Beta55

What are the differences? Which program produced the best Spartans? What's the difference between MJOLNIR GEN2 and MJOLNIR VI? The wikis aren't much help.

Hosting seems to be random. My NAT is open and I have a 50 mb/s download/upload connection. It's a bit frustrating when the game starts up and everyone is lagging due to a 512 kb/s host when other players in the same game would make for much better hosts. Also, why can't I view player ping?

You can't take down a Mantis with a DMR. I've tried countless times. Small firearms will only take out the shield, not the armor.

I prefer the slightly weaker vehicles (compared to Halo 3). It's nice being able to actually kill someone in a ghost with a DMR or Battle Rifle. The Mantis is overpowered and is difficult to kill without a concerted team effort. I was in a game earlier today in CTF where the opposing team managed to grab two Mantises. They held them for the rest of the game and there was nothing we could do about it as you can't take them down with DMRs, and you can't get a Spartan Laser from ordinance drops. The Mantis has too much armour, too much mobility and their stomp is just icing on the cake, making it impossible to hijack a competent player. The Mantis is why I hate Ragnarok.

The Mantis is grossly overpowered. Its high mobility and stomp make the thing incredibly difficult to kill without a spartan laser. I've not once been able to hijack the bloody thing. I'd much rather they were removed and replaced with the wraith again. The Mantis would be balanced if it was slower and its stomp was removed or if its armor was much weaker.

I've lost the past dozen games. I'm just about finished with Halo 4. I was having so much fun initially, but the past couple of days have been absolutely brutal. Nothing quite like going from every game being my team's MVP to being brutally raped every game by an entire party of people that seem to be more skilled than myself. Thanks for the info.

For the past couple days I've been pinned against people that are level 50-87 and often in parties, while I'm almost always getting dumped in to an ongoing game where my team has effectively already lost. This is starting to frustrate me. Why aren't parties pinned against other parties, and why aren't I pinned against people in my own general level? It wasn't a problem when I got the game on Monday, nor was it a problem on Tuesday or Wednesday. Can someone help explain Halo 4's matchmaking to me, please? Also, is there a way to ensure you'll get set up for a new game, rather than one already in progress?

Most Halo players don't read the Halo books. Reading Halo's expanded universe shouldn't be a prerequisite for understanding Halo 4's story. It takes a petty person to stoop to ad hominem attacks over something so trivial.

Is the sniper rifle available as a primary weapon loadout? I'm curious as I just finished a game on the snow map, and most people had sniper rifles. The sniping would never end.

As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

First off I'd like to say that the gameplay, the audio (as an audiophile, I'm a big fan of what's been done in Halo 4) and the visuals are all great... the problem is the campaign. It's the worst campaign to date and it's because of the writing. There's just so many cliches, weird plot points and the story was just disconnected like a bunch of scenes hastily taped together. I've been a big follower of the Halo series (the games, not the books), but I had a difficult time following along as characters and terms were being thrown at me as if I'm just suppose to know who/what that is. The Halo campaign has a lot in common with The Last Airbender. Did anyone else get thrown by a mention of a Human-Forerunner war? The hell was that about? It kinda killed the Halo universe in my eyes.