Twinreaper

Just finished eating. I swear being drunk make me a better cook than anything! Dinner was awesome and plentifull....my mother-in-law would have been proud. We love you mom....this christmas was for you! Now time to move onto dessert. Oh btw....got my first successfull.double kill withba splqzer in big team today!!!!

- woke up at 7:30 - watched the kids open their gifts - first beer 8:00 -8:15 started prepping appetizers - 8:30 second beer - shower time/ had a good cry - 9:45 put turkey in - time for beer #3 - general.eatijg of snacks and mad dashes to local.store for salt and onions. - 10:30 to 2:00 just more eating and drinking -as of this posting, my father in law is here and we are finishing cooking. On about beer #13 - scratch that.....we are all crying right now. More to follow.

You missed my point completely about the structure of your posts. I was trying to give you a tip on how to come across as a serious poster. Posting a thread with no coherent structure or detailing each section will only illicit short, unstructured responses. You are quite obviously not of a normal brand of member, so as such I simply am trying to instruct you on how to stay above the rest in that fashion. Now, as you so politely asked, I have read the entire OP you posted and have formulated a response. I will be as detailed and structured as possible, so as to not confuse or mislead anyone... CoD is not a good comparison to Halo. I cannot understand why people consistently compare Halo's changes to CoD style of gameply. Here is a quick fact for you, Unreal Tourny had loadouts, power-ups and all the gametypes we enjoy in Halo, long before Halo was even thought of. KOTH, CTF, Assault, Oddball...yup, UT had that. They also had power-up pickups that you could use at any time you wanted to use it, similar to AA's and Halo 3's equipment. Fact is, CoD and Halo BOTH contain basic groundbreaking features that were first placed in UT. If your going to continue to compare Halo to CoD, then so be it. But may I first suggest that you properly research the titles that have preceded both before you make a truly factual comparison. As for your view on BXR.....it was a glitch not a hack or a cheat. A cheat implies a third party add-on or manipulation of files to achieve and effect. The BXR was an animation skipping glitch that was part of the core "codec 2" programming. There was no way to effectively fix it since scripting did not sync on-line, and a core fix would have required new game files to be distributed...something a simple patch could not achieve. I will say however that I do not like the "scoped" in status when you receive damage. This is the first Halo to feature a "staying scoped" state when in battle. While this isn't that big of a change and rarely could it really effect a battle, I will say it does have a small impact, just not enough to warrant it to be fixed. As for flag dropping, that was taken out to inspire a more "teamwork" oriented gameplay environment. personally for me, if I am in a CTF match or an assault match, I would rather play cooperatively and rely on my team to provide cover, rather than play against a bunch of boosters and flag jugglers. 343 obviously listened and saw a lot of what was happening in those types of matches and made some changes. You are actually the first person I can remember posting in here complaining about the feature. I don't know what you are talking about here, but Bungie did not fail Halo. Halo was and only will be failed by it's fans. Bungie gave a lot to the community in terms of content and support. Not once have I ever heard of the "softcore" as you call it, hating Halo 2. Halo 2 is still loved and played today by tons of people. Yes the BXR is annoying at times, but most people, even MLG types frowned upon using it. That is a fact. IIRC, MLG stated strictly in the rules of combat, that super-bouncing and BXR style glitches instantly disqualified you during tournament play. Now that was quite some time ago so I may be wrong...but as far as I remember that holds true. Even today, I doubt MLG would allow the usage of button combos or glitches during a true competitive match. What's this about an extra $20? Not sure what that comment is about, but I would like to see you explain it. Halo 4 is not superior in graphics to Halo Reach or Halo 3. While yes the amount of on-screen poly's increased, the definition on rendering and textures is sub-par, and more along the lines of what we had in Halo 2. Just so you know, I am in the process of pulling texture data from the H4 map files so I can compare them to the other titles. Also I am compiling image renders of all titles so I can lay them out next to each-other just to illustrate once and for all how weak the graphical layer and shader post processing really is in Halo 4. The OP of the Binary Rifle is compensated by it's cool down and reload time. It's funny how someone like you, can laugh about the Boltshot not being OP I'm not sure how exactly the jetpack in your eyes breaks a map or the effort of the devs working on the map. If your going to illustrate that point, then show some proof as to how it breaks maps. Simply posting it does, does not make it so. As for the rest about the AA's, I simply just do not agree. That one is up to view and personal opinion. Ok so the spawn system yes, it's not perfect. but one of the biggest complaints you get during a lot of big battles, is the insane amount of time to respawn. 343 inplimented the instant resapwn to give people a better chance of coming back during defensive and offensive gametypes. Unfiortunatly, there is no way to have this feature without it being applied across all gametypes. Personally I have not had an issue at all with spawns. The only spawn issues I have is with Spartan OPs. getting respawned right in front of 6 elites, or being spawned 2 miles from where I died. I am not sure if your just unlucky or somethign else entirely... Ok so first off, quit using the term "sandbox". Sandbox is a dev term and in no way shape or form can you even begin to compare Forge to a "sandbox" in it's true form. As for Bungie failing altogether, do you care to showcase this? You have said that twice, that Bungie failed at halo, yet you have not given any clear structured detail into this. If you can't back up a claim like that, then don't post it. A true skill hasn't been added to the game yet. As it is now, your BPR is used to determine who your get paired up with. BPR can be viewed on HaloWaypoint in your service record. That's not to say that the system they will employ is going to be good....we just don't know yet. Fighting over map control and weapons is still in-play. You can't spawn with power weapons, I quite frankly I have not seen or heard a whole lot of people here complain about ordinance drops. I can probably go back thru the forum and count on 2 hands how many people have posted against ordinace drops. I have only seen about 6 or 7 drops in the entire time I have been playing. So I am not sure what playlist you go into a lot, but the playlist may have a lot to do with how frequent you see it. May I suggest playing a different one? Your not trying to bash anything? This whole post was a rant directed and just that wasn't it? You used terms like noobie and called out sub cultures like softcore. Plus the swearing? Sorry, but after really reading the post, I can't say I see anything but mindless bashing. Again, CoD was not the first game to use a loadout. TEam Fortress may not have had a "loadout" like we see now, but they had classes to chosoe form which all spawned the player with a different ability and starting weapon. Also you could choose on respawn which class to be. Loadouts are not cheap or a mechanic, they are a natural evolution to allow players more freedom to play with a style and weapon they are most comfortable with. Simply not being able to effectively combat someone with a skill set geared towards soemthign than your own, is simply called losing, fair and square. You talk about level playing fields? How is any competition in the real world level? Are athletes forced to use all the same brand and model equipment? Is it unfair that some people are just simply more athletic than others? By your very stance on a level playing field...everyone in sports should be the same weight, have the same access to every piece of gear or be forced to use it. A level playing field does not exist in real combat. If you were on the front lines, would you go running and give-up because it's not fair that the enemy has a tank, and you only have an AK? Establishing a level playing field does exist. You have the chance and opportunity to equip your self with the same types of loadouts as everyone else. So what if some items are not unlocked for you...then go unlock them! All I hear is "I just want to use my DMR/BR to rape everyone since that is all I am good with". Seriously.....the precision wepaons are the most talked about and used in the game. Are you just not capable of using other weapons effectively? Hell I may be best with a DMR instead of the BR...which is weird cause I dominated Halo2 with BR..but the point is, all the weapons in the game can be effectively combated by others. It all depends on how bad you want the win, and how well you stategize. I'm sorry....what makes you think your an expert again? You and the devs need to have a talk? Do you represent the community as a whole? Sorry but if you do, I must have missed that vote. Someone whom has never programmed or lead a dev team, has no right or need to talk to a dev team directly. While yes some of your views or ideas may be good and sound good to some, but do not delude yourself into thinking that you alone know what is best for the entire community. I understand your heated and upset that you got let down, hell so am I. Halo 4 is the first Halo title I have ever hated. My reasons however are more technical and dev oriented than actual in-game action. But then again, I'm what you would call a social type. I like to play fun gametypes with teams so I guess as most say, that makes my points invalid. But anyway, there you have it. I have tried to not sound like a **** or make any harsh words towards you. I think you do have an exceptional mind and view of things concerning Halo. I respect your opinions and stance with a high dgree, which by the way does not happen often around here.

Looks like someone took a posting lesson from me....very tl,dr. I suggest you try breaking down a huge rant like that into easy to understand sections. It helps get your points acrossed in an easier to understand fashion. From what I did skim, im only going to pick on one subject...the " starting off with the same weapon" bit. Not everyone is good with every weapon. If your team or you as a single rumble player is the only one/ones good with the starting weapon....how is that fair and truly competative, relative to the opposing faction/persons skill.set? Some players are great with weapons like an AR or plasma rifle or SMG...but can be utterly fail with a BR or DMR. In those matches where a precision weapon is the starting, I fail to see the " fair" and even playing ground.

It's been a very rough week for my family. We lost a bright light amongst many, and we are continuing to struggle through the tragedy that has befallen us and a whole community. In the midst of our pain and tears, we can only look to each other and our memories of Grace, and try to honor her life with love, compassion and keeping her spirit alive in our hearts. As difficult as it is to post and think about what happened, I wanted to make a tribute page to Grace McDonnell. She was a beautiful young woman with a bright future. Her smile alone was enough to melt hearts and bring others to smile. My sister-in-law Danielle often visited and spent time with her in Connecticut when she had a chance. To her and the rest of the McDonnell family, I can only pray for the strength to survive and move past this tragedy. Grace is and always be loved by her family and friends for all eternity. No amount of time, distance or disposition can ever change that. The only thing that makes it difficult, is the eerie twin nature resemblance she has to my Sister-in-law. Seriously, they look as if they could have been twins. In a way, it is kind of comforting, yet sad. At this moment I would like everyone to observe a small moment of reflection for Grace and the other victims and their families. My Angel, My Hero... Link to the CNN interview with Lynn and John McDonnell about Grace. http://www.cnn.com/v...erview-full.cnn Also real quick, if anyone has a facebook and would like to leave a comment or prayers for Danielle, here is the link to her facebook. http://www.facebook.com/danielle.pompilii

Keep in mind that we cannot be sure that any major update to weapon mechanics...will be limited to MM only. I'm sorry guys, but when I am playing thru campaign and Spartan ops, the last thing I want is all the weapons to change. I use the DMR and BR as my weapons of choice for both, and having either one change is not going to sit well. Historically speaking, in every other Halo game starting with 2, the global damage parameters reside within the mainmenu.map file. Which means that fixing it with a patch would apply the change to all areas of the game. Again I don't know what types of changes they made to the baseline of MegaloScript so it is very possible that they can script in basic mechanic changes that only load and apply to specific stated areas of the game. Ig uess we will all find out next month.

I wasn't comparing them to the degree you think. Even if Halo had a multiplatform base, it wouldn't even still capture the crowd numbers that CoD does. CoD Black Ops II beat every game ever released on the 360 period. That is just the 360, not including the IOS, Wii, PS3 or any other variations of it. Alone, COD captures the market and does put a hurting on Halo. As the previous poster just pointed out, the playlists do kill it a bit. Reach gave us a wide range of choices and had a "good" rotation. Halo 4 just doesn't seem to be starting off right. I mean c'mon....Grifball is not starting playlist?!? Grifball was and still is the most popular go to playlist gametype since Halo 3...yet 343i decided to not have it included at launch?

The weapon despawning is very annoying. The problem comes in when you need ammo. Yes we have a perk for that, but it doesn't help when the opponent you killed is a 1/4 map away and you can't even go and grab what ammo he/she left. At that point, your only option is to die on purpose just so you can get back into the game with a weapon to use. Ammo is another thing they need to leave. I have yet to see any ammo clips on the maps yet. On campaign and spartan ops....the despawning is just plain out annoying as hell. You use to be able to choose what weapon to pick up and use, and fall back and grab another that you left behind in case you needed it......no more now though.

Actually CoD Black Ops is the most profitable game in the CoD series to date for the franchise, and for the 360. In March of 2012 Black Ops had a confirmed selling of over 12.3 million units. Halo 3 barely broke 3.5 million. In terms of success, yes Halo 4 is not the best selling of the series, but halo in general has a long way to go before it will ever outsell the competition. That being said, times have changed dramatically since 2007 with halo 3 versus now. Economic woes, layoffs, etc have all contributed to the decline of gaming in general and the importance of titles coming out of the release gate strong. Also, we have not seen any graphical release of the actual MM data for Halo 4 yet. We can speculate based on our own numbers when logging on, but we are never around 24/7 as individuals to post numbers up that would properly reflect the population.

Oh they are out there, trust me on that one. But due to the hacks or memory edits only working on JTAG or dev kits, the population and chance of seeing any of them is 1 in a million for most of us. The hacks being described in the various threads I have seen are legit actual hacks that I can right now apply to my XeX or MM game, so don't go off about saying how they don't exist simply because you have not encountered them. Chances are, that many of you have encountered them, but just don't know it. For those who don't believe, go do a quick search for altered Alteration source code tweaks, and Halo 4 offset changes...you'll find plenty of documented laid out offset changes mapped, as well as a few apps to apply those mods. Again folks, think and research before you speak about a subject matter.....

Sorry to see you go Derp, we have been buds for a long time here. You always have me to fall back on when times get tough or you need a good laugh. Hope you do decide to come back, but if you don't I am sure I will see you around Crydev or a few other places. Be good man!

Crysis 2 had superior graphics to GoW and Halo 4, not sure what the article author was thinking... Crysis 3 is using an improved version of Cryengine, version 3.4.3...no pun intended there...that is the actual version number now..lmao. Crysis 3 will be hard to beat at any time, or even any version of Cryengine for that matter. The only engine that can compete or even start to beat it out is UDK.

Now your talking my language! Crysis 2 is a great game with the greatest engine created to date. Graphics are sick, multiplayer is uber hands down the most competative, and all around a great game to sink your teeth into.

All we can do is keep them alive in our hearts and memories. I still.cant cope with the fact that a sweet innocent member of my extended family was deprived of a bright future. She celebrated her 7th birthday just mere days before this. Thank you everyone for your love and compassion, and to anyone else here that may be feeling the same loss....I am here for you. Strength in numbers. This is a great community, and I truly love each and everyone of you! To Grace, let the light of the hereafter bath you in warmth and piece. You will be missed and loved always! <3

Unfortunately my family was touched by this horrible display of human behavior. My sister-in-law lost her little cousin to this. Needless to say we are all in shock and really hurting right now. Thank you once again for the words, and your obvious compassion for other people. I wish you the best of luck as well in raising your kids to be the righteous and courteous person you have obviously become. On a side note, I am shocked that anyone would choose to blame a form of media or entertainment for the countless things humans are capable of doing. It doesn't take an outside influence to guide someone who already has an idea in his/her head.

Surfice to say, your an idiot. Call of Duty was not the first game to use a loadout system, nor did Halo at anytime change anything to become as you call it, more "cod". I could go on to write way more thqn you could possibly read thru on this subject, but your now about the millionth troll who has posted garbage like this. Such a lengthy response would be wasted and isnt fitting for this. Perhaps you should go and take a little quiet time and do some game research then reflect on what you wrote.

Here are a list of known checks that both the MM initial server does. Certain things could have changed but at the time I am making this list, there is no new documentation on Live protocols regarding game content checking... 1. Map signature. Internal encryption hash to verify maps are signed and legit. This is done with a privateband public key-pair system, but it is not 100% verified to he used like Bungie did. 2. Engine version. This check ensures that the version or (patch) for the XeX file is the same version as the latest one according to Live. 3. Map size. Rather than check a map for every data field and tag referrence, the system instead ensures that nothing inside the map file was added or subtracted. That is to say that floats, enum32, enum16, enum8 or flag masks are not checked as this would take 10-15 minutes just to.decompress a map into raw format, then check it. 4. Internal Map Name. As silly as it sounds, if you rename the map internally, which is the field right after the header data, it throws things off. Now #4 is done when normally loading resources into memory. No additional time or processes is neded for this check. Almosht all of the above checks are completed during the pairing process in MM before host is handed. This is the main problem with the host system of mm. During this time, anyone with modifications to the fields I listed, will have those effects show in game. Not all effects are visible to all players since not all players have the same modifications. But anything that syncsblike.scripts, player positions, internal text, etc... will all show.

You misunderstand. The only checks performed during post and pre matchmaking is to the map files themselves. This is why memory editing editing along with decompiled and modified xex's are hard to go about detecting. Certain parsed map data does keep the same offset address in memory, and also changes and differs per match for everyone. But yes a large majority of poked data is always at the same offset. Mostly data parsed from the mainmenu and shared map.files. all other data differs based on individual maps. Currently, memory addresses are not indivdually read over Live, and the ability to read and poke offsets is limited to the console only at this time. If there was a way to poke other consoles over Live, then we wouldbsee a much larger issue with matchmaking. For instance, you could possibly see players purposely poking and changing loadouts, phywics etc, for enemy opponents. This is largely why reading memory is strictly locked down to the console itself, and not allowable over a Live environment.

Again, he isnt really mad at the hackers....he is mad at 343i for what he believes to be is faulty programming and a non existant banhammer. You quite obviously are new to hacking in video games if you think Halo 4 is highly hackable and that Bungie had no fault or problems. The hacking issues you are facing are what is called "poking". Its the process of changing address offsets in memory and mapping their effect in real time. There is no counter measure for memory edits. Some offsets change, some dont. Trying to.detect them would lead to many false positives and end up hurting players more than it would help. Please do a little research about such things before placing blame...

Just realized you had a thread for this.....wow I'm falling behind in my old age! lmao Anywho congrats Zeldie! Much deserved! I find it no great coincidence that December brought us both the first Dad that was MoM..me, and you the first actual mom to be MoM. Win fricken win baby!!! Enjoy the pink! Wait...that didn't come out right.....

I got two more levels on Legendary till I'm done. I normally have all Halo campaigns beaten in 3 days on legendary...but this time around I have less tiem to play. And when i do have time, my son is usually playing..lmao

But seriously to add a bit more to it, since I can never seem to post anything under 500 words.... His idea is great. It would allow a more customized expereince, and ina way, add a more strategic and meaning full expereince to unlocking armor. One thing that bugs me, is simply leveling up and unlocking and using the armor. As it is, the armor is good for nothing in the fact that it only adds flare, and sometimes that flare is lost since you dont get time, nor can always see the suttle differences in many players armor. I think it would add greatly to the replay value. Throwing in some whacky over the top challenges in all modes, would add some fun and break up the tension and reward players with serious skill in different departments, a great reward and gameplay style that fits them best. Again bravo! One of the best inclusion features I think anyone has posted up for Halo in a long time.

Short and sweet... I like it!