Official Halo Reach thread

[gorcorps]

Downloading now... 13% complete. Can you do other shit while you download? I tried switching games and it failed, but maybe the server was just busy?

You can do anything that doesn't involve being online, but as soon as a Live service starts it'll pause all downloads... so you can play most games offline but none online.

 

[R Nilla]

You can do anything that doesn't involve being online, but as soon as a Live service starts it'll pause all downloads... so you can play most games offline but none online.

I think the Reach Beta is one of those in-game downloads where if you leave the menu at all it will stop downloading.

It might be possible to stop the download and find it through your account on the dashboard to make it download in the background (if that makes sense).

 

[blurredvision]

Just played a couple of matches. The only thing I have to say is that Reach is good....it's very good.

 

[Anubis]

i DLed it and went to play and it said there werent any servers at this time

 

[fatpat268]

i DLed it and went to play and it said there werent any servers at this time

Same here. Took forever to DL the playlists, and on each of the 3 playlists available, it said no servers.

 

[gorcorps]

I think the Reach Beta is one of those in-game downloads where if you leave the menu at all it will stop downloading.

It might be possible to stop the download and find it through your account on the dashboard to make it download in the background (if that makes sense).

Ah, that's a bummer. I hate downloads that do that.

 

[ObscureCaucasian]

i DLed it and went to play and it said there werent any servers at this time

Yea I'm sure their backend is getting hammered today... If you keep at it the matchmaking time decreases.

Covie Slayer is pretty awesome if you haven't played it yet. Elites move faster and they can do the dive elites always do.

 

[fatpat268]

Well I finally got in, played a couple of games... and I don't like it at all right now.

For a number of reasons. On CTF, several guys stay at their flag invisible. Great. A grenade or two helps, but usually doesn't kill anyone.

Loadout screens come and go WAY too quickly (easily fixable)

A lot of wtf moments... Shoot a guy for a couple of seconds with SMG (rounds are hitting) and then melee him and he still doesn't die? What?

I'll give it more of a chance when I have time, but as of right now, most of my anticipation for this game is gone.

 

[ObscureCaucasian]

Well I finally got in, played a couple of games... and I don't like it at all right now.

For a number of reasons. On CTF, several guys stay at their flag invisible. Great. A grenade or two helps, but usually doesn't kill anyone.

Loadout screens come and go WAY too quickly (easily fixable)

A lot of wtf moments... Shoot a guy for a couple of seconds with SMG (rounds are hitting) and then melee him and he still doesn't die? What?

I'll give it more of a chance when I have time, but as of right now, most of my anticipation for this game is gone.

One thing I've noticed is that if you play this game like Halo 3 you won't do well. You need to know how to play with and against all the load outs and not just assume one is overpowered.

But also this is a beta so some may be over powered so there will be a lot of tweaking of different game attributes over time so that the final release of the game will be as balanced as possible.

 

[R Nilla]

Playing as an Elite is pretty awesome.

 

[blurredvision]

Well I finally got in, played a couple of games... and I don't like it at all right now.

For a number of reasons. On CTF, several guys stay at their flag invisible. Great. A grenade or two helps, but usually doesn't kill anyone.

Loadout screens come and go WAY too quickly (easily fixable)

A lot of wtf moments... Shoot a guy for a couple of seconds with SMG (rounds are hitting) and then melee him and he still doesn't die? What?

I'll give it more of a chance when I have time, but as of right now, most of my anticipation for this game is gone.

As Obscure said, it's a beta, not a demo. Report the stuff you think breaks gameplay. If you want the final game, I suggest you wait for the final game.

 

[fatpat268]

As Obscure said, it's a beta, not a demo. Report the stuff you think breaks gameplay. If you want the final game, I suggest you wait for the final game.

It's just my opinion after ~30 min of gameplay.

 

[S Freud]

I tried downloading and it said the download kept failing. I played some COD to pass some time and now when I go to the ODST menu to play the "extras" selection is grayed out. I try to click on it to download the beta but it says the option isn't available at this time...any ideas?

 

[Anubis]

IDK about you issue S Freud, have you tried to see if you need to delete part of the file that may have already been downloaded?

I played for like a hour last night, its very very fun. Im slightly annoyed that the button layout is different especially the melee button, its gonna take some getting used to or ill just remap it if it lets me. People REALLY like stockpile for some reason, its fun but i wanted some slayer and no one was voting for that often

 

[blurredvision]

I figured I'd give my impressions after playing quite a bit last night. I played a couple of quick matches yesterday afternoon around 5:30pm EDT and ran into the long matchmaking searches. Took about 5 minutes to finally get stuck into a match, but once I was there, I didn't detect any kind of lag whatsoever. A friend and I partied up last night right at 10pm EDT and still had the long matchmaking waits, but as we played into the night, the searches started to become very quick with minimal waits. Still not instantaneous, but by the time we quit playing (11:30 or so), the wait was down to maybe a minute (or less).

I played about 10 games overall yesterday, 9 of which were 4v4 Team Slayer. As of right now, there are only two maps, Powerhouse (outdoor) and Swordbase (indoor). I actually found myself loving both maps. I love the outdoor maps in Halo and Powerhouse has plenty of room to maneuver while having a ton of cover. Swordbase is the smaller indoor map with multiple levels. My friend didn't care for it since he felt like it was too cramped, but I felt like it was just big enough to still be able to move around while fighting.

As for the new loadouts (or whatever they're called), I think it's an awesome addition to the Halo multiplayer formula. There are four loadouts to pick from before each respawn; sprint, shield/EMP blast, invisibility, and the jetpack. I like that you can only choose one for each life you have and each one seems to be useful in some way or another. In my 10 matches last night, I saw all loadouts being used quite frequently. Obviously the most used was the jetpack, but I saw plenty of invisibility and even the shield/EMP. I did see the sprint a few times, but it's more of an out-of-combat move since your gun is lowered while running (like in Modern Warfare).

I used the jetpack the most . When jetpacks were first announced, I thought it seemed pretty stupid, but now I can't get enough of them. It adds a whole new dimension to the game that's so much fun. The jetpack physics feel perfect to me, as it takes a couple of seconds to get enough thrust from a stand-still. Using the jetpack to soften long falls for little to no damage feels great too, and I found myself integrating it easily while I was fighting without thinking about it. Flying over top of a structure or walkway and lobbing a couple of grenades down on enemies who don't see you is awesome. It's really easy to get the drop on an unsuspecting enemy, so you have to keep your head up at all times. I didn't have too much trouble with other people using the jetpack successfully against me, but I'm sure people will figure it out. Killing a guy who is jetpacking through the air is immensely satisfying though.

I didn't use the other loadouts to any great extent because I was having too much fun with the jetpack. The sprint is exactly what you think it is, but for right now, it seems like there's a bit of lag going into and out of the sprint. The few times I used it, I didn't feel like coming out of the sprint was quick enough to get the first shots in on somebody. I actually never once used the invisibility, but faced many who did. When standing still, a player is still able to be seen while invisible, but you have to look very closely, almost having to know that they're there. People used this on Swordbase a lot, camping next to the man-cannons and performing an assassination as you shot out. I used the shield/EMP blast a couple of times, but it seems fairly useless unless there are vehicles (of which there are none so far in the beta). The shield will soak up a lot of bullets, but still seems pretty susceptible to nades and melee. I did melee kill a guy while shielded once, but any attempts in other matches usually resulted in the guy dropping the shield and melee killing me. I learned after about 3 of those and started just chucking nades at shielded guys. The shield seems to last a decent amount of time, 5 seconds or more.

The graphics look pretty good to me, definitely better than Halo 3. I don't think the geometry count is really any higher, but there seems to be a lot more detail in the texture work. I read where other people were complaining about jaggies. I guess they are there, but who really sees that shit while you're fighting? The updated and refreshed matchmaking screens look great and allow users to see more info about other players without having to dig into more menus. The control scheme is changed up a bit to fit in the loadouts, and it didn't take me but a couple of matches to get used to it. I actually like that melee is moved to RB and reload is moved to X. Switching nade types was moved to B, which took quite a few matches to figure out (actually my friend finally figured it out and told me).

I like the new voting system for what map/gametype to play once your room is filled. All votes are cast automatically for the first option, and you can change your vote to one of two other options before the 10-second timer is up. The fourth option is that you don't like any of the choices, at which point I'm guessing it gives you new ones, but I never saw anybody vote for anything but the initial default game. With only two maps and minimal game types though, I don't expect any to really get into the voting that much.

The net code seems very good, I didn't see any instances of lag. My friend from Houston and I were in a party while we were matchmaking last night, and other than instances of bad echo over the chat channel during a couple of matches, everything was smooth.

To wrap up, I'm loving the beta more than I thought I would. I'm liking how the credit system is looking, the way you level up, everything. The online stats are pretty cool as always, although the site seems a bit cluttered initially. The new rating/division system looks interesting, and I finished out my day yesterday with a ranking of around 1653 (or something like that). At one point my rating had a litle sparkle on it while on the matchmaking screen, I had no idea what that meant.

I'm looking forward to playing more.

 

[blurredvision]

A couple of questions:

1. How do you do an assassination? My friend did a few last night and said he didn't do anything special, just a regular melee when behind an enemy. I melee'd more than a few from behind and never got the assassination. I tried holding the melee button and everything, no dice.

2. What's the difference between Team Slayer and Team Slayer Pro? Just no radar?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

I'm going to say... the jet pack is pretty sweet, there's nothing like coming down from the sky with a sweet assassination.

Yes there is.....sniping someone out of the sky and watching there body fall several stories to the ground.

 

[R Nilla]

The jetpacks are great fun and the needler rifle was my weapon of choice last night. I stuck with the Grab Bag playlist so maybe I'll try Arena next. I managed to make it to Private Grade I before I stopped playing but it looks that didn't make it to Bungie.net.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

For a beta this is incredibly polished.

This is not halo 3 though in that the weapons do not feel the same. But it isn't a bad thing at all, I love all the new weapons I've tried and even the old weapons feel "better" . The grenades have a little comet tail so you can track them how they bounce which is cool since they do throw a bit differently. The pistol is awesome too...the first time you put 4 of 5 shots between someones eyes as they are charging you with an AR its so gratifying. The more I think about it the more I love each weapon.

The new commendations "revenge", "opportunist" , "close call" are all awesome.

The power-ups.....I really only played with the stalker load out ....and I like it figuring out when to use or not use. tonight I'm goin to try out the jet pack exclusively.

The controls felt the same. I play bumper jumper so I felt like there wasn't any learning curve for me.

The credits system is a great addition. Being able to upgrade your armor and customize your player. great.

Considering this is a beta the online play was flawless I experienced no in game lag. If there were some network problems the game just paused rather than get laggy.

I don't like:

While choosing load out you can't see your kills. I like to see how many kills I have and my team has after i die and the two screens seemed like they were competing for your attention.

I don't like that reviewing your stats only shows that you got a medal not how many of that medal you got. This is easily fixed though.

While my teammate is performing an assassination i can steal his kill. This is stupid. What is the point of this?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

I got pwned so hard i was charging this guy from behind AR'ing him, I thought for sure it was an easy kill as I had a huge jump on him. I get close and am about to melee and he jet packs backwards over my head and assasinates me. FUCKING JETPACK PWNED

 

[blurredvision]

While choosing load out you can't see your kills. I like to see how many kills I have and my team has after i die and the two screens seemed like they were competing for your attention.

I think you can hit the Back button to bring up the score screen a bit quicker right after you die, but don't quote me on that. I ran into the same thing a couple of times where I wanted to select a loadout, change my spawn location to my friend, and look at the scoreboard really quick, but you don't really have enough time.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

I think you can hit the Back button to bring up the score screen a bit quicker right after you die, but don't quote me on that. I ran into the same thing a couple of times where I wanted to select a loadout, change my spawn location to my friend, and look at the scoreboard really quick, but you don't really have enough time.

Yeah could not figure out changing spawn at all. Didn't even know that was any option.

 

[Queasy]

I got pwned so hard i was charging this guy from behind AR'ing him, I thought for sure it was an easy kill as I had a huge jump on him. I get close and am about to melee and he jet packs backwards over my head and assasinates me. FUCKING JETPACK PWNED

I like getting the Gravity Hammer or Energy Sword and using the jetpack to fly up high and then come down on somebody hard.

DEATH FROM ABOVE!

 

[blurredvision]

Yeah could not figure out changing spawn at all. Didn't even know that was any option.

The problem with it is that the only way to adjust it is with the up/down on the d-pad. However, you have to select your loadout first, since the d-pad controls it as well. So you have to select your loadout, wait for a second or two lag in the UI, then you can change your spawn point, at which point you have to select within a couple of seconds before you respawn. All the while, the score screen pops up there for maybe a second before you respawn. I tried using the analog sticks to try and change the respawn point independently of the loadout, but it doesn't work.

About the respawn location though, I find that it's pretty rare you actually respawn right on top of the person you select. It seems as if they are in battle or anywhere near any shooting, you don't respawn near them.

 

[blurredvision]

The new rating/division system looks interesting, and I finished out my day yesterday with a ranking of around 1653 (or something like that). At one point my rating had a litle sparkle on it while on the matchmaking screen, I had no idea what that meant.

Sorry to quote myself, but I figured I'd update since I've found out what that sparkle is. Your rating is calculated daily by averaging your top 3 individual matches in that day. If you've already played your 3 matches for the day and got your daily ranking, then you play another match which lands in your top 3 for the day and raises your average, then your rating on the matchmaking screen will have that little sparkle on it, indicating it's just been raised. Nice touch.