The Decline of Halo

[Wakke]

from the mouth of ghandi former halo mlg pro and halo enthusiast

 

have given ten years of my life to competitive Halo. I’ve gone from being a national champion to commentating. For those who have been apart of Halo as long as I have will not argue that Halo has progressively gotten worse. Sadly, most of you started in either Halo 3 or the game that solely crippled the community called Halo Reach. You all have missed out on the glory days of Halo for sure. There is nothing more frustrating than being told to have patience by various people in this community. I’ve been doing this **** for ten years and I know what works and when something sucks.

I’m not going to talk about Halo CE much but know that it had/still has a cult like following. In order to play the game you had to manually searching for games through a program than ran on your PC. It was a major hassle but everyone did it because the game was so enjoyable to play.

Halo 2 was completely different than Halo CE, but it had something that Halo CE didn’t have… Wait for it…. Xbox LIVE! Finding games was so easy that everyone played for hours upon HOURS every day. Yes, the majority of Halo CE Pros despised the game at first but it didn’t stop them from logging countless hours on the game. “How was this possible?” It’s called RANKS! Ask every single “known” console FPS player what game they enjoyed the best and 99% of them will say Halo 2. This was all because of the ranking system and the online charts. Rumble Pit, Head to Head, Team Slayer, and both clan matches were the playlists that if one got to the top page they were viewed as gods. I remember making it onto the leader boards of Minor Clan matches (I believe that’s what it was called) and I printed out the page and brought it to school just so I could brag to my friends. This matchmaking playlist was AMAZING. It took forever to level up and you got punished for losing games. Unfortunately, Bungie didn’t realize the power the playlist had on the community and decided to “noob it down” for Halo 3.

 

Halo 3 began the dawn of customizations and forge maps. Some view it as a blessing others view it as a curse but that’s all perception. Regardless, Halo 3 had the largest on-line viewership of any other Halo Titles. Tsquared got on the Dr. Pepper bottle, Instinct got sponsored by Old Spice, Hot Pockets sponsored Triggers Down, and Stride Gum sponsored Carbon (but would move to sponsoring individual players). After reading that sentence there is no arguing that HALO was at it’s peak in terms of sponsors and exposure, but on-line experience wasn’t the same. Yes, MLG had a playlist and you could achieve a level “50,” but just about anyone in the top 64 could achieve a level 50. Personally, it wasn’t as meaningful to me, but it was still better than nothing. It gave a lot of new comers to the scene something to achieve if they couldn’t make it to an event. I believe this is the most overlooked detail of a ranking system. If players enter a play-list designed towards competitive play they are interested in being the best they will most likely look into events. Not everyone has hundreds, or even thousands of dollars to travel to an event to compete especially if they don’t know how good they are. If your dream is to become a professional player but if you don’t have the money to travel you’re essentially waiting around for the event to be close to your area. Without a ranked playlist these individuals are just sitting around playing various play-lists just to stop them from putting a bullet in their brain from boredom.

Halo Reach….. That’s all I’ll say about that. The Noble 6 was a *****.

Now, I’m going to skip over talking about Halo 4. Ah, **** it. I’ll talk a little bit about it. Halo 4 peaked at 470,534 on-line users on November 7th. Since November 7th the game has been on a steady decline. We have seen lows of 137,056 on-line users. Wow, that’s pretty abysmal. Now correlation doesn’t prove causation but it’s think it’s pretty safe to say that the online experience in Halo 4 just isn’t satisfactory. The biggest problem is ranks. I don’t understand how a game can get worse over the years, but Halo has done it. They were FLAWLESS with the on-line experience in Halo 2. Completely flawless, but then they get rid of it and turned it into a steamy pile of ****. This should be alarming for everyone who loves the halo series because it’s not looking good for us. I don’t want to talk about game types and settings for competitive play because it’s not going to change anyone’s perception, but food for thought. There is currently 2,013 online users in Team Slayer Pro. Team Slayer Pro is a stripped down version of Halo 4, but most players don’t like the stripped down playlist. Now Infinity Slayer has 26,861 players as we speak, so it’s clear what the majority of people enjoy. Now the obvious choice for competitive settings would be something in between Team Slayer Pro and Infinity slayer, but what’s actually happening is the opposite. Ghostayame, my former teammate and pretty good friend, is testing BR only start. He’s stripping the game down to the point where it’s more unappealing than Team Slayer Pro. If these settings are finalized you can expect about 2,000-4,000 players searching the MLG Play-list when it’s released. I just don’t comprehend the mindset of people. EVERYONE preached for ******* months before Halo 4 was launched that “everything needs to be vanilla. Let the game evolve. Blah!” Now the games been out for almost a month and everyone wants it changed. Still I can’t really figure out what’s worse, changing the settings to BR only and stripping down the game or using ALL FORGE MAPS so no casual knows what the **** is going on.

 

Here’s the real message I want to convey to all developers (especially 343). The gaming industry is BOOMING. If you want your multiplayer title to be successful you MUST include a basic spectator mode, a bad ass rank play list, and you have to support the title in the competitive scene. It isn’t hard to understand. Not to be cliche but look at League of Legends. League is by far the biggest game is Professional Gaming and they have the three basics. A working ranked play-list (although ELO Hell sucks!), a sufficient spectator mode, and they support the competitive scene so much that they throw tournaments for the game. It is very hard to compete with that, so if you aren’t willing to even give your players two out of three of those things your game will eventually die. I give the life expectancy of games without the basics about six to nine months.

I sincerely hope we can find gametypes that make Halo 4 highly competitive but as it stands I’m not getting my hopes up. Sometimes people just care about the brand and not what’s good for everyone. Peace!

 

 

Always gonna be haters but at least try to read without flaming. He makes some good points.

[SatanicBagels]

Hmmm... Declining is such a subjective word. For example I think that Halo has been in a slow and steady decline since Halo 2 (Though I do like Halo 4 a little better than Reach), but I still view Halo 4 as the best game on the market right now.

 

While Halo 4 may not live up to the expectations set by the original trilogy (and some will argue that it does; it's all opinion), it's still a very good game.

[TornadoFlame]

i think it declined after halo 3. and i can say halo 4 is one of the worst games on the market sadly but thats me they stripped everything and made it Scrub friendly and cod with sheilds wouldn't be surpized if they didn't make halo 5

[Sikslik7]

And here is the other thing. Not everyone plays or cares about MLG. I really wish some of the"top" Halo fans would stop complaining, look at things other than competition, and actually put forth an effort to play the game as a whole. I think Halo 4 is a step in the right direction, but yet again, the developers of the last two games have done a half-hazard job. Reach was only fun after better maps were made and were forged and TU happened (it made it better, fixed problems). Bungie did a bad job with Reach, best part: forge. 343i brought Halo back in the right direction, but made some huge mistakes.

 

Forge, although easier to use and a nicer appearance, is missing a larger forge world and the minor tweak controls. 343i also loved the DMR too much. In TU in Reach is became much better, not only useable, but worth using. In Halo 4, 343i made it the best starting weapon. The DMR is too accurate and powerful. The BR is harder to use against it. The carbine has become the needle rifle, lots of bloom after a couple shots. In Halo 3, the carbine was useable for most people, but was splendid in the hands of someone who could use it well. Game settings are less customizable than before (not a lot, but enough to be noticed) I think weapon drops are great and I love personal ordinance, but believe that more regular ordinance drops, and fewer personal drops would be better.

 

Halo 3 is still my favorite, but Halo 4 could end up being my favorite if some simple changes are made. I think Halo 3 campaign was the best of the Halo series and that 3 multiplayer was what fans needed.

[TornadoFlame]

And here is the other thing. Not everyone plays or cares about MLG. I really wish some of the"top" Halo fans would stop complaining, look at things other than competition, and actually put forth an effort to play the game as a whole. I think Halo 4 is a step in the right direction, but yet again, the developers of the last two games have done a half-hazard job. Reach was only fun after better maps were made and were forged and TU happened (it made it better, fixed problems). Bungie did a bad job with Reach, best part: forge. 343i brought Halo back in the right direction, but made some huge mistakes.

 

Forge, although easier to use and a nicer appearance, is missing a larger forge world and the minor tweak controls. 343i also loved the DMR too much. In TU in Reach is became much better, not only useable, but worth using. In Halo 4, 343i made it the best starting weapon. The DMR is too accurate and powerful. The BR is harder to use against it. The carbine has become the needle rifle, lots of bloom after a couple shots. In Halo 3, the carbine was useable for most people, but was splendid in the hands of someone who could use it well. Game settings are less customizable than before (not a lot, but enough to be noticed) I think weapon drops are great and I love personal ordinance, but believe that more regular ordinance drops, and fewer personal drops would be better.

 

Halo 3 is still my favorite, but Halo 4 could end up being my favorite if some simple changes are made. I think Halo 3 campaign was the best of the Halo series and that 3 multiplayer was what fans needed.

 

sorry its not that were all mlg and such we just want a game thats halo and not cod with sheilds. forge used to be cool in reach at least for me now it sucks. campaign was amazing till the ending ruined it.

[Twisted Oracle]

I have seen the same numbers since halo 3

[Dawn Wolf]

Anyone who says that Halo (Any of them) plays like CoD does not understand basic game design.

 

Even SWAT with ordinance and killcams would play nothing like CoD.

[Vaulting♥Frog]

Purely a matter of opinion. Sorry but its true. While I respect your opinion I dont particularly agree with it.

 

So many people layed down hate upon ODST but that was my second favorite Halo game behind CE. Its all about personal preference and as I have never been a hardcore multiplayer person I just enjoyed the story (for the most part, I do have issues with it but oh well).

 

People will play what they want to play and thats all their is to it.

[LiQuid BioniX]

I'm enjoying it. I understand that numbers haven't been there and I'd love for them to be back to the Halo 3 days, but that will never happen. Not with any game that 343 makes, it wouldn't have happened if Bungie had made it either. All I know is that for me, Halo isn't declining, it's getting better. I'm loving the game right now and I don't see stopping playing any time soon.

[TRF BaDInTentZs]

Population declining my ass lol. How about taking a precipitous nose dive lmao.

[thelegendofJohn117]

I can't believe all the people that say its "cod with shields". Even comparing it to that series of games is ridiculous. Just because they put in some elements that made COD famous doesn't mean its turning into call of duty. and if you don't like it so much then don't play the game, nobody's stopping you.

[Yoshi1176]

I see nothing wrong with it

[Jamesw01]

from the mouth of ghandi former halo mlg pro and halo enthusiast

 

have given ten years of my life to competitive Halo. I’ve gone from being a national champion to commentating. For those who have been apart of Halo as long as I have will not argue that Halo has progressively gotten worse. Sadly, most of you started in either Halo 3 or the game that solely crippled the community called Halo Reach. You all have missed out on the glory days of Halo for sure. There is nothing more frustrating than being told to have patience by various people in this community. I’ve been doing this **** for ten years and I know what works and when something sucks.

I’m not going to talk about Halo CE much but know that it had/still has a cult like following. In order to play the game you had to manually searching for games through a program than ran on your PC. It was a major hassle but everyone did it because the game was so enjoyable to play.

Halo 2 was completely different than Halo CE, but it had something that Halo CE didn’t have… Wait for it…. Xbox LIVE! Finding games was so easy that everyone played for hours upon HOURS every day. Yes, the majority of Halo CE Pros despised the game at first but it didn’t stop them from logging countless hours on the game. “How was this possible?” It’s called RANKS! Ask every single “known” console FPS player what game they enjoyed the best and 99% of them will say Halo 2. This was all because of the ranking system and the online charts. Rumble Pit, Head to Head, Team Slayer, and both clan matches were the playlists that if one got to the top page they were viewed as gods. I remember making it onto the leader boards of Minor Clan matches (I believe that’s what it was called) and I printed out the page and brought it to school just so I could brag to my friends. This matchmaking playlist was AMAZING. It took forever to level up and you got punished for losing games. Unfortunately, Bungie didn’t realize the power the playlist had on the community and decided to “noob it down” for Halo 3.

 

Halo 3 began the dawn of customizations and forge maps. Some view it as a blessing others view it as a curse but that’s all perception. Regardless, Halo 3 had the largest on-line viewership of any other Halo Titles. Tsquared got on the Dr. Pepper bottle, Instinct got sponsored by Old Spice, Hot Pockets sponsored Triggers Down, and Stride Gum sponsored Carbon (but would move to sponsoring individual players). After reading that sentence there is no arguing that HALO was at it’s peak in terms of sponsors and exposure, but on-line experience wasn’t the same. Yes, MLG had a playlist and you could achieve a level “50,” but just about anyone in the top 64 could achieve a level 50. Personally, it wasn’t as meaningful to me, but it was still better than nothing. It gave a lot of new comers to the scene something to achieve if they couldn’t make it to an event. I believe this is the most overlooked detail of a ranking system. If players enter a play-list designed towards competitive play they are interested in being the best they will most likely look into events. Not everyone has hundreds, or even thousands of dollars to travel to an event to compete especially if they don’t know how good they are. If your dream is to become a professional player but if you don’t have the money to travel you’re essentially waiting around for the event to be close to your area. Without a ranked playlist these individuals are just sitting around playing various play-lists just to stop them from putting a bullet in their brain from boredom.

Halo Reach….. That’s all I’ll say about that. The Noble 6 was a *****.

Now, I’m going to skip over talking about Halo 4. Ah, **** it. I’ll talk a little bit about it. Halo 4 peaked at 470,534 on-line users on November 7th. Since November 7th the game has been on a steady decline. We have seen lows of 137,056 on-line users. Wow, that’s pretty abysmal. Now correlation doesn’t prove causation but it’s think it’s pretty safe to say that the online experience in Halo 4 just isn’t satisfactory. The biggest problem is ranks. I don’t understand how a game can get worse over the years, but Halo has done it. They were FLAWLESS with the on-line experience in Halo 2. Completely flawless, but then they get rid of it and turned it into a steamy pile of ****. This should be alarming for everyone who loves the halo series because it’s not looking good for us. I don’t want to talk about game types and settings for competitive play because it’s not going to change anyone’s perception, but food for thought. There is currently 2,013 online users in Team Slayer Pro. Team Slayer Pro is a stripped down version of Halo 4, but most players don’t like the stripped down playlist. Now Infinity Slayer has 26,861 players as we speak, so it’s clear what the majority of people enjoy. Now the obvious choice for competitive settings would be something in between Team Slayer Pro and Infinity slayer, but what’s actually happening is the opposite. Ghostayame, my former teammate and pretty good friend, is testing BR only start. He’s stripping the game down to the point where it’s more unappealing than Team Slayer Pro. If these settings are finalized you can expect about 2,000-4,000 players searching the MLG Play-list when it’s released. I just don’t comprehend the mindset of people. EVERYONE preached for ******* months before Halo 4 was launched that “everything needs to be vanilla. Let the game evolve. Blah!” Now the games been out for almost a month and everyone wants it changed. Still I can’t really figure out what’s worse, changing the settings to BR only and stripping down the game or using ALL FORGE MAPS so no casual knows what the **** is going on.

 

Here’s the real message I want to convey to all developers (especially 343). The gaming industry is BOOMING. If you want your multiplayer title to be successful you MUST include a basic spectator mode, a bad ass rank play list, and you have to support the title in the competitive scene. It isn’t hard to understand. Not to be cliche but look at League of Legends. League is by far the biggest game is Professional Gaming and they have the three basics. A working ranked play-list (although ELO Hell sucks!), a sufficient spectator mode, and they support the competitive scene so much that they throw tournaments for the game. It is very hard to compete with that, so if you aren’t willing to even give your players two out of three of those things your game will eventually die. I give the life expectancy of games without the basics about six to nine months.

I sincerely hope we can find gametypes that make Halo 4 highly competitive but as it stands I’m not getting my hopes up. Sometimes people just care about the brand and not what’s good for everyone. Peace!

 

 

Always gonna be haters but at least try to read without flaming. He makes some good points.

What is this nonsense why does do u guys act like no one played the other halos. Why cant u mlg guys play the game how its intended to be. Starting with brs and no camo is just easy mode on halo 3. Can u guys really not see the invisible guy or cant pick up a br instead of starting with it. Garbage all of u i shun mlg for thinking they are true gaming shunnnnnn

[Halogeek99]

OP: I liked vanilla Reach better than TU. Bungie should have kept everything as releaseday. The changes and removal of everything in playlists only made it worse. Bloom removal was the nail in the coffin. Perhaps they should have nerfed AL. That's all.

[Caboose The Ace]

1 think halo 4 is not and never will be a fauliure

[Halogeek99]

I'm enjoying it. I understand that numbers haven't been there and I'd love for them to be back to the Halo 3 days, but that will never happen. Not with any game that 343 makes, it wouldn't have happened if Bungie had made it either. All I know is that for me, Halo isn't declining, it's getting better. I'm loving the game right now and I don't see stopping playing any time soon.

 

Why shouldnt Halo be as big as before? Me and my friends got this game day zero. The more we saw of things the more we anticipated it. Then we played.

 

I would absolutely totally SACK the match rules "brainiacs" if this game. Engine guys I would give a medal.

[Sova]

Ghandi is right in many ways on how halo really has declined in E-sports and popularity in general, especially with competitive community. But I think there is more to it than just a ranking system and playlists. Halo really has evolved into a game filled with a bunch of extra stuff that you equip to give you an edge in battle and I honestly think this hurts the competitiveness. The addition of new weapons and how they operate (bloom, no hitscan, general physics, grenade power) has really made gameplay not as streamlined as it used to be and maybe even unexciting and chaotic. I feel more than ever that Halo is now just a jumbled mess of explosions, bullets, and bodies. There's no real flow to a game and how it's going and I never get a real good sense on what is happening on a map like I did in the original series. It's a shame that it's gotten to this but I think it's not the developers fault necessarily.

 

Most of what's happened with Halo has resulted from a combination of development choices, game competition with other FPS's, and new capabilities of software and design.

 

That's my two cents on the matter, I just long for a near replica of Halo 2 gameplay again. Best moments of XBL happened then.

[Wakke]

He doesn't necessarily disagree with vanilla h4. He clearly states that they've been preaching keeping it vanilla vs stripping it down to its core. You play video games for fun and because you like to compete. Simply playing a game means you are competing for the win.

 

The game is by mechanically solid in the fundamentals (shot registration, etc) but there is so much more needed to be fixed/added. The competitive scene wants a lot of the same fixes as the casuals. Granted its only a month in. I just hope 343 releases a good TU.

[Bloody Initiate]

I think the competitive aspect probably hurt halo has much as helped it. I loved Halo 3's multiplayer, but people play games for different reasons, generally to enjoy themselves. Eventually a lot of players got seriously burned out on Halo 3 because they were sick of feeling like they had to try super hard to only be OK at the game. Not everyone has the talent to become a professional player, or even a GOOD player, so a game with an extremely competitive feel drives people, but it also makes them wish they could just relax and run around shooting things without turning their brain on first (CoD sounds like a good option for that).

 

This doomsayer BS gets friggen old too. I complained plenty about Reach and I've complained plenty about Halo 4, but you won't find a lot of instances of me forecasting the Halo Apocalypse where no one plays Halo anymore. The amount of players giving Bungie and 343 business advice - like the players would know - about how "you need to shape up or CoD is gonna take over" feels stupider than people whining about how the last game was "the good old days." I liked Halo 3 better than I liked Reach, but I was also playing Halo 3 while I was still in college, had lots of friends around me, and not a care in the world aside from playing Halo 3 and occasionally going to class. There are multiple factors determining whether you love a game, and there's no time like the first time, so I'm guessing that most people like the Halo where they first "got it" better than they like the others. Halo 2 sucked.... in my opinion. Halo 2 was the best... in your opinion. Which was the first you got to play a lot on Live? I bet there's a strong correlation.

 

Halo has become more and more of a niche shooter as other shooters have come out for consoles. It was originally king because all the alternatives were terrible (It was also very good, but the alternatives WERE terrible). It still gets an audience big enough to finance the game's continued creation, and they will do what they need to continue that trend. As much as I disliked Reach I met people who thought it was wonderful, really and earnestly thought it was great.

 

You may not like it, and I may not like it, but perhaps the most frustrating thing for those of us who liked another Halo game better is that ENOUGH people like THESE Halo games better and that means we might never get the things we loved back. The glory days may be over, but not for the game, just for the players who had them. Halo has changed a lot, and while we may argue which changes are good and bad, the fans of each game will just play while we argue. People change a lot too, so whether you leave Halo behind or it leaves you behind, if you don't like it, someone will. If no one does, they'll change it til someone does, and we won't know about it unless we keep trying them out as they come out.

[N1AK]

Having read his rant/post I'd also like to highlight that his position on H4 is basically that it should be left vanilla initially in competitive play. I agree with a lot of his points about H3/Reach though. I played a lot of H2 (but was never very good) and the rankings were a critical element, not having them in H4 at launch; at least without a clear explanation of what was coming was a big mistake imo.

 

Now when I play a game (especially objective games) ~25% of the games are extremely easy, ~15-25% are extremely hard and the rest are roughly competitive. I'm still loving the game but if matchups were closer to even it would be even better.

 

The problem with MLG is a common one with many other competitive environments: They want an improved version of what they already had. They want the same weapons, maps, play modes etc with better gfx and some bugs fixing. Most players don't want that and change could actually produce a better experience in a tournament setting but they have blinders on.

[Halogeek99]

They should strip down Halo 4 to its core. That I'm certain of. Remove the loadouts, keep carbines, needler, shottys, and plasma pistol in drops (if kept). Remove the power weapons from the drops and place on map only. Force AR/pistol starts or BR starts. In short; make it as similar as H3 within possibilities.

[Destroyaaa]

When the MLG pros are saying this, you know the game is bad. Halo was never more popular than when MLG was having Halo 2 and 3 circuits, and the fact that they took Reach off and cant even decide on settings for Halo 4 is a problem

[Chris Hansen]

The one thing I will agree with the OP is that many people haven't played halo 1 lan parties and halo 2 online. If you are 18 years old or younger then you would have been TEN YEARS OLD when halo 2 came out, nevermind halo 1.

 

This generation of gamers missed the best multiplayer experiance that the halo series had to offer. It's why I get the responses that I do sometimes when I decry things that are or were woefully wrong with the franchise (Armor lock, weapon bloom, melee system, overpowered banshee, and thats all from halo reach).

 

Halo 3 introduced some annoying things like equipment and boarding stuns but it was still a ton of fun to play.

 

Halo 2 had clans, and clan matches. It promoted competitive play. The skill ranking system was insane to boot, if you saw someone level 50 you KNEW they were good. It was difficult to hit level 50 and each playlist had its own rank.

[Twisted Oracle]

I just got on halo reach and saw steady numbers a few less than halo 4

 

all in all i think halo has not dropped in numbers but increased

 

when you have more games, more people spread out over those games.

 

Halo 2 appeared to have more because it was the first halo with xbl matchmaking

[Chris Hansen]

Stripping the game down would be massively welcome. Have a playlist that has fixed weapon spawns on the map and fixed loadouts, a precision weapon and an assault rifle. Remove armor abilities as those only remind me of halo reach. Somehow remove sprint and make spartans as fast as they were in halo 2 & 3. Increase the amount of normal weapons on the map like DMR's battle rifles and Carbines, along with the 3 assault weapons and secondaries.

 

I would play this playlist.