Halo 3 character model
***
Ah, how time flies. It was just two months ago, towards the end of March, when we debuted our Vs. Mode series, billed as " a new occasional section...where two or more people will discuss and debate a popular game, a new announcement, a burning issue, or whatever else is of interest to us and our volunteer combatants." Our first combatant was Stephen Totilo, who covers videogames as a reporter for MTV News, and our topic of debate was the Sony Santa Monica-developed PlayStation 2 title God of War II. For the second installment, we butted heads with San Jose Mercury News reporter Dean Takahashi over the (de)merits of the Xbox 360 Elite and the price-reduced PlayStation Portable.
Today, we welcome back the soon-to-be-married Totilo to discuss the virtues and vices of Bungie's Halo 3 multiplayer beta, created for the Xbox 360. The beta officially began on May 16th, but we and a slew of our fellow journalists got our hands on it early; first at a series of promotional events on May 11th, after which we were given an early access code to download the beta for ourselves. In the first part of our "previously recorded" email exchange with Totilo, we examine why in-person multiplayer gaming might be more engaging than its online counterpart and attempt to determine which sport or cultural phenomenon Halo most resembles.
***
To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: May 9, 2007
Re: I Want To Be Alone
Stephen,
One hour into my Halo 2 refresher course--the high-pitched voices of barely pubescent boys coming through loud and clear in my headset--I find myself wondering whose bright idea it was to make the Halo 3 multiplayer beta the subject of our second Vs. Mode pairing. (Damn my fellow Canadians at BioWare for their tardiness with Mass Effect.) As if it weren't enough that our first exchange revealed my complete ignorance of the Zelda franchise, this one will expose my deep-seated indifference to the online component of action games. That's why every fiber of my being is screaming, "Let's scrap our plan and pick something else." Still, there's something perversely appealing about being forced to find something interesting to say about an aspect of action games--online multiplayer--that, while I recognize its importance, generally leaves me cold. Besides, isn't that why they pay me the big bucks? So, once more into the breach.
It's not you, Halo 2. It's me.
The first online game that I remember playing was back in 1989 or 1990. I don't remember the name of the game, but it was a top down tank combat game for DOS PCs, and it had a two-player head-to-head mode that could be played via modem. A classmate of mine had the same game and there was something subtly magical about the way a blazing-fast 2600 baud modem could collapse the 30-minute walking distance between our suburban houses into a you-are-almost-there experience. Unfortunately, I didn't have two phone lines, so the thrill of trash-talking my friend was limited to pre-game and post-game chatter. That's why we spent a lot more time playing the decidedly analog tabletop game Axis & Allies in my parents' rec room than we did playing tank vs. tank over the modem; the former offered a much more social experience than the latter.
During my time in college from 1990 to 1994, I didn't spend much time playing games. My freshman roommate had a PC, and when he wasn't using it, I alternated between playing two simulation games: an Apache helicopter title and a college hoops coaching game. As for multiplayer gaming, I do remember a number of occasions where myself and four other guys in my freshman dorm would cram into the computer cluster, commandeer all of the Macs, and play Risk over the LAN. A good time was had by all, made more fun by the side-by-side game time banter.
When I got out of college in 1994, I went to work at the Washington Post in the wonderfully vague role of content producer for the newspaper's nascent online service. We worker bees were mostly in our 20s and 30s, and when we weren't swapping stories about how far we'd gotten in the greatest game ever made--yes, that evolutionary dead end called Myst--we were silently counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until quitting time. Because right at 6 pm, all thoughts of work were obliterated as we fired up Doom on our office PCs and gleefully blasted each other to smithereens for the next ninety minutes, the only sounds being those of our playful insults and cheers bouncing off the cubicle walls. Ditto for Doom II.
In the spring of 1995, I joined Newsweek and pretty much stopped gaming recreationally. It wasn't until August of 1999, when, curious about how much game development had evolved since the days of Myst and Doom, I got my editors to send me on a three-week tour of the industry. Beginning with Bungie in Chicago and ending with Dennis "Thresh" Fong in Berkeley, I also hit id software, Ion Storm, a slew of Gathering of Developers' studios, Sony, Sega and Microsoft. Since this was just a few weeks before the launch of the Dreamcast, for which NFL 2K was one of the flagship titles, it piqued my interest in online console gaming. But after a few random football matches with strangers, I lost interest. Many more of my multiplayer experiences on the dearly departed Dreamcast were had playing Soul Calibur, and later Virtua Tennis and Dead or Alive 2, with my opponents seated right next to me. (Ditto for PC multiplayer; I've pretty much thoroughly avoided playing such games online, but a fellow tech journalist who lives in Manhattan has for years periodically hosted LAN parties that last into the wee hours of the morning. Good, good times.)
My heretofore unexplored lack of interest in online multiplayer didn't change much with the release of the PlayStation 2 or the Xbox; save for playing a handful of games with publicists and fellow journalists at industry events and online hands-on sessions (i.e. SOCOM, Halo 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Doom 3), or dabbling with a few more titles shortly after they shipped (mostly Madden, Burnout and NBA Live), I was pretty much M.I.A., or AWOL, depending on how you look at it. And with the exception of a few quick bouts of Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 simply haven't forged in me the love of online multiplayer that warms the hearts of so many gamers, like Level Up's own Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling. But in the interest of Vs. Mode, I'm willing to use the Halo 3 multiplayer beta as a springboard to see whether there's a place for me somewhere in this vast connected arena.
Cheers,
N'Gai
***
To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: May 19, 2007
Re: Is Halo 3 Baseball, Basketball or 'Survivor'?
N'Gai,
It's been 10 days since you wrote me. Like a certain Nintendo-made first-person adventure game, I'm late (LINK: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1552624/20070215/index.jhtml OR http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2007/02/16/mp3-could-be-delayed-again/ ]
I've been busy, as have you. Some of that time was spent playing the Halo 3 Beta, which went live since you wrote me. A lot of other things have happened in gaming since then. Sega, Square, Sony and Ubisoft showed off their 2007 games line-up in press events in America and Japan. Tecmo announced the return of Tecmo Bowl. Blizzard announced a sequel to StarCraft. The official release date for Halo 3 was announced. And the people who track video game sales in America, the NPD group, reported a shocking disparity in Pokemon sales: the series' 2007 Pokemon Diamond outselling the counterpart Pokemon Pearl 1,000,000 to 700,000 in the games' first month. (I'm a Pearl man myself.)
Just 10 days brought all of that.
I'd like to say it's your email that got me thinking about all that can happen during the passage of time. You certainly were in a reflective mood yourself when you kicked off this exchange. You even made me a little nostalgic: in that August of 1999 you cited we were just becoming friends, you were just beginning to find excuses not to play Zelda, and your dreadlocks were just beginning, measuring at a couple of feet short of their current J Allard length.
But it wasn't your email. I've always been reflective, nostalgic...and I guess a bit of a sap. As a kid I used to get depressed on New Year's Eve. With the rest of my family in the living room I would go to my room and sadly remove the last year's 12-month calendar from my wall, flipping through the pages one last time to glimpse receding memories.
So...Halo 3. What does any of this have to do with Halo 3? It's got everything to do with Halo 3, because I'm thinking about the passage of time and the amount of stuff that happens during such passages. How much do we expect to have happen in gaming between May 9th and May 19th? How much do we expect to have happen from 2004 to 2007? How much can gaming change, and how much should a game series change?
I've heard a lot of people talking about how surprisingly similar this multiplayer-only Halo 3 beta looks and feels to multiplayer of the first two Halo games. I've heard a lot of grumbling that those similarities are a problem.
Now you didn't play Halo and Halo 2 much. Neither did I. I beat the first game in single-player. I went halfway through the second. I played less than 10 hours of multi-player of either game. Never mind that. I've played enough and you've played enough to know what this Halo 3 multiplayer beta indicates: they haven't really changed the game.
Like the first two installments, Halo 3 plays out as a quickly-paced first-person shooter that reward strategic team play. A good offense requires map memorization and a skilled hand at making your character hop and shoot at the same time. A good defense requires management of the series' signature regenerating-health system. Halo experts will scoff that I'm oblivious to some profoundly subtle developments in Halo, some key tweak to character turning speeds or Warthog handling.
The introduction of new X-button-triggered gadgets like the bubble shield and the trip mine is the one definitive addition. At best that's like the NBA's 1979 introduction of the three-point shot. It may tweak the game, but it's not overhauling it.
The passage of time just hasn't changed Halo series a lot. Is this a problem?
When last we debated, I railed against repetition in game sequels. My Kratos critique was that God of War II, although lot of fun, was too safely cut from the cloth of the first game to impress and impact me the way I hoped it would. Ready to call me a flip-flopper? I'm here today to tell you that I like that Halo 3 is playing it safe. I like the lack of radical change.
The difference between God of War and Halo multiplayer is that one is an adventure of narrative and gameplay. The other is enjoyed as a sport. I crave constant re-invention in the former. I assume perfection and stability is possible in the latter.
Sometimes a sporting formula just works. Take baseball. About a century ago someone figured out that 90 feet was a good distance between home plate and first base. Since then pitchers and batters have gotten stronger. Runners have gotten faster. Baseball strategies have changed. Pitchers' mounds have been modified. Yet nothing has ruined those 90 feet. It still is just long enough--and just short enough--to make for exciting plays. The dimensions just work.
Is Halo baseball? Has Bungie already nailed the 90 feet?
Or maybe Halo is basketball back in 1953, just before the introduction of the 24-second shot clock. Before the clock was added basketball was played at a slower pace. The sport was still about tossing a bouncing ball through a hoop, but the shot-clock forced play to be much more swift.
The Halo formula might well be baseball already. Then again, it might be basketball before the shot clock was added.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Halo isn't a sport and maybe it shouldn't be treated as if it can be as pure as one. Maybe it's more like "Survivor." You know the show, right? A bunch of people are sent to a jungle, get forced into all sorts of odd tasks and get to vote each other off, one TV episode at a time? I used to watch it regularly, and back when I did I noticed that the rules changed regularly. Those fundamental voting rules didn't, but many of the specific day-to-day ones did. Challenges changed. Tribes were shuffled. Monkey wrenches were thrown.
Halo multiplayer games have always been full of tribal challenges: Capture the Flag, Slayer Deathmatch, King of the Hill. We've got VIP mode and Oddball mode. The challenges get mixed every time, even if getting voted off the island consistently involves getting tagging from a hop-and-shoot enemy. If Halo isn't baseball; if Halo isn't basketball; if it's "Survivor," then, yes, it could use more of a remix.
Brian Crecente from Kotaku told me that he is disappointed that Halo doesn't allow players to fire from a protected hiding spot behind cover. He believes Gears of War popularized that element of shooter action and that Halo 3 could use that... or something. On his blog, he wrote:
"I suppose I shouldn't have been expecting them to re-invent the wheel, but it would have been nice to see some sort of shift in gameplay, something that Halo 3 most certainly doesn't do."
He's looking for a significant change. Me? I'm thinking the Halo formula is pretty well locked, more of a Mario Kart or Gran Turismo than the constantly reinvented multiplayer of Splinter Cell or the still up-for-dabbling Burnout.
I leave you with this question: what do we need from our multi-player sequels? Constant change? Consistent execution of a proven formula?
What do you think? And how about you open this up to that other element of Halo 3's similarity to the previous games: the looks. Should they have overhauled the graphics?
-Stephen
***
Sometimes, that's just the way it goes;
Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange on the Halo 3 multiplayer beta with
MTV News videogame reporter
Stephen Totilo was a largely friendly affair. For our part, we reminisced about communal gaming experiences from games gone by in an attempt to understand why online multiplayer generally leaves us cold, while Totilo variously compared Halo 3's multiplayer to baseball, basketball and "Survivor." And while there's nothing wrong with collegiality, our readers want to see some blood ink pixels spilled. Today, in Round 2 of our exchange, things get more than a bit personal as we hone in on what Halo feels like for a newbie.
***
To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: May 23, 2007
Re: Ducking and Covering
Stephen,
As usual, you've made some terrific points and posed some excellent questions. And as usual, I'm not going to answer them. Not right away, at least. Instead, I'm going to call you out. Because as terrific as your points and as excellent as your questions may be, I feel as though you're ducking the elephant in the room (our mutual avoidance of online multiplayer gaming) and covering it up (with useful analogies about what Halo multiplayer may or may not be.) We're both newbs here, dammit, and we should fully engage the experience of that newbitude (yes, I'm bringing back my neologism grenades for this Vs. Mode sequel) rather than simply draw parallels between Halo 3 multiplayer and single player games, sports and television shows.
The reason I spent an entire post clearing my throat was to explain to our readers Why I Don't Play Halo (Or Any Other Online Multiplayer Games, For That Matter.) Having done that, I promised them that I would jump in, and having done so, here is my report from the front lines. (Borrowing from a conceit I developed for my presently on-hiatus tech blog, The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized, my report will be delivered in the form of a brief playlist; the one I would have put on my limited edition Halo 3 Zune, had I taken it out of its box.)
1. "Loser," Beck: Anyone who steps into Halo multiplayer is going to die the way Chicagoans vote: early and often. To those who play online shooters on a regular basis, this point must seem hardly worth noting. To someone like myself, who tends towards single-player action-adventure games like Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and God of War II and arcade-y action games like Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and Every Extend Extra, it's extremely dismaying to step into a world that is visually indistinguishable from an action-adventure game, but has the death toll (mine) of an arcade-y action game. There's something very public about the repeated failure that online shooters ask you to endure, and for me, it's compounded by the fact that this ritual humiliation (note the small "h," please, as I don't want to overstate this) and occasional victory takes place largely around strangers. The social context of LAN parties that I described in my previous entry--all friends and acquaintances, gaming in the same physical location--obviously isn't present in the grim (dare I say Spartan?), pseudonymous kill-or-be-killed arenas of Halo 3. Soy un perdidor, indeed.
2. "All By Myself," Eric Carmen: Separately, I've met up with you and Level Up Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, but our handful of shared experiences didn't produce much in the way of coordinated action or in-game cameraderie. The real bonding took place during the after-action reports in the lobbies waiting for the next match to begin. During the games themselves, I felt as though I was pretty much on my own, but crucially and cruelly robbed of the narcissistic godhood around which single-player games are generally based--it wasn't all about me anymore. In other words, I was spawned into a world where I was fundamentally alone, and the only sure thing was that I was going to die. Clearly, a lot of people take to these games like ducks to water, but as a newcomer, I can't say that I found it inviting or welcoming. (By the way, Ziff-Davis' 1UP Yours podcast has an excellent discussion of what Bungie could do to make Halo 3 multiplayer more newb friendly; as newbs ourselves, perhaps we should take up some of those points in our next entries.)
3. "Let Go," Frou Frou: After the nasty, brutish and short Halo 2 multiplayer experience I briefly described in my opening statement, I realized that I was going to need some guidance. That's where Rolf came in. We partied up--this was still before Microsoft's Halo 3 press event and subsequent release of the beta download--and Rolf offered me the choice of an objective-based mode like Capture the Flag, or something more free-for-all like King of the Hill. Having been thoroughly and repeatedly owned during a CTF match the night before, I opted for the latter.
Best. Decision. Ever.
After the couple of minutes it took me to get my sea legs, I gleefully gave myself over to the Hobbesian ecstasies of King of the Hill. The genius of this match type is its just-the-right-side of barely-controlled chaos: you rush to get to the "hill" as quickly as you can; you hold it for as long as you can; you terminate all of your rivals with extreme prejudice; your final scores is based on the cumulative amount of time you were able to hold the hill.
So if Halo single-player is built around the pockets of action that Bungie refers to as "Thirty seconds of fun," King of the Hill is fifteen seconds of fun, washed, rinsed and repeated ad nauseum, mercifully stripped of the various tensions necessary to make the more structured game types work. There's no need for teamwork, patience, affordance, strategy, thought. Everything tactical is removed, but the presence of the hill gives it a focus--both in terms of the geography and the gameplay--that makes it more memorable and rewarding than a pure dog-kill-dog game of Slayer, aka deathmatch. Just so we're clear: as a fan of the Metal Gear series, I'm obviously not opposed to tactical games, and I've stated some of the action games I like above. But when tactics and action are combined, as they are in multiplayer shooters, then topped with skill and accuracy, we're starting to blow past the outer limits of my gaming abilities; in other words, those aren't two great tastes that taste great together as far as my weaksauceness is concerned.
So even though the other night I managed to place third--barely--in a Halo 3 Team Slayer match, my achievement felt hollow because I'm really not that good. It was pure blind luck in a game type that seems as though it should be about skill. Meanwhile, I'm still buzzing about my King of the Hill session in Halo 2 because of the way it expert way it scratched my arcade itch. That, then, was my final revelation about King of the Hill: it's structured in such a way that death doesn't feel like a failure, or even much of a setback the way it does to me in the other game types. It's merely a brief this-second-is-a-good-second-to-die interregnum between virtual killing sprees, making it more like arcade-y action games I praised earlier; it felt like Every Extend Extra or Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, in 3-D, with human opponents. Finally, my narcissistic divinity was restored, even if I was just a minor deity facing off against the petty god-avatars of other human beings. Finally, at long last, I had found a little piece of Halo that I could call my own.
4. "Simon Says," Pharoah Monche: This final track is here to express my hope that you'll--pardon my Xbox Live--get the f--- up off the sidelines (rhetorically speaking) and join me down here in the rumble pit in trying to grapple with the experience of playing Halo multiplayer.
Cheers,
N.
***
To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: May 24, 2007
Re: Forget Halo 3. Why Don't They Offer Halo 101?
N'Gai,
So the guy who agrees to partner up with me for an exchange about Halo 3--but then decides to not answer any questions I have for him--is shocked about the inability for me and him to cooperate effectively when we're actually playing the game?
Fancy that.
It reminds me of the time last week when we teamed up for a match in the Halo 3 beta and you shot my guy in the head with the sniper rifle. Mistake, right?
The experience I've had of playing Halo multiplayer as a newbie and failing with death after death is indeed bringing me back. It's like playing an old arcade game or any of those so-called NES "classics" with the ridiculous jumps. Then and now, I see my character dying a lot. When this happened in the old games I blamed the games' designers. Or, in less rational moments, I blamed the hardware. "Why'd the developers make that jump so hard?"...or..."I hit the A button! Why didn't my guy jump?" Playing Halo 3 Beta and getting smoked again and again is a nostalgia trip, except now I blame other players. They're too good. They're hustling me. They're ranked wrong.
Notice whose fault my failure never is.
It sounds like you're looking for ways to make the solo-ing in Halo more fun. I'm with you. I too feel the sting of frequent defeat and would prefer a more delirious buzz. I think, however, that I've failed to appreciate one nice touch Bungie has already put in the game: the ranking system. When I'm a Level 4 and I'm getting whacked by Level 8 opponents, I can deal. I have been nervous when the matchmaking system makes me the highest-ranked person in a match. Then I feel the responsibility to outshine everyone else. And when I've inevitably struggled to do so, I tell myself it's because everyone else saw my king-sized rating and decided to go gunning for me.
Now, I'll have you know, Mr. Third Place, that in the course of the Halo 3 Beta I finished a Team Slayer match in second place once. Second place! The brilliant performance was all my doing. I've also won some Team Skrimish Territories games, though that was mostly because the three other guys on my team were better at grabbing land than a baseball team that wants a new site for a new stadium.
I have not played King of the Hill. I have not had a triumphant session as a lone Spartan soldier. I've primarily enjoyed the cover of team games. I have tasted the joy of team play and hope to transform myself from jovial bench-warmer to power-player. Like you, however, I have yet to enjoy the serendipity of teamwork in matches. I've yet to find a friend on the battlefield, hatch a plan so crazy it just might work and then rocket to the number one spot on the stats list.
But let's be completely honest, N'Gai, and admit to the readers that we're such neophytes that when we played the same maps together we couldn't even get the Team Chat function working. We weren't working together because we couldn't talk to each other. I do recall one map where a player far better than us--so talented that he even knew how to use the Team Chat function!--effectively guided our little band of half-brothers to momentary mid-match success. Then he stopped coaching us, yelling something about desperately needing cover fire, and we went back to losing our match.
That match left me thinking about teamwork in these games and what kind of team-work is the most fun and even how a game might be designed to emphasize that type of team work. I could certainly diverge into discussion of why co-op story-based multiplayer might therefore be a more appealing feature than competitive arena-combat multiplayer for neophyte players like us. I could explain how that kind of solid contiguous mission structure could diminish our moments of blind flailing. But if I went into any of that you'd scold me for not talking about the Halo 3 experience.
So, yeah, I think the experience of team-based multiplayer is tops: like the time I got in the back turret of a Warthog jeep in Halo 3, had another player jump in the driver's seat and proceeded to collaboratively mow through the enemy forces. Oh wait. I'm remembering that wrong. The last time I tried that I jumped in the jeep, manned the turret, and then waited for someone to get in the driver's seat. They didn't. I just stood there.
The question for me is how a newbie can learn good team tactics. Solve that and you've solved one of the few problems that Halo clearly has. That problem is that the Halo virus has limited potency. The series is a fever that's hard to catch if you didn't catch it within a few months of when your friends did. I've found that if you didn't, then playing Halo with them winds up being a pointless exercise for both sides. The skill gap is just too great. Bridge that gap and Halo--and other skill-based video games--could welcome an ever-expanding base of players rather than a large but exclusively skilled set.
How do newbie players get better? Throwing them on the battlefield or expecting them to learn through the single-player mode of the game aren't the best answers. Need I remind you that I beat Halo and that hasn't helped me a lick on the multiplayer of Halo 3?
How about if some players online could lend me a helping hand? Let me share something with you: I'm such an expert gamer that I'm a bonafide level 12 druid in World of Warcraft (just about the equivalent of not even having put the quarter in the Pac-Man machine yet, if you can't catch my sarcasm). In my brief time in WoW I had one player spot my newbitude (or can we call it "casualosity"?) and, lo, did he challenge me to a duel and smite me with a blood spell? No, he offered me help. On the battlefield of Halo 3 there is no helping hand. There's not even a Molly Pitcher. Then again, on the battlefield of Halo 3 there's not a person who likes helping me rather than blood spelling me so much that the next time I log in he warps to my spot, turns into bear form, licks my character's face, and gives me pause to ever log into the game again. But there's also no help. Not much. It's, at most, a 16 player game. People need to survive, not give classes.
I do have an idea that would help us neophytes. You know how in single-player games you often learn one ability at a time, gain one new weapon or tool every few minutes but never have everything thrown at you all at once in a situation in which you're expected to excel? Imagine bringing that kind of pacing to multiplayer. Imagine being able to play multiplayer in training tiers: first maybe a map where jumping is disabled, then a map where jumping is enabled but shooting without both feet on the ground is not, then turn on a couple of extra weapons in the next map, then some heavier weapons in the one after that. Some of that map customization is already in the game, but not all of it. I think that kind of training routine could help a lot of players.
I expect some people might think this would be unpopular. Only newbies would want it, and what good is that? It would be like opening the local gym only to first-timers for a day. Having some trainers around is preferable. How do you get the experienced players--the potential trainers--to participate in the training maps? Simple: give out 100 Achievement points for any player that puts three hours into the training maps as student or teacher. Those expert gamers do love collecting their Achievement points. Problem solved.
How would you make Halo friendlier to new players?
And, oh yeah, is there anything wrong with the graphics?
-Stephen
***
Things finally heated up in Round 2 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News videogame reporter Stephen Totilo on the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. We taunted him by urging him to step out of the ivory tower and join us in the trenches where we were trying to grapple with the essence of Halo multiplayer; he in turn punched below the belt by exposing specifics of our online ineptitude. Today, in the Final Round of our exchange, we both get up from our corners and come out swinging against a common opponent--the starkly unforgiving learning curve that plagues many online multiplayer games--in an attempt to figure out how the rest of us can be trained to wage war like the veterans who dominate Halo 3's virtual arena.
***
To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: May 29, 2007
Re: A Campaign For Change
Don't be such a bunch of pussies. It's fine. All you need to do is practice.
--John Davison, Ziff-Davis Game Group editorial director, paraphrasing some message board responses to the May 25th 1UP Yours podcast about how Halo 3 multiplayer could be made more newcomer-friendly
I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game last it's my last but we're talking about practice, man. How silly is that?
--Allen Iverson at a May 8th, 2002 press conference after the 76ers were defeated in the first round of the playoffs
Stephen,
Thanks for indulging me in my desire to tackle the experience of playing Halo 3. About our shared forays into battle, I wish I could say I was griefing when I tagged you with the sniper rifle, but I don't even remember doing it. As for our team chat debacle, that's what we get for not reading the manual--I mean the FAQ.
I kicked off my final entry with the pair of quotes above because I'm
sure that after Round 2, the grizzled Halo vets among our
readership--the ones with the thousand-yard stares, the war stories
from long nights spent in the s--t and the astronomical rankings to
prove it--are almost certainly wondering, "Why don't these guys just stop bitching and practice?"
And when the completed version of Halo 3 ships on September 25th, with
a broader range of players available for matchmaking than the
self-selecting group of hardcores who signed up for the beta, they'll
have a point--up to a point. Because as you point out in your last
email, I am indeed looking for ways to make the individual experience
within Halo 3 multiplayer more engaging and more inviting, particularly
for newcomers. Otherwise, the same fate will befall Halo 3 as did its
predecessors and fellow multiplayer games: it will calcify into
something suited only to the hardcore. None of this, by the way, is
meant to suggest that Halo is in any way broken for its devotees. It's
not. I'm just trying to figure out how Bungie can increase its appeal
to the rest of us--no matter when we decide to Jump In, no matter how weak our skills might be, no matter whether we decide to take a break and then return.
My admittedly limited experience with Halo 2 and Halo 3 multiplayer has convinced me that matchmaking alone is insufficient to guarantee a rewarding online experience. In single-player mode, games are generally paced in such a way as to teach us how to play the game: they slowly increase the number of weapons, abilities and options; they gradually increase the difficulty; and they also provide a range of difficulty settings. In multiplayer, it often feels as though I've been thrown into a game where the difficulty has been set a couple of notches too high, coupled with unpredictable allies and enemies and a slew of options to choose from. Some might find that appealing and dive right in, but I find it as overwhelming as if someone were to hand me the controller halfway through Ninja Gaiden Black and say, "Now you play." If single-player games were designed in this manner, with the game becoming more difficult to play the longer you take to purchase it, a lot fewer people would play games. And over the lifespan of a shooter, the net effect is polarizing: a large but stagnant group of experts and a much smaller number of novices, with not much of a continuum in between.
It doesn't have to be this way. But the solutions aren't exactly cheap. They will require more money, time, manpower and genuinely inventive thinking. And given how successful the Halo franchise has been to date, I'd be surprised if the brain trust in Redmond feels that any of the following additions are in order. Still, it can't hurt to try, and I think that each of my ideas will actually appeal to the hardcore as well as the newbie. Moreover, none of these concepts take away anything that the core gamer likes; they're all additive.
The simplest solution to suggest and one of the hardest to implement is bots. By letting gamers practice--whether singly or in teams--against AI-controlled opponents, newcomers can learn the basics of weapons, equipment, geography, jumping and targeting in a more nurturing environment, while teams--newbs and vets alike--can practice their tactics and strategies, all before going online. (For bot matches with just one human player, imagine that this feature was paired with an optional 10-30 second rewind--think Full Auto or Prince of Persia--so that gamers could Un-frag themselves and learn from their mistakes in real-time.) The trick is that programming good bots is extremely hard work, which is why most multiplayer games don't even bother. But the continued absence of bots from many such titles will only perpetuate the alienation of newcomers from these games.
Another solution is for the game to help players understand where to go and what to do once they get there. You and I recently got separate demonstrations of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and we both agreed that Splash Damage and id software's solution to this problem is ingenious. Just press the M key, and the CPU will assign you a mission specific to both your character class and the state of the conflict. An onscreen icon tells you where to go to complete your task while another highlights any allies who've accepted the same mission. Complete the mission, and you get not only recognition, but also the satisfaction that your accomplishment has taken your side one step closer to achieving its goal. Because of the clever way in which Quake Wars embeds a single-player experience within its objective-based multiplayer gameplay, I felt like a beautiful and unique snowflake (think "Fight Club," not, uh, "Glory") with something to offer the cause rather than a maggot with a major malfunction.
Since Quake Wars has a more elaborate set of the objectives than does Halo 3, it's unlikely that this solution would entirely fit Bungie's forthcoming opus. Bungie does, however, give you the option of recording your matches to the hard drive. Shouldn't Halo 3 be able to provide me with a computer-aided analysis of what just went down? Imagine if the game could tell you that you were consistently aiming high and to the right; that you should have switched weapons in the firefight rather than reload; why the battle rifle might have been more useful than the shotgun in a particular situation; or some other contextual advice? This tool, which I've long wanted to see in Madden, would go a long way towards teaching newbs the ropes, while vets could use it to help eliminate any holes from their techniques.
My most provocative suggestion, however, would involve a change in how Microsoft doles out Achievement points on a per-title basis. For titles like Halo 3, where multiplayer is half or more of the reason people buy the game, developers should be encouraged to include a multiplayer campaign mode with as many Achievement points as single-player, effectively doubling the number of points available from that one game. This new multiplayer campaign mode would be an expansion of the training mode that you suggested, modeled after racing games like Burnout (maps and match types would be made available in tiers) and Gran Turismo (license tests for maps, weapons, equipment and match types) so that gamers are systematically trained for multiplayer--including team play and clan play--in much the same way that racing games teach us throughout single-player.
As I stated at the outset, all of my suggestions would be additive. So fear not, Halo champs: the vast majority of these Achievement points would be earnable through regular online play, making the multiplayer campaign entirely optional. And as always, all maps, all weapons, all game types will be available to anyone from the start, so even trainees can duck in and out of the multiplayer campaign. But for newcomers, this new mode would steadily guide them from new recruits to grizzled vets by starting them out with, as you suggested, a limited number of weapons, maps and abilities and increasing them as players complete their in-game tests on sniping, jump-shooting, shield counter-attacking, team ambushes and the like.
At the first stage of the campaign, rookies would be start out by being matched against bots to ease their way in. Subsequent stages would give gamers the option of to complete some requirements against bots rather than humans, but as the multiplayer campaign continues, the ratio of Achievements that can be completed against bots as opposed to humans would keep tipping towards the latter, because the campaign's ultimate goal is to propel players online, with the confidence and the skills required to make Halo 3 a genuinely enjoyable experience. Think of it as Halo Age: Train Your Trigger Finger In Minutes a Day, with the disembodied heads of Dr. Frank O'Connor and Dr. Luke Smith encouraging us to stick it out. I'd sign up for that. Wouldn't you?
Since you seem intent on me revealing what I think about Halo 3's graphics, I'll wrap up my final entry by doing so briefly. They seem just fine to me, and they are definitely an upgrade over Halo 2. However, I can see three reasons why a number of journalists and message board posters have said that it looks like an up-rezed version of Halo 2. First and foremost, we're looking at Halo 3 multiplayer, not single-player--it would be as if the first time we saw Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, we were shown the online game rather than the campaign mode. Take out the netcode and other multiplayer requirements, and there's enough horsepower left for a 50 percent graphical improvement, according to folks working on the game.
Second, Halo was art directed around the limitations of the first Xbox. That doesn't give Bungie the same kind of leeway that new IPs have to design their aesthetics from the ground up around today's more powerful consoles; if Bungie deviates too much from its established guidelines on color and style, it won't be Halo. Finally, the critical acclaim and sales success of Gears of War have established a visual benchmark that many games are laboring under. Even though Halo is more about wide open battlefields than Gears' urban combat, the expectations that Gears has set will negatively impact gamers' reactions to a number of subsequent titles until it is consistently surpassed.
Thanks for sparring once again, and best of luck putting the final touches on your wedding.
Cheers,
N'Gai
***
To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: May 29, 2007
Re: Totilo 1, Fly 0
N'Gai,
Are you trying to make enemies with people? Really, are you?
I ask, because, if I read your letter right, you've called for Bungie to make future Halo games one third bigger. You want the games to include lengthy multi-player campaigns in addition to the single-player and competitive multi-player modes they already typically contain? So either you want those Bungie folks to work harder. Or you want the games to take even longer to make, thereby enraging Halo fans. See that flicker on the horizon? I think I see a Spartan Laser setting you in its sights.
Now how about I be the good friend and step out in front to take the hit? (By the way, has there ever been a multiplayer shooter that rewarded players for the valor of taking one for the team? Make that an Achievement!)
I think what you were really trying to say is that poor Bungie is a victim of its own success. Theirs is the rare game series that is beloved for both its single and multiplayer modes. Not many other top franchises can claim that. Unreal Tournament, Street Fighter and Mario Kart are all celebrated far more for their multiplayer than for their solo modes. Final Fantasy, Tetris and Splinter Cell are much more popular as solo games. Only Call of Duty and Pokemon come to mind as games that are championed as much for what you can enjoy playing them alone as you can with competing with other people. We've talked about this. You actually noticed this first.
And it's a great point, one worth bringing back up, because maybe the price Bungie will pay for having to make high-quality solo and competitive multiplayer modes is a lack of time, resources and focus to truly advance either the solo or multi-player game development. The team will always have to split its collective intentions, and never be able to advance either front as much as we'd want without making their game unwieldy in scope. Though imagine, if you will, if the minds at Bungie only had to think about multiplayer Halo for the last few years. Imagine what we'd be getting.
I think that's the point you were trying to make, that Bungie has an unenviable, hard task tending to the Halo series. You didn't mean them ill. But I think I still hear a Warthog rumbling in the background and heading straight for your position. So let me make sure they see that I've gotten you off the hook.
You didn't mention it, but I think what you were trying to hint to them that they should look at good old Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, a game so ahead of its time that when they made a sequel years later, they had to number the new one as a prequel. Perfect Dark was cool for many reasons. One was because the developers hid a piece of cheese in each level. Another was because it had one of the great level concepts of all-time: rescue the President on a hijacked Air Force One. And another was because it didn't just have single-player. It didn't just have competitive multiplayer. It also had co-op multiplayer, something crazy called counter-op (which looks like it will resurface in a game called The Crossing) and--get this--it had a multiplayer-map set of training missions called Challenges that lurked within the game's Combat Simulator. You played these challenges against--and sometimes with--computer-controlled bots. You could play them by yourself or with friends.
The Challenges are what you and I are looking for in Halo, I think. You could use the Challenges to train yourself in certain multiplayer situations. Objectives included stuff like Hold the Briefcase and your favorite King of the Hill. The bots were called Simulants in Perfect Dark and were named after their artificial intelligence routines. The PeaceSim always tried to disarm you. The JudgeSim always attacked the player in the lead. The CowardSim went after the least skilled players. (A necessary note of praise: some guy or girl named CyricZ did a bang-up job writing a Perfect Dark guide. He or she not only listed Simulant difficulty levels, but also provided "real person equivalent[s]." For example, Cyric described EasySims as "Your rheumatic grandmother or three-year-old cousin." NormalSims are the "average person off the street, or your younger sibling of a few years.")
So I believe what you were trying to mention to Bungie--without naming games and therefore hurting feelings--was that developers have been able to include 30-mission multiplayer training mode with bots in their first-person shooters before. You wanted them to find inspiration. I'm with you, man. I too believe Bungie can fly, N'Gai. I too believe they can touch the sky.
Since I'm defending you so capably, can I tell you about a game I just finished last night? It's called God Hand, the only slapstick single-player brawling game I played last year, possibly because it was the only slapstick single-player brawling game that was made last year. I think you told me you didn't get far. Well I played it in easy mode so I could get somewhere on it, and that mode was still almost too tough for me. My guy, toughly named Gene, was killed a lot. He got slapped, punched, and kicked in his family jewels. This game pummeled me as bad as the people in the Halo 3 beta.
But bit-by-bit I made progress. Bit by bit I managed to get Gene killed in new, more advanced places in the game's adventure (speaking of getting pummeled by advanced competition, a fly just landed on my keyboard and when I typed the "G" in Gene I accidentally killed it. Sorry, little fly! You were my Halo newbie.) God Hand kept me playing because I saw a sign of progress: changing scenery. It gave me just enough success for each pile of failures that I wanted to keep playing.
Then I reached the game's final boss battle and was handily crushed like a fly on the letter G. There was no more new scenery to be seen, just a final brick wall into which I could bash my head. I tried and failed to beat this wretched video game cliché of a boss--he was one of those bosses that consists of a floating head and two big hands; yeah, another one of those--three, four, five times. I died, died and died. I started thinking about my rep as a gaming reporter who finishes lots of games, and, honestly, I started thinking I would list a new category of games I failed at in their 11th hour. But I couldn't leave that be and I went back to it again and again. At last, I beat it. I crushed the hands and smacked the big cranium. Game complete. Roll credits.
What kept me striving in God Hand when similar failure in a few Halo 3 multiplayer maps drives me to the log-off button to end an early night? Besides the scenery-changing stuff, I think the difference is that offline games have long given me the sensation that I'm in control. I make a character move. I input commands. I own an inventory. I take missions. I deal with things. Video games put me in a driver's seat, or at least create that illusion.
The jarring thing about playing Halo 3 and getting aced in it again and again is that it represents the opposite feeling: when I'm getting schooled on the Valhalla map I feel like I have almost no control. The skill disparity between my betters and me is such that I feel like I've got no handle on the situation. I'm not dealing with things. And that kind of experience, well, I've got enough of that in real life. It's not an experience I look for in games.
Now does that meant there's something wrong with the game? Or maybe there actually is something wrong with me. I'm having a hard time adjusting to the Halo 3 experience because I expect a sensation of control, not competition. But what are games--Halo, checkers, basketballs--really about?
I think I've got you in the clear. I think you are safe now. But just in case you're not yet, let me distract them.
Here goes: Hey, did I mention that I'm going to name the tables at my wedding after videogame places? I think I'll name one after that Halo mission called The Library. You know that mission? Everyone groans about it. So this wedding table will have to be really boring and tedious, full of people who repeat themselves.
There you go! Now Bungie will be after me instead. Of course, I just insulted some of my wedding guests! Sorry, folks.
-Stephen
