as on the fly goes say you PP over charge 2 elite and Headshot them. the remaining elites would try to put cover between itself and you often to avoid the PP.
One thing halo 4 did get right was viable friendly AI. We need more of that.
EDIT: one last thing i forgot to mention they should avoid. Infinite spawning enemies. Happened once in SPOPS. Just a very bad way to handle difficulty.
I would have to disagree with you about the damage and shield problems that you propose. It’s called legendary difficulty, which means it’s supposed to be really hard. I would say a bigger problem with the legendary difficulty is how the enemies instantly know where you are when they’re not even facing you. If you don’t like how quickly you die and how strong the enemies are on legendary difficulty, then perhaps play on a lower difficulty.
