343i has done a lot for Halo, both good and bad in my eyes. They have attempted to recreate Halo and put their own personal stamp on the franchise, for good or for bad, which they have succeeded again. However, when does trying to be innovative and being different from the way Bungie did things start becoming detrimental?
343i has had some good ideas. I personally like all the new weapons. I think the Binary Rifle and Incineration Cannon are both fun weapons. I have learned to deal with the boltshot and even use it. I appreciate how they have brought back some of old favorites such as the Covenant Carbine. I don’t believe any of these by themselves “break” the game. However, receiving these items from a personal ordinance drop not only will frustrate many players who have dominated these players in a match, it takes away skill from the game for that very reason. I do not have a problem with personal ordinances. What I do have a problem is what one may get in these ordinances. I think that ordinances should have no more than grenades (plasma and pulse) powerups (overshield, damage, speed) and secondary weapons (boltshot, plasma pistol). This would balance the game as well as reward players with items that can help them in combat without starting with a weapon that may be overpowered.
I also do not have a problem with personal loadouts. I think they are a good idea, but again poorly executed. Again with the innovation that went too far. I have my own grudges such as being able to pick up grenades from dead bodies without having to use a perk and the whole flinch conversation, but that is for another topic. I like the idea of getting to pick what weapon you start with. But to start with overpowered secondaries? Nobody should be able to start a match with a one shot kill capacity weapon (boltshot). And not to mention starting with the plasma pistol combined with sticky grenades COMPLETELY kills vehicle play in Halo 4. The plasma pistol start has completely killed vehicle gameplay which is not acceptable in my eyes. Also, starting with a grenade other than the frag can be overpowered also, which I just described using the plasma grenade as an example. Armor abilities are for a whole different topic. They can be tolerated, but am still excited for Slayer Pro to come back 
I prefer to have set ordinances rather than the random ordinances because of the skill and map control needed for set ordinances. Playing on the forge maps with set ordinances are great. Knowing when the rockets will spawn on Despair or the sword on Lockout has won games for the team. Again just innovation that was not needed and changed the gameplay a lot. Also with all the little unneeded things that changed. Such as the big red X over the dead bodies! I know they put it on the HUD but how about SWAT or gametypes like that which do not have the mini radar? And it was nice seeing which teammates were in combat with their service tags changing colors.
tl;dr: 343 used unneeded innovations that ultimately changed gameplay and replaced skill with randomness
343 did not innovate at all. They copy and pasted features made famous from COD AND ruined the actual UI and customization options.
Innovating =/= Copy and Pasting from other games
I didn’t make this thread to compare the changes made to this game that may or may not have come from other games (as your example COD). I made it to discuss what I believe changed too much or in too extreme of a measure.
PS other games took things from older Halo games too
Halo 4 is the perfect example of going too far just for the sake of change.
> Halo 4 is the perfect example of going too far just for the sake of change.
Yeah, not a fan of ordnance drops, perks, tactical packages, or armor abilities, and the same can be said for a good chunk of the community. After the feedback from Halo:Reach, I thought armor abilities would be gone, but instead it feels like they forced armor abilities, and added even more choice/diversity for each player to choose from. Feels like 343i went pretty far for this change, even though from feedback it seemed like most of this stuff was unwanted from the majority. Change is good just not unwanted change
The campaign was pretty good for the most part, (At least in my opinion it was) new enemies and new planet, pretty nice graphics, but they also kept some stuff from previous Halo games, like flying through space (Sort of), driving through complete chaos at the end of a mission, although usually it’s a warthog and not a ghost. They kinda overlooked certain parts of the game, like when you’re flying in one of the last mission and you crash and the whole screen shakes if you’re on Co-op, that got annoying, the ending with only pressing a few buttons to defeat the last guy, that was disappointing although I think that was possibly because they ran out of time, anyways, Campaign had changes and it worked for certain aspects of the game.
It really depends on what you change and how you change it. Unfortunately they got their innovation of change from Halo:Reach and kept going down that road it seems, and many people liked Halo: 1/2/3 over Halo:Reach. That’s where the main problem is. At least that is how I see it, it’s fine if you disagree with me, just my 2 cents.
> 343 did not innovate at all. They copy and pasted features made famous from COD AND ruined the actual UI and customization options.
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> Innovating =/= Copy and Pasting from other games
true true
> I didn’t make this thread to compare the changes made to this game that may or may not have come from other games (as your example COD). I made it to discuss what I believe changed too much or in too extreme of a measure.
>
> PS other games took things from older Halo games too
I didn’t mean to derail the thread but I do not believe 343 has innovated anything whatsoever. There’s absolutely nothing new, notable, or original about halo 4 that is universally thought of as positive. Almost everything 343 would tell you they innovated came straight from Reach and CoD. they absolutely took changes too far and not in a good way. Their company modo should be change for the sake of change. I don’t mind change, as long as its positive and there is a reason behind it, that is not the case in halo 4
Also if 343/halo continues down this path than i woudnt expect any game in the future to be copying anything from halo ever again
> Halo 4 is the perfect example of going too far just for the sake of change.
Too far? Ha, in section 8 you spawn from 20,000 ft. up, hit the ground like a cannon ball wherever the -Yoink- you want to, and play a much more ambitious Sci-Fi FPS than Halo ever was. The jetpack is part of core gameplay, ordnance includes turrets, tanks, and mechs, and you can customize every single point of your stats in the loadout system. You can spawn in with rockets, snipers, and shotguns (in a game with the same health mechanics and roughly the same kill times as Halo) without it being broken. And most ambitiously for a Sci-Fi FPS, automatic weapons can be effective at range (which factors into “power weapons” becoming part of the sandbox rather than ways of getting around it.)
What I mean by that rambling nonsense about the larger world around us is that Halo 4 is not suffering from an overabundance of new ideas. Sure for that one change over between Halo 2 and 3 there’s a lot here but even just looking at the differences between Halo 1 and 2 (let alone what other games are up to) Halo 4 hasn’t gone “too far” by any stretch of a reasonable imagination. There may be problems with what 343 has done but that’s merely a matter of implementation, not volume.
> > Halo 4 is the perfect example of going too far just for the sake of change.
>
> Too far? Ha, in section 8 you spawn from 20,000 ft. up, hit the ground like a cannon ball wherever the -Yoink!- you want to, and play a much more ambitious Sci-Fi FPS than Halo ever was. The jetpack is part of core gameplay, ordnance includes turrets, tanks, and mechs, and you can customize every single point of your stats in the loadout system. You can spawn in with rockets, snipers, and shotguns (in a game with the same health mechanics and roughly the same kill times as Halo) without it being broken. And most ambitiously for a Sci-Fi FPS, automatic weapons can be effective at range (which factors into “power weapons” becoming part of the sandbox rather than ways of getting around it.)
>
>
> What I mean by that rambling nonsense about the larger world around us is that Halo 4 is not suffering from an overabundance of new ideas. Sure for that one change over between Halo 2 and 3 there’s a lot here but even just looking at the differences between Halo 1 and 2 (let alone what other games are up to) Halo 4 hasn’t gone “too far” by any stretch of a reasonable imagination. There may be problems with what 343 has done but that’s merely a matter of implementation, not volume.
section 8 wasn’t really that popular tho. a better example would be tribes, which section 8 copied heavily from. tribes had a huge following and still does today some 15 years later. that game was the is IMO the pinnacle of arena FPS, to this day no game is as fast paced, skill based (very high skill gap), versatile, addictive, and just plain fun. it just came a bit too early for its time, it is still years ahead of the current crop of fps games. i’m sure most of the kiddies (not saying you) will have no idea about tribes, but they missed on one of the most fundamentally perfect games ever created.
however, i dont think there is a possible way to balance all of the crap they forced into halo AND maintain what halo is at its core. 343i is just cashing in on the name halo and throwing together whatever crap they spitball in brainstorming sessions without really thinking it thru.
Innovations goes too far when something is changed, just for the sake of changing something.
> Innovations goes too far when something is changed, just for the sake of changing something.
a perfect example of this is how they took a near perfect UI menu system from Reach and then gave us the garbage UI in halo 4
> section 8 wasn’t really that popular tho. a better example would be tribes, which section 8 copied heavily from. tribes had a huge following and still does today some 15 years later. that game was the is IMO the pinnacle of arena FPS, to this day no game is as fast paced, skill based (very high skill gap), versatile, addictive, and just plain fun. it just came a bit too early for its time, it is still years ahead of the current crop of fps games. i’m sure most of the kiddies (not saying you) will have no idea about tribes, but they missed on one of the most fundamentally perfect games ever created.
>
> however, i dont think there is a possible way to balance all of the crap they forced into halo AND maintain what halo is at its core. 343i is just cashing in on the name halo and throwing together whatever crap they spitball in brainstorming sessions without really thinking it thru.
I never got around to playing tribes back in the day (my own history takes me from Doom to Jedi Knights to Unreal Tournament) so I can’t really speak to what that game did well (which is why I go to S8 instead. Regardless of whether or not it copied another game it still achieved something remarkable for a modern shooter in and of itself. And on a separate note isn’t the jetpack and sci-fi setting really the only major line connecting S8 to tribes? I can’t imagine that point-by-point stat customization and select-a-spawn-from-20k-ft. were part of mid-late 90’s PC gaming. Nor do I think that they’re paced in anywhere near the same way (that was probably one of the biggest problems with the original S8.))
Anyway I think the problem with Halo 4 is solely with “and maintain what Halo is at its core.” Not that we shouldn’t try to stay with what Halo is, but I think we need to re-examine what as a matter of fact makes Halo Halo. Is it matchmaking, a focus on competitive multiplayer (both introduced by Halo 2,) or is it something more fundamental with what separated Halo 1 from the rest of it’s competition (Goldeneye and UT according to my own experience). Organic gameplay, something that we’ve really lost in putting a lot of the emphasis on scoped semi-automatic weapons, very simple arena style maps, and power weapons. To be fair those have their root in Halo 1, but in playing that game again I can’t say that they’re the reason it did so well. Rather it’s the great, big, even, open, and unassuming sandbox (in the campaign) that gives you a lot of options which we’ve been trying to supplement with equipment, with AA’s, and with loadouts but can’t quite replicate because we’ve adopted contrasting gameplay staples like the DMR (which play to the original mistake of the uber-pistol in H1 multiplayer.)
I agree with you, how 343 is working the game is the wrong approach, but I really do feel the cause isn’t with what 343 is adding (it being fluff) but with what they’ve kept of the Halo sequels that’s the problem.
> Innovations goes too far when something is changed, just for the sake of changing something.
If I was going to synthesize what I was trying to say in my original post, it would agree with Viral. While I don’t disagree with all the changes 343 made I think they to most if not all the changes they made to the extreme, which I elaborated on in my original post. Sure they implemented many things and I think innovation should ALWAYS be encouraged. But, change just for the sake of change is when it goes too far.
343 didnt put any spin on it
they simply removed many long time features and then turned them into perks basically copy and pasting COD
I mean a perk to pick up nades, for your vehicle not to be made of cardboard, for your turret to not overheat fast, to move at a decent speed at all times…just to name a few
All were STANDARD for ce-3
then they remove descoping… ridiculous
Nothing about that was innovation, just imitation and reinventing the wheel and doing a bad job at it.