Roun Cole

This is a thought thats been rolling through my mind, especially now that ive started playing again, when you play competitively the number one thing you hear is 'skill' how 'skill' is so important, well, I would like to ask the question, what is 'skill'? When I talk to people about just about anything related to multiplayer people always come back to this at least once, and when I ask people always say that skill is who gets the best shows with marksmanship weapons, but I dont think its that simple. If you were to stay in those terms the entire time you play, then its not dependent the individual for how good or bad you are, in the past I was really horrible with marksmanship weapons, but ive learned how to tweak my brain so I can shoot perfect, or nearly perfect shows so I can out shoot most people, which is how it works for most, if anything you can hardly find anyone who cant make good shots at least half of the time, more to the point, the vast majority of people can use a DMR pretty well, but if that was the whole game summed up, then skill is not an individual concept, its simply who can team up to take the other guys down faster, which is just the surface of what skill really is. Skill cant be limited to anything, skill has to be left open to every prospect, marksmanship is good, but in my mind it is actually the least of the factors, the highest on my list I would say has to be team work, just anyone can be a lone wolf, but to have a working system where you and at least one other person can complement each other in everything you do without premeditation is considerably rare, especially from what ive seen recently on xboxlive. Beyond team co-operation, down on the individual level where everyone lives, you have a few different factors to consider, at the top is behavior, this is more the sum of skill on the grander scale. The vast majority of people at least to me seem to be preprogrammed zombies, where everyone runs the same map the same way over and over, every time you get into a situation you react the same way every single time. This is the greatest flaw in the human race, never mind playing games... The greatest example that I can think of without contest has to be Armor Abilities, its the saddest thing in the world to hear endless complaining about how people dont like this or that and insist that it be removed so its easier for them to win, how sad it is that the reasoning behind those complaints is that the thing they hate is destroying the preprogrammed behavior they have developed and so heavily rely upon. Its not that the game is too hard, its simply that they are too lazy to find the way around the problem they keep having. Personally, I say make all AA as powerful as possible without things getting out of control, everything needs to have a weakness, nothing can ever be perfect... The way I see the AAs as they are is pretty good, but they need to be made a lot better, the jetpack shouldnt have a limit on how high it can fly, active camo is ridiculously weak, there shouldnt be any shutter or exposure unless your in full run, and so on. The point is, when people get hung up on something they cant keep doing it all the same way every single time, which is actually the text book definition of insanity, preforming the same action over and over expecting a different result, armorlock for example, everyone just hates armorlock, me, I understand it, the rule is to never get close, if you get close, you die... The secret is to let them sit in armorlock as long as they will, most of the time they stay in the full length of time because they dont have a clear option, when that happens take a moment to reload and figure out where they are going to try and run to, if you are not close enough to attack, the only choice they have is to run or die. When they come out hose them down, at full use there shields start to come back, but not by much, hose well and they die. Thats the correct behavior, the problem is that the vast majority of people never stop and think, they dont want to think, and so they die, they rush in and flail wildly at the person in armorlock, just the other day when I was on someone rushed me with a sword, naturally I went into armorlock to hide from instant death, which is why its my favorite AA it offers you some forgiveness for mistakes and some balancing power if you are outmatched, he kept swinging wildly so focused on trying to get me that my teammate came up casually and beat him down, not even in a rush, just came over and tapped him twice, and he looks all manner of stupid. It wasnt the fact that I used armorlock that caused him to die, it was that he didnt kill the other guy who walked right up to him, then wait for me to come out and get a double kill. I can go on and on with examples from my own experience on how people always end up losing because they either dont know how, or simply dont care to change there behavior. Even farther on top of it all, is premeditation, for most people its all automatic zombie motion, which is really sad, most of the time its just trial and error, you have to expect to get killed a few times before you know what your really up against, ignorance causes more death than anything else in the world, never mind playing games. Go out, get yourself killed a few times if need be, look at what the other guy is doing, then mentally fly around and look at it until you find something you can expose and get under his skin. It could be something as simple as how aggressive you are, most people are preprogrammed to bumrush charge every single time, I love taking advantage of that weakness, when people bumrush you its usually best to fall back, know the map good enough in your mind that you can run backwards, backwards around corners if need be, let them run headlong into something very ugly. A prime example is why I love the map countdown so much, so many rooms and hallways to move around through, but my favorite are all the doors that are half closed, where its a small wall on the other side, when I know the other guy is going to charge though the door in moments, I toss a grenade against the inside of the door, they dont see you throw it, and dont know its there until it goes off, then you hose and kill them easily. I mean I could write a book on this stuff, not just about playing halo, but the way people think and how there reasoning works, or doesnt work, but ill stop here and get to the point of it all. The point is, when you say skill, people always think of who shoots the straightest, which is no where near the top of the list, its all about how you think, the way you act, change the way you think and act, dont expect the game, or anyone else to change for you. I cant stress enough how irritated I get when I hear people complain about everything, especially when im forced to play 'pro' as its called, 'pro' right, such a joke, its as the point I made early on, skill cant possibly be limited to who shoots first/last and gets the kill at that point outnumbering someone is ‘skill’, they take all the armor abilities out, save sprint, but they neglect to take out power weapons. How sad, really? How sad is it to take everything else away but forget to do anything about power weapons, then to call it pro... Wow... Ever seen someone sprint with the sword? Is that skill? They have there place in different situations, especially if both sides have fair access to them, but power weapons really just come down to free kills, maybe with the exception of the sniper rifle, which is completely dependent on the individual, I personally cant snipe to save my life 90% of the time, if I try really hard without being shot at I can, but its just not my skillset. If you ask me, ‘pro’ is setting up an arena style game where everyone gets to choose whatever they want, no limiting the game to one train of thought, let them choose what weapons and AAs they want at any given time, with the exception of power weapons, let the players decide what they want at any given time, open the floodgates of creativity and have tactical planning at the center of the game. Each game would have maybe three to five rounds, each round the winning team gets a reward, some credit system with values assigned to power weapons and let that team decide how they want to spend it, or have each round escalate where both teams are given equal power weapons that each team decides how to use. With this concept, whither it’s a 1v1, 2v2, or 8v8, the rules stay the same, its all about how the players act, behavior, premeditation, the true measure of skill, may the best man win. Before I was reluctant to say it, but now I dont care, I love AAs I especially love armorlock, because it gives me all kinds of options for difficult situations, whither its power weapon nurfing such as sword or rockets, or being out numbered or drawing the whole enemy teams attention so your sneaky weasel of a teammate can satisfy his assassination fetish. Whatever reason I use it for, I use it because it gets me under peoples skin more than anything else, and believe it when I say a lot of people end up kicking my ass when I use it, because they understand and have correct behavior, if not armorlock then evade and jetpack in that order. With that being said, I know the cry babies are throwing a fit… My final conclusion is that most people really dont what ‘skill’ is, if you limit ‘skill’ to shooting straight, of which just about everyone can do, then you might as well limit football to long passes, imagine football without linemen, without play choices, just everyone running around passing and intercepting all day long, does that sound like football to you? Skill cant be limited to anything, if people dont have the common sense to realize that then its no ones fault but theres. Frankly it seems to me like halo is turning into CoD, the boil down of CoD is sprinting around lobbing grenades hoping to get the kill shot first, oh wait, I just described halo… woops….. Adding in gadgets to halo3 really helped to mix everything up, adding armor abilities put that concept on steroids. I want point to just be honest with me, when you look at stuff like ‘pro’ or MLG, it all really just looks like CoD, how much difference actually exists between the two? From what ive seen of halo4 I am hopeful in the future, that what really makes halo the game it is today will be preserved, assuming 343i stops capitulating to all the cry babies who want to play CoD but dont have the sense get off halo, God help us all…

I think the infestation of humans in starcraft are really circumstantial, the zerg are a biological nightmare, everything they do is by some form of mutation, if resources were limited, I would have no doubt that they would easily consider mutating some kind of viral invader form to take over other creatures to break them down into base minerals or something like that to perpetuate there own existence. Id say never count out a force that uses mutation as its means of improvement as an infectious invader...

Is it not true? Someone got upset and now I have a life sentence away from the shoutbox, its like lightning being cast from the sky over what I have done, what exactly ive done, I dont really know, I called someone a childish name, and made ironic humor to another, so lock your own thread, your not trapped in isolation....

""And note to Roun AND Father B, For gods sake will you all stop being so melodramatic? We don't need these long rants about the Community "banding togethor like a family to defend itself" or stuff about how "the community doesn't care so I do what I can to survive!" "" Yeah, thanks for taking that all out of context, I was using this as a microcosm example of crap in my life, for example, I have post traumatic stress PTSD of you will, from the loud booming sounds that come from stereos when people blare the base with the actual music very low, I spent two years living in a park filled with illegals who kept looking at me as if I were crazy when I said I wanted some peace and quite so I could study... Then I went to a church where everything was uncharacteristically loud, I asked them if they could turn the base down, they said it was 'normal' when clearly it was not. I insisted that I had a real problem with out loud it was, they told me if I didnt like it I could leave, not caring whither I live or die, I ended up walking down the hill from the main building and I could still feel it pounding in my chest about a quarter mile away, and as it turns out it was never that loud ever again, but I still earned a black mark and was harassed by staff ever sense. From a church of all places! The point is that people dont give a damn whither I live or die, and rather than being trampled and left for dead, rail against the crown and do all that you can to survive... Its amazing how people can take something so simple and complicate it into something it is not... And yes, I 'admitted that I was a jerk' reread the first paragraph at the top, the point of all of this is that I still have a life time ban from the shout box, and I still cant just have casual conversation with anyone..... Where is the confusion in this problem?

Shallow.... I mean the fact that they have acid blood, that the Xenomorph is infectious itself, I think about a three way between the flood Xenomorphs and the zerg, all trying to infect each other and mutating into something even more hideous...

..... ..... Its hardly comparable to yelling the N-word in an all black neighborhood... Im telling you, the first time it happened I was being silly, I was going someone compliments with angry emotes, I love you! :wallbash: The second time I miss spelled someones name, 'ELIY' 'ELLY' these are playground humor, I dont believe for one second that ive done anything wrong, give me the list of rules where these kind of acts are wrong? Show me in the rule book how wrong I am..... Not both, but individually, I was banned from the shout box, forget me being an ass hole, if you were to enforce this across the board, then no one would be in the shout box, everyone would be killed off for the smallest infraction... The whole time ive been here there most of have been a dozen times where my blood was boiling because I go to make a point in the forum and people tell me that I am not only flat out wrong, but that I am a stupid worthless sub-animal for believing it, when they dont even take the time to read the point I was making, yet I dont sit here yelling at the top of my lungs, KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM ALL!!!!!! I dont know what to think... People will always be offended by something, thats how it is, it can never change, and the thing is, no one ever asked me if I was offended by what was being said to me, or if I was offended for being ostracized... Now that you mention it, I dont recall being warned really, the first time it happened there was no warning at all, all I remember is the kid telling me that he wasnt amused by the irony, then the whole bar goes red and the world ends... The second time other people began telling me that it was a problem, the one kid 'eliy' 'elly' 'martha' 'susan' what ever the hell he decides to call himself, he had the usual display of immature yelling that happens, when other people started to complain about it I said sure, ok, im done, what ever, I moved on, then I was banned from the shout box after agreeing to stop... Again, its childish fun, if people get so offended by it, then THEY shouldnt be here, I dare one of them to spend ten minutes on xboxlive without trying to kill themselves... Parents would understand, ive seen children in public, screaming and yelling out of there minds because they dont get there way, this one boy kept yelling in a fit of rage because his sister wouldnt let him win at air hockey, if he cant be mature enough to keep his cool, then he shouldnt play the game... I tell you, I was not warned, the first time no warning, just ban, the second time I agreed to stop, ban, I dont care about the hen pecking argument that no one should have had to tell me to stop, that by all rights I should be banned just because, I was playing, nothing more, if small children cant play without getting mad, then its time for a time out... I dont know what lesson im being expected to learn, in situations like this its always jackboot thugs lording power, someone gets upset so they cry to the teacher who favors them without ever asking for both sides of the story, when you dont get a trail, its called jackboot... Its mixed emotions for me, im truly saddened by all of this, but when I really get to thinking about all of it, everything thats been said to me, all the petty excuses for why I am pure evil, all I feel is outrage because I know for a fact that I have done nothing wrong, so what I was being childish, so what I was a bit of a bully, is that enough to kill someone over? Its not like I got flagged and kicked out of the shout box for an hour and given a warning, I got shot in the head..... And to make it even better, I have admins like Jester preaching at me about how bad of a person I am, never asking me why I do what I do, never asking me for my side of the story, never ever ever considering me as an equal to the gods that I have offended... I wrote a personal letter to the site owner over a week ago, and nothing, not even a scripted jargon response stating that he doesnt give a damn, nothing..... In my life, I have seen so meny times where people refuse to care whither I live or die, a great number of times it just happened that way, and I have been burned, badly even, until I finally reached the point where I didnt want to get kicked around and left for dead, I decided that when push came to shove I would fight back... When people tell me that they dont care if I live or die, I get angry, I fight, I do all that I can to survive, because I refuse to be trampled and left for dead one more time... Not one more time..... If you people dont care about me, not even the slitest, then whats the point of being here... I dont want to leave, I liked it here before.... all of this... but if its so easy, so easy to be slated for execution, and to have nothing but shame and ridicule as the answer to all my cries of help, then what? whats left at the end of it all? I was banned from the waypoint forums for over 200 years on one account 400 on another, for proving a point that people didnt want to hear, they dont give a damn, and from the looks of things, its going to be the same here, so just shoot me, if there is no point in even trying, then just delete my profile, kill me already... If you most know, its pronounced `raun` as in round with out the D roun-d, dont ask me how that got started, I do not know...

Its easy to say 'follow the rules' but what rule did I break exactly? The no talking to snot nosed children rule? Or the dont even look at people in a bad mood claus? This whole thing is stupid I never did anything wrong, and justice is blind...

Well yeah, dickish is a word... Im not trying in inflate my ego... Im giving an explanation about why I act the way I do, and honestly, dont tell me not to talk about myself when clearly im not allowed to talk about anyone or anything else, I had to 'request' permission to post in threads after I was banned from the shout box, if you were completely Isolated from the whole world for a good while you would be trapped inside your own mind too... And the honest truth, compared to all the people on xboxlive, I am extremely mild, I dont run around looking for someone to beat up on, that makes me better than them I dont know how many levels, the point of all of this is that I shouldnt be banned for being me, especially when im not half as bad as the real ass holes we all know exist...

Hell freakin no!!!!!!!! Have you all forgotten how bad things were with duel wielding? half the weapons in the game were under powered and practically worthless, making every weapon a single weapon allows you to have that weapon at full power without it being double that as duel wield, the point of the game is balance, otherwise we might as well just keep up the trend of only using one weapon the whole time and once again throw skill out the window...

Yeah except Jun is to damn old to exist, I made a whole article about how the game Halo: Reach goes against the whole story of halo and pretty much destroys all the games and most of the books, I guess some mod didnt like it so they deleted it. Anyhow, the oldest a III can be from the beginning of the III program would be 27 Carter is 32, Jun and Emile are both 28-29 but I cant remember which is which, either way, they are to old to exist, bungie hates there fans, and made a game that has nothing to do with anything and now all of you people think its the bible or something...

Heres a thought, do you think the Flood is capable of infecting Xenomorphs?

Well, langauge is one of the worst habits that anyone has ever had, and really, I dont think its such a bad deal, if your aiming it at someone maliciously to hurt someone thats understandable, but whats the difference between the 'distasteful' words, and the words that arent? Crap, s-word, f-word, they all have virtually the same meaning in common use, yet crap is acceptable while the other two are not, the only time when the other two change there meaning is when they are aimed at someone as an attack... But heres the thing, I wasnt banned from the shoutbox because of language, I was banned for petty things like ironic humor, and intentionally miss spelling someones 'name' to get a rise out of them, I dont think its fair, basically the only thing that happened is that someone complained that they didnt like the that I mess with them, so I get shot in the head... Im making an appeal to the site owner about this, but I dont know if he will ever respond...

Apparently from what ive seen there was another race even older and more powerful than the forerunners who made us as well as them, and the point I was making before is that the forerunners were never intended on having the power they had, we were the ones who were supposed to inherit the 'mantle' as its called, from the precursors, as they were called, but there was a series of wars, and the forerunners stole humanities true calling of life, and at a point humanity was so weak that it caused a war between the forerunners and humanity. Basically, humans were responsible for creating the Flood in the beginning they found a powder of unknown origin that when fed to a pet called a Feru, it made them better, easier to train and so on, but after enough time the Feru mutated and became hellasious creatures, which were exterminated, but not before humans decided that the Feru made for good food, when they ate the Feru they mutation caused by the powder passed on genetically to humans, which first looked like invasion of the body snatchers, if your old enough to know what that was, which with time mutated into what we know of today... The humans of the time lost a good hundred worlds to the infection before they knew enough to fight it, which they found a way of fighting fire with fire, they made there own virus, which they allowed themselves to get infected with, the passing it on to the flood and eventually they out did the Flood in bio-warfare. What remained of the flood packed up and left the galaxy to avoid being whipped out, at which point humanity had so many refugees from the worlds that were destroyed that they were forced to go out and take new worlds to live on at all costs, they encroached on forerunner territory which sparked a war that ultimately lead to humanities defeat. The human race would have died out then and there if not for the compassion of a few who kept some alive to continue, which were left on a 'nature preserve' that is now called earth... The humans that didnt kill themselves to avoid capture made sure to take the secret of defeating the flood to there graves, which they basically did, the flood returned and the forerunners didnt know what to do about it, so they made the rings and killed everything to give everything a chance to start over, which the humans of the 'nature preserve' were taken to the ark and then reseeded, the rest we know... Its all a sad story, but all things considered, bad history is history none the less, and who we are today as a race is beautiful, and should not be traded for anything...

IGN votes are IGN votes, what does that say?

Ive never heard of laughing asses before but it sounds fun enough. LIke I said early on, im in hot water on this site, ive been banned from shoutbox for pretty much nothing at all, so I dont know if I will stick around if theres not a whole lot that I can do...

We didnt evolve, evolution is a joke, its not scientific... Read 'cryptum' it will explain everything...

LOL now to burst your bubble. While the Covenant made it all the way to earth and gave humanity hell, the forerunners nearly killed off all of humanity tens of thousands of years ago, and if not for the compassion of a few, they would have died off then and there... So its Flood 1 Forerunner 2...

Nah, they can do that from space, hes looking for mexican wemon, he heard there as ugly and perverted as they are, so hes going to see if its true...

The Covenant were a bunch of confused religious barbarians who didnt understand what the halos were for, besides, if you want to go there then the forerunners should be number 1 because they built the halo rings and actually managed to activate them. In the end the forerunners only needed to go to such extremes because they werent good enough to stop the Flood with normal means, by that right the Flood is the most dangerous thing in the universe...

Well, colours are pretty much a cultural thing, so there should be an explanation on how the warriors are for how they dress and the colours they choose. What I would like it see is a Promethean Warrior in some kind of stance, the symbolic Icon that represents them as a whole... Another line of thought is that they make them up that way because they want them to be seen, take that and combine it was that freaky skull face from that one drone and I would say they may have made them all to instill fear as well as a lethal threat. The sphinxes, for what little we know of them, are also modeled as seemingly organic creatures, when putting this into an anthropological perspective, if you were from a society with lesser technology, and you were being invaded by an enemy you didnt fully understand it would be alot more intimidating for you if you were being attacked by mythological creatures, rather than machines... Then again, it all depends on who you ask, I dont really know myself which is scarier, the bugs from starship troopers, or terminators of equal strength and power... But yeah, I have personal issues with japanese culture, art, and how they see things culturally and philosophically, basically I have a problem with everything about them.

The Flood Nearly killed everyone, Number One is a must of the flood...

Hello everyone, ive been getting into some hot water recently for what I believe are little things, and I feel compelled to explain myself... I love having fun, this is engrained in who I am, and at the same time I can be a real ass hole, ask some of my friends,(shadywolf15) on xboxlive, he of all people can give you a few bad words on how much of an ass I can be. But all and all we are good friends, thats just how we are together. And honestly ive seen a few things in life that do make it hard for me to lighten up and keep my cool when people are really trying to pick a fight with me for what ever reason, I am very passionate about my beliefs, I will stop and explain my conviction and reasonings for this or this issue/topic, but I truly believe that I am in the right, so when I fight for something I make damn sure I know what im looking at and that its the truth. If I can be disproven in my views I will own up to it, but I will fight tooth and nail for every little thing, because as I see it nothing is little, everything in life matters, and if you dont care about something, that just shows me how much you dont matter... Everyone should have convictions on everything, and anyone who sits on the fence will and should be shot from both sides... As I said before I wandered off on that tangent, I love having fun. A considerable kink in my personality is a sharpness, again from past experiences, is that I have almost no lovidovy bones in my body, when I see people at churchs or where ever who are always extra nice I get caught of balance, most of the time my friends and I take shots at each other over what ever just because we can, but we dont do anything to intentionally try and hurt each other, this of all things is the one thing that people need to know about me, especially in text, if you are not paying attention, you may not be able to tell if im messing around or picking a fight, which I dont like to pick fights that much, I do what I do because its funny and cheerful for me, not everyone can appreciate that... All of that aside I have a big heart I do care about people, I really do, when someone else succeeds I get a bi-carious sense of achievement, because I want to see good people get what they want, the flip side is that I dont care whither bad people live or die, I would dance on there grave if thats what it came down to. I dont know what else to say, I dont want to put my whole life up here like im supposed to be someone special, I personally hate jackasses like that who think every last thing they do should be a spectator sport, its the work of your hands, and the cause you defend that gives your life meaning... Anyway, nothing else comes to mind, short lived as it is, this is who I am, judge me as you see fit, but be warned, the splinter in my eye is usually much smaller than those of people who love to criticize... .....

I want to see role playing aspects to the game, think about this, your sent out on a mission that doesnt just end in a single objective, you are given either a team to lead or just what you need to complete the mission, you then leave under your own power from a base or some other start location and make your own way to where you need to be, you get limited supplies for the duration. I can think of something giving a spartan a big pack that stays fixed on his back the whole time, a pack that you can access as inventory, so when you go around you have your normal weapons and gear and what ever you can fit in it, extra ammo, other guns, medical equipment, what ever a realistic high tech soldier could want or need, you wouldnt worry about weight, because you are already stronger than a normal human, and the armor multiplies your natural strength how ever many times, think of Jorge with his large armor and that big gun keeping pace with someone smaller and lighter, the limit would be how much you could cram into the pack and still be able to access everything, it would be a bad idea in combat to go reaching or a different weapon because you would have to stop and open it up and reach around inside so you would likely get killed trying to dig something out. Basically, you get a budget assigned to you for stuff you can buy that you use on missions, and the money you have available decides what you can get, then, how much can you take with you when you go, what do you want to try and bring back with you, such as valuable enemy weapons, or objective items that you need to get and bring back, everything would play exactly the same as normal halo, but it would be more prolonged on missions, or a series of missions where you have to do everything before you can be extracted. An example of stuff like that, is say you want a DMR, Sniper, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, because those weapons are very useful in different situations. When you pack those extra weapons away, how much capacity do you have for ammo? Everyone runs out of ammo with there favorite weapon in the campaign, do you carry extra grenades, ammo, a weapon you cant live without, first aid, and how much of each? Its an interesting concept I think, how do you feel about it?

Correction, they found mexico, they can glass that...

Yeah, seriously, The Flood are at the tippy top of the list above number one, give the flood a single hour without contest and you would not be able to stop them, they are capable of using the memories, skills, and abilities of all the hosts they have infected, the halo rings were built to defend themselves against everything no matter what it was, even the leadership of the forerunners, because the Flood would take someone over and use there authority to tell everyone to stand down and not resist..... The Zerg can kiss there collective asses, the Flood would infect and take over the Zerg!