Halo was a game with a single player campaign, that could be played co-op, and also had versus multiplayer. It served many masters. This game only serves the latter. Halo’s multiplayer was played for years by a core group, but probably the most common use case was that it was played only a handful of times with friends, everyone had a great time, and it didn’t matter that people didn’t keep playing it after those handful of times. What would make FPS games great again, to me, is if we remembered all of that stuff about Halo rather than trying to be the one viral success out of tens of thousands of game releases every year, where failure results in tons of job losses because your company has no Plan B.
I only played the “first” one, but that one did feel incredibly like Halo to me. Just with the added functionality of portals.
I mean you have an assault rifle, a battle rifle, a pistol, a DMR, and shotguns. I’m sure there are some other ones I’m not remembering.
Edit: I also actually liked the functionality that grenades had. Instead of a crowd control or room-clearing tool, now they’re specifically to disable enemy portals. So now you had an interesting dynamic where yes, you can portal all the way across the map (or try sniping someone through a portal) into the enemy’s base and try to score, but it also presents a nice little counter to that strategy.
To add to this, I played with a group of buddies the other day, and they have made improvements to give some of the split gate 1 feeling back, but damn, it’s just too different. It’s too much like apex/destiny with just super fast sprinting, sliding and shotguns and smgs, it’s got no diversity or depth. Maps don’t matter, it just isn’t the same game.
I think this just a sign of changing times regarding how games are made. We’ve come a long way from the days when one programmer added multiplayer into Goldeneye at the very end of development, that could never happen today. And those are the footsteps Halo 1 followed in, they didn’t even have Xbox Live until the sequel.
Today, I think trying to make a game do a little bit of everything may risk struggling to stand out against titles that focus all of their development resources on just doing one thing really really well. You do have a point that having solo content to fall back on is at least a safety net, but does the opportunity cost of implementing that solo content make it even harder to succeed as a multiplayer game in such a competitive market?
I think this is definitely the case. For example, Halo Infinite is probably the last “classic” Halo game we’ll get in the sense of it has campaign and multiplayer, future games will probably just focus on either the campaign side of things or multiplayer. And some might even be public lobbies only, no custom games/forge.
As much as I wish we could get something as content complete as Halo 3 nowadays, it just doesn’t seem feasible anymore
We’ve come a long way from the days when one programmer added multiplayer into Goldeneye at the very end of development, that could never happen today.
Why? I can’t name a reason why this couldn’t be. Even extrapolating out for added complexity of network multiplayer, maybe it wouldn’t be feasible to add in just a handful of weeks, but if you’re already developing with client-server in mind, the same thing can still be whipped up today in a reasonable amount of time.
Even the rest of your comment makes it seem like if there aren’t thousands of concurrent players weeks after launch that it’s somehow failed as a multiplayer game. The industry has broken all of our brains so thoroughly that most of us can’t remember a time where that wasn’t a goal, and I’m arguing that it’s better if we didn’t make it the goal. If you make a multiplayer mode that you can play with friends, that has bots to fall back on when you don’t, and is designed to scale to very few players in a match, that multiplayer mode offers just as much value in week 1 as it does 20 years later. It’s not falling back on a single player mode, nor is it a failure as a multiplayer game in a competitive market if you build something that can withstand reaching a small audience, like the industry used to. That we used to get both modes in tons of games back in the day is what made these games “the full package” rather than only a single player game or only a multiplayer game, and I reject the idea that one of those two things has to suffer for the other to be good.
Halo didn’t have Xbox Live until the sequel because Xbox Live didn’t exist yet when Halo 1 was built, but it did still have network multiplayer. And that was still very much serving multiple masters, just like its predecessor.
Because most games aren’t designed client-server. GoldenEye was entirely local, so it didn’t need any networking, replication, or anti-cheat.
Games these days have a lot more going on. You need to replicate a lot of stuff in the world, you need to ensure that none of the clients are telling you something impossible, and you need a way to deal with cheaters. Usually that means accounts, anti-cheat, and bans. That’s a significant amount of infrastructure and management. And then you also have a lot of legal compliance too, like GDPR, and even more problems if minors will be playing your game online.
Even just split-screen multiplayer has value. Replication is handled by the engine. User accounts are handled by your storefront. Anti-cheat is something you’re thinking about if you’re designing an e-sport, but if you’re just making a fun video game that you might play with friends, it’s a nice-to-have. Why are we even collecting data such that GDPR is a problem? I know these are all things that multiplayer devs tell you they’re thinking about as to why this is so complicated, but we’ve lost the plot here so much that they’re building a game that they’re already expecting is going to reach millions of people without even being sure that they’re going to hit thousands. Which is how we get to an article like this one.
They dropped the first one while it was still hot. There was nothing wrong with it and it was quite fun.
The fact they can’t even stand behind any of these changes they announce makes me unwilling to invest time into their products as they could rug pull yet again any moment.
I seem to recall the reason they dropped the first one being that the tech stack it was built on couldn’t support the number of players trying to play it at once.
I tried it when it first launched, perhaps its just me getting older but the portal mechanic was just tedious. Learning maps is already hard enough without enemies being able to teleport around.
I cant remember specifics, but it felt overdesigned. The first was a little tricky to get comfortable with, but was pretty intuitive. I had a ton of fun playing against what I can only assume were bots.
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Halo was a game with a single player campaign, that could be played co-op, and also had versus multiplayer. It served many masters. This game only serves the latter. Halo’s multiplayer was played for years by a core group, but probably the most common use case was that it was played only a handful of times with friends, everyone had a great time, and it didn’t matter that people didn’t keep playing it after those handful of times. What would make FPS games great again, to me, is if we remembered all of that stuff about Halo rather than trying to be the one viral success out of tens of thousands of game releases every year, where failure results in tons of job losses because your company has no Plan B.
I only played the “first” one, but that one did feel incredibly like Halo to me. Just with the added functionality of portals.
I mean you have an assault rifle, a battle rifle, a pistol, a DMR, and shotguns. I’m sure there are some other ones I’m not remembering.
Edit: I also actually liked the functionality that grenades had. Instead of a crowd control or room-clearing tool, now they’re specifically to disable enemy portals. So now you had an interesting dynamic where yes, you can portal all the way across the map (or try sniping someone through a portal) into the enemy’s base and try to score, but it also presents a nice little counter to that strategy.
To add to this, I played with a group of buddies the other day, and they have made improvements to give some of the split gate 1 feeling back, but damn, it’s just too different. It’s too much like apex/destiny with just super fast sprinting, sliding and shotguns and smgs, it’s got no diversity or depth. Maps don’t matter, it just isn’t the same game.
Rockets that spawn in a neutral location
I think this just a sign of changing times regarding how games are made. We’ve come a long way from the days when one programmer added multiplayer into Goldeneye at the very end of development, that could never happen today. And those are the footsteps Halo 1 followed in, they didn’t even have Xbox Live until the sequel.
Today, I think trying to make a game do a little bit of everything may risk struggling to stand out against titles that focus all of their development resources on just doing one thing really really well. You do have a point that having solo content to fall back on is at least a safety net, but does the opportunity cost of implementing that solo content make it even harder to succeed as a multiplayer game in such a competitive market?
I think this is definitely the case. For example, Halo Infinite is probably the last “classic” Halo game we’ll get in the sense of it has campaign and multiplayer, future games will probably just focus on either the campaign side of things or multiplayer. And some might even be public lobbies only, no custom games/forge.
As much as I wish we could get something as content complete as Halo 3 nowadays, it just doesn’t seem feasible anymore
Why? I can’t name a reason why this couldn’t be. Even extrapolating out for added complexity of network multiplayer, maybe it wouldn’t be feasible to add in just a handful of weeks, but if you’re already developing with client-server in mind, the same thing can still be whipped up today in a reasonable amount of time.
Even the rest of your comment makes it seem like if there aren’t thousands of concurrent players weeks after launch that it’s somehow failed as a multiplayer game. The industry has broken all of our brains so thoroughly that most of us can’t remember a time where that wasn’t a goal, and I’m arguing that it’s better if we didn’t make it the goal. If you make a multiplayer mode that you can play with friends, that has bots to fall back on when you don’t, and is designed to scale to very few players in a match, that multiplayer mode offers just as much value in week 1 as it does 20 years later. It’s not falling back on a single player mode, nor is it a failure as a multiplayer game in a competitive market if you build something that can withstand reaching a small audience, like the industry used to. That we used to get both modes in tons of games back in the day is what made these games “the full package” rather than only a single player game or only a multiplayer game, and I reject the idea that one of those two things has to suffer for the other to be good.
Halo didn’t have Xbox Live until the sequel because Xbox Live didn’t exist yet when Halo 1 was built, but it did still have network multiplayer. And that was still very much serving multiple masters, just like its predecessor.
Because most games aren’t designed client-server. GoldenEye was entirely local, so it didn’t need any networking, replication, or anti-cheat.
Games these days have a lot more going on. You need to replicate a lot of stuff in the world, you need to ensure that none of the clients are telling you something impossible, and you need a way to deal with cheaters. Usually that means accounts, anti-cheat, and bans. That’s a significant amount of infrastructure and management. And then you also have a lot of legal compliance too, like GDPR, and even more problems if minors will be playing your game online.
Even just split-screen multiplayer has value. Replication is handled by the engine. User accounts are handled by your storefront. Anti-cheat is something you’re thinking about if you’re designing an e-sport, but if you’re just making a fun video game that you might play with friends, it’s a nice-to-have. Why are we even collecting data such that GDPR is a problem? I know these are all things that multiplayer devs tell you they’re thinking about as to why this is so complicated, but we’ve lost the plot here so much that they’re building a game that they’re already expecting is going to reach millions of people without even being sure that they’re going to hit thousands. Which is how we get to an article like this one.
They dropped the first one while it was still hot. There was nothing wrong with it and it was quite fun. The fact they can’t even stand behind any of these changes they announce makes me unwilling to invest time into their products as they could rug pull yet again any moment.
They sold out and pandered to eSports and really thought they had the next big hit that would bring in league and DOTA levels of esports engagement.
I seem to recall the reason they dropped the first one being that the tech stack it was built on couldn’t support the number of players trying to play it at once.
Also the CEO showing up to an event hyping the game in a “Make FPS Great Again” hat was a pretty big turn off to a lot of people
Oof
So I guess it’s backend problems? Why rewire the game client if the server needs rework…
I tried it when it first launched, perhaps its just me getting older but the portal mechanic was just tedious. Learning maps is already hard enough without enemies being able to teleport around.
When I played the first one I just camped at the teleporters, and got many kills. It was a very long time ago, perhaps around that same time.
Loved the first game. The gunplay and handling in the second never felt the same.
I cant remember specifics, but it felt overdesigned. The first was a little tricky to get comfortable with, but was pretty intuitive. I had a ton of fun playing against what I can only assume were bots.
so sad, as the first splitgate was a super fun game.