RedStarRocket91

It shouldn't even be that hard to tune them to be balanced properly. Here's an example of how it could be done. The DMR should still be able to get 3 kills/clip. However, decrease the maximum firing rate so that it has slower kills times than the Battle Rifle and the Carbine, and set it so that aim assist only kicks in beyond a certain distance. Doesn't have to be far, just enough to stop people winning versus Assault Rifles at close distances. This means it works at a longer distance than the other weapons, but has to be used from those distances in order to guarantee a win. The Battle Rifle becomes a sort of newbie-friendly Carbine. Not terribly accurate, but it has a little more in the way of aim assist and the larger reticle means every shot is more likely to hit something. Its faster kill times let it beat the DMR if every shot hits (rewarding use at its effective range). The Carbine becomes a more 'pro' weapon. It has the fastest kill time of all, but has very little aim assist and suffers from worse recoil than the Battle Rifle. A good player can keep it on target much more easily, so provided every shot hits it beats the Battle Rifle (rewarding the fact that it's the hardest weapon to use) although its much more likely to miss outright than either of the other weapons. It's really not hard to balance these three. One only works at longer ranges, and the other two become low risk/low reward and high risk/high reward.

I'd quite like to see this, along with the ability to set different traits for individual loadouts and make those loadouts team-specific outside of Invasion games. It would also be good to allow players to spawn holding heavy weapons, as you'd be able to set up Team Fortress 2-style matches that way. Great idea, hope to see it included!

Wait, so the DMR has a much longer range than the Battle Rifle, kills more enemies per clip than the Battle Rifle, kills faster than the Battle Rifle, and presumably can just be spammed as fast as possible to get kills up close faster than the Battle Rifle? Plus, all three shots from the Battle Rifle are presumably less likely to hit than a single shot from the DMR... Guess I'll be going for a Carbine/DMR combo. Seriously, what's the point of having the Battle Rifle anymore?

Because chess is so widely recognised as being a powder-keg of racial hatred. Anyway, I'm not sure about this. On snowy maps, or laboratory-style maps with lots of white/off white areas, white team is going to have a massive advantage, especially if it's possible to customise visor colours. Black team gets the same bonus in very dark maps or poorly-lit areas. That's conferred not by skill, tactics, or knowledge of the maps, but simply by luck. Even in maps with equal parts bright and dark, there are still going to be individual areas where one team is going to get advantages over the other purely because they happened to spawn as the right colour. I suppose it's potentially interesting for asymmetric gametypes (think of the fun you could have with making zombies harder to see on dark maps or snowy maps in Infection games, or for an Assault game on a snowy map where the attacking team have to deal with well-hidden opponents while being unusually visible themselves) but for regular, symmetric games, I can only really see this causing problems.

Very possible - imagine how hard it would be getting all your mission instructions in Sangheili!

I'm not sure about that. Maybe Marines have some version of translation software as well - when the Elites are talking amongst themselves though (e.g. the discussion about how the Flood has evolved on the level 'Floodgate' on Halo 3) it wouldn't make sense for them to be speaking English, so something has to be translating for Chief.

I'm fairly sure I read in one of the novels that they're actually speaking their native language all the time, he only difference is the level of auto-translation software in the Chief's armour. Noble Six didn't have it so he couldn't understand anything, Chief's Mark V Mjolnir armour had a basic version, and his Mark VI had a more advanced version, hence why in CE he could only understand the Grunts but from then on he could also understand Elites and Brutes.

This particularly caught my eye - I'll be very interested to see if they do something different with player movement on this map. Imagine the possibilities of the thruster pack in a low-gravity setting!

I'm sure it can be done, after all they were able to get them to work on console at least as far back as the PS2. Maybe they could use the campaign Marine AI in the rare cases where BPR hit 0?

Two of the most popular topics of discussion concern how to deal with players quitting mid-game, and the inclusion of AI-controlled players or 'bots' in multiplayer in future editions of Halo. The latter is generally quite straightforward. Most people are quite receptive to the idea: it's not something which has to be included as part of a match (unlike, say, weapon balance or respawn rules) and provides more gameplay options, especially for those without Xbox Live Gold or those who have poor internet connections and thus can't participate in Matchmaking. The most common counter-argument to this is that it would require a lot of programming time and disc space to implement properly - too much, in fact, to be worth investing in something that isn't likely to be used very heavily. The first issue, meanwhile, is more complex. While nobody likes quitters, there just doesn't seem to be any effective way of dealing with them. Some players insist that the only way of ensuring people finish their games is increasingly draconian penalties for failing to do so, with temporary bans both on earning credits and playing games, loss of experience, or even 'sin bins' in which quitters are forced to play against other people who quit regularly. A lot of people don't like this idea, as it doesn't allow for real life getting in the way, unstable internet connections, or other personal issues. A second suggestion is a 'drop-in/out' system, whereby players can join a game already in progress provided there is an empty slot. This too has its issues, as it could lead to unbalanced teams, slow matchmaking times, or a reduction in the skill gap so that players shoehorned in would never be much better or worse than the other players in the game. So, I had an idea that could solve both of these problems. What if, when a player quit during a game in Matchmaking, they were replaced by a bot? The biggest issue with this is making sure the teams remain balanced. If a fantastic player quits and is replaced by a weak bot, then that might unbalance the game. Equally, if there are two teams of fairly weak players and one quits, only to be replaced by what is literally a killing machine, then the same problem occurs. What's needed is a system that ensures the new player fits right in, and just setting them automatically to 'Normal' or 'Legendary' difficulty or whatever clearly isn't going to work. Step forward, BPR. In Reach, every player has an associated BPR (Battle Proficiency Rating) out of 100. This, it seems, plays a big role in determining teams, which is why we so regularly see three Warrant Officers and a Recruit matched up against Two Generals, a Brigadier, and an Inheritor: based on credit rank alone, this match is clearly insane. However if one were to examine the BPRs of all players involved, they might discover that the teams were in fact roughly equal. So how does this apply to bots? Well, this is where we start having to use maths. It's Team Slayer, four on four. Red Team's players have BPRs of 65, 65, 50, and 30, giving Red Team a total BPR of 210. Blue Team's players are 70, 50, 50, and 40, giving them the same number of points. Altogether, there are 420 points of BPR in the game. Now, player one on Blue Team quits. Now there are 350 total BPR points in the game. The game has two options here: it could simply give the replacement bot a BPR of 70, keeping the teams perfectly balanced. However, this bot would have a pretty big advantage over two members of Red Team, which arguably leads to the 'killing machine' problem outlined earlier. An alternative solution would be to calculate the average BPR and equip it with that. In this case, there are seven remaining human players, meaning that the average BPR is 50. So while Blue Team is now actually slightly weaker than Red Team, overall the bot is much better balanced against the skill of the other players. This also allows the game to better adapt to changing game conditions. Let's assume players three and four from Red Team also quit. There are now five human players, with a total BPR of 270, giving an average BPR of 54. While the new bots replacing them will have a BPR of 54, the existing bot on Blue Team's BPR will also raise from 50 to 54. Though Blue Team now has a big advantage in total BPR, overall the human players are now facing bots much closer to their own skill level, making individual fights fairer. And how would BPR affect the behaviour of the bots? Well, health, damage, and movement speed would be identical. However, team coordination, weapon use, and power weapon deployment would all differ. A bot with a BPR of 30 might wildly spam the trigger at long range, run around by themselves, and ignore power weapons or use them poorly, while a bot with a BPR of 100 would fire their weapons at almost the perfect speed for their range of engagement (spamming up close, pacing at distance), actively seek out power weapons and use them effectively, and stick close to their teammates, coordinating fire on targets and making use of more appropriate weapon types, such as headshot-capable guns and plasma weapons when around teammates. I see this as a win for everyone. People have the option to play games with bots if they wish, and can customise them to be as hard or easy as they prefer; teams never need to worry about the disadvantages of having a man down or lacking targets when facing a single, incredibly strong opponent; and the skill gap does not need to be reduced in order to keep teams balanced due to the random skill level of players who join mid-game. Obviously, this would be incredibly reliant on accurately reflecting player skill levels through BPR (or whatever equivalent system is in place), but provided this could be done, I see it as a much better alternative to other forms of dealing with quitting and a lack of fun multiplayer for offline players. Feedback is much appreciated!

Not anymore, it isn't going to be in Halo 4. They're already getting that, and besides, this is something that doesn't affect gameplay at all unless you make a conscious choice to use it in a Custom Game setting. ...wait a second, idea. What if they set it so that in Multiplayer, if a player quits you get an AI bot to take their place? Its skill could be determined by the quitter's BPR, so that it performs at roughly the same level, keeping teams balanced.

I think what you're asking for here are 'bots', i.e. the same type of AI players you can fight in Black Ops or Gears of War or Star Wars Battlefront, right? This is something that's been asked for before, and while it's a very good idea, Twinreaper has suggested that it's something that probably couldn't be done within the Halo engine. Basically, you'd need to hard-code orders for the AI players into every individual map and this would mean they quickly became very predictable - you also wouldn't be able to adjust game settings at all, and it would create huge amounts of lag when those maps were played online as the code would still be present and active even if there weren't any AI players active, or so I understand. In short, it's a very good idea and something that I think pretty much everyone would like to see, but at least for Halo 4 it probably isn't going to happen.

Good choice! It's one of the best things I've read in the past few years, even if it took me nearly six months to finish!

Well, if you don't mind a lot of adult content, you can't really go wrong with the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin - definitely one of the best fantasy series out there today though be warned they're extremely long. If you're looking for something a little more lighthearted, you could always try Terry Pratchett's Discworld series or Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, which are both very funny and accessible. Lastly, I'd recommend Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, which is a lot better than the film adaptation.

Change the 'Leader Traits' waypoint setting so that it's 'Visible to All Players', remove all power weapons except Sniper Rifles and Grenade Launchers, and suddenly all of the problems go away. I'd like to see a 1v1 playlist, it would be a great deal of fun and if someone's pathetic enough to boost, what's the problem? They start getting matched against people who are far too good for them and get completely stuffed as a result!

Provided that the maps are well-designed and balanced, I'm completely indifferent as to whether they're made in Forge or via level geometry. They've said it's going to be all new maps, and so it's unlikely that there'll be any old maps remade in Forge, at least to begin with. I'm sure we'll see Forge remakes at the very least in the community, and if we get more community cartographers they'll make their way into a Matchmaking playlist eventually.

The Gears of War bosses always kind of irritated me, especially Myrra - they aren't necessarily difficult, they just have so much darn health! When a boss takes forever to kill even using the right strategy, that's usually indicative of bad design, and that's kind of the impression I got. That said, there were a few bosses that I really enjoyed - the Corpser in the first game and the Leviathan in the second were loads of fun, as they actually required you to play tactically and use a good strategy to win, rather than just needing loads of bullets. Kind of the same with Skorge, though I wasn't happy that you had to use a Lancer to fight him, particularly as it took away my Sniper Rifle in order to give me one. I like the fact that there were bosses at all, though. You don't even get them in a lot of modern games, and there is just something really satisfying about smashing something enormous apart.

Oh my Gods, YES! I also offer one of my own favourite piece of music, from a game that I think has a perfect soundtrack. http://youtu.be/ncmrdAX2lSg

I don't think there's any point in the Needle Rifle coming back, the Carbine is already filling that role and balancing it would just get messy. The Beam Rifle is something I'd like to see return - the Covenant really need an effective sniper weapon, something which actually can kill as quickly as the Sniper Rifle. While the Focus Rifle is easier to use, there's literally no way a good user can kill someone as fast as a good Sniper Rifle user - period. That's not good for competitive gameplay, though I suppose since Elites won't be returning that may not be as much of a problem anymore. Anyway, they should only bring one of them back, and I guess I'd prefer to see the Beam Rifle.

I know, it's insane! Just for comparison, I checked and it's possible to download an entire episode of Doctor Who, in HD, for about 0.5 gigabytes. How the heck can a simple ending DLC take up almost as much space as three hours of HD video!?

If you're playing an Xbox Live or System Link game and select a vanilla map like Powerhouse or a downloaded Forge World canvas like Uncaged or Synapse, then you'll be able to play just fine. However, if you try and play a DLC map like Tempest or Anchor 9, you'll get a warning message to let you know not all players in the lobby have the appropriate DLC - if you then start the game anyway, everyone who doesn't have it will get grouped into a new lobby. However, if you play a Local game, and your friends are signed into their gamertags on the same Xbox as you, then they'll be able to play on the new maps even if they haven't downloaded them.

So do you have a digital copy or an actual disc?

...did I read that right? 1.9 GIGABYTES for a few non-interactive cutscenes? I have entire games that are less than 2 gigabytes!