I mean think about:

> Ordinance Drops ala Killstreaks

> Custom Loadouts

> Join game matches whenever you want

> Points System

> Sprint Function

> Tactical Package ala Perks System

> FUCKING Killcams!

I thought Halo: Reach was going the route of Call of Duty but it's Counter Strike 1.6 compared to this shit. I'm worried about Halo 4, and after hearing negative reactions to the live stream, leaked copies and ending, it's gotten worse. I hear the ending is almost as bad as Mass Effect 3's. *cringes*

Totally. It turned towards the Call of Duty train once Reach was released.

what multiplayer shooter isn't these days though?

EVERYTHING is becoming more like COD. In COD we trust, will soon be the gubments motto because the filthy chicoms don't believe in COD, they prefer RPGs.... the heathens.

Uh... welcome to Giantbomb. 
 
Also, I think that regardless of the direction they're taking their multiplayer in, Halo 4 still looks fun.

It's still Halo

@Vinny_Says said:

what multiplayer shooter isn't these days though?

That's what worries me about the current state of the gaming industry.

Yes, they are making it more accessible for new players because veterans of the series are too hard to please and are pretty much already going to buy it. All that's left is to compete with the juggernaut. People that play the game casually don't care about improving their actual skill; they just want unlocks flashing on the screen to make them feel a sense of progression. I hate the trend that Reach started, but I've accepted that I'm not who they're after anymore. Like every Halo game, I will wait for MLG to come out with the best settings, which will hopefully be reminiscent of classic Halo, without gimmicks.

> Join game matches whenever you want

That was in Halo: Combat Evolved. WHAT?!

what others said, it's still halo but with new multiplayers functions that are popular and frankly better like the join in session thing

I hate these threads.

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Sales =/= Quality

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

I heard they were making it so you'd target enemies and then shoot them

@NotWithoutIntegrity said:

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Is that right...

@Brodehouse said:

I heard they were making it so you'd target enemies and then shoot them

Those bastards.

@NotWithoutIntegrity: But... but... I like Call of Duty. Ok, you win, I'm an idiot.

oh my god

@NotWithoutIntegrity said:

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

You should probably go ahead and delete this forum account now, start fresh while you have the chance and pretend this thread never happened.

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

When you play a lot of the multiplayer, the changes they are making do make a big difference. Aiming at dudes and shooting will probably still be halo, but the strategy in a match is getting taken away more and more I feel like as it becomes more like COD (Perks hurting balance, kill cam revealing locations to easily, joining matches in progress makes winning unimportant). I feel like a lot of changes they made in Reach hurt the competitiveness of the multiplayer and they are going even farther in that direction with 4. I'm guessing 4 will get dropped from MLG within a year if they don't give lots of customization in custom games so you can make it more like old halo games.

@Colourful_Hippie said:

I hate these threads.

But what's not to love?!

Yeah, it's a shitload like CoD. No, a fuckload. It's pretty shitty that they have now taken basically everything from CoD and applied it to Halo. Halo already had its own awesome stuff, like ranked matches. There probably won't even be ranked in this game. Not even a piss poor form of it like Arena.

Are you ilovegbmods?  The theme in your name seems related. 
 
If you aren't, welcome to the forums.

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Sales =/= Quality

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

@GunstarRed said:

@NotWithoutIntegrity: But... but... I like Call of Duty. Ok, you win, I'm an idiot.

I'm not saying you're an idiot. I'm saying you deserve better.

If they happen to make the CoD system work as good as it sounds, I'm all for it.
 
Because CoD sounds awesome on paper and in description but all my matches have been nothing but frustration and killstreaks/etc rewarding the lucky/skilled and further kicking down the losing team.

@NekuSakuraba said:

@NotWithoutIntegrity

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Sales =/= Quality

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

What makes Call of Duty casual in your opinion? Sure, I'm not that into the series anymore due to being worn out on that type of shooter, but from what i played of Black Ops it doesn't seem that it's a casual game. Getting a bit stale? Sure (although we can't judge Black Ops 2 yet) but its not something your parents would be playing with you.

It is a little sad that even with one of the biggest FPS franchises in existence they're choosing to iterate rather than innovate.

@Brodehouse said:

I heard they were making it so you'd target enemies and then shoot them

Yeah, but in previous Halo games (and Reach to an extent) had you use skill and tactics while you target and shoot them. Now it's like Call of Duty, where you can target and shoot easily without any effort.

@NotWithoutIntegrity said:

Now it's like Call of Duty, where you can target and shoot easily without any effort.

What? The shooting hasn't changed. It's everything else you listed in your first post.

Anyone remember the time between Halo 2 and COD4, when Halo was derided as the most casual of casual games?

@NotWithoutIntegrity said:

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Sales =/= Quality

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

Sorry dude a statement like this is totally counter productive to a discussion it just sounds crazy.

Halo 4 is definitely getting a lot of CoD touches, killcam/ hit marker/ sprint/ loadouts etc. I don't think these are bad things, stuff like loadouts are definitely an opinion thing but additions like hit markers are improvements the game needs. What it comes down to though is it still plays like Halo. You can't two shot guys with almost every gun like you can in CoD (slight exaggeration but anyway) it still has the same flow and mechanics it's always had, just with added stuff on top of it. You're still gonna have floaty jumps and need to burn through a dudes shield before you can take him out. That's the stuff that makes it Halo, not the sprint button.

OMG COD IS FER NOOBS!!

It makes sense. It's like with World of Warcraft. It became the most popular in its genre, so everything after that imitated it.

There are innate gameplay aspects to Halo which make it extremely unique and one of a kind. While they may be adding things similar to COD I feel like it will still feel profoundly "Halo", for the people who love it. And that's a lot of people. Not necessarily me, but whatevs. I am only in it for the story which for some reason I find appealing.

Considering I hated playing Reach's multiplayer, but still love playing MW3's? This is a good thing for me.

well that is because call of duty is a popular game. the company wants that audience in their game also. the people that enjoy halo are going to buy the game. there's those millions and then want more people.

@NotWithoutIntegrity: While there may be some overlap between the crowd who are just playing Facebook games and the crowd who don't play many different games but are really into Call of Duty, they are two distinctly different groups. For one thing you're just not going to find as many middle-aged people or women playing Call of Duty as you will for something like Farmville, and the Call of Duty crowd tend to be much more committed to their games, looking for something that requires a significant time and skill commitment from them, instead of just looking for easy games that you just need to spend a few minutes a day on. You can't just lump all the popular games together and say "This is what the masses play", it's not that simple.

I notice you also seem to be noting that there's a lack of quality in the Call of Duty series, even when people have expressed that they like it themselves. Forgive me if I'm being patronising but quality is subjective, you may not like Call of Duty but plenty of other people do and they're not wrong for liking it either. Is Halo becoming more like CoD? Well that depends what you mean by "Like CoD". They're certainly borrowing a lot of ideas, and while some of these seem like better things for any FPS in general, I must admit I feel a little more sceptical about the ones that are more CoD-specific mechanics.

I just can't agree with what @GunstarRed: said, that lots of people like CoD so if they're making this like CoD that's a good thing. That's the kind of mentality which leads industries into only recycling the few most popular ideas over and over until everything's a generic grey sludge. I think now is the time more than ever when Halo needs to diversify. We're about six games in, and playing out the same few ideas over and over the series is arguably becoming generic and too iterative, to see Microsoft push further in this direction by largely just focusing on bundling in a bunch of CoD mechanics for this next one is very predictable, but sad.

Still, if we need consolation we can remember that at the heart of this thing, the gameplay still appears to be Halo. It's about slightly longer engagements with opponents instead of twitch shooting, it's about that colourful sci-fi aesthetic which we don't see in so many other popular FPS games, it's about that balance of grenades, melee, and shooting which is unique to the game, and it's about the feel of all of that stuff which you won't find elsewhere. These new mechanics are sadly unimaginative, but if we're being optimistic about this, we can look at this as some new twists being put on the classic Halo formula. Microsoft and 343 are never going to 100% want to replicate CoD, because then there'd be no point in people buying their game, they'd just buy CoD instead.

@NotWithoutIntegrity said:

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

Isn't it, though?

They are adding things that makes the experience better... whats important is that it still plays like halo.

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Sales =/= Quality

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

Sure why not. Apparently [popular = Call of duty.]

@Vinny_Says said:

what multiplayer shooter isn't these days though?

Doom 3 BFG Edition multiplayer. Its so bare bones in almost every area that the original Doom has more multiplayer options.

@GunstarRed said:

All of those things seem like great inclusions. A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right. I have no doubt in my mind that the game will play exactly like a Halo game.

>"A lot of people like Call of Duty, they must be doing something right."

Yes, those people are casual game players. The kind that play shitty facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Sales =/= Quality

If that were the case then James Cameron's Avatar is the greatest film of all time.

In those ways, yup. It was inevitable. Bungie tried to do it without sacrificing what was Halo. It worked for some and didn't work for others. This game goes a lot more in that direction.

Yup. They started that trend with Reach. And it seems like Halo 4 won't be much of Halo in terms of multiplayer.

Having played some multiplayer I can tell you it feels good and is enjoyable. More so than reach and halo 3. I don't really play many console games anymore, but Halo 4 is pretty cool. That being said I don't plan on playing it's multiplayer at all.

CS is more my style of game when it comes to shooters. (PC, not console)

EDIT: I haven't played any final build of the multiplayer, so take my opinion for what it is.

It's still a 'slow' shooter compared to COD. As long as it has the floaty jumps and the slow feeling. It will always be Halo, and ain't these updates to the game just evolution? minus the jumping in a match midway, that blows.

God forbid people in a creative medium draw inspiration from a formula that has proven itself to work.

I think that as long as I dont have to pull LT to aim and RT to shoot that halo will remain different enough.

If 343 can make sure the basic game play is fun this should be another great halo game.