| abstract
| - Luke Smith: Campaign prepares an amazing table, but multiplayer's your meal. Luke Timmins: I could eat it every goddamn day, forever. Joseph Tung: It's like sittin' around on a couch with seven of your buddies, playing Halo multiplayer, trash talking. Luke Smith: Two men enter, the better man leaves, the lesser man is respawning, and that's Halo. Luke Smith: The Beta, it's super important to have these like big ticket, like milestones, that sort of force a bunch of wishy-washy designers to get their shit together. Luke Timmins: So for the multiplayer team, it is absolutely a test of all we've been doing. Marcus Lehto: I'm really terrified about what people are gonna say. David Aldridge: The public Beta is where it all come together. Luke Timmins: Beat the shit out of our code, come break our code pieces, and come to try to like, it's a great security tester, they're gonna find glitches that we can fix, that's why I'm like please, please, find new glitches, find new glitches. Joseph Tung: We made a bunch of new changes in Reach, that are, that are pretty significant. Marcus Lehto: For multiplayer it's, especially, there is a lot of people who are super passionate about, the features that we put into it. Joseph Tung: The DMR is absolutely an awesome, worthy successor to the, to the Battle rifle. Jon Cable: You kind of get control over how accurate your shot is going to be, if you're spamming that trigger as fast as you can fire it, it's gonna go kinda wild, if you're trying hit a guy really, really far away, then you have to slow that down. Luke Smith: Everyone's totally destroying with the DMR, it's like everyone's got a Death Star in their hands. Jay Weinland: I usually go back to the Needler that's one, that I always, that always makes me happy. Luke Smith: Everyone's always wanted the Needler to be sweet, because it's hilarious and fun, but when it gets too sweet or all of a sudden something gets fixed, and it's like "Oh tracking's fixed" now it's like {imitates needler}, guys just burst. Jay Weinland: It's been fun to kind of, to go back and re-envision some of the old friends. Luke Smith: Like the Sniper Rifle, psh, like I pick up the Sniper Rifle and I'm like, this is it, it's totally happening, I'm about to rain death on the plebeians that I work with, and I'm like, yup, it's back. Chris Carney: The Covenant Focus Rifle is awesome, because it's like that Sentinel Beam from Halo 2, but now, it's a sniper weapon. Luke Smith: When the pistol started to come back, it was, it was insane! It was so awesome. Joseph Tung: I'm super excited to see what people do with Armor Abilities, it totally changes the game. Josh Hamrick: You've got a secret weapon in your back pocket, that's your fourth leg of fun. Chris Carney: What do you want to be? Invisible? Do you wanna fly? Do you wanna turn to stone? Josh Hamrick: With Reach you get guys in Jetpacks flyin' around, invisibility guys showin' up. Chris Carney: It's kind of a give and take between us and Sage and Josh tryin' to figure out, like what's that perfect balance with all the new stuff. Sage Merrill: There, there's a lot of that goes on, they're like "Shh, shh, don't tell Sage, he'll nerf it." Luke Timmins: You're juggling fucking plates, right, you're just sitting there spinning the plates and occasionally, once their spinning, you're like, Ah!, and your like, making this more powerful, and everyone's like, "no, keep it at this," and you're like, "ok, making it less powerful," and now everyone's like, I mean that's what Sage and those guys do, it's a fucking huge challenge. Sage Merrill: But no one would ever want to create one superweapon, that works in all cases, um, because that tends to make the game fairly dull. It's really up to the player, to decide how to they wanna play, on a particular map, it's a choice. Chris Carney: That's, I think is Halo at its best, is like makin' these choices. Chad Armstrong: You start the game, and immediately you get to chose a loadout. Sage Merrill: You're making a single selection that includes: your armor ability, and you're weapon, we sort of pair those intentionally. Josh Hamrick: It breeds the smarter combat, you'll definitely notice a big difference in how the game functions. Luke Smith: Right now, at this exact moment in development, Armor Lock's insane! It's super powerful, I love it. Joseph Tung: It is just fucking fun. Chad Armstrong: There are two Slayer maps, there is Powerhouse, which is an asymmetrical map, lots of indoor/outdoor action. Derek Carroll: Sword Base is a very vertical map. Chad Armstrong: Moving around Sword Base is a completely different scenario when you've got a jetpack versus when you're sprinting. Marcus Lehto: This time around we decided to integrate all the multiplayer maps with the campaign. Chris Carney: Overlook is another pioneer style base. Chad Armstrong: We're using it for a game type called Generator Defense, that's also a multiple loadout game type, loadouts are far more varied than say, on Slayer. Chris Carney: Boneyard is our largest map, we've ever done in multiplayer. Michael Means: It's definitely the most complicated multiplayer space we've ever tried, and, it's also a new game type. Chris Carney: Invasion is this big team battle. Luke Timmins: We sorta set out and said, let's try to make an objective game, that has elements like Slayer, and try to make that more fun. We wanted it big, huge, lots of guys, and all these fictional elements. Chad Armstrong: We've added a couple new Objective game types, Headhunter, Stockpile. Lars Bakken: Headhunter, it's so much fun, like, seeing a dude pick up skulls, and then you cap him, and then seeing skulls fly out of his body, and then the mad dash to pick those things up. Derek Carroll: And there's a lot of tension, as you are amassing skulls, the risk/reward for gathering up a lot, and banking all at once or just doin it one at a time, and not being a big target. Chad Armstrong: Stockpile is a team game based on Capture the Flag. Derek Carroll: Two teams, each has their collections, they own their stockpile. Chad Armstrong: There are multiple flags on the map, and your goal is to grab a flag, take it to your goal, it's a game of capture and defense. Luke Timmins: We have what we call the party games, we have race, we have Oddball, we have King of the Hill, but like Slayer is a thing you can come back to, like for me, Slayer is the game, Slayer is multiplayer. Joseph Tung: The Arena is a really awesome evolution for people who wanna play really hardcore, competitive multiplayer. Luke Timmins: Let's just acknowledge that Slayer is awesome and try to build that space, where we can sort of say like, if you're hyper-competitive, care about stats, lets make that for you. Luke Smith: Bam! Games, games, games, {bosh}, rating, {bosh}, division. Chad Armstrong: The better you play, you'll eventually be put into a division, the Arena divisions are broken up into: Onyx, Gold, and Silver, and Steel. Luke Timmins: You can say, Oh yeah, I was gold, ya know, and like that means something, and I'm like oh yeah, like oh yeah you're basically a AAA baseball player, I'm like, I'm onyx, you just met fucking Roger Clemens. Tyson Green: Our Matchmaking system is really good, at matching people based on skill, what it has never been really good at before is saying, well how much fun will these two people have playing together. Luke Timmins: I'll sing, some of its obnoxious, I'll get muted, why can't I tell the system to, I'm one of the people who playing like a Team Player. Tyson Green: Instead of just trying to put 8 people in a game together, we first used the social preferences, for finding teammates. Then we can say find 4 other people who are a really good skill match. Luke Timmins: Without players thinking about it, we hope that it will lead to better social encounters. Chris Carney: Active Roster essentially is us bringing the Y menu back from Halo 2. Tyson Green: It's a way of saying friends are online, and this is what they're doing, so I can hook up with them with a minimum of fuss. Luke Smith: Everything that you see in the game, there is a path to getting, we can make this game about you. Marcus Lehto: I really wanted to make sure that players were able to invest themselves in the Spartans that they create, and then be able to create carry that Spartan back and forth between Campaign and multiplayer, seemlessly, without feeling like it's two different experiences. Luke Smith: Start at zero, nothing, invest, play the game, no freebies, you're beta testing, have a t-shirt, little avatar t-shirt, I'll be wearing one. David Candland: Fans should never assume what you see in the beta is set in stone. Luke Smith: What's working about Powerhouse? David Aldridge: The jetpack is practically crying out for abuse. Luke Smith: Is Rocket spawn open, is that good? Marcus Lehto: In the end, it's all about the game and the game is king. Luke Timmins: There's that magical step in the process, from, like, where it stops being software and all of a sudden its more like this thing, I'm playing with my friends havin' a beer! It's awesome.
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