I wouldn't say it's worthless at all. you get directional awareness + proximity + level awareness.

you get basically the minimum possible level of each of those

When you combine this with general map knowledge it's pretty easy to know where someone is at. you don't get pinpoint accuracy, but it's HUGE for PvP.

again, the game is designed around it, it has a use, that does not mean it's extremely useful
the enhanced version is noticeably better, but still kind of weak

Take that away with like in the Inferno playlists and you end up getting much harder games. Almost every PvP primary I use has third eye for a reason.

I said in the first place that it shouldn't be taken away

did you miss the second half of what I said? the game was designed with it in mind
how many blips? 90% of the time it's either one section or two sections, which only tells you vague direction
I still think it's a travesty how it does nothing at close range even with the upgraded radar, it's ridiculous to have people chasing each other in a circle or just moving around randomly because they know someone's there but they can't see each other

I wouldn't say it's worthless at all. you get directional awareness + proximity + level awareness. When you combine this with general map knowledge it's pretty easy to know where someone is at. you don't get pinpoint accuracy, but it's HUGE for PvP. Take that away with like in the Inferno playlists and you end up getting much harder games. Almost every PvP primary I use has third eye for a reason.

Also, eliminate supers all together,

I don't care what anyone says or how much they whine, supers are not simple guaranteed kills and it can be very hard to maximize how many kills you get with them

get rid of radar,

no, it's borderline useless as it is, and the game was designed with it in mind

You must not PvP much. The radar game is half of PvP. Where are they, how many blips do you have, oh shit they went invis, okay I found the guy... Radar is HUGE in this game.

did you miss the second half of what I said? the game was designed with it in mind
how many blips? 90% of the time it's either one section or two sections, which only tells you vague direction
I still think it's a travesty how it does nothing at close range even with the upgraded radar, it's ridiculous to have people chasing each other in a circle or just moving around randomly because they know someone's there but they can't see each other

Zombies, Campaign, Campaign with zombies, PVP? What am I missing?

I'm a CoD fanboy and I'm not sure what the 5 modes would be either.

I really don't see much more then an evolution in the COD series. They always add in a bit from other big PVP titles, so it was inevitable they would add super abilitys (several very similar to Destiny's) and movement modes (from Titanfall).

Pretty much every CoD is written from scratch, though they obviously have a feature set they like to keep and evolve (I know this because I worked for Treyarch back in the day). It's really not too different from Halo --> Destiny.

I find the PVP to be just as filled with lag, weapons balance issues and wonky hit detection as anything in Destiny, and then you add in the killstreaks which are supposed to turn near contests into overwhelming lopsided matches and you have a recipe for frustration.

Man, I have to disagree here. My CoD pvp experience is worlds better than Destiny. When I shoot someone, they die. When I get killed, I know who killed me and what my mistake was. Every time. And you can't earn killstreaks in a near contest, because if you die, your counter resets.

Judged against other COD games it's great, against Destiny it's a long slog grind with ugly skins, a terrible community, and even less variety.

I'm with you until the variety part. CoD chat is like Barrens chat. It's awful and I always turn it off first thing. But the game has huge variety. Also, because every player has access to every weapon and mod for those weapons, it's a completely open playing field and fundamentally fair. If X is the best class, then you can just play as X. Is Y the best gun? No sweat, unlock Y next. Fair! Destiny is... the opposite of that. I know precious few people with "perfect" rolls on even a single weapon, let alone a full loadout. Let alone a full loadout at 320 light. With armor that has the right perks and stats. And those little changes make all the difference sometimes.

Also, eliminate supers all together,

I don't care what anyone says or how much they whine, supers are not simple guaranteed kills and it can be very hard to maximize how many kills you get with them

get rid of radar,

no, it's borderline useless as it is, and the game was designed with it in mind

You must not PvP much. The radar game is half of PvP. Where are they, how many blips do you have, oh shit they went invis, okay I found the guy... Radar is HUGE in this game.

Also, eliminate supers all together,

I don't care what anyone says or how much they whine, supers are not simple guaranteed kills and it can be very hard to maximize how many kills you get with them

get rid of radar,

no, it's borderline useless as it is, and the game was designed with it in mind

Even I can't pretend that they haven't lost a significant percentage of the old hardcore Halo fanbase, and the lack of campaign theater (and the lack of Forge and BTB at launch, the lack of a bunch of old multiplayer game modes, etc.) contributes to that.

I think you are overstating the importance of campaign theatre. The real reason so many of us old hardcore Halo fans are gone is simply that the new games have stupid stories, and haven't really moved forward in any meaningful way mechanically. Halo 5 is pretty much the same game as Halo 2. There just aren't many variations of the Halo formula that haven't been done before.

I suspect it is because the breaks are so much more severe in Halo 5 than they are in any of Bungie's Halo games... at least as far as I can tell. Again, I don't think it is a big deal, but it does break the immersion a little bit when you're running around a city suspended above the ocean and you know that there is actually nothing at all on the other side of the walls that surround you.

I suppose that's fair, but I still feel like there could have been some compromise that involves not just ditching a fan-loved feature that was in 3 out of 5 of Bungie's Halo games. I was a staunch supported of 343i around here during H5's launch, and I still am, but the lack of campaign theater is, in my mind, a huge mark against them, and it could be argued that it shows that they don't completely understand Halo's audience. Even I can't pretend that they haven't lost a significant percentage of the old hardcore Halo fanbase, and the lack of campaign theater (and the lack of Forge and BTB at launch, the lack of a bunch of old multiplayer game modes, etc.) contributes to that.

You're not wrong, but I don't really understand how this came to be perceived as a bad thing.

If they player won't see it, why bother with it? I think it sucks that this could be the cause of not getting campaign theater, why not just prevent the camera from moving anywhere that the player wouldn't be able to get to? Constrain the camera to the same area as the player.

That's traditionally how the camera in theater mode works... it is contained by the same boundaries that contain the player. The difference is gravity: There are spaces in the Halo environments that a player wouldn't normally be able to reach because they can't hover in air, but a camera can. In a game like Halo (with such lively physics) part of the fun having a huge explosion launch Master Chief a hundred feet into the air, or off a cliff, etc. You don't want Chief to get launched and then hit an invisible wall 10 feet above the floor. In those moments you get a brief glimpse of the environment from angles that you won't normally be looking from. In previous Halo games, this would sometimes reveal a little less detail in areas that the player isn't normally staring at, but overall the environments were pretty thoroughly rendered and detailed. But in Halo 5 I noticed plenty of gaps, untextured walls, or spaces where there is literally nothing. It's not a big problem at all, because you only see these things for a split second as you are hurtling towards your doom, but they're noticeable.

I'm also not sure why 343i would be concerned about being able to see those breaks in Theater. Bungie certainly didn't seem to care that much.

I suspect it is because the breaks are so much more severe in Halo 5 than they are in any of Bungie's Halo games... at least as far as I can tell. Again, I don't think it is a big deal, but it does break the immersion a little bit when you're running around a city suspended above the ocean and you know that there is actually nothing at all on the other side of the walls that surround you.

If they player won't see it, why bother with it? I think it sucks that this could be the cause of not getting campaign theater, why not just prevent the camera from moving anywhere that the player wouldn't be able to get to? Constrain the camera to the same area as the player.

I'm also not sure why 343i would be concerned about being able to see those breaks in Theater. Bungie certainly didn't seem to care that much.

Step just slightly outside of that perspective, and it's like you're backstage on a movie set.

that would be an awesome Easter egg: Get out of the geometry and see mountains and forerunner structures being held up by 2 x 4's.

I see your point. I thought it was awesome and amazing, but I didn't think we won't see the likes of this again. No campaign films is still my biggest disappointment of the 343 era.

It didn't have to be that way. I hear that there were no campaign films in Halo 4 because 343 "cheated" with the geometry such that not everything you see was real. To have a camera you could then detach and put wherever you want would ruin the illusion. Think forced perspective in the LotR movies. Frodo looks small, but only because the camera is in a very specific place.

The cheats were done for performance reasons. So you get to pick between better graphics, and campaign films. 343 thought one would sell more games than the other.

I was wondering if that had something to do with it. During my playthrough of Halo 5, I slowly came to the realization that very impressive visual presentation was just barely holding together. Every now and then I'd get blown off a cliff or fall somewhere I wasn't supposed to, and the illusion of the world would break instantly. There are barely-textured surfaces and geometry that just "ends" all over the place. You just don't see any of it from the intended player perspective. Step just slightly outside of that perspective, and it's like you're backstage on a movie set.

I disagree that this would be the reason there are no custom games.

[snip]

At that point Destiny isn't really Destiny anymore.

You said it better than I could.

Theoretically, you could possibly make these "MLG" weapons and armor stats separate and unaffected by changes to the general sandbox when they nerf shotguns for the 999th time, but would this be a playlist that comes around every so often, or is it there all the time?

To be competitive, Destiny would need to be SuperSmashBros-Final Destination map-Fox only.

Which is boring.

I think maybe they could do something like that and have it be a different kind of fun, in the same way that Halo or other shooters are a different kind of fun. I especially think there's a lot to the suggestion of having everyone on the same class, maybe the same subclass too. Maybe they could disable exotics, but some of the Vault of Glass armor and even some old blue-tier armor are still pretty strong without leveled damage, and I think turning that on makes things more unbalanced and less fair because it's down to RNG, although probably less now with how the current hard mode raid is.

But then again, Smash does have custom games soooooooo...

......

Fuck.

yeah

Just checking that last box would mean a guaranteed purchase from me, and it's the only thing I can think of that would do that.

I see your point. I thought it was awesome and amazing, but I didn't think we won't see the likes of this again. No campaign films is still my biggest disappointment of the 343 era.

It didn't have to be that way. I hear that there were no campaign films in Halo 4 because 343 "cheated" with the geometry such that not everything you see was real. To have a camera you could then detach and put wherever you want would ruin the illusion. Think forced perspective in the LotR movies. Frodo looks small, but only because the camera is in a very specific place.

The cheats were done for performance reasons. So you get to pick between better graphics, and campaign films. 343 thought one would sell more games than the other.

I really don't see much more then an evolution in the COD series. They always add in a bit from other big PVP titles, so it was inevitable they would add super abilitys (several very similar to Destiny's) and movement modes (from Titanfall).

I find the PVP to be just as filled with lag, weapons balance issues and wonky hit detection as anything in Destiny, and then you add in the killstreaks which are supposed to turn near contests into overwhelming lopsided matches and you have a recipe for frustration.

Judged against other COD games it's great, against Destiny it's a long slog grind with ugly skins, a terrible community, and even less variety.

From a technical standpoint, Reach's development was mostly done. Bungie really could focus on tool, asset and gameplay polish, and it showed. Few other developers have the longevity with a series to focus on it that intently. I guess COD could do it, but even with the two studios and the extra development time they seem to put very little effort into it, almost like it's just a paint by numbers experience with whatever they can steal from other competing games.

Three studios now, and you take that back!
Treyarch knocked it out of the park with Black Ops 3. Besides fitting five games in one, they delivered one of the most in-depth theater modes in any game, and a massive amount of customization tools... That's why other games that cook longer (Destiny, Halo 5) frustrate me, since they lack tons of features that a studio with less time can put out (and on their first current-gen effort, no less).

On the plus side, if Bungie gets their way and can do the 10 year plan, Destiny 3 will be one heck of a game.

I've said the same about Halo 6 since Halo 4 launched. Though honestly you could say the same about most studios and franchises...

My sights are set on the expansion later this year. Now that's where the good stuff is gonna be! :D