To 343: How to make H5 MP last for years

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I’ll preface this by stating what should be obvious: Halo 4 multiplayer does not last. Thousands of players have left and are unlikely to return.

You might think they’re bored casual players, but I disagree - despite what they might claim, I belive the majority of Halo multiplayer fans are competitively-geared. The average excited young kid in Halo 3 wanted a 50, wanted Recon. These are not casual traits, but highly competitive.

I feel as though 343i’s multiplayer designers made a critical mistake in not realising this fact. Halo 4 has a great many fun-geared playlists, free of the “overcompetitiveness” of a visible ranking system. It’s standard modern FPS fare, with sprinting and ordinance drops. Sniping is easy and carefree without descope, and you always know when rockets are up, thanks to waypoints. SAW and Railgun are basic point-and-shoot power weapons, and you can even have a charged shotgun as secondary. The flag comes with an infinite ammo magnum. Instant respawn. AAs. Weapon choice. Grenade alerts.

It’s all so easy.

Do players like taking it easy? The opinion on these new features is divided into two groups, and this is important:
Those who don’t mind the new features
Those who passionately dislike the new features

This is all a result of a miscalculation on 343’s part that people like simplification - that Call of Duty and Battlefield’s features are expected to be standard in FPS. Nay, this is not true at all. In fact, these games flourish as a result of their uniqueness, not their standardness. CoD is fast-paced and SWAT-like, BF games are huge.

Halo 3, despite its flaws, is treated as the gold standard of Halo games. (My apologies to CE/H2 purists.) It is a paced game, in which you position your team steadily and strategically. Movement is not easy - you csn’t run away from a grenade or a BR fight, and player speed is slow enough such that a good strafe is necessary to win.

This is a definitive style of gameplay. It’s tough. Even self-proclaimed casuals like myself enjoy the difficulty. It’s why LASO and the Global Championship are so popular. Halo players enjoy difficulty.

Action Sack was designed in Halo 3 to be a fun, open playlist, but now elements of it have seeped into Infinity gametypes, as if Fiesta is the height of gaming fun that must be copied.

This is not to say that I dislike Halo 4 multiplayer. I play every day. The precision weapons are supremely balanced. The BR feels better than ever. Even the Assault Rifle is a bit skilful (burst fire is super accurate). Haven and Abandon are classics. 343 update and improve multiplayer like nothing I’ve ever seen.

But it’s not the same tough-but-fair game as Halo 3. Hell, I get almost the exact same feeling winning in H4 as I do in winning a Fiesta Classic or Infection game. Instant gratification, nothing more. No 50 to build towards.

Halo 5 needs to take a page out of the likes of Dark Souls, oldschool FPSes like Marathon, and of course, classic Halo. Tough but rewarding - this should be any developer’s mantra. For a game to be a classic, it must be long-lasting and replayable. I feel the campaign of Halo 4 is perfect, and now only the multiplayer is left to improve. Not to be condescending, but for 343’s first game, it’s amazing. I believe 343 will do what’s right for Halo in the future.

2

Now THAT is constructive criticism. Well done, and I agree 100%.

3

Agreed.

Halos Campaign wouldn’t be as popular without Legendary difficulty. Multiplayer isn’t so different.

4

Great post OP, I completely agree 100% with everything you said. 343, PLEASE TAKE NOTE AS THIS POST WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE HALO 5 A LONG TERM SUCCESS.

5

It is worth noting that people do actually like some of the Infinity features. Not “don’t mind”, like. Perhaps even love.

IE- I really enjoy the loadout system.

6

343 will hopefully learn from tgheir mistakes.

Halo 4 has greatly improved with its TU since launch. And there are many post of the forums with people discussing what they like and don’t like.

I think the next Halo, will have to cater to both player groups. By having two match making play list to choose from.

A Classic and an Infinity Play List, unless 343 can implement a new system and pleases both groups.

But no matter if the next Halo was the best in the series, and had a higher player count than Halo 3 years later after release.

People will still find things to complain about.

7

Yes I agree completely. My favorite part about this post was it was very constructive other than that it is very sound. I would say add a few Infinity Playlists and then rest Arena styled. Then add Ranked and Social with visible CSR. Will please a lot of people and bring Halo back to the top of the mountain.

8

A lot of so-called criticism of Halo 4 is fairly bad, cliche, bandwaggon, etc. But this is a pretty good read that I can’t disagree with. It was balanced and well spoken, without the drama queen antics of most of the forum.

I also love Halo 4 but feel some things could be standardized for a more balanced, predictable (in a good way) competitive game. Dialing back some of the world ordinances (simply initial spawn weapon system) and making personal ordinance more standardized should be a good step.

Loadouts are fine and I hope they remain. Some of the passive abilities can be a bit more creative, though, as I feel their effect isn’t enough to exists right now. But yeah, the ‘FPS Grind’ style is a finite carrot on a string that would not keep players for long - which is why something like CoD is annual to begin with (along with other financial reasons).

9

> It’s all so easy.

… wut

Yeah, you have more advantages than you did in Halo: Reach and below but the problem is, so does everyone else.

The only thing I can think of that babies you a little is a grenade indicator and I’ll tell you this much. In Halo, if the grenade is skillfully thrown, it won’t matter if you see it or not. It will blow up incredibly fast or stick to you which hardly gives you any time to react, much less dodge it effectively, unlike CoD’s terrible, slow grenades. shudder And besides, in past Halo’s, it was usually pretty obvious when someone chucked a grenade at you anyway.

The game hasn’t gotten any more simple. It just has different or more things in it. In fact, if anything, it’s even more complicated than ever.

10

I agree it’s not just loadouts and weapons breaking halo 4 something els is Off. The players are faster, smaller harder to hit,plus the increased game speed. 343 prolly felt that increased auto aim would help players adjust to proportion changes so now guns have way to much aim assist. Everything feels too twitchy in halo 4. The recoil that’s been added to all the guns too. I just played reach for the first time in a while and besides the demon that is armor lock, its a more skillful game that halo 4. Halo 4 feels like reactions and reach is more about shot placement. I think I like shot placement better

11

I thought Gandhi’s thoughts on this were quite good as well. I see a lot of similarities between his ideas as well as the main post here.

Looking back at the improvements 343i have already made since the release of H4, I feel hopeful that they will implement at least some of the ideas in H5.

Cheers.

12

Keep sprint

13

> > It’s all so easy.
>
> … wut
>
> Yeah, you have more advantages than you did in Halo: Reach and below but the problem is, so does everyone else.
>
> The only thing I can think of that babies you a little is a grenade indicator and I’ll tell you this much. In Halo, if the grenade is skillfully thrown, it won’t matter if you see it or not. It will blow up incredibly fast or stick to you which hardly gives you any time to react, much less dodge it effectively, unlike CoD’s terrible, slow grenades. shudder And besides, in past Halo’s, it was usually pretty obvious when someone chucked a grenade at you anyway.
>
> The game hasn’t gotten any more simple. It just has different or more things in it. In fact, if anything, it’s even more complicated than ever.

Poorly-worded, I suppose. In that context, when I say “ease” I mean “comfort” rather than “not hard to win”. Losing is made to be less of a blow to the player, and the fun of a game comes more from things like getting ordinance and using jetpacks rather than succeeding at the game itself. Even I find using the thruster pack fun, but it’s fun without any effort.

But still, no descope, smaller Spartans, weapon waypoints and whatnot do take some skill out of it. A good player used to know that overshield was up because two minutes had elapsed since they took it, but now even bad players are aware without the need for thought. Longer range BR battles paired with autoaim mean strafing and Gandhi hopping are just about useless. Maybe I’m a bad player, but I don’t think I’ve strafed (or needed to) even once in H4.

I want these features to stay. Just not in every playlist, certainly not ranked.

14

I think it’d be good to have Classic (Halo 3 style) and Infinity gameplay, that way you have a bit more variety

15

> It is worth noting that people do actually like some of the Infinity features. Not “don’t mind”, like. Perhaps even love.
>
> IE- I really enjoy the loadout system.

I don’t mean to make myself seem like I’m part of the “Yoink! you! Go play CoD!” crowd, but you’re part of a minority. In terms of population, that much is clear. Sure classic Halo was becoming a little bit aged, but there’s better–ableit harder–ways to improve a game than translating the features of another game into Halo.
Halo has almost infinite potential; 343 needs to accept that their direction was the wrong one of thousands to take. Simply put; they have two more chances to start anew, <mark>and Halo 4 shouldn’t define the rest of the Reclaimer trilogy</mark>.

16

How is it possible that one forum goer has a more intelligent viewpoint on the multiplayer than the entire multiplayer development team? Seriously 343i, is it that hard to think?

17

> A lot of so-called criticism of Halo 4 is fairly bad, cliche, bandwaggon, etc.

Cliche? I wasn’t aware that the goal when giving feedback, is to be unique.
It’s quite obvious that a lot of feedback is going to be the same, seeing as the feedback is derived from the same game.

Bandwaggon? Again, I wans’t aware that standing out from the crowd is the goal when giving feedback.
Should feedback not be honest? In spite of whether or not it is popular or has already been said.

Just because you notice patterns in the negative feedback that people give, does not mean that those people are copying off each other.

I’m sorry but that’s a very ineffective way of trying to invalidate people’s opinions on the game.

18

> > A lot of so-called criticism of Halo 4 is fairly bad, cliche, bandwaggon, etc.
>
> Cliche? I wasn’t aware that the goal when giving feedback, is to be unique.
> It’s quite obvious that a lot of feedback is going to be the same, seeing as the feedback is derived from the same game.
>
> Bandwaggon? Again, I wans’t aware that standing out from the crowd is the goal when giving feedback.
> Should feedback not be honest? In spite of whether or not it is popular or has already been said.
>
> Just because you notice patterns in the negative feedback that people give, does not mean that those people are copying off each other.
>
> I’m sorry but that’s a very ineffective way of trying to invalidate people’s opinions on the game.

Not to mention that practically all the information on this site proves the critics’ points; polls are almost always unanimously in favor of altering armor abilities, changing active camo, removing sprint, etc.

19

You made a post criticizing much of what Halo 4 has done without going off on a tangent about how armor abilities are the worst creation since ET the Game. For that I respectfully…

Agree.

20

Agreed.

Casuals can enjoy a competitive game.

However, competitive players cannot enjoy a casual game.

Also, if I wanted a casual fast paced game with short kill-times and unbalanced gameplay, I’d go play CoD.

If I wanted a fast paced game, with specialized units, and lots of vehicles, I’d play battlefield.

When I wanted to play a more competitive, balanced, slower paced game, with or without vehicles, I played Halo.

Guess which one I played the most? Halo… and some Battlefield. Love the jets.