Having played Titanfall I can tell a few things about it.
A. it is balanced
B. it has loadouts
C. it allows you to call in your power up -> the titan
D. it is fun
It did these things even in beta and I can’t agree with anyone on the point that Halo 4 was A or C(while being balanced) at launch. In fact ordinance is still very unbalanced. So lets look at what Titanfall did to maintain its balance.
It has very few weapons, in the few categories it has to customize them. This is a very good thing as you won’t have to work as hard to maintain balance between the primaries. Next the anti-titan weapons aren’t very effective against pilots so there isn’t much of a reason to use them unless you have to fight a titan on foot. The titans themselves however allow the pilot to be better protected and deal more damage, but limit their mobility and field of view making it easy enough for a pilot to kill the titan.
That’s essentially the balance of the game, but that doesn’t necessarily make it fun until you consider the combination of the games 60fps to allow fast and fluid gameplay, the vertical aspect of the game and the fact its simple and skillful at the same time.
Halo 4 was not good at those things. It runs at 30fps, the game is poorly balanced with the saturation of weapons, nades and perks in the loadout, and while it did require skill later on, at launch when the most people were playing the high aim assist allowed people to get away with what would’ve been some pretty bad shots.
How does that even relate to this project though? These are all failures of a previous iteration of a pretty good franchise and who is to say they won’t be fixed in the next game? If these haven’t been already addressed there are a couple of ways to improve the next project:
standard ordinance options if personal ordinance is to remain, allowing players to predict to a degree what others would call in. The more randomized it gets, the harder it is to keep it in balance with the game.
No antivehicle weapons available in loadouts, frags will do just fine, power weapons capable of disabling non-regenerating vehicles are a bad idea when not map pick ups. Im looking at you plasma grenade and green gun.
Variety is not always a good thing when the becomes saturated with what are essentially reskinned variants of other guns in the game. It is simply not useful in a multiplayer environment. You can allow them in a custom games or forge scenario but honestly why are there those options in an online setting? The AR can be just as useful as the storm rifle and especially the suppressor in any given situation, that the minute differences between the two don’t allow themselves to any different style of play from each other.
The campaigns of the halo games have always been great, I hope they add more forge and customs options but at the end of the day, fast and balanced gameplay will always win out.
> It works for titanfall because titanfall is designed from the ground up with those concepts in mind.
>
> Halo 4’s problem is it tried to graft these concepts onto a franchise who’s sandbox is not designed for those concepts.
>
> Halo’s variety didn’t seem like it was an issue until 4, where so many guns got same-ified to be able to fit into loadouts.
Basically what he said. Halo should stay in Halo’s lane while Titanfall will stay in it’s lane.
Yes I realized I compared games on two different consoles, one of them last gen. The point is no less valid, fluidity brought about by 60fps is just necessary to stay competitive as a shooter.
I played it for 6 days now. Already reached prestige 3 and I see no reason to play this game anymore. I had a lot of fun with it but there is no reason to play it for me. Killing people with the shotgun and the Carbine is so extremly easy. I am already a god with these weapons. I played Halo 3 after that and guess what. It wasnt fast paced, but skillfull as hell.
And not every game should be or has to be fast paced.
Titanfall is fun for a while, maybe longer for casuals. But imo it is not skillfull and not competitive. I dont think we will see any big tournaments.
edit: oh and there is a pistol that aims for you. wtf?
> Yes I realized I compared games on two different consoles, one of them last gen. The point is no less valid, fluidity brought about by 60fps is just necessary to stay competitive as a shooter.
60 FPS was confirmed by Microsoft, so Halo 5 should run as smoothly as Titanfall.
Halo needs to decide if its a multiplayer game or a campaign/forge/TV show tbh. The money that goes into making good games on next gen is getting higher and with Destiny and now Titanfall stepping into the Sci Fi shooter genre Halo may either sink or swim. No guarantee’s anymore.
It’s so easy to look at a brand new game and proclaim how amazing it is. Play Titanfall 5 months from now and see how balanced it is once all your opponents find the cheapest weapons/loadouts.
The reason why it appears balanced with loadouts is because it is SUPER easy and quick to kill someone in Titanfall. It takes a fraction of a second to kill someone. In Halo, this isn’t the case. It takes seconds longer.
So weapons that appear to be balanced would not be. You cannot take one game that has loadouts and think it’s going to be balanced in another game with completely different gameplay mechanics.
Yes, Halo needs to be balanced and competitive but it doesn’t need loadouts or killstreaks or titans to do this.
I can’t imagine anyone attempting to play Titanfall in a professional competitive environment without heavily restricting the loadouts and etc. Titanfall is the type of game that’s a killer app in its first year and “oh yeah, I remember that game” the next.
> Titanfall and skillfull?
>
> I played it for 6 days now. Already reached prestige 3 and I see no reason to play this game anymore. I had a lot of fun with it but there is no reason to play it for me.
And this is exactly why games like Titanfall and Halo 4 lack replay value: once you use all of the abilities, there’s no other reason to play except to grind for experience. In competitive games, there is always room for improvement and always something to learn, and so there is always a reason to keep playing.