New Halo:Reach features

[CkSned]

Summary of the new features:

Active Roster = This is a throwback to Halo 2. When you boot up Reach, right at the main menu or lobby, you'll see a list of what your Xbox Live friends are doing within Reach. You'll get detailed information about any friends playing Reach including who they are partied with, what game they are in (plus score and remaining time), and more.

Queue-Joining - In Halo 3, it was difficult to join friends that were already playing in a match. You had to wait until they were finished. If you started a game while you waited, they would then have to wait for you. Instead of going back and forth, Reach will support queue-joining. Simply put, Reach will automatically join up as soon as your friends are joinable

Improved Voting System - Halo: Reach will utilize a new voting system, which Bungie described as "Veto 2.0". Each playlist will provide players with four options. The first will be a combination of map and gametype, much like you would see in Halo 3. The other three options will offer players additional choices to vote on. Thankfully, you'll know up front what your four options are so you no longer have to risk voting down a favored map, but unfavored gametype and getting an unfavored combination.

Arena Playlists - Possibly the largest change coming in Halo: Reach is the Arena. This is a Slayer and Team Slayer set of playlists entirely geared toward the hardcore. If that wasn't enough, players will be rated and placed into skill divisions in month-long seasons.

The rating system is smart enough to realize that kills aren't the only determining factor behind skill. This is especially true for team games where assists play a huge roll. Similarly, players that have a greater kill/death ratio (had more kills than deaths) will rank higher than players that die as much as they kill.

The divisions are Onyx, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Steel. It is possible to move up or down within a single season. To qualify for ranking, players will have to play a certain number of games a day to gain a "Daily Ranking", which will be an average of a player's best games from the day. To get a divisional ranking and compete in a season, players will need a certain number of Daily Rankings.

Casual gametypes will not appear in Arena playlists. You won't be seeing Rocket Race or Fiesta here.

Ranked and Social Combined - Since the hardcore will be in the Arena, Bungie doesn't want to further splinter the community. In Halo 3, Ranked and Social playlists served two different purposes. Ranked games were generally of a higher quality, while social games were more casual.

In Reach, the playlists will be smart enough to put you and your party in the proper match based upon how many players you have. Say you're looking for a game in a four-on-four playlist. If you bring four people, Reach will attempt to match your team against another group of four at a similar skill level. If you go in with more than four, it will properly split your party across the teams and fill in the blanks with additional players.

Streamlined Party-Up - After a Halo 3 match, players were presented with the option to "Party Up" and merge lobbies with all willing players. In Reach, it will be an opt-out system. After a match, players will be kept together and it will automatically roll into looking for the next match. The system is flexible enough to allow Bungie to determine, per playlist, whether to keep a team together and find a new set of opponents or keep an entire game together and move onto the next map.

Social Settings - In addition to these connection options, players can rate themselves along four axes to add another layer of criteria to the matchmaking. These won't trump anything else, but it will help Bungie build better teams. Players will define their playstyle in the following four categories:

* Teamwork - Team Player or Lone Wolf
* Motivation - Winning or Having Fun
* Chattiness - Chatty or Quiet
* Tone - Polite or Rowdy

[CkSned]

A more In Depth look at "The Arena"

* Luke Timmins - Lead Multiplayer/UI Engineer
* Tyson Green - Systems Designer


Luke Timmins: We want to take a new stab at the scoring system and come up with a 'pure scoring system'. We thought a lot about the different pros and cons of [our previous system. We didn't like that it penalized the best player on the losing team. What we came up with was the Arena. It has a different vibe. It is a hardcore, Slayer-only [area]. You are going to be given a rating compared to the rest of the population broken up into divisions.

It's a season-based model, which [helps prevent account smurfing]. If you played a bunch in Halo 3, you'd hit around 40 [skill] and all of a sudden you're number isn't going up. Players would say, 'I guess I'm done. Do I make a second account?' The season model does some really cool things. At the end of the season, it goes on the back of your 'baseball card' and the next season begins fresh.

Tyson Green: With the Arena rating system, we're trying to say, 'Here are the things we value and our players value in-game.' You get a higher rating by doing things that good players do: working with your teammates, getting kills and assists, and not dying a lot. You're playing Slayer, so if you die, you're giving [the enemy team] a point. Say you have two guys, one has a kill:death spread of 10 and the other has a spread of 2. Even if the guy with 2 scored a few more kills - the guy with the higher spread will get a better rating. The game is saying, 'You did the better job. You were playing the game better and working with your team better. This is what contributes to your overall rating.'

Luke Timmins: If you look at the different layers of Halo players, there are guys that really understand kills, deaths, assists, working as a team, and all the stuff that [will go into this rating]. We basically wanted to bubble that up, pull it out, and put it on the table: this is what Slayer is. We can now tell you, 'You did well', if you actually play well.

Tyson Green: Our seasons are probably going to line-up with calendar months. For the September 2010, you're going for the best division you can by the end of that season. To get there, you get rated on individual days. For example, if you need to get a rating on 5 days to get a rating for the season, that means on 5 separate days, you need to play a couple of games each night.

The day rating is based on the best selection of a night's games. You'll never have a situation [where one bad game] brings your rating down. It happens behind the scenes for matchmaking purposes and season standings, but every day, it's all about your best performances on that day.

Luke Timmins: We can tell people, 'Play this many games a day for this many days and you will be rated in the season.' You will know the minimum amount of participation you need for the Arena for that season. We didn't want this be like, 'play 30,000 games'. It's not a grind.

Tyson Green: There's a certain minimum bar that you have to meet to enter. At the end of the day, your day rating gives you your performance against your peers. At the end of the season, the division that you're assigned to tells you who your peers were.

Luke Timmins: You can't just play the best four games of your life and end up with the highest rank in the season.

[The Arena] is a special spot that we can carve out for our hardcore players. You're not going to go in there and find, I'm not going to bash some of our less-hardcore gametypes, but you're not going to find Rocket Race in there. There are people that should play in the Arena and people that wouldn't be happy playing in the Arena, but we have this whole other area just for them.

[Destructo]

Great stuff.

Matchmaking lobby got a huge facelift too. It looks amazing.

[Do a Barrel Roll]

It sounds good. When the beta comes out I know what I'll be playing.

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