Halo: Reach Discussion

[t3h m00kz]

it's a case of gameplay over realism

[Warsaw]

In this case, gameplay would be better without hitscan. We all know how over-easy the sniper is to use. Adding finite velocity would make it take some skill to wield and therefore balance it. Halo 1 did not have a hitscan sniper; I had to lead the target even on Xbox.

[p0lar_bear]

"Gameplay" not meaning just skill. Having a sniper rifle that actually connects with whatever you shot it at no matter what your latency is a hell of a lot less frustrating than one that does it whenever it feels like your ping is good enough.

[DarkHalo003]

Guys stop discussing and criticizing Reach in the Reach discussion thread, Bungie are gods and can do no wrong!

Shut up. You're acting like a complete ars. By your logic, no matter what choice Bungie makes, I'll agree because I agree with many things in Reach's design because I find the game fun. Find the faulty logic in there if you will. I've mentioned and concurred about things that I've found aren't quite perfected yet too, so stop acting like I'm some one sided bigot with no opinion.

I generally agree with you Polar, but I think the magnetism should be less than what it is now, or make it so it's not as easy to snipe as Halo 2 at least.

[=sw=warlord]

Credit Report

By now you’re all aware that there’s a limit on the level you can currently achieve in Reach. Based on the amount of noise and concern coming from the community I figured that the vast majority of you have already run face first into this virtual ceiling. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turns out, over 70% of the entire population is still at Warrant Officer or below. In fact, the amount of active players who are currently sitting at the level cap is less than 1% of everyone playing Reach.

I figured many of you would like to see how your current rank stacks up against the entire community at large so Jacob Miner, one of our infrastructure engineers and stats gurus, whipped up this quick chart for me:

Note that “Private A” is what’s known in-game as “Private Grade 1”, “Warrant Officer A” is “Warrant Officer Grade 1” and so on.

I just personally hit Major yesterday so I’m sitting in the upper echelons of the top 97% of our player base for virtual-ranks-with-no-tangible-real-value! I feel… special. This chart also shows what most of you already know – climbing the Warrant Officer Mountain is a monumental feat!

Luke Smith, the player investment designer for Reach, noticed this too, “Yes, Warrant Officer is a long stretch of gameplay so it’s not much of a surprise that there are a lot of folks still making their way to Captain.” There’s hope though. As Luke explains, “as some of you have found out – once you get to Captain it speeds up again.” Yes I can personally attest to this – once you finally get past WO Grade 3, its smooth sailing and downhill (mostly) from there.

So, what about that level cap then? I asked Luke to shed some light on the issue.

I’m at or near the current rank cap. Please say it’s being raised soon?
Luke: “We definitely have a plan for raising the cap and when those details can be shared, they’ll happily be conveyed here on Bungie.net. As far as “soon” goes, that’s a term that is pretty vague, so I guess your mileage may vary depending on what “soon” means to you.”

Once I hit the level cap, what’s going to happen to the credits that I continue to earn?
Luke: “Nothing, you’re still earning credits once you hit the cap and they are still counting towards your next rank. So, once the level cap is lifted, some players will shoot off into other ranks and get access to new stuff.”
Ok, so why is there a level cap in the first place?
Luke: “There’s a level cap in place for a number of reasons.
First, security: We’ve seen a bunch of games come and go where investment systems got exploited and broken early, completely throwing off the game economy (even though Reach progression is aesthetic only, it’s still important to us to preserve the ecosystem to the best of our ability) so one reason was certainly security. To use a hyperbolic example: If it turned out that teabagging players was giving mountains of Credits (try it, it gives nothing!), we’d have a failsafe in place to make a fix and continue the progression path
Second: We had some ideas on cool ways to lift it via communal effort.”

We should hopefully have more news to share on those “cool communal efforts” very soon and if I were a betting man I’d say that the current cap will be lifted in the next month or two, give or take. In the meantime that gives 99% of you plenty of time to continue playing, ranking up and banking credits while of course, most importantly, just continuing to have fun.

From the horses mouth.

[Ellis]

Definitely not what I wanted to read. I was foolishly, and even I know foolishly hoping for maybe next week, but if it isn't until November, I think I'll work a bit more at the rank this weekend and then stop playing Halo: Reach until they lift the cap. Just because I'm still gaining credits doesn't mean a thing to me honestly. I'm stuck somewhere, and I can't unlock anything so it actually makes the game a bit more boring. I love how since only 30% of the community is above Warrant Officer that they could care less about lifting the cap. And communal effort to lift it? That scares me. No offense to the people here who are the exception, but by and large I wouldn't trust the Halo community to be smart enough to save my god damn life if they had to. >_>

[Limited]

So Bungie is too busy massaging the cocks of MLG fangboys to keep them happy instead of working on elements that ultimately affect every player. Great...

What gets me is the fact Bungie have pretty much said they put the cap in place because they want the community as a whole to progress up the ranks together. They have advertised Reach as having shit tons of armour, to let yourself be unique! More helmets? More people will have different helmets! The cap is limiting that. People at moment only have a select few to pick, yes most people arent at the max, so they still have more to unlock. But the range would be even greater, if cap didnt exist.

The other 'reason' is security, the only thing the cap is doing is limiting the helmets from unlocking. Each player still has all the credits, the only difference, is the fact the rank name and helmet is locked. In my eyes having it locked makes it harder to find people who have hacked, if someone is somehow top rank after 5 days, Bungie can see "oh shit 3 people have inheritor, I'll look into that", if however Bungie see 10,000 people at Lt Colonel, how can the see the hidden stat?

The whole point in ranking systems, is to show that you are different than other players.

If this was H3 ranking system, I would say yes a level cap makes sense, because rank affected matchmaking, in Reach rank only affects the aesthetics of your armour.

So Hitscan == Raytracing

[Arteen]

I just hit max rank, and I really have no problem whatsoever with the rank cap.

[Limited]

What are your thoughts Arteen, about DLC and other content that are on the disk, but locked on launch? Considering that is affectively what Bungie have done, yes its available offline, so technically, we are paying more money, and we get even less content.

Oh and you might all be reading my posts and being like "oh hes butthurt as hes hit the level cap"...yes I am, all the low rank armour pieces are absolute shite.

[Ellis]

I just hit max rank, and I really have no problem whatsoever with the rank cap.

Better person than I am then. o.O Then again I've been at rank cap for more than a week now. *Shrugs*