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Bungie Unveils New Halo 2 Maps
An anonymous reader writes "Bungie has revealed that a total of 9 new maps will be made available both over Xbox Live and as a separate $20 add-on DVD for those without. The first maps will come out on Live in late April with 2 free and 2 for purchase (all maps will be free on Live by the end of the summer) with the remaining 5 debuting on Live when the add-on DVD is released. Also featured in the content update are a wide variety of fixes to eliminate cheating and balance gameplay elements."
Valve software use Steam to give new maps and mods to its customers for free. I don't mean to start a flamewar, but most companies, not just valve release extra maps and content for free.
Remember when in one of the numerous mods for Half-Life you could download one of the "new" maps for the low, low price of $0.00? Not to mention the widespread availability of maps due to them being user-created. When it comes to console gaming, (since so many claim consoles to be the so-called "future of gaming") are we seeing the end of user contribution to games like this?
Will we have to pay $20 for an ending patch?
Aim for the head. You take take someone out with a battle rifle in three shots (three bursts of three).
There are exploits used (non-solid geometry to pull things through, sword flying, and others), as well as stanby cheating (putting your modem on standby, doing things, turning off standby and having what you did happen to everyone else). The standby is the main cheat (there are a few others, but they aren't used as much), but there are others. Why Bungie made the netcode for Halo 2 so fucked up that someone, even if not the host, can standby and basically almost lag out, and then when he turns off standby the entire rest of the game has to catch up to his Xbox (the complete opposite of what should happen, he should catch up to the rest of the game) is beyond me.
"MS" getting $30? MAYBE gross, but I doubt even that... After paying all the employees, paying back Bungie, and the money that goes towards keeping XBL running with all the extra Halo players (There were rumors that on November 9th almost a full 1% of all internet traffic was XBL)... They're making a profit, but not the huge numbers you'd have us believe. You don't pay for maps? Fine. The rest of us will. I have no problem spending money on something I enjoy. I'm just sorry that you've joined the growing number of people who feel they DESERVE something for free.
20 USD for 9 levels (giving N hours of entertainment) compared with 18.50+ USD for a regular cinema ticket here (which gives 1.5-2 hours of entertainment) is entirely reasonable, even assuming a 10 USD (or third rate outlet 5 USD) ticket price, it still represents very good for money as far as entertainment goes, the same comparison is valid with music (where it's commonly ~7-14 USD per CD) or with buying a typical DVD.
People get a vast amount of entertainment time out of games but seem to be able to entirely dissasociate the amount of money they pay with how much entertainment ('bang') they get for their buck. It's one thing to bemoan a lack of quality (and say, expect and actual ending, or ensure that levels are not repetitive clones - with reference to both Halo, Halo 2 and a number of other titles, including BF:Vietnam where they pulled the same 'reuse the same level' crap), but it's another to moan about the cost of a decent offering if levels still cost less than a cup of coffee.
I find the amount of whining about the price of perfectly good titles often ridiculous, especially as games get increasingly complex and time consuming to develop. This is also true in relation to people complaning about paying sums of 8-10 USD a month for MMOG's (especially when you the same people will spend 3-6 times that on cable, yet don't actually watch 3-6 times more cable).
But that's going off topic just a little..
Now (speaking for experience) building half decent Wolfenstein levels was very easy. Doom/Doom2 were a little bit more involved, but pretty easy still, I did a few of those (not to say that stuff like Aliens:TC wasn't still impressive). Quake and Quake 2 were a bit more tricky, requiring 3D modelling, art and map design skills. At this time, dedicated model markers as well as artists, level designers, and coders are starting to have to appear as entirely separate entities (not so many sole level developers as their used to be due to the time and complexity required in making a decent level). Quake 3 and UT upped the bar still further.
These days, with games UT2K4 and Doom 3 (in particular) it's vastly more complex and to turn out a decent set of levels or mods - you need an entire team of people, you often find you have separate people doing music, sound, art, modelling, animation, level design, scripting even UI work (and often someone else just to co-ordinate things and run the web site and forums for a mod).
In fairness, you don't need other people to pitch in (beyond testing) if all you want to do is build a new network only level that reuses *only* existing elements - but even doing that (once a fairly simple task you could master in an hour or two) takes many, many times longer Doom 3 or UT than doing really enjoyable levels in Doom/Doom 2 ever did.
FWIW, I don't know about other people, but for me (building a solo level), it's something like an hours vs. weeks comparison as far as time-to-build-a-decent level goes. Personally, I find it a lot easier to learn a new programming language than to get my head round the newer level editors used by the likes of UT2K3/2K4 and Doom 3.
Now there varying levels of bang-per-buck, and I probably wouldn't be all that tempted to buy them at 20 USD either unless I'd heard the levels were especially good, but it still beats the crap out of a lot of other forms of entertainment and in that light isn't unreasonable at all IMO.
Fans are going to get many, many hours of entertainment out of them with their friends online. And what about those who don't want to pay? Well they can just play the free ones that are going to be released now, and then just play the rest in a few months (as Bungie say up front, all the maps will be available for free download in a few months).
On the topic of the accessibility of modern level design tools...
Personally, I'd much prefer to have seen Doom 3 be true to it's roots - as I see it - in the sense of providing greater accessibility to level designers and artis