Players Sink 31.4 Million Hours into Halo 4

[Marshall Honorof]

Players Sink 31.4 Million Hours into Halo 4

The game's first five days saw over 3,500 years of playtime.

In 1570 BCE, the adversarial Hyksos ruled Egypt, Halo 4 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intermediate_Period_of_Egypt] in its first five days. While the Egyptians wouldn't have accomplished much if they had holed up playing donkey-powered, stone-carved Xboxes instead of retaking their country, modern gamers have already racked up an impressive number of in-game accomplishments: 31.4 million hours played, and over 4 billion kills.

Halo Waypoint, Halo 4's official community site, has tracked metrics since the game launched. The bottom line is that a lot of people have been playing Halo 4 since its November 6 release - over 4 million, to be somewhat precise. The game's campaign has occupied 13.5 million hours for them, although multiplayer still comes out on top with 17.9 million hours logged. Over one-fourth of players completed the campaign, and 6% even managed to do so on Legendary difficulty. These numbers, however, are all small potatoes compared to the total number of kills: 4,590,416,285. In other words, if Halo 4's mortality figures translated into real life, the world's population would decrease by over half in less than a week.

Along with some pretty impressive sales figures [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120610-Halo-4-Makes-220-Million-in-its-First-Day], Halo 4 seems to have grabbed the fanbase's attention (and time) as effectively as the previous entries in the series. These "first five days" figures are unlikely to continue over the long term, but chances are that by time they taper off, Halo 5 will be just about ready to ship.

Source: Halo Waypoint [http://blogs.halowaypoint.com/Headlines/post/2012/11/14/The-Halo-Bulletin-111412-.aspx]

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[UsefulPlayer 1]

My roommate got Halo 4 and we've all been crowding around playing games here and there.

I feel like Halo 4 was definitely not a step forward for the series. Alot of things they did well like abunch of the new content with Dominion game type and perks, but they also cut alot of content that I think Bungie did really well in previous Halo titles.

Like lack of the giant-free forge maps, the music, story was definitely worse with lack of scope and grandeur, no brutes, only three new enemies, rehashed Promethean weapons while cutting the older ones, one new Mech while again cutting old vehicles, they cut firefight, campaign went back to you lone-wolfing it ALL the time (that's fine but you still need the epic giant scale battles, or atleast make it look like there are others behind you. Plus you were just running around turning things on and off most of the time), a lack of statistics in multiplayer.

So yeah, I don't think Halo 4 was the launch pad it could have been. But since its Halo, its still fun to play together and have a good time.

 

[Link XL1]

My roommate got Halo 4 and we've all been crowding around playing games here and there.

I feel like Halo 4 was definitely not a step forward for the series. Alot of things they did well like abunch of the new content with Dominion game type and perks, but they also cut alot of content that I think Bungie did really well in previous Halo titles.

Like lack of the giant-free forge maps, the music, story was definitely worse with lack of scope and grandeur, no brutes, only three new enemies, rehashed Promethean weapons while cutting the older ones, one new Mech while again cutting old vehicles, they cut firefight, campaign went back to you lone-wolfing it ALL the time (that's fine but you still need the epic giant scale battles, or atleast make it look like there are others behind you. Plus you were just running around turning things on and off most of the time), a lack of statistics in multiplayer.

So yeah, I don't think Halo 4 was the launch pad it could have been. But since its Halo, its still fun to play together and have a good time.

my thoughts exactly

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

My roommate got Halo 4 and we've all been crowding around playing games here and there.

I feel like Halo 4 was definitely not a step forward for the series. Alot of things they did well like abunch of the new content with Dominion game type and perks, but they also cut alot of content that I think Bungie did really well in previous Halo titles.

Like lack of the giant-free forge maps, the music, story was definitely worse with lack of scope and grandeur, no brutes, only three new enemies, rehashed Promethean weapons while cutting the older ones, one new Mech while again cutting old vehicles, they cut firefight, campaign went back to you lone-wolfing it ALL the time (that's fine but you still need the epic giant scale battles, or atleast make it look like there are others behind you. Plus you were just running around turning things on and off most of the time), a lack of statistics in multiplayer.

So yeah, I don't think Halo 4 was the launch pad it could have been. But since its Halo, its still fun to play together and have a good time.

The Promethean weapons aren't as redundant as people think, at least not in Multiplayer. There is much more diversity within weapon classes now. The DMR, Battlerifle, Light Rifle, and Carbine for example all fall within the same weapon class. But they all have very different characteristics, so you have a lot of room to customize your mid-range arsenal. The Promethean mid-range weapon, the Light Rifle, is the hardest hitting of the bunch, but the worst at close range and most difficult to use. Right now lots of people are saying the DMR combines the best of all worlds, but it's early yet. I've seen people call NERF before only to change their tune later.

Firefight was too similar to Spartan Ops, which is an exciting concept. I always thought Brutes were a poor man's Elite, to be honest. Not very cool looking, and not very interesting. Never liked 'em.

But I am definitely missing the Forge World. My assumption is they will release something like it as DLC. But I think that is a mistake. Having Forge World really opens things up for community projects, and the community will suffer for not having that at release. Even after we get it, it won't be as widely used, because the community will "grow up" without it. That's tuhruhbuhl.

I do miss the option to create scenarios against the AI via Forge. Spartan Ops won't let you do that- Firefight did. How am I supposed to practice with infinite ammo of a particular weapon against the AI? The humanity! The "push button to advance" objectives are terrible. In Halo: CE, I was boarding enemy ships, racing to escape pods, searching for Captain Keys, looking for the Cartographer, searching for survivors, racing to escape the Pillar of Autumn explosion, etc. If 343 had made that game, all I would have done is push buttons and then watched stuff play out in which my only involvement was pushing a button.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

snip

The Promethean weapons aren't as redundant as people think, at least not in Multiplayer. There is much more diversity within weapon classes now. The DMR, Battlerifle, Light Rifle, and Carbine for example all fall within the same weapon class. But they all have very different characteristics, so you have a lot of room to customize your mid-range arsenal. The Promethean mid-range weapon, the Light Rifle, is the hardest hitting of the bunch, but the worst at close range and most difficult to use. Right now lots of people are saying the DMR combines the best of all worlds, but it's early yet. I've seen people call NERF before only to change their tune later.

See, my favorite was the Needle Rifle from Reach, because it was for some reason automatic and you could just hold down the trigger. Varying your hold was a must for accurate shots of course, but since my hand starts to hurt after long raids with the other weapons the Needle Rifle was a godsend.

But see they cut that and we still end up with the same amount of rifles. I really do appreciate that Halo 4 has the most rifles, but all they managed to do was hold on to most of what was already created. I imagine the only reason Bungie only allowed two was because, as you suggested, balancing. But since Halo 4 has customizable layouts now, they had to include more than 2 and we only ended up with 4.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Impressive, but I bet Black Ops will have a much higher number after a week.

You're more than likely right, especially if numbers are combined across all platforms. If they focus on just the play time spent on Xbox Live, I'm willing to bet it'll be a close competition, but Black Ops will likely have a higher number.

Still, for a franchise that moved to a new developer and has a completely different multiplayer set up, Halo 4 is doing better than one would have thought possible. It may have it's flaws, but for 343's first stab at the well-established series, I feel like Halo is in good hands.

I'm sure that other long-time fans will disagree with me, but some people except the new and some people don't. I'm personally happy with what I've seen and look forward to future Halo 4 content.