I have oinly been playing H4 for a few weeks, and even I am starting to get burned out on the maps.  New ones would be great.  

 Ihave also wondered about some of the hit detection lag compensation issues.  Sometimes games go smoothly, and I feel like I've had a good game (for me).  Other times, it's laggy, and I seem to get killed so frequently and with so few shots, that I wonder what's going on.  

I have so little history wi HALO that I need to ask this question: Have special ability stuffs been the norm or is this a fairly recent soldier add-on?  I was talking with a guy here at work who said he used to play H3 all the time and loved it, but the special abilty stuff kind of killed it for him.  

 

The Bolt Shot, with its one shot kill, should never have been a secondary load out. Don't get me started on the maps.....

The game sucks.  I've been saying that since day 1.  I'm hanging around hoping for v1 settings to show up but if they don't show up within a month I'm out.  Is it fixable?  Yes.  However, I honestly don't see them fixing it since they've been heading in the wrong direction for years.  

(1) The biggest problem is the maps.  By far number one most favorite map is Haven but do they give us more maps like that?  No.   At this point it's too late to generate new maps so they NEED to go full on with forge maps RIGHT NOW.  It may already be too late.

(2) The game play also sucks but it's less clear how to fix it.  Nerfing the bolt shot or taking it out as starting weapon would help a ton.  

(3) I also think they need to freshen the playlists.  There should be a doubles list and some kind of ranked or hard core or MLG list.  They also need a traditional FFA slayer list.  It's like they've completely dropped FFA from Halo.

It's probably too late.  IMO all this pandering to the n00bs has ruined the game even for the n00bs.  The n00bs *said* they didn't like getting p0wned by the comp players but they secretly loved it!

It's normal for some people to burn out. You are not alone and this is true for any game.

Abilities came online with Halo REACH and are continued with Halo 4. You can bet your last dollar that wouldn't have happened if AA were unpopular. Satisfied customers are rarely seen in forums.

Lag/latency is a personal situation. You may not know it but whenever a Title Update gets applied to Halo the host selection records get wiped. That results in at least a week of poor host selection resulting in increased lag/latency. 343i has already applied two Title updates. More are coming so it is going to happen again.

I just got back into gaming after a 5 year limited time break so dont have the experience many of you have.  And dont have a solution to get numbers up!

I would say 1 out of 5 MM games I play have lag issue!  It makes me want to break shit and not play!!  Also it seems like it takes forever to get set up sometimes as a single not even 2 or 3 people.  Fix how the game is basically going to work first!

Have a selection box for game you are looking for like reach had may be helpful too.  ie Casual, competitve, quiet, talkative, etc.  Competitvie leagues maybe too.

More maps is a interesting aspect of what you feel discontent with and what would save it.  I have noticed the new Crimson DLC maps seems to have the smallest amount of players in it regularly.  (mean less interest or people not wanting to pay for maps?)  I personally only like a few of the maps currently (Exile and Longbow), and the rotation seems not so random I had nights where the same 3 choices popped up 2/3rds of the games played.

LB thanks for the info and hope they do make it better!

 

I'm going to reply in bits and pieces as I am busy at the moment.

The Halocharts is a good representation of what is going on in the MM playlists but not a good measure of Halo 4's entire population. It leaves out Spartan Ops, Customs, Campaign, Theatre, Forging and Idling thus not showing the total online population. 343i is not yet publishing the total online population. 343i is not yet publishing the Unique Users per twenty four hours (UU/24hr). UU/24hrs is a better overall measure of a games performance.

Here are a couple of links to population reports I did for REACH.

January 2012 REACH Population Report

REACH MM Playlist Popularity Study

After you read the second one you will see that 40%-50% of the REACH population was not in MM. If this is also true for Halo 4, you can almost double the playlist populations you see on Halocharts. Without complete stats for both games it is nearly impossible to compare both games at this point. I do not have any links but I remember seeing graphs for both Halo 3 and REACH, in the first three months, and the population dropped like a stone. The long term population trend doesn't kick in for about three months.

I can see your point of view DEEP, but I'm not sure it speaks to well of Halo as a community.  If MM is down, the community is down IMO.  I LOVED Halo 4 at launch.  I was extrememly into it for about a month after release, but got bored very quickly after that.  I have no idea why or even how to fix that bored feeling..  

For me it's probably burn out on FPS (yet im in love with Farcry 3).  I wish I had a way to fix Halo, but the truth is I don't think it needs fixing.  Its a good game, it's just not the game that people want anymore.  This isn't a bad thing either.  Halo nights live on,2old2playhalo still thrives, and so do the other clans and members here that love Halo.   Maybe we need to have a different discussion.  Does Halo need to have mass apeal to be good?  

There are really only two maps in H4 I truly enjoy - Haven and Adrift. The others are ok, but nowhere near the distaste I had for the Reach maps, so overall I can deal with the maps I just don't have any I love like The Pit, Guardian or Standoff. Even Ragnarok is different with the addition of the Mantis and personal ordinance drops that mean everyone has a power weapon.

Also, don't forget the game launched with Slayer Pro and it was the least populated list. Thinking a TU or MLG settings will "save" H4 is somewhat unrealistic. We may see a small bump, but nothing of much note. I think this is what we've got and this is what 343 wants out of Halo, so either we deal with it or play a different game. 

COD has steadily gained ground on Halo since Modern Warfare and has totally owned Halo since Reach. Halo just isn't as popular, but that's fine with me. I just want a good game. 

Halo 4, while I enjoy the game, still doesn't get me fired up to play. Maybe skill-based ranks will help, as I did enjoy the nights in H3 trying to get my pitiful ranks up. Now I feel wiped after 2 hours of play - which is what I felt with Reach. With no real point to playing, it kind of feels useless, especially once I reach SR 130. 

Overall, I think we will just have to accept the days of H2 and H3 are gone. This is Halo now - take it or leave it.

It's over. Dump Halo.  Go COD.  Don't look back.

 

Suffers the same issues as Halo on an accelerated time line.  

 

Half the weapons are one shot kills.  Loadout or not, it's really easy to get a snipe or rockets as a drop, and then everyone has them.  Ordinances broke H4.

 

Bolded the truest points.

 

The only way to get good is to get owned like crazy until you learn how to play well.

 

 

You don't have to go into the DLC playlist to play the DLC - it is in other ones too, as long as everyone has the maps.  This is probably why.

 

The problem with Halo 4 is the approach towards design of the game.  To begin let us toss out the terms "Casual" and "Competitive" styles of play in which we have been using them to this point.  The problem is NOT lack of embracing the competitive community (i.e. MLG) but rather fully embrace a market of gamers labeled as casual players, but really are just not very good at hardcore fps's, a market that Ifinity Ward and Treyarch have turned into a money river.  Before i go any further I am not saying people who are not hardcore fps player have no place in video game design but rather they have no place in the design of certain shooters.  Now it is absolutely no secret that production companies of well established AAA game titles borrow from each others models to help themselves achieve more success through a broader market of consumers.  Someone making decisions for the final product of this game came to the conclusion to put elements form other popular titles into this game hoping to increase their fan base, but in a fashion that is (in my opinion) unrealistic to even entertain. Halo wanted to steal players away from CoD by being more like CoD.

CoD is the king right now because it takes gamers and allows them to choose the gear they want before the match begins, thus in turn allows the player to reenforce a strong trait in their game-play and avoid weaker traits all together. Let me make an example. Let's say I am a decent sniper so as long as I have the Sniper Rifle and a good position I can be a productive member of my team. But the down side is I am not a good enough mid to close rage combatant to get the sniper rifle on a regular basis or to defend myself once my position is compromised. So instead of honing my skills to allow me to attack and defend myself as the situation dictates it would just be so much easier to have those things come to me. Thus the birth of spawning with indivisibility and an ordnance re shuffler so that if the sniper position I am camping does not spawn a new rifle once I am out of ammo I have, not one, but two shots at getting one delivered to me by means of an ordnance drop. Does any of this sound familiar, if it does you probably recently played a BTB match on Valhalla.

What I am really at the end of all of this really saying is that the core mechanics that made CoD and Halo the successes that they are were embraced by CoD and traded away in Halo. Cod is a class based modern shooter that allows anybody regardless of skill set and overall skill to be a competitor in any match and Halo was a hardcore nuts and bolts fps that embrace marksmanship and map control though power weapons. CoD promotes position camping while Halo promotes position defense. To look at the same games now, CoD is the same (almost to a fault according to some) but Halo has morphed into a hybrid class arena fps that NOBODY wanted or enjoys really. I have no charts to back this up but I believe that Halo 3 was more popular than Reach and Halo 4 and I have to think the reason is because Halo3 still felt and played like the Halo that we all liked and the next two in the series completely shifted how the mechanics behave.

Halo by it's nature I geared towards a more competitive style of player even in the most casual play list. AA's, Ordance, Perks, ability carrot dangles, are all things that work in some games but not Halo.  

I know what you are saying LB.  At the end days of H3, social slayer had 40k people per night and ranked slayer had 25K people.  That didn't include BTB and the other play lists.  These numbers are down.  I think it's a bunch of stuff, which is not related to gameplay (This game is about right, save the boltshot, which is a terrible idea.  The promethian weapons can go too, but I'm ok if they stay).

But people are bored, and here's why:

1.  Maps.  Infinity slayer is Abandon, Haven, Adrfit, Complex.  CTF is Abandon, Adrift, Complex, Solice.  Oddball is the same issue.  4 maps, it feels like we get the same ones all the time, because we do.  And if you don't like 1 or 2, then there's almost nothing to choose from.  Problem is the game came with 10, they added 3 more, and still only 4-5 are playable in 4v4 and 4-5 are playable in BTB and there is almost no overlap.  That wasn't the case in past Halos.

 

2.  Most people are over level 50, so there is nothing more to be gained.  The additional stuff with specializations is insignificant.  There is nothing to "play" for.  H2 and H3 had ranks, even Reach had new levels that you had to play 1000's of games to get (yeah, not as good as ranks, but at least I would still get something for playing.  There is really nothing now).

 

3.  Playlists need some variety.  I wish objecive was merged into 1 list.  Instead of CTF on the same 3 maps over and over, then there would be 3 gametypes to pick from as well, making 9-12 choices.  Regicide is actually very fun, so merge it with slayer.  Put snipes in with slayer on a small basis.  Put Pro in with slayer as well on a small basis. Give us some damn choices.  Don't make the choices by splitting up the community.  I bet they don't do it because they have people that quit because they don't get a gametype they want.  That was the whole purpose of JIP. 

 

I don't think it's burnout.  I don't think that Halo is past it's prime.  I think people just want more variety without having to jump around for it. 

While I think putting ranks in would help a lot, even without ranks in H2 and H3 there were also a lot of skills that took a long time to learn.  In Reach and then even more so in H4 they removed those skills from the game.  With nothing really worth working on we're bored after a month.

These are some good ideas.  Where did you come up with them?  Oh yeah right, it's what was done in every past Halo.  A lot of unlearning going on this time around.

We will have to wait until the second season of Spartan Ops + 6 DLC (Feb. and Apr.) + some community maps before we get a solid idea of what shape Halo 4 is in relative to past versions. We should know the whole story by the end of May 2013. FYI, then school will let out and the Halo numbers always rise then.

A lot of stuff is going to happen relatively soon and looking at current MM numbers is just going to give you heartburn.

One thing people have left out is how the lack of films and online fileshares has potentially affected populations. I used to spend hours capping Tbag videos just to show you guys. Only those few with cap cards can do it at the moment. My fingers are crossed and my bum is getting stinkier by the day waiting for the Theatre repairs.

Yo, I am not as big a gamer as most here, but I got can opine a bit:)

I been having a lot of fun with halo 4.  I may get wiped out after two hours of play, too.  Sometimes less, but that is not a big deal.  Two hours is quite a while to play a game, and if it entertains you for 2-hour sessions, that is pretty dang good.  I mean, you are only awake for about 17 hours, so that is well more than 10% of your day.

The Boltshot - I don't think it is OP.  While I do pretty good with it, I am almost never killed by one (and I am not that good at this game).   I tend to strafe or backpedal during an engagement, though; I feel the boltshot is more a punishement for players that like to charge facefirst into gunfire.

The Maps- This is really my one criticiism, I think.  I think they tried to elimate camping areas or something, I am not sure.  But, the maps all seem kinda similar (in a way) now; I want more dynamic maps, like Halo 3's Construct (genius map) and Guardian, and my favorite, Last Resort.  Those are dynamic, interesting maps.  Really, I'd like to plug a few of the old great maps in with the new ones.

My current favorite map for Halo 4 is Abandon.  I think, that is one that has that "classic" feel to it.  (Granted, I haven't fully familiarized with all the new maps, yet, especially some of the huge ones.)

cool, well, taht's my two cents.

 

 

I'm with you there DEEP. Check out this film at 5:28, the clip is Geronimo! by SiKSm0k3 on 9-23-2010 

I loved putting these together for the friends I played with and wished H4 had it from the start. Why did it not ship with the game DEEP?

Completely disagree.  You know, this is the same arguement that the Halo:CE guys used when H2 came out.  It was noobified.  It was made for casuals.  Then H3 came out with the bubble shield and all that stuff and the H2 guys said it was made for casuals and noobieifed.  Then H3.....

IMO, this is the most pure shooting skillful game since CE.  A good player with good aim will beat an average player with average aim almost every time.  When I'm playing, I know when someone is better than me and someone is not.  While there are some games that I feel cheated, it's not that often, and when it is, it happens mostly in individual games with individual players.

 

 

Yeah, funny that way huh?

Gotta agree with you there on the lack of films and online FS.  I have a cap card so i can help peeps out with MM clips, but a lot of neat and funny things are being missed in campaign and SOPS because there is no theater.  Case in point, someone in the clan forum described a really funny glitch in SOPS he encountered where the covies were JUST their weapons moving along on the ground - deadly enemies and hard to kill; would have made a hilarious film, but no theater -- no film.

 

There will always be disagreement on what will improve gameplay and bring back or keep population in the game, be it more (and balanced) maps, a good set of playlists, a little less COD like, and so on, but at least give us a fully functional game!!  What I see now is a game with less functionality than its predecessors.  Seems 343 spent so much time on the stupid stuff they forgot to cover the basics.

I don't believe I've ever read an excuse.

I've seen a lot of frame rate problems in 343i pre-release videos.
Dynamic lighting doesn't work on Forged maps.
Some objects/vehicles/characters are missing pieces in the game films. Dare I mention the weird things we see in the Killcam might be an indication of theatre glitches.

I'm hoping it will get fixed soon but I think it would be optimistic to believe it will ever get fixed.

LB is right - lacking map variety

DEEP is right - fileshare capabilities

These combine to indicate that 343 has a different definition of "Community" than Bungie did. Too bad, the collaboration and sharing is a big part of what I like most about Halo.

I would spend hours in H3 and Reach fileshare, looking at Most Downloaded and Most Recommended forge maps. I miss having an easy way to find good stuff like that.

Halo 4 has multiplayer? It would be cool if they had a deal where one team could fight against another team.

This is how I feel too

 

My Blame falls on Halo 2... I played that game till I was blue in the face... till shortly before they took the servers down for the damn thing even!  Every halo since then, though each cool in their own way, was in my opinion no where near as good as Halo 2 and I doubt none of them ever will be.  Halo 4 so far is the closest but since halo i've gotten into shooters that are... well some folks call more realistic, I guess that could be used as the term, I just dont enjoy shooters anymore where you got to have a headshot for it to matter and you got to shoot through shields before you can start actually doing any damage, I guess i've just grown out of this type of shooter.

This.

You mean game mechanics issues or the 'number of people playing' issues?

 

To me, seems like the challenge goes the opposite direction.  Going from games where "i see you first - one trigger pull kill" to "I have to play the map correctly, get in a battle and make every shot count to kill someone" seems to be the more logical transition - but maybe that's just me.  I mean, I guess you could say you've grown in the opposite direction - but seems to me that mostly young players like CoD and older players like Halo.

You say you played Halo 2 to death and blame it for........something?  But now that Halo 4 is more like H2, you don't like the game that you played to death.

Sorry, confused.  

 

game mechanics

We have two map packs left for this game, with three maps per map pack (according to the release schedule).  We're bound to have some stinkers in there, so, what, maybe one or two usable/good maps the rest of the way, with the majority of the maps going the way of Big Team or a Ghost Town-like clusterfuck.  The third map pack in Halo 3 had 8 maps alone, which is one fewer than the entire release schedule of all the scheduled ones in this title.  I thought that one of the lessons we learned from Reach was that we needed more original maps, and not necessarily remakes or maps from Forge.

 

I'd love for them to narrow searches to your particular continent.  If you play in a non-peak hour, you suffer some pretty shitty connections at time, interspersed with some amazing connections because you're host, which means everyone else in the room is suffering greatly if they all have some European accents.  Hell, you see a diffrence in the quality of games if you're East Coast and stay up later and play with predominantly West Coasters.

 

At this point, I haven't played much Halo in the past week or so.  There's exactly one map, Haven, that's worth playing.  The rest of them are all varying degrees of bad. (If you're wondering, Haven......Solace...Adrift....Abandon.......................................Complex...Exile, Ragnarok...................................Longbow, and the other two big ones).  There isn't a single map in the DLC that's usable, which is why I haven't even bought it.  It wouldn't be the first Halo DLC I haven't bought, though.  That goes to Reach.  That's when I stopped buying it reflexively.  That game gets 5 out of 5 rakes.

 

Forge is pretty badly gimped, so is the file sharing.  It's been two months after release, and it still feels like a beta (the Boltshot is pretty overpowered, the primary weapon balance needs a tweak, but I'd completely assume it would need to get tweaked down the road, probably a few times.  It's a nightmare to perfectly balance the BR, DMR, Carbine, LR, and AR).  I completely understand that the people that made this game made a great game at its core, and surrounded it with some crap, and that they put in a TON of long hours and deserved some rest and vacation over the holidays, but maybe a "Hey, we're on vacation now, but we're listening. Here are the things we hear a lot, here are the things we're fixing, here are the things we're looking at, and here are the things we're not fixing" would be great.  Just some kind of dialogue would be amazing right now, because I think a lot of folks are being left out in the cold right now.

 

Yes.  I'm a competitive prick.  I'd like to see ladders and tournaments and to see a lot of the fluff taken out of gameplay, at least for its own separate playlist.  The Virgin gaming thing is a nice try, but it's so bogged down with a lot of needless rules, when all I'd like to see is simply the same ranking system from Halo 3, if they can't come up with anything better.  Shit, the Forge from Halo 3 looks better than what we currently have.

 

Yay for Fiesta Slayer.  At least it isn't Reach, so we have that going for us.

 

Edited to add: I'm sure some folks are burned out.  Hell, look around here.  There are a ton of faces that are missing that would love to be more involved, but the game/developer doesn't seem to want them around.  Again, what 343 says and what they do seem to always be at odds with each other. 

 

Double edited to add: I don't like how the commendations and challenges are handled either. I don't want to see folks slinking around with a pistol, trying to get 9 kills in a game.  Play against me with the best of everything you have and let's see who comes out on top.  Don't gimp yourself because you're trying to get Barbie dress-up points.

I liked Ghost Town.  Seriously.

 

Close quarters maps, or clusterfuck maps allow players who usually do poorly in maps with longer sightlines or maps without vehicles, to have more impact.  This is increased even more so if more explosive weapons are on the map.  If you're always boxed in, it's harder to generate a team shot, especially if you're attempting to run and gun it.

+1.

Some people interpreted my posts above as that I hate H4.  I don't hate it.  I actually think it has potential (as yet unrealized).  I'm angry at 343 for fucking it up in such an obvious way.   E.g. it's obvious everyone loves Haven.  Give us more maps like Haven YESTERDAY or it's all over.

#HireDrost

I totally disagree.  Think about how often in past halos (<=H3) you got that perfect 4 shot.  How often did you get a perfect 4 shot in H3 even on LAN?  Sure it happened, but it happened about as often as you got an 8 shot kill.  In H4 I get 5 shot kills all the time and it's even pretty common when playing good players to get a 5-shot kill trade, meaning we both 5-shot each other and we both die on the 5th shot, meaning both of us 5-shot each other.  Never ever happened before this game.  Unlike previous Halo's this game has massive auto aim and bullet magnetism and any n00b can 5-shot someone.  Combine that with the fact that strafing isn't very effective and movement is pretty straightforward and all the other things that simplified play and this is the most n00b friendly Halo yet.

Even with respect to all of your valid complaints, I still expect to be playing this game two years from now. We had as much of a hoot last night as we ever did with previous Halo games. Halo 4 is a keeper, even with all of the issues. I certainly will be happier when some of the issues get fixed. The whole problem of silence from 343i is an odd one. I hope to see that improve over the next few weeks. MS has always been closed mouth.

I cetainly agree with the rage of 343 basically taking a month off from updates - especially for such a glitchy game. 

I get they needed a much deserved break but, as mentioned above, drop us a bone and let us know what is happening. Instead we get jack shit and the game has only been out 2 months. 

Bungie was always giving us updates, even if it was just a paragraph or two during the holidays to let us know what was happening. At least we got the feeling something was being done.

Perhaps we were spoiled by Bungie? Do Halo fans expect too much from this new developer? I don't know, but I can't help but feel like 343 has bitten off more than they could chew and released a game that was 80% done. Now, 2 months in and the natives are restless and wanting somebody's head on a stick - not a good sign.

 

Deep, I keep telling you this, and you either brush it off or don't understand it: you'd play and love Halo no matter what.  They could have made most any change to the game, or done anything else, but if it was a Halo title, you'd love it.  Case in point: you probably very rarely played Fiesta Slayer, but now, you're playing it exclusively and loving it because it's the new "vanilla". 

I think this is a bit unfair, considering there aren't other options.  If you like and want to play Halo - then you're playing Halo 4.  There is no other option that is Halo.  You can either play it and learn to deal, or you can just quit Halo altogether.  Hopefully there will be updates, I agree - but to berate someone for enjoying the series in good times and bad, rather than throwing down your controller in a tantrum and going to play some WoW or Minecraft or something seems a bit extreme.  Not saying that's what you're doing - but it can sometimes seem like people are spending all their gaming time complaining about what's wrong with the game rather than just playing the game.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it does seem so sometimes.

Yeah there are problems with the game.  But I don't think it's as broken as some others do, and I don't constantly bitch about it rather than play it.  If I was to that point, I just wouldn't play it and you wouldn't see me on this board.  I can almost guarantee nothing you say anywhere is going to affect what 343i does, so sure - state your issues, but play the game or spend time doing something else you love more.  Right?

So does Star Wars Kinect unfortunately.  :(  But I suppose that is different thread.  Let me wield my light saber the way I want to damnit!

I'm not as hard core Halo as that. I really am pissed about theatre, fileshares and some Forging issues. Those issues really do drag me down. We played Fiesta style in previous Halo titles and it could be a sign for why some of us like Infinity Slayer. I like getting my hands on a game-over-gun once in awhile. I wish my aquisitions always resulted in more than my suicide. LOL.  I/we like to mix up the games between pure shooters like SWAT, no AA, Infinity and crazy stuff. There is a point where I'd move beyond Halo but we are nowhere near that yet. I don't switch games or game genres like a little kid anymore. Too hard on the head. 

Dixon, you do understand that fiesta slayer cannot be fixed or removed, right?  All the maps have been set-up for this type of slayer.  You'd have to change the spawn points, the weapon drops, and all that stuff.  MLG used to be good at that stuff (note H3 changes to Narrows/Pit that became mainstream), but now they are so busy arguing about BR/DMR and what a 5% change in jump height does and making their own "competitive" maps that they won't do anything to help.  343 won't change their maps.  So, nobody is working on just taking the core game and making the maps work better.

^^ word.

Maybe its just me, but I think this game is great as a whole. It needs minor tweeks, but I'm a happy customer, and I have been playing since Halo PC. I don't think the BoltShot can be nerfed, as making it a two shot kill makes the weapon a weaker version of the Plasma Pistol. I think a compromise would be its removal altogether. I would like matchmaking custom searches just like everyone else, but I don't feel cheated as a customer.

 

Agree with lanierb.  The previous Halos didn't have nearly the bullet magnatesim as H4 does.  Hell, even in Reach the sniper took some skill and couple in the fact that you are no longer de-scoped when shot, everyone is a great sniper now.  Check out the vid below, especially around the 2:24 mark for the DMR.  That's why everyone can 5-shot now.  If you barely miss, you still hit.  You either need to miss badly or have bad connection to not 5-shot someone.  

 

 That video doesn't prove much at all.  In fact it only shows what is within outlying areas of the reticule.  This is hardly bullet magnetism and compared to "sweep sniping" from halos past is relatively normal for a console game.  You want skill, play a PC FPS with 0 hit assist.  I swear sometimes people forget they're playing on a Peer-to-peer network and sitting on their coach.