From the Halo Council. Except is was actually a Neogaf post.

Kevin Franklin on Podtacular

Posted by Cyren | December 4th, 2012

Kevin Franklin recently got the chance to go on Podtacular by Dust Strom. They go in great depths about Halo 4, how it came to be for multiplayer, and the future of it. Check out the full podcast here.

 

Here’s a quick breakdown by enzo_gt:

• Says they create a weekly “to be fixed” list, usually go live Sunday or Monday the following week after obvious testing and whatnot
• Map exploits are fixed by putting invisible volumes or soft/hard kill volumes in the maps, you can download recently played maps and the fixes will apply to those maps too (i.e. if you wanted to use fixed versions of maps in customs)
• Some exploit jumps were fixed on Haven recently
• With regards to Race and Territories and classic gametypes being missing, because of new gametype scripting being tied to the new medal system and whatnot, they can’t just copy + paste, says adding stuff like distinct game modes is possible, but can’t promise it, says when they fix glitches and stuff they can look into adding and creating classic game modes
• They consider Extraction as the spiritual successor to Assault rather than Territories
• Talks about the Banshee/Mantis balance on Ragnarok, there was a dynamic of the two considered in design
• Railgun is by design more anti-Spartan and not really meant to be anti-Vehicle although it can be used to do things like flip Warthogs
• Some weapons are different in campaign and MP, is not sure if Railgun is one of them (after host mentions potential faster charge in campaign)
• Ragnarok chosen to remake because they loved Valhalla and they felt that it would work well with the Mantis with regards to map flow
• Same main artist for Valhalla and Ragnarok
• Paying attention and listening to requests for remakes, but it was important for them to have as many fresh experiences as possible for launch
• Can’t say when, but remakes are definitely something they’re looking at (sounds like an indirect confirmation to me)
• Exile is one of the dev teams favourite maps, as well as Haven
• Voids in playlist right now include needing more smaller maps in Infinity Slayer, which they are looking at
• Relay is being looked at internally to be tweaked for inclusion into the CTF playlist, won’t be in for next week but the weeks after are a possibility, this kind of stuff is dependent on how many issues and the workload of the team at the given time
• Community maps have been obtained by the devs from a Community Cartographer event and they are looking at what needs to be done to get them ready for matchmaking
• Road map for including community maps into matchmaking again is not rigid, as fast as the team can do things they will with bug fixes being top priority
• Meltdown and Icefield (Halo PC) not directly related, team not afraid to use old maps as a beginning to evolve into something altogether, mentions this after using Solace being similar to Narrows as another example
• Team members look into every single Halo map for inspiration, models for sightlines, weapon placement, etc.
• Feedback from competitive community at MLG Dallas included concerns DMR/BR rifle balance which they are watching closely how the rifle balance evolves, taking note of people using Carbine and Light Rifle too, thinks we well see changes down the line
• Carbine is one of the highest skilled weapons in the game, believes it has fastest kill speed of any weapon if you get every shot, feels like highly skilled weapons have their place
• Asked why Halo gameplay was sped up, one of many early Slayer prototypes for Halo 4 was based around “tempo,” which affected all the core elements of gameplay, felt it raised skill curve and eventually it developed into the final product
• One prototype was developed called “Slayer ++ or M Slayer” that focused on scoring, a few others that were focused on weapon balance, they all came together and mixed together into what became Infinity Slayer right before E3.
• “Why take the Call of Duty route and introduce +10 points?” – The biggest thing was that the , felt it often didn’t recognize input of some members of the team such as the Wheelman, wanted to find ways to recognize all the players’ impacts on their team, chose to focus the medals on this new reward system, created point structure to distinguish between stuff like Distraction as a +5 where as a Flag Capture is +100
• Kill points kept consistent in denominations to create consistency with personal ordnance
• Asked if we’ll see another “insane” gametype introduced into Halo 4, possible down the line, Fiesta was well received at MLG, how fast they appeared in older Halo games would be a good indicator for when they will appear in 4, would consider emergent gametypes from the community that are very popular for playlist updates
• Aware of requests from community for spectator modes (Call of Duty cited as reference in the question), cannot commit to timeframe or whether it will happen, still something they want to do, would want to only release such a thing when it’s completely ready
• Says there is an advantage with using the Magnum instead of the BR/DMR in SWAT if you have the height advantage because of how head hitboxes work in Halo 4
• Added Mantis to Meltdown (I guess in BTB variants?) and there is a spawn issue they are aware of and working on
• Removed Banshee from CTF Ragnarok
• Graphs are available on the latest Halo Bulletin for Personal Ordnance drop percentages, are tuned based on maps
• Meltdown Dominion specifically has a high chance of dropping Incineration Cannons when you resupply bases (noticeable if you’ve played the gametype)

Kevin asks the community:

• For SWAT, are people starting with the BR or DMR? Wants to know from the people even though he can pull up stats