Why Halo 4 was a lie.

Games Other Halo
1

Halo 4 was a game with huge hype. I say this because of the advertisements, the excitement of halo being brought into new hands, the return of the BR, the escape from Reach.

Halo 4 was hyped to get to the end as fast as possible to prepare for the onslaught of awesomeness that was coming (supposed to come) ahead. Mountain dew sponsored Double xp, myself along with many many others i’m sure loaded up on caps, (myself buying one to two a day, especially with the stores that had 2 for 2$ deals).

We were all playing and playing and playing to reach that maximum level in order to be there to prepare for what most thought was more gameplay to come. Everyone hit 130 as fast as possible, which is a random -Yoink- number to max out at btw, and was easily a realistic goal.

Myself along with others were highly disappointed when realized that the leveling system, and the specialization system were so poor and easily obtained. Which brings me to my first gripe.

The specializations
I can’t fully speak for myself but im sure that myself and many others had a different expectation of the specialization system, which you explained, was a choice for your spartan to become unique and bring a new playstyle to the battle field, which by normal thought process, you think, cool, i can choose a specialization and be awesome, only to realize that it was just a “perk” that you had to keep equipped sacrificing a good perk in place of the power of the specialization, you diddn’t actually get to choose a specialization, other than what order you leveled them up.

Leveling / Rankings
Since recently you’ve been trying to get halo 4 into feeling like halo 3. At what point did someone in your industry did someone go, let’s just cap them at level 130, thats ok, we dont need that stupid Recruit to general to aka powerful ranking title’s for gaining alot of experience, we just need 1-130, also 10 of those levels will be free btw. Removal of the un realistic max level is a considerable factor in the drop of players, when you max out, you have no reason to play anylonger, Look at halo 3, 5 star general? 5000 xp, cant get a 50? thats ok you can be a brigadier or colonel grade 4 for 4k/2.4k xp and if you do get better and attain that 45 or 50 you’ll get that general, thats what made the system playable. (although the pureskill did have it’s minor flaw it was still attainable through work and dedication, not just handed to you on a silver platter.)

Things to look forward to in halo 5, my own suggestions
There are reasons games are successful, and there are reasons games die out. The main reason is re-playability. To start is campaign,

-Meta-Score
This is what kept halo 3 and somewhat halo:reach a replayable game. Bring back the meta score, and re-introduce leaderboards for it. People like competition, people DEMAND competition.

-FireFight
No doubt halo 5 is going to be a huge game, it’s time to bring back firefight, no unlimited ammo supplies, no predictable waves, no hand holding. Give us the difficult -Yoink- we want, to feel like were being over run from the covenant/prometheans, and for god sakes add the flood. This is a game, why stay semi-realistic, expand your game to incredible heights.

-Multiplayer Demands
Ever looked at your SR rank, and your current class title (mastery is -Yoinking!- stupid btw) and wonder, wow, all that space in the middle if they had just done a private to inheritor system that maybe began at the ridiculous 130 (120) cap that was right there in that big empty space the mindless players would have something interesting to look at and work for, well that little thing made a 10k player difference a day guaranteed.

-Radar
Halo lost its flair when the new radar system was introduced, yeah it’s cool to know if your opponent is above or below you, but -Yoink!- if it doesn’t ruin gameplay.

-Armor abilities
You shouldn’t start with these, these should be the power weapons of halo, in halo 3 i wasn’t given the option to start with a regenerator, or a bubble shield or EMP, i had to go out and find these magnificent power-ups, which promoted map movement. Sprint should be rid of also, i’m tired of that -Yoink-.

-Power-ups
Well you see what you did there? You removed em, and players went PUT EM BACK, whats the point of removing them if you were forced by your fans to put them back in ( overshield) This includes the working cloak, remove starting with armor abilities, and you can put the good ol camo back to work, which was awesome and un-predictable… except where it spawns of course

-Weapons System
The key to a shooter is guns, guns , and more guns. Dual wielding may not have been the best thing, but it gave people options, and it let people have fun with all the random guns that halo had to offer, which the number of guns seem to have dropped , especially in effectiveness, I have a question 343, if all the brutes and their guns are gone, why did you keep the cuncussion shot? I’m almost sure that was a brute weapon IDC what anyone says. Brute shot or not thats exactly what it was. Dual wielding was fun, bring it back, along with all the weapons and make the needler back to what it was. Not a powering weapon of doom.

-Realistic Goals
You want to include commendations? good, don’t make stupid ones like kill 1500 people with a plasma pistol. That shows you that your team diddn’t give a -Yoink- about the commendation, they packed it together with simple things and said boss were done pay us. Commendations are supposed to fun, not tedious, shooting a spartan in the air with a rocket is always fun, you want players to lighten up and play agame instead of doing the cheapest most effective strategy just to win? Make them change up and have fun again, after all games are for fun. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t play to win, but you should be playing to have fun and do drastic and out of control things to win.

-MatchMaking
This is the icing on top of your wonderful cake called halo. Ever heard of KISS? No not the band, Keep It Simple Stupid. All this work went into player cards, for what? So my spartan can stand to the left or the right? No one cares about this, or how your spartan looks before game, where i can admit this was a neat feature it just wasn’t meant to be. Basic lobby, [Rank, Name, Rank Skill (or playlist skill for non-ranked)

-Oh yes i did
Return Social /Ranked. Not everyone wants to play to win, not everyone wants to play for fun. Give people their choices back, and don’t jimmy the playlists with 3 to 4 options, Give us all the playlists at once.

-Gaming in the playlists
Game options are dull, you either choose Slayer, or Slayer pro, Thats fun, right? …No Voting is limited, Give us a random map, if we dont like it, we veto, and get stuck playing whatever we get next, Gamers don’t deserve choices, only in game where it matters. Half of the people don’t vote anyway, but im sure they will Veto.

Thousands of more words I could explain to how to not -Yoink- up halo 5s multiplayer sadly im not the one that gets to make those decisions on whats right or wrong for the community, but given the chance I could and I would as I don’t want to see anotherhaloruined.

2

I have to agree with you OP. Halo 4 promised things the community was never given. Remember when we were supposed to get competitive maps? Weren’t we promised that “this game feels like Halo?” We trusted 343 with Halo 4… and wow… just wow…

3

Good post. I can agree with most of your points.

I think the radar is fine though. It’s a nice “evolution” of what it used to be considering so many maps now have upper and lower levels. Actually all of them have them really.

I understand the frustration with the Halo 4 multiplayer, but I really think it’s got a lot of potential, it just needs some polishing up.

Ordnance’s wouldn’t have been as bad if they would have been tiered or at least limited to shotguns, saw’s and power ups (considering they would have left out armor abilities). But getting a rocket launcher after going 5/10 (k/d) while your opponent gets a needler or scattershot while he goes 5/0 isn’t very fair… one has provided a lot more for the team than the other.

All in all I do think 343i had to evolve Halo in some way, I just think they evolved it so much they took the core gameplay that made halo what it was, and broke it. I’m sure they’ve gotten enough feedback from Halo 4 to make Halo 5 a lot better.

I really would like to see social/ranked playlists back. That alone would have made halo 4 so much better, beyond the ordnances and loadouts and everything.

4

> Halo 4 was a game with huge hype. I say this because of the advertisements, the excitement of halo being brought into new hands, the return of the BR, the escape from Reach.
>
> Halo 4 was hyped…(sniped for brevity and pithiness)…
> Thousands of more words I could explain to how to not -Yoink!- up halo 5s multiplayer sadly im not the one that gets to make those decisions on whats right or wrong for the community, but given the chance I could and I would as I don’t want to see anotherhaloruined.

Damn strait NoLolz, DAMN STRAIT. 343i should listen to this well edited and laid-out post. You have very effectively laid out what is wrong, why its wrong, what is missing and how to fix it. I was just thinking myself that a lot of the AA’s, power-ups and ordnance should be items you seek out on the battlefield as a point of contention and something to strive for, not to start off with. Standing ovation.

With Love,
Your Mom,
~AnonomissX~

5

Halo 4 didn’t quite live up to my expectations either and I blame myself for that. I set my expectations, not 343 or MS. I think I’ll stay off the hype train for Halo 5 and will be much happier with the result.

6

+1

7

“Welcome to Halo 4, where your rank is made up and the points don’t matter!”

But seriously, you should have put more emphasis on a better ranking system in general, not just an improved progression system. It’s nice having an actual challenge playing online if you start doing better. At the very least, it should be a skill-based system first, and progression secondarily, if at all.

But even then, a progression system that rewards you the same for winning or losing, is just… just… stupid.

And I’m really not keen on buying a DRM console that freaking spies on you 24/7, but if they give us the type of matchmaking we really want, all of the custom and forge options they left out (at the very least), and the Promethean/Covenant/Flood ODST-style Firefight you sorta mentioned, I just might have to consider getting it anyway.

In other words, I’m probably not going to get it.

8

> that freaking spies on you 24/7.

So far there’s only paranoid rumours to support this, officially you can turn off Kinnect 2.0.

The Xbox One probably doesn’t spy on you anymore than your pc does.

9

> > that freaking spies on you 24/7.
>
> So far there’s only paranoid rumours to support this, officially you can turn off Kinnect 2.0.
>
> The Xbox One probably doesn’t spy on you anymore than your pc does.

I’m feeling lazy right now, so I don’t want to go searching for every single one of the links, but I’m pretty sure that I remember reading that it stays on even when your Xbox is technically off. I know for sure that the 360’s Kinect watches you. “Well, DUH!,” you might say.

But what if I told you that it apparently “tailors” your Xbox’s advertisements to what it thinks you want, based on what it sees?

And trust me, if this next one didn’t do that, Microsoft would definitely deny this “rumor” to high heaven. But they haven’t.

Also, it can detect your freaking heartbeat. If that’s not REALLY creepy, I don’t know what is.

10

I wholeheartedly agree- The leveling system in Halo 4 is child’s play compared with the amount of leveling required in Halo: Reach. I’ve played Reach for over a year and a half, and am just now almost at inheritor. I hit level 130 in 4 in just a few months of play time.

Furthermore, there are no game options in Halo 4 matchmaking to make me stick around.

Snipers on Halo 4 is a joke. How can you have a sniper battle when ALL of the maps are too small/ not open spaces. Ragnarock is perhaps the slight exception, but it is tiny compared with Hemorrhage on Reach. Also- getting the option to pick Ragnarock is a snowball’s chance in hell since 343i in their infinite wisdom didn’t include a NONE OF THE ABOVE option in the map voting.

Please add in a none of the above option for the voting system - it’s pretty piss-poor when two of the three maps available for voting are the same.

The Action Sack modes are fun for a bit but also get old fast.

The Multi-Team options are less than fun - there isn’t much teamwork possible with six teams of two. I felt the pace of the action was better when it was four teams of three, and still had plenty of chaos to throw around. Also - why not add in multi-ball? Six teams going after one ball makes for a pretty boring game.

Where are all the different game modes? The only type of multiplayer experience offered is a slayer match or slayer variant with objectives.

Add in game modes such as Hockey, Halo Ball Extreme, Headhunter, Rocket Hog Race, and Territories.
These different types of play gave previous Halo titles variability and kept the game fresh.

The fact that Multi-Team still doesn’t have Rocket Hog really seems silly - The fact that it’s addition or lack there of hasn’t even been mentioned in the Weekly Bulletins really is a thorn in the side.

The recent tweaks that 343i implemented with changing the vehicle loadouts and weapon drops on different maps did refresh some of the gameplay for a bit- but just changing the vehicles and weapons around will not work for future updates.

Personally, I’m back to playing Reach - at least the multi-team is fun, there’s rocket hog race, and a freaking decent sniper map.

11

I agree with all of you - H4 has horrific laggy multiplayer - which is a joke.

Sunday June 2, I started playing Reach again and will not go back to H4 unless they have a software update to address the crippling lag, horrible host selection, JIP as a user defined option and connection filers (as in Reach).

70% of my H4 Wargames or Co-Op Campaign and Spartan have by 0.5 to 5 seconds of Lag. I don’t have this issue in Reach or any other Multiplayer game. - so it’s H4 - not my Xbox or my Connection or my location either.

The unfortunate part is we have 2 key pieces of information that suggest 343 will never address these issues.

  1. H5 was announced at E3 and will be released in 2014. All of 343’s resources will be devoted to H5 and getting the code on a new platform for the XBox One.

  2. They made a great deal of noise that they can now tune Weapons and Maps without changing the Halo Code base. I always found that odd - but it makes perfect sense now. The code base for H4 is finished - it will never be updated going forward. The only way they can make a few tweaks to game play to keep the remaining few thousands of players going is by moving it outside the game.

So I strongly suspect H4 is done - nothing will be fixed going forward.

I would love it if BS Angel or any of the 343 employees would prove me I’m wrong - but I’m sure all we will get is weapons tweaks and map changes going forward.

PS: GameSpot has the E3 2013 Bungie Destiny trailers, Destiny Live Game Play Trailers and an very cool interview with one of the Bungie Writers about the game play too. According to the interview Destiny can be played Solo or Co-Op and it has both the MMO Co-Operative game AND Competitive Multiplayer too. Game Play probably going to be more like GTA IV where we have a main goal and optional or delayed sub missions. Also it’s on PS3, XBox 360, Xbox One and PS 4 platforms .

12

You’re beating a dead horse, OP. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but it’s been said thousands of times before.

13

> > that freaking spies on you 24/7.
>
> So far there’s only paranoid rumours to support this, officially you can turn off Kinnect 2.0.
>
> The Xbox One probably doesn’t spy on you anymore than your pc does.

Sorry but no matter how you slice it, one simply does not need a 100$ accessory that can monitor me when I’m playing so it can send marketing info to Microsoft. It’s a gimmick that sucks 100$ that could be better spent on an additional controller or games.

Not to mention I can disconnect my webcam and mic and Internet connection from my pc and it will still work and not be a useless brick.

OT: op the halo you described is dead and not coming back. Expect more cod like things such ad perks, sprint, to continue and maybe aim down sights and kill streaks in “halo” 5.

There will likely be no in game visible skill ranked playlists ever again in halo either. Everyone needs to feel like they are amazing, even if they are not.

14

> I agree with all of you - H4 has horrific laggy multiplayer - which is a joke.
>
> Sunday June 2, I started playing Reach again and will not go back to H4 unless they have a software update to address the crippling lag, horrible host selection, JIP as a user defined option and connection filers (as in Reach).
>
> 70% of my H4 Wargames or Co-Op Campaign and Spartan have by 0.5 to 5 seconds of Lag. I don’t have this issue in Reach or any other Multiplayer game. - so it’s H4 - not my Xbox or my Connection or my location either.
>
> The unfortunate part is we have 2 key pieces of information that suggest 343 will never address these issues.
>
> 1) H5 was announced at E3 and will be released in 2014. All of 343’s resources will be devoted to H5 and getting the code on a new platform for the XBox One.
>
> 2) They made a great deal of noise that they can now tune Weapons and Maps without changing the Halo Code base. I always found that odd - but it makes perfect sense now. The code base for H4 is finished - it will never be updated going forward. The only way they can make a few tweaks to game play to keep the remaining few thousands of players going is by moving it outside the game.
>
> So I strongly suspect H4 is done - nothing will be fixed going forward.
>
> I would love it if BS Angel or any of the 343 employees would prove me I’m wrong - but I’m sure all we will get is weapons tweaks and map changes going forward.
>
> PS: GameSpot has the E3 2013 Bungie Destiny trailers, Destiny Live Game Play Trailers and an very cool interview with one of the Bungie Writers about the game play too. According to the interview Destiny can be played Solo or Co-Op and it has both the MMO Co-Operative game AND Competitive Multiplayer too. Game Play probably going to be more like GTA IV where we have a main goal and optional or delayed sub missions. Also it’s on PS3, XBox 360, Xbox One and PS 4 platforms .

Why do you guys tout destiny like its going to be some kind of replacement for halo. It has aim down sights and aas LOL. It’s just more cod in space that will be about as popular as borderlands.

15

So Halo 4 is officially a dead horse?

I hope not… at least Reach is still here… for now.

16

I agree with some of what you said, but I had some problems with other things.

> it’s time to bring back firefight, no unlimited ammo supplies, <mark>no predictable waves</mark>, no hand holding.

Firefight’s waves were every bit as predictable as the ones in Spartan Ops. Probably even more so, honestly. Reach’s Firefight was really boring to me. If they bring back Firefight, it needs to be like ODST’s. I think everyone agrees with that.

> mastery is -Yoinking!- stupid btw

Would you rather be stuck on the last Specialization you finished? That’s why they changed it to Mastery. I can’t think of anything better they could call it. You’ve mastered all the Specializations, so your title is Mastery. Makes sense to me.

> Halo lost its flair when the new radar system was introduced, yeah it’s cool to know if your opponent is above or below you, but -Yoink!- if it doesn’t ruin gameplay.

Uhh… it doesn’t? You’re the first person to complain about that. How does it ruin gameplay to actually know if a person is above you rather than right behind you? It actually improves gameplay, I think.

> -Power-ups
> Well you see what you did there? You removed em, and players went PUT EM BACK, whats the point of removing them if you were forced by your fans to put them back in ( overshield) This includes the working cloak, remove starting with armor abilities, and you can put the good ol camo back to work, which was awesome and un-predictable… except where it spawns of course

I actually didn’t have problems with this. I quoted it because it makes so much sense! If people are putting power-ups in maps they’re submitting to 343, it’s a hint that they want them back on maps! And Camo never should’ve been an AA, but that was Bungie’s mistake first. 343 shouldn’t have continued it, though.

> if all the brutes and their guns are gone, why did you keep the cuncussion shot? I’m almost sure that was a brute weapon IDC what anyone says.

Look at the Concussion Rifle. Compare it to the Spiker, Mauler, and Brute Shot (which it replaced BTW). Does it LOOK like a Brute weapon? It shoots plasma (like normal Covvie weapons) instead of actual bullets (like all the other Brute weapons). I don’t know why you think it’s a Brute weapon, but it’s obviously not.

> So my spartan can stand to the left or the right? No one cares about this, or how your spartan looks before game, where i can admit this was a neat feature it just wasn’t meant to be. Basic lobby, [Rank, Name, Rank Skill (or playlist skill for non-ranked)

I care. I actually thought it was a pretty cool idea. I don’t see any reason they couldn’t have that AND what you suggested, though. I think that would be really nice. Or just go back to Reach’s UI and work from there. Reach’s UI was the best. Halo 4’s looks too much like it’s trying to copy Windows 8 (which nobody actually likes BTW).

Like I said, I agree with about half of what you said except what I quoted. Some of your complaints are legitimate, but some of them just don’t make any sense.

17

I wish the OP was part of 343i’s multiplayer design. We would actually have a Halo game to play in Halo 4 right now.

18

Well said OP.

I honestly hope Halo 5 is a more traditional Halo game otherwise I see no reason to buy the new Xbox. None of the other exclusives interest me like Halo does.

Here’s hoping that 343i gets it right this time.

20

I hope that they never go back to Halo 3.

OP, tell us what YOU want.

I say that because I don’t want what you want.

21

> Why do you guys tout destiny like its going to be some kind of replacement for halo. It has aim down sights and aas LOL. It’s just more cod in space that will be about as popular as borderlands.

Because Halo and Destiny are created by Bungie. I am hoping that Bungie will hit the same key points (great story - great game play - balanced maps - both ground play and vehicles - Multiplayer that doesn’t absolutely LAG as in H4) that made Halo CE and the entire Halo series great. And that they will learn from H4 what not to do with a franchise (i.e. lose ~ 130,000+ multiplayers in 30 days and do nothing to fix the crippling LAG which is likely why they stopped playing).

That doesn’t mean that I will be blindly rushing out to buy Destiny - like I did with Halo 4.

I bought the Limited Edition of H4 because I was sure that the DLC Maps would be a great addition to the game and it would save me money in the long run. With 343 at the helm - you never get to play DLC because they are rarely available to play and people don’t buy content IF they Can’t Play IT!! I will not make that mistake again on any 343 or Microsoft Game game and will not be a H5 early adopter. 343 has to prove to me they can build a good multiplayer game - which they have failed miserably at in H4 and then have had 8+ months to fix it but haven’t.

And I don’t have a problem with H4 Campaign or Spartan Ops SOLO, but anything multiplayer is just a Lag fest. Halo Reach multiplayer plays perfectly fine as do other games like H3 or GTA IV or COD II or Sonic Racing on my connection (8 ms ping time to servers, 70 ms ping time measured across North America, 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload in Western Canada). So it isn’t a ME issue - it’s H4 multiplayer that is the problem.

Laslty Destiny will be available on XBox 360 and PS 3 - as well as Xbox One and PS 4 if I decide to update my HW. So I could play Destiny it on my current HW - where as H5 is XBox One only. How well Destiny plays on any platform is still to be seen and I will wait until I see a month or so of user reviews before buying it.