RedStarRocket91

Though we all love our site awards, the process of working out exactly when someone has qualified for one and giving them out accordingly can become bogged down. Therefore, to try and help ensure that everyone gets their awards quickly and reliably, we'd ask that if you feel that you're missing an award you post here and let us know exactly what it is that you don't have, so that a member of the moderating team can correct the situation.

I hereby nominate myself as a candidate. All fear the coming of the Red President!

I actually really like the Famine skull, as strange as that might sound. I think one of the only things I really disliked about the Campaign was the way that the Chief never really felt like he was stranded out at the very edge of the known universe, cut off from the UNSC. While I can accept finding things like Assault Rifles and Battles Rifles in reasonably plentiful quantities throughout the Forward Unto Dawn's crash site, and even the occasional item like the SAW, throughout the entire area there are well-stocked supplies of UNSC weapons and ammunition meaning it's entirely possible to finish the level without once needing to pick up a Covenant gun. The Chief should be struggling against a lack of supplies just as much as the Covenant themselves, and all the non-Infinity missions feel a lot better just from an immersion perspective if you're constantly having to scrounge around for ammunition instead of just being able to empty magazine after magazine with abandon.

I honestly don't understand the problem here. He was wearing standardised Sangheili armour while he was serving as an officer of the Covenant; he wore the armour of the Arbiter while he was serving as the Arbiter of the Covenant; and now he's wearing a new set of armour because he's no longer either of those things. Sure, it looks more ceremonial than protective, but then so did his armour during Halo 2 and Halo 3, and he was able to fight just fine in that. As for his skin being so comparatively light... it could just be the particular art style of the author, or it could be to fit in with the redesign of the Sangheili. An alternative could just be the effects of ageing: by the time we get to the next Halo game at least six years will have passed since his last appearance, and just like humans and Jiralhanae the Sangheili may well lose pigmentation with age.

I'm not sure it would fit in well with Halo's gameplay. At its best, Halo is very precise and mechanical: you know exactly where a grenade will bounce and detonate, how harsh a weapon's recoil is, and exactly how many shots it will take to drop your shots and then kill you. Adding a headshot damage multiplier - however small - throws that off and could lead to confusion. Instead of knowing that I can afford to take another half second of fire to pull of a headshot, I have to just hope that my opponent's bullet spread is unlucky. I think it's definitely something that should be adjustable for things like Custom Games, and perhaps even enabled by default in things like Flood/Infection, but for regular competitive gameplay it introduces an element of randomness that doesn't really have skill-determined risk-reward levels. Sure, you can manage it to a degree, but unless it's possible to entirely negate bullet spread while still keeping the same firing rate as other users, I just can't see it working. In a way, it's almost the same problem some players had with the expanding reticules of the DMR and Needle Rifle in Reach: yes, it's possible to just time your shots and maintain accuracy, but the other player might well just spam the trigger and get lucky. With automatics being the way they are now, I just can't see it working in a way that enhances gameplay. That said, if an automatic weapon were to be introduced with extremely high accuracy (on par with the Halo 3 Battle Rifle, say) and no expanding reticule, I can sort of see it working. It would need to be very carefully balanced so that it didn't become overpowered - perhaps it would need to inflict almost no damage at all in terms of body shots - but provided the result of the combat was determined entirely by the participants' skills rather than the gods of bullet spread, then it's a sound enough idea.

Interesting stuff: Halo has always had one of the poorest netcodes in the industry and hopefully this means that they're looking to rewrite it so that it can actually compete with other titles.

While I think at its core the principle of the idea is solid, I don't think it would work if it were implemented in the same way as Gears of War. A visual active reload bar works well there because for the most part any reloading occurs in cover, while the player is safe from enemy fire - meaning the reloader can safely look at it, rather than needing to devote all of their focus to scanning the rest of the screen for new threats. Halo's lack of a cover system means this isn't really possible. I can perhaps see it working if the reload bar were to appear above the motion tracker, so that players could at least retain a degree of the tactical awareness necessary in an arcade-style shooter, but for as long as players need to divert their focus away from the battle without a guaranteed safe spot, I can see this causing quite a bit of frustration. I've been trying to think of a non-distracting way of implementing this, and I think one way to do it might be to offer a brief vibration in the controller during the correct time slot. This would mean players could keep their eyes on the screen while still knowing when the correct time to reload is, and potentially increase the learning rate for muscle memory. The other thing to note is that average reload times would probably need to be increased to take advantage of the system; they wouldn't need to be ridiculous, but when you can already reload an Assault Rifle in one second, cutting half a second off that in reload times just isn't worth the risk of jamming it for two or three. Power weapons in particular would also need to be very carefully balanced, as otherwise they'd go from game-changers to game-breakers, and that's definitely not a good idea. At the very least, increased reload times would perhaps level the playing field between conventional and plasma weapons, as while the latter obviously can't be reloaded faster, their own cooling times could be halfway between their counterparts' active reloads and regular reloads. At the moment plasma weapons aren't really proving popular with most players, so this could be a nice way to help bring them back into common usage. I'm also a big fan of your suggestion of dropping the damage increase as a very big part of Halo is knowing exactly how much fire you can take from any given weapon: knowing whether or not you can afford to take an extra shot from a Battle Rifle in order to land a killing hit of your own is literally a matter of life and death, and making that unpredictable is anathema to competitive gameplay. Great topic, MA1NE!

As of today, it's my pleasure to be able to announce the addition of several new members to our community staff. These members have worked incredibly hard over the past few months to help make our forums an active and exciting place, and I'm incredibly pleased to be able to recognise their contributions with these promotions. I therefore hope you'll join me in giving a round of applause to our three new staff members! Communications The newest member of our Communications team is someone who will be readily familiar to both users of the shoutbox and attendees of our custom game lobbies. An experienced video editor with a great sense of humour, please welcome the new manager of our YouTube channel and the man who will be bringing you the highlights of all of our future Community Events: Bnus! I'd also like to take this opportunity to announce a reshuffle among the staff here among the forums. In the past he worked hard to keep you supplied with updates on our front page as part of the News Group, but now he'll be working even harder to keep those updates rolling on our Facebook page. Having already been hard at work in his role for a few weeks but no less deserving of official recognition: Dog! News Group The newest addition to our News Group is a member who has worked incredibly hard to bring great information and discussion to the community with both original articles on the latest goings-on of the gaming world and weekly polls on aspects of the Halo universe. If you've ever wanted to learn how to join the News Group, you could do a lot worse than reading some of the fantastic posts by its newest member: Beckoningzebra1! Promotions/Events The last of today's official announcements concerns our dedicated organisational staff for Community Events, and who better to take the role than an active custom gamer who is both a regular attendee and even an occasional host? He's been a constant feature of our playdates and Community Events since the day he joined and will now be orchestrating them from the other side. Not just a boss, he's the Boss, and more specifically: D-38 Boss! These new staff members have my every confidence in continuing to bring their unique talents to bear on the future of the forums, and I hope you'll agree that as of today that future is just a little brighter and more exciting!

It's now been three months since Valve first announced their Steam Machines, and this week we finally got our first glimpse at the first generation of devices. While Valve had previously promised a wide variety of different machines appropriate for all gamer demographics, the sheer diversity of the final products in both price and power is astonishing, with models ranging from just $500 at the lower end of the scale to an eye-watering $6000 at the other. In a press release on Steampowered.com, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell stated that: 'The first generation Steam Machines offers something for every gamer, which is a critical part of extending Steam into the living room... With over 3,000 games and more than 65 million gamers on Steam, it’s important to offer gamers a variety of Steam Machines that allow them to select what makes the most sense for them.' With the release of components and specs for most of the machines, the accuracy of this statement quickly becomes apparent: aside from the controllers and operating system, not a single element is common to all devices. The least expensive models, produced by iBuyPower and CyberPowerPC, feature 500GB HDDs and 8gb of RAM, but feature customisable CPUs and GPUs. Outside these models, variety only increases. RAM varies anywhere between 8GB and 16GB; GPUs are chosen from both Nvidia and AMD in both single and dual configuration and vary from the GCN series to the TITAN; storage is represented by traditional and solid-state hard drives, and sometimes both; even the CPUs show a mixture of both i5 and i7 components. Even though the specs of some devices are dominated by TBD labels or consist of little but case images, it certainly seems as though Valve will fulfil its claim of a machine suitable for any gamer. If you're a PC gamer, are the devices enough to tempt you away from custom building? If you're a console gamer, with the current generation still in its early stages has Valve tempted you enough to consider a move to PC? Let us know in the comments! Source: Steampowered.com View full article

While at least the first few podcasts will be staff-specific, we may well start opening up guest participant spots sometime in the future

I think for me it would probably be Assault on the Control Room on Halo: CE. Lots of enemy vehicles, very numerous high-ranking enemies, narrow pathways occupied by very strong troops, limited Marine support, low ammunition, rare healthpacks, instant-death falls and even Banshees scripted to fight rather than patrol, it was just incredibly long. Everyone remember how much time it took to complete the Library, but nobody seems to recall just how much time needed to be put into capturing the Control Room in the first place.

With the last of the turkey sandwiches eaten and the trees stripped of their baubles, 2014 is most definitely upon us. But to help allay the stresses of returning to work or school, why not participate in one of the year's inaugural Community Events? To celebrate all things new, this month we'll be holding not one, but TWO Community Events, as well as the highly-anticipated return of some of our forum's most popular features! During this period we'll be unveiling some new staff members, carrying out a restructuring of the forums, and reintroducing both interviews with prominent members of the community and Weekly Wrap-Ups, the latter of which will be augmented with a new Monthly Mega Wrap-Up. We'll also be reviewing and updating both the rules on shout and post content and the general site rules: we'll be announcing the results of this review in the Shoutbox's link bar toward the end of the month, so you'll have a chance to familiarise yourselves with any changes. The first announcement marks the official re-launch of our social media outlets. From now on, we'll be bringing you highlight videos from all of our in-game Community Events, and even featuring occasional showmatches between staff members of your choosing with commentary from all participants on our YouTube channel, as well as providing a daily dose of news, discussions and videos on our Facebook page. If you haven't already subscribed to either, now is the perfect time to do so - not only will you be able to find our newest content as soon as it arrives, but you'll also get an awesome award showing your support here on the forums for each page! We're also opening up the chance for members to make their own mark on both of these pages in our first Community Event of the year: Drawn By Fate. Rather than simply restrict the opportunity to our own artists, we've decided to open up the creation of our cover photos for both Facebook and YouTube to all of our members. If you've ever wanted to see your artwork adorning an official branch of the forums, this is your chance - simply create a 851x315 image to do with any aspect of the Halo universe, and post it to the official submission thread, which will run from Wednesday the 22nd of January at 12am EST to Tuesday the 28th of January at 11:59pm EST. The winners will be announced on Friday the 31st of January at 12pm EST, and in addition to your work heading our Facebook and YouTube pages, you'll also receive a unique award to show off your art calibre on the forums. January also marks the return of the official 343 Industries Community Forum podcast, in which we'll be devoting a portion of time to answering YOUR questions - so if you've ever wanted to ask exactly what the staff do on the site, which games we're most excited about for the coming generation, or just how to beat GSD in Halo (we won't answer this: there is no answer) then feel free to post your questions in this thread and there's a good chance they'll be discussed on the podcast! Finally, in the spirit of embracing the new and shiny the last of these is dedicated to the Halo series' newest gametype in the All-Day Ricochet Community Event. This event will take place on Halo 4 on Saturday the 25th of January at 12pm EST, and will require the FREE Forge World DLC. We'll be opening a sign-up thread closer to that date, but until then keep your diaries open!

While I can sympathise with having to put up with bad teammates, especially in light of Reach's ridiculous quit-ban system, there isn't really anything that can be done here: the best thing you can do in these situations is to add negative feedback to the relevant players so that you're less likely to be matched with them in the future, and if possible try to party up with other players either from your friends list or from those who you've enjoyed playing with during matchmaking. Also please note that while it's okay to complain about a bad game, we do not allow threads which are based on directly attacking other players, regardless of their behaviour: as a result, all references to the gamertags of the relevant teammates have been removed. In the meantime, I wish you the best of luck in finding better teammates in the future!

Hmm. Noble Six?

So you're suggesting that we get active notifications when we unlock armour pieces in-game, rather than just having a 'New!' icon appear when we visit the armoury after we unlock it? This is actually a very good idea, perhaps as with achievements there could be a little bar which appears as you make progress toward it, showing how much further you have to go? That said, I'm not particularly fond of the idea of using credits and ranks to unlock armour, as it seems like it would open the door for microtransactions and those are something I don't ever want to see in Halo. Instead I'd far rather see a system where armour is unlocked based on certain actions within the game - you finish the campaign on Legendary so you get classic Spartan armour, you shoot down a hundred enemy air vehicles while piloting an air vehicle yourself and so unlock pilot-themed armour, you kill two thousand enemy Spartans with headshots and unlock scout armour, you get two thousand kills with melees and unlock CQC armour, etc.

Put it on sale. In seriousness, while I know I'm in the minority I actually really liked Halo 4. There's no denying that it was deeply flawed in places, especially prior to the weapon tuning update (DMR and Boltshot, anyone?) but overall I was very happy with it, and I think it's a strong enough game that I'd consider the next Halo an automatic buy. I think the only real obstacle would be the Xbox One itself, because at the moment it's still just too far out of my price range.

I suppose for me the weirdest part is the suddenness of the translations. Cortana isn't in Chief's head for the first part of Cairo station, and yet we can understand the Covenant boarders' speech perfectly: yet on Delta Halo, Chief actually has to ask Cortana to translate the Prophet's sermon - and there's no delay or anything, she just snaps her fingers and it's done. This does support the idea that Chief has some sort of translator software in his suit, as it can't translate San 'Shyuum speech because it's never encountered it before, while Cortana, having had previous contact with the Covenant, can. Assuming Cortana keeps updating Chief's translation software as they go, it also explains why even when she's not in his head during Halo 3, the Chief can still understand the Brutes and Prophets. But that's where it starts to get awkward. Cortana only provides translation for the Grunts during the events of Halo: CE, and if she can so easily translate what the Prophets are saying in Halo 2, why not do the same for the Elites on the Pillar of Autumn and Halo? Cortana doesn't get any canonical upgrades between games, so it's not like she's acquired any new linguistic abilities that way, and we already know that she's more capable of translation than the Mjolnir software. That said, I think Halo 4 has a potential answer. Cortana mentions that she rewrote the Mjolnir armour's firmware while the Chief was in stasis, and the fact that we suddenly can't understand what the Covenant are saying is actually brilliantly clever, as it's an early clue even before the first of Cortana's vision distortions that something is wrong with her, because not only has she completely broken the translation software which only got better and better over the course of three games, but isn't even capable of translating on her own anymore.

I do hope this ends up being a question of difficulty rather than gating off content based on player size. People should only ever be penalised because of their skills, and never because they don't want to work with others, especially in a full-priced game.