Frank O'Connor On The Future Of Competitive Halo

[Echos]

What about H3 do you dislike? Besides the bad BR spread and netcode.

Halo 3 arguably had the worse melee system to date. Only a fraction of your opponent needed to be on the screen to connect with a melee and it took away reaction time. For the first time if you struck the last melee needed to kill first you still died because they had .25 seconds to land their melee and kill you. That's why there were so many trade off melees in Halo 3 compared to every other game.

[MrGreenWithAGun]

I was glad to hear him mention how Halo stands out from the crowd with its lengthy fire fights. It sounds like that quality of the game is safe from any tinkering.

[chaosTheory]

Halo 3 arguably had the worse melee system to date. Only a fraction of your opponent needed to be on the screen to connect with a melee and it took away reaction time. For the first time if you struck the last melee needed to kill first you still died because they had .25 seconds to land their melee and kill you. That's why there were so many trade off melees in Halo 3 compared to every other game.

Yeah but the trade was infinitely better than what it was before that, if you'll recall. Before it was patched, it gave the win to the person with more health, even if that person melee'd after he should have died. And it wasn't a trade, that "dead" guy walked.

 

So if outshoot a player, walk away from that battle with no shields and come up behind someone else... I can shoot him three times and melee him first, and hear the sound of it connecting, when he SHOULD DIE.....and if he turns around and mashes the melee button within a window of 250ms, which is huge in gaming, he goes from effectively dead to sole survivor because instead of trading, it gives him the kill. He had 25% shields, I had 10%, therefore he wins no matter who hit first. I had a situation where I effectively killed the player, and it gave the win to the guy with the slower reaction time.

 

Thanks, I'll take the trade any day of the week. This fix did however, as you mentioned, result in a metric TON of trades, which was idiotic too, but to a lesser extent.

 

AND I SWEAR HALF OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE HALO THREE DONT EVEN KNOW THIS STUFF.

[Echos]

Yeah but the trade was infinitely better than what it was before that, if you'll recall. Before it was patched, it gave the win to the person with more health, even if that person melee'd after he should have died. And it wasn't a trade, that "dead" guy walked.

 

So if outshoot a player, walk away from that battle with no shields and come up behind someone else... I can shoot him three times and melee him first, and hear the sound of it connecting, when he SHOULD DIE.....and if he turns around and mashes the melee button within a window of 250ms, which is huge in gaming, he goes from effectively dead to sole survivor because instead of trading, it gives him the kill. He had 25% shields, I had 10%, therefore he wins no matter who hit first. I had a situation where I effectively killed the player, and it gave the win to the guy with the slower reaction time.

 

Thanks, I'll take the trade any day of the week. This fix did however, as you mentioned, result in a metric TON of trades, which was idiotic too, but to a lesser extent.

 

AND I SWEAR HALF OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE HALO THREE DONT EVEN KNOW THIS STUFF.

I do recall that and I would have preferred the Halo 2 momentum based melee then Halo 3's or Reach's shield based system.

 

If I remember correctly they were both implemented to curb host advantage?

 

I'd argue very few know how they're favorite game functioned and why it played the way it did that is why we see all of these if you could take x and put it into y game which would it be threads here as of late. Which is awesome to to talk and think about but we should know by now things don't translate from one game to another in Halo because every games mechanics and physics are different. A good example is hang'em high/ tombstone/ whatever its called in Reach. We knew that it played slower with hitscan weapons due to tombstone. But replace the dmr with the pistol in Reach and you get more a CE style of gameplay.

[Solarity]

The core is awful. The shooting is awful. The reticle feel is sloppy and floaty and laggy and weird. The movement has a ton of intertia that makes the strafe unresponsive. The melee hitboxes are gargantuan and melees are far too powerful for their ease of use. The BR is spread is way worse than h3 advocates make it out to be. The autoaim is also much higher than people made it out to be (see video). It's the worst iteration of what "classic halo" can be in my opinion. I know a lot of people love it and I'm sorry for making it sound so horrid, but I'd play default halo 4 over default halo 3 any day of the week, inane sprinting and armor abilities included. At least I can shoot in a damned straight line and kill people who arent 20 feet away and closer. At least I can always spawn with a headshot weapon. They also introduced the momentum-based distance modifier for grenades, which I have never liked to this day. It's inconsistent. That last one is debatable and could be argued to be more skillful, but I'd argue against it anytime.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y4K1gR0q6I

 

Disclaimer: I was a 50, I'm not saying this cause I was completely awful at it. I played MLG settings on LAN, hell I even played against pistola on LAN. I still think the game is terrible at its core.

 

 

H1: best core. Shooting took great skill vs strafing opponents. Coming back from being shots down was always possible. Nades were always consistent distance wise and did consistent damage. Timing weapons was the best in the franchise and the sandbox was the best. I could go one but it would sound even more fanboyish than this already does. Maps have more to do with gameplay than anyone else really understands. H1 maps are awful in other halo games because those games are awful. You could take bad maps from the sequels and if you laid out the powerups correctly, theyd work just fine in h1.

 

h2: By 2007 this was a good game. It introduced teamwork in a way that didnt exist before, because the individual had been nerfed. The key to winning any halo game is not to outshoot people, its to kill them without taking damage yourself. That was possible on your own in h1 but not in h2. So the teamshooting dynamic was introduced. Watching FB on warlock was a thing of beauty when it came to appreciating the coordination. I think I remember a game with like 52 assists in a game to 50 kills.

Glitches made the individual more powerful, but the real skill in Halo 2 was not shooting the BR well, it was mitigating the shots you took. Walling, peek shooting, etc - that was the real separation in that game other than teamwork. Nade distances were consistent and it was a solid game, even if I personally didnt enjoy playing it.

 

H3: It simply didnt add anything that didnt exist in Halo 2 except for the mindless charge strat. There is really nothing that H3 added except maybe leading shots, and that was already in h1. It further nerfed the individual to the point where teamwork was literally the only way to win, even vs people who didnt shoot particularly well. I personally don't think that is fun. The sniper was harder, so I guess that was a step up from Halo 2. Maybe plasma launching? That took skill to execute correctly in game. It didn't have a ton of merits that Halo 2 didn't do better.

 

HR: Reach was two games. It was nobleed bloomy nonsense and it was bleeding ZB awesomeness. The bloom was almost worse than the h3 BR spread. At least it was controllable, but it was still. so. bad. At times it felt way worse. ZB reach with no sprint was a great halo game, very much like halo 2 and if there were more viable close range options, it would be far and away a better halo game than h2. The lag in forge maps made it feel crappy at times but it was mostly decent. If someone had a better shot than you, they could prove it, consistently. Beyond that there were not a lot of other merits it had. Huge netcode improvement. Smaller melee hitboxes than h3, which was nice. Nobleed melees were the worst close range mechanic in any halo game, even worse than H3's giant hitboxes. It was illogical and IDIOTIC and just thinking about it makes me mad.

 

H4: Halo 4 doesnt do much better than previous games other than let you spawn with a weapon that works in pretty much every playlist. The shooting mechanics, while very easy and riddled with autoaim, are at least more consistent than h3. I like all of the primary weapons except the BR to be honest, though I wish the DMR was harder to use. The melees are about the same as Reach's. Nades are meh, I've never been a huge fan of bouncing nades, though I recognize they can be very skillful. There are way more bad things to talk about with Halo 4 than good things.

 

 

 

Well yea, all of those things WERE amazing because they were revolutionary. I'm not talking about any of that. I'd love for all of them to be in Halo 1 or any other better halo game. None of those things have anything to do with my criticisms of the gameplay. I know tons of people enjoyed it. Tons of people enjoy CoD, but I don't like that either. Popularity means nothing about about actual quality, eg Justin Bieber, etc.

 

You lose alot of credibility when you say things like that. H3s hitbox was by far the smallest between Reach and H4

[aBaldGinger]

You lose alot of credibility when you say things like that. H3s hitbox was by far the smallest between Reach and H4

He meant melee hitboxes, just watch the video.

[chaosTheory]

Smaller melee hitboxes than h3, which was nice. Nobleed melees were the worst close range mechanic in any halo game, even worse than H3's giant hitboxes.

 

You lose alot of credibility when you say things like that. H3s hitbox was by far the smallest between Reach and H4

 

And you lose a lot of credibility for reading comprehension if you can't infer I was talking about melees. Melees have an offensive hitbox as well.

 

Assuming you understood I did mean melees, watch that video and you'll see what I'm talking about. There was like 4 pixels of my opponent on my screen and I hit him both times. I was swinging at pure AIR. I'd have to do some testing with Reach and Halo 4 to see if I could reproduce that, but from my experience it is easiest to melee someone who isnt even in front of you in Halo 3. And I've played thousands of all of these games. Go cap it and prove me wrong if you think the melee hitboxes are so much bigger in Reach and 4.

[zZunair]

Dem h3 1 pixel melees

 

yum

[The Boss Haug]

I like the interview but I am still not gonna get my hopes up. With what happened with the launch of 4, I am going to wait until the game launches.

[Solarity]

And you lose a lot of credibility for reading comprehension if you can't infer I was talking about melees. Melees have an offensive hitbox as well.

 

Assuming you understood I did mean melees, watch that video and you'll see what I'm talking about. There was like 4 pixels of my opponent on my screen and I hit him both times. I was swinging at pure AIR. I'd have to do some testing with Reach and Halo 4 to see if I could reproduce that, but from my experience it is easiest to melee someone who isnt even in front of you in Halo 3. And I've played thousands of all of these games. Go cap it and prove me wrong if you think the melee hitboxes are so much bigger in Reach and 4.

 

Didn't read. I meant head hitboxes. in that case H3s have the largest melee hitboxes you are right, but that made it more consistent. there is alot of flailing around beatdown annoyances in reach especially. 

[Teapot]

When cT posts, you read every word. Then you go back and you read it again.

[eXTeaR]

I like the interview but I am still not gonna get my hopes up. With what happened with the launch of 4, I am going to wait until the game launches.

 

This^. Didn't they say the exact same stuff, with the launch of halo 4. 

[chaosTheory]

Didn't read. I meant head hitboxes. in that case H3s have the largest melee hitboxes you are right, but that made it more consistent. there is alot of flailing around beatdown annoyances in reach especially. 

 

I appreciate the honesty, no worries.

 

I guess my question is this - don't you think flailing around and missing is actually a good thing? I don't think missing melees is an annoyance per se; I think it's me missing and I generally tend to blame myself (as best I can, it's really easy to blame the game for deaths). I don't want the damn thing to lunge and aim for me no matter where my opponent is, because then I'll just assume that every single time I die to a melee, it was complete crap. Just my opinion though,

[El Vortex]

-snip-

I almost knew the order you were going to mention it, although I did though that you were going to put Reach in top of Halo 3(which IMO, is the worst of all not including Halo 4). It would be nice for the next game to have a small hitbox for the melees so people can actually start thinking about when to use melees.

[ssj]

I died.

 

 

 

At least he admitted that Spectator Mode was in their mind but due to time, they couldn't make it happen.

Hopefully, now that he said that they had their team, they have time and they resources... there will be not only a spectator mode, but maybe a little bit more. Such as "Coach Mode" like Saucey said and 343 were interested.

 

(Just sayin' lemme be)

 

Wasn't the "coach mode" Nexy's idea? I'm pretty sure he said it one of his videos a while ago. Just saying.

[chaosTheory]

I almost knew the order you were going to mention it, although I did though that you were going to put Reach in top of Halo 3(which IMO, is the worst of all not including Halo 4). It would be nice for the next game to have a small hitbox for the melees so people can actually start thinking about when to use melees.

 

I ended up just putting them in order of release and forgot to order them by merit. You were right, I would have put Halo 3 at the bottom, perhaps tied with 4 for the worst if only because Reach was made so much better with just a few changes. It sucks cause there are so many things about h4 that are way worse but I still find it more enjoyable on a casual level.

 

Let me put it this way:

 

Almost everything that Halo 4 did wrong, Halo 3 did right. But almost everything that Halo 3 did wrong, Halo 4 did better. They are each bad for totally different reasons so I understand how and why h3 fans would hate me for equating them.

[Faliz18]

He said accessibility a little too much.

[LeandroTrooper]

I ended up just putting them in order of release and forgot to order them by merit. You were right, I would have put Halo 3 at the bottom, perhaps tied with 4 for the worst if only because Reach was made so much better with just a few changes. It sucks cause there are so many things about h4 that are way worse but I still find it more enjoyable on a casual level.

 

Let me put it this way:

 

Almost everything that Halo 4 did wrong, Halo 3 did right. But almost everything that Halo 3 did wrong, Halo 4 did better. They are each bad for totally different reasons so I understand how and why h3 fans would hate me for equating them.

Thats a good things! I mean... not the fact about that both Halo 3 and Halo 4 had bad mechanism/good mechanism. Is good to know what both games need so the game could work out to be 100x better!

[makeitstop]

Imagine how awesome it would be if developers would come in here and drop knowledge bombs the way cT does. Would be amazing, thanks cT; hope you aren't looking at retirement anytime soon.

 

 

When cT posts, you read every word. Then you go back and you read it again.

 

 

'Aight we get it people.  You splooge whenever cT makes a comment.  

 

I'm not saying that his comments aren't that good or anything, I'm just saying that I'd rather not see 2 or 3 people saying "praise you based cT"  every single time the guy makes a comment longer than two paragraphs.

[Mindful]

'Aight we get it people.  You splooge whenever cT makes a comment.  

 

I'm not saying that his comments aren't that good or anything, I'm just saying that I'd rather not see 2 or 3 people saying "praise you based cT"  every single time the guy makes a comment longer than two paragraphs.

He is a smart individual who knows halo, Some people go overboard but the man knows what he's talking about

[makeitstop]

He is a smart individual who knows halo, Some people go overboard but the man knows what he's talking about

I agree with you, I just don't feel the need to be reminded every damn time he makes a comment haha.  I mean, I kept my mouth closed (or should I say my keyboard) the last 5 or so times but now it's getting kind of annoying.  Perhaps he'd want some relief as well?

[Mindful]

I agree with you, I just don't feel the need to be reminded every damn time he makes a comment haha.  I mean, I kept my mouth closed (or should I say my keyboard) the last 5 or so times but now it's getting kind of annoying.  Perhaps he'd want some relief as well?

ya theres slight shall we say riding happening halo people are just in need of a cT right now

[makeitstop]

ya theres slight shall we say riding happening halo people are just in need of a cT right now

Dick riding.  You mean to say dick riding.   As in straddling the eel, mounting the one-eyed snake,  ascending the sausage, bestriding the bald man...

[Vegan Elite]

Dick riding.  You mean to say dick riding.   As in straddling the eel, mounting the one-eyed snake,  ascending the sausage, bestriding the bald man...

Man poor guy seems like someones in need of a bit of dick riding himself. On a positive note there ain't nothing wrong with compliments and giving credit where it is due.

[Droid]

And you lose a lot of credibility for reading comprehension if you can't infer I was talking about melees. Melees have an offensive hitbox as well.

 

Assuming you understood I did mean melees, watch that video and you'll see what I'm talking about. There was like 4 pixels of my opponent on my screen and I hit him both times. I was swinging at pure AIR. I'd have to do some testing with Reach and Halo 4 to see if I could reproduce that, but from my experience it is easiest to melee someone who isnt even in front of you in Halo 3. And I've played thousands of all of these games. Go cap it and prove me wrong if you think the melee hitboxes are so much bigger in Reach and 4.

 

I was gonna say that the ease of ability to ninja people in Halo 3 alone proves how broken the melee hitboxes are. Not to mention the fact that if you hit a guy on his right shoulder regardless of where he was to you it was an instant backsmack.