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Halo 4

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BuckeyeMac;2146601; said:
I havent read the Halo books, but I am interested in doing so. How many are there?
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There's quite a few now, BUT, the ones to read are Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx (in that order)

All written by the same author and follow John 117 (Fall of Reach takes place during the attack on reach obviously, and goes up to basically the beginning of Halo video game...

First strike is basically after Halo to Halo 2 IIRC and Ghost of Onyx MC isn't the main character and that takes place during-after H2 I believe


Then there's Contact Harvest which is focuses on the first meeting between Human's and the Covenant and the start of the war basically (heard it's a good book, I haven't read it, the Main character is Sgt Johnson, so if you're a fan of his during the game (who wasn't?) then you'll prob like it)

Cole Protocol is next which center's around Gray Team (early in the war)

Then the newer ones are Cryptum which centers around the Forerunners and goes over their war with the Flood, and Primordium is the sequel to Cryptum

The first three are must reads though, great books
 
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OSUScoonie12;2146604; said:
I've always thought about reading the Halo books, but was too busy reading the Warcraft and Starcraft books instead, which are very good if you are into those games.

I cannot wait for this game though. It will awesome to have a new series of Halo games with bigger and badder enemies.
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I loved playing Starcraft. I think I may have to pick up those too
 
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Bucknut24;2146608; said:
There's quite a few now, BUT, the ones to read are Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx (in that order)

All written by the same author and follow John 117 (Fall of Reach takes place during the attack on reach obviously, and goes up to basically the beginning of Halo video game...

First strike is basically after Halo to Halo 2 IIRC and Ghost of Onyx MC isn't the main character and that takes place during-after H2 I believe


Then there's Contact Harvest which is focuses on the first meeting between Human's and the Covenant and the start of the war basically (heard it's a good book, I haven't read it, the Main character is Sgt Johnson, so if you're a fan of his during the game (who wasn't?) then you'll prob like it)

Cole Protocol is next which center's around Gray Team (early in the war)

Then the newer ones are Cryptum which centers around the Forerunners and goes over their war with the Flood, and Primordium is the sequel to Cryptum

The first three are must reads though, great books
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The first three books talked about by BuckNut24 are great IMO and set you up for the "real-time" story of MC in Halo 4, keeping in mind that he has been in Cyro for a few years. These books are an easy and quick read as well. Cryptum and Primordium (which I recently finished) are not nearly as action packed but take you deep into the lives of a few Forerunners at the heights of their empire and a few humans that are the descendants of what remains of the humans that were defeated by the Forerunners and then genetically set back to prevent them from becoming an immediate threat again. These books are interesting but look at the culture and beliefs behind why the forerunners do what they do and the ever present concept of "The Mantle" which is supposed to motivate all their actions and dictate their social structure.
Interestingly you find out that the Halo Constructs were a last effort against the flood but was strongly resisted and fought against by powerful forerunners but corruption and political power of a few allowed these devices to be built and under the control of these few they were used to punish old enemies as an excuse for what basically boiled down to an experiment of the Halo's powerful capabilities. While doing these experiments an unwanted side effect was the weakening of an ancient prison or containment device, found on an old Precursor planet, whose sole purpose was to house and isolate an "evil force" who the Forerunners referred to as the "ancient one", "THe Captive", or "The Primordial". This highly intelligent being is biologic but defies the concepts of normal living things. It seems to never age, is deeply intelligent and can use this in the form of extreme cunning and deception, even to the point of manipulating artificial intelligence. So, by firing these halo arrays they unintentionally release "the captive" and massive problems follow. What is the captive? They are not totally sure, but when asked if it was a Precursor it said it was. A lie maybe? We don't know.
But.. before it dies it says that after its death another will rise and that Forerunners were selected to bare the "Mantle" but that they had come to fail that test of stewardship and that a new species was chosen to bare the the concepts of the mantle; humans. This is where the second book ends. But it makes it seem like in Halo 4 we will come to discover this information in some way and somehow interact with possibly both Forerunners, Precursor(s), and their AI's.
I think another book is due out before the release of Halo 4 but it is a modern story line book.
 
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Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...-master-chief-article-1.1068510#ixzz1tLUkFbzT

I'm a little shocked that you spend this much time on the ship. I was thinking we would find our way to the planet below quickly.

"343 Industries will usher in the next level of Halo titles with a darker game. It's evident in these early moments, and O'Connor says it will be seen throughout. While the Chief will eventually wind up on the planet below (Requiem), much of the game will play out on the Forever Unto Dawn, O'Connor says."

Also I thought it was interesting that...

"Despite that, there will be no 3D or Kinect feature set."

I'm happy to hear this part as I think they can wait on this aspect and really make it special in Halo 5 when it is running on the next genreation Xbox.

"Each of the aspects ? Spartan Ops, Campaign, and War Games ? got equal weight, so it can all play a role," he says.

I wonder if "War Games" is the in game name for the true old fashioned match-making like 4v4 slayer, big team, MLG, etc, etc.... I really want this part to be special. I think this is what put Halo on the map, what made Halo 3 great, and what could make Halo 4 great. Really hoping they don't put the basic match-making on the backburner in trying to reach a broader audience.

I also want my rank to mean something again. Not experience but rank. The 50 beside your name in Halo 3 told most of Halo "I'm better than you" (or that you send to much time playing. :biggrin: ) but in Reach I feel it's burried within your profile and not much of a reward for playing in Arena. So, I have heard that a return to a number ranking system will on a 1 to 100 basis. I hope that is true.
 
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Bucknut24;2148706; said:
yea, I liked the number rank system a lot more..never got to a 50, think 40 was the highest I got in H3
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There were positives and flaws in both the number system and the Reach experience system. What they need to do is combine the two into one amazing system. I hated how in H3 i could go 19-5, but my team lost and I don't get any credit for playing so well. I felt like the number more represented how many good/great teammates you got paired with. In Reach though, I hated how horrible players can still obtain the same level as great players...they just had to play a shit-ton of games.

They need a happy medium...like the best player on the losing team should get close to same credit as the 2nd or 3rd best player on the winning team (based on how well they do).
 
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BuckeyeMac;2153083; said:
What do you mean by true skill?
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It's the system used in Halo to determine your ranking

rueskill system is a skill rating system that is used for many games on XBox Live and more than likely PC. If you haven't already guessed, the reason I bring it up is because Halo 3 uses the trueskill system.

The trueskill system works on two basic valus, your uncertainty value (sigma) and your actual skill (mu). I will refer to them as sigma and mu from now on.

Your sigma is basically how the game accounts for luck; it is the numerical representation of what your skill could be. Play consistently for a low sigma, or play inconsistently for a high sigma.

Your mu is the actual representation of your skill. Win games to raise it, lose games to lower it.

The mathematical relation of mu and sigma is (mu) - k(sigma) where k is a constant assigned by the developers. This means that your skill is actually higher than the number you see, but the game does not give you the benefit of the doubt.
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BuckeyeMac;2153083; said:
What do you mean by true skill?
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Bucknut24 gave a great text book deffenition of what "True Skill" is and how it is actually computing your rank and tereby using this rank to pair you with other random players who have the same generated true skill value or the closest available players.

On the surface this worked totally fine and did what it was supposed to do -cause for fair and balanced game play where diehards skill loving nerds were playing others of the same desire and newer players, who need to pause 5 seconds over a weapon in order to pick it up, are matched against other limited players. But over a short period of time those who played a lot noticed that this system could be manipulated by pairing a very low true skill account with a virgin account or one with no ranked match making history. So, what happened was I or another player would take an account and go play in matchmaking for the purpose of losing and building history on that account of losses and poor "true skill" value. These low value seeking players were nick-named derankers and really lowered the fun of match making. So, the next logical question is why create a sucky account? The answer is that when you paired it with the new and unranked account, say in team doubles, I could play as the "new account" that was just started and I would allow my boosting partner to recover my deranked low account and when we play together with this new accout we are then playing for real and trying to win. The ranking system takes into account that this low skill account never wins on its own but when its paired with me (the new account) it starts winning. True skill assumes that this must be due to the skill of the new account and creates a "bump" in value to reflect the skill value difference being made up for by the new account. This is the boost being refered to when you say Boosting, at least on Halo. My friend used to hold the record on Halo Charts for fewest games played to 50. It took him 17 games. You can see why 343 would want to remove this ability when you realize that tones of people started to do this and how easy it was to do.
 
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I honestly don't know enough about all the different types of ranking systems out there...but I hope there's a way they can have the 1-50 and it's not only based off wins, but K/D ratio, etc.

Like If I go +10 against guys ranked a bit lower than me, that won't carry as much weight as going +3 against guys who are ranked higher than me
 
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