Halo: Reach Discussion

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Originally Posted by Pooky

I agree Armor Abilities aren't the root of the problem, but they are an extension of it. I've said before that the thing that really made Halo 1 combat evolved was how much individual power a given player had. Unlike any other FPS I can think of, in Halo 1 it's perfectly possible to take on and destroy an entire team of enemies plus vehicles with just a Pistol and some grenades. Successive Halo games broke this critical element of gameplay by (among other things) overbalancing weapons and abilities to the point where superior numbers will always triumph. Armor abilities frequently act to create unwinnable situations, where you have no chance of survival no matter what you do. In Halo 1, you always had a chance.

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I agree. to some degree
The way I see it, is that they keep injecting elements into the sandbox to make this exactly more challenging, but none the less I realized its what keeps me going. CoD is literally just point and shoot. Halo on the other hand requires you to think, and try to outsmart your opponent. Armor abilities play well into it, because regardless you can always still take down any fucker and the next that come along as long as you think it through well. I liked the armor abilities, because it just adds another way to do this, at the same time of challenging you further. Armor abilites dont create un winable situations, as long as you think 2 steps ahead, you can always beat the fucker and the next 2 coming along.

No you can't. You just came out of a firefight. Some douche comes barreling at you from around the corner and simply double (or single) melee kills you. How is that defensible? You can't explain that.
[/Bill O'Reilly]

By contrast, same situation in Halo 1: guy hits you, you recoil and throw a plasma grenade. Most likely you both die. At best you kill him and survive. At worst you miss the grenade and get killed or kill yourself.

It's not the armour abilities. It's the over powered melee, the melee lunge, the bloom (to a small degree, but not much), and the reticle magnetism. Also I swear that the hit boxes are bigger than Halo 1, but I have to see the files.

Well I was looking on Xbox.com and noticed the new Reach achievements on the compare achievements section.
What do you think of them?

Return to Sender -
Successfully return two flags in a matchmade CTF game.

Crackin' Skulls
Kill 3 players with the Oddball in a matchmade Oddball game.

Candy from a Baby
Capture two flags from an enemy capture zone in a matchmade Stockpile game.


So what do you think of these? There is only 3 (that i can find)
Any thoughts and ideas?

On Topic:

I think the biggest problem with Armor Abilities is how they are incorporated into the game. AA's should be pick up items on the map and treated as power weapons because that's exactly what they are in previous Halo's you would never start out with an Active Camo or Overshield you would fight for them and pick them up on the map, and they might only spawn 2-3 times over the course of an entire 4v4 Slayer game. They should not be constant abilities that you spawn with that you can use whenever you like.

At the very least the only AA's you should be able to spawn with should be movement AA's such as Sprint, Evade, and Jet Pack. You should be able to pick up the other AA's on the map and swap them out for your current AA.

In every other Halo game that is exactly how AA's would be treated, i don't see how Bungie made the jump from having an Active Camo on map that only spawns a few times during each match to being able to spawn with Active Camo and use it whenever you want, and to think people used to complain about how the BR was too powerful of a starting weapon and now Bungie spawns you with powerups like its no big deal.

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Originally Posted by Warsaw

It's not the armour abilities.

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Except armor lock. AL's really good at setting up unwinnable situations.

I want one abstract like the one where you DMR someone from halfway across the map. Like, an achievement for sniping from a mancannon would be legit.

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Originally Posted by Arteen

Except armor lock. AL's really good at setting up unwinnable situations.

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Yeah, I already covered that on the previous page. Bungie staff were on some kind of exotic drug when they came up with that one.

Another thing I noticed:

We all complain about BR/DMR spamming, but we didn't complain so much about the pistol in the first game. I think that's because while they all do the same thing, you can fight back in the first game and because the pistol also took some skill to use well. By contrast, the BR and DMR are piss easy to use because all you have to do is hold your sights at head level and spray away until 4 out of 12 shots hit....oh wait, they now give you 15 shots to achieve this in...great move, Bungie! The DMR was perfect in the beta, but they caved in to the MLG profag crowd.

What the big deal is is that the game is too easy to pick up. Games are games, yes, but when it's easy to pick up and go it gets aggravating when you know you have more practise but there's no return on it. As a result, the game loses players. Who wants to play a game where you get killed by the new guy every two seconds through no fault in execution of your own? Who wants to play a game where the only way to win is to exploit the same system every single time? Like I said before, who needs guns? We have fists of fucking adamantium.

idk about the camo. its an interesting spin to have it as an armor ability because you cant run with it without becoming un-invisible, you cant hear anything, and it makes your radar completely useless whilst giving away your stealthy intentions to all the enemies around you. i have used that effect to my advantage before though too. in a game of infection on that ascension remake i helped a team mate sneak into the tower to take out a guy that was camping up there by hiding outside and keeping camo on so he couldnt read his motion tracker.

camo in this game is hardly comparable to camo in the past games. i cant tell you how many times some random asshole jumps through the air and blasts me out of nowhere with camo and a shotgun or rockets in halo 3. i love how even though most of the power weapons are on the map, you still have a choice of something decent to start with. that has always been a complaint while playing halo 2 and 3 for me. you spawn with such shitty weapons sometimes that all you can do is get killed by people with better weapons. at least now even if you just spawn with a pistol, you can have SOME form of defense (not to mention that the weapons dont all inherently suck like they did in halo 3. yes, im looking at you AR spawn. fuck you ar.)

See, in the first game, the AR was a great spawn weapon. The only one that inherently sucked was the Plasma Pistol, but the Plasma Pistol is now useless compared to what it used to be. I'm sorry, but if you want over charge bolts to be the only useful thing, then just make it shoot overcharges.

The Plasma Pistol is great for cqc. 3 shots take out an enemies shield.

i thought the plasma pistol was pretty good in halo 1, especially in campaign. you could fire it so fast. i dont think there was actually even a fire cap on it now that i think about it. in halo 2 it sucked for everything but charge shots, which homed like a bitch. in halo 3 it was such a piece of shit that if the charge didnt EMP vehicles i swear to god the gun wouldnt have even appeared in MP. now in reach theyve actually given it its balls back... or one of them at least. iv actually gotten a few kills with the primary fire. i know when i play as an elite in invasion, i drop my repeater before my plasma pistol. the firing cap is the only thing about it i dont like in reach, but it kind of needs to be there imo. no fire cap and its way overpowered.

im pretty sure a charge shot on a vehicle in halo 1 dropped the shields of everyone onboard too, making killing them with the pistol pretty easy.