Forum:Halo 4: From the Beginning You Know the End

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Alright hear me out here, I know the title of this forum may seem a little extreme but this is not about the ending to the game, or rather the story of Halo 4 at all. What it's about is the ultimate end of the Halo experience that was masterfully crafted by Bungie, there has been a lot of information leaked out from the May issue of Game Informer, and I know I may be jumping to conclusions, but its seems like the franchise is already headed in the wrong direction. Let me clarify:

It seems like 343i is trying to bring the multiplayer to the "modern age", which at a glance seems good, but think a little deeper. Almost all modern shooters have the same basic formula, e.i. Battlefield, Homefront, Crysis, Killzone, Rage, etc... And we all know where this stems from; Call of Duty, now don't get me wrong, I enjoy some Call of Duty from, time to time, I, unlike many others don't have any problems with it, however I do hate the majority of it's audience, which I'll return to later.

Now to me it seems like 343i is trying to COD-ify the experience in an attempt to expand the already massive audience, some examples of the COD-ification would include the removal of a respawn clock and making it instantanious, a seemingly small change but it still breaks the formula. Another huge change is sprinting for all, which is the only change I'm for, its about time the supersoldier can actually move faster than 3MPH, however some possible cons to this could be that everyones sprinting to cover, making it harder for the marksman with the Battle Rifle to do his job, rushing the power weapons (which now has an issue all its own) which used to be something that players that chose sprint as an armor ability had exclusively. Thats just scratching the iceberg, as I mentioned above the power weapons have issues, now they no longer follow a respawn clock so players can no longer plan there routes accordingly, now rather they randomly come in "weapon drops" where everyone gets a notification of where the weapon if, similar to Gears of War 3 or Crysis 2, however think of how this breaks the formula, the power weapon spawns would become a massacre if every player rushed them at once. Worse still, I've heard rumors of ADS (aim-down sights) being added, that would honestly be the nails in the coffin for that Halo feel.

If I havn't convinced you enough yet then this should; players can now join multiplayer matches in progress, something that seems good, now nobody has to play 3v4 right? Well honestly its a problem Bungie started in Halo: Reach, leaving a match had almost no penalty, which of course led to much more match quiting than Halo 3 where you actually lost EXP for leaving a match, now it becomes more like COD where you could join a match a minute from ending, which DOES NOT work in the Halo formula, where kills have to be skillfully earned and took a whole match to look impressive on the scoreboard. Now players could loose their whole sense of "honor" for the match, now with people joining and quiting it becomes a droll experience where every opponent is an annoyance, not a worthy adversary, which is how I alway saw it. With this new system rage quits will run rampant across Halo's "honorable battlefields".

It's worse still, custom loadouts and armor that effects how you play is what a lot of Halo fans wished for, but honestly it's one of the biggest breakers of the Halo formula, all the way back to Halo: Combat Evolved it's work liked this: All players spawn equally and victory is based on skill and obtaining the power weapons, now this new formula takes that and pisses on it, now this is how it works: Victory is based on who is higher level and unlocked better armor and weapons and is unfair to every other player. It's just sickening. Like I mentioned above now you'll have to unlock your armor through LEVEL PROGRESSION. NO. Halo: Reach had it perfect, you could customize your armor to you're liking by buying it with the credits you EARNED. Sure you had to be a Colonal to but the gold visor for example, but you probebly couldn't afford it anyway so it all really balanced out. Now theres "Spartan Points" which you use to buy you're armor abilities, including the VERY overpowered-sounding Forerunner Vision, seeing through walls? Really 343? There goes trying to be stealthy and using cover, its just becomes mindless shooting and punching in the open, sure in retrospect it seems like an anti-camping measure but now that you can customize your grenades (and honestly, who would actually run Frags when stickies are an option?) campers don't worry me as much.

Theres still more, now 343i is undoing the mastery of Bungie, REMOVAL of Firefight!? Really? How can you get rid of that? A game without a survival mode these days? Thats not gonna fly, it was an amazing game mode. I personally liked it better in Halo 3: ODST because in Halo: Reach they kinda ruined the matchmaking aspect of it but I still enjoyed a private game on occasion with my pals. They now have Spartan Ops, a story-tied series of weekly four-player missions, I am opptimistic for this at best but would rather take Firefight over it any day. Also tossed on the trash are the Elites in multiplayer, although they were less common is Reach than in Halo 2 or 3 they are still very welcome and loved, I remember always making jokes with my friends about playing as an Elite in Reach, they'd run and call me a dinosaur, and laugh when I was too large to fit through things, and now they are gone. And I can only assume that Invasion is out because there are no Elites, pity, I loved Invasion. Now the multiplayer has a "story" you're all SPARTAN-VIs in training, but honestly we didn't need a reason on why they are fighting, we already have one, cough "Kill the Reds, Kill the Reds, Kill the Reds".

Now im not all cynacle towards the changes, like I said I don't mind the universal addition of sprinting, and the new game mode; Regicide sound like fun (although Headhunter was pretty much the same thing). But I can honestly barely find anything positive about these changes.

Now in a final conclusion, I draw attention to Microsoft, obviously the true one in charge here, not 343i, that was obvious but I think it goes deeper than that. I believe that Microsoft wants 343i to make this game appeal to the Call of Duty audience, in an attempt to make more money. Why else would they not make a beta for Halo 4? When they'd supposedly been working on it for years? So that the Halo community dosn't realize that the new formula sucks and decides not to buy the game. They just want money, they'd sell out the massive Halo community, the "Halo Nation" as we are collectively called, so they can have Call of Duty's audiance, which like I mentioned earlier is mainly kids, little punks who think they're cool and hackers. When Bungie was in charge they would of never let this happen, they did thingd their way, not Microsofts, but now they're gone. The Halo multiplayer is done, as Luke Smith once said "Campaign prepares an amazing table, but multiplayers your meal." and it appears that meal has been spoilled rotten.

BushWookie^Camper 23:16, 9 April 2012 (EDT)

I'm not a multiplayer man, so I'll admit some of your points may have merit. Insta-respawn, for example. Random power weapons. Drop-in. But some of your assertions are simply laughable, which I'll deal with in paragraphs.

"An honourable battlefield"? My brother's played enough for me to know Halo is also a wretched hive of scum and villainy, though maybe not as much as the COD crowd. Again, I'm not a multiplayer man. As for Spartan Points, is it really that much different to the Armoury system? Rather than mindlessly grinding for character model customisation that doesn't affect gameplay, you have an incentive - the higher your level, the more you have access to. Multiplayer should work by pairing players of approximately equivalent level - a common complaint I heard during the days of Halo 3 was that people would intentionally lose levels so that they could get paired up with newer players for easy matches. If you do that under the Spartan Points system, then you lose all your sweet loot - an incentive not to cheat.

Who said they removed Firefight? As far as I'm concerned, it's just been renamed and revamped as Spartan Ops. Campaign enemies in a competitive setting, now linked with a metanarrative. Consider it an analogy to Mass Effect 3's Galaxy at War, a system that I love the sound of. It allows competitive play, gradually increasing difficulty, but lets you play as part of an "in-universe" strike force doing something that has an effect on the campaign. Yes, using Mass Effect as an example for Halo sounds contradictory (STAR CHILD!!!!!!) but it's a good one. And really, I never got the big deal about Firefight - if I wanted to play in campaign settings against campaign enemies competitively, why wouldn't I play campaign? Ramp up the difficulty, turn skulls on, get a group of friends? With a bit of tweaking, there's no reason why Spartan Ops can't be the new Firefight v.3. You also misunderstand how it'll work - the Spartan Ops are episodic, not weekly - it won't be like challenges, where there's a new set for each week, it means a new set will become available, adding to the others. By the end, you'd have a coherent storyline that you could play through again.

Elites are a stylistic choice, and they've always come with controversy. In Halo 2 and 3, we complained they hunched over too much. In Halo Reach, they were too tall. I loved the aesthetic, the idea of playing the other side, but in gameplay terms it's just troublesome. I'd have loved to play as Elites, but it isn't breaking the game.

Forerunner Vision. Really? You take exception to this? Round a corner, shotgun to the face. Or come up to a corner, use FV to check if there's a camper around the corner, back away to fight on elsewhere, or maybe flank him. And perhaps you could counter it by using active camouflage. Anyone who thinks it's going to be TOTAL x-ray vision across the whole map is taking it to the ridiculous extreme. It would need to be short-range, limited duration, and have weaknesses - maybe it doesn't see through lead? If it was that unbalanced, it wouldn't be in the game. The core of Halo isn't the level playing field, it's that everything has a counter and it's up to the player to find and use it.

Multiplayer having a meta-fictional excuse - sorry, who does this hurt? Answer: nobody. I actually like the explanation they came up with, and it's better than the RvB idea that it's all war-games but nobody told the participants. And I love RvB.

When did a multiplayer beta test become a god-given right? I loved playing them, but I hated the idea of them in the end. The Halo 3 beta was legitimately to playtest multiplayer assets to see how they would interact after release with new hardware - the fact that they looked good, and familiarised players with new equipment, didn't hurt. With Halo Wars, though, it just seemed like a bit of advertising - here's the appetiser, now go buy the main course! And with Reach, I still felt it was more to get consumers interested. Yeah, I'd like to see some actual gameplay from Halo 4, and maybe it would allay some fears among the community. But setting up and running a beta test isn't as simple as you'd think, and the data needs to be processed and responded to in the time left before the game's released, or it's just an expensive demo. Evidently, 343i decided that the benefits didn't outweigh the cost, and decided to focus on polishing what they have. But what really irritates me is that fans have come to expect a beta test. With Halo 3, I was like "oh, hey, this is a cool thing Bungie are doing, props!" But as time went on, it became more and more focussed on advertising the game rather than actually improving it. Was much changed between the beta and final copy for Halo Wars or Reach? I can't remember much changing.

Microsoft as the money-grubbing evil corporation: I've seen this a lot lately, and it's also something that irritates the hell out of me. Corporations are businesses, and they need to make money to stay afloat. They have a responsibility to investors, owners, etc. They do this by delivering quality products. If you don't like the product, you don't have to buy it - which means they have a responsibility to deliver quality. If you want an example of corporate greed, look at EA's utter mishandling of the otherwise brilliant Mass Effect - they forced the development team to cut out a major character to ship the game on time, forcing them to include him as DLC, enraging fans. They forced the studio to change the original ending (something about Dark Matter) after some German hackers leaked details, giving us the abominable Star Child. And I wasn't too thrilled that they were charging players for such ephemeral things as weapon packs and alternate appearances. I spent more on Mass Effect 2 DLC than I did to buy the game. With Halo, we've always got quality DLC. The fact that you use their name for us, the Halo Nation, shows that they care about community input. They know that pissing off the fans only creates negative publicity. There's an old saying: "any publicity is good publicity." Bullshit. Word-of-mouth lead to people raging at Mass Effect 3 in droves, forcing Bioware and EA to backpedal hard. What, exactly, has Microsoft done to ruin Halo besides keeping it when Bungie moved on? Bungie were moving to new things anyway. Looking back, I'm a little sceptical that I've just defended free market capitalism, being the liberal that I am, but it's true.

What I really take exception to, though, is the notion that Halo is something fragile that needs to be protected, that there was a perfect form that that it should stay like that for the rest of its life. If that's true, then it's already dead. The clue is in the title: "combat evolved." Every game has brought new stuff. Halo 2 brought LIVE. recharging health, and Dual Wielding. Halo 3 gave us equipment, and customised armour. Halo Wars gave us an interesting new take on a familiar universe by making it an RTS, as Bungie originally envisaged Halo being. Halo 3: ODST lost dual wielding (absolutely the right move) and gave us Firefight. Halo Reach improved equipment by turning them into armour abilities, gave players optional loadouts, and vastly expanded Halo 3's armour customisation. What are the major changes to Halo 4? respawn times, weapon spawns, and Spartan Ops. I feel old saying this, but people complained back in the day too! This isn't new! People insisted that dual wielding would ruin Halo, breaking the Golden Tripod. They said the same of equipment, and armour abilities. What people are really complaining about is that Halo is changing, and they're forgetting that Halo has ALWAYS been about change.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the level of Bungie worship we're seeing has got to stop. I love Bungie as much as the next person, but they're gone. Let them go. I'll be buying their games of course, because I'm not insane, but I am, first and foremost, a HALO fan. I loved Halo Wars, problems and all, and people were already decrying it as Microsoft whoring out the franchise. I loved Ensemble before Halo Wars, after playing the brilliant Age of Mythology. I still do. I've been impressed by how 343i have turned a shaky beginning around into a coherent vision. A fan shouldn't have this idealised notion of something, because nothing will ever come close to it. A true fan criticised and appreciates in equal measure, and loves it regardless. I also love Doctor Who, but I acknowledge and accept that it has its fair share of awful (Rose. Davies' soap-opera treatment of it. The overexposure of the Daleks. Moffat's timey-wimey stuff. And that's just the new series'.) But I love it anyway, in spite of, or perhaps because of, them. Same goes with Halo - I can see the possible problems, and I offer criticism. The shoulder pieces of the Chief's new suit are awful, even if the rest is really growing on me. I also am worried about how instant respawning and randomised power weapon drops will work out. And I'm worried at how little substantive stuff we're seeing. But these things are not and-all and be-all. We've been suckling at Bungie's food nipple for so long that we've idealised them in our minds as gaming gods. Now we're discovering that there's a pantheon, filled with names like Epic, Bioware, Blizzard, and that 343i is joining their ranks. And like the monotheists we are, we haven't taken it well.

And, to be completely pedantic, "codify" is a real word. I do not think it means what you think it means. :P

Man, I feel old. -- Specops306 ^{Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek} 02:04, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

I typed a bunch of stuff, but an edit conflict with Specops306 really explained things more thoroughly. So, I am just going to summarize my opinions in one sentence: "I don't want Halo to be 'Call of Duty... RECYCLED IN SPACE'!" —S331 _{(COM • Mission Log • Profile)} 02:30, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

I agree with many of everyone's points. I am open to improvement, but I don't want the game to become a generic first person shooter that just happens to take place in space. If I wanted that, I'd ask for Call of Duty: Future Warfare. Anyways, the random weapon spawns will be just as confusing to new players as the timed ones will. I can see it now:

"What? I just saw that weapon over there last game! What's going on?!"

Which defeats the purpose of the change entirely. Instant spawn also needs to go away, escpecially since that makes exterminations impossible and multikills easy as heck. It also takes away some of the things that make the game interesting. I also disagree with the midway game quoting/joining, at least for some game modes. Co-op campaign and Spartan Ops would be the major exceptions to this belief. Finally, they need a way better name than Forerunner Vision, cuz that just sounds so damn lame. pestilence Phil, pestilence! 16:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

Forum/Thread title is misleading. Was expecting something on plot/storyline. To contribute to the discussion, the gameplay of Halo (except Halo Wars gameplay... which is something different) has always been, as a wise man once said, "that 30 seconds of fun". I would say that this formula is preserved in future Halo titles (except for Halo Wars, see earlier note) by 343i. Just an interesting observation since Halo 3; the Halo fanbase love blowing things out of proportions when they receive early details of a title (aside from criticising genre... the horror that is Halo MMO), incomplete/limited details to that point.

It should be reminded that the multiplayer component of Halo 4 has greater influence to canon than previous titles, according to what I heard from other commentators. I guess various explanations of the multiplayer could be made from a storyline perspective. We are told that multiplayer takes place within Infinity's holo-training chamber (ala X-men style, some said). I guess weapon placement being random would be quite a reasonable explanation to increase the intensity of the training environment. In another example, sprinting being default could be an indication that the S-IVs are not as fast as the S-IIs and S-IIIs (since sprinting was an inhibitor for their own safety). Potential explanations for multiplayer... and I have been quite spot on. :D

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the level of Bungie worship we're seeing has got to stop. I love Bungie as much as the next person, but they're gone."

— Morhek

*pitchforks and torches* — subtank 16:59, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

*Flees to a nearby mill to escape the crowd, carrying his creator.* -- Specops306 ^{Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek} 18:51, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

*The Germans find you and execute you by firing squad*

I do want there to be changes to gameplay. However, with this said, I do not want it to be changed in such a way that it is not Halo. I do not like change; rather, I like improvements. I hope that Halo 4 acomplishes this. I read an article recently that decried the changes 343i is implementing. What it advocated was that gameplay never change, and that Halo turn in to CoD, the reasoning being that the fact that the games don't change at all leads to their popularity. I read another article, entitled "Halo: CE ruined Halo", which I agreed with entierly. It entaled how a desire to return to "glory days" of CE have affected halo. This is evident in all of the changes to Reach. I entierly agreed with its assertion that Reach ought to be diffrent, that this diffrence was fine. This is what I wish for 4 - that it is different, but remains in the spirit of Halo. I hope this is what happenes, and that it dosn't simply become Call of Duty. - DefeatingLine 19:17, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

*Finds Specops306's creator next morning in the mill* Specops306, there is a difference between "Worshiping Bungie" and "Keeping Halo's tradition". —S331 _{(COM • Mission Log • Profile)} 20:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

There is a huge difference. There is a long tradition to Halo development, but what I take exception to, as I said, is the notion that ONLY Bungie can make a Halo game. People decided Ensemble, an award-winning studio with a huge fanbase on its own, of being inferior to Bungie. People are doing the same with the admittedly unproven 343i. But that's it - they are unproven. How are we judging them with so little in the way of actual tangible material? I look at [these screenshots] and [pieces of concept art], and I am reassured that Halo is doing fine. It may not be my favourite Halo game, but Halo:CE is a hard act for anyone to follow, and even Bungie didn't quite manage it. -- Specops306 ^{Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek} 20:50, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

I'm looking at a lot of this angst against a "CoDization" of Halo in the same light as American views towards basic personal freedoms and the Republican notion of "hating change." I would rather see 343i crash and burn miserably for failing to deliver a great gameplay experience by trying out new features than to simply do what Bungie has been doing for 11 years. Both Halo and Call of Duty have been getting stale since 2007 and hings need to change for both franchises. And to be honest, ours more than the latter... Grizzlei ♥ ツ

Links removed: legal biz.— subtank 08:24, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

There are you that can accept improvements/change to Halo. I, to a degree, am one of those people. I'll start off by listing the changes that are either confirmed or speculated, and giving my past and present opinion of them.

Spawn time: I don't, nor did I ever, find the removal of spawn times a problem, as long as it is handled correctly. It should be forced after about five seconds, but by pressing X there's no need to wait those five seconds, and you can hop into battle faster; you can gain more kills and medals and it makes the game more fast-paced. On the other hand, if re-spawning were not forced, people could easily... Troll in a sense. I'm certain that if this were the case, the people would go into Team Slayer with a party of three and kill themselves, just so they can not re-spawn and watch the remaining player squirm in a now 1 v. 4 match.

Weapon Drops: Well... At first the only way I could picture this was it happening in a way similar to ordinance in Halo: Reach Firefight. I could just envision people charging into battle, only to be killed by an incoming drop pod. But, now that I've had time to ponder the subject, I feel that if would be less like random weapon drops, and more like random weapon spawns. I find this to be a completely neutral change. It will add unpredictability and excitement to matchmaking games. Though, people that are good with a sniper rifle usually wait for the sniper rifle to re-spawn. Players will have to be much more adaptive when it comes to this new style of spawn points. It will also frustrate the hell out of forgers, the way I see it.

Sprint: What's there to complain about? If you don't feel like running, don't; if you do, then do. It makes things faster. That's all there is too it.

Forerunner Vision: The only way I have ever envisioned this is similar to the VISR in ODST. Everything will turn purple and be outlined in white. Vision will fade out fairly close to the user, and the difference between enemies and friendlies wouldn't be specified. Also, it would only last about ten seconds. Now, that's just the way I saw it, and that seems like a perfectly balanced system to me. It actually seems like fun. I see no need for complaining about this sort of Armor Ability.

The Matchmaking Story: I'm proud to say that this was the explanation I came up with for Halo 3's matchmaking back in 2010. You can say I kind of predicted it... Anyway, to the point. I think it's great that they're trying to expand canon as much as they possibly can by even integrating it into matchmaking. It provides players like me, the ones in it for the story, an appeal to multiplayer.

Spartan Ops: A.K.A. Even MORE campaign! I couldn't ask for anything more. I love campaign. I replay campaign for hours on end and it will entertain me like nothing else, and now there's a, quote-unquote, second campaign! My only hope is that it isn't strictly multiplayer. I would love to be able to play alone on something like Spartan Ops.

Removal of Firefight: Honestly, I see why everyone is angry, but I see no problem in just popping in my ODST or Reach discs if I feel like playing some Firefight. Granted, I would have loved to face more enemies than just the Covenant, but I can settle with what was given to me. You all should be able to do the same. It is time to move on to another new game. And who knows, maybe Firefight will make a triumphant return in Halo 5 or 6.

ADS: Honestly, this is something I'm hoping will not make it into the game. It will... Just ruin the feel I get when I play Halo. That will be the beginning of the end to me.

Armor Permutations: I find the new addition of armor permutations affecting game play to be exciting. They should only affect your player in ways that are balanced and canonically correct, though. For example, a larger chest plate might give you a bit more health but slow you down slightly. Conversely, a smaller chest plate would do the exact opposite. There could be helmets that give you an enhanced motion tracker, boots that allow you to run for a longer duration, or ammo pouches that allow you to hold extra clips or grenades. I think it would be fun to have some advantages/disadvantages to players on matchmaking. It still leaves skill conquering over all, but it puts a new twist on things that we haven't seen before.

Now, I understand your concerns, but I think a lot of the anxiety has to do with the fact that Halo is in the hands of a stranger and we don't know how to trust them. But, in all honesty, the Halo Nation has become a cult of sorts. We worship Bungie as our hero-god that will absolve us of our sins and take us to the afterlife that is Bungie.net. We need to move on. It was hard for me to accept too, but it's true. We must move on and welcome 343i with open arms. After all, who really controls the future of Halo? Microsoft, or us? We are brothers, after all. Connected by the great franchise we have come to know and love called Halo.

Ιι Ηη Ππ 21:19, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

Your last paragraph is exactly what I'm trying to say. Cherish their memory, follow their other work, but accept that Halo has moved on from them. -- Specops306 ^{Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek} 08:57, 11 April 2012 (EDT)