Petition for Halo 4 Sandbox!

[Stevo]

I can't actually sign in to Waypoint anymore (And haven't been able to for about 3 months... which is very annoying!) so figured I should just voice a bit of an opinion here.

I think just about everybody loves Forge and the extra possibilities it brings to the Halo game environment, although there are still issues with it.

To keep things simple, I really want a Sandbox v2 on Halo 4, and I want the all the precision editing and stuff put back into Halo 4 as well.

Sandbox 2.0 - what it needs

Spoiler

- Simple plain textures that match the environment
No ridiculous grey on bright green grassland, no ridiculous dirty white on dark grey / bright green.
Keep sand on sand or Frosted Steel on Snow or Rock on Rock/grassland. Think about it 343, why would we want a porcelain toilet coloured junk with flourescent colours randomly pasted on them on a Forerunner environment?
- Pieces of every variety and combination.
Why haven't we got "Block Double" anymore? Why aren't there all the versions of 5x5 blocks? Simply put, if the game struggles to render so many items at once, wouldn't the game perform better if we had less items that cover larger areas?
- Fix the categories.
All the objects in Decorative category currently are just items with far too many textures on them. Axe the lot of them and merge them into the blocks category. Infact, get rid of Platforms as well... they're again just items that need to be used as blocks... and merge the walls into the blocks category. 'Structure and Assembly' should be a single category that has a much higher object limit, and allows players to fully customise their own environments in Forge and not be forced to place only 100 blocks, or 50 walls. If those caps are there for performance issues, get rid of them. You can fix performance issues in matchmaking by not allowing maps with performance issues in. If people make maps with performance issues, then that's their own problem. People shouldn't be penalised in map creation because a small minority don't have the brains to figure out their maps are unplayable when they spam items in one place.
The 'Decorative' category should contain vinyls that can be stuck to items to create forerunner aesthetics, or letters, or UNSC icons, or Covenant holograms. Again, if people abuse these decals or vinyls, it's their own fault for creating an unplayable map. These items should be able to be coloured (Like the piece on High Noon for Halo: Reach... that was a good piece. Plain, with a decal on it. It fits in with environments, and it provides a good visual theme).

The above only contains the bare minimum Halo 4 Sandbox 2.0 should have. 343 really need to think above and beyond for Forgers because what we got in Reach was a slight step up in the tools, but a major step back in the maps... in Halo 4, it's a step back altogether. By 'Sandbox 2.0' I don't actually mean another sand map. It can be anything, it just needs to be based on the same context as the original sandbox where items all matched each other, so they could all be used and they matched the terrain so they didn't stick out like a sore thumb.


Sign the poll, and if anyone wants this to maybe get anywhere... try and get this linked over at waypoint so more members can sign the petition and get us a map we can all enjoy again!

 

[Fuzzle]

i dont need anything other than a few fixes everyones complaining these days. there were times without post-launch gameupdates you know? if we found a problem we solved it somehow or get used to it. so you are not satisfied with the forge in h4? i think limits really help forcing people to be creative and i dont have any problems with forge since its a map editor not map creator

edit: give me the option to say that its fine just as it is

 

[Stevo]

i dont need anything other than a few fixes everyones complaining these days. there were times without post-launch gameupdates you know? if we found a problem we solved it somehow or get used to it. so you are not satisfied with the forge in h4? i think limits really help forcing people to be creative and i dont have any problems with forge since its a map editor not map creator

edit: give me the option to say that its fine just as it is

Lol, that kinda comes without voting if you're happy with the way it is. It's just something to 'sign' if you want to see the improvements. If you don't, you don't sign?

However, there was once a time when games weren't released in their Beta phase, and had promised fans so much, and then provided so little. As a whole, I think Halo 4 is a giant step up from Halo: Reach. However, the Forge aspect is a step backwards in all categories. The removal of precision editing for example, why? That was the most useful tool in the entirety of Forge Modes, and it's been removed?
The map aspect has gotten worse over the games. They're focusing too much on making the maps look good themselves, without allowing the players and forgers to make the maps look good themselves. Sandbox maps looked good when a player finished the map. The atmosphere was created by the Forgers, and each map was distinguishable in it's own rights... Hollow for example, utilised darkness and the lights built in to the crypt to make a really eerie map, and it succeeded greatly...

Unfortuantely, both in Halo: Reach and Halo 4, there are no maps that succeed in creating atmospheres due to the limitations. Every map you load up, you can see every piece that has been used because of textures clashing, or decorative illustrations being cut up, or flashing through with Z-fighting in different regions... or the glass that creates a surface reveals a part of a block you shouldn't be able to see... All the maps kill the atmosphere in Forge at the moment, and it's extremely disheartening loading up Forge with a specific map in your mind to create, yet you find it's impossible to create because of OLN, or texture issues.

Also, all of the above was far more achievable with less objects, less budget, less variations of objects... and just simple textures that matched one another and their environments.

A prime example of textures not suiting their environments at all, is Ravine. It's a UNSC pallet, for UNSC structures, on a Forerunner artifact / landscape. Nothing works in that environment. You pretty much have to build a floated map to succeed on the Ravine, or exclude everything that hints 'Forerunner'.

 

[Titmar]

A prime example of textures not suiting their environments at all, is Ravine. It's a UNSC pallet, for UNSC structures, on a Forerunner artifact / landscape. Nothing works in that environment. You pretty much have to build a floated map to succeed on the Ravine, or exclude everything that hints 'Forerunner'.

I agree with some of your issues you've brought up here, and I'd love to see a much improved forge in Halo 5.

BUT -- with this bit i've quoted here, you are simply wrong.

I've seen tons of maps that look amazing on Ravine. There's plenty of ways to integrate the UNSC theme into the grass and rocks around Ravine. If you can't figure out a way to do it nicely, then perhaps you are not creative enough (no offense intended by this statement).

However, it's true that the pieces look terrible when placed with the forerunner structure instead of the grass.

I think the main problem with Ravine is the terrain itself, not the pieces. There is basically 3 main driving paths, and if you want to build a map around the natural geo there, you are pretty much prescribed to using those paths. That part frustrates me more personally.

 

[Stevo]

I agree with some of your issues you've brought up here, and I'd love to see a much improved forge in Halo 5.

BUT -- with this bit i've quoted here, you are simply wrong.

I've seen tons of maps that look amazing on Ravine. There's plenty of ways to integrate the UNSC theme into the grass and rocks around Ravine. If you can't figure out a way to do it nicely, then perhaps you are not creative enough (no offense intended by this statement).

However, it's true that the pieces look terrible when placed with the forerunner structure instead of the grass.

I think the main problem with Ravine is the terrain itself, not the pieces. There is basically 3 main driving paths, and if you want to build a map around the natural geo there, you are pretty much prescribed to using those paths. That part frustrates me more personally.

Yeah, there are some maps that work well... but, they're the maps that have no forerunner atmosphere the map is supposed to create?
Like, sandbox maps - sandy, deserted, ancient atmosphere. Where ever you built it, you got the atmosphere.
Foundry - Industrial, factory, warehouse atmosphere... where every you built it, you got the atmosphere.

It shouldn't be about being forced to build in specific ways, or in specific places, or even with specific pieces next to each other (because we all know of the abomination of pieces that connect to absolutely nothing, and just look out of place everywhere), it should be about giving a kid a box of Lego and saying "Hey, go nuts, son!"

 

[Indie Anthias]

I'm almost completely unbothered by the textures. The only map that I have a slight distaste for is Impact, with all the white and the harsh shadow contrast. I love the tan color of the ravine pieces, and I even like the brown in Erosion, which look especially cool down in the lake where you can get the green glow on them sometimes. Forge world was bad just because everything blended together and made depth perception hard, like if you had a window with a wall behind it across the room, you couldn't see that there was a window. Imagine how much better that would have been with dynamic lighting.

More variety would of course be a plus. Sandbox had the wooden walls you could put in select places... those were awesome. Maybe all pieces could have a wood/stone/metal setting. But if given a single texture I think Ravine and Erosion were chosen well.

My main complaint is the given terrain. Sandbox is the only map to have handled this well, though the main ground level could have been bigger. Flat terrain is a bit boring but it is by far the most flexible and useful. The terrain in Erosion is utterly useless for anything except some variation on the default map Ascent. Ravine has some parts that could be nice if they weren't ruined by boulders. Those boulders are on the forge pallet already, why the hell are they peppermint fixtures?

edit: damn you auto correct! (I'm leaving that in there, it is supreme.)

 

[Stevo]

I'm almost completely unbothered by the textures. The only map that I have a slight distaste for is Impact, with all the white and the harsh shadow contrast. I love the tan color of the ravine pieces, and I even like the brown in Erosion, which look especially cool down in the lake where you can get the green glow on them sometimes. Forge world was bad just because everything blended together and made depth perception hard, like if you had a window with a wall behind it across the room, you couldn't see that there was a window. Imagine how much better that would have been with dynamic lighting.

More variety would of course be a plus. Sandbox had the wooden walls you could put in select places... those were awesome. Maybe all pieces could have a wood/stone/metal setting. But if given a single texture I think Ravine and Erosion were chosen well.

My main complaint is the given terrain. Sandbox is the only map to have handled this well, though the main ground level could have been bigger. Flat terrain is a bit boring but it is by far the most flexible and useful. The terrain in Erosion is utterly useless for anything except some variation on the default map Ascent. Ravine has some parts that could be nice if they weren't ruined by boulders. Those boulders are on the forge pallet already, why the hell are they peppermint fixtures?

edit: damn you auto correct! (I'm leaving that in there, it is supreme.)

lol peppermint.

Touché. I did say at the beginning it was my opinion on what I think we should have.
As a whole, the game mechanics have improved, and Forge improved a hell of a lot with it (like with auto-merging and coordinate... have you been back into Halo 3 Forge recently? LOL) but at the same time every time I go in to Forge I find myself a lot more limited with possibilities because I can't get pieces to connect properly, as well as look good, for the gameplay I'm trying to create... so ultimately, it just becomes another map that sits around on my Hard Drive doing nothing more than collecting dust.

I had started a pretty nice map using only 2x2 Steep ramps and 3x3 Shorts (because they're the only pieces on Impact that are plain and white, without crap all over them) and I quickly ran out of the items I needed and the rest of the map can't be completed anymore :/
I just feel I'd be able to Forge a lot more with a more versatile pallet, and ultimately, if I can do more with a more versatile pallet, I'm sure everyone else can too and maps in general could be of higher quality.