When Does Community Feedback Cease to Matter?

Games Other Halo
1

I’d like to know when, during the development process for a Halo game, does offering a suggestion have no value? In other words, let’s say 343 has lost their minds and decided not to use hitscan for Halo4. At what point can I say, “Hey, if you don’t use hitscan you’re just making a stupifying and huge mistake that will cost you millions of dollars in DLC money for no good reason.”, and they’ll have time to un-screw it for Halo4.

So, 343, if you’ve made a boneheaded decision to have the BR/DMR type weapon not have perfect accuracy and long range, how can I help you help us? When does that ship sail? Do you already have a horrible BR/DMR mechanic in place, so we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes in the past, or is there time to save Halo4 now?

I know it right now. I know there is some MP guy from 343 pitching insanely stupid ideas to Frankie. How can we stop him? How much time is left to stop that stupid guy pitching aiming handicaps into Halo4? He must be stopped now! Before its too late.

Here’s a crazy idea. Take all the amazing things that worked in Halo2, and improve upon them. No handicapping.

Improving. Nurturing. Refining. We love what was given in HaloCE andHalo2. Think about why. Then, embrace it. Don’t re-invent the wheel every Halo game. Stop the insanity.

2

um can you explain this to me, i dont quite get your point your trying to make?

3

> um can you explain this to me, i dont quite get your point your trying to make?

He wants to know if what the community thinks affects how the game is developed, and how far our voice goes.

4

He’s asking at what point in development will 343i be unable to change or add something the community requests (excluding the beta, if it has one). I hope this question is answered, it would help me out when putting together ideas for future Halo games.

EDIT: Oops, that last post wasn’t there when I started writing this.

5

> um can you explain this to me, i dont quite get your point your trying to make?

Let’s say 343 has decided to go with no damage bleed for all precision weapons for Halo4. Can they change that or is that now forever embedded into the code for Halo4 and they won’t have time to fix that insanely bad decision.

I want to know when there is no point offering gameplay opinions because they won’t have time to change anything. Heck, it could be right now. Halo4 may be beyond changing. So whatever atrocious decisions have been made are coming to a video game retailer near you at the end of next year.

Let’s stop the horrible decisions before the game is finished, rather than suffering through another wonky, poorly devised MP game again.

I’d like to know what Halo4 is doing with the MP mechanics BEFORE its too late. So community feedback might actually have some value. Mostly, community feedback never has any value because all the horrendous decisions are already living and breathing in the code. What is Halo4 doing so we might be able to actually suggest something 343 can use.

6

k thx

7

> He’s asking at what point in development will 343i be unable to change or add something the community requests (excluding the beta, if it has one). I hope this question is answered, it would help me out when putting together ideas for future Halo games.
>
> EDIT: Oops, that last post wasn’t there when I started writing this.

No, by the Beta its already way to late. If something is fundamentally awful, like everything in Halo Reach, its way too late by the Beta.

We need to know the fundamentals of Halo4 NOW, so we can maybe help with an idea that has any real value.

Like, had we known about the stupid damage bleed for Halo Reach, someone might have said something that would’ve made Carney say, “Hmmmm, maybe we should take another look at it. Maybe the game will play too slow and become really melee focused and then we’ll have Infection be the highest populated playlist which would be embarrassing.”.

COD keeps the shooting mechanics very similar for each release. Cuz if it ain’t broke… Halo on the other hand changes the shooting and shields and nades and bullet travel and all manner of things for every new game. Why??? I thought we found something we loved in HaloCE and 2 when it came to all this. Yet it gets dumped for every new game. Why leave fun to find fun?

8

I think a much earlier released exclusive beta with more to test out would fix the issue. Most betas barley give you anything to toy with, and they’re released within a few months of the finished game’s release, and don’t even last very long. If the Waypoint community received a beta much earlier, got to play it longer, and was able to use more of the games features in it, we as a community would be more informed about how the game handles and therefore could give intelligent feedback on virtually any aspect of it, making it the best it can possibly be.

9

> I think a much earlier released exclusive beta with more to test out would fix the issue. Most betas barley give you anything to toy with, and they’re released within a few months of the finished game’s release, and don’t even last very long. If the Waypoint community received a beta much earlier, got to play it longer, and was able to use more of the games features in it, we as a community would be more informed about how the game handles and therefore could give intelligent feedback on virtually any aspect of it, making it the best it can possibly be.

No thanks. I’m talking about pre-alpha. When they are tinkering with the awful decisions. Let’s kill those immediately.

Like, honestly, if they are going back to bullet travel time and random spread for Halo4. STOP!!! DO NOT DO THAT! Right now!

What if they are going for even slower average kill times. STOP!!!

I’d really like to know now what the fundamental mechanics are so maybe someone can shed some light on why that may not be a great idea for the Halo style gameplay. I don’t want another Reach. Let’s stop the madness before it takes hold in the game.

10

I see what you mean, but I think the devs need some time to build a foundation (alpha phase) before the community can influence a game for the better. If we all just start throwing in our ideas for development and they do what we tell them, they’ll end up creating a game that everyone will probably hate. Add that on top of there as just simply too many of us with different ideas and suggestions. We all want things to be a certain way, but we can’t all agree on everything. I think the trick is to meet the majority of the people’s common needs for a game, so at least we can all agree on something.

In short, the developers should be the ones to develop the game. Let 'em do their thang.

11

> I see what you mean, but I think the devs need some time to build a foundation (alpha phase) before the community can influence a game for the better. If we all just start throwing in our ideas for development and they do what we tell them, they’ll end up creating a game that everyone will probably hate. Add that on top of there as just simply too many of us with different ideas and suggestions. We all want things to be a certain way, but we can’t all agree on everything. I think the trick is to meet the majority of the people’s common needs for a game, so at least we can all agree on something.
>
> In short, the developers should be the ones to develop the game. Let 'em do their thang.

But that’s the beauty of having past games to draw feedback from. Right? Its not like they have to re-invent the wheel.

Yet for every new Halo game, they re-invent the wheel. INstead of improving upon what worked, they dump what worked for the new thing. Why? Boredom? Ego? Who knows but they need to take a deep breath and look back at what worked and why it worked.

I think they really need to examine kill times and what there ancillary impact to gameplay is. For example, now the kill times are so long with shooting, the game is a melee saturated thing. Why? because its quicker and easier to kill with melee’s and or melee weapons.

So, learn from that. Make the starting weapons have a kill time like Halo2. Then, players might shoot at each other in a first person shooter game. Crazy idea, I know. Also, why fear accurate powerful weapons when Trueskill can sort out who should play with who. If a game has a large skill gap, Trueskill can sort it out. Then, everyone wins.

There needs to be someone at 343 who gets it. Who understands why HAloCE and Halo2 worked so well. It starts with kill times and skill gaps. MM can sort players out from there. You make the gunplay unrewarding for skill, and you lose your audience. The beauty of Trueskill is that you can make a really difficult game to play, and it won’t hurt anyone. You make a game with a real skill gap, and players will get that rewarding feeling again, and want to improve. For Reach, there is no incentive to improve because you battle the game as much as you play it. Takes too long to kill. Play well, watch a guy Armor Lock and sit frustrated. Honestly, making Halo4 should be easy if they just accept what was great for past games and go back to it. Keep it simple. Keep it clean. Keep it Halo. Save us Frankie.

12

Variety is a good thing. People like it too. I understand what you mean about “re-inventing the wheel” but gamers don’t want to buy a new game if it’s the same thing as the last. Things need to change every so often to keep people interested in it. This is the biggest reason why I’m not considering buying Modern Warfare 3. I’ve been a fan of CoD since CoD4. A few new things have been added here and there, some things tweaked. In general though, they’re all the same game. It gets repetitive fast and extremely boring after a while.

What I’m trying to say is every new generation of a gaming series needs some sprucing up. Nobody wants to see the same regurgitation of a game they bought years ago. Change is good.

> Nobody wants to see the same regurgitation of a game they bought years ago.

The only exception of this is Halo: CE. That game is legendary and deserves refurbishing.

13

Meh I think Halo: Reach had alot of community influence onit, but I think that basically The Community are mainly not professional game designers and simply do not know what they want.
I though the Halo: Reach Beta was Epic fun, fresh and quite competitive, but the community of MLG wined about the DMR’s magasine being too short and the normal gamers complained about the magnum being OP and the AR being UP and in the end we realised the larger magasine of the DMR promoted spamming , the magnum is not worth putting all the focus into using because its only one kill per mag.
It’s where the developers have to seperate the “good” feedback from “not great” is where it matters. so if someguy proposed " Hey shall we add bloom in the game " if that feedback was considered as " not so great feedback " then the game we are playing now could of been very different.
It’s all down to developers decisions.

14

Depends on the change you want. If it’s something big like, hm… removing bloom from Reach, then community feedback doesn’t matter the minute they find out about it. It was a design choice and they knew from the start a lot of players wouldn’t like it and they weren’t gonna change it, ever. If it’s something small, like the colour of something, then I’m sure as long as the game hasn’t gone into production there might be some chance of getting it changed. Who knows, though.

15

How about for the next Halo game we DON’T have a mid range precision weapon that can cross map effectively, hmm?

It was impossible in CE and borderline impossible for Halo 2, so why make the change?

16

> Depends on the change you want. If it’s something big like, hm… removing bloom from Reach, then community feedback doesn’t matter the minute they find out about it. It was a design choice and they knew from the start a lot of players wouldn’t like it and they weren’t gonna change it, ever. If it’s something small, like the colour of something, then I’m sure as long as the game hasn’t gone into production there might be some chance of getting it changed. Who knows, though.

Its fundamental things that touch all parts of a game where a designer doesn’t know what’s going to be the impact across the board until its tested.

Kill speeds were too long for Reach. The impact is a melee game instead of a shooting game. And Infection is now the most popular playlist.

It think the golden Kill speed time is Halo2. Everything flowed at that kill speed time. I still wanted to get that power up or power weapon, and I could choose to do some things on my own, even playing with Randoms. Playing alone in Reach isn’t fun because team shooting is forced and randoms don’t team shoot with coordination. If you can play a game of Halo alone with randoms and have fun, you’ve made a great halo game.

17

> Its fundamental things that touch all parts of a game where a designer doesn’t know what’s going to be the impact across the board until its tested.

Bungie are practically testing 24/7.

18

> > Its fundamental things that touch all parts of a game where a designer doesn’t know what’s going to be the impact across the board until its tested.
>
> Bungie are practically testing 24/7.

But from past Halo games core things have been tested. Things are tried and true. Why dump them?

Why would hitscan ever be dumped? Why would they ever drop power ups like they did in Reach? Why mess with aim? You’ve got to find a happy place with Halo as a dev and leave some things alone. Every Halo game disenfranchises thousands of fans for no real good reason.