xC6VETTEx

I understand that it is just the nature of the beast, that the Halo saga needs to move on, and that it would be fiscally inadvisable to waste terabytes of data on providing information services that the majority of Halo players no longer use -- however, as technology continues to advance, terabytes of data will soon become relatively more manageable (USB 3.0's come in 1-2 TBs now), and if enough people really wanted old, seemingly obsolete archived data services to continue, it wouldn't be that much of a hassle to provide such services. I understand that it's a long shot for this to occur, but it doesn't hurt to at least propose the idea.

Have a great holiday! Thanks for your support in helping me get acclimated to the forums .

I think the post is called "12th Halo Anniversary" because Halo 2's 10th Anniversary will be 11/09/14, which is near the 13th Anniversary of the Halo Universe. Looks like someone messed up some math! I wouldn't mind a remastered version, and although I would prefer having the original be resurrected from the grave, I know that no game developer would ever do such a thing. Plus, Halo 2 will always be remembered as a classic, not for its Campaign (which isn't that bad, but some people have qualms with it), but for its one-of-a-kind online multiplayer experience. Having the original being made available as an XBLA game (Campaign only) wouldn't be a bad idea, though.

Hey All, I'm C6Vette, and I'm new to the world of Halo forums, but not new to the world of Halo. I posted a few things during the past couple days, so this is a belated hello, but hopefully an interesting one nonetheless. I tend to pontificate so if you're not the sentimental story type, quit reading now. <Story> I first started playing Halo with my two brothers when my dad bought our family an original Xbox with a copy of Halo: CE. It was probably sometime in 2002 that I played my first match. I was only in third grade at the time, but I still enjoyed bashing others around in my Warthog on Blood Gulch. When I started to get really good, my older brother got frustrated, and secretly switched my account's controller settings to "Inverted," causing me to look up by pushing down on the right thumbstick, and vise-versa. I was confused at first, but I adapted, and I've been playing Inverted ever since. I first played Halo 2 via Xbox LIVE on February 5, 2005, on my older brother's account, InfernoMan97. I got my own account, C6Vette, an account my dad created for himself when he bought his burnt orange, stick-shift 2005 C6 Corvette, when he gave it (the account, not the car!) to me since he didn't enjoy playing online as much as I did. My older brother quit playing, too, and so my little brother and I played Big Team Battle on these two accounts for about a year or so. We managed to get to Level 22, surprising for our age. By September 2006, I had achieved Level 31 in Team Snipers and Level 26 in Team Slayer on InfernoMan97 in Halo 2 without the use of bridging for host, modding, or "standbying" (lag-switching), but then I hit a brick wall since I would always get matched up with cheaters. Then I picked up C6Vette and got that account two Level 28's in the same two playlists. However, Bungie announced that they were going to reset the ranks on or around April 24, 2007 (which didn't actually happen until around May 10, 2007). My two buds and I decided to seek revenge on all those modders (who were the reason for the rank reset), gathered our spare 2-Months, and had at it! We managed to successfully mod and raise InfernoMan97 to Level 37 in Team Snipers and Level 33 in Team Slayer, and bridged to get C6Vette (bridging requires more in-game playing skill than modding) to a Level 33 in Team Snipers. Now, you probably think, "Wow, you're a cheater, too!" Well, if you had played Halo 2 back in the day, you'd understand my frustration with cheaters. Cheating was so prevalently rampant in Halo 2 that any player having a Level 40 or higher was assumed by all who he met as having cheated to obtain such an egregiously high level. There were popular clans, such as Rank Rotation and Solar System, whose members had no Level below 44 (44 = Crescent Moon, 45 = Gibbous Moon, 46 = Full Moon, 47 = Eclipse, 48 = Sun, 49 = Nebula, 50 = Halo), see the chart below. Thus, the name Solar System was quite appropriate. In addition, occassionally you would run into players with names such as "SixHourModz" or "MODDING2LVL50," and so immediately after you realized they were on the other team, you ruefully told yourself and your teammates before the game even started that you were doomed. By the way, modding in Halo 2 was only possible on Xbox LIVE for a maximum of about six hours before the servers caught and permanently banned your account from Matchmaking. Source: Halo Nation (http://halo.wikia.co...nk_%28Halo_2%29). But that's not to say there weren't any fun aspects about the cheating community. How is this so, you might ask? Cheating got so ridiculous in Halo 2 that I decided to purchase a capture card to take footage of my gameplay. I would enter high level matches on purpose, filmed cheaters when I came across them, sent a message to the cheaters saying "Sayonara!", sent the footage and game information to Bungie's cheating hotline (they used to have an email address for reporting cheaters), and managed to get about eight people banned from ever setting foot in Matchmaking again -- including two Level 50's. There's nothing quite as satisfying as being the one who aims Bungie's Banhammer at the heads of those who cause your Level to go down. One such video I posted a while back on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clOBRzyR1zs. Sadly, InfernoMan97 was lost in the data transfer between Xbox and Xbox 360 accounts (original Xbox accounts didn't go Silver when you stopped playing them, and during that time period, many accounts were lost if they weren't renewed). So I created xC6VETTEx to fill the empty hole in my life in September 2007, just in time for Halo 3. Another account I created, xDAxFUZZ1N8Rx (inside joke, so don't ask), in December 2006 also proved to be another Halo 3 account I used often. Both of these accounts I leveled to around Level 27-28 in Halo 2, until the original Xbox LIVE servers went down on April 14, 2010. By Halloween Night 2009, I had gotten my first 50 on xC6VETTEx in Team SWAT, and then another 50 on xDAxFUZZ1N8Rx on May 31, 2010, also in Team SWAT. I won't be getting a 5-Star General anytime soon, since Double XP Weekends are now a thing of the past in Halo 3, and I've been busy with getting ready for college. Halo: Reach has also been really fun to play, but there is really no motivation to play it as much since the competitive nature has been taken away with the non-skilled based ranking system. Hopefully Halo 4 will feature a Level 1-50 ranking system. I will never forget all the fun times this game has brought me. R.I.P Halo 2 (11/09/04 - 04/14/10). Across all four of my accounts, these were my stats: Total Games: 6805 Total Kills / Deaths: 42211 / 40803 (This is really bad, but keep in mind I was only in middle school for most of it) Total Assists: 10435 If I were to add my Halo 3 + ODST and Halo: Reach and Halo: CE stats into the mix, I might be over 100K kills. But I've done so much across so many accounts, that I don't want to even start counting. I'm currently still trying to get all of the Achievements for all the Halo tites. Some of the ones for Halo: Reach are difficult because they are only achieveable on a Defiant map, which makes Achievement hunting rather frustrating. Other than those, all I have left to achieve are some Halo Wars Acheivements -- then my Halo Waypoint will be 100%! Well, that pretty much sums everything up nicely. Two more things I would like to point out before I leave, and then you'll know just as much about me as I do. One of my favorite things to do in Halo 3 was to create accounts using 1-Month trials (which are no longer sold unfortunately) and then level them as high as possible. One such account I named "A E I Ovvn U," and I played Team Slayer on it with one objective: to go as long as possible without dying! I managed to go 112-0 over six games, then I died four times in one game. At one point my K/D ratio was 37.00. Now it's around 22.36. I've only played 13 games on it, and I'm a bit nervous to play on it again, but perhaps one day I will. Here's a link to its profile: http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo3/careerstats.aspx?player=A E I Ovvn U. Another favorite passtime of mine when I was younger was to "Superbounce" in Halo 2. I used to film myself Superbouncing, both tactically and recreationally, and then post them on YouTube. Here's a link to a "Killimanjaro Bounce" (seven-in-a-row) I did one day before school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpH4DZ7QaVY. </Story> I currently use the gamertags xDAxFUZZ1N8Rx and xC6VETTEx, so hopefully I'll see you guys on Halo: Reach soon! I hope I can both contribute to and learn from this forum . -C6Vette

I agree that the recent price hikes in DLC are frustrating. Having DLC being separate from a title launch, but also being necessary to complete the game, seems rather silly -- but as Luke pointed out, it is sometimes necessary. And it's never fun when you are kicked from a Reach lobby because a map from a DLC that you don't have gains the majority vote. For a rational solution, one need only turn to Halo's long history of DLC. Back in the days of Halo 2, in my recollection, I seem to remember that the DLC was at first available for a price, but after, say, eight months, the DLC became available for free. I think this would be a fair compromise, considering most sales for DLC eight months after its debut are only a mere fraction of what the sales were when it was first being sold. This way, everyone wins -- DLC makers get their money's worth from gamers who want to pay immediately, and gamers who'd prefer to wait in order to gain access to DLC can wait. Another aspect not previously brought up is the fact that some Achievements are unable to be, well, achieved, without DLC. Players who want to complete all the Achievements for games which come out with DLC-based Achievements are forced to buy the DLC. This is especially frustrating for titles like Marble Blast Ultra, whose DLC (and the arcade game itself) are no longer available on Xbox's online marketplace, causing players who have the game, but not the DLC, to be stuck, particularly if they are completionists who cannot stand the thought of having an uncompleted game on their Gamercard.

Your comment on artificial intelligence monitoring a player's betrayal count isn't as "futuristic" as you make it seem. There are ways to make the "unfair" booting system better, but by no means will it ever be perfect. There will always be that one immature teammate from time to time who thinks by killing you it will make the game more enjoyable than actually playing the game the way it was intended, but there are some intelligent ways to get around that (and admit it -- you've probably been guilty of doing this yourself at one point! In this respect, the system's lack of proper functionality is a part of the "Halo experience," if you will). For example, let's say that, in a game of Team Slayer, your teammate betrays you with a Rocket Launcher. From a completely open-minded perspective (that is, a computer system that cannot make decisions based on a betrayal's motivation), this seems completely plausible -- shooting an enemy that is near a teammate with the good old Rocket Launcher could very well cause an unintentional death. However, if a teammate is killed by a DMR in a Team Slayer match, from a completely unbiased perspective, this seems a bit more unlikely to have been unintentional (the victim would have had to have virtually no shields for the betrayal to have been an accident). So one solution would be to have betrayals monitored by what weapon was used to commit the betrayal. However, if the gametype were Team Rockets, this system would not work. Thus a global approach to solving this issue is not possible. As you can see by this example, there are so many factors that effect the booting system, it would be difficult to make it any better than it is currently. Nobody (except Bungie's programmers) knows for certain how the current booting system works, but I do agree that there could be some improvements, such as the overall "three betrayal limit," or monitoring the time intervals between each betrayal. Bottom line is that betrayals are a frustrating but necessary part of the game, and so learning to shrug it off, even if it happens to you right before you get that Perfection with ten seconds remaining, makes you a more mature Halo player -- in fact, it should make you motivated to try to do it again!

Hello all, Like most of you, I am saddened by Bungie's recent termination of providing Halo data services. The services that we had all been accustomed to and had appreciated very much have ceased to exist. Since April 1, 2012, I have visited my online Bungie-provided Service Record for Halo 3, only to discover that my most recent games are no longer being logged for future reference -- no more showing my friends that amazing extermination I earned in Team Slayer, or priding myself in my aggregate medals I've achieved over four years of continuous game-play. I fear that, now that the data services have been terminated, this puts Halo 3, among other aging Halo titles, one step closer to having its online playing servers discontinued. In order to keep an invested interest in Halo 3 and other pre-Reach, Bungie-developed titles, I would like to see 343i and/or Microsoft take up Halo data services for the games that the entire Halo community still enjoys today. As of now, Halo Waypoint, the new source for online Halo data available through Xbox's website, only updates information for a player's Service Record for Halo: Reach and Halo: CE Anniversary. I would very much like to see existing Halo 3 data, as well as future data, be made accessible through Halo Waypoint as well. Perhaps even transferring all existing Halo data, including archived Halo 2 data, could be part of such a transition. I have created this thread for anyone who also shares the same sentiments to express their own thoughts on this matter. While I would like to see this change implemented, and perhaps it isn't even an issue 343i and/or Microsoft could feasibly address due to lack of legal control over financial/capital resources (or over rights to own/provide pre-Reach, Bungie-developed data), I would certainly at least like to entertain a discussion about any other viewpoints there may be. For instance, one might say "Halo 3 is coming up on five years old, and there needs to come a time where the old ceases to exist to make way for the new." Well, I disagree -- Halo 2, arguably the watershed title for making the Xbox LIVE experience what it is today, was discontinued because it was only for the original Xbox LIVE servers (which went offline April 14, 2010), which is a valid reason; however, as long as the current Xbox LIVE servers are online, I see no reason why one of the world's best-selling titles, the sequel to one of the "founding fathers" of Xbox LIVE, and its corresponding online data services, should be completely terminated. But, this is only one opinion, so... To all of those veteran Halo fans out there, especially those who still appreciate Halo 3 -- let me know what your thoughts are! -C6Vette