- Bring back and use what worked!
Every Halo to date has had good and bad aspects to them. What needs to be done is with this next title is to utilize these good aspects and not toss them for some new idea which will most likely fail. An example of this was firefight. Spartan Ops had great potential in H4, but what it lacked was the ability to play it over and over again. 343 needs to keep what worked well with previous Halos because when as a developer you hit on a great idea that people like you build a fan base for that aspect, but when you do not include that it your next title you isolate those people and take out what they enjoyed.
- A feel of community.
I feel that a lot of games today really lack is that their players are not part of something bigger then themselves. Halo 3 really took this idea and ran with it. Bungie really put in place the infrastructure that made the game easy to find friends and easy to build individual groups which fueled the desire to play the game. They did this by the way their website functioned and by way they did their multiplayer. I can not describe it but before the party system was implemented people were forced to talk to one another and work together when they played.
- Matchmaking.
This is the aspect of any current game that needs to be perfect when a game is released. Without enjoyable and replayable multiplayer any game will eventually become boring and dull. This can be shown with what happened with Halo 4. H4 had the best graphics of any game on the 360 and had a great campaign, but nobody plays it really anymore due to its multiplayer. Not only does the in game aspect to multiplayer have to be good but the overall design of the matchmaking experience needs to be enjoyable. Then design of the menus and the ranking needs to give a player the feeling of “Wow I can’t wait to go play because I only have a couple more victories before I rank up”. The ranking system needs to be designed to where when you get a rank it means something. It just should not be obtainable through just playing. Rank needs to be a reflection of how you are as a skilled player, not just how much time you play the game.
This post maybe was not structured very well, but I believe that I hit on some important aspects of the game Halo which we all know and love. If there are any other things which I missed that are important post in the comments below!
I agree. Here’s my 3 things, in no particular order:
Social fun:
What’s important at launch in terms of community is a working file share system. Ever since Halo 3, in my opinion, people haven’t been checking file shares, downloading, and disturbing gametypes as much.
More importantly, though, is the infection gametype. If 343 wants to maintain a community, Flood has to go and return to old infection where gametypes could be modified to play a wide variety of fun things.
Competitive Features:
343 may think that appealing to the competitive community isn’t important because the numbers of Throwdown are low, but that’s because the Halo competitive community is spread across a wide variety of games. There’s people playing Halo 2 XBC, Halo 3 Ranked, Halo Reach MLG, and lastly, Halo 4. The new Halo game, whether it be H2A or H5, needs to gather all of this community into one place, that being the new game. 343 can accomplish this by:
-Skill based ranking that cannot be abused
-Small Arena Maps
-Return of on-map powerups and powerweapons
-Consistent hard to use utility weapon
User Interface:
Needs to have less clutter and be more appealing. These Holographic Pokemon Cards are simply terrible.
OP, I gave your post a thanks, so don’t get the idea that I don’t agree with you.
Your first point about bringing back what worked is so very true. I’m not talking about “equal starts, no gimmicks, arena style”. I’m talking about everything else Halo had that we didn’t get. Theater, Forge, Custom Games, Fileshare. These were the things that made your second point: A Feel of Community. There was so much else to do in a Halo game that you could completely ignore multiplayer. The “competitive” Halo 3 community was no match for the Halo 3 Forge/Machinima/Custom Games community (ok I cheated and combined 3, but you get the idea). All of these things were available in Halo 3, then they got better with Reach. If you didn’t like Reach’s multiplayer you could still Forge some good custom games and make some interesting Machinima. There was still a reason to put the disk in the machine. With the new game everything went backwards or didn’t happen. Multiplayer fell short, SpOps went away, and there’s nothing left. Match that up with no interaction at all between fans and the developer and you have a complete lack of what worked.
What worked prior to Halo 4 was the ability fans had to participate in Halo’s growth. Fan participation gave us Griffball, racing games, and Red vs Blue. Can’t do anything like that now. Play what they give us or don’t play. Look what happened.