Where I think Halo 4 went wrong

Games Other Halo
1

Take it or leave it, but here is all I have to say on Halo 4, and where I think it went wrong. I’m sure it’s all been said before and will be said again, oh well.

Removing Weapon Spawns
Lets start with the biggest mistake. The one that that ruins the traditional feel of Halo, and does the most damage to what could have been a great game. Removing weapons from maps. I don’t know how anyone who has been a long time fan of the series, as the people calling shots at 343 should be, could have thought this was a good idea. Halo has always been a balanced game of ability and strategy. If you don’t have the controller dexterity to win, you could make smart use of maps, teammates, and weapon spawns. The very best teams could do both. Weapons gave maps flow, a reason to leave the base, a reason to fight for ground. Removing weapon spawns from maps, and making spawns totally random removed any reason to move around the map, eliminating one of Halo’s great strengths, strategic map control.

Ordinance Drops
This compounds the problem of removing weapon drops. Not only is there no incentive to push for map control, now power weapons come to you right in your own base. Now, half way through a game on Valhalla, there are suddenly 6 snipers clinging to each base. Trying to hold top mid is only a liability, since it is the only place you can’t get a weapon. Games become massive standoffs that are simply no fun to play once the weaker team turtles in their base with care packages and random spawns delivering them weaponry.

Unlockables
Again, Halo has always been about balance. Both teams enter the game even, the better team comes out on top because they played better. Whether it be by sheer talent, better communication, or better map control, the better team won. Now, players are given advantages based on how often they play, or what they paid for the game. That’s why I always preferred Halo over Battlefield or COD. How much you played didn’t matter, each win has to be earned. Now, wins are given away through superior abilities, specializations, and starting weapons. Don’t think they make a difference, fire up a new account and hop in a game with your high level friends. See how much fun it is being the only one who can’t use a jetpack or carry a boltshot secondary. This is simply not Halo gameplay.

The above three gameplay changes, IMO, ruined Halo 4, and for me, the series. They removed strategy and fairnesss from the game. Without those, Halo is just your standard FPS indistinguishable from the crowd. Now, the minor grievances.

Lobby UI
Lobby UI is inferior to all previous games. You should be able to see who is in your party at a glance without opening menus to find it. You should also be able to see who else in the game is partied together in the pre and post game lobby.

Theater
Missing for forge sessions, ops, and campaign. Kind of lame to step back in features.

Firefight
Was way better than Spartan Ops. Since ops just recycles campaign levels, could have easily done the same with firefight. The code you inherited already had it, so again, why remove features?

MM install requirement.
The game shipped with two discs, requiring 8 gigs of HDD space is poor design. Offer a lower res option like Battlefield did for people who have slims, arcades, or launch models. Shouldn’t have to buy hardware to play a standard console game.

Boltshot
Absolutely ridiculous that this is a starting weapon. It is one shot kill, as powerful as a shotgun, with significant range.

Active camo
Anyone who thinks this should be a persistent ability has never had to play the game on a small monitor. Gives advantage to whoever has a better TV. Also encourages hiding and drawn out, boring games.

Forge
Why no zoom while moving pieces? I like the new menus, magnets, and duplicate options, but remove zoom really kills some fine tuning. Also, why must the monitor be so annoyingly noisy?

Custom game options
Sad to see some of my favorite gametypes cannot be recreated due to lack of custom game options. Can never disable sprint, can’t race, can’t remake soccer or skiball, and can’t score passenger vehicle kills.

At it’s core, Halo 4 could have been a solid game. It is Reach re-skinned and re-lit, with many of the changes we hoped for. Reduced bloom and spread, more jump height, a tad faster movement, all of these good things. Things look good, sound good, and the networking is great. But the removal of weapons from the map, addition of care packages and perks took a great start to a Halo game and made it a cheap COD knock-off. All the removal of gametypes and features found in previous Halo games was just insult to injury.

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Halo 4 turned its back on every single feature that made it an arena shooter, and turned into a class based arcade shooter. Custom games are so broken and crippled that you cant undo the horrors 343i did to Halo.
And wtf is up with that menu design? Its beyond horrible.
If i wanted to play CoD or Battlefield, I would play those games. Halo should move towards the arena shooter USB genre, not away from it.

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> Halo 4 turned its back on every single feature that made it an arena shooter, and turned into a class based arcade shooter. Custom games are so broken and crippled that you cant undo the horrors 343i did to Halo.
> And wtf is up with that menu design? Its beyond horrible.
> If i wanted to play CoD or Battlefield, I would play those games. Halo should move towards the arena shooter USB genre, not away from it.

QFT

4

I agree. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done for it.

5

I agree with alot of your points. (Not Firefight though, if they had both good, but I prefer Spartan Ops. Remember Firefight was all recycled Campaign maps too.)

And I’m glad you left out changes that honestly aren’t that bad.

I will add that while on some level adding customization can be a good thing, when that customization has a major impact of the gameplay of the game, it throws it off balance.

“Pick your Weapon” would have been a good idea if they handled it right. If Primaries were ONLY precision weapons, and Secondaries were the MAgnum, and Automatics. Guess what? It wouldn’t be a problem. But because Primary includes both Precision AND Automatics, and Secondaries allow the PP and BS, it is plain broken.

6

Nail on head. Good post.

7

OP is a good post. I hear the same things you posted over and over again.

8

good post man and i think they need to implement a good ranking system that is visible and is skill based

9

Agree on all accounts. Well said.

10

I don’t mind custom loadouts at least if all the weapons were actually balanced. Ordinance drops are terrible though so I only play objective games which are more fun anyways. Custom games were probably my biggest disappointment. Instead of expanding and evolving they used the same pieces in forge, gave us 3 mediocre spaces to forge, took out some critical forge elements, and completely butchered custom game options.

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> good post man and i think they need to implement a good ranking system that is visible and is skill based

I can do with or without the visible rank. That did lead to a lot of hassle in previous games with getting knocked offline, derankers, jumping accounts, etc. It’s fairly obvious that Halo 4 implements a hidden truskill, as you can instantly see a difference in opponent quality if you create a new account, or if you play with tryhard friends. All I’m really concerned about is what provides the gameplay I desire. What armor anyone has, doesn’t have, or what kind of rank or picture they have doesn’t change how the game plays, so I don’t mind it being hidden as long as it does it’s job. IMO, either make it all ranked, or none, rather than split playlist populations.

At this point, I could care less even if they ever get file share working (how many months has that been?). Lack of features, and promised things not working don’t do much to help that this game just isn’t like Halo. You can feel a little bit of fun Halo in the opening moments of each game where teams charge out to gain the early edge. Then the game settles into gimmicks as people start calling down damage mods, speed boosts, super burny flack cannons, etc. The game simply breaks down once everything becomes fiesta slayer with dynamic spawns and a power weapon for everyone.

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> Firefight
> Was way better than Spartan Ops. Since ops just recycles campaign levels, could have easily done the same with firefight. The code you inherited already had it, so again, why remove features?

I disagree about Firefight > Spartan OPs. Heres why:

Spartan OPs and Firefight are reasonably the same except some obvious differences. Firefight is wave based, while Spartan OPs has a mission structure when it comes to its gameplay. Firefight (ODST specifically) focused on survival, giving players limited weapons and ammo and lives, while Spartan OPs focused on its Narrative which takes place 6 months after the Campaign. Both are unique and respectable experirences.

When it comes to Spartan OPs reycling maps from the campaign and multiplayer, the enviornments are usually different in some way shape or form. Additionally, when you played Firefight, you played on campaign enviornments all the time. I don’t get it when it comes to people and this arguement about playing Spartan Ops on the same maps. You play on the same maps in Firefight, you played on the same maps in Multiplayer, and so now you play on the same maps in Spartan OPs, only you play on maps from both the campaign and multiplayer that offer slight differences depending on the mission you chose from. I just find that arguement just completely ridiculous.

Whether you enjoy Spartan OPs or Firefight, both of these cooperative experiences are great additions to Halo. Personally, I enjoy Spartan OPs more because it has a narrative and because I’m not just fighting waves and waves of enemies until I die. Spartan OPs can use improvements, like adding scoring, balancing enemies with power weapons on higher difficulties, maybe adding some customization options and of course, some new enviornments, but in all honesty, its a great addition to the franchise.

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>

For those that desire a more traditional/classic (call it what you will) experience, there may still be some small hope. The game is still young, and there aren’t that many hoppers in the grand scheme of MM. A “classic” type playlist was mentioned many moons ago, and I hope the idea has not been forgotten about. It took a while for us to see it in Reach, due to the transition, but hopefully you won’t have to wait too much longer to see something come to fruition for H4. I can understand the trepidation for the future of the franchise, as 343i has been pretty silent on the matter, but hopefully people are now back from break and digging back into it. Unfortunately, it seems that all that can be done is to sit and wait and see what unfolds. Not all that ideal, I know, but I’m not sure what else to tell you.

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> > Firefight
> > Was way better than Spartan Ops. Since ops just recycles campaign levels, could have easily done the same with firefight. The code you inherited already had it, so again, why remove features?
>
> I disagree about Firefight > Spartan OPs. Heres why:
>
> Spartan OPs and Firefight are reasonably the same except some obvious differences. Firefight is wave based, while Spartan OPs has a mission structure when it comes to its gameplay. Firefight (ODST specifically) focused on survival, giving players limited weapons and ammo and lives, while Spartan OPs focused on its Narrative which takes place 6 months after the Campaign. Both are unique and respectable experirences.
>
> When it comes to Spartan OPs reycling maps from the campaign and multiplayer, the enviornments are usually different in some way shape or form. Additionally, when you played Firefight, you played on campaign enviornments all the time. I don’t get it when it comes to people and this arguement about playing Spartan Ops on the same maps. You play on the same maps in Firefight, you played on the same maps in Multiplayer, and so now you play on the same maps in Spartan OPs, only you play on maps from both the campaign and multiplayer that offer slight differences depending on the mission you chose from. I just find that arguement just completely ridiculous.
>
>
> Whether you enjoy Spartan OPs or Firefight, both of these cooperative experiences are great additions to Halo. Personally, I enjoy Spartan OPs more because it has a narrative and because I’m not just fighting waves and waves of enemies until I die. Spartan OPs can use improvements, like adding scoring, balancing enemies with power weapons on higher difficulties, maybe adding some customization options and of course, some new enviornments, but in all honesty, its a great addition to the franchise.

Adding more is always good. But not when it comes at the expense of removing something else. That’s what I don’t get, why not just re-use Reach’s and grab a couple campaign spaces for it? Since they are already making us purchase a new drive to play the game in the first place, space consideration couldn’t have been the issue. I doubt coding was an issue, they started with the Reach source. They could have done like they did with forge, make some tweaks but for the most part, just re-use what was there.

Horde/survival/zombie/firefight mode has become an industry staple at this point. Leaving it out in favor of episodic content you have to pay for seems like a hollow attempt to milk customers.

15

I agree with most of your points but i think you left out one critical part of the problem with weapons on the map: You can see them. A lot of the fun of teamwork and map control came from learning the maps, knowing where the power weapons are located and getting them without the enemy knowing. The fact that they are all displayed on your HUD and everyone else’s takes away the fun and excitement of racing to a weapon and seeing who gets there first.

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As far as paying for Episodic Content, while we all purchased the game, along with that purchase were getting 10 episodes of Spartan OPs that equates to 50 missions. That in and of itself sounds like a good deal for the customer.

I think the decesion to remove Firefight in favor of pursuing Spartan OPs was made just so that 343i could do something different. Enviornments aside, Firefight is all about survival and fighting waves of enemies. Spartan OPs is mission based objectives that continues the story of Halo 4. I think they just prioritze Spartan OPs more because it continues to tell Halo 4’s story and its an intricate part of UNSC Infinity, just like “War games” is.

Horde/Survival/zombie/firefight modes, arne’t so much a staple in the industry as just having a cooperative element to bring players together. Thats what Spartan OPs is, another cooperative element thats both like Firefight and different from firefight at the same time.

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I don’t really consider “press X button” as a real good objective over and over again on the same maps again and again.

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UI: Yeah it’s pretty horrible.

Theater: Leaving it out was just wrong.

>

I hope Spartan Ops distances itself from Firefight.

It may be continuing Halo 4’s story but by no means is it continuing it’s campaign experience.

Lackluster elements from Firefight are still prominent:

-kill all enemies
-enemies always know where you are
-power weapon emphasis (i.e. if you don’t use the ordnance during the Hunter fight in E5C5, you don’t have many ways to kill that many Hunters)

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> I don’t really consider “press X button” as a real good objective over and over again on the same maps again and again.

Just put “add more objectives” on the list of improvements the game mode can use.

Still don’t get the pointless arguement over playing on the same maps over and over again. I would think people would be use to playing on the same maps over and over again for both competitive modes and cooperative modes, but that just me.

20

Spartan Ops would be great if I could play offline. Having to have xbl gold to play content that comes pre-packaged feels like an attempt to force people into upgrading to gold. I enjoyed FF because I could lone wolf it up and customize gameplay without needing an internet connection. Even if you are a gold subscriber, if your internet goes down you’re left with just the campaign. I agree with OP. MM just isn’t nearly as much fun as past Halos imo. I do however love always having sprint. The custom loadouts and drops would be fine in Spartan Ops as they are now, but I think they take away from the balance that was always a part of MM.