First, the obvious. You cannot ignore the success of the battle royal format. Halo 6 will likely need a battle royal playlist, and it needs to be more than an afterthought, or I doubt it will be particularly relevant. It could be awesome in the Halo universe. I don’t want the whole game to be BR, but one playlist would be great.
Second, Halo has seen a trend towards realism, both in mechanics and art. This has been the subject of lots of debate on every Halo forum I’ve seen and I am loathe to open it up again, but Fortnite’s success is good evidence that there is a sizeable FPS market for games that emphasize fun over realism. The color palette, the accessibility, the lack of visual clutter, the movement, etc. all eschew realism. Halo CE was a visually simple game with a pleasant color pattern and simple, yet deap mechanics. It was never realistic. It worked then, it works now. Certainly realistic games are popular also, like PUBG, but that’s not Halo’s heritage.
Open platform. Cross platform matchmaking on nearly every kind of device is the wave of the future. I realize this is the impossible dream given MS’s business model, but it’s a mistake. Halo can no longer drive an entire platform on its own. Give up that illusion and make H6 available on every platform. Let everyone play against everyone else. Certainly having it on Windows 10 is an improvement, but it isn’t everywhere. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be.
In any case I just want Halo to be on top again, and while I’m not a fan of chasing every trend, some are so powerful that they can’t be ignored. This is one of them.
> 2533274957674504;1:
> Halo 6 will likely need a battle royal playlist, and it needs to be more than an afterthought, or I doubt it will be particularly relevant.
I doubt it’s going to be relevant even if it’s not an afterthought, because the market for battle royale games is already filled with Fortnight or whatever. Instead of trying to fill that niche, Halo should try to fill the niche for a Halo game.
Now you might be thinking there isn’t a niche for Halo games anymore, because the franchise’s popularity has dropped off in recent years, but I think there is still a niche for Halo games to fill. It’s just a matter of whether or not Halo 5 is filling it, and I say it could be doing a much better job of that. Instead of spending a bunch of time and resources on some battle royale thing, 343 should focus on making sure Halo 6 is a solid, complete Halo game that’s not designed around trying to make players want to purchase lootboxes, and not half-finished at launch, and has a large amount of playlist options including a polished firefight mode for PvE. That would be a much better way of making Halo successful than simply copying some other successful franchise and trying to fill its niche.
My gut tells me BR gameplay as it exists in the PUBG/Fortnite model is a fad. I don’t believe it will be this big for too much longer, and frankly, it really doesn’t fit the Halo universe. The graphics are something that are highly subjective, and I don’t know that there is any “win” for 343I, if they make it too cartoonish, they will get lambasted for making a game of toys, if they go too far the other way, they get lambasted for moving away from the Bungie Halo artstyle.
This thread should be changed to: ‘Who does Microsoft need to fire from 343i so that Halo can become a half decent franchise’.
> 2533274957674504;1:
> In any case I just want Halo to be on top again, and while I’m not a fan of chasing every trend, some are so powerful that they can’t be ignored. This is one of them.
The only reason halo should even bother with battle Royale is if it introduces its own unique style of it, simply slapping battle Royale won’t do. Furthermore will the fanbase be willing to sacrifice current aspects to make way for it? What happens when btb or warzone goes just to get BR in? 343 could also develop their own unique mode that has yet to be implemented rather than doing something that’s been done. Even if a BR does get implemented how much will it attract players? Why should people leave PUBG or Fortnite to try halos version? This is the issue when you follow trends as the originals typically keep their followers while the newer games only pull in a minimal fraction. If you copy trends you HAVE to offer something the rest don’t.
as for the visuals: I think the issue is more to do with them just ditching the art style that was already in place. The unsc looks more practical, much if the covenant aesthetics only resemble the old style just enough that you can’t tell what it is (elites still are elites but look quite different for one example). Realistic or cartoonish won’t bother me at all but I’d imagine a good portion of the fan base wants a middle ground where it sits in between. Nevertheless I think the core issue is more art style over the actual graphics themselves.
im also in 100% agreement on halo needing to ditch its exclusive title and just open up to everyone. It’s no longer this flagship franchise that it used to be and it’s not the system seller like it was in the past. Instead it’d just be more effective to get more players overall by opening up to every platform possible, especially when cross platform gaming is slowly making a rise.
another thing to take into consideration is changes 343 would have to make for battle Royale. The engine WILL have to change. It already struggles with 24 players so if people want the BR experience of large lobbies then servers would need upgraded, the engine will most likely need changed and it’d take some time to get it all going. During this time (and that’s assuming 343 already isn’t doing something with BR in mind) that opens up opportunities for everyone else to get their foot in the door. This in turn just lessons halos chance on taking a good slice of the market, so would it be worth doing at this point or just coming up with something new themselves?
I hope Halo doesn’t have a BR mode. The Fortnite/PUBG era will likely be waining by Halo 6 releases in 2019, gamers will be looking for something new.
343 should focus on evolving Firefight in meaningful ways. If they take anything from Fortnite, I think it should be base building. Imagine your Spartan running around with the support of a Monitor team mate who builds walls and fortifications, spawns turrets and vehicles to help your team survive the onslaught of enemies. Kind of like a mashup of traditional firefight with warzoneFF and base building aspects.
I think Bungie had been playing around with the idea of a verses Forge mode in Reach before it was cut. 343 could build off that.
> 2533274957674504;1:
> Halo 6 will likely need a battle royal playlist, and it needs to be more than an afterthought, or I doubt it will be particularly relevant.
No, it won’t. Just because those types of games are popular doesn’t mean every franchise needs to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, unless Halo has some unique twist that it can add to the genre (and not be just PUBG or Fortnite with the mechanics of Halo), cobbling together a trendy gamemode will do no favors to Halo. Players who want to play Halo will play Halo regardless. Players who want to play Fortnite or PUBG are already playing Fortnite or PUBG. The likely mediocre outcome of a hastily added gamemode would likely hardly attract new players, and the diversion of resources would likely have a negative impact on the quality of the rest of the game.
This is not a trend Halo 6 will benefit from in any way. (In fact, I would argue that established franchises hardly ever benefit from jumping on these sorts of fads.) The best thing for Halo 6 is to do its own thing, and seek a niche that makes it stand out from the rest of the shooters. Not necessarily because that will make it good, or popular, but because that at least won’t make it forgettable.
By the time Halo 6 releases, most likely the battle royale trend will die out such as everything else. I think they should just keep doing what they have planned or come up with something on their own.
> 2533274825830455;8:
> > 2533274957674504;1:
> > Halo 6 will likely need a battle royal playlist, and it needs to be more than an afterthought, or I doubt it will be particularly relevant.
>
> No, it won’t. Just because those types of games are popular doesn’t mean every franchise needs to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, unless Halo has some unique twist that it can add to the genre (and not be just PUBG or Fortnite with the mechanics of Halo), cobbling together a trendy gamemode will do no favors to Halo. Players who want to play Halo will play Halo regardless. Players who want to play Fortnite or PUBG are already playing Fortnite or PUBG. The likely mediocre outcome of a hastily added gamemode would likely hardly attract new players, and the diversion of resources would likely have a negative impact on the quality of the rest of the game.
>
> This is not a trend Halo 6 will benefit from in any way. (In fact, I would argue that established franchises hardly ever benefit from jumping on these sorts of fads.) The best thing for Halo 6 is to do its own thing, and seek a niche that makes it stand out from the rest of the shooters. Not necessarily because that will make it good, or popular, but because that at least won’t make it forgettable.
Although there’s a PUBG guy in me who would love to try out the game type with Halo graphics and gun/motion mechanics, I have to admit that I agree with virtually everything you said, but there’s one point on which I feel the need to expound:
“The likely mediocre outcome of a hastily added game mode…” made me think immediately of WZFF. That was as tacked-on a piece of poorly thought-out game design as I can ever remember seeing in Halo. And yet it manages to be immensely popular, to my great annoyance. Maybe I’m misinterpreting what I’ve seen and experienced in this game, but I’m not sure that the lesson of WZFF holds no implications for a Halo battle royale.
> 2533274957674504;1:
> Halo CE was a visually simple game with a pleasant color pattern and simple, yet deap mechanics. It was never realistic. It worked then, it works now. Certainly realistic games are popular also, like PUBG, but that’s not Halo’s heritage.
I don’t think this was a conscious choice. I think it was because Halo CE is an ooooooold game. And old games didn’t have a lot to work within terms of graphics. I would bet money that if Bungie made halo today they would opt for a more realistic approach compared to cartoony. I’m also willing to bet that if they made Halo today it would have started with sprinting as a game mechanic.
But I kind of like the idea of a pubg game mode. I don’t think 343i should make a whole game mode out of it though. I think they have something pretty fun and original with Warzone firefight, and I think it would be better if they focused on improving that. But there are a few pubg maps in the customs menu that people have made in forge and they’re pretty fun. I think a better idea would be if they added some pretty big maps (like the really huge ones on Reach for example) and the option to play with pubg rules, and that should be enough. The community will then handle the rest.
I think what 343 can learn is that they can’t do a normal BR themed game if they did decide to go that route. Fortnite took the BR concept, but they made it unique and fun with all the cartoonish stuff and the building abilities which made it stand out from the crowd. If 343 decides to do a normal BR game, it’s just going to get lost in the crowd of other BR games that could possibly be a dying fad by then and it likely won’t have any kind of big success outside of the hardcore Halo fans who buy all their games.
Or… How about a halo game? We saw with halo 4 and 5 what “following the trend” does. It divides the community as soon as advanced movement became popular in cod,titanfall,and other games they added advanced movement and the community did not like it. What happened to halo being the trend setter. It doesn’t need to hop on the bandwagon with BR games. They just need to make a halo game that is different and that stands out and if they do make a BR game mode they need to make it unique like others have said above
> 2533274950960631;2:
> If it was up to 343, halo would be on every platform possible. Sadly, Phil spencer has other ideas.
I’m not so sure on that. If it were honestly up to 343, I think they’d keep Halo to the Xbox. The idea of Halo being played on Playstation or Nintendo is weird. Can you imagine playing Mario in a Playstation game or Crash Bandicoot in an Xbox game?
> 2546678360738636;18:
> > 2533274950960631;2:
> > If it was up to 343, halo would be on every platform possible. Sadly, Phil spencer has other ideas.
>
> I’m not so sure on that. If it were honestly up to 343, I think they’d keep Halo to the Xbox. The idea of Halo being played on Playstation or Nintendo is weird. Can you imagine playing Mario in a Playstation game or Crash Bandicoot in an Xbox game?
> 2533274900668879;19:
> > 2546678360738636;18:
> > > 2533274950960631;2:
> > > If it was up to 343, halo would be on every platform possible. Sadly, Phil spencer has other ideas.
> >
> > I’m not so sure on that. If it were honestly up to 343, I think they’d keep Halo to the Xbox. The idea of Halo being played on Playstation or Nintendo is weird. Can you imagine playing Mario in a Playstation game or Crash Bandicoot in an Xbox game?
>
> It’s more likely than you think.