CMT Public Beta Feedback

Quick list of problems:

1. The pistol is silenced- there should be no flash of light happening in the environment. Also, the gunshots alert enemies- they shouldn't, for obvious reasons.
Video here.

2. Camouflaged elites seem to have "shields" appearing over their guns sometimes.
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screensh...f88fc0ed6c.jpg

3. The additional sections should have some kind of markings to help direct players a bit better. (Floor arrows, etc.)

4. There shouldn't be random grates/scenery/etc. slapped over the ladders. (How does that make sense in the first place? I know the whole deal with putting the "shields" over the ladders is fine and all, but grates? Seriously?)

5. The Spiker's shaders seem too shiny. Tone it down a bit.

6. Brute shields are ugly; maybe it's just oversized? It does seem a bit too large, almost as if the texture was made to be bigger than it was supposed to be.

7. The Brute's "shuffle" animation to walk/etc. is rather bad. Needs some improvement.

8. The scenery warthogs that are destroyed don't look good, mainly because the suspension isn't visibly "hugging" the ground.

9. The "butt plate" on the Chief model needs some details added to it.

10. The AR is exceptionally weak. I don't know if it was designed that way or not, but it sucks. A lot.


Things to add, maybe:

The whole section with the warthog garages got me itching to get into a Warthog, yet there were none. Perhaps add a brief warthog run, just for fun? (Or maybe even do something with a Mongoose instead.) To reference something jcap mentioned earlier:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jcap

In all honestly, what would have been awesome to see is a small segment of the last level where you can fight in one of those big rooms you drive through at the end of the game. You could cut out maybe 75% of the hallways and then throw in that giant fight scene.

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I agree, and I think some of the larger areas kind of got me hoping I'd see some brief sniping sections, as well. Perhaps using some of the larger sections like jcap says would be neat; a "large scale" battle being waged inside the POA would be an interesting twist to the level.

Additionally, make the covenant AI more varied... some needler grunts or a few jackals would have been a nice twist to it; perhaps even some Jackal snipers, or just Jackals with carbines in a section, would have been nice. There's no reason there wouldn't be some jackals. Generally enough, there should be some weapon variance, as I found it boring to be picking up Brute Plasma Rifles, Plasma Rifles, and spikers only off their corpses.

The laser on the pistol, as stated, looks ridiculous. Please take it off. The firing sound is also overly loud and scratchy, and it alerts enemies when fired, which it shouldn't.

AR firing animation has absolutely no recoil, which just looks silly (though it does seem consistent with the very low power of the weapon).

Enemies with Spikers don't drop enough ammo, considering how quickly it burns through it. Annoying, since it's a fun weapon to use.

I only got lost once in the new areas, but I can't really fault CMT for that. Most of you guys seem to have forgotten that the level design for Halo was shitty and confusing to start with, we've just all memorized the paths by now. If anything, it's surprisingly consistent in that fashion.

SMG should not waste ammo when reloading. It's annoying, stupid, and unnecessary.

The 'Clear Decals' button never seemed to work for me, which was disappointing considering the biggest gripe I had with the whole experience.

What the FUCK.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Warsaw

• The AI is retarded...I massacred a whole room of sleeping grunts and the Brute stood there and watched me do it, and this was at close range too.

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IIRC, Masterz (or somebody) said that exact brute is set to sleep (like a grunt would). The animation for the brutes sleeping is ironically, the standing fixed pose. The only way to make him wake up is if you try to shoot something near him (and i mean near him, like insanely close to him) or just shoot him

lol

Forgot to mention this bug (possible game breaker?): Certain loading zones can make all enemies disappear. I accidentally alerted a room full of grunts, backpedaled past a loading zone, and they all disappeared.


Oh yeah: did I mention GALLONS AND GALLONS of blood?

At the end of the twisted hallway, you need to raise the trigger volume that switches the bsps. I went through "jumping" and the following part didn't load. When I went back and walked through it it did.

Alright, finished it.

I actually enjoyed most of it, especially the warthog bsp sections. Alot of the parts really keep you on your toes the entire time. I died once on heroic, but it was challenging.

Handy list of pros and cons:
Pros:
-Keeps you on your toes the entire time
-The encounters were, in general, decently planned out
-Fun new weapons, though I stuck to the human ones the entire time (cause I'm badass like that)
-I also didn't really notice this "lack of polish" many of you have described, apart from the minor things I mention below

Cons:
-Sometimes you could see the ai being placed, and sometimes the ai hadn't yet engaged each other when you arrived, even though they're looking at each other
-I really don't like the AR, it just feels tacky and cartoonish (I absolutely love the SMG though, I used BRG + SMG most of the time)
-Lack of music in certain parts that could have used them
-Sometimes I believe you placed too much grunts or camo elites to be believable, though the grunts are very fun to kill with
grenades + SMG, oh how I adore the SMG
-Silenced pistol is okay, but as said before, sounds a bit too loud, and I don't like the laser

Pros:

• Even though it's fairly obvious when you enter a new BSP, none of them really seem out of place(though a bit more purpose for each area would be nice), new areas keep the feel of old ones and don't seem as out of place as I thought they would.
• Enemy textures are very well done, most of my deaths were from being distracted by how nice they looked(dunno if that's really a pro :raise:), especially the Elites.
• Ditto on the above, but substitute "Enemy" with "Weapon".

Cons:

• Not entirely fond of blood effects, even there was only half as much it'd be considerably less jarring.
• Some of the weapon animations are noticeably... off. Little things mostly, like the spiker having barely any kick, and the pistol melee.
• On the subject of the pistol, laser effect is misaligned, and lasers aren't usually visible like that. Maybe just project a red dot onto the target?
• What exactly is up with the marines? Their faces have some very grey shading, and it doesn't look natural. Also the wrists seem very thin, possibly a rigging issue?

I havnt finsished it yet, but I kept on spawning infront of a brutes fist Lol, I had to melee quick before I died. Then I had to run because two hunters where inches away from me and I had no sheild lmao. But that was just a bad place to die.

I did notice one thing though, after you finish talking to keys when the screen comes out of being white, all you can see are keys balls in your face. Because for some reason he is standing on some invisible box, didnt get a image sorry.

The spikers melee felt incredibly fast and strong, I played through it on heroic and I beat down that group of 3 brutes that spawn towards the twisted tunnels (or thereabouts) with it. Then again that may have just been the fact that I haven't used melee to kill anyone in a long time.

The plasma pistol looks like ass.
The pistol doesn't...feel right. It feels blocky, almost like firing the shotgun.

The twisted tunnel was absolutely mind bending :awesome: and overall it was pretty good. Incomplete (well duh, it's a beta) but good nevertheless.


Also, did il Duce Primo make that bulletin board just as you go into and out of the bridge? The one about the last beta leak? (the red letters)

• The first entirely custom room, the ladders in it aren't tall enough or something... you can't just walk up the ladder and get to the top of the platform, you have to crouch or jump at the right time which is just weird.
• Brutes bleed more than any creature ever should. scale their blood decals down just about 5X 'cause there was a few times that I'd shoot ONE brute and the entire floor of the room would be covered with purple.
• The slowmotion powerup thinger... have some sort of screen overlay to let us know what's going on. I was about to post in here saying the marine's animations were all slowed down and I was confused. Put some sort of overlay... or a soft ticking (clock) sound to let us know that we have altered time.
• There's displays of Halo near a sphere with a big red line squiggly line going across it, they look like they should be like LCD displays, but they have a bump map on the screen that goes with the design on the screen....
• The death animation for the brutes is horrible. They lose any illusion of weight when their feet start sliding around while they are dieing.
• A few of the flaming warthogs are floating. Their OMG IM ON FIRE effect thing looks more like they have a flame thrower attached to them than having them actually be on fire.
• There's a weird metal texture that you use a lot throughout the level that just looks bad. It has verticle lines going up and down it and looks like it's supposed to be some sort of corrigated metal which just doesn't fit in at all with the rest of the POA's theme.
• The part of the tunnel that's broken and twisted... make the entrance to it look broken. When I first got in there I thought it was just bad modeling, rather than it being broken. add broken chunks of metal and such to the area.
• The Chiron area (first part, dunno if there's more than one) felt horribly unbalanced. I was playing on Normal and a ton of guys kept rushing that area rather than staying in their zone until I came along which lead to a bunch of people all in one spot, then nobody for a while.
• This is my last one for now, but it's a HUGE one. I gotta get going... haven't completed the level yet but... MUSIC. I don't care where you get it from but put some music in there throughout, when we're running around in silence aside from our footsteps and such it makes us feel like we're going the wrong way. Bungie used music to guide us and say "Yea, you're in the right area, keep going." by chiming it in when we're doing something right haha.

Overall it looks pretty neat, some of the custom environments needs some more population to them so they're not just big open spaces but at the same time it changes the gameplay a lot to give you something fresh.

Played through it all on Heroic , died alot , had no graphical problems , had a problem when i was trying to fraps stuff , on the original BSP it kept freezing up for some reason , but when it got to the new BSP it did no such thing.

The vast majority of the new BSP i felt was not needed , Bungie made that level short in the original because it was essentially a tutorial level to get you used to the controls , staying in an enviroment for any longer than what was done originally made it seem boring , too long , and the enviroment did not seen to be constant in style , the boarding action and chirion style sections had me thinking wtf is up here most of the time.

The sections i did like in the new BSP where the hog bay sections and the twisted sections that go up and down , apart from that , the rest i thought was too shoddy to keep my interest.

The AI is easily slaughtered because they drop that many nades you can just nade spam your way through the entire level , the pistol has no zoom which made me sad , the smg seems to be a waste of a pick up , the speed power up made everything look very jerky on screen when activated , and i found that most of the encouters are actually the same ones as in the original BSP just in reverse , like for instance the stair well sections , original = Covie : Top , Human : Bottom , but when you go further on its switched around which did not bring anything new to the table , just basically made the masacre easier because i did not have to worry about hitting stuff on the roof with stray bullets or nades , i just threw the nades down the stairs and watched the enemys struggle to avoid them.

In all , i enjoyed the new content like the characters , some of the weapons , and of course the new chief model, but the BSP i just found too boring :(