PeytonManThing

It is way more complicated than that. Reach was catering to the casual gamers and it failed completely. There are niches in the market and CoD absolutely dominates the casual FPS console market. Halo was dominating the hardcore fps console market. Halo Reach switched to trying to compete with the casual market and FAILED because they cannot compete with CoD, and Halo will CONTINUE TO FAIL if they try to compete with CoD. Clearly casual gamers do not buy casual based Halo games. Why buy a CoD knock off instead of CoD??? And hardcore gamers will not buy new Halo games if they are catered to casuals. I won't buy Halo 4 if it is anything like Reach.

Twin, knowing how to program something has NOTHING to do with knowing how game balance works and how marketing of a game works. Just because you know how to write a program does not mean you realize what makes and breaks a game. The two things are completely separate. Good gamers talk about knowing about that, because THEIR SKILL is what the game is balanced around, not some wannabe programmer's ability to look at the games code. The argument here is whether or not the Halo franchise should attempt to cater to the masses, which did not work for them in Reach and leaves hardcore console FPS gamers with no good videogames left to play, or if they should cater to their base of FPS gamers that want a well balanced game. Blablabla I know how to program is totally out of scope, and if you cannot see your logical leap then you're an idiot.

I know Sova personally. He had 4 50s in Halo 3 (every game type that still had enough players to get games at 50 later on) and would consistently go in to games on his 50 in Team Slayer and go plus double digits. I would jokingly tell him pre-game to go plus 14, and he often did it. He could have done well at MLG tournaments. You clearly haven't played halo if you are saying there was no recoil, dual smgs in Halo 2 had a ton of recoil, and you don't know what you are talking about when you say that dual weilding did not do anything. SMG Spiker in halo 3 at medium range whooped the BR or the AR and you could get two kills before you had to reload, it was fantastic, and dual weilding cut down on 'nade spamming. That any ranking system works is just a lie. Notice that in Reach they are down to ONE ranked play list and it is barely played. That's because their current ranking system is AWFUL. Several days to get in to a division and then you're in for a month and after that you start over from scratch? And the divisions only divide you in to fifths? And the ranking is based on your personal score so if you hog the rocket launcher and sniper rifle to yourself at the expense of the win that makes you go up? That's all completely retarded. If you played a large number of games in the 50 system you would end up being the rank you should be. It was competitive, thrilling, fun, and made the game successful.