Ruby's Rebalanced mods - opinions?

[Bullett00th]

Just discovered these, made for every Halo up until and including Reach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTGgrtZPqtY

The changes sound interesting. Anyone tried these mods? I'd love to hear opinions

[Snark]

Haven't tried it, not interested. It's just a bunch of value changes that tweak damage, accuracy, etc. I don't think it's anything special, but I have a habit of manually tweaking weapons and enemies for each game to suit my tastes. It's all personal preference and I usually go for what I find to be more fun.

Of course you can make anything sound more impressive than it is if you make a long video talking about how you "fixed", "reballanced" and "improved" the gameplay by giving some in depth armchair dev explanations as to why you made the needler slightly faster. Sometimes you don't need to justify a change, you made a weapon stronger cause it feels better to use, you removed the reload animations because it makes combat more satisfying, etc.

I'd say videos like these don't do the mod much justice because all you hear is talk about numbers and accuracy and gameplay loops, etc. All of that is meaningless, it's too abstract, just play the mod and experience how it feels.

I personally prefer bigger more bombastic changes, like in Halo 2 I edited the outskirts mission to have sword elites, jackals, hunters, etc. Jump off from the roof tops to attack me while swarms of grunts would storm the steps and so on. I removed most of the jackal snipers as well and added more enemies and specifically hunters in general.
With Halo CE I'm currently adding more foliage to certain sections, like big mushrooms and stuff and I've downloaded and tweaked custom tags, like brutes and drones. Slight value changes to weapons is too vanilla for me.

[Dan Murphy]

I enjoyed the Halo CE Rebalanced mod on Heroic, I felt it improved my experience when playing on PC, but I reckon many will disagree. The level geometry is still designed for typical short range shooter combat on a low-res CRT with a controller. Playing in high resolution with a mouse and extra range makes some sections too easy.

[BigDaddyHumphrey]

I'm having a very difficult time trying to run Ruby's Halo: 3 content. I've replaced the correct game files but every time i try to start a mission the game crashes. Thoughts?

[TOYSIPO2]

Originally posted by Snark:

Of course you can make anything sound more impressive than it is if you make a long video talking about how you "fixed", "reballanced" and "improved" the gameplay by giving some in depth armchair dev explanations as to why you made the needler slightly faster. Sometimes you don't need to justify a change, you made a weapon stronger cause it feels better to use, you removed the reload animations because it makes combat more satisfying, etc.

I'd say videos like these don't do the mod much justice because all you hear is talk about numbers and accuracy and gameplay loops, etc. All of that is meaningless, it's too abstract, just play the mod and experience how it feels.

His organization could be better. It's about demographics- for some people abstractions can paint a clear image, others not so much. It's not meaningless, but the problem's that not all of the parts and thoughts he gives are complete on their own. I think he needs far better changelogs. The content in these videos should more or less be how the changelogs read- they're too unclear and you shouldn't have to watch a video to hear the numbers. The videos themselves should be highlighting key differences in how the game feels and drawing comparisons between his vision and Bungie's vision.

For example, Halo CE let the player get creative with their arsenal because most non-power weapons made sense and played off one another. The main weapons they thought the most about were the AR, plasma rifle, pistol and plasma pistol, and to a lesser extent the needler. Every other weapon was usually for specific power plays or disturbed the mid-range positioning of Chief-Elite firefights. Bungie also had a clear vision for difficulties in CE- you should use cover on Heroic, and you should also use weapon combos on Legendary. But you could still work interesting combos on lower difficulties to flex, and some combos only really shined on Heroic or even Normal.

However, Halo 2 oriented stages cinematically and positioned guns for extremely one-off challenge segments, so that entire matrix of analyzable weapon design was lost. Needless to say, they didn't have a clear vision for Legendary so they jacked up the numbers, left it to memorization and called it a day. The original mid-fight design of CE was overshadowed and the games got a lot less interesting.

I think variable and passive balancing mods can make a big difference because not many people have the basic skills or patience to sit down and fine-tune the game themselves- and let's be real, Halo 2 is one of the games the most in need of fine tuning.

Do gotta say, I don't personally see Halo 2 getting improved by variable modding alone, yeah. What players need is the open-ended design schema of Halo CE somewhat restored and reassessed in different games, and to that end some things need to be re-thought, especially the entire idea of long-ranged enemy combat, because the AI is clearly either hard-coded for it or isn't able to adapt, and that just doesn't seem as inspiring or as well thought-out as the juking and dancing elite AI in mid-range firefights.