RedStarRocket91

Well that assumes that K/D is any kind of measurement of skill, which ignores quite literally every game mode in the game except from one and even then disregards players who prefer to support a team with weapons like Plasma Pistols and Frag Grenades rather than going for kills themselves. I've seen players with K/Ds of more than 4 who were absolutely terrible because all they did was spend the whole game camping and trying to get kills rather than going for objectives. More importantly, a K/D of 1 is average, simple as that. Basic laws of mathematics insist that it's always easier to be going toward a K/D of one than it is to be going away from it. And more importantly, there are something like two million players who've been involved in War Games at some point, discounting Guests and duplicate accounts. Are you seriously suggesting a random xsample of less than a thousand on a self-styled hardcore closed community is representative of Halo players as a whole?

The problem with adding Forged maps is that a lot of them can have game-breaking bugs or unintended exploits that can be exploited in game, which just aren't very easy to detect: look at Settler, for example. This is a map which was Forged by 343 themselves, and even then had the infamous respawn death issue. The other things is that while Reach undeniably did have a very large pool of Forge maps, a lot of them simply weren't very good: 'The Cage' was so broken it had to have a major overhaul to its structure within months, 'Paradiso' was completely one-sided as soon as one team took the hill, and even 'Pinnacle', which was nothing less than a remake of a pre-existing and very popular map, suffered from major balance issues: and these are maps which were made and shipped by the Bungie team themselves! As for a remake of 'Hemmorhage'... 'Hemmorhage' had a great deal of problems stemming from the fact that in addition to not quite being either a 'Blood Gulch' or 'Coagulation', its just didn't account for the weapon sandbox, which is probably a big part of the reason why it's not in Halo 4. Long open sightlines with hills forming most of the cover and occasional clumps of rocks worked fine when there wasn't that much elevation at the sides of the canyon and the main rifles were fairly medium-range, but introducing the DMR and raising the height of the canyon sides completely broke that. Halo 4 also features the Lightrifle, which is even more devastating at long range than the DMR. Put simply, it's not a map design that's going to work anymore. Perhaps for a 'Classic' playlist or something where there are restrictions on the rifles and with bigger hills and less height around the edges of the map, but with things being as they are it just wouldn't be fun or balanced to play. And that's before we even come to the simply question of quality. I've played some absolutely amazing maps in Halo 4: I've also played some absolute garbage. And while it's obvious that some maps are bad or broken straight away, for others it only becomes apparent after very extensive playtesting, which takes time. How many matches need to be played on a map in order to make sure it's balanced? Five? Ten? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? Even with a team working around the clock, it could take two or three days' worth of time to make absolutely sure a map doesn't have any serious problems, let alone that it's of Matchmaking quality. Now imagine that there's two thousand maps to go through and you can start to see the sheer amount of raw time needed to make sure we're getting only good, working maps into Matchmaking. And there really isn't any point adding maps just to bulk out variety if those maps aren't any good. As for the DLC-only playlist idea... it's been tried before, but they tend to have extremely low populations. People tend to be more concerned with what game mode they're playing than with what maps they're on, and fixed DLC playlists generally only offer DLC maps and random gametypes. If Halo 4 had a bigger population, there might be some merit to making certain playlists DLC-mandatory: but as is, there are so few players on at any time that we can't afford to start dividing up the numbers even further. If someone's favourite playlist suddenly demands an extra $20 of purchases and 5gb or hard disc space to play, it's just as likely that they'll put Halo 4 back in its box and start playing something else as it is they'll actually just pay up. If it were more popular, I'd love to see playlists start demanding DLC. But as it is, I think it would actually make finding a good match even harder than it is now, and that's a really bad idea.

Provided you complete the campaign on Legendary whilst connected to Xbox LIVE, you'll unlock the full set of Mark VI armour from Halo 3 to use as armour for your multiplayer character.

The absolute biggest problem you're going to have with the direction 343 are taking at the moment is whether or not what you've written fits within the established canon: at the moment they're trying to make sure that all Halo media fits together and ties in to the story without any conflicts, so if there's anything which happens in your work - at all - which doesn't fit with something that's already been established in another book, graphic novel, film or game, unfortunately that's going to result in immediate rejection. But if what you've written does happen to fit perfectly with everything else, then you've got a better chance. The first thing you could do is try sending your work to various staff at 343. If you can afford it, physically print the thing out along with all of your notes, because an enormous pile of paper landing on a desk is much harder to ignore than an email with a couple of sentences and a few attached files; at the very least they'll have to open the package up, and recognise that they've been sent something. Stick a quick note on it with your email address and a request to either give it a quick read or hand it over to someone relevant, and that's probably the best chance you'll have of getting it read. Sadly I don't really know who would be the best people to send your work to: unfortunately the people most involved with the story and production side of Halo are the ones least likely to actually have the spare time to read through 900 pages' worth of fiction. That said, you could always try getting in touch with their legal department and ask them if they'd be willing to license the rights to Halo to you: at the very least that way someone would have to read your work to evaluate it, and even if they refused to license it, they might be able to tell you whether it's or not it's actually worthy of publishing. If it is, then they may be able to pass it on to someone in the franchise team who otherwise wouldn't take the time to read it, who could get in contact and tell you whether or not they'd be willing to use it. I hope this helps: best of luck on getting your work published!

This is perfect! Every time you kill a camper you're not only showing them how cheap their tactics are, but potentially depriving them of an Achievement too

I really, really don't like using the word 'noobs' to describe players of low skill. There's nothing wrong with being new to a game, the Halo fandom's obsessive hatred towards anyone who hasn't been playing since the second bloody instalment is a big part of why we're getting so few new players these days. It's entirely possible to have played two matches and be really good. It's also possible to, like me, have played something like four thousand games and still be terrible. Provided someone isn't being arrogant and abusive, who cares who long they've been playing the game? As for aim assist: it doesn't feel nearly so bad since the title update, at least with the automatics, though I agree it was far too high before. I'd like to see it reduced a tad more on the more powerful weapons (Battle Rifle and DMR) though it's pretty good where it is on the other loadout weapons, and it could only improve things if it were completely stripped from the sniper weapons. But other than that, it doesn't really bother me too much.

It really wouldn't be very hard to code. Since the sprint bar depletes, it has to have a maximum and minimum value: they could simply alter the code for the new gametypes so that the maximum is set to zero, or that starting level is set to zero and regeneration is shut off. Definitely not difficult to code: more likely, they've left it in because the maps are quite large and regular 110% movement speed still isn't high enough to make traversing them without sprinting fast enough.

If you're playing with the same account on both of your Xboxes, it really should be working: as far as I know it's supposed to be that while anyone can access content on the console where the license was bought, only the account that actually owns the license can play it on another console, which should mean that you can access it on any Xbox you want, unless someone else on your console put the code in. If the code was definitely put in on your account, try uninstalling and then redownloading it, which might update the licenses - if that doesn't work, you'll need to contact Xbox Support directly.

No, you'll need to purchase it regardless of whether or not you already have the map pass. However, you can buy pieces of the bundle individually, so if all you want is the maps without the armour or weapon skins, then you can get purchase the maps by themselves for a slightly lower price.

As far as I know you shouldn't have been able to attach your gamertag to anything other than a Microsoft e-mail account in the first place, so if you did somehow connect it to a Yahoo! account, that's probably the root of the problem. Alternatively it could just be that all you had to do was register your gamertag and the email that was sent out was merely a confirmation email, so you're already registered anyway.

Well, the Forerunners have the ability to generate Hardlight Shields which have a physical form instead of just being composed of holographic light like regular human technology, so perhaps it's the same with Cortana's 'bodies'. They do emerge from the light bridge, after all, and that's perfectly solid.

UK versus US, obviously! Though it may be worth changing that to US versus Rest of World in order to make the teams a little better balanced As for the game... I leave that to everyone else to decide!

Basically modding of any type is a bannable offence: because you'd be modding something that's technically connected to online play, that would probably translate into a permanent ban for your account, as any kind of online mods are considered cheating, even if they don't actually have any effect on gameplay. More importantly, the Mark VI armour is something of a status symbol for most players: it shows that they've had the skill necessary to beat the campaign and they want to show off how good they are. If 343i were to allow people to just pick up whatever appearance they wanted, it would kind of take way that sense of achievement for a lot of the players who've worked really hard to earn their armour. And if they'd really wanted us to have all that armour available whenever we wanted it, we'd be able to use it whenever we wanted it. If you really want the Mark VI armour but are struggling with Legendary, try posting a invite in the Game Invitations forum. As far as I can remember it's possible to earn it by playing co-op, and I'm sure there would be others willing to help you.

Are you seriously suggesting that someone who paid $60 for a game shouldn't be allowed to play it online just because they don't want to spend an extra $30 on DLC? That's absolutely ridiculous. They have ALREADY paid for the right to play online, and if they don't want to pay for extra content that's their decision and nobody has any right to take away the base online experience from them, because they've already played it. Does it suck when you pay for DLC and can't get any matches on your new maps? Of course it does! But if you play often enough you'll definitely start seeing more of the DLC maps appearing. try playing with friends who also have all of the DLC and you'll see an immediate increase in the new maps you can play. Only in the Social playlists. DLC has never been required to play in the Competitive playlists in Halo 3, and the population was big enough to guarantee that you could get into DLC games in just about any of the social playlists if you wanted them. It also didn't hurt that they handed out free map packs with the ODST disc.

And exactly why would it be awful?

Perhaps it's because Chief is using an older version of the Mjolnir system compared to the Spartan IVs? It could be that, while Chief's armour does have thrusters, without picking up the Armour Ability's hardware module, they're only calibrated to work in zero-gravity and need the external module to override their safety limits. or perhaps it's a fuel container of some sort? The Mjolnir armour might not have its own fuel supply for the thrusters, and so the Armour Ability is actually just a heavily armoured petrol tank, rather than an actual piece of hardware.

It's always great to see someone come back!

I stand by citing Call of Duty in this circumstance, though I'm not going to dispute that dynamic maps have been around for a very long time. I chose the newest Call of Duty as an example for two main reasons: the first, because it's representative of the current trend toward dynamic maps, which is what I was focusing on rather than the history of maps as a whole: the second, because it was one of the game's big selling points, and was probably the first game featuring this kind of thing for many people. It's an accurate citation and one that most modern gamers will be familiar with it, so I don't really see the problem. I should also clear up the second paragraph, because it wasn't very well written I actually don't really have any problems with very big lobbies, provided the game is coded well enough to cope with them. If a game is built well enough that one match can have a hundred people while keeping lag at acceptable levels on the average home connection, then I'd be perfectly happy to see that many people playing together. The issue with Halo in particular however is that, to my understanding, there hasn't been a major overhaul to the netcode since the days of Halo 2, which is why compared to more recent franchises the newer instalments of the Halo series have such horrible levels of lag: essentially, we're trying to run a modern game on a system built for the world as it existed a decade ago, and that system just isn't adequate anymore. I know for a fact that netcode can be written to accomodate AI without destroying everyone's connections - look at Horde mode in the Gears of War series, which is the prime example - and yet we're still in the situation with Halo that even people with decent connections can suffer lag bad enough to make games unplayable once more than two or three AI units show up. Even with 8v8 games, the game can sometimes struggle. So yeah, while I'd be very happy to see bigger lobbies and I know that it's entirely possible to make their lag acceptable, I'd far rather that Halo were to stick with fairly small lobbies than create really big matches where everyone goes back to the kind of lag we had in the late 90s.

The original post seems to have been updated, it actually says Monday June 3rd now, which is actually the correct day of the week :/ it also says that the weapon tuning 'will be' updated, rather than 'was' updated, so definitely looks like it's gone up late. I don't know what's going on at Microsoft lately, their whole infrastructure seems to be in chaos.

Do you have a link to the original post? It's very strange that they'd be holding a playdate a whole month after the weapon tuning update, and it would make sense that they'd be trying to advertise that.

I think it's something to do with the actual party system itself: the only times I've ever had serious problems with lag on an otherwise strong connection connection have been when either I or someone else in the game have been in a party. Unfortunately, while it's not likely that you're a victim of cheating, there's not really very much you can do about this, other than trying to ensure that your connection is as strong as possible.