Invasion continues to be good unbalanced fun!

Yeah, I haven't had this much running since Battlefield 1942! ;) I am finding Invasion not only unbalanced (poor Elites!), but it has too few people, poor weapon load outs (wtf, have a huge football field and then give the Elites needlers and blue plasma guns?), and clunky as it has a ton of bugs. Invasion Slayer is a little better, but so far I am not impressed at all.

I'm more impressed with the chances they're taking than the results, but I also continue to see a lot of potential in Invasion. Both gametypes feel very new, and they remind me of something that you might see in Unreal Tournament. Invasion is like rush and conquest had a baby--and it married CTF! There's a lot of hate out there on other forums, not just for Invasion, but for Reach in general. People are upset that it feels so fundamentally different than the Halo games that came before it, but I'm not turned off. Bungie is still putting their best foot forward, and what they're attempting is not so far outside of the formula that it feels foreign to me. Change is hard, especially when that change caters to the (dumb) masses, but I hardly think that's the direction they're taking. There are still several months left to get this right, so I'm hopeful that Reach will turn out to be the game that it deserves to be.

I'm more impressed with Invasion than I will probably ever be with stuff like stockpile (which i think is pretty lazy and lame) or headhunter. Those gametypes just feel like extensions of the weakest links to me. Invasion is bold, it's new, and it's got potential. Now lets see if they can fix the obvious balance issues holding it back. I really look forward to generator defense too, because Overlook looks awesome (maybe the best looking new map period!), and because it has the potential to expand Halo's newness.

Halo 3 may continue to be the best traditional Halo game, but who knows. I love the weapon bloom, and I love load-outs (I can't wait to see custom games!), and more importantly I love armor abilities.

Good games tonight Phaethon and Heretic!

You're already immobile. If you don't know how and when to use it you're just going to set yourself up for death anyway.

I actually really like Stockpile, I don't think it's lazy at all. I'm finding it much more enjoyable than the Invasion games. It's a shame they haven't really given Invasion a proper chance because of the obvious things that are busted like party splitting, too few players and loadout configuration.

That said, I think Invasion lacks a certain tension that other gametypes have. The first two stages always feel inevitable. Unless the Elites are idiots, it's almost certain they can overpower one generator unless the Spartans are extremely well drilled. Against extremely well drilled Spartans they've got no chance. There's no middle ground.

Thinking aloud, the first stage would be more dramatic if the Elites had to plant say two bombs to break through to the next phase. Standing around in a territory just feels a bit more arbitrary.The Arena formula is on Bungie.net and it takes kills, assists, deaths and victory into equation. Right now, assists count as much as kills which is something they want to review. What they want to encourage is team play and cross map shooting. That's exactly what you see in most MLG games.

I think it's fair to say the ratios will be tweaked but I don't think it's seriously flawed. The maths are pretty solid when you look at it.Central design tenet of Halo: When used in the correct role, everything should feel over-powered. To an extent the opposite is also true.

I would say the armor abilities are the most balanced thing in the game right now. Each one has a place where it's very useful, places where they aren't and appropriate counters. Armor lock leaves people very exposed, especially to a well timed grenade throw and there's no way shields can recharge fully whilst it's deployed. The worst abuse of it I've seen is quickly springing out of it straight into a melee (combined with the EMP, that's a kill). It doesn't take people long to not run at people with armor lock and the melee recovery time is getting tweaked.

I'm just not feeling it at all. I think it lacks any kind of focus or direction. It's sorta like something that you could have come up with on the back of a cocktail napkin. Which is fine, I guess, but it doesn't feel like much thought went into it beyond that stage. I think it ranks up there with three-plot and oddball as the worst team objective modes in Halo. And fwiw, I love the concept of "Territory" game modes, and oddball is fun from time-to-time, but they all just feel poorly implemented to me. When you compare them to simular game modes in simular games they just do not stack up.Yes. And they've already got the groundwork in place for such a thing to happen with Assault. That's assuming they didn't kill assault, which would be a big bummer.Grenades are definitely OP.Bungie doesn't seem totally concerned with skill when it comes to their gametypes. They'll let MLG come in and fix the game again and hopefully we'll see a new playlist come out of it :P

But I totally think you're overblowing the issue with AL. It's not that bad.

I still think tweaking the melee recovery time is sorta missing the point in terms of what is making melee so prevalent.

Vehicle, explosion, etc.

There are some explosive objects in the power house (I think), and there are other ways you can die in Halo. You could get crushed by an object, or the impact of a grenade, etc. There's a few possibilities.

It can also be when the game can't work out how you died (the infamous 'Guardians').I could say the same about Invasion at this stage! (It'd be harsh, I think it has potential at least). Obviously we are into different things.What point would they be missing? Melee killed with one hit when shields were down in other Halo games. It does the same here. If anything, when the melee recovery is sorted out it will be harder because if there are any shields left at all, the melee won't kill. Nerfing melee so that it doesn't kill when shields are down will make it like pre-patch Halo 2, i.e. busted so what else can they do?

What has changed is that they've made it very obvious when shields are down so more people will know when to hit the melee, as opposed to some players just having a better feel for it before hand.

Well, I'd also say the same thing about Invasion. The difference is that the framework for a good gametype is already there in Invasion, but Stockpile is so forgettable that I have to continually look up the name just to talk about it :) I'm fine with just agreeing to disagree on this one, but I still think Stockpile sorta stinks. I've never been terribly impressed with some of their objective implementation though. I love that the variety exists within Halo, and I love that there are multiple objective types, but there are CTF modes in Halo that no one plays that are way better than Stockpile. Why can't they just add some neutral flag to the playlists? That's a riot and it's been largely ignored by official playlists since forever.I think the point is that people are able to close the gap at all without having their shields broken by the time they're right up in your face. If the weapons did slightly more damage (think MLG's 110% from Halo 3), this probably would never be an issue. But instead of adjusting the AR's damage, they're opting to make melee worse. They really want those longer encounter times! I think that this change will greatly reward melee+pistol. You'll still get to rush you opponent and now you'll just have to finish him off with a quick shot with your side arm instead of that second melee.