For the sake of balanced perspective, I bring the following. CursedLemon rant

This CursedLemon guy has pissed me off since the Halo 2 and 3 days with his rants. I haven't been able to get passed the 8:43 mark so far. Maybe he has a link to the text somewhere.

In order to bring a balance to the generally more positive opinions on Halo 4, especially mine and people like me, I offer the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ItTXmzjqo

Finally, he offered up his txt.

1. Do you want to know how I know we're dealing with a new generation of Halo players? Three years ago, I put out the third of a series of videos talking about Halo, its past and its future. The last one specifically spoke of Bungie and their shameless cheapening of the franchise in order to maintain Halo's status as Xbox Live's top dog. And a lot of people agreed. But now, we've got a new company taking the reigns with Halo, and it seems like a lot of people have a hell of a short memory, because everything that was contained in that last presentation still holds true today. Except now, the community is in an even sadder state, because instead of arguing over whether or not all of these stupid additions to the game are actually competitive, now we're all fearfully bickering about whether we should bow to the whims of casual players, as if their love of watered-down Halo is going to be the thing that saves the competitive scene. By the way, they're not listening to all this infighting, because they're playing Modern Warfare 3 right now.
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3. Right off the bat, I'd like to express just how utterly pathetic I find this community to harbor that kind of prideless, defeatist, and at the same time utterly spoiled attitude. The fact that competitive Halo achieved the success that it did is simply incredible - but let's take just a moment and put things in perspective. How many FPS games can say that they achieved the same success - we'll call it financial success - in the tournament circuit as Halo did? Counterstrike, Quake, and...? Despite their obvious competitive capacity, FPS games have actually had a somewhat poor track record compared to fighting games, RTS games, etc. The only leagues that paid out considerably large cash prizes for FPS games were WCG, CPL, and MLG. CPL went down the tube, and WCG is basically Counterstrike's MLG. The point of this is to show that Halo's success is somewhat of an anomaly, ESPECIALLY given the fact that it is a console shooter.
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5. I find myself somewhat dumbstruck, therefore, when I see that the community is cowering in a corner over the fact that...Halo is no longer at the #1 spot on Xbox Live? Out of how many games that have online multiplayer? Yeah, the competitive scene is in a bind, but to anyone with half a brain, they would understand that the reason for this is because Reach was a game that set the bar for shit. Casual support has never been the secret of competitive Halo's health - if this were the case, then MLG would never have achieved such unparalleled success during the span of 2007-2008, a time when settings were just as separated from default Halo as ever, and the cult-like divide between MLG and casual Halo players had NEVER been wider. Yet, now we sit here and seizure wildly over not upsetting the Halo layman, so that he might occasionally happen a glance at the MLG stream and give the sponsors a few more bucks.
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7. So, for me, this becomes an issue of dignity. Halo is a game with a distinct identity in its multiplayer, its design philosophy is unlike anything else that exists out there. But ever since Halo 2 came out, that design has been grossly distorted, perverted for the sake of sales, and ultimately compromised in favor of outside influence. The reason that I like vanilla Halo, and the reason that I care enough to preach to people who have the absorptive capabilities of a rock, is not just because it stands on its own merit by itself, but because when you follow its mindset, you will find that it leaves room for all sorts of growth. Did you hear what I just said? I said that Halo's basic design, in its purity, is capable of facilitating new ideas. New ideas that are competitive, and not in the mediocre way that this community has chosen to settle for over the years. The question we should be asking is, "if the formula of multiplayer Halo isn't popular enough to stand on its own against other games, then shouldn't it just die a natural death?"
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9. Let's get this out of the way - multiplayer video games are a competitive venture by their very nature. They are crafted to separate good players from bad. There will always be a crop of players that are light years ahead of the rest of the masses, that much will never change. However, not a single person in that entire spectrum will benefit from, much less appreciate, being funneled into a smaller scope of skill. A game with a wide skill gap and a properly functioning ranking system will disappoint no one. It is therefore my STRONG opinion that Halo adhere to the design that it was founded on, not necessarily appealing to its simplicity, but rather its clarity of vision and logic.
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11. The point of this video, meanwhile, is to address something that constantly gets thrown in my face when I talk about Halo. One of the more common complaints against me when I discuss these issues is that I am nothing but a pessimist that is vacant of any constructive criticism. I vehemently detest this attitude - the very act of raising my concerns, regardless of the tone that I choose to use while doing so, is constructive, but I have never been under the delusion that Bungie or 343 have ever paid attention to anything that I've said. The fact of the matter is this, I am not behind the driver's seat of H4. I have no control over its development, therefore the only thing that I can do is respond to what has been shown to me in all the pre-release hype. Which, might I add, has been less than thrilling.
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13. But the notion that I lack the ability to offer up solutions to Halo's problems is utterly laughable. The fact of the matter is that I, along with a few other people, have already solved all of Halo's functional problems. If I were given the keys to the Corvette, I could ship you all a game that played like nothing you have ever seen before, and Ogre 2 would win every single championship. But the consensus of the scene now is that we need new, fresh ideas in order to keep Halo afloat. I find this notion to be utterly moronic, and yet the criticism has morphed to accuse me of a lack of vision for the future of the Halo series. So I have made this video to specifically tackle a certain hypothetical question; what would I do, if I was developing Halo 4? How would I take all of the gimmicky nonsense that is being introduced into the series, and make it work?
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15. The very first thing that needs to be established is whether or not the basics are usable. I can tell you right now that in H4, they will not be satisfactory - 5-shot starting weapons are all I need to assure you of that. You might all just grin and bear it, and that's your prerogative, but I'm telling you that this is nowhere near ideal. The problems of basic, mechanical Halo have been elaborated on by myself and by others a million times over, and I really don't feel the need to address them here. Therefore, this video is going on the assumption that we are beginning with a game that has no aim acceleration, has responsive movement physics, very little bullet magnetism (reticule magnetism is passable), short kill times, yadda yadda.
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17. It occurs to me that people don't like vanilla Halo anymore, or are unwilling to admit that it has value in a world where Call of Duty is king. So I am therefore tasked with coming up with ideas that "spice Halo up," and make it more interesting - which anyone with even an ounce of honesty will know to mean that we're trying to yank people away from Modern Warfare and Black Ops by basically ripping off its most prominent features. Therefore, I have to concede the fact that the ideas I am going to pitch will end up sounding absolutely nothing like Halo, which is apparently what people want, because if anyone happened to pay attention to my lectures on the Social Skirmish casts, they will understand that hanging Halo in a purgatory between H1 and CoD will make precisely nobody happy. So, I will spit on the ground as I say all of this, but at least my ideas will make systemic sense.
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19. So, where do we start? Why don't we start off with one area of Halo that everyone, whether casual, competitive, or that annoying in-between group that I hate so much, all agrees was a universally fucked up facet of Halo Reach - the maps. There are more overarching issues to deal with, but let's start here. I feel like if there's any issue that I can get off on the right foot with everybody on, the maps would be it. And boy, were they terrible. Absolutely no sense of flow, too many routes, too open, all sorts of design flaws. It's very easy to open up on the original maps in Halo Reach as failures. But, hold on now. What about the Sanctuary remake? What about Penance? What about Battle Canyon? These maps once served gloriously in Halo's arsenal, yet their inclusion into Reach failed miserably in solving the problem of slow gameplay. Well, the fact of the matter is that there is only so much a map can do to influence gameplay, and most of the time a map is incapable of actually improving it. Rather, a map can either let the game play as it was intended, or it can stifle the experience with bad design. The honest truth is that a good game will function as a good game in almost all scenarios, even if you're fighting in a square room with four pillars. If you're running around in an architectural clusterfuck, however, shit starts getting stupid. The point is this - it's hard for maps to make a good game bad, but it's impossible for them to make bad games good. That said, however, there are right ways and wrong ways to craft maps, all according to whatever type of game you're working around.
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21. What's in a map, anyhow? Well, a lot of things, both seen and unseen. Consider the following base characteristics of a map for its definition; size, shape, clutter, segmentation, and methods of traversal. Defining these will ultimately lead you to secondary characteristics, which could be described as; flow, traffic, congestion, and perhaps other things that I cannot pull off the top of my head quite so easily. All secondary factors are directly affected by the core gameplay mechanics, so it will be impossible to define them without invoking a specific example. This doesn't mean, however, that the base characteristics mean nothing, in fact the opposite could not be more true. Now, I have previously stated that I was going to present all of these ideas in the context of a working base system of Halo - i.e. NOT Reach, or anything even remotely resembling it. But as per my earlier sentiments, I feel that it is easier to phrase these observations under the pretense of playing a game that does not have self-sustaining gameplay. It's also easier to talk about the bad elements of maps as a method of conveyance,
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23. So, we begin. Let's start with what all maps start as in the development process - a big square room. What's wrong with a big square room? Aside from the fact that that's boring as piss, it also doesn't lend well to the spawn system. So, we need a map with cover. We could always make the map look like a botched game of Tetris, but that takes out an important predictive ability utilized by intelligent players, by making the field random and over-accessible. The idea of a map is not to have action smeared over the entirety of the physical space it provides, but to create areas that are generally contested, yet never approached in quite the same way. A good example of this is Chill Out, a map in which every room is regularly approached through every possible entry point over the course of a single match. It's not endlessly complex, but in its well thought out asymmetry it also avoids congestion (let it be said, for the record, that fast kill times are the number one solution to map traffic jams).
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25. Let's look at Reach in the context of two different maps with two completely different philosophies, Countdown and Penance. We know Penance works, because it once worked. On the other hand, Countdown, in addition to being a map that had the unfortunate luck of being cast in Reach, is also one of the dumbest displays of map architecture I've ever seen. Look at it - it's a three level doughnut maze. In addition to having the rockiest methods of climbing levels (p.s. fuck lifts), its innards are about as disorienting and nonsensical as the plumbing in my walls. And to top it all off, it still has an element that pisses me off to no end about almost all maps post-H1, with a wide-open middle area that is completely non-conducive to movement but oh, so very encouraging to long-range gun battles. Allow me to harken back to the H2 days of Lockout TS games. Most of you have really good memories of this gametype. Do you know why? It's because every single one of you KDR neg-nancies were transformed into Halo pros - no, Halo GODS - when you were standing on B3 or bridge with your BR fully-loaded and someone's helmet peeking over the sniper rail. A gametype where everyone stands still for entire segments is a gametype where everybody looks like a strong Halo player, because they have no weaknesses to exploit. Now take that concept, except make library a featureless hallway and blue lift an impossibly complicated series of tunnels, and you have Countdown.
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27. And according to our enumerated map qualities, what does this mean for congestion? Well, what do you think, with the entire middle of the map rendered unusable? The "sniper" positions up by the catwalk and vents do no good, as everybody constantly hides in the jungle of tubes, lifts, and vents on one side of the map. It creates combat that is relentlessly too close-quarters, and fosters a great deal of running and hiding when being shot. It also nearly ruins the predictive capacity of the map, as when you get in parts of it, you literally cannot know where your opponent is going to come out from. Part of the skill of map awareness comes from effectively covering your own ass, by noting the position of your teammates and then breaking down the location of the enemy. It's why you see the best players almost never getting assassinated. This only works, however, because those players are able to create a map presence. If you were to look at 4v4 Halo battles from a bird's-eye view with all or most of the players alive, you would notice that typically the player formation is an amorphous blob shape for either team on the side of the map that they're holding, yet it's still a tactile formation and it moves in sync (if the team is any good). That is the basis of teamwork theory in Halo and in any shooter, and the better teams have the most greatly-expanded coverage and knowledge of what points on a map facilitate this. But when you make it so I can take it one short hallway over and end up right in the middle of a team's covered area, you completely wreck that theory. And, as always, huge areas with long, open firing lines will always heavily favor teamshot over individual skill, so this map is doubly awful.
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29. So, what about Penance then? It's a mostly faithful recreation of my all-time favorite Halo map ever. How could I not like it? Because Reach sucks, that's why. Look at Penance, and you'll see it has almost everything you could ever want in a map. It's large but it's segmented into distinct rooms that are all multi-accessible (just like Chill Out). It has close-to-medium range firing lines, with some long lanes opened up to make use of the sniper. Its power weapons are placed correctly to encourage movement to the bottom of the map (Reach spawn system be damned), as well as putting the retriever in a vulnerable position. Yet somehow, Penance turns into a campfest. Why? Because nobody is strong enough to take down the power weapons, not to mention you're just too damn slow. You can't move. Penance is a map that, by the nature of its architecture, encourages players to make individual plays, or at least plays that don't require seven DMRs on the same person. In H1, even if you had rockets and sniper sitting up top somewhere, someone was going to try to nade down camo, and if you put yourself out there, you were getting magnumed straight into respawn land. Even walking up through tunnel with rocks and snipe waiting on the other side, a couple of pistols still stood a chance. But now, if you try to go up top through portal, good luck - you better hope the other team is just flat out not paying attention. Every avenue of advancement is compromised, and it is in no way the map's fault.
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31. Now, the point of this video is not just to lecture on Halo theory, but to suggest what I would do if I were in control. Well, crafting maps does require a certain amount of creativity, and it's impossible to explain the exact structure of maps that I would potentially make. Let me say this - a map has to have a theme. And I'm not talking a fucking aesthetic theme, I mean a structural theme, and it has to be distinct. That's why I brought up Boarding Action and Chiron previously, because those are themed maps. But themed maps don't need to just be for dick-around fun, either. They can be made in the competitive spirit as well. Maps should be interesting as well as functional. In the case of a game like Reach or, god forbid, Halo 4, the powerup layout needs to be - and this is important - sparse. Maps need few power items that are spread out and spawn quickly, to promote aggressive map movement. People need to not be afraid to walk out in the open. Part of this is due to a crappy starting weapon, but it's also due to the fact that if everyone except you has a power item, you don't have much encouragement to start skulking, and honestly you're still kind of useless trying to back up your overshielded or rocket-toting teammate. And quite frankly, if we're going to make this game about teamshooting, then we should probably encourage it, should we not? Making individual spartans completely ineffective at slaying, but then feeding them a power weapon every three feet kind of destroys what's left of the tattered remains of Halo.
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33. Let it be said that I am not opposed to "fun" maps. What I am opposed to is trying to play serious gametypes on crappy maps. I have touched on this before, so I'm going to end up reiterating myself, but there is a humongous difference between a poorly designed competitive map and a "fun" map. That may seem blatantly obvious, but in practice most people seem to completely disregard this notion. The two examples I've given previously are Boarding Action and Chiron, both from H1. These are probably the worst possible maps for competitive play ever designed (except Elongation), and that's because they're clearly not meant to host serious matches. They are, however, infinitely fun for something like sniper CTF and FFA oddball, respectively. The fact of the matter is that since H2 came out, we have literally not been able to clearly discern what a "fun" map is, and what a "serious" map is. Is Ascension a fun or serious map? What about Ghost Town? Boardwalk? You can't tell what the creators of these maps were thinking, because they are both non-competitive by nature and they are not strikingly quirky enough to clearly fall under the label of a "fun" map. I suspect that in H4, this trend will continue on, and we will be stuck with a host of ambiguous maps that don't even know what they're trying to be.
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35. That's the story on maps. What next is there? How about the ranking system, another area which we all agree could use some improvement. The ranking system, perhaps more than any other feature of the game, is a study in psychology. It begs the question of just what all different players are looking for in their gaming experience. Some people want the truest representation of their skill to show next to their name when they're browsing through matchmaking, while others are just looking to ram through achievements. To be as simple as possible, there are three modes of achievement in a game - length of time played, the game's goals, and personal milestones. The first is hardly an achievement, but due to the influx of 13-year-old kids who were reared on the last generation of games so easy that a crippled cripple could complete them, it's viewed as a necessity by game devs. The second is the most obvious one, and would translate to Halo 2's number ranks for success in team playlists. The third is the epitome of hardcore brattiness, those who can't seem to pinpoint the reason that their team always loses while they're going +20. If I had my way, the second rank would be the ONLY rank that existed, but unfortunately I have to try to make "new" ideas work...even if those ideas suck.
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37. But I wonder, what's the problem with a three-tier ranking system? First issue to address is that your rank, no matter what it is, needs to be immediately visible upon your entry into a party or a matchmaking game. It's a rank, it has two functions; match players appropriately, and for bragging rights. The idea of incorporating team wins, personal skill, and experience into one rank isn't that hard to do, it just requires a little bit of creativity, as do most things like this. Win/loss ratio should always be displayed as a number. It's the most important metric, and it is the most easily identifiable facet of one's rank. Now suppose that we take personal success, which could be figured from KDR, number of MVPs, number of times a player has the most kills or objective scores in the game or on their team, and all sorts of other stuff. We've already got win/loss taking up the number element, let's turn the personal skill element into the badge system that Reach tried so desperately to implement. This rank should be cumulative and not subject to subtraction if a player doesn't perform well, otherwise this will overly encourage selfish play. Then, the experience element, which you can also tie to a credit system or whatever, that's honestly something I couldn't care less about. I suppose the best way to employ this would be to make credits based on both experience and achievements, but keep the experience rank itself merely a factor of time. But we've got a number and a badge type, why don't we use color? The longer you play the game, we'll say that your badge color slowly changes from a dusty black color up through a bronze-ish, gold-ish, until it hits a shiny platinum color at whatever would be considered "General" level. These are just suggestions, but the focus here is to combine all elements of a potential ranking system into one, singular displayable icon that people can wear on their sleeve, so to speak.
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39. Now of course, the question immediately becomes "what system should govern the ranks?" The past couple of Halos have used an incredibly complicated system to formulate their singular rank, but all of that stuff becomes completely irrelevant once we split the rank elements into three, thus relaxing and simplifying the formulas needed to ascertain each specific one. The hypothetical number rank is pretty straightforward, wins versus losses and absolutely nothing else. Say, three losses equals a win. You win one game, it takes three losses to put you back where you started. The key here is to make the progression to the limit slow. It has to be extended enough that the possibility of losing three games in a row at the halfway point, such as 25 out of 50, is just as likely as winning. The greater the number of games required to progress through the system, the greater the "distance" between advanced players and less skilled ones - and the happier everyone is. Look how easy it is to get a 50 in H3, and you'll see what I mean, with novice players constantly hovering around 35-40. So, what about the personal merit rank? This one is a bit more complicated, as it depends on what any particular person decides is the truest statistic representation of skill. Certainly, KDR factors into it, as well as the number of times a player outperforms his teammates and enemies. The fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no way of determining just who had the greatest influence on a win, or a loss. But the fact of the matter is that while stats don't tell the whole truth, they do tell part of it, and someone who goes +20 in a 50-30 loss likely had little to do with the loss itself. Instituting a rank of this sort is an admitted concession. Experience is simple, it's a measure of the length of time played, and is meant to be weighed against the other ranks. Assuming daily play, I would suggest that the experience rank should cover the greater part of two years, encouraging players to remain with a single gamertag - this should also suggest the level of difficulty it should take to top out on either of the other two ranks. This three-tier system creates a situation in which whenever a player is unhappy about the progression of one rank, he still has two other ranks to be "distracted" by. Bitches love distractions.
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41. One thing brought up by a couple different people, and an idea that I thought was wonderful, was the idea of manual rank reset. Don't think of it as Call of Duty's prestiging, because there won't be any item loss or anything like that. Think of it as the perfect solution to derankers. Now, there's no cure for boosting, and there never will be, nor should we even bother poisoning the system to try to discourage it. I don't really care what Frankie says, boosting is not that huge of a problem, especially when you have playlists that are actually decently populated, which is not the case at all with Reach. And as I have tirelessly tried to explain to people before, leveling up is part of the fun of Halo. It's fun to make a run to 50 with your friends, especially when it gets challenging later on in the levels. But with the system I described, that challenge will hang around for quite a while, because a very skilled player will still have to grind out for experience to get some holy, almighty rank display to show off to his peers. This would also make selling accounts rather difficult, as the amount of time invested would have to be massive to cover the XP portion, and the player would have to be skillful enough to conquer a particularly trying skill-separating leveling system. The fine resolution and adjustments of the variables involved in this would have to be tuned in the development and testing process, and likely even after the game came out, but I feel that this sort of system could be highly successful if it were implemented.
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43. Let's move on to another important topic, which is the weapon system in Halo. I should start by explaining the difference in philosophy between arena shooters and squad shooters in this respect, and why Halo sits squarely in the middle between them. The system of most arena shooters like Doom, Quake, all of that is based on the fundamental principle that you start with the worst gun in the game. You are then presented with a menagerie of weapons strewn about the map to collect at your leisure, all of which are based on a generally linear scale of increasing power. This is why 1v1s are the most popular gametype in these types of shooters, because often the maps are not quite big enough, and the power weapons not prolific enough, to support an entire team of players vying for weapon use when you start with a gun that is inherently worthless. You are also typically able to carry as many weapons as you want. Contrast this with squad shooters, often which have absolutely no weapons on map, and involve loadouts to choose between different weapon options which, along with supplemental abilities, give rise to different role-based classes. You usually can only operate two different weapons in these games, a main arm and a side arm.
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45. Now think about all that, and think about what the intended philosophy behind Halo is. The weapon scale is not linear, but role-based, yet you can carry two main arms if you want and the weapons have no characteristics that define them in specific behavioral roles (such as running bloom with the sniper, or not being able to fire a missile launcher while moving), but have functional roles all the same as defined by a starting weapon that is meant to be combative against all weapons in the game. There are also weapons on map, yet not a lot of them. Overkill on THC spelled this point out rather simply by saying that H4 is looking to be "the first role-based arena shooter." Now, I am of the opinion that roles, as the word suggests in its intended context, will not be as prominent in H4 as everyone seems to think that they will be, but let's assume that we're actively trying to make an outside-the-box role-based arena shooter. With H4, that role-based aspect is going to come from the armor abilities; the arena aspect is too heavily ingrained in the weapons system as it pertains to kill times and fighting for weapon control.
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47. With that said, how would I model the weapon sandbox? Let us first address an issue which is pissing me off quite a bit about H4 - the BR versus the DMR. Now, I'm all about preference, but having two weapons integrated into a game that takes up precious development time that are going to have virtually the same function and the same capabilities with regards to mowing opponents down, I find that to be just a bit asinine. The BR is basically a burst-fire version of the DMR, and vice versa. The solution to this is one I have talked about before on various forums, and that is an adjustable starting weapon. If the DMR and the BR are going to have equal or near-equal kill times, why not just make them the same weapon? Why don't we have a weapon that you can adjust in your options menu, where you can vary the weapon's characteristics according to your personal taste? My conception of this weapon is to have a set of options laid out in which when you alter one, another responds. So imagine in your head, you have a rifle. This rifle has two sliders on it, one of which is the damage vs. rate of fire adjustment, and below that is a bloom vs. recoil meter, with finally a zoom meter to follow. No matter what setting you choose on this gun, the kill time is exactly the same, whether you are firing two bullets or twenty. Note that this gun will have no "spread" on any setting. So, as you decrease ROF, so too will you increase damage done by a bullet. Decreasing the ROF will also increase the recoil, because your shots are more powerful, and therefore will cause your muzzle to displace. You will also be able to zoom in farther up to 3x, as such is the nature of a gun like that, it will be for picking targets farther out and pinging them hard. Contrast that with an increased ROF, which will result in less damage per bullet, and a decrease in degree of zoom until it reaches zero, effectively turning the gun into a sub-machine gun. Farther to this side of the scale, you will suffer less and less recoil, but incur more and more bloom the longer you hold down the trigger, encouraging manual burst fire at range. The kill-time adjustments would have to be carefully calculated to compensate for the wait for bloom to reset, but all this would take is some time. I realize that I have previously said that bloom is stupid. Well, so is Promethean Vision, but I'm gonna go in on that at length in a little while, too. I never said this wasn't a stupid Halo.
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49. Pardon me while I go off on a tangent for a moment, but this bloom thing really gets to me. One thing that royally pisses me off is when, in the midst of a conversation about bloom, someone will bring up Shadowrun. You know how I know when someone is talking about Shadowrun that has literally never played the game before? They talk about how "competitive" Shadowrun's bloom is. Shadowrun's bloom is not competitive, because that's an oxymoron. Shadowrun's bloom is tolerable, because it isn't exacerbated by a number of problems like exceedingly long exchanges between players. Shadowrun is a better game than any Halo besides the first, and it has nothing to do with the bloom whatsoever. There's a simpler way to punish spammers, you know; a capped rate of fire. The difference here, of course, is that Shadowrun is actually built around bloom, with several mechanics that respond to it, so simply yanking it out would have consequences. Halo, meanwhile, is a run and gun game - including bloom only from firing your weapon is an unnecessary and counter-intuitive speed limit. But unfortunately, people seem to be incredibly averse to the idea of a powerful starting weapon that has pinpoint accuracy and is only restricted by your own capacity to aim the fucking thing right.
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51. I digress. So, what do you know? We've hit two birds with one stone, giving people adjustable leeway to work with their desired preference, and also putting a slight role-based element into just the starting weapon. What about the other weapons? The problem with Halo is that its entire weapon sandbox is filled to capacity by just a few guns, so additions to the hierarchy end up being simple distractions. As power weapons, the sniper takes long range, the sword or shotgun takes close range (when designed properly), and the rocket launcher is...the rocket launcher. When trying to liven up the sandbox, ask yourself, "what can fit into this puzzle I've already created". Don't sit there and say, "I'm bored, we need a hundred more spray guns and lots of stuff that blows up a lot," because then you sound like an honest case of ADHD and probably require medication. If you have a sniper, shotgun or sword, and rocket launcher in a game, then either use those and supplement appropriately, or scrap the whole thing and build a new power weapon matrix. Myself, I don't see a thing wrong with the sniper/shotgun/rocket setup, so I have no want to change it. However, if you held a gun to my head, I suppose that I could come up with a new weapon playground that fits these rules. The key point here, mind you, is that I would do this by replacing the weapons that are already present, not compounding the sandbox with useless clutter.
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53. We can easily replace the shotgun with a powerful spray-type weapon. Have you ever heard anyone complain about the inconsistency of the H1 assault rifle? Do you know why? It's not because it's LAN, I'll tell you that much. The H1 assault rifle has the unique characteristic of having, as far as I'm aware of, the highest ROF of any Halo weapon to date, draining a massive amount of ammo in a very short period. The thing is literally as close to "spraying bullets" as you can possibly get. This has the effect of making every bullet drastically less important, almost to the point that it is not a matter of hitting the opponent with this bullet or that bullet, but keeping them within the imagined damage vector of the AR's spread. It's almost like a conical ray being shot from the AR, rather than a bullet barrage. This basically makes the death of the opponent more a function of time - based on the distance, and the wielder's relative ability to aim competently - rather than skill (which is what our starting weapon is based off of). Take a gun with this concept, extend it to medium-short range, and you've got an effective killing machine.
54.  
55. We've already seen a bagillion replacements for the rocket launcher. The grenade launcher, the spartan laser, the plasma launcher, the fuel rod cannon, the rocket pistol, whatever you can possibly think of. The concept is simple - it's an explosive. It shouldn't go very far, or if it does, it shouldn't go very fast. It shouldn't reload quickly, and it shouldn't have a large clip. This is all made up for, naturally, by the fact that it's a fucking rocket launcher. Similarly, the sniper rifle is fairly caste in its role, a bullet weapon that has the capability to kill in one shot when wielded correctly. There are a couple of important things to note here; one, we are dealing with a level of spartan damage resistance that is fairly low. It's not as low as Call of Duty, in which all weapons are crushed into a 0.3 second or so kill time, which has the consequence of making every type of weapon a viable starting weapon, creating a true class system, and eliminating the concept of "power weapons" entirely. But, it's still low. Secondly, Halo is a game that has been designed in a way that says you must be hitting almost all of your shots. Contrast this with a game like Quake, where a lot of weapon "jousting" happens, like shooting grenades and rockets into certain passages not to kill your opponent, but obstruct him. Thus, getting back to the sniper rifle, it is a perfectly accurate, instantaneous ranged weapon that is meant to destroy. There isn't much that you can do to change that concept and continue to have it be an effective and desirable arm.
56.  
57. But, why don't we do this? Why don't we switch the role of the rocket launcher and the sniper? Let's replace the rocket launcher with a short-medium range "sniper" type weapon, a railgun or a close approximation of it. This gun will have no zoom, and will be a one-shot kill for a headshot just like the sniper would. It would be a tad like how no-scoping is now, except that aim-assist would be involved. Likewise, let's have a long-range explosive weapon that travels particularly fast. Make it a guided missile, like a cross between CoD's Predator and Metal Gear Solid's Nikita missile, loosely speaking. Now I'm not saying that all these are the greatest ideas, in fact they're honestly pretty stupid. But the point I'm trying to make clear is that reimagining the default sandbox and its solid system, instead of piling a metric fuck-ton of garbage on top of it, is the key to making Halo both competitive and refreshing. People don't need nick-knacks clogging up their experience to enjoy Halo, they just need a system that works and that makes them feel strong. Halo has long been guilty of taking a "story first" attitude, which flows over into the game mechanics. Consequently, we get weapons that are "cool" before we get weapons that are functionally ideal. The hint here for game developers to take, naturally, is that working weapons with badass skins are 100% cooler than non-working ones with badass skins. Of course, having six or seven useless fluff weapons lying around the map when everybody is going to be gunning for the sniper and rockets anyway really isn't helping. And, for everyone's information, taking sniper and rockets OFF the map doesn't fix things.
58.  
59. While we're on the subject of weapons, let's talk about something that's been completely neglected since Reach came out - powerups. An entire facet of Halo basically abandoned for armor abilities? I could not have been more pissed off when they tried to make this switch, because powerups are one of the most integral parts of the multiplayer of Halo and the most important factor in "spicing the game up," bar none. Because powerups are fought for and won in-game, they have the ability (as per our aforementioned design philosophy) to give players non-compromised benefits that don't come simply in the form of a new weapon. The idea of taking powerups and transferring them into loadout abilities was the worst decision in Halo history, even worse than ditching the pistol, and the reason for this is that the custom powerup is the most versatile, powerful thing in the whole sandbox, with the greatest potential to change the way the entire game is played. Now, was that potential maximized in Halo 3? Absolutely not, it was just turned into a regular overshield. So exciting. Look at all the things that could've been done with the custom powerup. Overshield, camo, damage multiplier, speed increase (fuck sprint), superjump (fuck jetpacks), infinite ammo or bottomless clip, enemy indicators, invulnerability, the list goes on and on. Can you imagine Halo with these potential powerups in the game? Armor abilities seem like the butt of an incredibly unfunny joke when you consider the possibilities that these items bring to the table. I have salivated over the idea of something like Quake's quad-damage in Halo. All of these characteristics make players want to push, which is the single most significant quality that an in-game addition can have, encouraging aggressive playstyles. Combined with fast kill times to lessen the overwhelming need for teamshot (and thus less of a penalty for having two down, three down, etc.), these kinds of items could not only fill out the map with powerups, but lessen the need to include stupid weapons to compensate for an otherwise "boring" Halo game. Not only that, but they can be tailored to be fucking map-specific. Think about it.
60.  
61. That's pretty much that on weapons and the like. Why don't we segue onto what is probably the most contested H4 topic, armor abilities. According to what we're seeing in the H4 teaser gameplays, this is the facet of the upcoming game that is going to most drastically change the way we play Halo. Maybe. I have gone on at length about how much I hate the concept of armor abilities in Halo. Anyone who thinks that all of this stuff isn't Call of Duty pandering is beyond hope, but the fact of the matter is that it's in there, and we have to deal with it. But there is an inherent design flaw in the way these armor abilities are implemented that makes me cringe with disgust, as to me it feels like a severe lack of insight into the way that shooters work, or that is what I'm telling myself so that I can sleep at night. As I've said on one episode of Social Skirmish, the thing that makes loadout characteristics into "classes" and not just unlocked powerups is that for every option you choose, there is a downside, a counterbalancing aspect. Now, in any other game this would apply to the weapons as well; as mentioned previously, the weapons in Call of Duty are all smeared roughly equally in their abilities and shortcomings, ensuring that every weapon can be a suitable starting weapon. This is what truly makes a game class-based, but with Halo the concept is restricted to just armor abilities, ensuring that the arena shooter quality remains prevalent. Still, that's no excuse for not taking the time to give each AA a limitation, or so that's what it seems to me from looking over the various examples of gameplay we've been offered. Now, the problem with invoking this principle is that it is one factor that contributes to slow, campy gameplay, something that needs to be fixed with fast (but not instant) kill times. Still, AAs are going to be included in the next Halo game, therefore I have to figure a way to make them coherent.
62.  
63. The easiest example that I can give is with sprint. First of all, I would fire anyone who suggested sprint as a default ability, as it would be relegated to an armor ability just like all the other stupid quirks, but I digress. What does sprint do? It makes you run faster. That is, the affected area here is movement, but what we should avoid is making the counterbalancing effect the direct opposite of the improved effect, because that creates a rather pointless scenario in which one wonders why they are using a given ability at all, and does not contribute to stylized play. So instead of giving sprint slower base movement as the consequence, let's give it a shield detriment. For instance, if you would normally die in three headshots, let's make it two. This effectively turns the spartan into a rogue-ish character, a speedy demon that is good at flanking. Once more, I must absolutely stress the point that fast kill times are needed, otherwise a class like this will be utterly powerless in a game environment in which teamshooting is 90% of the formula for success. For anyone who has ever modeled their game after Strongside, this would be the class that they would want to choose. What about a more hardy type of class, that can take punishment? Let's make a class that starts with an overshield. Your spartan will begin with three shield levels, and it will only recharge to the nearest shield degree. For example, say you take one or two shots that don't completely take away your first shield bar, it will recharge to full. Let's say you take three shots, and have some of your second shield bar shaved away, then it would only recharge to two full shields, and same thing with the bottom shield layer. Your drawback, then, is that your base movement will be slower, making you a slightly sluggish tank-like spartan that can take a beating.
64.  
65. What about camo? You're invisible, so that's another sneaky element that has to be neutered somehow, and I think the most logical way would be to have a damage handicap for fired weapons (but not melees). This would slightly discourage the camo'ed individual from engaging in long-rage rifle battles, and instead prompt them to want to get closer to catch opponents off guard and shoot them from behind, or assassinate them. Now bear in mind, I hate the idea of having camo as an armor ability, but in this scenario we can at least craft it into something relatively appropriate. Then there's Promethean vision, which is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever seen to give as an ability that can be used on a whim. Isn't the theory behind shooters to prevent camping? Give some Promethean vision-wielding fucker a shotgun and watch him go to town in an around-the-corner battle, yeah, that was really well thought out. Still though, let's put this in a practical perspective. What is Promeathean vision? It's a scouting ability, not an offensive ability, so let's run with that idea. Let's give Promethean vision a large, extended range, enabling the user to see a good portion of the map and any enemies it may be concealing. As a price, make it so that for however long the user applies their ability, so will they incur a blurred or washed-out screen when they switch it off for that same duration. This will completely do away with the prospect of players camping corners with the vision, and render it useless as an assault tool. Then, I suppose, there is jetpacks, the most irritating thing I think that I've ever seen in Halo. The simplest way to balance these would be to make the descent of the jetpack floaty as shit and remove air control when falling. This will force the wielder to have to make very precise jumps with it, to avoid being caught without their footing.
66.  
67. One characteristic of Halo that hasn't received much love since the first game is the spawn system. Every Halo has had a different spawn system and a different design mindset behind each one, but by far the biggest jump between any two was between H1 and H2. H1 had the distinction of having the only system that was almost entirely controlled by your teammates. It also had far fewer actual spawn points, leading to those memorable games on Prisoner of spawning top bridge with three pistols and camo rockets staring straight at you while you've got your AR out. The system itself is complicated in some ways and simple in others (and is much different when you consider spawn zones and objective games), but if you search for "Halo CE spawn system explained," you'll come up with chaosTheory's explanation as hashed out by himself and insidi0us. The most significant principle of this is that depending on where you are at the time of your teammate's spawn, because there are so few spawn points, you can control to a great extent where they will end up spawning, leading to a very deep metagame of forcing random spawns to fuck with the enemy's perception of where your team is. This is obviously a huge skill element, and something that I would ideally want to put into the game. However, I am nothing if not realistic; I know for a fact that if you took some poor kid who grew up with H3 and put him in a game of Priz, he would throw his controller across the room within the first five kills. Now, Prisoner spawns tend to be in very unfortunate locations on a wide-open map, so that is an extreme example that would not reach that level of severity on any other properly designed map. I don't want to say that I am making a skill concession, but really, this is a level of depth that I just cannot put on your average H4 player with respect to the default settings. However, consider that Forge allows us to map out our spawns. If the underlying system is properly designed, then we can decimate the number of spawn points in any given map and, potentially, revive that very same metagame.
68.  
69. But what makes the system work? After H1, the system was changed dramatically to incorporate player deaths as a weighting factor for spawns. The key thing that made the newer systems transparent was the sheer number of spawns, enabling players to spawn in various nooks and crannies of maps and generally avoid being screwed over by either their teammates' lack of coordination or a bad line of sight to the enemy. No spawn system is perfect, but understanding the way the system works and the vision for what each system is trying to do will enable you to make a rational decision on how to craft the system for a new game. The basic point is that if we are going to have a spawn system that is not able to be used to your advantage, whether you are forcing your own team's spawns or the other team's, then it absolutely needs to be a system in which every spawn is within a safe teammate-dominated zone and outside the line of fire of the enemy. As it stands, the spawn matrix on any given map in H3 and Reach is based on a point system that is influenced by the area that the player died, the proximity of enemies, and whether or not that spawn is being blocked by a player or object. Things that do not affect spawns are line of sight, map geometry, and weapon activity (thank you FyreWulff for this information, as hosted on HBO). It's incredibly difficult to have an abstract grasp of a spawn system without rigorous testing on specific maps, but the important thing is that we nail down exactly what sort of thing we're trying to encourage with the system we're designing, which is what we should be doing for every characteristic of the game. Do we want a system that is a complete non-factor, or do we want a system that can be utilized? When we decide that, we can set out building the system that we feel is mechanically true to the ideal we're pushing.
70.  
71. That more or less covers the in-game aspects, to at least a general degree. What about out of game? Well, there are obviously things that everyone wants to see in the game - forge, theater, spectator mode, etc. Theater could use a functional fast-forward and rewind system, I'll say that much. Even if it incurs a buffer, it's better than having to wait with extreme patience to finally snip out one single clip from a theater instance, and it would save everyone time, hassle, and headache. Spectator mode is something that would be nice if multiple users were able to utilize it, but 343 claims it is a bandwidth hog. Now, mind you, the reason that we have been clamoring for spectator support is not to build massive spectator parties to watch scrims and online games, but for the competitive Halo scene and its broadcasting needs. Halo is incredibly expensive to broadcast, because it requires that the video feed from every Xbox be individually split and captured. A much, much simpler solution would be to enable one single "spectator" slot for each game - make it LAN exclusive if you have to - that a ninth Xbox could be hooked up to on a local network and have the ability to individually cycle through first-person views of any player in the game. This would make it so that the video feed of only one Xbox would be needed, and could even detach itself from a player to briefly capture the action from a bird's eye perspective to display team movement over the map. One spectator is most certainly not going to be a "bandwidth hog," much less if it is a LAN-only feature. Don't even call it "spectator mode," call it "broadcasting mode." It could not only be used by tournaments, but by people hosting their own LANs.
72.  
73. Forge needs an improvement. First and foremost, I would change the colors up. I know that is really the least important thing on the list, but the grey is obnoxious and everyone in the Halo world knows it. The pieces don't have to make aesthetic sense together; we're building maps out of Legos here, it's not supposed to look pretty. One thing that Forge desperately needs is a switchable locking grid mode, so that players can create perfectly fitted and even map formations without having to sit there and meticulously place each piece to get it lined up correctly. This would take some doing to make the system work right, but I guarantee it could be done. Likewise, Forge also needs a "freeze in place" feature, so that pieces can be positioned regardless if they are structurally supported or not. Or, heck, just for floating things in mid-air. Forge also could use pre-fab hallway structures - square pieces that are hollow and open on either side so that hallways can be built like square piping. Additionally, have curved pieces like fittings for those pipes that we can use to run our hallways 90 degrees to the left or right. Doing this would make it so that we can build pathways around our maps without having to arrange all four walls every five feet, a fact that has kept me from attempting to forge maps ever since H3 came out. Another feature that would be nice to have is to be able to make every individual piece able to be temporarily breachable. That is, you can select the piece's properties and make it so that you can set things partially inside its geometry. Then, you would be able to build more complex structures and shapes, and when you were done, you would switch the property back, and it would become solid again. This would eliminate the need for forgers to search for glitches in order to meld objects together.
74.  
75. What about the playlists? I find that the playlist count has become incredibly trite and bloated, and there are most certainly a number of things that I would do differently. Firstly, I would make it so that each playlist has a ranked and unranked version (except Action Sack, I guess), which will ultimately do a much better job of separating people who are playing seriously and those who are in it for laughs. Here is the ideal playlist mapping that I would prefer:
76.  
77. Rumble Pit (TS and Obj): Your archetypal free-for-all playlist, for those who feel like going solo. Max 8 players, would be restricted to small and medium-sized maps. Slayer would go to 25 kills. Objective gametypes would include Oddball, King of the Hill, and tag-style Juggernaut.
78. 2v2 (TS and Oddball Only): Doubles matches, using the smallest available maps, going to 50 kills. I have found all doubles objective games to be moronic except for oddball, which actually works fairly well, and so that would be included.
79. Default TS: Would use default settings as crafted by myself, including all flavored elements introduced in the new game. 4v4, 50 kills, radar on.
80. Default Skirmish: Default objective settings, small arena maps. Gametypes would include 2-flag, 1-flag, oddball, assault, territories, and KOTH. Territories and KOTH, especially, need to be played on smallish, hectic maps. I can think of no more boring Halo experience than playing territories on Containment.
81. Team Hardcore: Settings that are slightly altered from the default TS gametypes. Ideally, with a properly designed game, this would be a virtually unneeded playlist, but there are bound to be some things that need switching; for example, turning radar off. May also be used as a "vanilla Halo" playlist with no AAs, perks, etc.
82. BTB TS: Large maps, vehicles, and weapon installations like turrets and such will be exclusively confined to this playlist, there is no reason for any of that stuff in 4v4 arena Halo.
83. BTB Skirmish: Objective counterpart for BTB, will include the same gametypes as regular 4v4 skirmish.
84. Multiteam: 3v3v3v3 playlist, will be default settings and include TS (50%), 4-flag, 1-flag, oddball, territories, and KOTH.
85. Team Snipers: 4v4, 50 kills, no radar, human sniper and magnum start, no grenades.
86. Action Sack: Mess-around gametypes like zombies, tower of power, Troy (if that's even possible), swords only, stickies only, Grifball, fiesta, SWAT, hide and seek, etc.
87. Weekly Fun Gametype: This will be a community-oriented playlist that updates every week, featuring a fun gametype that can either be made by the developers or submitted by players.
88.  
89. There is one gametype that I would like to include more than anything, and that is a 4v4 Clan Match playlist. Unfortunately, I don't know if clan matches are possible anymore, as they would require some kind of proprietary service within the structure of XBL to maintain. I think that H2 might've been spoiled in this way, and I'm not sure that we can ever get this experience back, but if I were in charge, I would do everything within my power to return it to its former glory.
90.  
91. These are the ideas that I, Cursed Lemon, have for the next installation of Halo, as per concepts fleshed out from the content that has been revealed to us at this point in time. I have tried, to the best of my ability and my patience, to tolerate the new flavor of Halo and morph it into something that I feel represents not only a functionally sound experience, but testament to a coherent set of ideals that are present across all aspects of the game. I have tried to provide for both the casual and competitive, the fun and the serious, everything in between and everything that is just plain out there. It was my greatest attempt to create an environment in which it is up to the user to define their own experience, as I feel that is the most important aspect of what made H1 the competitive monster that it was, and what made H2 the timeless experience it turned out to be. Not all of these elements can be recovered, and not all of the necessary changes and tweaks that would be needed were fleshed out to their entirety. In reality, game design is an undertaking that most people do not have the constitution for. I have the luxury of simply sitting in front of my screen and assessing the end product of a long and exhausting process, one that can potentially cloud a developer's mind. This video was made with the sentiment that some things, however, are simply inexcusable. It is futile for me to sit and try to explain that this or that mechanic could be tweaked to optimize the functional experience of Halo, but I feel that it would be better of me to simply convey the notion that casual and competitive gameplay are not mutually exclusive - they're not even that far removed, by nature. Halo has gone in a hopeless direction as of the past two titles, and I feel that its creators are simply not looking at the problems the right way. Now whether or not a developer cares about the state of the game beyond its initial sales is another point entirely, but I feel that it is not only important, but downright ethical, for a developer to adopt a utilitarian attitude when crafting their game. Competitive Halo players have gotten the shaft for a long, long time. I know how I would fix it, but sadly I don't have the keys, and nobody ever asked me for my opinion.