Halo Title Update Log for Halo 4

RogerDodger

RogerDodger

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NOTE: This thread will include hot-fixes as well as title updates.
For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering updates from February 2013 to the present day.
Last updated 2/21/13



Post 02/13/13 from BS Angel at HaloWaypoint.com, discovered by FREEDOM CORBA:
(old news) - see spoiler.
Title Update… Update?
In early January, we announced that we had started work on a title update for Halo 4. That work is nearing completion, and it is expected to release within the next two weeks. It addresses some of the concerns we’ve been hearing from the community, but just to set your expectations accordingly, we know we still have work to do. There’s more balancing to be done and more issues to address, and we are actively working with the Halo 4 game team to investigate the feasibility of additional fixes. We’ll share the complete change list after it launches, but here are a few of the big ticket items:
• Reduced the range of the Boltshot’s damage scaling over distance. The previous effective range for 1-hit kills was 20'-25'. The range has been reduced to 15'.
• Fixed an issue that did not allow players to create respawn timers or disable instant respawn in custom games.
• Fixed issues with friendly fire against vehicles. If FF is disabled, damage / EMPs from friendly sources will no longer damage vehicles that are fully controlled by your team.
Keep an eye out for the complete change list once the TU is live.
Click to expand...

This post is a little bit ambiguous when it comes to time frames. "We'll share the complete change list after [the Title Update] launches..." implies that the following are meant to happen in the future, but there's a lot of past-tense verbiage like "Reduced the range", "Fixed issues", etc. However, through testing, none of these have been added and will be included in the TU. It also suggests that at the beginning of March, we'll see this full-blown title update. Pray to the Guardians that they fix what needs to be fixed, because when they're "investigating the feasibility", it's a worthless excuse for ignoring what a 16-year old kid could find out by himself.

We know that the current range of the Boltshot, through testing, is at about 7 meters. This would correspond well with their estimate between 20'-25', landing at around 23'. They claim that the Boltshot would then be precisely a one-hit kill at 15' or 4.572m. This is an obvious difference of 8 feet, or 2.4 meters, and 35% decrease in range. Regardless, the thing could still decimate people at a distance equal to that of two Spartans (presuming that they're about 7' tall each) laying down on the ground, head to toe. Although said change would make the Shotgun actually better than the Boltshot, one could definitely kill a Shotgun user if they get close enough to one another. I think it's not very significant, but we'll see how it performs with the next update coming in March.

Post 2/20/13 from BS Angel at HaloWaypoint.com - brought to attention by FREEDOM COBRA (I found it around the same time too):

Title Update… Update?
The next Halo 4 Title Update is slated to go live sometime this week. While we’d love to give you the specific date and time you’ll be prompted to download this update, unfortunately we’re only given an ambiguous window in which it will release, not a hard date. So you’ll know as soon as we know… or something like that, anyway.

While this update tackles a significant amount of bugs, glitches and issues we’re happy to soon call resolved, there’s more balancing to be done and more matters of contention to address, and we are actively working with the Halo 4 game team to investigate the feasibility of additional fixes. For now, here is a breakdown of what will be included in this particular title update.

Gameplay
• Reduced the range of the Boltshot’s damage scaling over distance. The previous effective range for 1-hit kills was around 20-25'. The range has been reduced to 15'.
• Fixed an issue where modified loadouts were not being saved correctly.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to sprint while crouching using “hold to crouch” would cause players to be unable to shoot for 1-1.5 seconds.
• Fixed an issue where some players were not able to get into matches on new map/game variants after playlist updates.
• Fixed a DLC-related Join-in-Progress issue that kicked players back to the title screen.
• Fixed various issues regarding glitched Autosentry deployment.
• Fixed an issue where one player per session was unable to stay scoped with the Flagnum.
• Fixed an issue where clients playing multi-round matches were not propelled by Man Cannons after the first round on Wreckage.
• Fixed an issue for players who had licensed content for the specialization offer, and had the free Map Pack content, but did not have the Map Pass or Map Pack license by displaying a new error message: “You have Map Pack content that requires a license. Please purchase the War Games Map Pass, purchase the Map Pack individually, or delete the Map Pack content from your console.”
Vehicles
• Fixed issues with friendly fire against vehicles. If FF is disabled, damage/EMPs from friendly sources will no longer damage vehicles that are fully controlled by your team.
• Fixed an issue with where the Wraith secondary turret became disabled when shot with a Plasma Pistol. The feature has been updated to be consistent with previous Halo titles.
• Fixed a Mantis functionality exploit that allowed pilots to survive planted grenades.
Specific Game Modes
• Friendly fire turned off in Flood to prevent exploits.
• Fixed Flood character models to allow for Warthog and Mongoose use.
• Fixed an inconsistency with King of the Hill deathcam.
• Fixed an issue where the Grifball would get stuck in geometry and never respawn.
• Fixed the issue for Extraction where players did not regain full control of their character for extended periods of time after interacting with a site.
• Fixed multiple Extraction scoring issues, including an overtime fix that ensures that a victory will not be awarded to a team who is controlling the go-ahead extraction point when the game ends.
Custom Games
• Fixed an issue that did not allow players to create respawn timers or disable instant respawn in custom games.
• Fixed an issue on Shatter where players couldn’t start a custom Dominion game.
• Fixed an issue where the Ordnance game options reset when scrolling up or down in custom games.
• Fixed an issue where custom game descriptions did not appear in the “Settings” preview screen.
• Fixed inconsistencies and bugs in the final death cam for custom games.
Spartan Ops
• Fixed an issue where the “Dedicated to Crimson” Achievement could not be unlocked.
• Fixed an issue where players in Spartan Ops Episode 6 Mission 1 were able to look around before the vignette.
Miscellaneous
• Fixed a selection of issues where theater clips were missing map-specific audio, including ambient noise and announcer voice.
• Fixed File Share preview images for films and map variants.
• Fixed issues with in-game translations.
• Fixed title screen camera clipping.
• Fixed an issue with Forge pieces and the shadows they create.
• Fixed aliasing split screen HUD issues.
• Fixed an issue where some saved films of Forge games featured no Forge lighting.
• Fixed incorrect “change description” text in File Browser.
• Fixed assorted crashes.
Click to expand...

IT WAS RELEASED TODAY, 02/21/13
Dang, quite a long list. Let me just stress some of the important points:
  • All the things mentioned in the earlier post are confirmed again, and you can check them out yourself. Just trying to avoid redundancies.
  • As I'm particularly concerned with the Multiplayer aspect, it's disappointing to see that none of the other weapons that really need to be altered are not included. This could be foreshadowing to how 343i is going to treat Halo 4 in the future - a game completely dominated by precision weapons, with CQC additions being a side-function of Loadouts.
  • A few new things I can applaud them for fixing is Deathcams so they don't lag like you're using a McDonald's w-fi connection, and gametype bugs.
  • Forging gets some nice bonuses, albeit they're not completely crucial (dammit pull up the Fileshare link system already!). Respawning became more editable in gametypes, some Forge pieces got better shadowing, and the File system saw numerous ease-of-use additions.
Through testing, the Boltshot is now at about 4.75 meters of effective kill distance. This is just a bit more than the approximated 4.57m, but is still within the ballpark of what their estimates said. So far I can say the bull-sh*t I've gotten from the BS (heh,get the reference), is a lot less than before. Rejoice, shotgunners - the old king hath returned.
 
Fuzzle

Fuzzle

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whats your suggestion to nerf the BS then? reduce damage to make them oneshot would make it a worse plasmapistol, reducing the range even further would lead to its uselessness. the plasmapistol would be better in almost every way unless the BS gets a new use e.g. increased single shot damage to make it a mix of the magnum and the plasma pistol. but that would totally miss its initial purpose and would make it a mauler v2
 
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

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Fuzzle said:
whats your suggestion to nerf the BS then? reduce damage to make them oneshot would make it a worse plasmapistol, reducing the range even further would lead to its uselessness. the plasmapistol would be better in almost every way unless the BS gets a new use e.g. increased single shot damage to make it a mix of the magnum and the plasma pistol. but that would totally miss its initial purpose and would make it a mauler v2
Click to expand...

It's all in the range, honestly. Let me explain in terms of the Plasma Pistol (PP) and the Boltshot (BS)

CQC has always attracted the favor of the melee attack. For the sake of consistency, we'll leave the Sword and Hammer out of the discussion. A person needs to be right next to another person to bash them. If they are not, they need to forgo a certain distance without dealing damage in order to get close enough to do so. By moving up, they incur damage themselves.

That being said, we can infer these things:
  • Two people bashing each other will result in a tie
  • A pre-charged PP and a bash at point-blank will beat two bashes, since the PP has a one-up on their shields and can bash immediately afterwards
  • BS fire will negate all melee attacks, in the instance that the melee person has to forgo said lethal distance of BS in order to bash them
Therefore, it's between the PP and Boltshot, and where/what times those will be the best:
  • Between the two, at point blank, whatever one has the fastest charge time will win (most people, though, are preemptive thinkers)
  • At BS's lethal distance, the PP will loose if both weapons are charged. (+1 Boltshot)
  • Outside of BS lethal distance, the PP can down shields and kill faster if a precision weapon is switched to. (+1 PP)
  • PP needs lock-on and travels in a timed fashion, while the BS is instantaneous and ready on demand (+1 Boltshot)
Through these inferences, I propose that the BS gets just a range cut. It's a fair way to make sure that people who are outside the PP/BS system are not effected, while still leaving the PP as a usable and better alternative at range. We can see that the BS is SUPPOSED to be better at CQC, not the PP. That being said, a range cut on the BS could be combined with a longer charge time on the PP, to ensure that at a closer distance the BS doesn't magically get screwed over.
 
Fuzzle

Fuzzle

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Z3R0FLAME said:
It's all in the range, honestly. Let me explain in terms of the Plasma Pistol (PP) and the Boltshot (BS)

CQC has always attracted the favor of the melee attack. For the sake of consistency, we'll leave the Sword and Hammer out of the discussion. A person needs to be right next to another person to bash them. If they are not, they need to forgo a certain distance without dealing damage in order to get close enough to do so. By moving up, they incur damage themselves.

That being said, we can infer these things:
  • Two people bashing each other will result in a tie
  • A pre-charged PP and a bash at point-blank will beat two bashes, since the PP has a one-up on their shields and can bash immediately afterwards
  • BS fire will negate all melee attacks, in the instance that the melee person has to forgo said lethal distance of BS in order to bash them
Therefore, it's between the PP and Boltshot, and where/what times those will be the best:

  • Between the two, at point blank, whatever one has the fastest charge time will win (most people, though, are preemptive thinkers)
  • At BS's lethal distance, the PP will loose if both weapons are charged. (+1 Boltshot)
  • Outside of BS lethal distance, the PP can down shields and kill faster if a precision weapon is switched to. (+1 PP)
  • PP needs lock-on and travels in a timed fashion, while the BS is instantaneous and ready on demand (+1 Boltshot)
Through these inferences, I propose that the BS gets just a range cut. It's a fair way to make sure that people who are outside the PP/BS system are not effected, while still leaving the PP as a usable and better alternative at range. We can see that the BS is SUPPOSED to be better at CQC, not the PP. That being said, a range cut on the BS could be combined with a longer charge time on the PP, to ensure that at a closer distance the BS doesn't magically get screwed over.
Click to expand...

i agree with everything you said, i personally think the boltshot should have the upper hand in cqc because the PP has alternative uses (EMP). but you didnt really respond to what i tried to say, as far as i understood you rated the changes to the BS as "Not very significant" and you are critzising the changes of the TU. if thats not true i apologise, i was just asking you what changes you would make to balance the BS to fit in the weapon arsenal of halo 4. the way it is now is just rediculous
 
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

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Fuzzle said:
as far as i understood you rated the changes to the BS as "Not very significant" and you are critzising the changes of the TU
Click to expand...

UPDATE! I just tested it. They haven't changed much, if anything. It's still lethal up until 7 meters. Therefore, those changes are probably future ones.
 
FREEDOM COBRA

FREEDOM COBRA

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mazdak26 said:
no way in hell. It's supposed to be used at pretty close range. either that, or exclusively to switch to for a quick headshot. Anything less and it becomes the pocket BR of Halo 2. In my opinion, the magnum was at its best in reach when it had insane bloom.
Click to expand...
Yes, it was right in Reach it needs to be at Reach level. The hud marker(don't know the correct term) is harder to aim in H4 so it should be better to compensate or maybe an option to swap between current and old?
 
mazdak26

mazdak26

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I think the term you are looking for is reticule. And no, it isn't. You may have your sensitivity weird. The magnum the way it is is borderline, though the lowered bloom does makes some sense considering 343's push to focus away just a little from cqc, which I think is totally the right call. That range needed to be opened up a bit. You know when close quarters combat is too claustrophobic when the shotgun doesn't shoot much farther than your fist.
 
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