- MeisterSchaaf
- |
- Exalted Member
Posted by: eating lunch
I never post on here, but before Halo Reach came out I came on the website here from time to time to see new advertising videos for Halo Reach, and I have come time to time now after playing it hoping for three things:
1. Maps. Free Maps.
Seriously, you guys have Countdown, Reflection, Powerhouse, Zealot, Boardwalk, and Sword Base. 6 normal multiplayer maps. That's nothing! Especially considering that Zealot and Boardwalk suck big time and are largely disliked by players. I personally think you guys ripped Boardwalk straight out of the campaign with only minor modifications to alter it into a multiplayer map.
Look at how many maps Halo 2 had, or games you guys are competing with. You're getting trashed by the Call of Duty series, which isn't saying much because the gameplay in those games sucks. But regardless, Black Ops does have some excellent maps, although I never play CoD.
2. A New Forge World as Downloadable Content and Forge Update
Forge in Reach turned out to be a joke, largely due to the inflation of the budget, the pitiful object pallete, and the strange grouping of objects. (Objects that are NOT similar need to be grouped together, NOT objects that ARE similar to each other). Its Halo 3 forge plus angle snaps, phasing, and a couple of other things. You can't even make a larger map than in Halo 3's forge, or edit your own terrain. I have 2 words and a number to respond to Halo Reach's forge:
Far Cry 2
Far Cry 2 is old, and laughs at Halo's forge. I'm guessing you guys couldn't put a mad editor like Far Cry 2 has in Reach because you can't fit it into your engine, and you can't fit it into your engine because you guys are simply altering an old engine rather than making a new one. I read a big reason you guys took out duel wielding and something else was to make room for some forge related stuff, like a big forge world map, phasing, snaps, and a slightly increased budget.
The Cry Engine puts your engine to shame, seriously. I can't wait for Crysis 2, because I have a strong feeling its going to turn out to be what Halo Reach should have been.
Forge also needs to be updated to simplify some features. How are players supposed to know if they need to use a Hill, Capture Plate, or whatever the other thing is when placing an objective on a map for example? Then, on top of that, how are they supposed to know which label they need to put on the objective object? It took me TWO MONTHS to figure out how to make a map compatible with gametypes like Capture the Flag! I finally looked it up on the internet, and the help wasn't that clear, so between looking at maps that came with the game and the tutorial online I eventually figured it out. Tons of players that forge STILL don't know how to make a map play CTF. That's just sad. If its too complex to change through an update, you guys could at least have a forging tutorial prominently displayed on this site. (Which should have been there anyway for people knew to forging since there was no in-game tutorial for forge).
3. An Update Patch (Whatever those things are called to fix things)
Halo Reach is in dire need of some pretty significant tweaking to keep its multiplayer functional and fun. The bloom in Reach is not right for some reason. I used to play SWAT all the time, until I got bored of Reach due to these reasons I'm listing at least, and Reach does NOT count headshots right all the time. Maybe I'm wrong and its not the bloom, but it sure feels like it. And I'm aware bloom has been in all the Halo games, but its off in Reach for some reason. Perhaps you guys screwed up the hitboxes in the heads or something and it simply feels like bloom causing the problem to me.
Armor Lock also needs something done to it. And it doesn't need to save people from plasma grenades that they have already been stuck with. That's ridiculously stupid. Armor Lock is just very glitchy, and all around not right. I would suggest just giving up on it altogether and removing it from ALL playlists, and replacing it with the Drop Shield. (Which is pretty lame too, especially the regeneration, but it seems to work exactly how its supposed to unlike Armor Lock).
The ranking system SUCKS in Halo Reach. Arena needs to be removed and replaced with a 1-50 ranking system that people like me understand. If I play Arena, which I have probably only done like literally 5-10 times after playing Reach 15 hrs a week for a few months, and I got a rating of say 1255, what in the world does that mean? Is 1255 good? Where does it come from? What is it? I have no idea, so I don't care about that. I skip past it to look at my k/d spread to see how I did.
Also, what is the gold/ silver/ onyx junk? I don't know what color is best, or how they work exactly. And whatever they are, they reset like every month or something?!? Very wierd. It makes no sense to me.
And why would I want to get good to move up in that wierd rating system if it resets every month or few months? (I don't even know when it resets because there's no way to know).
Weapons need tweaking very badly too. The Plasma Launcher is now useless compared to being awesome in the beta. Me and a friend of mine loved the Plasma Launcher in the beta, and thought it was one of the most fun weapons ever put in Halo. Then the REAL game came out, and it sucks now?
The laser needs 2, yes TWO, shots to kill tanks and banshees now? Is that seriously how its supposed to be? If not, it happens all the time to me in matchmaking. Its crazy that it takes two shots to take out a Banshee while a Sniper Rifle takes what, 3-4 shots to take out a Banshee? I know some people criticized you guys for making the Sniper Rifle more powerful against vehicles, but I think thats fine, and it functions anyway. But is the laser seriously supposed to take 2 shots to kill Banshees and tanks now? Either way, it needs a damage increase. Its also TERRIBLY inaccurate now as well because it lags behind where you're actually aiming for some reason.
The Focus Rifle. Rename it the shield drainer. Its not like its going to kill anyone. Even back in the beta it was less powerful than a Needler. (I shot someone at the same time they shot me with a Needler while I had the Focus Rifle, and I died first because the Needler kills faster). And after the beta instead of giving the Focus Rifle a slight damage boost, it was made far less powerful. Its useless. I NEVER pick it up. It might as well not exist.
The armor abilities also seem unbalanced because some are used far more often than others. I think Sprint is certainly not balanced against others since it is by far the most used armor ability.
The abilities also glitch VERY badly. Lots of games everyone spawns without armor abilities until they die and respawn, armor abilities drop onto the ground instead of spawning with players, last longer than they're supposed to, don't work at all, and so on. There are tons of common issues with them in matchmaking games.
Firefight matchmaking lags so badly its pointless for it to be there for most players. Has it been fixed yet? No. The only way I can play firefight in matchmaking is by myself in score attack. And its not just my internet. My internet is fine and tons of other players have the same problem with severe lag in firefight that's so bad they can't really play it.
The Infection playlist sucks big time. It has so many problems I can't even fathom how a playlist was put in matchmaking that is so screwed up. And your response was to fix the worst couple of problems, while there are many more. Most of the maps chosen for that playlist don't make sense either because they're the worst maps possible for Infection. Are you guys actually truly looking at your voting data, and really making changes to playlists based off that information? It doesn't seem like it.
There's probably much more that needs to be fixed in Halo Reach, but I will stop here. That is more than enough to make you think I just don't like Halo, but thats not true. I've been a fan of Halo since CE, and still think Halo CE is the best game made yet.
Also I would like to say you guys INSULTED your players that forge maps and share them with the community playlist you made by putting such bland maps up. I have seen the HUNDREDS of maps on forgehub.com, and know there are easily at least 20 maps that could go straight into matchmaking. But instead you guys put HORRIBLE maps into matchmaking, and declare them winners of your contest.
Its an insult to the people that play Halo Reach and make maps to play when you guys put BAD maps from people you know into matchmaking and declare them the best. There ARE better maps out there, but you guys want to sell your map packs. (Which the first 6 downloadable maps should be FREE since Reach has no maps).
If Bungie doesn't listen to this criticism, you guys will continue to lose to other popular games such as CoD. You can't just slap the name Halo on a game and expect everyone in the world to love it if it sucks.
Obviously as you can tell Bungie, you have lost my business if some attempts to solve some of Reach's problems aren't shown. So far you have shown arrogance and disdain for your fans rather than sincere efforts to fix at least the simple problems, like the infection playlist, and other things like that. At the very least, a free map pack of at least 3 maps should have been released by now. I feel ripped off because Reach has no maps, and the invasion maps are only good for invasion games, not even big team really.
If you guys at Bungie don't get off your high horse of arrogance, and start explaining what you're doing to improve Reach, and don't offer at least 3 free maps, I won't be buying your next game. Hopefully 343 turns Halo around.
!