Halo Wars 2 - Gen. Discussion Out 2/21/17 for Xbox One & WIn 10

Spybreak8

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See Wiki below:

 
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Tried the beta, played mostly like the first one. Didn't feel to me like full upgraded units, Scorpions especially, had the same punch; I didn't really care for that ineffective feeling, but I would hope that's more a balance thing that'll be tweaked. My biggest beef was with the new building visuals; the differences between basic and upgraded UNSC resource buildings, and I assume Covenant too, were very slight visually. I had a lot of trouble knowing what I had at a quick glance while scrolling through bases. I'd end up with bunches of basic buildings while thinking I had things upgraded. I could see it being a problem when attacking too, not knowing quickly which buildings to prioritize if you want to choke off the enemy's resources.

 
Multiplayer Beta with the new Blitz Mode will run this month on the 10th to the 30th, details and trailer here. Also updated OP.

 
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Hopefully Best Buy will get the physical PC version since I would rather play it on the PC and it comes with a digital version of it on the xbox one.

 
Blitz Mode for is pretty fun, but I think it's going to be drowning in microtransactions for the cards. I mean, they're obviously going to be there, but doing well is probably going to mean acquiring a LOT of packs until you have a couple of decks full of rare cards. It definitely is an improvement over Halo 5's REQs since they are permanent cards, though it doesn't look like there is a way to craft them like Gears 4 or Overwatch, so you could potentially never get the stuff you want.

There is a Firefight in the options though who knows if that will have the same legs as normal Halo Firefight. It's nice to see this along with Blitz. Halo Wars 1 had a small but dedicated playerbase, but having more options might bring in more long-term players.

The art is encouraging to me. While some the Covenant and Forerunner stuff looks closer to 343's style, the Spartans and most UNSC vehicles look closer to Bungie and (Ensemble's) HW1 designs. The choice to set this after Halo 5, and at the Ark of all places, certainly is giving this potential to be interesting. I get the feeling they will just brush over the 30 year gap that the Spirit of Fire presumably cryoslept through, but even without building on that there could be a lot of interesting stuff here.

Personally I don't know that I'll stick with multplayer enough to care about the DLC for it. I hope you can just buy the story stuff separately. Currently you can't even get the season pass outside of the Ultimate Edition.

 
I didn't notice a bot mode for Blitz in the beta. You can do 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3. There is a Firefight Blitz mode that I would guess is essentially just against bots, though it may have gameplay modifiers of some sort like traditional Halo Firefight. Since Blitz seems like the microtransaction in, they may make it hard by giving the AI good decks to incentivize buying more card packs yourself.

There is also a Skirmish mode in the menu, which is probably standard versus with bots.

 
Dat Launch Trailer, added to the Wiki. Really loving Atriox as the villain and hope we see this story arc fleshed out in Halo 6 as HW2 takes place in-between Halo 5 & 6.

 
Apparently there's some viral marketing, War of Wits:

Used Car Lot War of Wits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBOrxRsWh7s

Airplane War of Wits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wTgV1u2K5Y

Hahaha :rofl:

 
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Oh I love it! Says 4 out of 6 figures on the box if you're interested in collecting them.
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So I'm apparently going to own this game from Day 1, but I have yet to finish the campaign of Halo 5.  For anyone more familiar with the lore, should I finish Halo 5 before I start this?

 
Considering that it will take place after Halo 5 I think you should but knowing the way things usually run you'd not lose out on the context if you didn't. Halo Wars 2 Music Vidoc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHgpgFUv9SY

 
Should Halo Wars DE be available by now for those that preordered the ultimate edition? I still only have the 10 MB placeholder.
I have reason to believe that it is an Add-On for HW2 (various places call it an Add-On), but if that's true then I don't know where to start HWDE from inside HW2.

 
I have reason to believe that it is an Add-On for HW2 (various places call it an Add-On), but if that's true then I don't know where to start HWDE from inside HW2.
Yeah definitely nowhere to launch from within HW2 at this moment. I have the panel for HWDE pinned but when I launch it it just takes me to the game page where it says it's installed and no other actions are available. I can only figure it will unlock on the 21st.
 
Yeah, the opening is cutscenes heavy, and it's a lot of awesomeness from Blur Studios, but once the game gets going, it's great to be back in action. My copy was said to be the Ultimate Edition and I got Sgt Forge free when booting up the game, score. I'm pouring through all the logs I find, I think if you're a big Halo fan you'll be satisfied with what the team at Creative Assembly has done. There's daily challenges that'll get you XP and you gain levels and unlock Blitz Packs. So far so good.

 
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Picked up the Ultimate yesterday as I was waiting on some XBL credit. I think I am going to play through Halo Wars: DE SP first to refresh my memory, while playing some MP on 2. Once finished I'll hit up the SP on 2. If anyone wants to play together hit me up.

 
I think the story for Halo 5 was all over the place, the story for Halo Wars 2 is a lot better to be honest. If you're a big Halo fan you'll probably like it, you happen to enjoy strategy games you'll def like it. I'm in a high spot with HW2, really enjoying it so far. If I wasn't playing the free weekend of Rocket League and then picked that one up too, I'd be playing right through the campaign. I needed to take a break today though due to the Hold the LIne mission.
Edit: Done, omg missed Par Time by 1 second?!
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Did anyone here buy the Ultimate edition physical copy? Does the DLC show the full game or the season pass on the pop up menu when you enter the code?

 
Finished the game, 👌 got a few Blitz games in and I'm 1-2 so far. The first one match making set us up with a R10 and 2nd game R21. Um, I'm R6 and yeah when we got set up with two R6s we took it fairly easily. It's a lot of fun if it's balanced skills wise.
 
Finished the game, got a few Blitz games in and I'm 1-2 so far. The first one match making set us up with a R10 and 2nd game R21. Um, I'm R6 and yeah when we got set up with two R6s we took it fairly easily. It's a lot of fun if it's balanced skills wise.
So the MP portions of the game, do they allow co-op vs. bots?

 
So the MP portions of the game, do they allow co-op vs. bots?
They do but not for Blitz.
Deathmatch
Domination
Strongholds all do though.

Edit: Actually there's a whole other mode I didn't see before. Yes you can play the A.I. In Blitz Firefight, a wave of attacks with minimal energy. Just played a match today after reading about that mode's achievements and went huh?
 
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New hero unit inbound...

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343 says expect new content the third Weds of the month.

"Just because the game has launched doesn't mean the work is done," the developer said. "In fact, very far from it, as the Creative Assembly and 343 teams are hard at work on upcoming patches as well as future downloadable content."
Also

"Additionally, work and investigations continue into online connectivity, latency, and performance issues that some players have been reporting," 343 said. "We're aware that some players are still experiencing issues and it's a top priority area of focus for the team."
Thumbsup emoji

 
Lol everybody is out getting a Switch or playing Zelda and I'm here playing Halo Wars 2 PvP (insert Spider-Man at desk meme). I recently found out that GameSpot gave it a 6/10 and reading their review I remember why I don't visit that site anymore. What a load of shit.
The campaign's story was better than Halo 5 and the mission variety was inspired off of StarCraft II and modern day RTS titles (build up your base and attack the enemy is very retro now). One of my favorite games of last gen was BfME II - GameSpot gave a 83/100 - and it uses the similar control scheme, which was used for HW1 as well. HW2's control scheme IMPROVES on that control scheme! Did they even play it on PC I wonder?

Blitz Mode could be its own game tbh, esp with how successfully received GWENT was in The Witcher 3. It's highly addicting to do a match because they're fairly fast and then dive back into deck management with either the cards you just got or changing up your strategies.

/Rant

Oh and I was looking at the achievements for daily or weekly challenges in HW2 and there is one, Long-Term Commitment, for "Complete at least 1 Weekly Challenge each week for a month."
Yeah it is beneficial to do challenges, some reward Blitz packs and all reward XP, which again can lead to a pack for each level you increase you receive a Gold Blitz Pack. That said, Hahaha, dafuq you smokin', who's gonna do that? Also there's talk that achievements based on those challenges are glitched lol.
 
Dailies for me were play 3 blitz matches, use Decimus 2 times and use all 3 Banished leaders. Super easy

Guy hijacked my Blisterback with Jerome Spartan. I go ah shit, followed by laughter on his end. Then I call in one of my powers and destroy the now dead Blisterback and I hear "aaawww" on the other end lol. I love Blitz Mode (if you go up against rank like opponents or same unit levels - seriously WTF go up against lv4 locust and shit- and you gotta work as a team). 1 vs 1 is heartpounding, just won a match where I beat the opposing player by 2 points! Sweating bullets

Edit: Video link: http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Spybreaker/video/27921944

 
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Demo didn't engage me too much. I much prefer what XCOM has done with strategy. Hope ya'll still support Microsoft and these kind of titles need to be made and end up successful!

 
Demo didn't engage me too much. I much prefer what XCOM has done with strategy. Hope ya'll still support Microsoft and these kind of titles need to be made and end up successful!
Curious what's given in the demo?

One of the best parts, aside from the really good campaign, is the multiplayer, Deathmatch/Domination/Strongholds/Blitz/Blitz Firefight.

 
A heads up, 4 rare achievements popped for me when I started up Halo Wars 2 tonight, also stating a 7GB update to start downloading and take priority over my queue! We're those borked before?

Some light reading
Just the facts
Heroes never die
Bear necessities

All popped and have done seriously nice artwork too.
 
Update Alert, a big one too. Colony is live.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/big-team-bonanza

Sooooo my Halo Wars 2 updated with a 27.5GB patch last night... jesus. Apparenlty it's like this;

1. Hard reset your console, re-launch the game and your download should begin right away. HOWEVER - this will almost certainly result in you having to download 27GB (entire game) rather than just the 10.1GB patch.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/38bd6e2ebbb14e5b9b359bb029588800/topics/colony-dlc-update-good-to-go/899d64a9-896e-4c31-b0df-55389ca241c2/posts

Ahh that explains a lot.

 
So it looks like the team behind Halo Wars 2 are showing a new mode, Terminus Firefight, for the Awakening The Nightmare expansion (where you'll play a Banished campaign, fighting as Atriox's Lieutenants.) that's coming to the game at E3. This new mode is a horde mode like battle where you'll face wave after wave of enemies after you build up your base along with other players all trying to unite and survive against the threat. Also, the flood are coming to Halo Wars 2, only as baddies, not as a playable faction. Two new leaders are planned to roll out for June as well. More in link following: https://news.xbox.com/2017/06/12/halo-wars-2-awakening-nightmare-infects-xbox-one-windows-10-pc-fall/

And Halowaypoint Post: https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/introducing-halo-wars-2-awakening-the-nightmare

 
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FYI, I heard they fixed en but yeah I just unlocked Short-term Commitment. I'm a believer now. Might go for Long-time Commitment now lol.
 
So having Jerome on the field or an Omega Team Spartan can really turn the tide or fuck up your day lol as their ability to hijack vehicles can give them a free Grizzly or a new Scorpion, Wraith, etc. That really throws a wrench into things. Also the new Mastodon unit that Jerome controls is basically a big APC so throw everyone into it and drive over to the area where you need to go and eject out your small little army. Same with the Phantom, the Arbiter's new toy.

 
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