Watched a new video of Halo: CEA of the level “343 Guilty Spark” and a terminal.
Although it looks nice… its nothing compared to what it was 10 years ago. The original level had a lot more fog, alot more rain, and alot less light. How it is now really just destroys the atmosphere it had in the first place.
> Okie dokie…
> Listen/Read please BS angel and 343; GRAND IDEAs(2) HERE
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> First idea: Have a VIP rewards system. Such as from Bioware’s idea area, registering your game titles from all the Halo’s to your profile, which allows in later games armory unlocks and customize multiplayer things.
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> Second idea: Allow people who buy collectors edition’s for all halo games to have discounted or a VIP pass (example: LA Noire, MK9, Battlefield) on all new DLC releases. This would allow the LOYAL halo’ers to have thanks from 343 for their support and loyal spending of a wonderful franchise.
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> Ill be back with more…
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> Trust me ya want GOLD, I’ll make them Platinum
I like the VIP system. It’s a good idea. But DLC should be equal for all players(unless its a sale, its still to all players). The majority of people who don’t buy the “Legendary Edition” of the game simply can’t afford it.
Reach Title Update Playlist Ideas:
Slayer Pro needs to have it’s own playlist, along with Elite Slayer. I, personally, play Team Slayer and Squad Slayer to use AA’s(<3 Camo, Yea, I’m THAT guy). I enjoy SWAT and Arena without AA’s when I get SUPER Crappy randoms(Not all THAT often but it still happens)
Community needs its own playlist as well. I personally feel like Team Slayer is just a disappointment seeing as how a lot of the maps have game-breaking camp/spawn trapping spots. Not to mention I can never find the right copy of the maps in File Share so I can download and get used to the maps and find where everything is.
Wouldn’t mind seeing a collaborated playlist that didn’t have any grenades also!
> I have an idea for Forge in either an updated Halo: Reach (if possible) or definitely Halo 4.
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> I’d like to see a “smart” spawn system available in Forge where you can edit the spawn points to have a certain possibility of spawning. For example, say you have a map with a red and blue base. You have the red and blue spawn points in their respective bases, and then you start placing neutral spawn points in each base. Now you can choose to edit the neutral points to have a “one-fourth chance of red guy spawning” with one spawn, but have another spawn with “three-fourths’ chance of blue guy spawning” and so on, and so forth.
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> Also, my mother was a fan of Halo: CE, and I asked if she had any suggestions for Halo 4. She says “I want the Grunts to be a force to be reckoned with. Don’t make them look different, give them a superweapon of something.” So try to please my mother 
Lol a grunt with a RL! They already have the FRG… but Gruntpocalypse with nothing but RL Grunts would be overkill… Armor Lock here I come!
I do have to say yuck for the bloomless dmr gameplay. Hopefully that’s just for classic mode. Its not hard to aim at someones head and spam the trigger. Might as well put away every weapon for good cause the god weapon has returned to Halo. If its only in classic that would be one mode you won’t see this gamertag on. I still love you Halo.
> > I would appreciate the following achievement in CEAnniversery
> > Clear any of the levels without setting foot in a vehicle.
> > thanks
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> I would specify a level. There are at least 5 levels in CE that don’t even include vehicles, including the first level, so it would be completed automatically.
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> Unless you meant all of the levels… that might be a challenge if it was on heroic or legendary
Halo,Silent Cartographer or Assault on the Control Room. Any one of those levels would be fine with me
Saw the damnation gameplay. The bloomless DMR scares the hell out of me. Really guys. If you are going to give that weapon no bloom, it needs to be at least a 7 shot kill. That 5 shot kill is asking for a one weapon game again, which is what ruined Halo 3 for me.
At least for classic. Either balance the DMR out, or remove both it and the Needle Rifle for classic so I can avoid it. Then I can use the hopefully not overpowered classic Magnum.
Everything else is looking stellar. Keep it up!
> Okie dokie…
> Listen/Read please BS angel and 343; GRAND IDEAs(2) HERE
>
>
> First idea: Have a VIP rewards system. Such as from Bioware’s idea area, registering your game titles from all the Halo’s to your profile, which allows in later games armory unlocks and customize multiplayer things.
>
>
> Second idea: Allow people who buy collectors edition’s for all halo games to have discounted or a VIP pass (example: LA Noire, MK9, Battlefield) on all new DLC releases. This would allow the LOYAL halo’ers to have thanks from 343 for their support and loyal spending of a wonderful franchise.
>
>
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> Ill be back with more…
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>
>
> Trust me ya want GOLD, I’ll make them Platinum
Wait a second. Im a loyal Halo fan and have all halo’s but the only special edition I own is Reach. This becomes unfair to people who cannot afford the special edition prices and in turn then punishes other customer/fans. By having a VIP it would be a better Idea to maybe sign up for a yearly or quarterly fee such as Bungie Pro therefore there are no restriction on who can or can not be a VIP member. Also, It is unfair to just give you armor unlocks that need to be worked for. The idea of a video game is to work for goals not have them handed to you. Although, with the limited editions certain things are given before others, Such as the Recon helmet in Reach and many other things. Yet, The extra money for the special edition give the purchaser an elite status for doing such a thing. But this does not make them a bigger fan or supporter which in turn does not make them special for any treatment over anyone else.
I was thinking that as they are running a new graphic layer in Anniversary they could make the Elite in the elevator in The Maw look more like how Zuka 'Zamamee was described in the book. I’m not suggesting that they change the scene to add a shade turret, just give the Elite black Spec Ops armor. I think it would be a nice little nod to fans of the books.
can we have back the first person view when being a passenger in the warthog, and other vehicals in halo 4 please? that was awesome in halo 1.
I consider your feedback from not buying the Collectors, but i have solutions for ya’s ppl!
You a) make it like L.A norie and MK9 like i posted previous and spend 750 MS points and it is a VIP code that allows you to get all DLC from then on.
For b) {not being mean with this} who have the moneys to buy collectors maybe allow them the VIP code for free.
VIP area could be called --RECLAIMER pass-- and that would allow you to use (biowares system) to add your halo games to the system and receive free things. Such as armor things.
more idea’s to come, trust me its epic
> I was thinking that as they are running a new graphic layer in Anniversary they could make the Elite in the elevator in The Maw look more like how Zuka 'Zamamee was described in the book. I’m not suggesting that they change the scene to add a shade turret, just give the Elite black Spec Ops armor. I think it would be a nice little nod to fans of the books.
I want this too.
I’ve been playing halo multiplayer since halo 2, and though I’ve never been one of the best players, I’ve been around for a long time and seen a lot. I have the most fun in large scale big team style games, so all of my advice is going to be for making those better. Oh and there’s a lot here. I hope you brought your reading glasses.
Part 1:
This is general advice for the weapon and vehicle sandbox. If you’re entirely scrapping most of the CE through Reach sandbox and starting fresh, this portion will be much more helpful than the second portion where I’ll go over individual weapons and vehicles.
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If you have something like invasion where you have two teams with completely different weapon sandboxes, these weapons need to be a little more tightly balanced with each other. One side shouldn’t spawn with two hitscan weapons and a headshot weapon while the other side spawns with a couple of non-hitscan non-precision weapons. One side shouldn’t get a close range weapon that’s blatantly superior, and that same side shouldn’t also get a better explosive weapon AND a long range precision weapon that does much more damage much more quickly while also being able to damage vehicles.
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There should be a 3 state rule when it comes to failing in a vehicle. What that means is that there should be roughly an equal chance of the 3 end states of a player’s time in a fresh vehicle. Furthermore, most attacks on the player should have at least two of these options as a possible outcome. These are A. player dies but vehicle survives, B. vehicle dies but player survives, and C. vehicle and player die simultaneously. This helps to avoid monotony for people who are spending a majority of their time in vehicles. It inserts some much needed uncertainty to encounters which are sometimes mathematically predictable. Generally boarding a vehicle accomplishes option A, leaving a vehicle accomplishes option B, and using a power weapon on a vehicle accomplishes option C. The warthog, ghost, mongoose, and revenant follow this rule pretty well. Being boarded leads to option A, flipping over leads to a perfect toss up between the three, and power weapons and other vehicles tend to cause option C.
The wraith, banshee and scorpion generally ONLY have options A and C. Being boarded in a banshee always results in A while damage from any source always results in C. Being boarded in a wraith always results in C (!) while damage from any source always results in C.
This was different in halo 2. In halo 2, being boarded in a wraith or scorpion resulted in a toss up between all 3 because if the driver was quick enough, he could jump out and fight the person who boarded him. If he weren’t fast enough, the player who boarded the vehicle could choose to quickly destroy the vehicle, or slowly kill the pilot and then use the vehicle himself. Power weapons would often kill the driver of a vehicle without killing the vehicle, and boarding a player didn’t hurt the boarded player much, and didn’t cause a stun, allowing the boarded player to fight back and sometimes retake or destroy his old vehicle. Even though the most likely outcome was A, (the new driver of the vehicle killing the old) there was also a possibility for B (the new driver’s vehicle is destroyed by the old) or C (the old driver destroys the vehicle and dies in the process.) Also, the ghost had a spot (roughly the size of a spartan head) where it could be shot, causing the vehicle to be destroyed with almost no harm to the player. This was satisfying for the person firing, and fun for the person on the vehicle due to unpredictability and the rush of escaping near certain death.
I also want to add that the delayed explosion mechanic that was in the halo reach beta, where you would catch on fire and then explode, helped massively with the 3 state rule. If you took just enough damage to catch your vehicle on fire, you could jump out and narrowly escape the explosion, allowing option B to be a satisfying alternative for savvy players who knew when to bail. It looked cool, it was fun, and it allowed for greater uncertainty in how your vehicle ride was going to end. Reinstating it would be a great start towards applying this rule.
- Vehicles should generally be harder to kill than a player outside of a vehicle, but only a little bit more powerful (or even sometimes weaker.). This avoids situations where all of the vehicles kill each other in the first minute of a game and players end up having to face the long walk across hemorrage. (tankier lower damage vehicles kill each other slower, resulting in more tactical gameplay) It also avoids situations where one team facerolls the other team and locks the entire playing field down with an unstoppable barrage. (lower dps vehicles allow players a better chance of regrouping and gathering power weapons.) Reach has a bunch of vehicles which die really quickly to sustained fire from any weapon, but which have way too much firepower. Compare the banshee in reach with the banshee in halo 3, or even halo 2 if you want an even more powerful example. The bomb has become so powerful that it is absolutely impossible to avoid, and will always kill you, while the banshee has become infinitely more easy to take down. The tanks both suffer from this same problem, although the warthog, ghost, and revenant all follow this rule well. It takes 3 hits generally for a revenant to kill a player, which takes quite a while, but the advantage of a revenant is that it protects it’s driver while using this relatively weak weapon.
- Vehicles (and weapons) which kill in one shot should be harder to hit enemies with such that it takes about the same amount of time for an average driver to get a kill with the one shot kill weapon that it would have taken to get that kill with a rapid fire vehicle. (The warthog/assault rifle is always a good baseline for this.) This stops OHKO vehicles from becoming so powerful that they don’t fit in the multiplayer sandbox at all (H3 Gauss Hog, Campaign hornet), or can only achieve balance by being made of paper. (Every OHKO vehicle in reach.) This also allows for a player’s vehicle preference to evolve as they evolve as a player. A new player may gravitate towards weapons and vehicles that achieve a sure fire kill slowly, such as the warthog or the assault rifle, whereas a skilled and experienced player will gravitate towards a binary style kill or miss style vehicle like the gauss hog/tank/wraith/whatever. As an alternative example, a new player would prefer the plasma repeater mode of the banshee while experienced players would stick with the banshee bomb. As it is now, the banshee bomb is so powerful that even a very new player will use it exclusively. (But of course that new player will never get to fly the thing, because it’s been removed from most maps due to being really difficult to balance, and blows up immediately upon entering unless your team locks everyone down or you’re the godliest pilot ever. See rule 3.) ONLY the wraith even comes close to following this rule. The scorpion fires so quickly and has so much splash damage that it has to be removed from any map where it’s not going to get boarded by a million people the moment it spawns, and the banshee bomb has so much splash damage that there’s no point in even trying to avoid it.
Again, look to halo 2 for how to solve this one. The gauss hog was really hard to aim with, so that for most players it took around 3-4 misses to kill an infantry opponent. This roughly equalled the warthog in killing speed, while allowing for the vehicle to be added to most maps and gametypes. It also let weaker players gravitate towards the regular hog, allowing more skilled players to choose the vehicle they had more fun with. The tanks both fired very slowly and had limited splash damage, which resulted in more missed shots and a better chance for the enemy to fight back. Of course, they killed other vehicles quickly, but that’s the advantage of a powerful and inaccurate weapon.
On the weapon front, the sniper rifle follows this rule perfectly in every halo game to date, as well. It takes a player like me 2-3 shots to kill another player, sometimes many more. The sniper rifle is still an effective weapon for me, especially at long ranges where the enemy can’t fight back easily, but I gravitate towards weapons that kill more slowly and have more leeway for missing, such as the DMR or even the assault rifle. Meanwhile, there are other players who can kill people very quickly and efficiently with it due to accuracy and skill.
- Encounters where infantry fights a vehicle with an anti-vehicle weapon should require input from both the vehicle and the infantry. Furthermore, the more skilled the infantry player is, the more skill should be required from the vehicle player. This simply means that the driver of a vehicle should have some chance to respond (most of the time) to an incoming attack, and that it should be harder to respond to that attack if the enemy player is skilled. The missile pod in H3 used against a banshee is a great example of this. When a missile pod locks onto a vehicle, the driver is alerted immediately due to an alarm sound and is allowed to take evasive action. This requires a split second assessment of where the shot is coming from and a resulting maneuver to escape it. The enemy player can make the maneuver more difficult by waiting until the banshee is distracted or very near, such that even a skilled banshee wouldn’t have time to avoid it.
The laser and reach sniper break this rule MASSIVELY and results in frustrating and completely unavoidable deaths. (Unless the player using it sucks and misses.) The sniper is even worse than the laser, because at least with the laser you get a little red line that gives you a chance to evade. (Although almost any player will be able to still hit an evading banshee.) The worst part about the whole thing is that not only is mastery over the vehicle player’s fate completely removed from his/her hands, the result is always option C from our earlier rule about vehicle end states. The exact same thing is going to happen every time a laser or sniper is leveled against you, no matter what you do. Fun for the sniper or laserer, frustrating and dissatisfying for the driver/pilot. There are several solutions in this case, as making the weapons more compliant with the 3 state rule would help, but giving the vehicle a way to respond to the threat skillfully also would. For the former strategy, the player could sometimes survive their banshee exploding (although possibly not the fall to the ground), for the latter, the player could be alerted that a sniper or laser is being aimed at them through a H3 style alarm. Both together might be even better.
Oh and finally, armor lock in vehicle games breaks this rule as well. The only smart player response to armor lock is to entirely stop attempting to splatter enemy players. (a behavior that is highly risky to begin with due to boarding!) Using armor lock against a vehicle is as simple as realizing a vehicle is coming and timing the ability properly. This is another egregious example because it breaks the 3 state rule too. Armor lock almost always results in a dead vehicle. BAM. It’s your fault for trying to splatter someone at all right? The simple solution is to make it not kill at all. If a vehicle rams a player in armor lock, the vehicle should bounce off awkwardly and generally flip over. This would allow the driver to exert mastery over the situation by pushing themselves onto their wheels, it would still function as an anti-splatter countermeasure, and it would comply with the 3 state rule. (A. vehicle flips over and armor lock guy guns down the driver. B. vehicle flips over and armor lock guy grenades it, missing the driver but destroying the vehicle, C. Armor lock guy grenades the flipped vehicle, destroying it and it’s driver.)
Anyway, if you get the vehicle/weapon sandbox to more closely follow those rules, I think that the big team experience (and potentially smaller scale games) will be greatly improved. Campaign might be a little adversely effected though, but I strongly believe that the sandbox should be balanced around multiplayer first and campaign second. It was a lot of fun going around in the gauss hog in halo 3 for the 10 minutes we were allowed to drive the thing, but think about how many balance problems it caused in multiplayer over the years! The best solution to this is to have an OP version of a vehicle for campaign and forge, and a more balanced version for multiplayer matchmaking. (H3 did this with the hornet, and H2 did it with the wraith, which fired much more quickly in campaign.)
Part 2:
What follows is a comprehensive list of things I’d change about reach to make it comply with the advice I gave in part 1 and with other small gripes from the playerbase.
Lets start with the weapon sandbox.
Rocket Launcher: Lower the splash radius a little bit, or make damage drop off a little faster at the edges of the radius. They feel a little bit too powerful (against infantry) as they are now. (Rule 4.) In previous halo games you had to be fairly accurate with them, but in reach you can just fire one in someone’s general direction and they’ll die.
Sword: Take a long hard look at sword blocking. The sword is already a fairly weak weapon compared to other close range options such as the shotgun or heck, even the assault rifle. Does it really need a semi random mechanic that completely shuts it down in order to keep it balanced? It doesn’t make sense in the lore (spartan’s are equipped with anti-sword plates in their forearms?), it’s incredibly frustrating to deal with, and it makes spartan vs elite gametypes even more unbalanced than they already are. I think the fact that the sword forces you into really close range (especially painful with how slow people move), has a prohibitive ammo/energy mechanic, and only does a little bit more damage than a regular punch would do is enough to keep it from being as out of hand as it was in H2. (Generally, if you’re running at someone and shooting, the punch would have killed them by the time you got to them anyway.)
Shotgun: Almost perfect as is. If you make the sword a little better to make up for the fact the shotgun by it’s very nature will win head on fights often, it’ll be fine in invasion too.
Sniper: It’s great, but tune down how much damage it does to vehicles a little bit. It’s great that it’s helpful against vehicles, but it really sucks to have your entire set of vehicles trashed by a single guy on a cliff with a completely unavoidable death machine. It doesn’t need a major nerf, just make it take a hit or two more to take out most vehicles. (You should have to at least RELOAD to kill a banshee by yourself >_>) Either that, or make certain parts of vehicles more vulnerable than other parts, so that the sniper has to actually aim to be as deadly as they are now. (Wraiths have the engine thing in the back and the pilot’s head, ghosts could have the little engine thing on the side be relevant again, warthogs could have a gas tank to aim at, etc.) Also, consider having the sniper sometimes kill a vehicle without killing the player inside. (Through disabling it and sending it into a freefall where a player could jump out before it hits the ground and explodes, or smashing it open and knocking the player out without exploding it.)
Plasma launcher: It’s fine as it is against ground vehicles but a little bit OP against flying ones. In a ground vehicle, you can get cover in the way with some quick thinking and block the shots, but in the air you’re a sitting duck. IMO the tracking should be just a tiny bit worse against vehicles so that they’re avoidable IF you saw them coming from far enough away and moved erratically enough. Against infantry it’s pathetically weak compared to the rocket launcher. Increasing the splash damage would be one way to bring it more in line with the rockets, but you could also bring back the multiple target paint functionality it had in the reach beta.
Focus rifle: Perfect against infantry. It should do a little more damage to vehicles though. Either that, or it should have a bit more impact against vehicles so it can slow them down or flip them over. Actually, it would be kind of neat if it did less damage to players too, but slowed them down. This would make it even more of a support weapon than it is now, and would give it more of a unique feel.
Needle rifle/DMR: They’re almost perfectly balanced against each other and they’re both fun and satisfying to use. There are some issues with bloom that other people have gone over in much more detail than I ever could. (And the infantry side of things isn’t really the focus of this post.) Basically though, spacing your shots should be a good idea more often, and spamming should be a bad idea more often.
Assault rifle: I think it’s clip size is a little bit much. You can spray all over the place and miss most of your shots and still kill someone. Compare this to the pistol which kills at almost exactly the same speed but either has to land a headshot or not miss at all to get a kill without having to reload. I’d say reducing the AR clip by about 10% would fix the problem.
Plasma repeater: It’s a little weak compared to the AR. (Although it’s much more fun to use.) The AR kills faster and is more accurate at longer ranges. The PR needs some kind of advantage to balance out the fact that it’s not hitscan. Maybe add a slowing mechanic or some other kind of debuff?
Armor abilities: All of them are fine except for armor lock. Make vehicles bounce off it and get flipped over and I won’t have any problem with it. (Although many other players will because it’s kind of a loathed ability in smaller games.)
Now for the vehicles!
Ghost/warthog(both kinds!)/revenant/mongoose/everything else: Perfect!
Wraith: Pretty good. The shot it fires should have slightly reduced splash damage, but other than that it’s fine. HOWEVER, I think it should still be able to fire it’s main gun while being EMP’d. Being EMP’d in a wraith basically means you’re dead, because they’re just going to repeatedly hit you with it while they waltz over and board you. It’s especially crazy when you realize that every other vehicle can fire it’s primary gun while emp’d. Heck, the banshee can even drop bombs while it’s flopping around on the floor. Wut? What balance reason is there for the wraith to be affected so strongly by the PP?
Scorpion: The scorpion breaks rule 4 over it’s knee. It kills in one shot, it fires ridiculously quickly, and it’s splash damage is insane. Of course, as a result it was removed from any map where it’s weakness of being squishy didn’t come into play at all because nobody could get within 3 miles of the thing. It’s only still on boneyard CTF because it spawns directly in the middle of the map where players from both side swarm all over it like little greedy ants and it gets immediately boarded and destroyed. The shot needs to be slowed down, or it needs to have it’s splash damage massively reduced. Make a special super scorpion for campaign if you have to.
Banshee: Similar problems to the scorpion. The banshee bomb is the most OP vehicle weapon I’ve ever seen. If the banshee is heading towards you, you are already dead, whether you have cover or not, because you’re about to get nuked. Of course, it’s as fragile as it looks. So you get in it, you get a triple kill or a killing spree in 20 seconds, and then you inevitably explode. Bleh. I’d rather have a vehicle that applied a tactical presence to the battlefield for a good chunk of the game than a god vehicle that gets blown up within 20 seconds.
Anyway, thanks for reading this far. I know you guys love halo to pieces and I trust you with it. Halo wars was amazing and your map pack looks great. I really hope that you guys make a game with a big team environment that is as amazing and exciting as halo 2 showed me it could be. Make it happen. <3
While Title Updates should focus on adding new content, it would really be stupid if existing Reach glitches got overlooked. The only two I can think of right now are the Gauss Warthog / Forge World objects glitch (it goes right through them), and the glitch where if you set a gametype to limited lives and everyone dies, the gametype doesn’t end - you have to wait out the (possibly infinite) time anyway.
This is probably already in the works, but I just want to make sure it gets done. Either accompanying or shortly after the TU and CEA, can you (343) please create a lot more playlists that require DLC? Not counting the new Classic playlist you’ve said you plan to make, I expect at least a few more DLC-required playlists (Noble, Defiant, and Classic) like Slayer, Objective, maybe Big Team, and maybe Action Sack. Because currently Reach only has two DLC playlists, and about 30% of the time in those playlists you play non-DLC maps (I know, I don’t get it either.) And getting a DLC map in a non-DLC playlist doesn’t happen nearly as often as Bungie made it sound like it would.
I saw a match of the halo aniversary multiplayer on halo waypoint and I was pretty dissapointed. I was hoping it would be the older style incorporated into a new gameplay. Im not a big fan of the Reach gameplay. I thought it was gonna be like an ugraded halo 1 style with multiplayer. Just though id share my opinion. Theres a lot of other people that was hoping for this too.
before even thinking about doing anything for those who whine about armor lock, or bloom, or lack of halo3’s melee bleedthrough, or jump physics ect:
should look at “fixing” spawncamping. it breaks the game far more than just one guy not moving or doing anything for 6 seconds max. can’t enjoy the game if you’re trapped in the spawn screen and killed before you can even take a step. people quit in frustration of being totally prevented form playing ect.
thats the -Yoink- people leave the game over, not some bitchy issues with armor lock
http://www.youtube[dot]com/watch?v=_173FBZiZ00&feature=related (broke the link so it isn’t a link)
so if anybody thinks bloom or armor lock needs to be removed or messed with, first stop and think weather you love spawntrapping…if you do then shut it and suck it up
(as your lot is so fond of saying to those whining about spawncamping: ‘‘get better, adapt, or go find another game you don’t suck at’ noob’’).
this is not saying I think they should fix/remove spawncamping by say adding a half second antikill shield on spawn to all mm playlists to prevent spawncamping, but if you’re gonna mess with anything with a tu that’d be top of the list.