ProudDrunkIrish

Halo 3 was the best community of almost any online fps I have played, I made friends through just playing, I ended up with a team for every game mode and it was great, win or lose we had fun but we were all out for the win. I remember the guys I played Team slayer and BTB with, we loved playing against a clan, it was like a real competition lol. On H4 have added no new friends to date and only found a handful I would play with for more than a couple of rounds.

Are you making a clan or just joining one?

In the matchmaking what is the actual ingame armour the chief uses if its even in there?? Just curious.

Yes all they needed to do was improve the booting system and maybe include a report system so that if a player was booted for betrayal and reported (say for doing it for weapons) X no. of times they could get a ban for X time. To just take away the friendly fire option was a lazy way around it. It makes a game for morons without a brain. The one good thing of Halo was always that you had to be somewhat smart, also in H3 somehow it never bothered me if a team mate was trying to shoot me I relocated.. to be honest it stopped base camper sniping (something I hate about this game)

It is supposed to be part of the January 21st major update that will have this and some new playlists as well as bug fixes in it... I have read this date in a few places but can give no 100% assurance on it but being the only date I have seen mentioned its the best info I have. Yeah I can see the dissapointment, the old split of ranked and social was perfect it meant you could be competitive or not, and you had your rank to work on (something that never ends), they seem to have missed that point when deciding to make it entirely social.

How about the following although I read that some will appear soon: Team Doubles Multiteam Team Snipers KOH Griffball Rumble Pit BTB Objective Assault 1 Flag 1 Bomb FFA Team Slayer Pro These are but to name some of the normal playlists that really should be part of every Halo game from the start, I guess they did not get them finished in time for release as some have been removed and others just never existed.. They are all traditional Halo playlists and are all very popular, if these had been in from the start there may be more people playing the game right now but thats neither here nor there, however I would like to see all of the above back to be honest.

I have to say i always thank a good driver for their part by pm after the game, its the least one can do.. Adding a few medals that give you more points would be good, say warthog spree, frenzy, riot etc... These would show how good a driver you are and maybe even more like 'driving God' if you break say 20 wheelmans in 1 life. You do have the wheelman commendation to think of I suppose so that is something, as for vehicle strengths well they are all up for debate, have to say the overheat on the Hog is silly and could be removed. I used to think the banshee was weak and in some open lvl's it is but say on exile you can wreak havoc with it as is so any change would have to be slight. Mantis replaced tank in some lvl's so 2 x spartan is about right, if your team take its shields and a little of its life it is still only a 1HK. Making the Hog stronger would be bad just fix the Machine gun version from overheat hell the gauss is dangerous with a good driver and gunner.

I'm up for a clan at this stage, as long as I do not have to change my gamertag or do practices.. Confirm these and I will consider it...

The male spartans make female noises if the player is playing like a little girl.........

They are releasing a ranking system in the new update (January 21st), it will not be Halo 3 style however as no rank is visible ingame, you will have to go to the waypoint forum to see it. The exact system is unknown but has apparently been working in the background since the start (cannot say it is working when matching players but meh..). They have not mentioned ranked/social playlists so I cannot imagine we will have them anytime soon if at all. To be honest the only thing I can say is now you can go to a website and see some invisible rank, this seems to be as much as we are getting. Hope this helps may not have been what you wanted but alas its what we get. I had personally hoped for more H3 style but I do not see it coming at all.

Then just compare the xbox numbers and no doubt CoD is king of sales!! Its a good game but the biggest fps on xbox should be a great game is all i am saying. The days of Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3 the word good was not something I ever connected to them, that was reserved for many other lesser games. Its not so much the game but the way the company have done things that gets me, its obvious they did not get all they wanted finished in time and yet if the had who knows great might be the word I would be using right now. They tried to do a CoD on it and worry about sales more than anything else, the advertising and FUD release was a mega build up that maybe left expectations too high!! I know it may be my fault for expecting too much but then again this is Halo and this game is the main reason I have an xbox and pay for live. Alas MW3 had me more gripped than this game which is sad for me to say..

Not sure about canada thought ye got an email if ye played before a certain date in novemeber if not no worries you will have the specializations in a few days as i said above. It was crazy of 343 to give them to some and not others based on where they are from, the word 'discrimination' comes to mind which I thought was somewhat against the law these days...

The AR has become the new secondary, using firepower and this as your secondary is very effective but beyond that I could never pick it over say a BR, there are just no lvl's suited to it.

It is very easy to use no bloom no issue same for each shot, it has lower aim assist but that is not an issue for me personally.. the only improvement would be the reticle is almost invisible against certain backgrounds which can be annoying as hell. You get used to the unzoomed use and although it is a bit weak it is still effective enough to get the kills where required.

If you want first strikes go for the Spartan on Ragnarok BTB, but do not make the mistake of trying to take it let the enemy pick it then open up on him, you will kill him before he can charge it and get first strike and if lucky the Laser back aswell.. That seems to be where I get most of my first strikes.. there or Vortex take a ghost and go straight on the attack, odds are you will die after all you are attacking their entire team but you can get 1 or 2 kills easy enough.

The big risk with extra specializations is that they will be most likely underpowered or overpowered. A possible good one would be ''Mechanic'' that could make you more effective against vehicles and say couteract the ones that assist vehicles. Maybe EMP lasts a little longer and your weapons fire does more damage.. And the maybe something like ''trapper'' this could allow you to booby trap weapons on the map and vehicles so they blow when an enemy tries to collect or get into them.. (could be very funny) Just a thought.

Well I have to agree with the posts saying play the game for fun, I mean it will not be long before you get to lvl 130 and then thats it as far as the xp thing is concerned.. So why rush or worry.

lol its happened to me when I have completed them and only a while later do i realise I am not getting any XP and go change it. Glad I could help.

Make the bans more severe and if you got banned for quitting then you really have no right to give out about others doing it lol... Get a grip you only complain as you cannot quit anymore and deservedly you reap what you sowe

Then its half the game CoD is then???? Well hooray and there I was getting worried for the future of Halo lol.. Sales are based on expectation and they were gained off the back of Bungies masterpieces, the name sold this game not the actual game itself. Sales figures mean nothing to the players however the player population does, the issue now will be that people will remember the mediocrity of this game and when it comes up against another CoD or BF title which will they actually buy this time??? Lets all face it they messed it up big time.. they released the game with few playlists, no ranking system and many glitches, they have been promising things from the start which are things I have no doubt were originally planned to be in the release... They are relying on the update system to save them and thats a very bad show indeed. Now 343 made a decent game but compared to the first 3 Halo games it does not even play the same sport..

If your based in europe or many other regions you were never getting them... wait till january 21st I believe they will be releasing them with the next update.

Are you sure you picked a specialization?? Might sound silly but it is really worth checking. If not that would explain why you are stuck at lvl50. Beyond that I am sorry to say I cannot help.

They did not build it to facilitate quitting but to counteract some of the effect, the truth is people are now starting to complain about the JIP system because it has become so common to be thrown into a round. This is due to an insane number of quitters, there is no good reason for it to be that common. People have this confusion that JIP was made to allow them to quit when it was made in fact to help the team you cowardly quit from. If you have a reason to quit i.e lag or have to stop playing then fair enough, so a banning system would not affect you as you would not be a regular quitter. Those who quit because they did not get a particaular weapon or vehicle however would pay the price and afirly do so. The true fact is that anygame without a skill based ranking system suffers too much from quitters, if the old Halo ranking system was in then people would not quit as much as it would hurt their rank but here we have no such thing. Even in CoD where there is no end to points needed from games people lose more than here. That is why a more severe penalty is needed.. It may not happen in H4 but I hope its their in H5 and if you cannot accept it go play something else....

This is one of the things I really dislike about the game on occasion.. on the whole the new system works in its own right, it saves you being killed everytime you pick up a sniper or say someone removing your shields so you will die.. That said you can still be splattered by a team mate and often if you get the mantis or tank they emp you or stick you with plasma grenades, they can do this with safe knowledge they will destroy the vehicle and not get booted. I liked the old system despite its flaws, it was Halo and it meant intelligent play as you have reffered to above. Also teammates often run into the path of your fire blocking you from finishing a kill, either through stupidity or in an attempt to steal it. Friendly fire naturally negates these issues to some extent. Still it is not going to change and i cannot imagine it will change for the next game as they made a clear decision to remove a main feature of the game.

I have to agree with a lot of the points mentioned in the OP. However the one about jumping has been something that is a part of Halo, I have always used a mixture of jumping and strafing to avoid being hit and it works, the same applied to H3 where I did it even more. The whole jumping thing is not as effective in this game as it was in 3. I have not used the thruster pack much as I found it underpowered in comparison to other AA therefor I have litlle to say beyond my initial impression same goes for the hardlight shield (although I have seen it used effectively) The host migration is a real pain, you lose kill streaks and revert back to weapon class 1 (very annoying for me as I have different classes for each gametype). The only thing I could add is the lag in BTB now I know this is an issue with many games but hopefully they can reduce it a little.