{"id":26589,"date":"2016-04-30T08:53:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T13:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/halofanforlife.com\/?p=26589"},"modified":"2016-04-30T08:53:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T13:53:24","slug":"halo-community-update-memories-of-reach-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halofanforlife.com\/?p=26589","title":{"rendered":"Halo Community Update: Memories of Reach Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a reblog from HaloWaypoint:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

BY\u00a0B IS FOR BRAVO<\/p>\n

\n

Welcome to another weekly read, friends. As I sit at my typewriter (HFFL:<\/strong> Typewriter? Who even uses those things anymore? Keyboard yes, Typewriter? Okay, moving on…)<\/span> and combine these eloquent words, each team at the studio is busy wrapping up their contributions to Memories of Reach. The release will include updates across the game, including the addition of a new game mode in the form of Infection (a bit more on that today), new controller options, UI updates (including post-game medals and more), new armor, skins, weapons, a new Arena battleground, matchmaking preference options, Forge updates, and much more, including some updates to REQ weapon balance, which we\u2019ll also talk about in today\u2019s blog. To correctly set expectations, Memories of Reach won\u2019t be here just yet next week, but we\u2019ll continue to keep you updated on specific timing as we get closer to release and all final work is completed, tested, and ready to go out the door.<\/p>\n

To start, let\u2019s talk a bit more about Infection!<\/p>\n

INFECTION<\/h2>\n

\"crypt-ee8bf967e9e94b71b5fc146e3e873038\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The widely requested mayhem that is Infection is also receiving final tweaks and polish. We\u2019re playtesting the game type across a variety of dev and community maps, and precision tuning is nearly complete. Let\u2019s unveil a few specifics on the game mode:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Total player count: 12<\/li>\n
  • Number of rounds: 4<\/li>\n
  • Round time limit: 3 minutes each<\/li>\n
  • New Custom Game option: \u201cLast Squad Standing\u201d<\/li>\n
  • Spartans have all Spartan abilities (naturally!)<\/li>\n
  • Infected have Thrust, Smart Scope, Stabilize (HFFL:<\/strong> No Shoulder Charge?)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • New medals<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Speaking of medals, here\u2019s a look at what to expect:<\/p>\n

    \"medals-layout3-e2afed5b10ee4d079162fa0121c6ef51\"<\/p>\n

    HFFL:<\/strong> Wow, those medals are fantastic! I like the ‘Infected’ one the most.<\/span><\/p>\n

    FORGE ??? (CONTINUED)<\/h2>\n

    Tom French and Mike Byron from the Forge team are back with another cryptic clue of what\u2019s on the way. I\u2019m guessing it comes as absolutely no surprise that they have once again, and without comment, sent over a cryptic screenshot for this blog.<\/p>\n

    \"hmminteresting-6d8fdf37483144fe983c679bad6c2ef5\"<\/p>\n

    HFFL:<\/strong> Hmm, well, there are 25 frames to the gif above. You really only need pay attention to 2 of them. Frames 23 and 24 are the ones t look at closely. This is where the image changes significantly enough so that the Covie’s armor turns from Red\/Silver to Pinkish\/Yellow. Also, there is a circle on the blue screen. In 23 its’ split, in 24 it’s full. Are these clues at all? Of course we see the infection symbol which we now expect to be a symbol that can be placed in Forge. What of dead alien (and human) bodies? And skulls too? Also, make note of the flag near top right. Any significance there? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    MEMORIES OF REACH REQ PREVIEW<\/h2>\n

    This week, we\u2019re pulling back the curtain on some of the goodness you\u2019ll find in Memories of Reach. Stay tuned next week for the full reveal, including a few specific armors (and more!) you may be looking forward to. Memories of Reach will include a bunch of new stuff, and will also bring the Spartan’s Armory REQs into the REQ pool.<\/p>\n

    HFFL:<\/strong> Yeah! This is where we get into the MEAT of the next update! I’ll be posting a closer look article about these today or tomorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"mor-req-21dcb934e32145b59b67bb6e187885ca\"<\/p>\n

    HFFL:<\/strong> I won’t go into detailed descriptions for each. Just a few quick notes. Those skins released in the HCW pack a few weeks back are back, this time for good! I’m happy about this, even though I did pay real money for a pack. I”m only missing the UNSC Magnum, so I’ll be happy to complete that. Now as to so of the blurred out REQs…Well, the armor is self explanatory as we saw those in the Infection preview video. We know they are Noble team’s armor. <\/span>
    \nThere are two REQs\u00a0that should be specifically mentioned. The first Legendary REQ. Since this is Reach we’re talking about, that one looks suspiciously like a Grenade Launcher. It would be a great weapon to bring in and the UNSC’s equivalent\u00a0to the Plasma Caster. Now the big one…The ONI hidden REQ. This just HAS to be the Falcon. It’s Warzone, so we know it’s not just a skin for weapons or armor. If it’s NOT the Falcon, many fans, (Me most certainly) will be HIGHLY disappointed. Okay, that’s all I’ll say about those until I write the closer look article alter.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I’ll just leave this here:<\/p>\n

    \"brute-plasma-rifle-b6de8165daa140d0a34aa59d48bf9578\"<\/p>\n

    REQ WEAPON BALANCE UPDATE<\/h2>\n

    \"reqbalance-5e445dc10dd44c12acfe2dc7d312bf0b\"<\/p>\n

    Memories of Reach will include a new weapon balance pass, which will bring a variety of your favorite weapons and rarest REQs closer in line with the appropriate effectiveness in both Warzone and Arena. To get the scoop, I chatted with our data and sandbox teams on what\u2019s to come. Take it away, gents.<\/p>\n

    MICHAEL WETZEL<\/strong>, BIG DATA ENGINEER<\/p>\n

    When the sandbox team came to us and asked us if we could somehow measure weapon effectiveness and balance, we were super excited about the idea.\u00a0 The concept of being able to distill weapons and player usage into metrics that we could compare was very compelling from an analysis standpoint, and could potentially provide huge value to our designers.\u00a0The challenges however, were substantial \u2013 trying to come up with a single number or set of numbers that accurately describes a weapon is a very difficult task, as each weapon has its strengths and weaknesses, situational suitability and \u201cplaces\u201d in the sandbox.\u00a0 Normalizing this data is also challenging \u2013 for example, in Warzone we see a huge number of AR and Pistol kills, does this mean they\u2019re the best weapons?\u00a0 Probably not.<\/p>\n

    Initially we looked at\u00a0kills per weapon per death<\/em>\u00a0as a starting point, but this turned out to be non-ideal. For example, how do you measure weapons that are thrown away after being used?\u00a0Next on the list was\u00a0kills\/weapon instance<\/em>, but it turns out there are some potential issues with this metric also. How do you deal with spawned weapons on the map versus picking up weapons from dead players? Also, how do you deal with loadout weapons that are never actually used by the player?<\/p>\n

    The main metric we landed on was\u00a0kills per weapon use<\/em>. This allows us to easily compare weapons no matter where they came from based on whether they were used or not. It’s not without complications though, because we have to define\u00a0use<\/em>\u00a0as something that is fair to all weapons. For example, if we only considered\u00a0use<\/em>\u00a0to be shooting the weapon, then weapons that have more deliberate shots (e.g. Railgun) would naturally have an advantage since the usage wouldn’t be counted unless they get their shot off. That’s why\u00a0use\u00a0<\/em>has a time component \u2013 if you hold the weapon as your primary for more than 5 seconds, it counts as being used.\u00a0In addition, damage dealt per\u00a0use<\/em>\u00a0is also important, especially for weapons like the Plasma Pistol that are great at dealing out damage or nuking shields, but maybe not great at racking up kills.<\/p>\n

    Along with this, for each of these data points, we capture information about the game mode, the map, the killer\u2019s and victim\u2019s respective skill levels, distances, etc \u2013 this allows us to do cool drill-downs on the data to understand which weapons are more favored by higher skill players, which weapons are most effective at which ranges, and on which maps, and if they\u2019re overpowered on a particular map.<\/p>\n

    We can of course find cases where these details are not 100% representative of effectiveness in particular instances, but after many iterations, we\u2019re pretty happy with how it allows us to interpret the data, especially when we look at it over the entire dataset of the billions of kills that have happened in the game.<\/p>\n

    DANIEL WIKSTEN<\/strong>, SENIOR WEAPONS DESIGNER<\/p>\n

    One of the sandbox team\u2019s core pillars has always been to \u201cmake\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0weapon relevant,\u201d and we came really, really close. The weapon balance is Halo 5 is something we take great pride in. But due to the sheer number of weapon variants in Warzone some unintended balance issues have slipped through the cracks. Luckily, we have access to copious amounts of data from you players using the weapons. This allows us to supplement our \u201cgut feeling\u201d with some hard numbers.<\/p>\n

    Thanks to the fantastic work by our data team, the sandbox team is able to access a great breakdown of weapon effectiveness out in the wild. We look at things like average kills\/damage per use, kills\/damage per use compared to other weapons of the same cost, etc, and determine what types of balance updates need to be made.<\/p>\n

    Ideally things would look like the Energy Sword below:<\/p>\n

    \"sword---kills-per-use-374c458d633c4814b409f782d5378279\"\"sword---damage-per-use-dfbd2ac5053048ea93ebf58a9ac82b2d\"<\/p>\n

    As you can see above, each increased level of rarity and energy cost leads to an increase in average kills, with the Mythic Prophet\u2019s Bane giving a massive boost in killing power. Hell yeah.<\/p>\n

    But we did catch a bunch of outliers, for example the Fuel Rod Cannon below:<\/p>\n

    \"kills-per-use---fuel-rods-671cdd5b9a324abfa5934d9a7495e85d\"\"damage-per-use---fuel-rods-db99b5a10a0843edbb520419ba75fa99\"<\/p>\n

    Our\u00a0rarest Fuel Rod Cannon, Pool of Radiance, is underperforming the normal Fuel Rod Cannon by a lot. Obviously not intended!<\/p>\n

    The Pool of Radiance projectiles leave a damage over time effect where they detonate. Turns out this damage over time was delayed and less damaging than intended. The projectiles will still kill on a direct hit, and it\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0cause damage over time, just way less than it should. So the imbalance for this particular variant was not instantly apparent.<\/p>\n

    HFFL:<\/strong> Well, I have to agree with this data so far. I’ve only used the Pool of Radiance twice. That due to the decreased damage and more importantly the slower firing time between shots.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    In total, over a dozen weapon variants have been updated to have a more appropriate effectiveness. We\u2019ll start by detailing the Plasma Caster and Hydra updates specifically, and then get into the full list.<\/p>\n

    PLASMA CASTER UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The intended use case of the Plasma Caster has been \u201cindirect fire\u201d. Shoot around cover, predict enemy movement, etc. And it does fill that role to a degree.<\/p>\n

    However, the indirect fire from the sticky grenade was pretty much only effective if you get a direct stick. The use case of putting the sticky in a strategic position and letting the cluster grenades rain down on enemies was not working as intended.<\/p>\n

    The following balance changes will be in effect after Memories of Reach:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Cluster grenades are more effective<\/li>\n
    • Charge shot has less arc<\/li>\n
    • Regular grenade will explode slightly faster after bouncing<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      HYDRA LAUNCHER UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Hydra is filling its role well, with the exception of engaging multiple targets at close range. The splash damage radius was very, very small. Also, the recoil when jumping was not helping players accurately place rockets where they intended.<\/p>\n

      The following balance changes will be in effect after Memories of Reach:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • Recoil has been reduced<\/li>\n
      • Rocket splash damage radius increased<\/li>\n
      • Typhon variant: Can now lock onto 3 enemies at once for extra coolness!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        HFFL: YES! Now the Typhoon becomes MUCH more relevant. I was selling all of those off. I’ll keep them now with this update!<\/p>\n

        WEAPON BALANCE UPDATE SUMMARY \u2013 MEMORIES OF REACH<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

        Plasma Caster: Default<\/strong><\/p>\n

          \n
        • Reduced non-charged timer from 0.5 to 0.3 (less overshooting of enemies)<\/li>\n
        • Sticky grenade has less arc (to be able to place it on the map more reliably)<\/li>\n
        • Sticky grenade detonation is now more damaging vs. vehicles, but less damaging vs bipeds (will still kill bipeds in one shot when stuck)<\/li>\n
        • Increased sticky grenade submunition damage values from 43 to 75 (indirect fire from a sticky shot can now actually kill!)<\/li>\n
        • Sticky submunition grenade inner AOE increased from 0.65 to 1.0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Plasma Caster: White Scar<\/strong><\/p>\n

            \n
          • Needles have improved aim toward nearby targets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

            Plasma Caster: Scourge of Fire<\/strong><\/p>\n

              \n
            • Sticky shot now has 7 submunitions instead of 5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

              HFFL:<\/strong> Ah, that is great! I”ll use this weapon more often now!<\/span><\/p>\n

              Hydra Launcher: Default<\/strong><\/p>\n

                \n
              • Reduced recoil in hip<\/li>\n
              • Increased inner AOE radius from 0.4 to 0.8<\/li>\n
              • Increased impact damage to make it more effective against vehicles (still two rockets to kill Spartan)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                Hydra Launcher: Typhon<\/strong><\/p>\n

                  \n
                • Enabled multi lock on for up to 3 targets<\/li>\n
                • Increased impact damage (still two rockets to kill Spartan)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                  Scattershot: Loathsome Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

                    \n
                  • Increased number of hardlight projectiles to be same as normal scattershot (5 -> 8)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                    HFFL:<\/strong> Hmm, I don’t know if that’s enough for me to use this one. I’ve not had much luck with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

                    Rocket Launcher: High Five<\/strong><\/p>\n

                      \n
                    • Increased AOE radius on cluster rockets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                      Binary Rifle: Twin Jewels of Maethrillian<\/strong><\/p>\n

                        \n
                      • Reduced recoil<\/li>\n
                      • Placed twin projectiles a bit closer together for easier biped targeting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                        HFFL:<\/strong> Yes, now THIS was much needed. I’ve heard this complaint from several friends when using the TJoM. So the change is VERY much welcomed.<\/span><\/p>\n

                        Covenant Carbine: Rain of Oblivion<\/strong><\/p>\n

                          \n
                        • Reduced recoil<\/li>\n
                        • Increased zoom magnification a bit (closer to default Carbine)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                          Incineration Cannon: River of Light<\/strong><\/p>\n

                            \n
                          • Added slight homing to charge shot to hit multiple bipeds easier<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                            HFFL:<\/strong> Any added homing ability is definitely a step in the right direction!<\/span><\/p>\n

                            Incineration Cannon: Heartseeker<\/strong><\/p>\n

                              \n
                            • Added proximity detonation to charge shot (like the normal Inc. Cannon has) to make it more effective against airborne targets or targets behind cover<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                              Fuel Rod Cannon: Pool of Radiance<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                \n
                              • Fixed a damage bug (was not causing AOE damage on initial explosion)<\/li>\n
                              • Made projectile thicker<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                                Needler: Talon of the Lost<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                  \n
                                • Reduced supercombine count to be same as normal Needler<\/li>\n
                                • Needles have longer lifetime to more easily supercombines against difficult to hit targets (8s instead of 4s)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                                  Spartan Laser: Selene\u2019s Lance<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                    \n
                                  • Reduced recoil<\/li>\n
                                  • Made beam thicker<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                                    HFFL:<\/strong> The recoil is the ONE thing that kept me from using this weapon a lot more. Depending on how much it’s been reduced, I will use it more and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

                                    COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT<\/h2>\n

                                    We\u2019ve got to start by highlighting Spartan\u2019s montage, which just dropped earlier today. Grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy a ton of amazing clips:<\/p>\n