The Maps Of Halo 4

Games Other Halo
1

There is nothing more important in Halo 4 than its starting map selection. Say what you want about Reach’s gameplay, it would have been ok if the maps were not so boring. Halo 4 must have an excellent map selection. Even if they fix reach’s problems, the game will fail if the maps are bad. So what kind of map selection should halo 4 have exactly? Here are my thoughts.

To determine what Halo 4’s maps should be like we need to first look at what past great maps were like. Past Halo maps always seemed to have a sense of mystery. You were on an alien world, you saw things that just didn’t exist in other games. Reach lost this feeling. Please someone tell me whats so exciting about powerhouse or sword base. What makes them special? Nothing. it was just boring, human architecture. Halo 4 needs to be new. It needs to be alien. It needs to be mysterious.

Also, Halo 4 maps need interactivity. There are a few good examples in halo’s past that have great integration and interactivity. First is Zanzibar. The giant circulating ring, the operational doors, and the bridge were all fun and interesting. That map is great not only because of its fantastic layout, but its interactivity and dynamic functions. Ascensions rotating satellite is another example.

Halo 4 maps need stuff like this. Simply running around a static box just isn’t enough anymore. It needs some dynamic maps.

Lastly, Halo 4 needs a variety of maps. Some need to be small and competive like the pit, lockout, etc. Others need to be large and vehicle based like Blood Gulch, Sandtrap and Headlong. Then there is the 3rd category, one reach did not include. that is the medium sized maps. Maps that are big enough for vehicles, but not so big that a 4v4 match is impossible. Not all medium maps have vehicles though. These maps include Zanzibar, Hang Em High,etc.

one last things. Don’t be afraid to have a few maps go against the grain and just do something different. Boarding Action comes to mind. It had a very unique layout with 2 opposite sides exposed to each other with teleporters that allowed you to travel across. it provided tons of fun gameplay opportunities and the concept has yet to have been revisited. Do something new. How about a map where 2 moving platforms are moving side by side each other and you have to jump between them and etc. Just anything new like that.

Now I’m going to do a quick overview of what the selection needs to have and then you guys take over.

Halo 4 needs a lockout. The lockout style map has become a staple of Haalo. Obviously Halo 2 had lockout, and halo 3 had Gaurdian. Halo 4 needs a map that follows its previous incarnations. Not an exact remake, but very similar like gaurdian was to Lockout.

Halo 4 needs its Blood Gulch. Every Halo game, has had its blood gulch. Halo CE had blood gulch, Halo 2 had coagulation, Halo 3 had Valhalla, and reach tried with Hemmorage but it failed because it was forged and just was missing the spark. Halo 4 needs to start with a Blood Gulch. Not an exact remake, but the same formula. 2 bases, 1 valley, great vehicle and infantry action.

Halo 4 needs to limit its remakes. I love remakes, but not when half of your multiplayer offering is made up of them. Reach had far too many remakes, and most of them were forged. I say limit Halo 4’s remakes to 2. I would love to see The Pit return along with Waterworks ( an incredibly underrated map.)

Halo 4 needs dynamic maps (like i said before)

Halo 4 needs new concepts

Halo 4 needs a good mix of small,medium, and large maps.

And finally, the maps need to capture the essence of mystery and epicness that past Halo’s did.

Done

2

What you just described was mostly based on aesthetics.

Halo’s maps have been great because of a mix of balance and innovation. Halo 4’s maps need to have those traits or else it won’t matter how pretty or mysterious they look and feel.

For the purpose of longevity, they should be made with an attempt of maintaining a competitive atmosphere. Eventually, gimmicks that are placed on a map lose their nolvelty over time, so delaying the inevitable by making such gimmick’s/innovations worthwhile for gameplay is a better option than to strive for \something that will eventually lose it’s touch.

3

I want more maps. Halo CE had 13 multiplayer maps. COD has like 20.

And personally I would want 4-5 small-median arena maps, kinda like Midship, Lockout, Sanctuary, Wizard, etc…

4

Yes, have more maps please.
I want Halo 4 to be a really fun and interactive game with a lot of fun maps.
Please don’t make all the Maps be related to the Campaign…

5

Halo 4, should have the 3 best maps from every previous Halo Game.

And have at least 8-10 new maps on release.

This would be a total of 12 remakes and 10 new maps = 22 maps.
Als would require some Fire-Fight maps (at least 8) and these should be able to be played in multi player as well. This is a total of 30 maps on release.

Halo 4, also requires to have a larger amount of players.
I would love to see at least 24 players for Halo 4, if they could do 32, that would be great.

Halo has been 16 players max for 10 years. It is time 343 raised the bar.

Halo 4 would still have it’s core 4v4 TS. But BTB with 12v12 or 16v16 would be awesome.

This would allow for some bigger maps, and Invasion and BTB should be migrated into the same play list.

Halo 4, will need a much better Spawning System, than any other Halo Game.

6

> What you just described was mostly based on aesthetics.
>
> Halo’s maps have been great because of a mix of balance and innovation. Halo 4’s maps need to have those traits or else it won’t matter how pretty or mysterious they look and feel.
>
> For the purpose of longevity, they should be made with an attempt of maintaining a competitive atmosphere. Eventually, gimmicks that are placed on a map lose their nolvelty over time, so delaying the inevitable by making such gimmick’s/innovations worthwhile for gameplay is a better option than to strive for \something that will eventually lose it’s touch.

Out of all the Halo games, I believe Halo 2, had the best selection of Maps.

Great for BTB, and great for your TS 4v4.

Halo 2 maps were fantastic, and are still some of the best maps today. And the DLC for Halo 2, outstanding.

Halo 3 and REACH DLC have also been fantastic.

7

> This is a total of 30 maps on release.

I think your setting the bar really high there. For Firefight, why not just make it so that the multiplayer maps are based mainly (and only) on multiplayer while you can also play FF on them while also having FF based maps. Its sorta like how GoW does it with there maps so why can’t Halo 4 do the same?

8

> Yes, have more maps please.
> I want Halo 4 to be a really fun and interactive game with a lot of fun maps.
> Please don’t make all the Maps be related to the Campaign…

^This.

Little to no campaign maps please.

Also, I think they maps should be simple, along with the mysterious feeling, interactivity, and balance.

These are the things that made what Halo’s multiplayer used to be. And what can bring it back to that point.

9

> Halo’s maps have been great because of a mix of balance and innovation.

I swear to god people just throw the word “innovation” at everything and anything. The only ‘innovation’ I’ve ever seen in any of Halo’s maps was the train in Terminal. Even then… hardly worth noting as an innovation.

There’s no mix between balance and anything else. It has to be balanced or else it’s a -Yoink- map. End of story.

10

I also would love to see some balanced maps that flow really well, Max Hobermann and Certain Affinity have created many cool maps, so hopefully they will be helping out 343i so 343 can concentrate on the mechanics and making sure everything plays right, because without good gameplay, maps almost don’t even matter. And even if they don’t have the help of CA im sure they have many talented people in their company that can develop well-balanced, fun maps.

On a side note, I wouldn’t mind taking a graphics hit if we could get interactivity back into the maps. I especially liked the gate on Zanzibar and the activating teleporter on Relic, they were really neat features.

Also very important is that they limit the graphics and everything so we don’t get the frame rate lag like in Reach, there’s nothing that kills immersion better than a poor mechanic in a video game.

11

I’d like a Mombasa streets style firefight map, only in a environment like ‘halo’ from CE, so free roaming firefight :smiley:

12

There is one very important aspect of maps I want to bring up. Sure, map can always be balanced and even look nice, but these two can only make it a good map. In order for the map to be amazing it needs flow, they need freedom of movement. Lockout is an amazing example of this, you could jump almost anywhere on the map and end up performing a cool trick jump that saves you a lot of time.

The Cage again, is on the other end of the spectrum. On top of being unbalanced, it also restricted movement from the bottom. Basically Uncaged fixed some of this, but the map really had some other major issues. Anyway, come to think of it, most maps in Halo Reach pretty much lack on this area. While a huge important factor is jetpack, the maps too have problems.

The flow can be accomplished in many ways, jumps that aren’t obvious and require skill are one, of course the general way how routes are located. A route should never end in a dead end (Powerhouse) or few defined paths (The Cage). Of course movement paths are especially good on some BTB maps when not used on every map. Standoff would have been a great map hadn’t it had bad spawns. Rat’s Nest was nice because you had this smaller inside area and the outer route sircling the map with vehicles driving around.

So, in order for map to be amazing it needs not only to be balanced and good looking, but flow seeamlessly.

13

i actually like this idea.

14

I think that 343 Industries should just make a few dozen maps with less effort. Perhaps the result will be that at five or six of those are hailed as genius design. And people will forget the maps that they don’t like when thinking about the game.

Although I also think that there tends to be a sort of Uncanny Valley-ish issue with maps these days. As Halo games get denser and denser in details, I think that maps start to be less and less easily navigated. I think that emphasis on multiplayer maps should be simpler aesthetics. Complex stuff just distracts. Though I also think that if your HUD had a built-in way of picking people out from the environment for you without being distracting, then the maps can be as detailed as you want them to be. It’s mainly about getting eyes on the bad guys, and how easily you can do that.

15

I think aswell we need more varitey in maps settings imo, on other halo games we’ve had maps on earth, covenant and unsc ships, halos, the ark and high charity. on reach it just all feels the same.

16

I would like to see more maps being on halo rings and big huge maps like in halo combat evolved with the forerunner structures…i thought it was so cool being on the installations.

17

I think they should make a SUPER MAP! A giant map(at least twice the size of forge world that features areas good for tanks and banshees, areas good for dmrs and shotguns, a low grav zone, great forge and flyable pelicans and dropship. Such map might be hard to make, but it would give halo amazing multiplayer, maybe just a remake of the WHOLE level silent cartographer would work.

18

> There is one very important aspect of maps I want to bring up. Sure, map can always be balanced and even look nice, but these two can only make it a good map. In order for the map to be amazing it needs flow, they need freedom of movement. Lockout is an amazing example of this, you could jump almost anywhere on the map and end up performing a cool trick jump that saves you a lot of time.
>
> The Cage again, is on the other end of the spectrum. On top of being unbalanced, it also restricted movement from the bottom. Basically Uncaged fixed some of this, but the map really had some other major issues. Anyway, come to think of it, most maps in Halo Reach pretty much lack on this area. While a huge important factor is jetpack, the maps too have problems.
>
> The flow can be accomplished in many ways, jumps that aren’t obvious and require skill are one, of course the general way how routes are located. A route should never end in a dead end (Powerhouse) or few defined paths (The Cage). Of course movement paths are especially good on some BTB maps when not used on every map. Standoff would have been a great map hadn’t it had bad spawns. Rat’s Nest was nice because you had this smaller inside area and the outer route sircling the map with vehicles driving around.
>
> So, in order for map to be amazing it needs not only to be balanced and good looking, but flow seeamlessly.

The reach comunity has forged some great maps. Maybe the maps can be based on the comunity maps because there so good.

19

there needs to be a mix of big maps and small maps, which should start players off on equal footing, have just a few power weapons in hard to reach places, and a good spawn system.

20

for competitive play, maps should be symmetrical. think of how awesome the pit from halo 3 was. ranked team slayer/mlg games on those kind of maps are a blast and always a fair struggle for map positon. the better team wins on those kind of maps.