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2 Months Late--Easy Does It 2 Results!
Posted By: Morpheus <SlimDKR@aol.com>	Date: 1/6/13 1:41 a.m.
I wish I could blame this massive delay on somebody else. Granted, the forum closed down the day the contest ended, but it obviously reopened soon after, on Halo 4’s release. I guess I could blame that, since it has taken up a lot of my time. Also, for the first time, I was having some serious trouble getting the prizes out to the winners(Yes, plural! Can you believe it?!? More on that later). Packages were lost, communications were closed at a time—I even ran out of money and had to wait until almost Christmas to fulfill my obligations! I didn’t want to publicize anything before then, so that could be a finger-pointer as well! But nothing excuses it; there’s no one to blame. No one but my lazy-ass…ass. Yeah, that should do it. My lazy-ass ass. That’s what took me this long. Easy Does It 2 is (obviously) over, and for the first time in my whole 4-year contest history, there was a winner in each category! While it wasn’t the absolute avalanche I was hoping for, a handful of entries did come in last minute—enough for people to actually win! So here are the total scores that the players earned to win their respective prizes. The Winners of Easy Does It 2 The winner of the Prepare to Fall(s) circuit and a now proud owner of Halo:Reach Legendary Edition(not kidding, they still have ‘em online—at full price.) with a score of 902,580 points, Eyejah Pearson! Winning the Coming Full Circle Challenge and getting a copy of Halo: Anniversary with a total of 893,688 points, give your love to CDRomm! Weird names… Anyway, last—and without question, MOST—with a mind bending total of Three million, fourty-six thousand, six hundred and twenty-two points across Halo 3, Halo 3:ODST, and Halo: Reach, the winner of the 4 a.m. Wake-Up Call gauntlet is our very own RC Master!! Everyone send him your congratulations—I’ve never seen scores so high!! As with the winner of our last contest, I scored an interview with the high roller, and here’s what he had to say: *This interview was conducted sometime between the 1st and 6th of November. M14:Good morning! Looks like we finally caught each other. R40:Hello! M14:Well, then! You're a little lucky--since the forum was closed until release, I wasn't able to post the results yet, so no one knows who won, etc. R40:Apart from those who follow you on Twitter M14:Heh--that was maybe one or two people. I don't know if I even have followers on Twitter. M14:I guess now would be as good a time as any to start this interview! Ok, I guess I can ask this one like last time--how did you hear about Easy Does It 2? R40:I'm a regular poster on HBO, so I saw the post you made about it on the forums. I remembered the name from previous competitions (that I didn't participate in) and thought I would give this year a go! M14:Excellent, excellent! I was honestly surprised by the big barrage of scores near the end--did you frequently repeat the levels you played, increasing your score further and further until you were satisfied, or was you just doing the One Take Willie thing? R40:There were a few levels I repeated because I knew I could easily increase the score (New Alexandria for example), but for most levels it was just about getting a clean run in, i.e. without deaths, since time is a big score multiplier. Some levels I managed that first try after researching as far as I could (HighSpeedHalo high scores, my old runs etc.) but other levels needed a few tries to get right. Like The Covenant, that was hard! M14:Oh really? What was the biggest hang-up about that? R40:Just stupid little deaths really, mostly betrayals from my marines! You know that Chieftain on the bridge inside the Citidel near the end? He knocked me off the bridge while I was trying to Assassinate him, TWICE! M14:God, I can't even imagine....and that's REALLY close to the end of the level, too! R40:Exactly. Catch and Cowbell came off after that. M14:Well, it certainly didn't seem like you were having any trouble out there--I've never been more impressed with anyone's runs--you're like the Jason Bourne of Halo. You'd use a weapon to its fullest potential, firing every shot it could possibly give--yet before the 'out of ammo' message would even appear on your empty gun, you immediately picked up another random weapon on the floor without missing a beat and made it work for you, just fantastic on-the-fly improvisation. R40:The Jason Bourne of Halo? Hahaha! I like that. Are you talking about the runs I sent in for Easy Does It? There was some improvisation, especially in Reach and about half of ODST where there haven't been a lot of score runs yet, but a lot of it is actually quite planned and deliberate. Can you point to a specific example? M14:Let's see--(I actually kept some of the runs I liked best)...one example I can think of is probably in The Ark, after you destroyed the Scarab. I think you had a Battle Rifle and a dual-weildable weapon like a Plasma Rifle. The way you fought up that hill so fluidly was just inspiring. I think I might record some of the stuff you did to show others, too. (I should still have the videos available, I’ll see if I can work on a small compilation of clips to show you guys what I mean.) You dropped the Rifle for a Spiker as soon as it was depleted, turned around and threw a plasma grenade at the two Jackals under the roof, and just CHARGED up there to tackle the Brutes. Not to mention, I noticed very often that you used the Mike Miller method of hitting an enemy with a charged Plasma Pistol shot and sticking them immediately after. I'm guessing that was for more points? R40:PR to strip shields in lieu of a PP, and BR to headshot - sounds about right. I was getting a bit time-pressed on The Ark and really wanted that sub 30 minute time multiplier so I had to sacrificed some combos. Overcharge + sticky both for points and time M14:Smart! R40:In Halo 3 if you got multiple medals on a kill it wouldn't just stack the multipliers, you would actually earn the base points*multiplier for each medal on a kill. So if a Brute was worth 100 points (I forget) with one medal that kill would be 125 or 150 points or something, but if you got two medals, you'd get 250 or 300 points. It was even more insane in ODST with the multi-kill multipliers. Sticky medals are worth the same multiplier as a headshot, so instead of waiting to line up the headshot, I could just stick them and move on and still get the same amount of points. M14:Wow, I didn't even KNOW that! R40:These are the things you learn as a speed/score runner. M14:Unbelievable. Well, let's move on! You went ahead and snagged a copy of Halo 4 while your official prize was on its way in the mail--what are your thoughts and opinions? R40:Good overall. Much better than I was expecting - I was a bit of a naysayer leading up to launch but I was pleasantly surprised. It's definitely got a different fundamental feel in the way levels and enemies are designed than in Bungie games, but it's still a game I can spend some time on. I have PLENTY of complaints about the game still, of varying size, just like I had with previous Halo games. But it's still fun and that's the main thing. M14:I bet there are a lot of people reading this that would agree with both statements. So going back in time, beforehand--would you say that you were warming up to the idea of 343i taking the reins, or was it like a newborn baby, where the "love" was instantaneous? R40:I was getting a bit anti-343i for a time to be honest. But that's changed a lot now I've got my hands on something to actually play. M14:Glad to hear it! Anyway, with the Limited Edition, you have slightly earlier access to the rest of the Specializations when you rank up to SR-50. Do you already have your first choice, or are you deciding to wait and see? R40:Well I think Pioneer makes a lot of sense as a first choice since Fast Track speeds up your progression but, as a big player of BTB, Operator with the Wheelman mod could make you very deadly in a vehicle. M14:Of course! What do you think about the new Spartan customizations? R40:After completing the campaign on Legendary, I'm mostly rocking the Mk VI so far. I like the fact you have different skins and can pose your Spartan differently this time. But some of the pieces aren't very distinct I feel. I miss my Pilot helmet from Reach. M14:Oh, I'm looking at a picture of it now...it reminds me a bit of the Recruit/EVA one. R40:I considered wearing the recruit one because of its similarities but, who wants to wear default armor? M14:Of course. Have you taken advantage of the other special features that come with the Limited Edition? Watched Forward Unto Dawn, read up on the literature inside, put up a poster? R40:I'd watched the Foward Unto Dawn web series as it came out, so I'm saving the full, uncut version to watch with my girlfriend sometime soon (who also plays Halo). I've not read the stuff in the box yet in detail - the strategy guide has given me more than enough to digest so far! I don't usually put up posters for some reason, perhaps I should with this one. M14:That’s good. Okay, I'm running low on ideas, so I've got one last question, one final one to leave you with, alright? R40:To leave me with? Like homework!? M14:Almost. It's gonna make you think real hard. Without spoiling anything for any of the readers who haven't finished/started the game yet--you've finished Halo 4, and you've finished it on Legendary. What do you think the future holds in Halo 5 for the Xbox 720? What will you be looking forward to? What expectations will you have concerning content? What changes would you like to see made in Campaign, Multiplayer and any other modes 343i might have available? R40:Wow, that’s a big one. M14:I occasionally come up with something semi-smart. ;-) R40:I think, in Halo 5, some of the things that you believe have been resolved in Halo 4, are not actually as resolved as you might expect. I hoping the extra power is put to increasing encounter size, map complexity and such. Halo 4 was struggling a little bit in places you could see, and had to keep deloading areas behind you. I think 343i are going to learn an awful lot from all the feedback from Halo 4, what really matters to players, etc. I'm hoping that for Campaign, we can get the scoring features back, and that speed running and high score running can play a more central role in what is viewed as the core replayability of campaign. Though I like Spartan Ops' micro-objective, mini-plot thingy, I'm hoping we can also get Firefight back, as some of the maps they already build for SpOps would suit perfectly for that mode anyway. Sometimes it’s just fun to blast harder and harder enemies until you can't anymore, you know? Multiplayer, I'm all about gametypes. And there is some promising stuff in Halo 4 like Extraction and Dominion, but I think they can still do better. For the competitive side, I hope they can integrate some skill-rated tournament features and such - I know the planned Waypoint-only skill ranks probably aren't going to satisfy that itch. M14:Very smart, well-thought answers. I'm not familiar with Extraction, what's that like? R40:I would describe Extraction as a cross between Land Grab and King of the Hill. There are a few neutral objective items (Forerunnery data thingies) that each team rushes to, they press X to start a countdown, but during that countdown the other team can 'convert' it to count to their own score, so you have to defend it. Then once has been extracted, another one spawns on the map. And that continues until one team reaches the score limit. Not had a chance to play it because it's not in MM yet, but it seems interesting, and there might be some interesting potential for custom games, though I need to investigate that myself. M14:I was going to omit this section since it didn't really have anything to do with the interview, but there's NO way I'm gonna pass up using "Forerunnery data thingies". That's going to do it for this interview--Have any final thoughts you want to share? Shout-Outs? Victory Dances? R40:Shout out to Pahat Pojat, Cyph9r and the other members of HighSpeedHalo for l33t score-running strats. And to Morpheus for running a cool skill-based competition. Thanks Morpheus! M14:And thank YOU for doing this interview, thrilling us with some of the most amazing runs EDI has ever witnessed and breaking the bank on Campaign Scoring! I hope you enjoy your copy of Halo 4 for years to come! R40:I do too! And that thanks is also extended to those who participated and made this contest popular, bs angel and Louis Wu for hosting and helping to spread the word like wildfire, and the rest of you for having such great patience in me and reading this lengthy announcement post!! That does it for Easy Does It 2, hope to see you in another exciting contest! Connected Co-Op is still open for a handful of weeks—why not try your luck there? See ya then!

Message Index

2 Months Late--Easy Does It 2 Results!	Morpheus	1/6/13 1:41 a.m.
Re: 2 Months Late--Easy Does It 2 Results!	Paused	1/6/13 8:06 a.m.
Hmm...Well, The Thing Is...	Morpheus	1/6/13 9:55 a.m.
Re: Hmm...Well, The Thing Is...	RC Master	1/6/13 11:36 a.m.
Re: Yes, please :)	Lawnmower172	1/6/13 2:37 p.m.
Re: Hmm...Well, The Thing Is...	Paused	1/6/13 3:14 p.m.