Halo: Reach Forum
This topic has moved here: Subject: Current Issue Improvements for Future? :D
  • Subject: Current Issue Improvements for Future? :D
Subject: Current Issue Improvements for Future? :D
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Just your average joe blow, fairdinkum, true blue battler who's done the hard yards, and at the end of the day, speaks the way regular aussies do, stone the bloody crows ya mongrel.

Okay, so I popped Reach into my Xbox for the first time in... I dunno, 6 or 7 months. To be expected, I suck again (and also figured out why I may or may not have sucked when I actually did play it seriously :3) but I did notice a few things I never picked up on when I did play it seriously, and I'll bet others may have noticed them to but... well I haven't been here in quite some time so I can't be bothered spending all that time looking for discussions, and I imagine it'd be a bit late to join them anyway, so this is my perspective on where Halo stands as is and what I personally think could be fixed/improved with Halo 4, without completely removing major things or greatly annoying certain current players.

First of all, Armor Lock. Yeah, I know, everybody complains about this ever damn day of every damn week of every damn month. Well no, im not complaining about it because I personally see no issue with it. For god sake people, it makes them invulnerable, sure, but they can't do anything when they do it. Don't completely run at them like an idiot, any semi-decent player can see them turn it on and wait patiently for them to get out, while regening just as much as they have. It's simple timing and can easily screw them over way more than you.
To my point though, when I use this ability, I get barely any use out of it in a standard Team slayer or free for all, whatever. Honestly, the best use I've gotten out of the ability is in Big Team Battle or just maps with vehicles. It confuses me as to why Armor Lock was even an available ability in the 8plyr games instead of something like the Bubble Shield or Evade, cause 85% of the time, Armor Lock has only ever been useful to me when a Vehicle is coming at me. Something like a Bubble Shield in Team Slayer seems like a more balanced...ish ability. It insists the team stick together, as they should, it's a perfectly good defence that doesn't waste peoples time when someone is obviously going to die and I can see it causing far less rage among people. Hell, a good team can take advantage of an enemy teams bubble.


Above all else, the biggest thing I noticed was the Load Outs in general. What I mean is, the thing that made me pop the game in after many months was when I remembered the Reach Beta, I had a damn good time with it and could not remember why I thought the main game was lacking in comparison. Well I found it. The variety of weapons is really lacking. In the Beta, each armor ability had a specific set of weapons to it, like Sprint having the DMR and Pistol, Jetpack with Assault Rifle, Active Camo with a Plasma Rifle...Repeater, whatever it is now. Same with the Elites, Needle Rifles, Energy Swords, Plasma Rifles, blah blah blah with their abilities in Invasion. I cannot remember if it still does that in Invasion actually, my attempts to even play an Invasion game were hindered due to waiting 30 mins for a game to be found before I just gave up.
Even with these Load outs, there's just not enough variety around the maps themselves. There's 1 or 2 power weapons, a shotgun, possibly a Sniper Rifle, and a crap load of DMR's and Assault Rifles all over the place. There's Covenant weapons around, I know, but they're never used because the load outs start us with Assault Rifles, or even DMR's in those very annoying Slayer DMR gametypes (seriously, do people actually like them?) The starting weapons are the only weapons people use if they can't find a Shotgun, Sniper or Power weapon.

I'll bet to some people this doesn't sound terrible, but think back to Halo 1 or 2 where you started with a Pistol/SMG in your standard game. It was useful to start with, sure, but ideally you need to go run around to find other weapons, and generally, anything was helpful, whether that be a Plasma Rifle, Needler, Plasma Pistol, sometimes the same weapon to Dual Wield in Halo 2, or a rifle like the Battle Rifle, Covenant Carbine, whatever. There was proper variety. It never once was a case of 'Whoever had the bigger weapon wins', that was just an excuse people used when they couldn't kill them, Halo 2 effectively eliminated that with Dual Wielding, and it created a balance to stop that train of thought. Halo 3 brought the Assault Rifle back, but it didn't stop that balance. You just started with an Assault Rifle rather than an SMG, it was the same thing more or less, you just had to go find 2 small weapons to Dual Wield if you wanted them.

When Reach said they eliminated Dual Wielding, I was iffy, sure, but I thought the Armor abilities would counter this... and they did. For the Beta anyway, when the game came out, everybody started with Assault Rifles and Pistols, or DMR's and Pistols in the many many Slayer DMR games that I dislike greatly. Everybody had the weapons they needed (and if they didn't, there was about 500 DMR's around the map) in majority of the games, huge percentages of people are just using Sprint or Armor Lock. I barely ever see the Jet Pack anymore, and I love that thing ;_;


So Variety was something that was lacking in Reach, mostly in terms of weapons, but then you find in the actual game that the weapons effected the armor abilities as well. Im thinking it'd be best in Halo 4 to start us back off with the Pistol, or a dumbed down Assault Rifle/SMG so we can go back out into the map to find weapons... and I don't mean 500 Battle Rifles all over the damn map, I mean you pick up and use whatever you find because you'll need it until you find something else you like. I wouldn't mind keeping the armor abilities, though as I said, maybe Armor Lock should be restricted to vehicle games in matchmaking.

That's pretty much all I can rant about, 2 major factors currently in the matchmaking that I think could be improved for Halo 4. Damn near everything else is still a solid fps multiplayer experience. Now that I re-read through this, it does more or less just boil down to Armor Abilities in weapons, but I really think what I said would improve these factors if they remain in Halo 4. I don't think they NEED to go, so... yeah. Take from that what you will.

Also just occurs to me... Bungie forum. Not that I'm expecting developers to read through this, but almost seems pointless to talk about Halo issues with 343 taking over. Oh well, this is all I know for Halo forums :P

  • 05.13.2012 7:14 PM PDT

Posted by: Brownee2
Okay, so I popped Reach into my Xbox for the first time in... I dunno, 6 or 7 months. To be expected, I suck again (and also figured out why I may or may not have sucked when I actually did play it seriously :3) but I did notice a few things I never picked up on when I did play it seriously, and I'll bet others may have noticed them to but... well I haven't been here in quite some time so I can't be bothered spending all that time looking for discussions, and I imagine it'd be a bit late to join them anyway, so this is my perspective on where Halo stands as is and what I personally think could be fixed/improved with Halo 4, without completely removing major things or greatly annoying certain current players.

First of all, Armor Lock. Yeah, I know, everybody complains about this ever damn day of every damn week of every damn month. Well no, im not complaining about it because I personally see no issue with it. For god sake people, it makes them invulnerable, sure, but they can't do anything when they do it. Don't completely run at them like an idiot, any semi-decent player can see them turn it on and wait patiently for them to get out, while regening just as much as they have. It's simple timing and can easily screw them over way more than you.
To my point though, when I use this ability, I get barely any use out of it in a standard Team slayer or free for all, whatever. Honestly, the best use I've gotten out of the ability is in Big Team Battle or just maps with vehicles. It confuses me as to why Armor Lock was even an available ability in the 8plyr games instead of something like the Bubble Shield or Evade, cause 85% of the time, Armor Lock has only ever been useful to me when a Vehicle is coming at me. Something like a Bubble Shield in Team Slayer seems like a more balanced...ish ability. It insists the team stick together, as they should, it's a perfectly good defence that doesn't waste peoples time when someone is obviously going to die and I can see it causing far less rage among people. Hell, a good team can take advantage of an enemy teams bubble.


Above all else, the biggest thing I noticed was the Load Outs in general. What I mean is, the thing that made me pop the game in after many months was when I remembered the Reach Beta, I had a damn good time with it and could not remember why I thought the main game was lacking in comparison. Well I found it. The variety of weapons is really lacking. In the Beta, each armor ability had a specific set of weapons to it, like Sprint having the DMR and Pistol, Jetpack with Assault Rifle, Active Camo with a Plasma Rifle...Repeater, whatever it is now. Same with the Elites, Needle Rifles, Energy Swords, Plasma Rifles, blah blah blah with their abilities in Invasion. I cannot remember if it still does that in Invasion actually, my attempts to even play an Invasion game were hindered due to waiting 30 mins for a game to be found before I just gave up.
Even with these Load outs, there's just not enough variety around the maps themselves. There's 1 or 2 power weapons, a shotgun, possibly a Sniper Rifle, and a crap load of DMR's and Assault Rifles all over the place. There's Covenant weapons around, I know, but they're never used because the load outs start us with Assault Rifles, or even DMR's in those very annoying Slayer DMR gametypes (seriously, do people actually like them?) The starting weapons are the only weapons people use if they can't find a Shotgun, Sniper or Power weapon.

I'll bet to some people this doesn't sound terrible, but think back to Halo 1 or 2 where you started with a Pistol/SMG in your standard game. It was useful to start with, sure, but ideally you need to go run around to find other weapons, and generally, anything was helpful, whether that be a Plasma Rifle, Needler, Plasma Pistol, sometimes the same weapon to Dual Wield in Halo 2, or a rifle like the Battle Rifle, Covenant Carbine, whatever. There was proper variety. It never once was a case of 'Whoever had the bigger weapon wins', that was just an excuse people used when they couldn't kill them, Halo 2 effectively eliminated that with Dual Wielding, and it created a balance to stop that train of thought. Halo 3 brought the Assault Rifle back, but it didn't stop that balance. You just started with an Assault Rifle rather than an SMG, it was the same thing more or less, you just had to go find 2 small weapons to Dual Wield if you wanted them.

When Reach said they eliminated Dual Wielding, I was iffy, sure, but I thought the Armor abilities would counter this... and they did. For the Beta anyway, when the game came out, everybody started with Assault Rifles and Pistols, or DMR's and Pistols in the many many Slayer DMR games that I dislike greatly. Everybody had the weapons they needed (and if they didn't, there was about 500 DMR's around the map) in majority of the games, huge percentages of people are just using Sprint or Armor Lock. I barely ever see the Jet Pack anymore, and I love that thing ;_;


So Variety was something that was lacking in Reach, mostly in terms of weapons, but then you find in the actual game that the weapons effected the armor abilities as well. Im thinking it'd be best in Halo 4 to start us back off with the Pistol, or a dumbed down Assault Rifle/SMG so we can go back out into the map to find weapons... and I don't mean 500 Battle Rifles all over the damn map, I mean you pick up and use whatever you find because you'll need it until you find something else you like. I wouldn't mind keeping the armor abilities, though as I said, maybe Armor Lock should be restricted to vehicle games in matchmaking.

That's pretty much all I can rant about, 2 major factors currently in the matchmaking that I think could be improved for Halo 4. Damn near everything else is still a solid fps multiplayer experience. Now that I re-read through this, it does more or less just boil down to Armor Abilities in weapons, but I really think what I said would improve these factors if they remain in Halo 4. I don't think they NEED to go, so... yeah. Take from that what you will.

Also just occurs to me... Bungie forum. Not that I'm expecting developers to read through this, but almost seems pointless to talk about Halo issues with 343 taking over. Oh well, this is all I know for Halo forums :P

Halo Reach will stay as broken as it is when Halo 4 comes out. Then, 343 won't give a damn about the Reach community.

  • 05.13.2012 7:18 PM PDT

There's always room for you, If you want to be my friend.

Tl;Dr

  • 05.13.2012 7:49 PM PDT