Nak3d Eli hosts a Halo 4 review with Elamite and Ace
#1
Fri, 06/29/2012 - 18:14
Nak3d Eli hosts a Halo 4 review with Elamite and Ace
More discussion on Promethean Vision included.
More discussion on Promethean Vision included.
The more I see of PV the more sure I won't be using it. The whacked out colours may reduce my immersion and I don't see red so well so these reddish character silhouettes may not be as good for me as other people.
Of course I'll be using it to find out for sure.
What do you folks (and you specifically) think about the opinions of these professional Halo players?
What they have to say is very relevant. Important to note is how 343i testing showed players try out PV a lot then move on to other abilities. I'm sure they are correct but the Pro's haven't had the time and other AA to try out to make other choices. So the Pro's are only seeing a snapshot. A pretty darn good snapshot but still a subset of the whole. Their reactions based on that is PV is god-like and will be alternately in MLG Pro or disallowed. You heard on of them say maybe only one person should have it. Maybe but we don't know all of the details on AA use yet. Sometimes I like AA limited to certain team members and other times I think full freedom is best.
MLG got to try out previous titles but this is the first time we all get to see the action. Is it just PR or is 343i really looking at the Pro market as a source of input? I think it's both.
I am hearing more thoughtful commentary regarding casual players, MM and similar sandboxes. This is new and important. Previously the message I heard was, look at us, we know best and fuck casuals and MM. I'm glad to see the change. I'm still wary of hidden opinions but I want to believe what they are saying.
Even though they are Pro players, they were making the same kind of mistakes as any Halo player. I don't expect them to make perfect choices or that their opinion will work for general MM.
You know me by now. I think anybody and everybody has to drop the attitudes and let 343i make a game that succeeds. That means change to keep people buying and playing. Paying more attention to mass appeal which points to campaign, more campaign, general everyday MM, Forge, Films, Customs. From this will grow the ranks to support playing and watching Pros. We've/they've seen what happens when support drops. No Halo on the circuit.
Pretty soon, they're going to run out of things to say. Honestly, I think they've reached that point about a week ago. It's all the same footage, and pretty much the same insights, and from most of the same people. Best Man seems to get a lot of face time here in these videos, with not as much for Walshy or Karma. Of course, I only see the videos posted here, so that might be selection bias. Part of the problems we have here is we only see this bit of information here. Nobody that played the game played it enough to have a well formed opinion, and nobody else with any actual information is saying a thing yet. I mean, there's been very little actual data given out. At this point, we'd have already run through the beta, and we could have tried this out, so for this franchise, this is pretty virgin territory. Honestly, I actually believe them, to a point, when they say that they're still making tweaks to pretty important gameplay mechanics. PR demands that we'll never know the full story, though, not unless someone leaks it. These pros, for lack of a better term, know the game better than most. They also have a bit of a following. In theory, it's like using the mavens from the Malcolm Gladwell Book "Tipping Point", except those early adopters, those ones that are power users of a product dont' even have access to the full product, not unless they've signed NDAs. I think It's haphazard PR, but then again, I'm not getting paid a princely sum to do it or have any input on it, so what the hell do I know? Of course, a lot of these pros used one weapon or one Armor Ability the whole time, even though some were told to try using different things. I know I'd glom onto something I know immediately (the Battle Rifle and plasma pistol) and use it until it's demosntrated to me that I'm doing it wrong. If you have a limited time with the product, why jump around to a half dozen things? Stick with one thing and get some kind of knowledge about it. Not putting the product in the hands of these people, is proof to me that it's all a PR move. Otherwise, you'd see these pros posting up weekly snippets and snapshots.
Promethean Vision is the most interesting of the Armor Abilities presented so far. Otherwise, I think most of the choice would go to Camo. The more of it I see, the more of a crutch it appears, and the more that I think that good communication is not displaced by PV is right on the money. I just really wish this Armor Ability crap would be over, though. I'm pretty much done with it. Sprint isn't necessary with faster move speed, and that frees up an extra button for control schemes. Most of the other Abilities are better replicated in Custom Powerups, put in strategic areas, and fought over. Of course, that seems to be the Old Way. It's funny. I found this place during Halo 3, and my eyes were opened to the competitive and MLG world in Halo 2. I remember people grumbling in Halo 3 that Halo 2 was a drastic departure from what Halo is, and thinking those people were crazy. "'Tis nostalgia", I said, "and nothing more". I think I'm starting to understand it now, after Going through two amazing experiences, and then Reach. Some people miss Halo 1, with the pistol. Some people miss Halo 2, with the button glitches and the hitscan Battle Rifle. Some miss Halo 3, with the more truthful Battle Rifle, which plays out beautifully in LAN, and not as well over some shoddy connections on Live. I honestly can't tell you what some people would miss about Reach.
Every one of these pros know they're part of the vocal minority. Every one of these pros also know that their sport, their meal ticket, is dependent upon people watching. They want Halo 4 to be ultra successful, because, again, we see what happened because of Reach. It's in everyone's best interest to keep the vanilla Halo experience as close to the MLG experience, although I think we're about to see the number of weapons double or triple with human and Covenant equivalents (enter the loadouts). Everyone wants to see regular matchmaking work, although it's obvious that as soon as the MLG area opens up, those people would hardly be back in regular matchmaking. I don't think a single thing has changed, with regards to the casual/competitive chasm, it's just that these folks know it's better for business if they keep it to themselves and root for all of the Halo community to succeed. After all, schlubs like you and I aren't getting to try it out and post our opinions on YouTube. They are, and there's an obvious reason to that.
I do know you (superficially, of course) by now. You're going to love any game that has "Halo" on it. I understand you want to see what's best for the franchise, so they keep churning out games, but it doesn't really matter what they make. You're going to love it. You (and I, for that matter) aren't the people they need back in the fold. It's those folks that went to play Call Of Duty and never came back. There are a lot of folks on my Friends List (yay for anecdotal evidence) that were everyday Halo players and very active clanmates that don't play Halo any more, even on clan night. There's an itch that's getting scratched with Call Of Duty that Halo isn't doing for them. Or is it simply because everyone else isn't playing it any more, so they won't either?
Lastly, the competitive folks and the casual folks need to realize we need each other in this. We also need more people to stop playing campaign and play multiplayer, or at least pick up and keep picking up the multiplayer experience. This, more than anything else, is key.
There may be more videos around with commentary. I just grab the ones I see posted on NeoGAF and HBO. Usually CyReN is posting links.
AA are here to stay for awhile apparently. I was actually surprised to see them in Halo 4. Even though the majority (probably) likes them in REACH there is a bigger than usual minority clamoring for a move away from them. I was expecting to see Sprint but not all these new and old AA. So I now feel confident that 343i knows AA is the correct way to go based on popular opinion. If I hated AA, I would not buy Halo 4 and you wouldn't see me hanging around here.
This is total whacky conjecture of mine. People who played Halo CE starting when they were ~15 to ~20 are some of the most hard nosed haters of many newer Halo features. I've got this idea that their young developing brains got some kind of burn-in from Halo. Like it was crack or something.
For all of it's shortcomings, REACH has been a lot of fun. It's way less frustrating from a network perspective than Halo 3. It has its own sort of beauty and character. Playlist populations are evidence that people are finding niches to play in. I may not like Infection or Grifball but those people help keep the game alive.
I stick to Halo by choice. I'm wise enough to only waste my time on one game. Keeps me out of trouble. It is easily possible for a bad Halo to send me packing. ODST was a game that I liked, but I'm fairly sure had it been the next mainline Halo with the whole multiplayer regime, I probably would have tried out other games like COD.
I have noticed a decline in members of my FL playing Halo. My Halo groups still turn out but it's the in between times that have reduced activity. I did notice in MM last week a large number of low ranked players. So that may explain why REACH is hanging at 5 on the XBL list. There's still people picking up Halo for the first time.
If people are on playing campaign, there is a greater likelihood they will be available for multiplayer. 343i is counting and planning on that with their new incentives. They want to capture the campaign players, groom and then persuade them to join and stay in MM. The Spartan Op planning looks pretty impressive.
According to Louis Wu, the Pros did not get pushed to use PV. They could have used any of the available abilities. That makes the Pros' choice to use PV really strange because I doubt it will make it into Pro competition.
Kind of a waste of valuable hands on time don't you think?
We already knew what Hologram was. We had questions about Thruster and Promethean Vision, and after cursory use, (in this incarnation of the Armor Ability) it becomes apparent that PV is the obvious choice. If you can see through walls, and see folks' movement on the map, why would you want to use anything else?
This is also a pretty obvious casual/competitive comparison here. Would you have tried the other ones out, especially after it becomes clear that you're at a disadvantage if you're not using PV?
I cite Louis Wu again. He gave it up for other choices. He is an experienced player and spends most of his time in MM.
I dunno, at this point, I'm not sure its wise to guess what anyone is going to use, seeing as how we've seen a portion of the total sandbox. All I know is that, aside from a couple questions about how Thruster works, PV is the obvious choice, especially with these more Reach-style maps we're seeing. Better maps are going to influence gameplay greatly, and close-quarters maps, with lots of tunnels and nooks, are begging for rampant PV spamming. I'm just not sure how/why 343 didn't catch that in early internal testing, though.
Dude. You're an "experienced player". That's not to take anything away from anyone, though. I've played with Louis a couple times, but playing the game a lot doesn't quite equate to being skilled.
Louis Wu is higher than 1 K/D and +6400 games with +4000 in typical MM. I think he is a pretty good judge of the sandbox.
I'll give you that the Pros may be able see some exploits sooner than others but they probably are still people of average intelligence. No doubt their hand eye skills plus colour discrimination must be off the charts.
I look at PV and see a one wall x-ray colour diffuser with potential weapon identification but requires you to turn your whole body to see a target and must be enables over and over. Halo 4 radar is good to its maximum range, persistent, includes 3rd dimension plus one glance total information gathering but has idle invisibility plus radar jammer as limitations.
I'm having difficulty with this whole PV hoopla. I'm getting the feeling the Pros were following a juicy rabbit.
So, as its presented, you don't see a problem with PV?
Edited to add: Balance-wise. Yeah, you're old and can get lost in a cardboard box, but balance-wise, do you see any problems?
Have you thought about what it would be like to watch hours of MLG Pro videos with frequent PV false colour? I would probably watch them less than I do now.
PV in regular MM will probably lose it's tasty flavour when the other AA are available too.
Right, but that's unfortunately all the info we have to go with. That's why I asked, as presented, does this show any kind of balancing problem to you, which it doesn't.
I think that's actually a very good point with the PV. It might not be so bad, because I didn't mind seeing gameplay of it now, but that might be a reason PV stays out of competitive play. Also, I still say that if it does end up there, it'll be because the maps are like the one with the giant mech in it, and they'll almost demand it. Le sigh.
This is a recap of a couple of Frankie's Promethean Vision comments. The first one is especially interesting based on the E3 Pro experience.
Frankie 4.7.12
Frankie 4.8.12