Halo Reach Multiplayer Beta

After watching the vids/screenies I am also getting excited about the game, I've never been a big Halo fan but to be fair I've never given it enough play time to make an informed decision.

I'm an xbox gamer now, I cant be taken seriously without owning at least one Halo Game :)

Keep the info coming Omega, nice work so far.
 
Sockmonkey said:
After watching the vids/screenies I am also getting excited about the game, I've never been a big Halo fan but to be fair I've never given it enough play time to make an informed decision.

I'm an xbox gamer now, I cant be taken seriously without owning at least one Halo Game :)

Keep the info coming Omega, nice work so far.
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Socks you can pick up Halo 3 for R200 since its classic now, ODST is still a tad expensive, R600, most places but the Beta Key and complete Halo 3 MP Map Packs is totally worth it. Let me know when u picked it up and we go co-op.
 
OmegaFenix22 said:
Socks you can pick up Halo 3 for R200 since its classic now, ODST is still a tad expensive, R600, most places but the Beta Key and complete Halo 3 MP Map Packs is totally worth it. Let me know when u picked it up and we go co-op.
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There is a used copy of HALO ODST on the kalahari marketplace for R330 including postage, which isnt bad at all, I might just pick it up end of month. I'm really keen for some co-op, so I definitely let you know.
 
I bought Halo 3, I kinda enjoyed it but not really my type of game. Maybe its because I suck at shooters, and Halo is not really the easiest game to play. So far on Mass Effect I am really enjoying it, not doing too bad either. MW2 is also good. I am enjoying that alot. Never really felt that way about Halo though.
 
Quick question - How will the beta key be distributed to HALO ODST players? Is there some kind of code in the original box, do I have to buy it new to get the code?
 
An In-Dept Look at Halo: Reach's ARENA System

Today, Shacknews revealed several improvements Bungie will be making to the Halo: Reach multiplayer game, one of which is the Arena system. Put simply, this is an area of the multiplayer component geared entirely toward high-skill, hardcore players.

I spoke with the following group to find out more about how the hardcore Arena system will function as well as how the ranking system will determine comparative skill between players.
Luke Timmins - Lead Multiplayer/UI Engineer
Tyson Green - Systems Designer

The Arena System - A Ranked Set of Playlists for the Hardcore Community

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.

If Tyson wants to play with his little brother, who isn't that good, Tyson can play with him. His brother might suck, but Tyson might be really good. He can go in and get a good rating game after game after game. This is something that our Halo 3 model did not do well.

Play with who you want. You're going to get scored individually.

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.

Shack: How much of this taking cues from real-time strategy games or something like World of Warcraft's Arena?

Luke Timmins: What is the game you mentioned? World of what?

Tyson Green: Shut up (laughs). There's definitely bits of it in there. We've looked at things like chess and the ELO system and quarterback ratings from the NFL. There real inspiration came from this notion of, 'can we take someone's performance and distill it down into a number?' People can compare numbers with each other and have it be meaningful in the same way NFL quarterbacks are compared with the QB rating.

We looked at the way seasons worked in World of Warcraft arenas, but we think those seasons are too long [for us]. They are based around [Blizzard's] content cycle and not on what would be an optimal season duration. There are bits and pieces taken from other places.

Shack: Can you move divisions within the same season?

Luke Timmins: Yup! Up and down.

Shack: Is this division and ranking tech Reach specific or did you work with Microsoft to build this into Live?

Tyson Green: It's Reach specific. We're still using TrueSkill to actually build matches, but we're using it in a less-constrained version than Halo 3, so it works faster and it works better. I think [Reach] is one of the first titles to use TrueSkill properly.

Luke Timmins: With Halo 3, to get what we wanted out of TrueSkill, we had to abuse it in various ways. A big part of what we want to do is let TrueSkill do what it's amazing at, which is giving you meaningful skill numbers that we can use to match you. On top of that, we wanted this additional layer that is more meaningful to users.

There were a lot of things that sucked in Halo 3 for users. Once you got dialed in, your skill wouldn't change. We were promising users the number would go up and all of a sudden it doesn't. Players felt like they were done.

Stay tuned for more on Halo: Reach including information about combing Ranked and Social playlists into one straight from the developers.
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Source
 
Bungie Reveals Halo: Reach's Matchmaking & Social Features

The beta test for Halo: Reach is set to begin on May 3 for owners of Halo 3: ODST. Until today, Bungie has been tight-lipped about new features and improvements coming to Reach's multiplayer game, releasing only one multiplayer trailer.
Yesterday, I spoke with the team at Bungie for a preview of some of the new features for Halo: Reach's multiplayer offering, including Active Roster, Queue-Joining, and the extremely exciting "Arena" system.

Now, I've played a good amount of Halo 3 and Bungie's plans for Reach have me extremely excited. What follows will be pretty in-depth and assume some knowledge of Halo 3's multiplayer, but I'll try to explain things in as much detail as possible.
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.

Basically, Bungie wants to make it so that you do not have to utilize the Xbox Live Guide to find out what your buddies are doing in Reach.
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.

Behind-the-scenes, a lot of work has been done to give more flexibility to the playlist designers. A designer could, for example, ensure that the first choice is always Team Slayer on a set of 3 popular maps, but offer different gametypes in the additional choices.
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.
Even though Arena is geared toward top-level players, it should help less skilled players avoid being matched up against people they have no chance of winning against.

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.

Matchmaking Connection Options - The options for finding games in matchmaking will be more open to the player, if they so choose. If you only ever want to play in games with a good connection, that can be set in the options. If you only ever want to play against players of a similar skill, that can be set. The same goes for finding players that speak to same language.
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 vs. Lone Wolf
Motivation - Winning vs. Having Fun
Chattiness - Chatty vs. Quiet
Tone - Polite vs. Rowdy

This allows Bungie, for example, to try and build a team of chatty, polite, team-playing, winners in serious playlists.
These new features are a huge part of Halo: Reach and should help foster a better community than Halo 3 or Halo 2. Personally, I'm extremely excited about the Arena system. I've been having a lot of fun in the StarCraft II beta test with Blizzard's Leagues & Ladders system. Arena is the same concept.
It should also help alleviate the epidemic of smurfing (creating new Xbox Live accounts) to give maxed out players something to do in Halo 3. Instead of starting over, destroying noobs and reclimbing the skill charts, these top-level players will be encouraged to play season-after-season in the Arena and be meaningfully compared to each other. It's a system that has been a long-time-coming to a first-person shooter.

Look for more coverage on Halo: Reach from Shacknews soon and get ready for the beta, which begins on May 3rd. The full game will be released exclusively for the Xbox 360 this fall. See you online!
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Sockmonkey said:
Quick question - How will the beta key be distributed to HALO ODST players? Is there some kind of code in the original box, do I have to buy it new to get the code?
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According to some url that I found and lost again, closer to the time of the actual beta release ODST owners will be informed as to what will happen. The only advice they give you is to "Hold on to your ODST disc."
 
Tempy said:
According to some url that I found and lost again, closer to the time of the actual beta release ODST owners will be informed as to what will happen. The only advice they give you is to "Hold on to your ODST disc."
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Awesome thanks, was wondering about this.
 
Cool.

My main problem right now is that I still don't have ODST... Hope to have remedied that by tomorrow :) Does anyone have an idea of how long the beta will be up and running for by the way?
 
Here are some of the Matchmaking Screenies.

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Bungie Reveals Halo: Reach's All-Encompassing Player Investment System

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Why should multiplayer gamers have all the fun? That's part of Bungie's pitch for its ambitious "Player Investment" system being implemented into what could potentially be the studio's final Halo adventure, Halo: Reach.
It's been a while since Bungie had a chance to reinvent their brand of online play and Player Investment is Bungie's response to the more RPG-influenced level-based multiplayer experiences found in dominating games like Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Whereas Modern Warfare 2 and its ilk confine these experiences to multiplayer, Bungie's hoping to rope all of its Halo fans under a single, player-driven umbrella and involve single-player.
"Whatever your preferred flavor of Halo is, we're gonna find a way to reward you," said Bungie player investment designer (and former games journalist) Luke Smith in a phone interview with me earlier this week. "Whatever you enjoy doing in multiplayer, we're gonna find a way to reward you. Through the Player Investment system, you're going to be building an identity for the first time in a Halo game."

Bungie has detached Halo 3's ranking from the Trueskill system that drives matchmaking. Previously, the on-screen ranking users saw reflected how players would be matched up competitively, meaning someone with a high ranking would most likely be a competent Halo 3 player. That's not necessarily true in Halo: Reach. To be clear, Trueskill is still driving matchmaking, but Player Investment is more reflective of the amount of time someone's dedicated to Halo: Reach and not necessarily their skillset. Someone can have a high Player Investment ranking and be a terrible player. But since Trueskill is tracking that data in the background, away from users, it will still match players appropriately. So, don't worry: terrible Halo: Reach players will be matched with other equally-awful Halo: Reach players.

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Player Investment is driven by credits ("cR" for short). Credits are given to gamers simply for playing Halo: Reach, either through rounds of multiplayer or by working through the single-player campaign, but the amounts of credits vary, based on the actions of the player. Different actions will dole out a different amount of credits, but Bungie is being careful to not encourage player actions that would potentially damage the gameplay experience. It does mean that more challenging tasks (say, five headshots in under a minute) would produce more credits. Bungie's currently balancing how credits are doled out, but credits drive the Player Investment experience, both to increase a player's Military Rank (replacing Halo 3's Ranking system) and to purchase customization items in Halo: Reach's "Armory."
In Modern Warfare 2, as a player levels up, they unlock new abilities, new weapons and other features that fundamentally change the gameplay. Someone who is level one in Modern Warfare 2 can not equally square away against someone nearing the level cap. Bungie is being mindful to avoid that type of player inequality in Halo: Reach. Everything that players gain access to via credits in Halo: Reach are used solely to purchase helmets, shoulders, chests and other accessories that allow Halo: Reach players to create a Spartan who is uniquely them. These items are for visual changes only and do not affect the flow of gameplay.
"There are no in-game benefits to Spartan armor," said Smith. "It would definitely make Halo something different than what Halo is."
This player uniqueness is reflected in multiplayer and single-player. Your customized Spartan having battles in multiplayer is the same Spartan you're controlling while fighting the Covenant for control of Reach in the prequel storyline. Bungie wanted Halo: Reach's story to be more about the player's role in the battle, rather than simply assuming control of Master Chief and guiding his actions. Your customized Spartan is even included in the cut-scenes.
"When the cut-scene comes up in campaign, we want you to see you," said Smith. "For instance, that trailer that we showed with the helmet and soldier picking it up, the Noble 6 trailer, that helmet is going to be your helmet. If you're pink and adorned with unicorns, that's how you're going to look. [...] With Reach, this is your story, this is your identity, this is your version of a story that we want you to be a part of."
In speaking with Bungie, Smigh pegged me as someone they are targeting with another new feature called "Challenges." Smith knows me. He understands I'm not the most skilled Halo player and am more likely to finish the single-player, maybe dabble in multiplayer, get frustrated because most players are better than I am and move on. Bungie's hoping Challenges will keep players like myself coming back for more. Challenges come in two forms -- daily and weekly -- and are Bungie-developed obstacles that provide short to medium-length goals to be achieved solo or with groups. As Bungie expects most gamers will tackle Challenges after spending a chunk of time with Halo: Reach, many Challenges will have a notable difficulty curve.

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"Some of [simpler daily challenges] are aggregate actions," said Smith, "like kill X dudes, help kill X dudes today. Sometimes those dudes we want you to kill are gonna be in multiplayer, [or] they're going to be in another mode. Sometimes it's going to say just kill anyone anywhere, we don't care what you do, just kill people and we'll reward you for that."
Smith knows what kind of Halo player I am because we've played Halo together. But it's hard to know exactly what kind of player someone is just by looking at their user profile. An impressively high rank doesn't tell you anything about their play style. Bungie hopes to help alleviate that problem with "Commendations," described as persistent medals that reflect player actions over an extended period of time. For example, if the game tracks that you spend most of your time battling with a sniper rifle, your Commendations show that. The profile can eventually represent a snapshot of your Halo play style and provide a better understanding amongst friends and strangers where player strengths are. Oh, and along the way to earning Commendation medals, you'll of course be earning credits.
"There are guys [who] just want to drive people around. We haven't done a great job of reinforcing that kind of behavior in the past"
"I can look at your service record, Patrick," explained Smith, "and see that you have a ton of assists and a ton of progress in your wheelman Commendation, so I know that you like to be a support player, you like to drive vehicles. That's your preferred style. One of the things that we really want to do a better job with Reach is [highlighting] the guys out there who do like their Halo maybe differently than, for instance, I like mine. I like head shots, I like killing people with a sniper rifle, I like all that stuff. But there are guys that we've encountered along the way who just love to drive; they just want to drive people around. We haven't really done a great job of reinforcing that kind of behavior in the past and the Commendation system is one way we're doing that."
Bungie's ambitions for Player Investment suggest hopes for a more efficient, more persistent player experience that extends over users' single and multiplayer adventures. While some gamers might hope for customizability that extends beyond the visual appearance of their Spartan, that's not Halo's style. But if you burned with jealousy over a friend getting their hands on Halo 3's Recon armor, well, Bungie has a whole new set of tools to play with. And for someone like myself, maybe there's a reason to play multiplayer again once the credits roll.
Halo: Reach's multiplayer beta goes live May 3. The full game will be released later this year.
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Courtesy of G4tv.com

With Halo Bungie reinvented console FPS, With Halo 2 they set the standard for Multiplayer in an FPS & by the sounds of it Halo Reach is going to be yet another standard setting experience, both in Singleplayer and Multiplayer.

Cant wait for the Beta to start.

Ill look and see if i can find the video of the Character Customization first look.
 
Here are some more screens of character customization.

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All this is going to make picking out your buddies much easier in Team Slayer.
 
Azimuth said:
Heh, I'm always super easy to spot because I use a bumble bee colour scheme. :P
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Hehe just look for my Phoenix symbol, although ill be making full use of this customization since it will feature through the campaign as well as the the mp and co-op. Going to be pretty awesome.
 
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