Why Halo is NOT Call of Duty (long read)

Games Other Halo
1

I have seen a lot of people saying how Halo is becoming COD. I think it’s generally an ignorant statement used to piss people off and feel betrayed. I think many people complaining that Halo has become COD have never played COD. I hadn’t played COD until a year ago, and once I did, it made me appreciate Halo - yes, the new ones (Reach and H4) - even more.

Games borrow from each other all the time. COD was the first to borrow from Halo. Regenerating shields/health anyone? But Halo wasn’t even close to the first game that had regenerating health/shields. That’s been around in games since the 1980’s! The question, then, isn’t what is similar between two games on the surface. If that were the case, Halo was never Halo, it was just another game it stole ideas from. So what’s the deal now? COD and Halo both have guns. COD and Halo 2 both have regeneration. COD and Halo 2 both have guns. COD and Halo 2 both have slayer gametypes. And now, all of a sudden, Halo has practically become COD because of having some abilities?

Look, COD is vastly different from ANY Halo, including Halo 4. While there are some similarities between the two, there are also similarities between COD and Halo 2. But for anyone who has played both games, these similarities do not even come close to bridging the huge gap of distinctions in regard to how the game plays. Let me elaborate.

  1. COD caters to lone wolf style gameplay. You can get a team and do well by stacking killstreaks, but in COD, you can also run and gun quite easily. Some gametypes may not be as good for this, but overall, it’s easy to go solo. You can also go solo in Halo, but as soon as you are put up against a team that works together, or if you’re on a team that can’t assist much, you notice a HUGE difference in the outcome of your score.

  2. Due to the amount of health/shields you have (yes, there is still health, just like there’s always been), firefights are much different. You have a chance to react to your attacker sometimes, meaning if you have more skill, you may pull out a kill. It also means that being outnumbered has drastically different results. Teamwork in Halo is significant in the outcome of a fight. Not so much in COD. When I played COD with friends, we rarely talked. We talk constantly in Halo.

  3. Continuous radar in most gametypes means that Halo provides a significantly different logic one has to use, and an awareness that must be acquired in most gametypes.

  4. Halo’s weaponry generally has a particular niche and can be beat by another weapon if used outside of the appropriate niche. This makes weapon selection extremely important, as well as weapon acquisition and control. Unlike the MP7, there is not one gun to rule them all (although we finally have a gun that can hold its own and do very well as a starting weapon, though it is disadvantaged by the power weapons in their niche).

In conclusion, Halo’s gameplay is still 1) relatively slow paced and methodical, 2) has slow kill times that allow for skilled players to shine, 3) has power in numbers which encourages teamwork, and 4) encourages map and power weapon control. None of those hold even close to as true in COD games. And these are the elements that control the pace and play of the game.

There are a myriad of other huge distinctions I could point out, but the word limit is fast approaching. I hope people can begin to realize that Halo still has the key components of Halo that have always been present, and it’s vastly different than COD and any other game. There may be differences I/others don’t like about certain stylistic features of maps or gameplay, but the core elements remain drastically different than the emotional phrase most people use in an attempt to incite others to their cause without presenting any case - “Halo is just like COD now.”

2

I completely agree,
Even with the smallest similarities, the two games are nothing alike at all.

3

it’s not the fact that the game is like call of duty. The underlying mechanics are all fine, but there is a problem.

I posted this on B.Net earlier today, and I think it sums things up quite nicely.

> Posted by: SilentA98
> Games these days are designed for everyone. Call of Duty is a great example of that. Call of Duty does a fascinating job of making sure everybody and their grandmas dead cat can get that sick killstreak that they see on the internet.
>
> Halo 4 is no exception. The ordinance drops are specifically for the people who always end up powerweaponless and can’t get a multikill without such a weapon.
>
> So you’re a new player and maybe not as good as the others in the lobby? It’s alright, we’ve got your back. Here’s and incineration canon so that you can get that sick overkill without having to work for it.
>
> Thats just the community the games cater to these days, and simply because people feel left out and don’t want the game to feel like to much of a chore.

Now, that in mind, it doesn’t make the game bad. Thats just how people are comparing it to Call of Duty, and why.

4

Are you referring to the “random” power weapon drops, or to the creation of weapons such as the incineration cannon?

If you’re referring to the first, I was on board with you initially. However, I read a great post by someone who had gone into forge and explained the logic of the weapon spawns. OK, so the timer is 2-3 minutes instead of exactly 180 seconds every time. You don’t know precisely when the weapon will pop up. And on all but the starting spawns, you may not know which 2-3 weapons will pop up. But you do know that when the sniper pops up, it will pop up at X, and you know around what time that will be.

The post I read discussed how this person’s setup with his group was to control two out of the three power weapon spawns on the map around their fresh spawn times. If he is right (you can go into forge and check), I’m thinking that this isn’t a nod to the casual community at all. There’s still tons of strategy and logic there.

Now if you’re talking about player ordinance, that’s a different story. I think the randomness of that and all that goes into this is a nod to the casual players. But the playlists where this happens is relatively limited and the hardcore community can take this out.

If you’re referring to new weapons being too easy to use, I don’t think I agree. The incineration cannon has no more ammo and doesn’t seem any more powerful than the rockets. It’s secondary explosion isn’t much worse than the rocket’s explosion. The only weapons I can see as a bit strong are the sticky detonater and the needler. They’ve always had problems balancing the needler. As far as the detonater goes, they just need to decrease the blast radius. I’ve killed people I certainly shouldn’t have killed before with it. Easy fix. And of course the boltshot, which should be an easy fix, but generally not gamebreaking since most fighting occurs at more distance. Or, they could remove it from being a starting weapon.

Anyway, I just don’t see all this as significant enough to consider this on par with COD. Playing COD, these causal elements have significant influences. If I can get an air strike or other cheap kills like that, it’s simple. But if all Halo gives you is a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher every 5 personal ordinances in a limited amount of of playlists, you still have to traverse the map and get kills with them. They’re not gimmes like in COD. I think you make a good point as to how some people are comparing the two games, but I still think the differences are significant. Thanks for your thoughts.

5

Sigh…wish you would stop making these long reads. You don’t need to explain to people that halo is not cod. Thats a no brainer. When people say halo is cod or halo is turning into cod, its simply an exaggeration of the truth. There is no way in hell you can deny that this game is trying to cater to the cod audience.

6

In reality, any statements saying Halo is CoD are simply exaggerating the reality. However, it’s undeniable that Halo has consistently, since Reach, become more like CoD. The most obvious such feature is the loadout system. Reach added it, Halo 4 made it customizable and in its current state, it’s very near to the one in CoD, even though there are things it doesn’t allow you to do that can be done in CoD. Another is the personal odrnance that, while not resetting between kills, rewards players for playing.

In general, Halo is very clearly moving towards the individualistic design philosophy that puts emphasis on learning a single skill instead of multiple and is very evident in CoD. For individualistic play, you have the personal ordnance drops that require you to get as much points for yourself as you can instead of your team. At the same time, this emphasises consentrating all your learning to the ability to kill players as efficiently to gather yourself as much ordnance and points as possible, discouraging map knowledge, teamwork, and strategical skills. After all, if you can win an encounter most of the time, you don’t need to worry about losing as long as you get points. At the same time, you have no reason to move around the map as you have weapons that effectively kill at range and your personal ordnance will always drop right in front of you, there is nothing to control on the map.

In the past, being good at the game has required knowing about the maps, knowing about spawns. Very long ago, when the leveling wasn’t based on personal performance, but winning, teamwork was encouraged as well as strategical thinking. You needed to move around the map actively and it was more about your team than yourself, which reflected in the ranking system.

It’s a pitiful truth that CoD dominates, and therefore influences, the modern FPS market. Developers try to do the impossible and capture the game’s audience by trying to make their game more like CoD in order to appeal to the game’s audience. That applies to most FPS developers, and in that, 343i is no exception. Where all these games fail is that the features they are trying to cram into their game don’t necessarily fit in, and even if they do, CoD still has already established its fan base, and those fans certainly aren’t abandoning the game because some other game is similar. The next developer who manages to build a unique shooter that doesn’t look like an attempt to try to win the CoD fanbase gets my money.

7

> Are you referring to the “random” power weapon drops, or to the creation of weapons such as the incineration cannon?
>
> If you’re referring to the first, I was on board with you initially. However, I read a great post by someone who had gone into forge and explained the logic of the weapon spawns. OK, so the timer is 2-3 minutes instead of exactly 180 seconds every time. You don’t know precisely when the weapon will pop up. And on all but the starting spawns, you may not know which 2-3 weapons will pop up. But you do know that when the sniper pops up, it will pop up at X, and you know around what time that will be.

Actually, I was mostly refering to personal ordinance… Sorry for the confusion.

> The post I read discussed how this person’s setup with his group was to control two out of the three power weapon spawns on the map around their fresh spawn times. If he is right (you can go into forge and check), I’m thinking that this isn’t a nod to the casual community at all. There’s still tons of strategy and logic there.

I may have to give that a try. There is strategy and logic there, even if it is not what we are used to.

> Now if you’re talking about player ordinance, that’s a different story. I think the randomness of that and all that goes into this is a nod to the casual players. But the playlists where this happens is relatively limited and the hardcore community can take this out.

Thats more what I was refering to. The probelm is, in the gametype that is Infinity Slayer, it gets to random and chaotic when you implement all the new changes. There isn’t really a playlist out there that offers the good changes, but takes out the bad.

There’s only Slayer Pro and infinity slayer, which are polar opposites in a lot of cases.

> If you’re referring to new weapons being too easy to use, I don’t think I agree. The incineration cannon has no more ammo and doesn’t seem any more powerful than the rockets. It’s secondary explosion isn’t much worse than the rocket’s explosion. The only weapons I can see as a bit strong are the sticky detonater and the needler. They’ve always had problems balancing the needler. As far as the detonater goes, they just need to decrease the blast radius. I’ve killed people I certainly shouldn’t have killed before with it. Easy fix. And of course the boltshot, which should be an easy fix, but generally not gamebreaking since most fighting occurs at more distance. Or, they could remove it from being a starting weapon.

I’m fine with the incineration canon itsefl. The problem is that after five kills I can have it dropped at my feet without really having to work for it, which is very overpowered.

I think the sticky detonators one of the better weapon in the game (needler is overpower though.) The detonator can be used as a trap, and to guard hallways if you are down a man. I think they should definitley remove bolthsot from starting weapon.

It’s like starting with a Halo 3 mauler.

> Anyway, I just don’t see all this as significant enough to consider this on par with COD. Playing COD, these causal elements have significant influences. If I can get an air strike or other cheap kills like that, it’s simple. But if all Halo gives you is a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher every 5 personal ordinances in a limited amount of of playlists, you still have to traverse the map and get kills with them. They’re not gimmes like in COD. I think you make a good point as to how some people are comparing the two games, but I still think the differences are significant. Thanks for your thoughts.

Thats very true. There are significant differences (like the ability to at least be able to aim in Halo) but it is significantly different from previous games, and does have a lot more gamechanging elements than in previous games.

What’s more annoying, is that we can’t get rid of some of these elements, like instant spawns or default sprint, so that severly cuts the options for competitve playlists and custom games.

8

> I completely agree,
> Even with the smallest similarities, the two games are nothing alike at all.

The similarities aren’t small anymore. After implementation of kill cams, Sprint for all, perks, loadouts, quicker deaths, slower regen, this game is a lot more like COD than anyone is giving credit to. Within the first hour of playing the multiplayer I couldn’t even think otherwise. After playing the COD franchise long enough, I knew this felt extremely familiar, and that it has been done elsewhere. This is my opinion, like you have yours, but all Halo multiplayer is now, is a Graphical Anomaly of COD. COD has point streaks now too btw. Major difference is in COD you have more than around 12 guns to choose from. Also more maps.

9

> Sigh…wish you would stop making these long reads. You don’t need to explain to people that halo is not cod. Thats a no brainer. When people say halo is cod or halo is turning into cod, its simply an exaggeration of the truth. There is no way in hell you can deny that this game is trying to cater to the cod audience.

It isn’t an exaggeration though.

When comparing 2 different things, you look at what is different. In Halo you’re able to pick up new weapons, while in CoD you choose the weapons from the start. That would be an example of a difference.

Say that Halo has 100 differences from CoD. Well if 50 of those differences are changed into what CoD is doing, then the game is in fact starting to become a CoD clone. Once every difference has been changed, it is no longer a different game.

Is Halo CoD NOW? No, but the fact nearly every change in H4 is currently bein used by its competitor CoD means it is inarguably moving in that direction.

The DIFFERNCES are why fans like myself CHOSE Halo instead of CoD. If 343 continues taking those differences away, then Halo will die in every sense of the word.

10

> > Sigh…wish you would stop making these long reads. You don’t need to explain to people that halo is not cod. Thats a no brainer. When people say halo is cod or halo is turning into cod, its simply an exaggeration of the truth. There is no way in hell you can deny that this game is trying to cater to the cod audience.
>
> It isn’t an exaggeration though.
>
> When comparing 2 different things, you look at what is different. In Halo you’re able to pick up new weapons, while in CoD you choose the weapons from the start. That would be an example of a difference.
>
> Say that Halo has 100 differences from CoD. Well if 50 of those differences are changed into what CoD is doing, then the game is in fact starting to become a CoD clone. Once every difference has been changed, it is no longer a different game.
>
> Is Halo CoD NOW? No, but the fact nearly every change in H4 is currently being used by its competitor CoD means it is inarguably moving in that direction.
>
> The DIFFERNCES are why fans like myself CHOSE Halo instead of CoD. If 343 continues taking those differences away, then Halo will die in every sense of the word.

11

> > Sigh…wish you would stop making these long reads. You don’t need to explain to people that halo is not cod. Thats a no brainer. When people say halo is cod or halo is turning into cod, its simply an exaggeration of the truth. There is no way in hell you can deny that this game is trying to cater to the cod audience.
>
> It isn’t an exaggeration though.
>
> When comparing 2 different things, you look at what is different. In Halo you’re able to pick up new weapons, while in CoD you choose the weapons from the start. That would be an example of a difference.
>
> Say that Halo has 100 differences from CoD. Well if 50 of those differences are changed into what CoD is doing, then the game is in fact starting to become a CoD clone. Once every difference has been changed, it is no longer a different game.
>
> Is Halo CoD NOW? No, but the fact nearly every change in H4 is currently bein used by its competitor CoD means it is inarguably moving in that direction.
>
> The DIFFERNCES are why fans like myself CHOSE Halo instead of CoD. If 343 continues taking those differences away, then Halo will die in every sense of the word.

  1. how is it not exaggeration? an exaggeration is in overstatement.

  2. i agree that halo will die (is dying) if these differences are removed so im not sure what the meaning of your entire post was.

12

The easiest fix for this is of course to simply have a ranked and social playlist. The hardcore community can play vanilla halo without ordinance drops or loadouts. The casual community can keep halo the way it is now and add some playlists like griffball. I know I would like both.

13

Halo is not cod of course, which is why all those cod fans flocked over to BO2 once it came out. The go back to real deal… cod formula. We try incorporate some of that formula in our game. It doesn’t last long for halo fans…

14

> The easiest fix for this is of course to simply have a ranked and social playlist. The hardcore community can play vanilla halo without ordinance drops or loadouts. The casual community can keep halo the way it is now and add some playlists like griffball. I know I would like both.

Oh ya, so about that classic playlist we were promised… lol

15

> In the past, being good at the game has required knowing about the maps, knowing about spawns. Very long ago, when the leveling wasn’t based on personal performance, but winning, teamwork was encouraged as well as strategical thinking. You needed to move around the map actively and it was more about your team than yourself, which reflected in the ranking system.

I’m not really sure how people can honestly say that after watching the Fall MLG championships. Personal ordinances weren’t game breaking, team work, strategy and map control were all used as well. Spawns were watched and played well.

Mind you these were MLG settings, but they still had the exact play style as older Halos.

http://www.own3d.tv/MLGHalo4

16

come on, various cod elements were deliberately implanted in Halo 4 and i still remember 343’s description for one of the specialization(rouge?) saying “Yep, this one is almost straight out of Call of Duty…” you guys can’t seriously deny this.

17

> come on, various cod elements were deliberately implanted in Halo 4 and i still remember 343’s description for one of the specialization(rouge?) saying “Yep, this one is almost straight out of Call of Duty…” you guys can’t seriously deny this.

Call of duty is like TF2. They took loadouts from it, took it’s game modes, and even let people spawn with rocket launchers and grenade launchers. Call of duty is just like TF2. Get TF2 out of my call of duty.

See what I did there?

18

> > come on, various cod elements were deliberately implanted in Halo 4 and i still remember 343’s description for one of the specialization(rouge?) saying “Yep, this one is almost straight out of Call of Duty…” you guys can’t seriously deny this.
>
> Call of duty is like TF2. They took loadouts from it, took it’s game modes, and even let people spawn with rocket launchers and grenade launchers. Call of duty is just like TF2. Get TF2 out of my call of duty.
>
> See what I did there?

343 made it obvious that it was catering to cod players. I wasn’t thibking Halo is cod. I simply want Halo to stay on it’s roots.

19

HALO is not COD, because COD measures your ping time before JIP’ing players onto a jacked up host.

20

halo is not cod because cods developers didnt -Yoink- over their fan base

also any game that adds an abundance of luck factors needs to rethink what they are doing