RedStarRocket91

There was a similar story a few years back, but with someone playing StarCraft rather than Diablo - they eventually just died in the chair, having played about 40 hours straight. I suppose there are worse ways to die, but it's still such a tragic waste.

Here's a solution. First two people to quit get instant half-hour bans, no exceptions. If something in real life is important enough to pull you away from the game, it's probably going to last more than half and hour, so that only hurts people who leave without a good reason. Anyone who quits after that gets away completely free: while we get a lot of stories of one or two man armies who singlehandedly come back from being 20 kills behind to win a game, that isn't what happens in most games and players should not have to suffer getting power weaponed to death twenty times just because their teammates suck. This would of course be dependant on fixing the banhammer so it can tell the difference between a voluntary disconnect and an involuntary disconnect. No-one should get punished because their connection fails.

You could memorise them. Most people use at most ten websites that require a password, and if you use them regularly it shouldn't be hard to recall what your passwords are. Or, write a new password down in a document in your email address for a few days after you've created a new account. If someone gets into your email you're in trouble anyway, so there's no additional harm.

On the subject of Uncaged, can you believe that was designed by the same guy who created Lockout? Seriously, the same person who's brilliant enough to make LOCKOUT also designed The Cage and Uncaged!

I'll probably go for either the Carbine or DMR, unless the Assault Rifle has a lot less bloom and kills a lot more quickly than it did in Reach, in which case I might well go for that on some maps. I won't be using the Battle Rifle, from what I've heard about kill times, accuracy and aim assist so far, it looks like it's going to be seriously underpowered.

They actually had quite a lot of variants on Sandbox in the Social playlists, and even on a few occasions in the Competitive ones. Social Big Team was absolutely full of Forge maps. Anyway, provided there's a good system in place that ensures we get more good, balanced maps like Synapse, MLG Nexus and Treasury, and less like Atom, Cliffhanger and Uncaged, I don't think there's a problem. New Forge maps, if they're well-designed, offer new experiences which keep matchmaking fresh and exciting and stop it getting too repetitive. Again, check our very own Map Room to see some examples of what the community can actually create - some of them aren't so good, some of them really deserve to be in Matchmaking.

I don't agree that all Forge maps are 'garbage'. Look at some of the MLG Forge maps - they're absolutely fantastic competitive spaces, and a great deal better than some of the geometrically-formed maps like 'Reflection' and 'Zealot', which I think most people will agree aren't very good. Sure, there are plenty of bad Forged maps. 'Uncaged' immediately springs to mind, as do 'Atom', 'Cliffhanger', 'Enclosed' and 'Think Twice'. But that is, simply, not the whole story. Take a map like 'Synapse', which is well balanced, caters to a range of playstyles, works well with either Slayer or Objective and with any number of players. It also looks a darn sight prettier than a lot of the non-Forged maps, and has far fewer exploits, glitches, and flow-breaking points to boot (Sword Base lift room, anyone?). It could also be that you're looking in the wrong places. We have a great Forge section on this very website, with some really clever user-created maps; you could start by having a look at 'Emerge' and 'Pillar of Donut', both of which are extremely well made and provide a fantastic competitive spaces. If a map is good enough to be included, it should be. Just because something is made in Forge shouldn't automatically disqualify it from being included in Matchmaking, especially if it provides a new or interesting experience. Matchmaking should be composed of the best maps available, not the ones with the least amount of Forge objects.

The whole point of it being exclusive to the Xbox is that it makes more money for them. If you ported it to PS3 sure, you'd get a few more sales there. But that means you get a fairly big bonus once every three years or so, whereas you lose customers to the PS3 who would otherwise all be playing their games on the Xbox. If you want to play Halo, you have to come to Microsoft, meaning you have to have an Xbox, meaning you'll probably buy your other games for the Xbox, meaning they make profit on all the games you buy, instead of just one.

I was actually joking. The point I was making is that if you don't physically hit the target, you shouldn't do damage - if a sticky grenade goes near the target but doesn't actually hit it, it shouldn't stick to them any more than a Sniper Rifle shot that misses the target should do damage. That said, I agree with you about stickies and bullets literally passing through opponents' bodies without connecting. The collision detection in Reach really isn't the best, and I hope it's improved for Halo 4. It's also why I get so frustrated with armour customisation: especially with bigger pieces, like the Grenadier chest or the Security shoulders, it can be very hard to tell whether you're actually aimed at an opponent's hitbox or just the visual noise attached to it.

I always thought I was the only one who'd noticed this. It's doubly odd because while I've had male Spartan arms from day one in every gametype, regardless of my Spartan's gender, if you go to parts of the campaign where you see your character's arms in first person during cutscenes (most notably at the start of Exodus) there are fully textured female first-person arm models for female Spartans, and regular arms for male Spartans. Quite clearly, they're both in the game. Most likely it's just a design oversight, though an admittedly irritating one.

I totally agree with the OP here. It sucks that when my Sniper Rifle almost hits an opponent, they don't take damage. What on Earth is going on there? 343 needs to fix it so that if you nearly hit something it still counts!

Motion tracker has always been bottom left, bottom right is score, clock, and weapon. As for Promethean Vision, Frankie has said he expects most players to stop using it once they learn to use the motion tracker, and even if you don't use it, if someone is crouching or whatever you're still going to know they're there, even though you have no vision, sound, or motion tracker dots to alert you. It's going to take a lot of the tactical stealth out of gameplay, and that's a shame. Though I like your optimism, these are important things to consider. Hit markers could have a VERY big effect on certain playstyles, and from what we've seen so far there are a few things to worry about. Either way, I do agree that it looks like it's going to be a great game - and welcome to the forums, by the way!

Perhaps it's because the Spartan IVs are still in training? Presumably they need the extra practice, whereas Chief is a hardened war vet and so it's more important for him to spend time frozen in order to stay young (and thus combat-capable for longer) than to go through simulated combat training. It could also be because the Spartan IVs are learning to work as a team, who presumably will have their own sets of missions to complete. Someone who isn't going to be a part of that team in real combat situations being involved in their training could mean they can't work as a group as well in real combat situations, as they'd be expecting a different person to be there, and might not be able to predict what the others are going to do - and thus respond accordingly - as accurately, raising the chances of them being killed or injured, and generally reducing effectiveness.

The problem is more than the player on the bottom left of the screen has their aim really badly obstructed, because that's where the killfeed appears. They can easily lose a good quarter of their vision, and that can really hinder the ability to play to full ability, which sucks even if the game is just for fun and laughs rather than serious competition.

Long as it only activates when the injured player is in the attacker's line of sight, I'm cool with it. Stealth is going to become so much harder if players know when they've hit you around corners and through walls, which is going to make gameplay a lot less tactical and interesting.

...how is he going to get that ice cream into his mouth!? OT: I quite like the new art style, going in a new direction worked for Gears of War 3 and I'm sure it'll pay off here, too.

Same basic idea, except lasting much longer and doing a lot less damage - maybe over the course of fifteen seconds or so it would knock out about half your Shields, and once you'd been hit there wouldn't be any way to get rid of the effect until it wore off by itself (so you couldn't just run away).

I think most of the problem is that the AI in Halo just isn't very good. A squad command feature could be very interesting and it would definitely open up new gameplay options (think how nice it would be to hand a Marine a Sniper Rifle and watch them actually use it beyond melee range, for instance!) but it would also add another layer of complexity that would first of all be very difficult to actually use in a heated firefight - and if your squad isn't capable of reacting to new combat situations, they'd probably get killed even quicker than they do at present. That also presents the issue of when the AI kicks back in - do they immediately do their own thing once they've moved to where you tell them to, do they stay there for an entire fight or move up to flank opponents or get a better shot, do they run away when being flanked or just stay put because that's where you told them to be? I can imagine getting very frustrated when my rocket launcher Marine runs forward to take out a Grunt when I want him on the flank to cover against vehicles and generally avoid damage, or when I suddenly discover I'm 50 feet in front of my team with no cover because they're following the orders I gave them at the start of the fight and then not moving up to support me. There's also the issue of how it would fit on a controller - is it done via the Pause menu, off the D-Pad, or is there a button to press which then alters existing controls and gives me a new, more in-depth control scheme to work with? Needless to say, that's a lot of extra complexity which could be mostly fixed simply by making their controlling AI more intelligent. The other thing is I'm not really sure it has a place in Halo, which is much more based around personal skill and run-and-gun combat than clever tactical manoeuvres and AI micromanagement. There's definitely nothing wrong with that type of game - how much poorer would the Rainbow Six, Mass Effect or Future Soldier games be without that ability to individually control squadmates? - but I just don't really see it fitting in with first-person combat. It's definitely an interesting idea though, and perhaps some basic commands could be included - I'm sure it should be possible to tell individual Marines to hang back or get forward without causing too much complexity. Left on the D-Pad for keeping down, right for supporting you closely, down for getting them to resume normal AI routines, perhaps? I just don't think it would work well with anything more complex than that, otherwise you spend more time worrying about whether your Marines have the right weapons and positioning than you do choosing which Grunt's life to ruin next.

I completely agree with you, actually. When the TU first came out, there were a lot of extremely angry posts from players who claimed that they weren't ever going to play again because now the Assault Rifle could actually beat the DMR and it wasn't fair because they shouldn't have to lose to 'noobs' who could get 'cheap' kills with it. This really bugged me for two reasons; firstly, that anyone could genuinely believe that a gun which has enough bullets to get three kills per clip, has a really powerful scope and a ton of aim assist is somehow not a 'noob' gun itself; and secondly, that people seemed genuinely irritated that the DMR was no longer a 'God Gun' that could win at any range. Precision weapons, by their nature, really should be losing to fully automatic weapons at close range, instead of being the best non-power weapons to use in every single situation. So yeah, I really hope that in Halo 4 the gameplay won't exclusively cater to the precision weapon crowd: every weapon should have a role that it can fill effectively, and there should be a clear balance in the general-purpose weaponry sets.

I'd like to see some new grenade types in Halo 4 - perhaps some sort of EMP grenade with a large blast radius, doing massive Shield damage but leaving the Health underneath completely untouched. Or a grenade which inhibits the armour abilities (or whatever the equivalent is) of anyone caught in the blast radius for a short duration afterwards. There could even be some sort of grenade which does low-level repeated damage to anyone caught in the blast radius for a few seconds afterwards, meaning it doesn't cause much harm directly but does prevent affected players' Shields from recharging. These could make for very interesting Objective games, where (for example) it would be possible to force players to stay out of the fight for twenty seconds or so because their Shields aren't coming back up, which in a way could be worse for their team than just being killed outright. Inhibiting armour abilities could also be worse than raw damage, as the affected playrs would be forced to stand and fight rather than just using their powers when things look bad.

I'd like to join - in terms of time on the site, I must be one of the oldest members still posting regularly!

This is something which has already been in every Halo game except in Halo 3. If you crouch at the right time just before hitting the ground, it can significantly reduce the amount of damage you take: as far as I'm aware, it's possible to survive falls from about one and a half times the normal kill threshold if done correctly. However if you crouch at the wrong time, your Spartan will actually take extra damage. You can still take serious damage or be killed outright even if you do it correctly, but it is a skill which can be learned and then used to improve your chances of surviving long falls. Some sort of crouch roll is an interesting concept, but kind of redundant.

I'm in the exact opposite position, I spend a lot more time using stealth than charging around the battlefield. It's even worse considering how bad Reach was at differentiating between a backstab and a full assassination, I can't tell you how many times I went for a quick one-tap kill and got a drawn-out execution or attempted the latter and just performed a punch to the spine. This system had better be a lot more accurate, or they'd better offer some other button layouts.

I don't like the idea of it working off some sort of persistant 'currency' that's earned between games. However, this could be a very interesting idea for Objective games if each team is given a set amount of currency at the start of each round - say $5. Perhaps it could cost $1 to build a turret for the defensive team, and another $1 to upgrade it to a slightly better turret, or whatever, while the attacking team can spend $1 to unlock a gate or $3 to upgrade a Mongoose to a Warthog or whatever. That keeps the teams balanced and makes the game a little more interesting, as the maps will vary just a little every time they're played, enhancing replay value. The idea of rewarding individual players for their efforts is also something interesting. If someone gets a killing spree, they get an extra $0.50 for the next round, or an extra $0.10 for a Sniper kill. So a team where one player gets a killing spree from five Sniper kills ends up with $6 to spend on the next round of a match instead. That's also an incentive not to camp, as you can only get bonuses by actually getting out into the map and taking part in the fighting. What it should not be is based on some sort of currency that exists outside of individual games. That rewards players who've put a lot of time into the game rather than those who are good at the game, or who have good individual talents. A team of people with huge amounts of experience but little in the way of actual ability would simply be able to build up impenetrable fortresses each game, while players who were extremely capable would struggle purely because they hadn't played as often.