[360] Halo Reach: Ghosts of GFF

Oh yeah, my avatar is actually wearing one of those helmets. I assumed from the pre-release stuff that there'd be more stuff like the Waypoint unlocks, armour pieces you unlock by reaching certain commendation levels, gaining achievements and so forth. I think I read somewhere that the skull face helmet you only get by buying every other helmet so I guess there'll be similar shoulders, chests etc but I suppose anything they give specific requirements for is only going to cause odd behaviour in players grinding for it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by DieSeLFueLeD

But Shin, what's the point of cutting people off for having fun in gruntocalypse or sniperfight score attack and calling it "abuse of a progression system"?

To be fair, there is no point. If someone is so desperate to unlock a certain armour chunk that they're willing to play Gruntpocalypse 12 hours a day then that's their perogative and it affects me in no way what so ever. Hell, if people are such losers that they want to sit through a cutscene at the end of a level over and over again all day just to get a different picture next to their name I say let 'em. Given that matchmaking still uses the true-skill system behind the scenes to actually match you to similarly skilled players, it makes exactly zero difference to me whether other people want to waste their lives doing boring shit for a meaningless online rank.

Originally Posted by Daravon

I know if I hit the rank cap I wouldn't really have any incentive to play anymore until they raised it.

Genuine question, surely the incentive to play a game is that you enjoy playing it? Do you actually like playing Halo or are you just playing it to get to the top rank because that's a pretty weird way to approach a leisure activity in my opinion.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I guess since I've never been in a position to hit top rank in Halo games, the concept of giving a shit about rank has always been an alien one to me. Even in Rainbox 6 Vegas 2, a game I'm actually not too bad at, rank has always been for me something that happens as a natural result of playing the thing, rather than being something to aspire to.

Anyway, I'm glad they're shaking up the playlists, I'm fucking bored of SWAT and snipers. I think they should make a version of Haemmorage with six Scorpions at each end, make it a proper tank battle game. I'm glad to see Rocket Race coming back too because it's awesome.

I spent a bit of time pissing about with Forge World last night for the first time ever. I made a race track of sorts although it's totally unsuibtable for more than one person at once so it's more of a time trial thing. Also you need to have invulnerability turned on or you're unlikely to survive the big jump. My best time for a lap last night was about 2:20. It's in my fileshare if anyone's interested.

Now I've got a feel for how it works, I think I might try to make a Banshee race or maybe a Wipeout style race track for Ghosts.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Zip

man i really suck at this game, I dont get what i'm doing wrong. I's fun but my ratio is going down the pooper. I need some general tips, go:

One thing I've learned from being forced to play so much SWAT is that I naturally aim down at people's chests, rather than at head height. I think it comes from growing up with Quake where you're often looking down for rocket jumps and shots. I even noticed that as soon as I spawn in Halo I instinctively flick my view a shade down. Having noticed that, I'm making a concious effort to aim up at head height, the slightly smaller target compared to a chest shot is more than made up for by the extra damage from a head shot.

Also, now that damage doesn't carry over from a shield pop, you can get some kills by not melee attacking someone who's running up to you. Instead, use the recovery time from their attack to finish off their shield with normal fire then melee them for the kill. Not foolproof but most people aren't out of the habit of charging in then melee attacking yet so use that to your advantage.

Of course me giving Halo advice is laughable as I also really suck at the game but I do tend to win or come second in Firefights when I play with randoms, primarily because I tend to focus on high-value targets. Sniperfight? Aim for the Wraiths. Two shots to kill one, no scope required coz they're massive and you get 1,300 odd points...

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Qwarky

Originally it was because I was playing with headphones, and only used the mic of my headset, and had chat voice come through the headphones as well, so all the talk pretty much got covered up by the explosions and gunfire. Then I started using the headset as a headset, while still having one of the headphone cups to my ear so, and I can hear people talking much better now.

That said, I hardly hear directions from you, I catch something here and there, but I didn't realiz you'd talked more, so they must get drowned out by everyone else talking at once. And gunfire.

You're not missing much. Tails' directions are generally along the lines of "Look out for that grenade" about three seconds after it's blown you up.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

If you're playing offline (Including a Silver subscription) you are limited to earning 1,000 credits a day, presumably to stop offline hacking where Bungie can't keep an eye on what people are doing.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

This is indeed the case. The Bungie forums are full of people who don't have Live subscriptions bitching about people who do have it credit farming.

Thing is though, if people are hacking their 360s offline to get extra credits, who actually cares? Surely it'd make more sense to adjust people's credits when they did go online rather than to limit them in the first place?

Also, I can see Bungie in future putting some harder challenges up for more credits. At the moment they're all basically kill x bad guys in y mode and none have been too challenging for committed players but who's to say they won't start sticking in "Finish the whole campaign solo legendary using only side-arms" for 100,000 odd credits?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I think the drop shield has no place in CTF games as well as oddball etc. Me, Qwarky and Zip won a game earlier by basically spamming the shield on the flag and triple-teaming anyone who ran into it, I felt kinda dirty. In fairness, the offence points we scored were smooth as fuck but still.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Also, sadly, SWAT is still an option in Multiteam

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I got ten assists in three multiteam matches and two of those were Rocket Races. 40 is probably not that unobtainable for anyone who really wants it.

I was speaking idiomatically.

But the people they match against Devo, Tails and Daravon often take the game quite seriously and get really mad when you either beat them or just start pissing about which is always hilarious.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by KING MANCHU WOK

Fuck you. Jorge in Firefight is like playing Halo as Jason Statham.

Also, forgot to mention this the other day but have you actually ever heard Jason Statham? He sounds exactly nothing like Jorge in any film he's ever been in. Jorge is about as un-mockney as you can get. If anything, Jorge sounds like Idris Elba, maybe Timothy Dalton but Jason Statham? Not even similar.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Count me in. We can go look at the tribute room while we're there.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Raptorfox

You are such a bad kid.

New Firefight owns. Feels a lot more chaotic and ODST-like now. Wraiths inside the Corvette, oh my god.

There always were Wraiths inside the Corvette though. No friendly fire takes a lot of the fun out of it I think, especially as people don't even think twice about firing rockets at covvies you're meleeing now.

I agree though that real men play proper FF, score attack is for losers.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I've spent about four hours playing Fallout so I'm bored of it again now, some Halo would be a refreshing change of pace.

That's a yes, btw.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

So with friendly fire turned off, Sniperfight might as well now be called Fulerodfight and it's no fun anymore. They need to put in a Firefight Hardcore or something that has friendly fire turned back on.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Maybe I just ran into a string of idiots tonight. I swear in one game one dude dropped his snipes in favour of a fuel rod and plasma launcher and insisted on spamming the fuck out of both. I spent more time trying to stand right in front of him so he'd hit me and suicide than I did killing Covenant...

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by DieSeLFueLeD

Um so why not just shoot the fuck out of the covenant instead? Why waste your time trying to grief him?

Because trying to hit anything with a sniper rifle when the screen is being constantly filled with fuelrod explosions is nigh on impossible and I was having more fun pissing him off than I would have had by grabbing one myself and joining in. It was particularly amusing because there was fuck all he could do about it, not being able to kill or boot me and all.

It'd be nice to see more different types of Firefight introduced since that's the main gametype I play. Firefight in vehicles on Haemmorage would be cool or maybe pistolfight but with the running speed jacked up.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I managed to survive the whole match of a four man Sniperfight on Outpost yesterday. Admittedly that's not a huge achievement on Outpost when the others know what they're doing but still, I was pretty chuffed. I even survived the bonus round of Hunters but didn't actually manage to kill any of them. I came 2nd overall.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Does anyone know how to update what your Spartan looks like on bungie.net? Mine is still wearing the same yellow armour he had on on day one, not the bronze colour I've been using since about week two onwards.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I thought in Rocket Race now you could kill anyone not on a vehicle? When anyone's on foot they get an orange marker over their head and a rocket hit or splatter will kill them. I remember getting a killing spree with Tails when we were all playing together once.

Still, I hate multiplayer achievements. Not that it matters to me since I doubt I'll ever get the Legendary solo achievement or even the complete on Legendary one. I seem to only be able to get 1,000/1,000 on long ass rpgs...

FELIPE NO

Trying to win is probably where you're going wrong. If you really want to win, I find camping one end of the map so you get all the targets at the end is a winning strategy but it's fucking boring compared to blasting round the joint like a maniac. If you have a team mate who realises you can shoot rockets at the ground next to you for comedy air it always improves the game too.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by SailorDaravon

We have zero idea. We don't even know if it looks at your current "streak" of unquit games and the odds increase that way, or what. I've only heard tale of 2 people getting it, and I don't personally know anyone who has gotten it.

I got 777 once, possibly about two days after the game launched.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Chances are though, the rest of the unseen challenges are as bullshit as the existing ones. They won't have put in anything truly hardcore for a shit ton of credits so we'll see similar variations on a theme over and over.

That the challenges are the same for everyone though suggests it's a server-side issue so I don't really understand how they can't fix that with a small patch. Even if they're hard-coded on to everyone's disks, I can't imagine it would take a coding master to change where the game looks for challenge data and make it somewhere online where they can edit and customise them.

Obviously I know nothing about video game programming but surely if they can change the layout of the maps for everyone, they can change the challenges because even for someone like me, they're fucking pointless at present. Personally I'll get the ones you can get from Firefight, swerve the multiplayer ones and maybe do the campaign ones. So far nothing has popped up that made me really want to play the game a different way, especially as the credit boosts have been roughly what you get from two or three Firefight matches anyway so far.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Challenges.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by SailorDaravon

Also during any of this it doesn't help that some of the people I play with are terrible. I played a game of Invasion Slayer recently where Shimms went -18 and someone else went -23. How do you even manage that??

See I'm one of those people who's terrible but I still really enjoy playing Halo, whether with people from here or on my own. On my own, I'm actually not that bad at Firefight and in BTB games you can always find someone who's fucking about to have fun with. With other people, the fact that I'm so shit just makes it that much funnier I find. Every SHIN WHY moment cracks me up (And there were quite a few this evening, I do wish Tails would stop running in front of my grenades) and I guess I gravitate towards the people who don't take the game too seriously or care about winning that much more than caring about having fun playing it. As a result I guess a few people don't like playing with me (Merk hates me for example) but I don't let it get to me. People play games for different reasons. I play for pissing about fun, you like winning and collecting shit. Neither of us is "Right" or "Wrong", it's just the way people are.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?