RedStarRocket91

Staff Response Church is totally guilty.

Actually, the level 'Composer' takes place on Ivanoff Station, which is in orbit around Installation 03, seen here in the level's opening cutscene: Source: Halo Wiki One of the rings (I believe it's the same one as here, but I'm not certain) is also mentioned by Lasky and Del Rio at the end of 'Infinity', where they explain that the Infinity's purpose is to locate and study the remanining Halo rings for decommissioning. This is also where they'd originally found the co-ordinates for Requiem. I'm fairly sure that there aren't any brutes at all in Halo 4, although the Gravity Hammer does make a brief appearance halfway through 'Midnight'. Anyway, welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy your time here

Sign me up! Name: Bnus Gender: Bnus Age: Bnus Class: Bnus Preferred Weapon: Assault Ryeful

You could have gone with BreadStarRocket91 or something. That's not even a pun. I'm very, very disappointed in you.

Dough not get my hopes up like that.

Bnus

The statue of Chief is, I think really interesting. I think it's particularly notable that while in Locke's trailer it's completely intact, in John's trailer, it's damaged. This is important, because while Locke is looking at the Chief, Chief is looking at himself. Locke sees the legend, and says as much: this immutable, unbreakable man who has survived all of the destruction around him. However, when Chief sees it, he's not seeing the legend, but the actual man - and more importantly, he sees that he's missing a part of himself. The fact that this damage is to the back of the helmet, rather than the front, is very obviously an allusion to Cortana, and a good indicator of just how much he saw Cortana as a part of himself. What I'm actually hoping for, is that we're going to see two campaigns: one for Locke, one for Chief, culminating in the two of them meeting. Once you finish both, having killed the other, you'd unlock a third campaign, in which rather than seeing it from either's perspective, you find out what actually happened when the two of them met at last. At any rate, I'm really exicted by these trailers, I'm going to add more thoughts once I've rewatched them a few times!

I saw that

This thread is intended to serve as the hub for discussing Halo 5: Guardians' 'Two Sides' trailers: if you haven't already seen them, you can watch them below: Speculation, analysis, and theories are all welcome here: if you've previously started a topic and would like it to be included in this thread, feel free to send me a message! Master Chief's Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rd8FWUCCZk Spartan Locke's Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHQiYPiNVEE

I've always felt a little conflicted about it. The thing is that I generally don't really see myself as much of a 'leader' because, at my core, I'm just a Halo fan who's had an incredibly positive experience with the forum and its members, and I'm privileged enough to have been offered the chance to really give something back to the community. I don't even know that there is such a thing as a 'leader' of the membership at all: we came here because we love Halo, but we stay because of the friends we've made, because of these little groups of people who we've come to know and love. I can't tell people how or how not to be friends - how to make each other laugh, or smile, or cry. Only you can do that - and since those interactions, those friendships are what really matter - who am I to claim that I'm a leader? The truth is, everyone on the site has the potential to be a leader: it's as simple as getting a few friends together and jumping into Matchmaking, or going into the Forge sections and trying out some of the maps we have submitted there, or even starting a great thread that people want to read and participate in. The staff are just here to help keep things organised. While I'm definitely a lot more vocal in the shoutbox now than I ever was as a member - I think I had something like 400 shouts when I first became a C-Mod, and by then I'd been on the site for almost two years - around the forums themselves, I'm a lot quieter. One of the big differences between being a moderator and a member is that, as a mod, I have to read everything that's posted. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it means I get a much better sense of who people are, but it is time-consuming, and so while it used to be that I'd login to the forums, pick out a few topics which interested me and reply to them, now I generally just skim-read everything. One of the things that people probably don't realise about me is just how slow a poster I am: as of this sentence, I've been writing this post for just under half an hour. And because of the way I am as a person, I generally don't like leaving short replies to things, meaning that an average post will take me anywhere from about twenty minutes to an hour. This is fine when I'm just reading eight or nine topics a day, but when I'm reading 100+ posts (and this isn't even counting Offbeat!), I normally just don't have the time to write out a reply of the standard which it deserves. The members. I've met so many friends in the time I've been here, had so many good experiences: people cheering me up when I've been feeling down, people reading my humble opinions and thinking they're worthy of the time to write a reply, people deciding I'm fun enough that they'd like to come and play a few matches of Halo with me (although usually not enough to let me win!). The truth is, I could count on one hand the number of people on my friends list who I didn't know irl before I joined the forums: now, almost everyone I game with is someone I've met from here. There are so many great memories I have. I could talk for hours about the first time I joined in a forum playdate, the way everyone refused to believe my accent was real; of the time Absolute Dog chased me, screaming my head off as I ran, with an Energy Sword for five solid minutes while everyone else literally stopped fighting to watch; of all the nonsense that Church inevitably has to cut out of the Community Podcast whenever we record it as it's simply too rude ever to be broadcast. Memories like that - those that I cherish - are something that everyone deserves to have. The forums have been so good to me in furnishing those experiences: the very least I can do in return is make sure that everyone else gets a chance to have them as well. One of the big ways that the community has changed me is how much more social I am online. Prior to joining the forums, I never really interacted with people I didn't know online: if I were to talk to people at all, it'd usually just be in the form of replying to a post on a forum somewhere. Having a shoutbox - having a comparatively small pool of regular members - meant I got to know pretty much everyone on the site, and I slowly got more comfortable just opening up and talking to people. A few years ago, you'd have been hard pressed to get me to even plug in a microphone for a customs lobby: now I'm happy to sit and record podcasts. In short, it's done wonders for my self-confidence. Just a shame it hasn't improved my voice! I think this is pretty much covered above. Beyond that: I'm a fairly empathetic person. Chances are, if I do meet you, there's going to be at least something I like about you. And if there's something I like about you - why wouldn't I do my best to make the forums as nice a place as possible for you? Oh please, I can't even get all of my own answers into one paragraph!

For the most part, I think that whether or not friendly fire is on should be based on playlist. I'm a very strong advocate for breaking matchmaking up into Ranked and Social playlists, and for the most part, I think that should serve as a reasonable way of splitting up friendly fire. If I'm playing competitively then yes, friendly fire should absolutely be on. It promotes tactical choices as well as raw aiming ability, thereby increasing the skill gap and making for more interesting decisions: is killing a teammate worth causing the enemy to drop a flag, or to drop a power weapon, or to pull back from an advantageous map position? I also find it makes for more interesting dynamics in terms of grenades. Halo has always suffered from issues with grenade spam, and the sad truth is that most of the time, there isn't really any skill involved, particularly when you can hold four of each grenade type as you can just keep chucking them until you kill whoever you're targeting. This isn't to say that I don't think there's no skill in using grenades - on the contrary, the ability to put a grenade exactly where you want it is something I greatly admire - but that in a lot of fights, things tend to come down to quantity over quality, which isn't something I feel lends itself well to good competitive play. Risk/reward is a cornerstone of good, competitive play, and friendly fire is a good way of showing off player skills and exposing weaknesses, so for me, including it is a definite 'yes'. For social play however, I'd prefer that it stays out. If I'm playing a social playlist, then chances are that I'm just wanting to relax rather than feel under pressure to do well, and so it's much better not to have to worry about accidentally harming teammates. This also makes it much easier to prevent players abusing the system to troll: I can't count the number of times I've had people try to either kill me or weaken me in order to get hold of a Sniper Rifle, or to deliberately try and stand in front of me to prevent me from using it. This is still obviously an issue in competitive play, where player ranks mean that people are more likely to care, but troll accounts tend to be amongst the lower ranks and thus easier to avoid or deal with, meaning it's not such a big concern. One big thing I'd like to see change in the current betrayal system, regardless of whether damage is on and how it's dealt, is removing the ability of players on the same team who've exchanged fire to pick up weapons dropped by the other. This would immediately solve about half of all betrayals, and greatly cut down on the stress of deciding you want to pick up a Sniper Rifle. 343i's stated aim in removing friendly fire in Halo 4 was for this specific reason, and while I can definitely sympathise with players who dislike its removal, as a sniper I can't applaud it enough.

As of a few hours ago, the latest patch to the troubled Master Chief Collection has been released, and is now available for download. Measuring in at a very beefy 690mb, the patch is intended to address several of the more common in-game issues, as well as to rectify problems with the game's matchmaking and party systems. The full list of changes is as follows: MATCHMAKING Made a variety of updates to improve matchmaking performance and success rates Improved matchmaking search times/time to match Improved stability throughout the matchmaking process across all titles PARTIES Improved party stability HALO 2 Made improvements to multiplayer shot registration Improved campaign stability across a variety of levels Addressed stability issues for matchmaking and custom games Fixed issues around resuming H2A Campaign from “remastered” mode Improved medal display consistency HALO: CE Fixed issues regarding aim assist which resulted in the reticle being pushed away from an enemy Improved shot registration consistency between host / client in peer-to-peer custom game matches Resolved a variety of UI inconsistencies, including team color randomization, medals, and in-game scoreboard display So far, anecdotal reports from players suggest that this might well be the update we've all been hoping for, with the matchmaking process operating significantly faster then previously and without issues such as imbalanced teams or inability to remain in parties. While there's undoubtedly still a long way to go before the Master Chief Collection delivers on its initial promise, this is a very encouraging step in the right direction, and hopefully a sign of better days to come. If you'd downloaded the update, let us know whether or not you're seeing an improvement in the comments! View full article

Writing up an announcement thread for our MoM can sometimes be difficult, as while every MoM is exceptional, each is also unique, as are the ways in which they earn their titles. There are times where writing up an announcement is easy because the reason they were chosen is so straightforward; some have earned it through tireless efforts to bring the latest news to the community; some, for their extensive work to ensure that there are always games to be played; others, for their constant support of the moderating team in helping us fight spam. It's easy to herald our MoM after putting our heads together and seeing a single, solid way in which someone has gone above and beyond to improve our community. This isn't one of those easy months. In truth, I simply don't know where to start! Our new MoM has been a candidate in our discussions for many months now, thanks to his absolutely tireless efforts to get involved in just about every part of the community. To some of us, no doubt he's best-known for his ongoing work to uncover the forum Mafia in the latest iteration of the popular game; to others, for his constant attention to the forums as part of our Top 15 member selection committee since the start of the year; and of course to many, simply as our current Forum President, who has set about the business of office with energy and enthusiasm, assembling a congress and moving to start working for the voters with unparalleled speed. And this is before we even begin to consider his actions behind the scenes, which involve co-ordinating an upcoming Forge contest, helping us find countless numbers of spambots, and even offering to organise last year's Forum Christmas Tree - something which only a series of miscommunications among the staff prevented! Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a very thoroughly deserved round of applause for our new MoM: Yoshi1176! Congratulations, Mr. President! We hope you enjoy your month in the pink!

I'm on to you.

Staff Response This is a very contentious topic, and one with a great deal of legal nuance and political content. We therefore remind all of our members to stay civil and calm during any discussion, and that personal attacks or flaming may lead to warning points.

I mean no disrespect to your teacher, as she no doubt said it with the best of intentions - but this is an absolutely terrible piece of advice. If your writing is good enough, and focused enough, chapters can be dozens of pages long and your readers will continue to hang on every word: equally, if your writing is weak or lacking focus, simply making chapters shorter isn't going to remedy that. I think perhaps what your teacher meant was that the more pages you put into a chapter, the greater the chance you have of going off-topic or losing focus, and so it's better to try and keep your chapters short and to the point rather than rambling. I know I'm using the word 'focus' a lot, and it probably deserves an explanation. Basically, you need to know what the purpose of each chapter is; Do you want to use it to build a world? To develop a character? To introduce a new plot element? If you go into a chapter knowing exactly why you want to include it, and roughly what you want to happen in it - and more importantly, the content fits the purpose - then provided you stick to your plan, your chapter will have a lot of focus, and so you can make it as long or as short as you want. This way, you don't need to worry about adding unnecessary filler text, or removing interesting sections, in order to hit a certain number of pages. A bigger concern would be that you're compressing your work too much. While it's theoretically possible to create deep characters, meaningful interaction, and satisfying arcs while using only four or five pages per chapter, there's a very real risk of everything feeling underdeveloped and shallow. While obviously it varies a lot according to genre, the average book can be anywhere from 70,000-150,000 words - and since you can have anywhere from about 250 to 400 words on a page, even assuming you're writing at 400 words a page and 5 pages a chapter, you're going to need to write 35 chapters to even hit the absolute minimum end of the spectrum. I'm not saying all this to put you off, but to try and make the point that you really can't write your chapters with your mind on how long they are. Write them while thinking about your plot and your characters, and with a clear focus on what you want to do with every chapter.