DracoAvian

I'm not entirely certain how H4 is 'easier...' But they did make automatic weapons 'useable' and 'worthwhile.' Precision weapons are deadly precise as well. There is no randomness from those weapons from what I've experienced. I can see how ordinance removes a great deal of skill from the game in form of map control and teamwork, but most MLG contests are still decided by old school rules anyways. Can you elaborate on what the player said?

Although I agree that stickies are a huge problem, I still think plasma pistols 'en masse' is still a problem as well. I think the problem lies in that you can have as many plasma pistols as you have lives and teammates. And when you spawn with them you don't have to expend any time to retrieve them. You can just die, respawn, switch to secondary, and shoot more overcharges.

Yeah... I've gone 30 something before in guass hogs as well. I'd probably have a few perfection medals if wheelman sprees in big team games counted towards them. My point is that I don't like how the gauss hog is the only thing that works. And it works too well. It is a sniper with unlimited ammo. A sniper that can shoot through walls and is effective at every range. As long as they aren't spawing next to you, anything within your line of sight is as good as dead. Which is why I think it would be better as an anti-armor variant.

Well I'm a fanboy and I do think that the way the implimented sprinting is great. I think the big fear from the nay-sayers is that sprint will turn into something that doesn't have a downside. As it stands if you get caught sprinting at the start of a firefight you are at a pretty hefty disadvantage. In games like CoD or Battlefield you can pretty much sprint at any time without any significant downside to those "see-eachother-at-the-same-time" engagements. I am a fanboy and I like the idea of Personal Loadouts. I just don't like how they are implemented and how it affected the way maps were made. I think that loadouts should consist of your primary weapon and armor ability. That's it. Power weapons still need to be on the map! Basic weapons still need to be on the map! Vehicles need to be a strategic resource for teams to exploit! The biggest changes need to be in big tem battle scenarios. They have small team maps, but very few compelling maps for BTB veterans. Is it any wonder why the custom community is so active? Because H4 is a fantastic game. They can fine-tune it to suit what they want to see. Look at what the custom community is doing! Take hints from them! EDIT: Also ranking system. The reason I like ranked is because it pits you against people of a similar skill level. Nearly every battle is fought tooth and nail!

It is an interesting idea, but one we've covered a few times in the forums. That fact is that attachments do not inherently add to the game. In fact, they more often than not take away from it. Let's look at Battlefield for a moment. In Battlefield 3 there are a ridiculous amount of weapons. Absolutely bonkers. What attachments are predominantly used on every Assault Rifle? Heavy Barrel and Foregrip. How about the PDWs? Extended Mags. How about the most used sights? Red dots or Holos. Small factor magnifaction scopes are nearly never used. How about the most popular weapons? The M16A3 and the AEK. And what do we see on those weapons a majority of the time? Red-dot sights, heavy barrels, and foregrips. The point I'm trying to make is that when you add more variables it becomes harder to balance. Players will always gravitate towards the most powerful weapons and setups. By increasing the amount of things to choose from, many games actually decrease the actual variety seen in the game. Additionally things like the M27 Dart or USAS-12 will fall through the cracks and ruin the game until it is patched. This is the reason why I'm against attachments as a whole. It is the reason why I am averse to seeing loads of new weapons or vehicles at the same time.

Naw, man. Promethians are only easy once you figure out how to fight them. I was getting wrecked in Legendary in so many places. The first knight alone took me probably 20 minutes to beat. Crawlers at best are annoying and Watchers seem to be largely useless as well... Knights are plenty tough though.

I don't know... I think we should be as hopeful and as imaginative as possible. With the new hardware they could do some pretty spectacular stuff. If we sit back and never say anything we may just end up with something less than mind-blowing. Who knows, maybe something said down here in the lowly forums will actually make it into the game. I'd love to see super-heavies like the mammoth or scarab in Invasion. More Invasion is always a good thing! With as popular as Invasion is and with how much the community misses it, I would be shocked, SHOCKED, if the developers decided to go ahead without something like it.

What I want to see are programmable movement-based pieces. Either 'building-block' pieces that would be used in conjunction with other forge objects to make them move. Or actual fully fledged pieces. Operating them could be done with active, passive, or constant switches. -Active switches would require the player to press a button to interact with it. Good for gates or bridges. -Passive switches would merely require a spartan to move or stand in a designated position. Could be easily used to make automatic doors and such. -Constant switches would be invisible but programmable. This could allow for certain pieces to raise and lower based on a timer. Think of the the giant wheel in H3/H2's Last Resort/Zanzibar or the antenna array in H2's Ascension. Building block pieces. These would be more difficult to pull off, but the forge community would be much richer for it. -Hinges to make objects swing back and forth on a fixed point. Useful for bridges, doors, ramps, etc. -Conveyors to make objects slide forwards and backwards, left and right, or up and down. Useful for sliding doors, conveyor belts, elevators, etc. -Rotators to make objects spin. Useful for giant fans, giant wheels, bowser's castle race levels, etc. Fully fledged pieces. These would be easier to implement and would probably look pretty classy too. They could be of any size, from small one-man doors to large gates big enough to drive a tank through. They could be any length or height. A 5-storey elevator or a 2-storey one. Whatever the devs think could work. -Gates, drawbridges, elevators, doors, anti-vehicle shields, etc.

Taking Cover - I'm not against it at all if it remains in first person the entire time. Red Orchestra 2 is a fine example of a cover-based first-person-shooter. It flows well and only adds to immersion. It looks fantastic and cinematic to boot! However I think some of the core mechanics of Halo would utterly trump 'taking cover.' Grenades, accuracy while on the move, and jumping shooting all mean that the best (and only) cover is from large objects which you can maneuver behind. Sticking to cover and movement are mutually exclusive. It would look cinematic as hell. Could be hella effective for KOTH or other objective play. Additionally if the hardlight shield was tweaked an ally could take cover behind you... making that AA pretty ridiculously awesome... especially in objective carrier situations. I think you're really looking for more cinematic gameplay though. I think the ticket would be more physical map interaction. Objectives could be destroying a reactor, uploading an AI into a system, refueling or cycling 'mega' equipment. I don't think these actions should be as uninvolved as pressing a button or standing in a capture zone. It could be that a spartan physically plants and arms a bomb inside or near the reactor, a spartan has to carry the AI in heavy a shock-proof and bullet-proof container and replace it, or a spartan removing damaged or drained power cells and replacing them with new ones. In H4's campaign the Chief does a lot of stuff that visibly strains him. I don't want a button-mashing quick-time-event, but it could be interesting to stand back for a second or two and watch your spartan perform some feat of skill or strength that no normal human could do. Strategy/Invasion - You're not the only one who frakking love Invasion. I still play it with my brother and friends from time to time. It has so much appeal! I love gametypes that move the fight or focus it in different parts of the map. It is probably the reason I enjoy objective games in general. I personally would like to see the return of the super-heavy vehicles: the scarab and the mammoth. I can definitely see some fun matches leading up to an assault on a scarab. I would have fun seeing the mammoth advance through a map acting as a mobile base for attacking spartans. Superheavies and Invasion are what I want to see in BTB. ADSing - I disagree. What makes Halo stand out from most AAA shooters is the offensive mobility of the player. If ADS was implemented the gun in your hands would be the only factor to most engagements. Melee, vehicles, and grenades would have to be rebalanced against guns, and then even the maps would be rebalanced for the new ADS mechanic. ADS slows down gameplay and completely changes the landscape. If it were implemented I honestly don't think it would look or feel like Halo anymore. The Golden Tripod would be kaput!

Lol wut. Off the top of my head: The Foundation, BioShock, Dune, Riddick, Elysium, The ultra-dystopian Warhammer 40k, Star Wars... Those are just the ones with humans fighting humans. If you're looking for dystopian you can add Starship Troopers, Aliens, Stargate, the 'looking glass reality' of Star Trek, Mass Effect, and many others on top of those. Initially even Halo was about the complete genocide of humanity as enacted by religious zealots with no true chance of survival. Then they tossed in a healthy helping of hyper-parisitical extragalactical organisms on an ancient artifact of a long dead civilization. Then we learned that the artifact was in fact part of a galactic scale WMD network that was used not to kill the parasite, but to kill anything they might use as food. Yep, we're all about holding hands and singing campfire songs in the science fiction community. I could totally see ONI (or at least a section of ONI) as the boogie-man in Spartan Ops: Season 2. Halsey being party to some of ONI's darker secrets could be some sort of motivation for them. They could even have a specialist operative or team that the player gets clues of or glimpses from time to time. He/She'd have to be completely unhelpful though. Probably the cause of some dead-ends, sabotage, and the elimination of some HVTs you intended to interrogate.

Warthogs are still broken. Game needs work. Other than that the game has been getting better and better. I just wish there was a more streamlined process to get updates out there.

I love comments about using Spartan Ops to boost your rank when everyone knows that people who play multiplayer games only do it to boost their rank. Some of the missions on legendary are so difficult only because of the sheer lack of ammunition on certain missions... My biggest problem is they toy with the gun physics from mission to mission. Sometimes railguns will rearm at ammo boxes, other times they won't... Fuel Rods are dangerous, but beatable in some missions. In others, you die if the guy holding it shoots at you. The shots move so freaking fast it almost seems like a hitscan weapon at times. Ever try to do a no-death legendary playthrough? Even with a full squad? It ain't happening for anybody who is human.

I don't know if I have a favorite mission, but my favorite episode was #7. Getting to actually fight through the guts of Infinity was so much fun. And besides that, it was all about moving from place to place, never staying in one section of the map for very long.

I'd love to see a season 2 as well, but I think I'd rather them get it on Halo 5. New hardware would mean the possibility of greater scale in battles after all. The main thing I thought was missing from H4 were massive battles where the spartans (Chief too!) act as force multipliers and fight alongside entire platoons of marines and tanks.

I actually had quite a blast for the first few and last few episodes. There were some in the middle there that didn't do much of anything for me... I had an absolute blast from the battle on infinity to the resolution of season 1. There was plenty of things I feel could have been done better. 1. Not all buttons are created equal. Some had animations, some just clicked or beeped, and some took a progress bar to complete. It bothered me more than it should have... But I think they had a chance to remove some 'video gamey' elements by actually seeing your spartan unlock doors, press buttons, type commands, punch detonators, or yada-yada. More stuff with hands! Also, that first person assassination in the prison break mission was sick. 2. Some enemies had supernaturally powerful guns. Chiefly among them were Elite Generals with Fuel Rods in the middle missions. Those things didn't add difficulty or challenge worth playing against multiple times. I got by a few sections by throwing my unlimited bodies on top of them and eventually crushing them under the combined under the combined weight of my corpses. 3. Unlimited lives removed any challenge at all. I would have liked to see some sort of system to support 'staying alive.' An easy fix would have been to allow players to set skulls. An Iron run through the first mission would have been a blast. Promote teamwork, yo! There were plenty of great things though. 1. I loved the story progression. Some people say meh, but I really enjoyed exploring the lives of other spartans and other characters. Seeing Halsey in a leading role was enough to get me fan-boying and rereading the books again. 2. I loved getting to pit "My Spartan" against Covenant and Promethians. I think Reach was my favorite game simply because I got to play a superhuman version of myself in every mode. 3. Some of those missions were quite cinematic in the action. I particularly loved taking the Scorpion up the hill, fighting beneath the Covenant ship as another Spartan team boarded and destroyed it, and fleeing the excavation site while gravity was super wonky. /rant All said and done, I'd absolutely love to see a Season 2 in Halo 5. It was splendid. And I really want to hear more backstory from Majestic. Grant intrigues me. I'd love to see more from the scottish spitfire.

I loved actually progressing through missions against AI rather than just holding a single position. Those 'moving' missions where you go from place to place to place for each firefight was actually pretty sweet. Spartans are for kicking in doors and blowing up bases, not baby sitting wrecked AA guns or empty civilian structures.

More games I'd love to play! Halo: ODST + Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter = Ghost Recon: ODST Rome 2: Total War + Warhammer Fantasy = Warhammer: Total War

Are these games that sound silly or fusions that we'd actually love to play? (I'd actually love to play these) Halo + Tom Clancy's Endwar = Halowar (I guess...) Halo + Xcom: Enemy Unknown = Halo: Enemy Unknown

I don't like this idea. I really don't like the idea of scrambling to change my armor pieces after each map is voted for. Armor customization shouldn't affect how you perform in the game. Even if some sort of armor set loudout were implemented, I still wouldn't like it. I choose my armor based on what I find aesthetically pleasing and my weapon and armor ability based on what I want to do at that particular moment. Now I'm all for a greater amount of aesthetic presence from armor abilities. It has always been easy to identify those with the jet packs, even when they are not using it. Maybe some sort of projector gauntlet for the hardlight shield, a helmet attachment for promethian vision, or perhaps small field generators around placed strategically around the armor for active camouflage.

I don't know about these ideas though... Jetpacks are for climbing, sprint is for moving fast (we already blaze a trail of glory and destruction with sprint right now. I see no need to make vehicles even more useless), melee is for melee. This is Halo and not Mirror's Edge, after all. We have the golden tripod to keep from knocking over. Guns, Grenades, and Melee require precise balancing. As for a sort of Aim-Down-Sights mechanic, I'm against it. ADS makes movement of less importance (as when ADSing, you're movement will slow) and the lack of it helps to make Halo stand out a little more. Artistically, many weapons in Halo are not designed with ADS in mind. Many UNSC weapons and most, if not all, alien weapons are not designed with sights. I don't like thruster packs though. I agree that evade should make a return. Standard-sprint and ability-evade would make for a uniquely maneuverable class. Of course they could just make it a matter of agility instead of based on some sort of device. Spartans can sprint now, so why wouldn't they be able to have evade as a base trait as well? I'm pretty sure that the thruster pack could be redesigned into some sort of evasion apparatus if having both as agility traits would be too ridiculous.

Yeah... There is so much skill involved in a gun that sprays triple headshots everywhere compared to a weapon that fires a single round at a time. Aim-assist notwithstanding, it is a very powerful weapon when used in groups because of the amount of ammunition it puts down range. I prefer the DMR, it is more satisfying for me to use. I also love the Railgun, Splaser, and Sniper Rifles. Something about single shots make me happy.

But they already announced Battlefront 3.

I realize that, but after just a few hours? Even on Harvest most of the civilian population was able to be evacuated. I have no idea why this attack would be so fatal. But I suppose that's how it went down. No use complaining now I was just hoping for a little fan service.

The biggest disappointment I had was not seeing ODSTs or marines do ANYTHING but die. They could have showed them kicking butt for a sequence or two. It seemed implausible to me that everyone but this room full of academy cadets were the only survivors after a few hours of battle at most. I think romance is important to Halo though. It is a part of being human. It also serves as an example at what Laskey, The Chief, and the other Spartans have given up to protect humanity. Halo: ODST had a romantic story arc after all. I like to think Buck and Dare got hitched after the war.