Halo: Reach

[Steel5]

Re: Halo: Reach

Looks great. The RPGish currency and buying different armors is pretty cool. Hopefully they make it so you have to play for a long time to reach the max level and be able to buy all of the armors.

[Steel5]

Re: Halo: Reach

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU_032610

Rank - Rank as you knew it in Halo 3, is dead. The concept of Rank has been revamped and divorced entirely from Trueskill (more on that in a few paragraphs) and the concept of EXP (at both the Global and Playlist levels) has also been discarded.

In Halo: Reach, Rank is a global, cross-gameplay-mode-encompassing representation of the time you've spent in the game. So whether you're a Campaign-only guy, or a Matchmaking-only girl, or you swing both ways, you're going to be seeing that Rank advance as you keep playing.

Rank will increase over time as players earn more Credits. Credits are the lifeblood of the Player Investment system and they can be earned in all of Reach's gameplay modes, through a number of systems.

Finishing games and Winning Games in Matchmaking - For the purposes of the upcoming Public Beta, this is going to be a significant source of earning Credits. There are very clear constants in the ways that Credits are earned in Reach across game modes and at the heart of those constants is Time. In the long run, the majority of Credits will be earned from this bucket.
Commendations - Commendations are persistent, aggregating awards that will advance through gameplay. When players are progressing Commendations, they're going to be earning Credits - and when Commendations reach milestones, players will earn a bunch of additional Credits. Most importantly, Commendations serve as virtual scouting reports with information on what type of a player someone is, what weapons they use and what tricks they bring to the table. Commendations in matchmaking won't aggregate specific actions - like say, a Sniper Headshot - but instead, a Headshot. The Beta will have a small subset of Commendations at very limited levels of completion.
Challenges also contribute to Credit earn (among other things), but there's a question coming up about those later, so I'll save it.
Achievements - Spoilers! There will be Achievements in Reach and completing an Achievement will give you some small amount of Credits.
And more...

This new Rank has jack and squat to do with your Arena rating. The two are wholly unrelated and having an amazing Arena rating won't directly correlate to how many Credits you earn per hour, per day or per minute.

Indirectly, however, we fully anticipate an acceptable delta in Credit earn moment to moment between good players who win regularly against a guy whose never played Halo before.

Credits don't give access to better weapons. If we were going to use them to gate Playlist entry, it'd probably be akin to the newbie Hopper in Halo 3.

Done right, earning Credits won't alter the core gameplay at all - we don't want to incentivize behaviors in our sandbox that are at odds with our gameplay philosophies. We don't want to introduce rewards and awards for behaviors that disrupt other's playstyles.

The stuff you earn with Credits is purely cosmetic. You can use the right analog stick to move the camera's position so you can check out your gear from all the right angles.

A race implies a conclusion, by mapping Trueskill to Military Rank in Halo 3, we created a race that the vast majority of the population couldn't finish. It was fun seeing the number next to your name climb, and keep climbing - we recognize that. The unfun part, is when that number stops changing and players are mostly powerless to change it.

There are other measuring sticks in Halo: Reach - like the aforementioned Arena, with its Daily Ratings, Season models, resetting Leaderboards. Among other things, the Arena will introduce our competitive population to something they haven't really had before in Halo, the hope that "next month, I can do better."

While we're not including Challenges in the Public Beta, they are a suite of activities that will help keep the Reach experience fresh by offering new content every day, and targeted, challenging Content each week.

When players log into Reach each day, we want them to check out the Challenges menu and see if anything piques their interest. Challenges will arrive in a few different forms:


Daily Challenges:

Short-session tasks, analogous to Double Double from Halo 3's DLC Achievements, or Kill X players in Matchmaking, or Kill Y Enemies in Campaign, or Help Kill Z enemies in any game mode today.


Weekly Challenges:

These can be harder, take more time, maybe it will take you a week to accomplish a Weekly Challenge. Maybe sometimes it'll remind you of an Achievement like Annual from Halo 3 - where you and three of your friends will get together for something. Maybe we'll ask you to play a Mission like few have dared...

In the Public Beta players will customize Helmets, Left Shoulder, Right Shoulder and Chest (alongside Emblems and Colors, of course!) - in the retail game, it's a pretty safe bet that there will be other things on your Spartan to customize.

Elites will be customizable, but not in the same way as the Spartans. Spartans have their own dedicated massive part of the UI, you'll be able to customize your Elite, but it won't be the same as decking out your Spartan. Your Spartan is your identity in Reach.

Oh, and in case you haven’t caught on, the plan of record is to keep dumping out truckloads of Reach multiplayer information from here on out. The closer we get to the public release of the Beta in May, the more information you’ll find yourself armed with in the form of articles, podcasts, and yup, videos. We couldn’t bear the thought of sending you out into the wild and woolly new multiplayer world without arming you with the information you need. We don’t want to see you get hurt!

[Flawless]

Re: Halo: Reach

Sounds like the podcast next week is going to have some juicy info.

[Vast]

Re: Halo: Reach

I'm hyped. Sounds like the true multiplayer evolution of Halo 2. Which revolutionized multiplayer gaming as we know it.

[Beantown]

Re: Halo: Reach

Holy **** I can't wait for this game.

[Candyman5]

Re: Halo: Reach

I call bull****, so for those of us that have played as a Elite since Halo 2 get the shaft because "Its not the identity of Reach". BS Sounds like "We didnt feel like adding stuff for Elites" to me.

Besides that everything else seems great but the Elite thing has me a little heated.

[Beantown]

Re: Halo: Reach

Hopefully it'll make less people play as Elites. The incredibly frustrating head-shot difference between Spartans and Elites in Halo 3 was one of the only things I hated in that game.

[Steel5]

Re: Halo: Reach

I call bull****, so for those of us that have played as a Elite since Halo 2 get the shaft because "Its not the identity of Reach". BS Sounds like "We didnt feel like adding stuff for Elites" to me.

Besides that everything else seems great but the Elite thing has me a little heated.

Hopefully it'll make less people play as Elites. The incredibly frustrating head-shot difference between Spartans and Elites in Halo 3 was one of the only things I hated in that game.

Guys Elites in Reach are a little seperate than spartans. Not only are they different size, and have slightly different physical abilities (jump heights, move speed, shield, health), they also have a different Armor Ability (Roll).

With this said having them selectable for all gametypes is not fair. They are creating a variety of new gametypes that are Spartans vs. Elites specific.

Personally, I think this is a huge improvement. I have always thought that Spartans vs. Elites would be cool, and now we get it, but also there won't be any unkillable Elites in Team SWAT.

[sportsdude]

Re: Halo: Reach

I call bull****, so for those of us that have played as a Elite since Halo 2 get the shaft because "Its not the identity of Reach". BS Sounds like "We didnt feel like adding stuff for Elites" to me.

Besides that everything else seems great but the Elite thing has me a little heated.

I don't think it's that big of a deal and I've been an elite in Halo 2 and Halo 3.

This is a different game and before you teamed up with the Arbiter, obviously, so having the elites and spartans separated like this, I think, is actually pretty cool.

[Cyros]

Re: Halo: Reach

I call bull****, so for those of us that have played as a Elite since Halo 2 get the shaft because "Its not the identity of Reach". BS Sounds like "We didnt feel like adding stuff for Elites" to me.

Besides that everything else seems great but the Elite thing has me a little heated.

Way to start crying, Candy.

[Candyman5]

Re: Halo: Reach

Way to start crying, Candy.

Your welcome.

[Steel5]

Re: Halo: Reach

Your welcome.

Candy I think once you get to play the game you are going to be happy with the spartan vs. elites gametypes as a much cooler way of including elites in the multiplayer than H2 or 3.

[Flawless]

Re: Halo: Reach

Gamers sure are a fickle bunch.

I too am glad given Elites are enemies during this time, that we're going to see some unique gametypes and individual characteristics, instead of re-skinned Spartans.

[Beantown]

Re: Halo: Reach

Gamers sure are a fickle bunch.

I too am glad given Elites are enemies during this time, that we're going to see some unique gametypes and individual characteristics, instead of re-skinned Spartans.

I completely agree. I cannot wait for this game.

[Steel5]

Re: Halo: Reach

New podcast is up. I'll post some of the main points when I'm done listening.