Things Halo 4 got right

Games Other Halo
1

The forums seem to be too cluttered with complaints about changes that were made and sure I think not all change was for the better but I think it’s important to list the changes that were made that we like so 343 has an idea about what DID work for the community. Here is my list of things 343i got right, please post your own and feel free to disagree with mine.

-Sprint is always available
-Join in progress
-Having social playlists (all of them in this game lol) search by rank (CSR could use some tweaks of course)

2

Edited by Moderator - Please refrain from making nonconstructive posts.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

This is a troll thread right? How can anyone say this game got anything right?

3

>

Is someone who enjoyed Halo 4 a ‘troll’ now? I don’t think I was ever taught that.

That isn’t a very constructive post and I recommend that you edit it into something that won’t get you in trouble.

On-Topic

I personally think that 343i nailed it with:

  • The campaign. Halo 4’s campaign, while it may have been linear, had an absolutely brilliant story that shattered anything that Bungie had pulled off previously.
  • Armor customization. While most of the armor permutations looked terrible, the amount of customization was not.
  • Forge. Despite the backwards steps in mechanics, the dynamic lighting in Halo 4 made the maps look absolutely terrific and I didn’t really have to worry about having the structure be mismatched in lighting. Not too mention that the duplicate and lock tools and how selected objects are highlighted made forging faster and made it difficult to delete the wrong object.
  • Audio. In Halo 4, the sounds in the game are absolutely perfect and are extremely powerful sounding. However, I will say that I don’t like how some of the iconic sounds, such as the Energy Sword, were changed.
  • Soundtrack. While its implementation into the game was sub-par, the score was brilliantly composed and perfectly captured the feel of the game.
4

Well other than a few hiccups, like the “no-scope-from-across-the-map-autoaim” beamrifle or the pre-rebalance DMR, halo 4 probably has the best weapon balance of any halo, and as far as armor design goes when they do get it right they get it really right.

5

> The forums seem to be too cluttered with complaints about changes that were made and sure I think not all change was for the better but I think it’s important to list the changes that were made that we like so 343 has an idea about what DID work for the community. Here is my list of things 343i got right, please post your own and feel free to disagree with mine.
>
> -Sprint is always available
> -Join in progress
> -Having social playlists (all of them in this game lol) search by rank (CSR could use some tweaks of course)

-Sprint 24/7 is never a good thing. When you give everyone the ability with sprint. Power weapons become way too powerful. Double melees went from mild annoyance to huge annoyance. The fact that people can get away way too easily gives most of the starting weapons less value to them when all you really need is the Battle Rifle and a Mauler, I mean Boltshot.

-JiP is really only useful when the matchmaking population is flourishing with gamers. When you join a bare bones playlist that has the potential of JiP, you’d be setting yourself for disappointment because if a population is low, it USUALLY stays low for good reasons. Which to date over half of the playlists is under 1000 players.

Oh and please don’t even try the excuse of “You’re not playing during peak hours.”

-Many of the social playlists that people like aren’t permanent, which this is a problem. First and foremost, is DLC. I don’t think I need to explain myself there.

6

Shot registration and connection issues are much better than any halo game. I get laggy games every once in a while but unbearable connections are usually sorted out a few minutes into the game.

7

> -Sprint is always available

can’t agree, but that’s due to my stance on sprint entirely

> -Join in progress

join in progress promotes quitting, i’d say the LoL system of once you quit you can only join back to your game / high penalty for quitting, would be a better system.

> -Having social playlists (all of them in this game lol) search by rank (CSR could use some tweaks of course

it’s not good / the same as before if it doesn’t work, social needs to be ranked, even if it is invisible and quite loose, to ensure there is less mis-matched teams, so hopefully this concept can be refined

> The campaign. Halo 4’s campaign, while it may have been linear, had an absolutely brilliant story that shattered anything that Bungie had pulled off previously.

personally i disagree, halos’ story may have become more complex, however the way it delivers its story through the medium of the game is appalling.

aside from that, i feel it has ditched what made the story so amazing in the first place, which was that it is a huge reference to how religious, mythological, folk and science-fiction stories are told and the amalgamation of the contents within those stories, the story feels quite forced now and feels somewhat disjointed due to the change of hands and what thy’re wanting to do with the story development.

> Armor customization. While most of the armor permutations looked terrible, the amount of customization was not.

as long as there is a larger amount of good looking permutations than previous titles

> Forge. Despite the backwards steps in mechanics, the dynamic lighting in Halo 4 made the maps look absolutely terrific and I didn’t really have to worry about having the structure be mismatched in lighting. Not too mention that the duplicate and lock tools and how selected objects are highlighted made forging faster and made it difficult to delete the wrong object.

i would disagree with nearly your entire statement.

dynamic lighting is an awful idea if it cannot be quantized or turned off, most forge maps were incredibly dark and looked awful / became nearly unplayable because of its lack of light, allow it to be turned off or give the player the option to create light volumes.

dynamic lighting made the lighting on maps incredibly mismatched in comparison to reach or h3 as there was not enough space to have consistent lighting volumes throughout the created map.

i do agree with duplicate and lock, however if 343 need to borrow forging ideas just look at 3d modelling software like maya, i’m sure they could create more basic forging tools for the player, instead of one or 2 per game.

also despite that making forging faster, forging became much slower due to lack of precision editing.

8

dunno about the american or european scenes, however the australia / new zealand scene thrived due to reach’s good connection search.

it turned a mediocre/average halo game into a good enough one for us, due to ability to find consistent local games, something that is unavailable across most MM titles, halo 4 does not have this feature giving us consistent laggy games.

aside from that, i feel that reach had a better shot registration based on LAN gameplay and local online gameplay across all titles.

9

>

People can say Halo 4 got things right because it got things right in their minds. It’s pretty simple. If you can’t handle people having opinions other than your own on the Internet, fine, but don’t be a jerk about it, and at the very least try to explain why you disagree.

Honestly, I shake my head at the idea that Halo 4 did nothing well.

The champaign is one of the best we’ve ever had (Yay, character development!) and both the graphics and sound effects were superb. Can you tell me why that point of view doesn’t make sense now please, instead of spouting off accusations of trolling?

10

> personally i disagree, halos’ story may have become more complex, however the way it delivers its story through the medium of the game is appalling.
>
> aside from that, i feel it has ditched what made the story so amazing in the first place, which was that it is a huge reference to how religious, mythological, folk and science-fiction stories are told and the amalgamation of the contents within those stories, the story feels quite forced now and feels somewhat disjointed due to the change of hands and what thy’re wanting to do with the story development.

Explain this further please, as well as to why one of the old “gods” coming back to wreak havoc on us mortals doesn’t fit in with that.

Personally, what you’re talking about has never really been what interested me in the story, but it’s an interesting idea I would like to hear more about.

11

> I personally think that 343i nailed it with:
> - The campaign. Halo 4’s campaign, while it may have been linear, had an absolutely brilliant story that shattered anything that Bungie had pulled off previously.
> - Armor customization. While most of the armor permutations looked terrible, the amount of customization was not.
> - Forge. Despite the backwards steps in mechanics, the dynamic lighting in Halo 4 made the maps look absolutely terrific and I didn’t really have to worry about having the structure be mismatched in lighting. Not too mention that the duplicate and lock tools and how selected objects are highlighted made forging faster and made it difficult to delete the wrong object.
> - Audio. In Halo 4, the sounds in the game are absolutely perfect and are extremely powerful sounding. However, I will say that I don’t like how some of the iconic sounds, such as the Energy Sword, were changed.
> - Soundtrack. While its implementation into the game was sub-par, the score was brilliantly composed and perfectly captured the feel of the game.

-I would argue that the Campaign was story wise was the best in the series so I am in agreement with you there.
-Lots of armor options is a good thing
-Forge was best in Reach but the snap tool and some of the other things added were good.
-I cannot disagree with you more on the audio direction but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

12

The only thing I can currently think of is guests having access to all armor and weapons/equipment the main player has unlocked.

And that’s all I can think of.

13

While I agree that 343 got things right in halo 4, I don’t really agree with your original statement, OP. I think that if halo didn’t have sprint, it would’ve been better accepted by the community. And I think, while the join in progress is a good idea, if it is changed slightly. If 343 allowed you to select whether or not you find a join in progress game or not, then it would’ve been perfect.

I also think that they tuned the weapons really well after the TU (apart from the assault rifle), the campaign was absolutely amazing, and the graphics were beautiful, unfortunately there’ll always be floors in a game and there’ll be people to whine about them. Hopefully 343 takes everyone’s feedback with a pinch of salt and understand that halo 4 was a really good game, especially since it was their first.

14

Multiplayer

-Addition of three new objective gametypes in Extraction, Dominion and Ricochet. Extraction being arguably the best gametype to see competitive settings yet.

-Hit detection is by far the best yet.

-JIP, although a controversial implementation, I would love to see it return to social play in Halo 5. It should not be in ranked playlists and instead there should be a heavy quit penalty.

-The expansion of the sandbox. People argue that there are far too many one hit kill weapons in matchmaking to which I would have to agree. However with the commendations, I feel this is necessary. Hopefully in Halo 5, we see a small variety of power weapons in matchmaking and leave the rest to Action Sack and custom games where they belong.

-Stances and Weapon Skins are a cool new addition and though I’m not completely for loadouts returning, I would defiantly like to see more customization in Halo 5 assuming it has no effect on gameplay.

-Though some maps are ones to forget, there are also some fantastic maps that not only play well but look amazing. Haven, Skyline, Monolith, Landfall, Perdition and Abandon are some of my favorite maps of all time.

Forge

-Duplicate tool is incredibly handy. It’s so much faster and convenient to previous iterations of forge.

-Halo Reach had one massive canvas. Halo 4 has multiple canvases with different pallets. Though I don’t particularly like the Erosion or Ravine canvas, I like the direction 343 are taking forge.

-The lock tool can come in handy as can magnets (though i personally dislike magnets).

-Trees and Rock Walls are very welcome additions to the forge mode. They may be exclusive to Forge Island, but they really bring a map to life.

Spartan Ops
The reason I want Spartan Ops to return is because I feel 343 know where they went wrong and need to improve. This may mean reducing the amount of levels and changing the gameplay up. Regardless I would love to see at least another 25 missions.

-The gameplay is repetitive and has little replayability value but with improvements I’d love to see another season to return in Halo 5 alongside Firefight. Firefight is an Arcade mode whereas Spartan Ops is deep and adds to the story.

-Though lacking in replayability, it still is another 15+ hours worth of gameplay. I myself have over 50 hours logged into Spartan Ops.

15

> > The campaign. Halo 4’s campaign, while it may have been linear, had an absolutely brilliant story that shattered anything that Bungie had pulled off previously.
>
> personally i disagree, halos’ story may have become more complex, however the way it delivers its story through the medium of the game is appalling.
>
> aside from that, i feel it has ditched what made the story so amazing in the first place, which was that it is a huge reference to how religious, mythological, folk and science-fiction stories are told and the amalgamation of the contents within those stories, the story feels quite forced now and feels somewhat disjointed due to the change of hands and what thy’re wanting to do with the story development.

I’m going to have to agree with Andycu5 on this one.

16

> Spartan Ops
> The reason I want Spartan Ops to return is because I feel 343 know where they went wrong and need to improve. This may mean reducing the amount of levels and changing the gameplay up. Regardless I would love to see at least another 25 missions.
>
> -The gameplay is repetitive and has little replayability value but with improvements I’d love to see another season to return in Halo 5 alongside Firefight. Firefight is an Arcade mode whereas Spartan Ops is deep and adds to the story.
>
> -Though lacking in replayability, it still is another 15+ hours worth of gameplay. I myself have over 50 hours logged into Spartan Ops.

Huh, I have never heard this point of view on Spartan Ops before. And I agree. Though I’d be fine if Firefight or something else replaced it, I don’t think 343 should just abandon the gametype entirely.

17

Load-outs, if we strip them down (alot) we could very well see an amazing feature that will help halo rather then break it…I.E Reach’s op AA selection and H4’s op wep choices (and pv,jp and ac).

Perks are…dumb.

18

> The only thing I can currently think of is guests having access to all armor and weapons/equipment the main player has unlocked.
>
> And that’s all I can think of.

I completely forgot about that one.

That feature is especially helpful for screenshots and machinimas.

19

Soundtrack was very good.
Halo 1-3 had more of a Covenant type music.
And now in Halo 4 you have more forerunner story so the music fit really good in it.
Of course there could have been some 1-3 type music for some covenant parts of the game

20

Even though I’m a halo vet, I still like the hitmarkers. Makes it a lot better knowing when I have actually hit the person online.

I like a few of the maps. Longbow, haven, and Skyline.

Weapons are balanced but this is ruined by load outs, PODs, and flinch.

That’s honestly all I can think of.