Halo 5: Guardians Discussion

[ChieftaiNZ]

When you are just reading r/xboxone and someone says  "343i's problem is that they listen to the hardcore community too much and made changes in terms of gameplay resulting in a game that casuals can't pick up and play. (Examples reducing auto-aim, adding Spartan charge & ground pound which made controls more complicated). They should've just kept sprint and that would have been easier for people to understand. "

343's problem is they don't listen to anyone, not even the pro's that are the face of their game, or the casuals.

Less auto aim, more bullet magnetism. Only thing making aiming harder is the (hopefully fixed next update)

Says that Spartan Charge and Groundpund (Mechanics pro's have spoken out against) make the game to hard beuse of extra controls.) Spartan Charge is a mechanic BUILT for anyone to get a cheap kill after sprinting around a corner like a headless chicken.

"Makes the controls complicated" Yeah, because tapping the melee button while sprinting and holding it in mid air is so incredibly fucking difficult its nigh impossible for casuals to get their head around it, which is why they don't play the game.

 

Kill me please.

[arglactable]

We should host some crisp default setting Empire Strongholds 24/7 server.   

 

Get that Strongholds garbage out of here. Only Empire Slayer is real.

[VideoGangsta]

Get that Strongholds garbage out of here. Only Empire Slayer is real.

If they are adding KotH, we need to play Empire KotH instead.

[Bassman]

We should host some crisp default setting Empire Strongholds 24/7 server.

I will find what ever server is hosting that, and I swear to god that I will punt it into space.

[Astronautic II]

I will find what ever server is hosting that, and I swear to god that I will punt it into space.

 

I refuse to play "arena" so I'm just guessing, but is the issue with Empire Strongholds is that you basically have to jump inside of a death pit the whole match?

[Ramirez77]

When you are just reading r/xboxone and someone says  "343i's problem is that they listen to the hardcore community too much and made changes in terms of gameplay resulting in a game that casuals can't pick up and play. (Examples reducing auto-aim, adding Spartan charge & ground pound which made controls more complicated). They should've just kept sprint and that would have been easier for people to understand. "

343's problem is they don't listen to anyone, not even the pro's that are the face of their game, or the casuals.

Less auto aim, more bullet magnetism. Only thing making aiming harder is the (hopefully fixed next update)

Says that Spartan Charge and Groundpund (Mechanics pro's have spoken out against) make the game to hard beuse of extra controls.) Spartan Charge is a mechanic BUILT for anyone to get a cheap kill after sprinting around a corner like a headless chicken.

"Makes the controls complicated" Yeah, because tapping the melee button while sprinting and holding it in mid air is so incredibly fucking difficult its nigh impossible for casuals to get their head around it, which is why they don't play the game.

 

Kill me please.

 

Egh, this annoys me immensely.  I'm not sure how to even articulate why their thought process is broken but I'll make some kind of attempt at it.

 

1.  Games that are designed competitively are usually casual accessible anyways.  Even if the aiming in a game is extremely difficult, it won't matter so long as both players in the match are equally terrible at it.  Plus immensely powerful tactics that require tons of skill won't negatively impact casuals because it will be beyond their understanding and thus they'll never encounter them, again assuming equal matchmaking.  Even assuming the worst you can just throw a couple of optional crutches into the game, and disable them in competitive settings.  There's no need to dumb down the entire game.  Take Ce, throw in a rifle that has significantly more aim assist but slightly slower killtimes, and then ban that rifle from competitive play.  There, problem solved.  You didn't need to 'noobify' the game to the extent that Halo 2 did.

 

2.  On the topic of tweaking the game to benefit competitive players, casuals are only likely notice tweaks that make the game more difficult.  Difficulty is only one aspect of competitive design.  Tweaks made to make the game more competitive while not ramping up its difficulty will almost always go unnoticed by casuals.  For example you could make the H3 Battle Rifle more consistent, adjust a map's weapon layout to be more competitive friendly, or remove a broken glitch that is only used in top tier play.  Changes to a game made to favor competitive players don't always come at the expense of casual players.

 

3.  Again, options, options, options.  Look at Smash.  It's both a great competitive game, and a great casual game.  A 1v1 on Final Destination with no items is about as competitive as you can get, yet you can also play hazard-heavy stages like F-zero with all items enabled and four players for a crazy experience.  The game didn't need to be entirely designed around that F-zero mayhem in order to appeal to a casual audience.  To side with the casuals for a moment though, not enough competitive games do things like this, but they should.  Halo and Smash are the exception to the rule.  Meanwhile UT, Quake, etc. have very little in the way of pure-casual mayhem.  If such games reached out to casuals more in the form of options they wouldn't be such niche titles, and they wouldn't even have to sacrifice their core competitive value in the process.

 

4.  As you pointed out, their inexperience with competitive settings leading to them misunderstanding what the competitive community wants.  None of us wanted spartan charge.  But they know nothing about competitive settings, and they see 343i advertise this game as such, so they just make the false connection in their heads.

 

 

TLDR:  Have competitive gameplay in mind when designing your multiplayer games, but include options so that the game doesn't cater exclusively to the hardcore crowd.

[NAK]

Have we all agreed that the "Universal Settings" idea was a failure? It pretty much resulted with no portion of the community being very happy. 

[Celestis]

Does anyone know the speed of default sprint in halo 5? Thanks.

 

HALO CE:

7m/s

 

HALO 2:

7m/s

 

HALO 2 ANNIVERSARY:

7.6m/s

 

HALO 3:

7m/s

 

ODST:

5.5m/s

 

REACH:

6.85m/s (Base)

10.75m/s (Sprint)

 

HALO 4:

6.6m/s (Base)

10.75m/s (Sprint)

 

H5G:

8.3m/s (Base)

10.75m/s (Sprint)

[NAK]

HALO CE:

7m/s

 

HALO 2:

7m/s

 

HALO 2 ANNIVERSARY:

7.6m/s

 

HALO 3:

7m/s

 

ODST:

5.5m/s

 

REACH:

6.85m/s (Base)

10.75m/s (Sprint)

 

HALO 4:

6.6m/s (Base)

10.75m/s (Sprint)

 

H5G:

8.3m/s (Base)

10.75m/s (Sprint)

 

Is there a reason why Halo 3 feels so slow then? FOV maybe?

[ChieftaiNZ]

if the next Halo game had sprint, but didn't make you go any faster, would the majority of the population even notice? 

I don't think they would, they'd it the button, go into the sprint animation and just go

"WWWWWHEEEEEEEEE I'M A SPARTAN, AND I CAN TELL THAT I AM A SPARTAN BECAUSE I CAN SPRINT, AND NOT FOR ANY OTHER REASON!!"

 

@@NAK It'll probably be the FoV that makes it feel slow. If you crank up the FoV and make it higher, you feel as though you are faster, so I assume that going to opposite direction with FoV would make you feel slower.

[TheIcePrincess]

Is there a reason why Halo 3 feels so slow then? FOV maybe?

It's entirely FoV.

[Ling Ling]

Is there a reason why Halo 3 feels so slow then? FOV maybe?

 

Yep.

 

[arglactable]

Egh, this annoys me immensely.  I'm not sure how to even articulate why their thought process is broken but I'll make some kind of attempt at it.

 

1.  Games that are designed competitively are usually casual accessible anyways.  Even if the aiming in a game is extremely difficult, it won't matter so long as both players in the match are equally terrible at it.  Plus immensely powerful tactics that require tons of skill won't negatively impact casuals because it will be beyond their understanding and thus they'll never encounter them, again assuming equal matchmaking.  Even assuming the worst you can just throw a couple of optional crutches into the game, and disable them in competitive settings.  There's no need to dumb down the entire game.  Take Ce, throw in a rifle that has significantly more aim assist but slightly slower killtimes, and then ban that rifle from competitive play.  There, problem solved.  You didn't need to 'noobify' the game to the extent that Halo 2 did.

 

I think is really the key point. A game that is well balanced for competitive play will be well balanced for casual play the vast majority of the time. Outside of players looking for the kind of instant gratification with minimal investment that you get from a twitch console shooter like CoD, a highly competitive game with an extremely large skill gap can be a blast on a casual level and ideally the nuances of high level play have almost no impact on casual players (not so much in H5). You don't need to know how to strafe jump in Quake to have some fun with your friends. You don't have to be a wall-bouncing god to enjoy Gears. You don't need to know what wave dashing is to play Melee. You don't need to memorize smoke grenade placements and spray patterns to enjoy some Counterstrike. A decent ranking system goes a long way towards mitigating the barrier for entry as well, but basically "depth > complexity." The more you front-load the game with shit casual players have to keep track of, the less they are going to like playing it casually.

 

The issue I find with H5 and the reason I think that casual players think it is the most MLG 360 no-scope sweaty tryhard Halo game ever made is that the nature of 343's compromises with derivative gimmicks results in a game that is ALWAYS stressful, with movement that is wildly sporadic, and ample opportunities for nearly any half decent player to fly at you with some kind of overpowered bullshit that requires minimal skill to use. Add to this the convoluted control scheme that makes claw and paddles more useful than they've ever been and you have a game in which you're constantly inputting borderline button combos to just get around the map without feeling like you're crippled. By contrast, you can get on Halo CE with minimal preparation and almost immediately grasp the basics of it. It effortlessly translates to relaxed, casual play and yet if you hopped into a 2v2 against Patch and Legend, you probably wouldn't even know what happened while you got the hot 50-0.

 

There's certainly a skill gap in H5 (though I would say it's smaller than many would like to believe), but there seems to be a lot of overlap, ESPECIALLY if you're a solo player (team shot and team rotations/collapses mitigate some of this). You could be a much better player overall than mr. gold kid over there, but he can still Spartan charge you. He can still ground pound you. He can pick up a better bullet hose and melt you. He can chuck a splinter nade right in your face before you can get the last shot. There simply isn't that big of a difference between a good player with a storm rifle and a bad one (especially if the bad players has one and the good one doesn't), something they've managed to replicate with the sniper rifle as well. Meanwhile, relying too heavily on a weapon that does reward skill to a certain degree (the magnum) is a recipe for getting shit on by a BR user sitting in a power position or fucked over by the kid who switched to his bullet hose before you did. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of casual H5 players think everyone in the game is a god and every successive match is the sweatiest they've played in their entire lives when they're one AR bullet randomly deviated into the head from death in every fight they win. 343's compromises just blur the lines between the casual and competitive experience so much. They tried too hard to make the "competitive experience" accessible for players that don't want it at all.

[Basu]

Have we all agreed that the "Universal Settings" idea was a failure? It pretty much resulted with no portion of the community being very happy.

I still believe universal settings are beneficial for the game. It's just that the implementation in H5 failed hard.

 

Universal settings ideally mean: Stuff that makes it easier to switch between gamemodes a.k.a. similar starting weapons, map layout and weapon placement, weapon respawn times etc.

 

343's interpretation of universal settings: Compromise everything! No real skill matching in ranked, fake social, 8s respawn times for all gametypes, huge amount of power weapons in FFA and radar in every playlist. And don't get me started on all the compromises in the sandbox design.

[Hard Way]

I refuse to play "arena" so I'm just guessing, but is the issue with Empire Strongholds is that you basically have to jump inside of a death pit the whole match?

 

Ever play Countdown KotH in Multiteam?  It's like that.

[tbrakef]

I don't think universal settings make sense ever. I don't think a casual would tune into the HCS and be like what where is the radar... F-this I'm not watching unless it looks exactly the same as the way I play...  I think the majority of 343's reasons for things are what they perceive to be "cool". Plus if you watch the Bungie vs. 343 video. You can see that all 343 cares about is making things "cool" while Bungie cared about making it the best experience.

Things that seem exciting, but actually make the game worse:
Easy Sniper - Lots of no scopes, multikills, headshots [Actually lowers skill gap and is way too many kills, anyone can dominate with it now]

Variety of "useful" weapons - bright colors and variety, different looking projectiles, not just pistols out the whole time [Autos ruin skill gap, makes snowballing even more likely since spawners are at such a disadvantage]

Sprint - "speeds up the game" [Makes movement less predictable benefits careless tactics and  adds randomness]

Thrust, Ground Pound, Spartan Charge - Looks cool to see amazing tricks [Thrust is only a defensive tactic, slows the game down, GP eh...., SC i need not say how ridiculous SC is]

Lots of OP power weapons - multikills....[Too many power weapons snowballs the game]

Timers - Viewers know when the powerups come. [This isn't a big deal but it makes it so everyone knows whether a weapon is available less advantage for a set up]

Radar - Forces engagements more often [Promotes camping, lowers skill gap, does not punish poor positioning, ring around the rosie]

 

Seems to me the competitive community is niche, make a fucking awesome game and then let competitive happen organically. Bungie did not choose the settings, the competitive community decided what is/is not competitive not the Dev. I know Dev support is great but not if they literally try so hard to make everything cool that they suffocate the whole thing.

 

Also one 2.5 million dollar even is about 10 times worse than ten $250k events. Seems like a great way to make your game irreverent for 10 months.  Every time I see the HCS money list, I get so tilted that more more was given out for 2nd place than the entire rest of HCS combined.

[Rumpojec]

Dunno if this has been posted yet or not, but Ske7ch confirmed that the server browser is coming to PC as well with this next update.

[Moa]

Dunno if this has been posted yet or not, but Ske7ch confirmed that the server browser is coming to PC as well with this next update.

Also confirmed a while ago. In fact, the custom games browser was initially confirmed for PC and then for console shortly after.

[tbrakef]

Dunno if this has been posted yet or not, but Ske7ch confirmed that the server browser is coming to PC as well with this next update.

 

Now the question becomes.... will I ever turn my XBOX on ever again after this update...

[Larry Sizemore]

I'd honestly rather see them take the opposite direction.  Bring back traditional unlock progression (credit or achievement systems, preferably credit).  Warzone could be tackled by having a store where you can spend earned credits on REQ cards, with some cards costing more than others.  Then obviously you earn credits for completing matches, completing milestones, or maybe as you said be able to bet them on matches.

 

Of course that won't happen because there's no profit in it for 343i.

 

Honestly they should just dump the REQ system - and the weapon/upgraded-weapon/super-upgraded-weapon format - and let you buy shit directly with points/currency. Buy a "naked" warthog, choose a turret (chaingun, gauss, rocket, sword needler, whatever else, with an option to go without as well), choose some speed/agility setting (fast and agile with higher rollover risk [H3 hog], slow and heavy with low rollover risk [H1 hog], something in between), and choose some other miscellaneous thing like energy shielding, heavy armor (maybe different types that vary in effectiveness against bullets, plasma, and whatever the forerunners use), short speed burst, etc. Weed it out as necessary, balance it, and come up with an economy for it so that you can't have 5-star shit across the board, if you want something like a spartan laser turret then you're forced to skimp elsewhere.

 

Do that for each weapon and vehicle in the game. Boom. Something interesting, finally. But oh no, that would require WORK and THOUGHT and 343 might even break a SWEAT. Guess we better just cut corners and just turn it into a lottery, we'll find another way to engage players and make them think and experiment. (No we won't, #immersion)

 

I'll take the unpopular stance here and say that Warzone should stick around for Halo 6, there is a lot of fun to be had, and it shines through occasionally, but the good stuff is buried underneath a mountain of clutter, randomness, and stupidity. Going with the system I described above and ditching the bullet sponge bosses would go a long way toward bringing it out.

[Cursed Lemon]

@@ske7ch, if you want to do something that will immediately get you miles on the good side of this forum, find out what they did to the aiming system (the way the reticule moves/behaves when you use the right analog) between the beta and the final release. 

 

This is the #1 reason I can't play Halo 5. 

 

You will be treated like a golden god. 

[Omahhhha]

When you are just reading r/xboxone and someone says  "343i's problem is that they listen to the hardcore community too much and made changes in terms of gameplay resulting in a game that casuals can't pick up and play. (Examples reducing auto-aim, adding Spartan charge & ground pound which made controls more complicated). They should've just kept sprint and that would have been easier for people to understand. "

343's problem is they don't listen to anyone, not even the pro's that are the face of their game, or the casuals.

Less auto aim, more bullet magnetism. Only thing making aiming harder is the (hopefully fixed next update)

Says that Spartan Charge and Groundpund (Mechanics pro's have spoken out against) make the game to hard beuse of extra controls.) Spartan Charge is a mechanic BUILT for anyone to get a cheap kill after sprinting around a corner like a headless chicken.

"Makes the controls complicated" Yeah, because tapping the melee button while sprinting and holding it in mid air is so incredibly fucking difficult its nigh impossible for casuals to get their head around it, which is why they don't play the game.

 

Kill me please.

Well, they do have a point. Kind of.

 

343 has definitely made the game too complicated for casual players. The skill floor of H5 is very high. You need to be a pretty solid gamer just to be able to play H5 at an entry level. It just so happens that they complicated the game in a way that also lowered the skill ceiling and pissed off most hardcore fans.

 

It's a lose, lose scenario and its why a game that gives away free DLC every month cant stay in the XBL top 20.

[Sitri]

Were we given a timeframe on the news today?

[Moa]

Were we given a timeframe on the news today?

Soon.

[Apoll0]

Yeah, about this server browser...why are we not more excited about this?  H5 has a stupid good forge. These customs are going to be bonkers. We should be hosting Beyond lobbies and streaming that shit. Its gonna be fun af.

 

I've wanted a server browser in Halo since 2004, and I'm finally getting one in 3 days.  I feel like we're not nearly as excited for this as we should be.

 

I agree.  I think this could be huge for bringing players back, especially casual players.  And i have been wanting to play games on PC for so long, but none of my friends have a PC that can run it and my schedule is jacked most of the time....

 

Egh, this annoys me immensely.  I'm not sure how to even articulate why their thought process is broken but I'll make some kind of attempt at it.

 

 

1.  Games that are designed competitively are usually casual accessible anyways.  Even if the aiming in a game is extremely difficult, it won't matter so long as both players in the match are equally terrible at it.  Plus immensely powerful tactics that require tons of skill won't negatively impact casuals because it will be beyond their understanding and thus they'll never encounter them, again assuming equal matchmaking.  Even assuming the worst you can just throw a couple of optional crutches into the game, and disable them in competitive settings.  There's no need to dumb down the entire game.  Take Ce, throw in a rifle that has significantly more aim assist but slightly slower killtimes, and then ban that rifle from competitive play.  There, problem solved.  You didn't need to 'noobify' the game to the extent that Halo 2 did.

 

2.  On the topic of tweaking the game to benefit competitive players, casuals are only likely notice tweaks that make the game more difficult.  Difficulty is only one aspect of competitive design.  Tweaks made to make the game more competitive while not ramping up its difficulty will almost always go unnoticed by casuals.  For example you could make the H3 Battle Rifle more consistent, adjust a map's weapon layout to be more competitive friendly, or remove a broken glitch that is only used in top tier play.  Changes to a game made to favor competitive players don't always come at the expense of casual players.

 

3.  Again, options, options, options.  Look at Smash.  It's both a great competitive game, and a great casual game.  A 1v1 on Final Destination with no items is about as competitive as you can get, yet you can also play hazard-heavy stages like F-zero with all items enabled and four players for a crazy experience.  The game didn't need to be entirely designed around that F-zero mayhem in order to appeal to a casual audience.  To side with the casuals for a moment though, not enough competitive games do things like this, but they should.  Halo and Smash are the exception to the rule.  Meanwhile UT, Quake, etc. have very little in the way of pure-casual mayhem.  If such games reached out to casuals more in the form of options they wouldn't be such niche titles, and they wouldn't even have to sacrifice their core competitive value in the process.

 

4.  As you pointed out, their inexperience with competitive settings leading to them misunderstanding what the competitive community wants.  None of us wanted spartan charge.  But they know nothing about competitive settings, and they see 343i advertise this game as such, so they just make the false connection in their heads.

 

 

 

TLDR:  Have competitive gameplay in mind when designing your multiplayer games, but include options so that the game doesn't cater exclusively to the hardcore crowd.

 

This is why waypoint is the strangest fan site on the internet.  People with well thought out opinions get banned.

 

 

@@ske7ch, if you want to do something that will immediately get you miles on the good side of this forum, find out what they did to the aiming system (the way the reticule moves/behaves when you use the right analog) between the beta and the final release. 

 

This is the #1 reason I can't play Halo 5. 

 

You will be treated like a golden god.

If the impressions of the EU halo pros come to fruition, you're prayers may be answered come thursday.