Halo MCC/Infinite/general Griefing thread - Six months, two maps, no refunds

[HeyYou]

Actually, looking over the challenge requirements again, I'm not so sure I can successfully try this since the wording for the challenge suggests that it requires a 4-person team to meet the criteria. Whoops.

Ah. I didn't know it meant that you had to have 4 people, just that you had to play the correct FF classic mode that supports 4 people.

 

[King Dead]

I did a quick search, and someone on the Waypoint forum said that you can't cheese it by modifying settings. It has to be the base FF Classic gametype, four players, on Heroic or Legendary. Guess you gotta do it legit. On the bright side, at least you can do the other seasonal challenges for the helmet-on variants which are considerably easier.

I powered through the ODST campaign last night. Kinda forgot how short it was, and it wasn't terribly difficult even on Legendary. I had a few spots that I died repeatedly on, but most of the campaign was a breeze. A nice little side story with unique mechanics and some sweet nighttime saxophone.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I did a quick search, and someone on the Waypoint forum said that you can't cheese it by modifying settings. It has to be the base FF Classic gametype, four players, on Heroic or Legendary. Guess you gotta do it legit. On the bright side, at least you can do the other seasonal challenges for the helmet-on variants which are considerably easier.

I powered through the ODST campaign last night. Kinda forgot how short it was, and it wasn't terribly difficult even on Legendary. I had a few spots that I died repeatedly on, but most of the campaign was a breeze. A nice little side story with unique mechanics and some sweet nighttime saxophone.

The ODST soundtracks with Jazz are so good you can have sex with them in the background, and it'd fit like a glove. Couple that with tight, fast gameplay, and you've got yourself a treat worthy of the Forerunners.

 

[King Dead]

New MCC dev update:

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - MCC Development Update - September 2020

Join us for our latest MCC Development Update for a closer look at what you can expect with Halo 4 and our next Insider flight, updates on new content and features on the horizon, and the latest status of key community feedback items. Buckle up and prepare to drop!

www.halowaypoint.com

Spoiler: bulletpoint version

• Brief celebratory mention of ODST being available on PC, as well as ODST Firefight on all platforms and the start of season 3.
• Dev discussion begins with talk about adding more things to Halo 3 beyond the new skins this season, including vehicle skins and some redacted items that were previously unreleased. Possibly more armor permutations that didn't ship when Halo 3 launched?
• The Acrophobia skull's functionality has been ported to other engines, but it's not fully accessible yet. They're open to finishing it up in the future, as well as adding more skulls to ODST campaign and Firefight, including one that they didn't quite get finished before launch.
• New Reach unlocks coming in season 4 include unfinished items that Bungie didn't release back in the day like the GRD helmet, armor effects for Elites, and the robot arm for more chest pieces than those already included. Future customization items are being looked at down the road, including ways to show off your character in lobbies and menus pre- and post-match.
• For upcoming features, cross-play and input-based matchmaking are first, and they should launch with Halo 4's PC release. New text chat options are being added with Halo 4's launch; you'll be in the Squad channel by default, and can opt into Team and All channels. Regional server selection might make it in time for Halo 4, depending on how complete it is. Custom game browser's first stages will likely launch after Halo 4. They don't have a time table yet for when PC file share will be added.
• Lots of other things that they're looking into bringing in: new game modes, increased modding support, more customization options, animated nameplates, and porting the Halo Online maps. No promises here, but they're looking into all these things.
• Halo 4's Forge is getting the "Thorage" treatment, with various improvements to the Forge experience and the return of Trait Zone editing to 4's Forge. More objects will be added to the Forge canvas maps, pulled from campaign, Spartan Ops, and multiplayer. Forge budgets and object limits will also be increased on these maps. Items shown include Covenant sniper towers, Pelicans, and Phantoms. Each Forge canvas map will also get all the items from the other canvas maps, so you can have trees in space if you want.
• The reason why they've limited all these new items to just the Forge canvas maps (not just in 4 but also Reach, 3, and H2A) is because of how the game handles what items are included in each map. Right now, when items are added to a particular map, it gets baked into the map's cache file; adding all objects to all maps would drastically increase the install size of the game, up to several hundred gigabytes. They'd like to make improvements, but for now, these are being restricted to canvas maps to deliver the best return on investment.
• A couple more miscellaneous points: they're looking into porting the skins added later in Halo 4's lifetime, but that probably won't make it in time for launch. They're also looking at the ability to change teams in the pause menu so you can play classic Halo 2 Infection, or other games that require you to change teams manually.
• Halo 4 flighting is coming soon, planning to start sometime in October. It should include most of the game, though they're still ironing out what's going to be available.
• A reminder to join the Halo Insider program if you want to help test Halo 4 and any other future updates.
• Finally, a quick overview of the state of development for various specific features, a fair amount of which are currently in testing.

 

[Miller]

Just got my internet back so I can finally play ODST firefight.
I hope they will add matchmaking for co-op.

they're looking into porting the skins added later in Halo 4's lifetime, but that probably won't make it in time for launch.

I remember getting the steampunk skins for the UNSC weapons. I know that style has become overused but it really looks cool.

It's a shame that they can't do whatever they want with the different versions of Forge. I wonder what the team will do for Infinite. AI would be nice.

 

[Gravemind]

It's a shame that they can't do whatever they want with the different versions of Forge.

IIRC, 343 said they technically COULD, but to enable the resources needed to add anything to every Forge map regardless of map restrictions would significantly raise the file size of each map and, subsequently, the entirety of the MCC as a whole.

 

[Snekposter]

The issue with Halo is that quite literally everything is baked into the maps themselves. Instead of say, a single file that handles a rifle's stats, which is then read by the map... that's in the map data itself. Yes, its dumb as fuck, but that's how its been ever since the Halo: CE days.

 

[King Dead]

The issue with Halo is that quite literally everything is baked into the maps themselves. Instead of say, a single file that handles a rifle's stats, which is then read by the map... that's in the map data itself. Yes, its dumb as fuck, but that's how its been ever since the Halo: CE days.

It's the sort of thing that worked fine at the time, but cracks began to show as the games' complexity increased. And now that they're on consoles and PCs with significantly more power than the Xbox or 360, what should be a simple change to enable more functionality and take advantage of the better hardware involves reworking fundamental systems, taking considerably more time and budget to do so. But hey, that's gamedev for you.

Credit where credit's due, 343 has been doing a pretty good job with the PC release of MCC, and I appreciate their dedication to continuing to support the game with more features and content in the months to come. I've been thoroughly enjoying going back and playing games I haven't touched in almost a decade or more and having just as much fun as I did back then.

 

[Vault Boy]

The issue with Halo is that quite literally everything is baked into the maps themselves. Instead of say, a single file that handles a rifle's stats, which is then read by the map... that's in the map data itself. Yes, its dumb as fuck, but that's how its been ever since the Halo: CE days.

Let's hope that the Slipspace engine can rectify that quirk, that sounds like a waste of file space.

 

[Titos]

Let's hope that the Slipspace engine can rectify that quirk, that sounds like a waste of file space.

I would say it might but it's made by 343 so I wouldn't get my hopes up. It can't been much worse than the Halo engine they've been using though. Bungie is thoroughly retarded when it comes to making engines for some reason. If I remember right there was some report where the engine they made for Destiny takes like 8 hours to compile shit even if it's as simple of a change as moving a box a few inches.

 

[Tahoma]

the Blam! engine will outlive us all.

 

[King Dead]

I would say it might but it's made by 343 so I wouldn't get my hopes up. It can't been much worse than the Halo engine they've been using though. Bungie is thoroughly retarded when it comes to making engines for some reason. If I remember right there was some report where the engine they made for Destiny takes like 8 hours to compile shit even if it's as simple of a change as moving a box a few inches.

That was definitely true at the start of Destiny, though they've apparently made improvements since then, according to an AMA from a couple of Bungie engineers (they were specifically asked if Destiny would have its engine replaced at some point). There's some instances of code being used in Destiny today that had their origins all the way back in the early 90's in some form, so I guess it's mostly a case of building off of what they know instead of trying to replace things wholesale. Naturally, this can lead to issues when it comes to extending a game in a way it wasn't originally designed for, so 343's probably having a lot of fun finding out how many ways they can break the existing Halo games by adding new content.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

The issue with Halo is that quite literally everything is baked into the maps themselves. Instead of say, a single file that handles a rifle's stats, which is then read by the map... that's in the map data itself. Yes, its dumb as fuck, but that's how its been ever since the Halo: CE days.

For OG Xbox it made perfect sense, load the level with everything included from the DVD to the harddrive and go from there, no need to read from disc.

I don't think the first PC version of CE did that, it was one CD in size instead of the ~3GB(?) of the Xbox version. People said that the small size was a sign that the PC version was gimped, it didn't have everything, textures were smaller and so on when it appeares to be a change in file management. Never poked around in the PC version so maybe they still used the Bungie method.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

How many people here think that 343's handling of the Forerunners ruined the mystique of Halo?

To me, while there were some neat stuff done with the Forerunners under 343's tenure, it destroyed the mystery behind the Forerunners, and by extension, made the series more like every other sci-fi story. The overall mystique of Halo rested on these enigmatic aliens. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did the Flood invade them? What's their relation to humanity? Are they really our ancestors? Bungie wisely left these questions unanswered so that the fans would think up their own answers, and that left a certain mystique to the race whose tech was at the very heart of the story. Halo. A superweapon developed by a long-dead race that can annihilate all life in the galaxy with a switch. And these Forerunners who left them behind are just as mysterious as the weapons they constructed. There was religious imagery, themes, and allegories, which gave the series a sense of wonder and excitement, and the mystery of the Forerunners was at the center of it.

But now we know who they are. They look like the children of Voldemort from those Harry Potter books. They were your typical space fascists with a touch of tree-hugger ideology who were pissy that their makers favored humans over them, so they slaughtered their makers, the Precursors. The surviving Precursors, as a final "fuck you" to the creations they rejected, created the Flood as revenge, and the Flood proceeded to lay waste to the Forerunners' galaxy until Halo destroyed both sides.

Oh, and the humans weren't Forerunners, so all that guessing as to whether or not they were Forerunners was nothing, even though in the first Halo game, 343 Guilty Spark describes human history as "a record of all our lost time!"-meaning that the Forerunner and human species are somewhat related, and that the humans are the modern descendants of the Forerunners, down to the point where 343 Guilty Spark even tells Chief that "You are Forerunner" by the end of Halo 3. That truth had such consequences behind it that it is the reason why the Covenant leaders want humanity dead: the moment their people find out that living descendants of the Forerunners are among them, they lose all power, and they had to do everything in their power to stop that from happening. The fact that the lead Covenant prophet who wants the humans dead is named Truth, and he's lying to his people about the fact that they're killing the children of their gods, was a tragic irony that elevated Halo from a mere action series into a poetic tragedy.

But no, now the Prophet of Truth was actually telling the truth, the Forerunners hate the humans and fought them. We meet a Forerunner general in Halo 4, and they totally hated humans and killed them in battle. If the Prophet of Truth found out about that and revealed that to the general Covenant public, he would actually be, as his name suggests, a prophet telling the truth. Which is kinda hilarious, now that I think about it. The biggest liar in the entire series was actually telling the truth all along.

Now that the Forerunners are revealed, warts and all, they, and the mystique they exuded throughout the entire series, is lost. They're just your standard fascist pricks with environmentalist leanings, who didn't eat meat, which is ironically enough what Adolf Hitler was. For all their power and grace, they're just as petty as Cain was from the Bible, killing the Precursors because the latter favored the humans over them, and the mystery of the Flood? Gone too. It was just a final "FUCK YOU" move by the Precursors to the people who killed them. All the shit in this series started because the Forerunners were pissy idiots who killed their makers because their makers favored another creation. This whole saga was started because of the same petty jealousies that surround us in our daily lives. It's no different from any other soap opera story where people kill each other over narrow shit like jealousy and misunderstandings.

Halo as a series had so much potential, looking back at it now, but that potential has been thrown aside. What was once a mystery draped in religious leanings has now been secularized into a simple power struggle between a father and his two sons. The father favored one son, so the other son got jealous and killed his father, and as the father died, in his last moments, he unleashed a plague that wound up nearly killing both of his sons as a final curse against his killer.

I know there's plenty of people here who are fans of Greg Bear's Forerunner trilogy, I myself am a Halo 4 fan, but I'd be lying if I said that it was all OK. What they showed about the Forerunners, in my mind, is what the kids today would call "TMI"-too much information. Some mysteries are better left unsolved to give the story a sense of wonder, and just because you can solve a mystery or give an answer, doesn't mean that you should. I mean, heck, people demonize George Lucas to this day for making the Force into a blood power, saying that midichlorians destroyed the mystery of the Force. 343 Studios and their story-writers did something similar, destroying the mystery of the Forerunners by telling us everything about them and answering questions that best left unanswered.

 

[Snekposter]

Having finally beat the main Halo trilogy, you've hit the nail on the head with the plot issues in later games, I feel. I would have loved to have the sequels be about mankind recovering and rebuilding their Forerunner legacy a piece at a time. Hell, could also have Chief get woken up decades after going to sleep and no longer recognize mankind since they've recovered so much tech the whole aesthetic has started to change from the stark militarism he experienced to smooth, shiny Forerunner-ness. He's the biggest fish out of water there ever was, and everyone's trying to figure out how to give him a proper retirement that isn't a bullet to the head or just slapping him back on ice as a museum exhibit when a crisis happens and he has to get shit done the old fashioned way.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Having finally beat the main Halo trilogy, you've hit the nail on the head with the plot issues in later games, I feel. I would have loved to have the sequels be about mankind recovering and rebuilding their Forerunner legacy a piece at a time. Hell, could also have Chief get woken up decades after going to sleep and no longer recognize mankind since they've recovered so much tech the whole aesthetic has started to change from the stark militarism he experienced to smooth, shiny Forerunner-ness. He's the biggest fish out of water there ever was, and everyone's trying to figure out how to give him a proper retirement that isn't a bullet to the head or just slapping him back on ice as a museum exhibit when a crisis happens and he has to get shit done the old fashioned way.

Exactly. It could have been an interesting scenario where Chief finds modern humanity to be about as alien to him as the Covenant. But instead, we get new Forerunners who are just basically Covenant elites with teleportation powers and a leader who isn't nearly half as compelling as the Prophet of Truth, who gets caked in his first game and composed in a comic.

I'm going to write in my own story that the Ur-Didact and his people were bastardized Forerunners who were a cadet race and the humans are the descendants of the pure-born Forerunners. Oh, and the Precursors were human too; they were twisted into abominations because of something they did in the past, and they created other species in their pursuit of creating an heir, and they managed to make the Forerunners as their children, to be their successors and heirs. Then the bastardized Forerunners killed the Precursors, and one Precursor who was driven to madness then created the Flood.

 

[Endu]

The Halo 4 flight just released a couple days ago, with codes being given to everyone who set up an Insider profile. I played a little multiplayer and Spartan Ops before realizing why I stopped playing Halo 4 in the first place.
A friend and I have been playing through the releases with another friend who hasn't played any of the Halo games before, but I'm really not looking forward to seeing his reaction to 4. The Prometheans just aren't fun to fight (fuck those flying reviving faggots) and some story elements go directly against Bungie's story philosophy (directly showing the forerunners/giving Master Chief feelings).

Spoiler

I really fucking despise that last one. Master Chief was basically built to be a killing machine that displays a light semblance of humanity, and while the idea of taking Cortana away from him does sound like an interesting scenario, 343i tried to turn him into a fucking softie. Fuck Lasky for giving the buildup to the worst line I've ever heard in Halo ("She said that to me once, about being a machine.") I'm honestly only playing Halo 4 to farm all the achievements so I'm just going to grit my teeth and deal with it, but all the disappointment I had about the game when I was younger is slowly resurfacing.

 

[Miller]

I got 2 invites (Xbox and PC), I guess not enough people played the previous flights.

The Prometheans just aren't fun to fight (fuck those flying reviving faggots)

Perhaps it's easier to fight them now that we can use a keyboard and a mouse to aim at the weak points.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Guess where the F2P aspect is being recompensed? Better armor but NO control over coloration.

 

[Miller]

Guess where the F2P aspect is being recompensed? Better armor but NO control over coloration.

It would have been nice to have the option for the materials too. The multiplayer of Doom 2016 had a lot of options for the customization, it was made by the same company who used to make multiplayer content for Reach and Halo 4.