Sticking with the Halo themed post this week I was surfing the web searching for more comments about the Halo 3 Beta, which brought me to a digg posting about what needs to be fixed in the Halo 3 Beta. The bottom line is that the story doesn't quite make much sense on how it'll really benefits anyone other that maybe the author of the post, so in short order here is my response to the problems that need to be "fixed" by Bungie (Check for original article to see their take here).
"Polish the graphics" - This seems to be the biggest complaint among people in general, this is normally followed by the comment is "its a shinier Halo 2" or "its Halo 2.5". Granted the graphics in the Beta aren't the same as the graphics we saw in the original teaser trailer for Halo 3 but it doesn't mean we won't (Again its not a final demo, its a beta). Second of all its not like the beta looks bad, its not better than Gears of War but shouldn't people be wondering more about the smoothness of the game at this stage? When its all said and done the game play will reign supreme and Bungie doesn't need to reinvent the wheel for this one.
"Give the needler a make over" - I actually kind of agree with this part the needler is an extremely under used weapon in the Halo world. However, I'm not convinced that its due to the look of the weapon, its more about how it works. When using any weapon in Halo there a few fundamental things the player is concerned about targeting and damage. The needler is flawed in the latter portion, it does a good amount of damage now but its slow meaning that the damage doesn't really take place until the needles explode which gives your opponent the chance take you down rather quickly if you don't strafe properly. The other portion of the weapon that has always bothered me was that it constantly gave away your position, there are other weapons that do this too (sniper rifle, rocket launcher, etc...) but those are much more powerful and do direct damage on contact. If anything give the person a medal for taking people out with a needler, you already give one out for the sniper rifle and the shot gun.
"Push to talk is stupid" - I completely agree with this, either put this on an easier to access button or make it so that this can be toggled or something. Good call.
"Make the AR just a little more powerful" - The Assault Rifle has been one of my personal favorite weapons from the original Halo, which means take this response with a grain of fanboy salt. I really like the assault rifles return to the series but I do agree that there does seem to be a problem with the range, when shooting at targets from a longer range the bullets do seem to disappear. I don't expect the assault rifle to always hit from longer range but short burst are suppose to help (where the hell is the shield flicker), to me this seem more like a bug than anything so I do hope that does get fixed. As for the comment about the assault rifle not being a good medium range weapon, I'd say thats a gray area, I think the ability to fight in medium range with the assault rifle has more to do with tactics then the weapon. Sure you may not want to charge at some one with a carbine in an open field but I would definitely try to use cover objects to make them take harder shots and close the gap; the assault rifle isn't the most powerful medium range weapon but it can get the job done. Granted if your playing against a better player there isn't much you can do, but I don't think that has so much to do with the weapon than the skill level of the player.
"Sometimes you need to start with a BR" - this more a default start weapon argument than anything but the battle rifle would be an ideal weapon for most of the maps in the beta. However, different weapon types are plentiful and spread out through the map again I think this is more a tactics issue than anything, but I do agree that getting hammered by a Spartan Laser right when you spawn in is rather annoying.
"Grenades need more oomph - AKA need to kill stuff" - this is another point that I completely agree with, the reducing the power of the grenade in Halo 2 really bothered me since it required you to pretty much tag the opponent with a grenade to get the kill. I'm sorry grenades aren't precise weapons so why do I have to put it at someones feet to make them pay. However, in turn I've just improved my grenade placement but that still doesn't mean that this shouldn't be fixed.
"Guns are suppose to sound powerful" - um I tried to follow this reasoning but it didn't quite add up to me, for the most part the sounds are pretty good, am I missing something here?
"Double your fun" -this statement about adding more dual wielding weapons to the map is kind of an exaggeration in the sense that the maps aren't balanced with different types of weapons. I personally think that High Ground and Valhalla are pretty well balanced in the weapon arena. These two map facilitate the game play style of the map in other words if I were playing Halo 2 on Beaver Creek my weapon choices would be different than for Coagulation.This is more an opinion thing than anything but I don't necessarily think that adding more dual weldable weapons will fix the problem. If you've noticed I didn't mention the map snowbound basically since this is the map I think needs some tweaking, there are plenty of weapons on the map overall but not all are useful in this hybrid map that encourages both long and short distance combat tactics.
"Show the bigger picture" - I liked the stats feature on Live when Halo 2 came out it helped figure out your general weaknesses as a player but for the non hardcore this is just a nice to have and I personally don't think it enhances game play. Though it would be nice to have at least the same stats in Halo 2 in Halo 3 the beta has a much shorter version of the carnage report (post game player stats). I'm pretty sure this isn't a need to be fixed thing but more of will be there in the final version and these are basic stats for the beta.
"Fix the King of the Hill: We Hate the Wall" - Haven't played king of the hill yet so I won't comment on this issue.
"Hide ranks in matchmaking" - rank numbers were a nice feature in Halo 2 to show a persons game play experience and overall of how good they were, in the halo 3 beta they take it a step farther so you know some ones overall experience vs their experience for a specific game play type rumble pit, team slayer, and team skirmish. Personally I think that the matchmaking ranks work as well as they can for the system and does give the other players a ball park idea of your skill level. I don't thing hiding the ranks will encourage less cheating, cheating is a constant problem in multiplayer games but I don't blame this on the rank numbers.
"Get rid of the recoil in the human sniper" - alright the first two games allowed for seamless sniping fun but that doesn't mean sniper rifles don't have recoil, to me this complaint seems kind of ill conceived sniper rifles normally aren't automatic and usually designed to kill within on shot. So adding recoil makes the weapon feel a bit more realistic, however the changes to the weapon show that Bungie may be trying to change the game play to focus more on mid and short range combat. Personally I don't think adding recoil is going to change the odds of you getting sniped but I do think you'll see less and less dominate snipers.
"Rockets blow $#!% up ... right?" - the trend of reducing the effectiveness of splash damage weapons seems to be a trend for the Halo series which I really wish would stop. That being said the rocket launcher does have a smaller splash damage area than previous game but its not so small that you always need to shoot at a persons foot. Personally I think if your trying to balance out a game by reducing the rocket launcher damage, make it a harder weapon to obtain. Make the weapon respawn time long, shorten the clip, anything except making the weapon feel weak. So I agree with the sentiment but the whole sound complaint is still leaving me scratching my head.
"Better solution than a mixed party solution" - if you've been reading the blog you know I'm pretty annoyed by the response time of match making in the beta, so I'm going to have to agree with this statement. I'm not sure if that's causing all of the match making delays but sure I'll bit and complain about it until someone tells me otherwise.
"Don't mess with Killtacular and Running Riot" - these are accomplishments, so if they take longer to obtain then tough. The accomplishments are still in the game they're just harder to get, this complaint comes off as whiny to me, its Bungie's call; so get better.
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