Halo 5: Guardians Discussion

[publicbussystem]

r/Gravemind

r/halocompetitive

[CyReN]

[VinFTW]

Adding       to my wounds.

 

:cry:  :cry:  :cry:

[Moa]

BLACK OPS 3 BETA THOUGH

 

FUCKING HYPEEEE

[VinFTW]

BLACK OPS 3 BETA THOUGH

 

FUCKING HYPEEEE

Yeah thats great news, I'm hyped for the beta and will def. be getting the full game.

 

but RIP Halo

 

 

Not seriously, this is mostly hyperbole but still... missed opportunities

 

[Hully]

I can't believe Black Ops 3 is going to have a beta, it's been so long since there's been one for a CoD title. 

[Mr Grim]

I'm expecting fully customizable abilities like perks, wall running, super speed, high jumping, wall kicking. I'm not so sure the game will have the same abilities as aw.

[Hully]

wall running, super speed, high jumping, wall kicking.

God I hope not. 

[-DeucEy-]

Haha.. Touche Treyarch... Touche...

[CyReN]

I can't believe Black Ops 3 is going to have a beta, it's been so long since there's been one for a CoD title. 

 

CoD 4 / [email protected]

 

I got to play both, can't wait for this.

[ABearInTheWoods]

CoD 4 / [email protected]

 

I got to play both, can't wait for this.

 

BLOPS 3 will be doppeeeeee

[Mr Grim]

God I hope not.

the goal is for h5 to survive, so you better hope blops 3 has those abilities.

[VinFTW]

Wall running and boosting has been confirmed for BLOPS3 already. Not sure if that's what you guys were talking about. 

[Mr Grim]

Wall running and boosting has been confirmed for BLOPS3 already. Not sure if that's what you guys were talking about.

have they? By boosting do they mean double jump or just a high jump like crisis?

[Maximus IL]

@Sal1ent:

 

Though I haven't exactly qualified myself as a fanboy, neither have I been uber-negative about 343i.  There is only one area where I have been highly critical, and that is the MCC.

 

I know that you are not assigned to work on the MCC.  I know that the MCC itself has nothing to do with your job.  But there is at least one aspect related to the MCC that does have a very real - and very direct - impact on Halo 5.

 

Communication

 

By communication, I don't mean updates, or blog posts, or bulletins.  Those are the internet equivalent of a billboard, and presently contain about the same amount of useful information*.  Real communication requires a two-way interaction - even if it's not as live as posting back and forth in a forum thread.

 

The problem with the one-way communication for the MCC is that it does not assuage the players' concerns because the depth is too shallow to communicate the necessary details.  The statement "improvements to parties in matchmaking" means nothing.  It doesn't tell us what 343i thinks the issues with "parties in matchmaking" are.  The MCC team may well have fixed what they perceive to be the issues, but if those issues are not what the players think the issues are, then the company has just signed itself up for one of two interpretations of the communication:

 

1.  343i is lying to us.

2.  343i is entirely incompetent.

 

Neither may be true; but the statement that "X is fixed" without explaining what "X" means removes the ability of players to judge 343i on whether the company actually did what it said it did, and instead allows the players only to judge the company on what the players think the company did.  Those may be two completely different things, and as the MCC has proven, they likely are two completely different things.

 

This type of communication - or lack thereof - was prevalent during H4.  The notable exception was the weapons tuning update, in which some two-way communication occurred in conjunction with bulletins that were far more informative than usual.  But prior to and throughout the rest of the H4 release, much of the communication was poor.  Statements that H4 would return to a classic experience after the aberration that was Reach were either marketing ploys (hopefully not) or displayed a large disconnect between what 343i thought was a "classic" experience and what players thought was a "classic" experience.  The descriptions of the Legendary Slayer list were wholly different than what was delivered . . . and so on.

 

H4 was Strike One.

 

Then comes MCC - billed as "just as you remember it", "dedicated servers", and "best skill matching ever" . . . not just printed in marketing material, but from the mouths of 343i managers and directors on video.  None of that was delivered.  Even the last two uber-patches have failed to deliver it.  CE wasn't as anyone remembered it, with atrocious hit detection, anti-aim assist, and constant disconnections; H2 was the Vista port, which retained the Vista game's issues with hit detection and spawning; H3 was plagued with controller dead zone problems, sound issues, and more hit detection problems; and even H4 has horrible hit detection compared to the 360 version (I have many videos demonstrating this on my Live account - including 6-shot BR + melee not killing an opponent).  I still play primarily P2P games despite being within 90 miles of the Chicago datacenter, and there has never been a statement from 343i detailing the conditions under which the game reverts to P2P (preventing me from correcting it even if it is an issue on my end).  And the ranking / skill matching was broken from Day One (and remains broken as we speak, with rank 50s being generated overnight and matching against rank 1s, despite the last patch being advertised as having fixed it).  After initial apologies, Dan Ayoub and Bonnie Ross were apparently composed by the Didact, never to be heard from again.  I could fill a novel with examples of incomplete and sometimes entirely incorrect information being disseminated by 343i about the MCC.

 

MCC was Strike Two.

 

Now comes Halo 5; the title for which you, Josh, have responsibility.  There have been some noticeable improvements over the MCC and H4; namely, a public beta and a beta post-mortem.  The Sprint episodes are very interesting.  Those are much appreciated (though there were as many sentences in the post-mortem justifying decisions that were not universally popular as there were sentences describing how the game would be changed).

 

With that, there are still some worrisome signs.  SmartScope turned out not to be as advertised ("absolutely no hipfire penalty" on Twitter turned out to mean "hipfire penalty with respect to spread" in-game).  The decision for an ADS-style zoom and the inexplicable design change to the signature SPNKr rocket launcher - almost universally panned everywhere (including by casuals such as myself) - is explained as "modernization" or "immersion", which are descriptors that can be used to justify anything and hence contain no useful insight to your thought process.  Concerns with lighting (and these are not small concerns) have been met with silence.  After all of the repeated statements concerning how well ranks would work in the MCC - which turned out to be pipe dreams - combined with the glitchy behavior of the H5 beta system and virtually no mathematical / theoretical description of how it works (a la Bungie's H2 description) leave little confidence that the ranking system will actually work.

 

Given the effort poured into HCS, you obviously understand the importance of the competitive scene with respect to Halo's image and how that image impacts both sales and longevity of the franchise.  But word-of-mouth on the street (read: forums and reddit) is perhaps even more powerful because it reaches a larger group of people.  Most people may not post anything . . . but they certainly read what is posted.  And while most would probably cringe at some of the things said when Frank O'Connor was visiting here, most would also be disappointed with Frank's responses and subsequent disappearance.

 

While some of the things posted for Frank were (in my opinion) over-the-top, there must also be some understanding that a great deal of it is pent-up frustration being released all at once.  For many years, players have watched the franchise change in ways they disagree with quite strongly.  During those years, 343i did not have any active presence with respect to those issues anywhere except perhaps NeoGaf - which is a closed forum (that, incidentally, has never approved my membership request).  Furthermore, some of the explanations concerning these changes are clearly incomplete.

 

Take sprint, for example.  The primary reasons given for its inclusion have revolved around immersion, "it makes sense", and vague statements about "trends" in the industry.  Since "immersion" is a reason without meaning, it is appropriately viewed as a non-answer.  "It makes sense" is clearly subjective, as it does not make sense to those arguing against it.  "Trends" translates most easily as "CoD has it".  While these may be true reasons, none of them address the concerns that players actually have - such as pacing and map size.  Statements that the "map will play fine without sprint" - backed up by no evidence - similarly ring hollow, as the players concerned about sprint know that unless sprint is nerfed into uselessness, the maps must play differently.  And none of these answers address the real reason that you are retaining sprint:  you feel it is a better business decision to do so.

 

That lack of candor frustrates players, and leads them to make excessively aggressive remarks, which leads 343i to withdraw, which results in attempts by 343i to address player concerns without any real dialog on what those concerns really are.  Like the non-fixes associated with the MCC, that is a recipe for disaster.

 

In addition, there is a distinct lack of statistical information available for players to answer some of their questions themselves.  If we could access game data freely, for example, we could compare the kills-per-minute in a H3 game vs. an H4 game.  Was H4 really slower paced?  Answer available!  We could compare rank matchups to truly see whether skill matching had improved - rather than resorting to "it still sux".  We could determine the percentages of P2P vs. dedi games, look at the player mix, and begin determining common threads between those of us stuck with P2P and those of us enjoying dedis.  There are so many questions that players could answer - independently of any involvement from 343i - which would help us determine which are issues of perception and which are issues in fact.  Both 343i and gamers could then focus on those aspects that truly need improvement rather than thrashing around in the dark chucking spears at each other.

 

Lastly, there is virtually no attempt by 343i to provide a structured, sensible way for players to report glitches and bugs.  Why are there not subforums or pinned posts on Waypoint (or even better - a bug report form) to organize categories of complaints?  Were that structure to exist and be appropriately moderated, many of the bitch-threads would disappear.  The information you would have at your disposal for both fixing and evaluating fixes would be greatly improved.  Players would feel like you actually care.

 

And maybe - just maybe - Frank could come back here without being greeted with a constant barrage of hate mail.

 

Censoring information from us - and often lacking candor in the information you do share - will not foster a cooperative effort between you as the developer and us as gamers.

 

Please think about it.  I do not want Halo 5 to end up being Strike Three.

 

 

*which, if you were wondering, isn't much.

[VinFTW]

have they? By boosting do they mean double jump or just a high jump like crisis?

The insider just said it'll feel different. Could be more similar to H5... :/

[Moa]

Wall running and boosting has been confirmed for BLOPS3 already. Not sure if that's what you guys were talking about. 

None of those have been confirmed.

[VinFTW]

None of those have been confirmed.

Shinobi (GAF insider) hasn't been wrong about anything really since his time on NeoGAF. 

 

I'm inclined to believe it's confirmed. I wouldn't just spew random rumors without a reliable source lol

[Mr Grim]

The insider just said it'll feel different. Could be more similar to H5... :/

then those things....haven't been confirmed then. Not cool man

[Moa]

Shinobi (GAF insider) hasn't been wrong about anything really since his time on NeoGAF. 

 

I'm inclined to believe it's confirmed. I wouldn't just spew random rumors without a reliable source lol

That's not confirmed then.

[VinFTW]

That's not confirmed then.

I understand your questioning of the reliability of the source, but I'm 110% sure it's going to be shown on Sunday.

 

Shinobi don't lie. Never has, never will. 

[Batchford]

This is one of the better posts I have read on this site. Extremely well paragraphed and you promote your points clearly.

 

I personally hope Josh responds with an equally well written response.

[Hully]

the goal is for h5 to survive, so you better hope blops 3 has those abilities.

Halo and CoD are essentially the only games I play. I want both games to be good. 

[Maximus IL]

This is one of the better posts I have read on this site. Extremely well paragraphed and you promote your points clearly.

 

I personally hope Josh responds with an equally well written response.

 

I honestly and truly do not care whether he does.  It would be nice, I suppose . . . but the only thing that matters is whether 343i actually changes how they interact with us.

 

I give Josh lots of props for hanging around here.  It's probably painful to him every time he opens that H5 thread, yet he has kept himself from spewing digital hate.  But he's only one guy - on a site that is not even 343i's site - and that's simply not going to fix anything.

 

I believe Josh cares about making H5 a success financially and competitively, even if I disagree that some of the changes for H5 actually accomplish either.  But feeling that Josh cares and that 343i cares are two fundamentally different things.  We need the latter for this shitfest to ever improve.

[VinFTW]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=159523795&postcount=857

 

"lateral dashing" sounds like Halo 5, NOT AW-type jetpacks. So we are REALLY CoD now. Bet BLOPS will probably do it better too :/

 

Ugh.