It's an exciting weekend in the gaming world. As I'm writing this 343i is prepping their panel to talk about the future of Halo 4 multiplayer. Needless to say I'm too excited to focus on much else, what with the hope of great anvils being dropped.
Anyways, BS Angel is quite busy with all of this but was sure to drop us our weekly bulletin with lots of good news. Especially some very exciting news for the next Title Update.
PAXALICIOUS
Those lucky individuals that both, live near Boston and got tickets to the sold out event, are able to get first hand experience of the new Castle Map pack. Assuming they waited in line they're getting into the 343i they're getting all the juicy tidbits which I'll be putting into this bulletin once news comes out.
In the mean time here's the rest of the info from the Bulletin:
Title Update
Well the past title update came and went. And with all the cries of nerfing the DMR being seemingly unheard, 343i took it a step further than just a single gun nerf.
Enabled “X-Markers” on the HUD to designate when and where teammates are killed.
Updated Active Camo to fully reveal players when they fire all weapons.
Reduced the auto aim, magnetism and damage on the Gauss Warthog.
Fixed an issue in which some players at SR-130 did not see their Specialization on their in-game Player Card.
Fixed various issues with ordnance navigation markers.
Fixed various join-in-progress issues with Flood.
Added the ability to make weapon adjustments via backend tuning.
The last one is most exciting. Now they don't need a Title Update to do any weapon balancing and can tweak weapons with a simple non-title update. Now the DMR Nerfs and Storm Rifle buffs we've all been looking for can come at a moments notice. Exciting stuff.
Playlist Updates
Well if you've been looking for Lighting CTF and confused why it's not showing up, well be confused no more! It was never in there!
Unclear as to why this took 2 weeks to get included, Lighting CTF drops into Action Sack on Monday.
Contest Maps
Living up the short entry period for the Certain Affinity Forge Contest, 343i already has a top 8 list for the finalists in the competition.
They'll be dropping into their own unique FFA playlist, replacing the Majestic FFA Playlist.
The winning maps include:
Black Site by The Fated Fire
Bloodthirst by iiHopp
Edifice by Redemption1272
Malice by AgentPaperCraft
Opus by SHIFTY time
Plaza by Smexi Bilzo
Assault by NLTROOO
Serenity by DG Intensity
Congrats to everyone who entered. I recognize a few of those maps and will definitely be checking out the playlist when it drops. Depending on the success of these maps, they may make their way into a permanent FFA playlist including Majestic maps, and on-disk maps. From the sounds of it they're gonna be pushing more maps to playlists. Good news for people that bought the Season Pass and haven't gotten much use of it.
The other playlist getting the Majestic maps is the Team Throwdown playlist. Offering a more competetive gameplay without the randomness of Infinity, throwdown continues to expand on itself with these new additions:
Team Slayer on Haven
Team Slayer on Monolith
Team Slayer on Skyline
Team Slayer on Abandon
Team Slayer on Shutout
Team Slayer on Simplex
CTF on Simplex
CTF on Adrift
CTF on Skyline
CTF on Monolith
King of the Hill on Monolith
King of the Hill on Haven
Extraction on Dispatch
Extraction on Adrift
Oddball on Skyline
Along with these new gametypes, the Pro setting is updated to include the no-instant respawn Pro setting from doubles, as well as a brand new BR-start gametype by Gh057ayame. The Pro 4v4 gametype will also include the 4 precision weapons for those of us that prefer not to use the BR.
PAX NEWS!
As promied, news is coming out as I write this. Some big drops so far:
Waypoint match history displays CSR AT TIME OF THE MATCH. CSR per Playlist
NEW FORGE MAP!
HUGE FLAT GRASSLAND. Medium flat grass land, and small flat grass land. New pieces.
Forge island is FREE on April 11th
Some pieces are UNSC, new design.
Question about precision editing in Forge. Not part of this TU. Doubtful if at all...
For all the tweets from PAX:
https://twitter.com/ncsuDuncan
and