This is the kind of balance that no other dev seems to understand these days, awesome news indeed!Free For All :)

Awesome news.

Pretty cool :)

I hope they add a lot of custom options. They did it a little in Halo 3 but everyone still ended up relatively the same

Yeah, but I don't like free for all game modes much at all. I'm so much more a team player. Free for all's just feel too random and hectic for my tastes.

I like it, i like it allot.

Bungie weekly up date, Investment System questions answered.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topne...

Insane!

Dev's must cry when Bungie raise the bar yet again, when they have yet to catch up to even Halo3 Online offerings.

http://www.nobleactual.com/More at the link.

http://downloads.bungie.net/presentations/Grieseme...

A GDC presentation on Halo's sniper rifle. It's not about Reach, but I've been finding it quite interesting.

cool stuff.

Some cool info from the latest Bungie podcast:http://themindchannel.blogspot.com/2010/03/brand-n...

I'm loving what I'm hearing about the frag grenades being much more powerful and destructive.

New Vidoc they say? By very soon, I hope they mean this week :D

Okay, okay, I already know when they vidoc is coming out :)

Do you? When?

The last vidoc was great... something about heroism and tragedy.

By I know when, I'm just making an educated guess that it'll be before the 9th of next month.

Based on my educated guess of how Bungie usually does things, it will be released on Thursday, April 8th. If there is a delay of some kind, which I don't expect there will be, it will be out on April 12th, which is a Monday.

I suspect I'll end up right :)

Reading through the changes the first time I was kinda worried. I mean slower speed and 5 headshots for the DMR and Magnum just sounds wrong. But then again they say the player encounters are supposed to last longer so I guess the AR isn't as powerful in CQC as it used to be in Halo 3.

Slower speeds will put more emphasis on the armour abilities. I still don't know if I like it, the implementation of it has to be really good to convince me. The Beta will answer the questions hopefully. I've sunken a lot of hours (1,5 k games, level 49) into Halo 3 but I won't do the same with Reach if the gameplay doesn't turn out to be better than Halo 3s.

In the podcast, they mention the player speed had to be decreased slightly because the Spartans are shorter than the Chief. If they kept the movement speed the same while being shorter, it would appear that you are moving more quickly. Listening to the podcast and their reasoning behind certain changes really alleviates any potential worry. They are a thoughtful group, and I have the utmost faith in their ability to bring us an awesome MP mode.

I like that it takes the DMR so many shots to get the job done, it actually makes the fact that you possess a high tech shield that much more believable, if you ask me.

Shields should actually mean something more than just a minor nuisance on the way towards killing the person you're aiming it. They should be effective

Add to that the fact that shields actually take even longer to regenerate than in Halo 3 and that Health also slowly regenerates in thresholds, it really gives off the impression that the shield is a game changer of sorts that, once you lose, you really have to suffer the consequences of greater vulnerability until it recharges again. It seems that this Halo game, even more so than the others, will seek to make the shield a bigger deal than it has been in the past, which should have immediate and very positive impacts on the overall gameplay in SP. Potentially even more exciting combat and shootouts against elites, who have stronger shields and more health than Spartans? I'm most certainly excited by that prospect, I most certainly am.


If there were one broad impression that I've been getting of this game gameplay wise, it's that they are really out to make an effort to ensure that each of the things that are in this game are more immediately impactful on the overall experience than they have been in previous games. One example of this is, as opposed to going for all the various nades that were in Halo 3, they've shortened the amount to just the two original frag and plasma grenades, but have gone a ways to making very big improvements to them. The frag has been stated as being akin to a power weapon of sorts now, it's much more devastating with a larger blast radius.

I even love how aim assist is on a per weapon basis now. They're really going all out. The slower run speed than the chief, the shortened jumped heights, the expanded fov, the shield and health regen system along with the return of health packs and the new armor abilities -- I think it's all going to lead to a better gameplay experience.

The speed info is strange because after watching the vidoc and MP beta videos, the action and movement seems quite a bit faster than Halo 3. Anyway, theres lots of good news there but i'm mainly glad that the Pistol finally looks to be powerful enough to use as a main weapon, this is something i've wanted post Halo:CEMaking encounters last longer by weakening gun damage discourages camping, which can only be a good thing.

There's a saying Acert: You can run, but you can't hide. Sure, someone can try to duck behind a piece of cover and try to gather themselves, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're safe. I think it's balanced out by the fact that the shield recharge takes longer than Halo 3, movement speed is slower than in Halo 3 -- not counting the sprint ability -- which should help towards making it a bit more difficult to just run and escape that extra hit.

All that's truly required is a minor -- very minor -- tactical adjustment on the player's part. It's enough of a change to be noted, but not enough of a change to too drastically rock the boat.

I may not know much about Halo MP, but I I have a very good understanding of competitive play at its highest level through my experience with Counter-Strike, and I think these changes will be better for the game in the long run. I basically look at it in the same way as I look at the changes made to CS through the betas, 1.3 to 1.5, or from 1.5 to 1.6 and when the AWP delay was first introduced, to the anger of many. There was the much needed money system fixes, there was the fact that from 1.3 to 1.6 the game became slower, bunny hopping became far more difficult. Many first greeted the gameplay changes kicking and screaming, and just as many have now come to accept them as having been in the best interest of the game. Even bullet spreads were toyed with some in 1.6, not sure how many noticed. Many yelled at the top of their lungs for years about how 1.3 needed to be brought back, and once it was through various leagues, it turned out that it didn't age quite as well as some had hoped or the gameplay wasn't as impressive as some had remembered, and as a result of that little experiment, many had a front row seat to observe and take notice of just how much the changes to 1.6 had improved and advanced the game forward. I still remember how many flipped about the changes to the Desert Eagle, and the lack of accuracy compared to previous versions of CS while the player was jumping.

I'm not saying what is already present in Halo 3 is necessarily showing it's age, but I foresee many liking the changes more than they think. I've gone through similar concerns, exactly like a lot of the concerns some now have regarding changes to Halo's gameplay, because Bungie's gameplay change list, some of the more controversial ones like the sniper delay, seem to vibe fairly well with changes made to Counter-Strike (not including the terrible source)

And with regards to antialiasing, I don't know what will change come the retail, but from the gameplay I saw in the Vidoc, the game looks far better in the aliasing department than Halo 3 ever did, that's for sure. The bits of cutscene footage we saw in the vidoc as well was light years superior to the stuff seen in Halo 3, of course in ways not just limited to the aliasing. Even the pan of the environment as they talked about higher fidelity models looked really nice.

I suspect the game aliasing wise may end up being a non-issue on the whole, while also not being entirely free of aliasing.

That's exactly what I thought after watching the Reach videos as well.

I thought the same as well. Just goes to show how a lot of things, unless specifically stated by Bungie, may not actually be noticed.

I've just watched them again and its definately faster :sAlso, its a big part of the formula that makes a kill in Halo games so much more satisfying than other FPS MP games. In Halo you really have to work hard for a kill, an encounter/batlle for just one kill between 2 skilled players can last a long time.