343 Just Doesn't Get it - 1-50 Ranking MADE HALO!

[CyberPunk]

I have been playing halo since the day it came out. Halo 1, LAN parties, 4 xboxes and 4 tvs.

Then halo 2 came out, based on online matchmaking and the awesome 1-50 ranking system. Why did kids play over and over and over again, like a crack addict? Because they just wanted to rank up. In the back of their mind they wanted to get a 50, even if their current goal was to get from 35 to 40. The 50 ranking system is what made everyone play way longer than they would have played any other game.

 

Overshield, invisibility.. Teamwork, timing, and map control, took the game to another level. Getting to 50 and playing 50 high, was like chess. Knowing exactly the time rockets or overshield popped back up, so your team could strategically position themselves to grab them. Knowing the time sniper came back up.

 

Halo was basic, 1-50 rank, and everyone wanted a 50. You didn't have to worry about retarded jet packs and armor lock. You started with the same things, and had to fight like hell on the map to get power ups. Not spawn with them!

 

Halo 3, same concept. 1-50 and map control. it was like chess..

 

Then they ruined Halo. Halo reach came out, tossed out the 50 ranking system, and majority of die hard halo fans were outraged. Halo Reach didn't go over to well with MLG did it?

Halo 4, flop. Looked like a pastel comic book. I rented it, took it back the same day.

In Reach, I can't even play Team Slayer because of jet packs, armor lock, and no Battle Rifle. They are stupid, annoying, and NOT HALO! So all I play now is Team Snipers, the only thing they didn't screw up.. other than the fact it still isn't ranked.

I was hoping this entire time that Halo 5 was bringing back the 1-50 ranking system.. What a huge disappointment!

Bring back the 1-50 ranking system, bring back the Battle Rifle, over shield, all of that. Get rid of jet packs and armor lock. Bring back Halo, not this jacked up game your calling Halo nowadays.

You want to test it? Make a playlist in this new jacked up Halo 5, called "Traditional Team BRs" or something. Exactly like Halo 3/Halo 2. 1-50, over shield/invis so we can have map control and team work. No jetpack or any of that. Starting with a BR. Exactly like Halo 3 Team BRs. I guarantee you it will be the most popular playlist.

 

Halo died after the 1-50 ranking system was taken away. You would think you would have learned after the first bad business move, but you keep repeating it over and over, expecting different results. That is the definition of insanity.

[Azaxx]

I'll like to clarify a few things since you are evidently not informed with Halo since Halo 3 started to drop out of the top 5 most played games on XBL.

Jet Packs and armour lock have not even been put into any form of Halo 5 Guardians, on top of the Battle Rifle was in the beta. Overshields are back as a map pick up being a one time use equipment. Halo also didn't die after Halo Reach, it died after Halo 4. While Halo 4 was a financial success, it failed with it's population and this can be pinpointed to two main factors.

Factor One; Black Ops was released within two weeks of Halo 4's launch. Due to the popularity that Call of Duty had at the time (it was the most played game on XBL in 2012), it can be argued that Black Ops ruined any chance of Halo 4 being confirmed as a top 5 game for XBL. However the second factor is more likely.
Factor Two; Halo 4 was too different for the average Halo fan by comparison to the original series. The introduction of mainstream FPS elements were undesirable by the community and saw the rapid then steady decline of concurrent players for Halo 4, see below in spoiler tag.

 

We can then look at Halo Reach, while Halo Reach was not as successful in its population as Halo 3 was, it was very close to being the same after at least 1 year from release for both games.See below the population spread over the month of June for Halo 3 in 2008 (one year after launch) and Halo Reach during 2012 (two years after launch).

Furthermore, an analysis for Halo Reach's population count over a period of 12 months between January 2011 and January 2012 can be seen also. This ties into the next point I'm going to make about the population of XBL games in general at the time.

 

After the dynasty of Halo 3, other games became more prominent on XBL's service. Xbox 360 was just a bundle of exclusives, but instead had multiplatform titles from big AAA publishers being shoved onto the console en mass. Call of Duty was the most solid game for years, peaking at the number 1 rank for so long, even when Halo 3 was one of the most player games at the time. Whenever Halo 3 was down at rank 2, it was because Call of Duty was rank 1. As seen below, there is a good comparison of every Halo games ranking, no other games are included for the sake of simplicity.

 

We can then introduce how Halo 5 Guardians' beta went. During the 3 weeks that the beta was live, the game still managed to poll over 2.5 million hours of gameplay from the participants. A full detailed image of statistics for the beta is seen here;

It's evident from this that 343i did something right, especially given the dramatic failure that was Halo the MasterChief Collection. Halo MCC failed dismally and still does not work on all regions correctly, and even in USA where the main servers are located, the game still doesn't run flawlessly. Granted 343i were given horrid servers to run the game on, the coding in the game itself was subpar and 343i deserved every bit of aggression they had directed towards them. That being said, the turn around that was Halo 5 Guardians' beta was remarkable. The netcoding saw you be paired with players and had a game started up within 30 seconds regardless of region. The exception was when players weren't being paired with any games at all, which was only fixed late towards the beta's cycle, although the population for that error was incredibly minor.

 

Moving towards your main topic about the 1-50 Ranks, it can be safely said that the removable of that specific rank system did infact not kill Halo, it was the market for games that did. However what makes the ranking system good in the first place? Lets look at the first argument you posed, which was about map control.
Halo has pride itself upon map and power weapon controlling. Even a game as iffy being Halo 4 can proved that game control is paramount. Halo 4 did have the ordnance system, however if the opposition team was communicating well enough and were decent, the weapons the opponents got should mean aboslutely nothing. You should always be able to teamshot power weapon holding opponents with a standard loadout. If you die, that's your own fault for not working at a maximum efficiency. This can be proven in MLG tournaments, pros who have power weapons do not go crazy about them, they still work with the team. It's the oppositions task to eliminate that threat, and most of the time, they do. So again, is this why Halo 2 and 3 did so well with their population? No, because Halo Reach, Halo 4 and to a lesser extent so did Halo Wars. IT was the market that took over from Halo's reigns.

 

What about weapon and equipment spawns? The argument can be said that without these consistent spawns, the game would no longer feel like Halo. While that is a popular argument, due to Halo 4 worked with the ordnance system, it's not a correctly justified argument. Spawn timers only happened after the weapon, vehicle or equipment was used up. For example, if I picked up a sniper at time 08:00 and I died at time 02:00 the sniperwould not spawn again, Halo 2 and Halo 3 used this flawed system, Halo 4 fixed it. A game that works around this, which is closely tied to the Halo series is Destiny. Destiny uses static spawns, meaning everything that does spawn, will spawn at specific times, regardless of when the subject in question was used or not. This is a superior spawn system, and Halo 5 Guardians does infact use this. 10 seconds before the weapons spawn into the map, a comm speaker comes online for all players (this is an audio option that can be turned off in the full game) alerting them to the static spawn of a single weapon in Arena (the competitive gamemode for Halo 5 Guardians). It's also important to note from Halo 2 and 3, that if you stood for 3 seconds with said weapon or equipment, the timer would start up again. However only you and you communicating team would know this, there would be absolutely no way for the opposition to figure out when the timer is going to restart again, giving the controlling team complete and utter advantage, an unfair advantage since it is not based on skill in the slightest.

 

You also make the argument of the Battle Rifle being "Halo". I then pose this, what makes "Halo"? Because if I recall correctly, the Battle Rifle did not make an appearance in Halo Combat Evolved whatsoever, and that is the most pure form of "Halo" there is. Halo is easily defined by three 'tools' in a combination; weapon/grenade/melee. In Halo 2 and 3 the Battle Rifle was the only main weapon worth using, the other weapons were bullet hoses which did absolutely nothing, further showed off by MLG players only going to pick up a Battle Rifle and refusing to play non BR start games. The Battle Rifle was literally a cancer that ruined fair gameplay, Halo 2 had the highest bullet magnetism in the franchise (see

, enabling easy cross-mapping with the Battle Rifle without even trying, it was not a weapon of skill. Halo 3 also had the issue where the main gun, the Assault Rifle did next to nothing and the Battle Rifle was sought after at all costs in most standard Ranked games. Halo 5 Guardians fixed this making the Assault Rifle a great weapon to use in close-medium ranges, and limiting the Battle Rifle to only mid range dominance while lowering its reserve capacity.
Halo 5 Guardians also brought in the DMR as a good long range counter for the Battle Rifle, the Battle Rifle will now most likely lose every encounter at long range, so long the opposition is using a DMR. However 343i also countered the DMR by making it incredibly difficult to use at close quarters on top of that it also has a very slow time-to-kill in comparison to close range weapons. So was the exclusion of the Battle Rifle in Halo Reach what caused Halo to die? I beg to differ.

 

Now we can finally move onto the actual topic of 1-50 ranks. Were they good? Apparently a lot of people liked them, but was it blind and bias love? I say yes. The 1-50 ranking system was fundamentally flawed as it did not represent any quantifiable numerical solution to your skill. It only showed how many times you won without massive losing streaks, without taking into account how good you were, or how badly carried you were. A very small population could carry themselves up to rank 50 without a team, and those are the very very few people who could say that had legitimate skill to get to rank 50. Those players are primarily pro players, not the average bloke. Additionally, Halo 3 was infamous of businesses starting up for carrying people to rank 50, or even in many cases, taking over accounts to get them to 50 for a price. These sorts of businesses were evident all over Halo 2 and 3 as you could curb stomp so many players if you were a level 5, just due to a vast amount of the population getting other people to boost them up. Game boosting was also another issue, being in a party with the right amount of players who would 'just happen to be partied up' in the game itself then would purposefully lose so one player could get to rank 50 in a certain playlist. You may say that it hardly ever happened, but it was a very vast majority who did, this was seen when Halo Reach came around the corner and people couldn't hide behind a rank because it meant nothing.
The ranking system also failed in the regard that if you quit out or were dropped from connection from any means (DDOS'd, ISP dropping, etc) you would go down rank. No matter how legitimate the reason you had, you would go down rank. This meant that even if you were at 50, you were always posed to the risk of being dropped in rank without any good reason, only for you to put so many more winning games into your account to go back up 1 rank. Is this a good ranking system? I think not.

Halo 5 Guardians did improve on the ranking system, it is based on wins, and how your team wins. If you do well on the losing side, you aren't penalised as hard because it takes some form of individual analysis to determine what sort of rank rearrangement is required. If you do exceedingly well on the winning team, you will also get a slight boost to your rank up in addition to your winnings that the team overall is rewarded with. However the system is not perfect, if your team is curb stomped yet you were the only great player on it, you will not be saved from ranking down. Same to if you carried your team so hard for a win, you do not get a massive boost in rank, because the system is based on team winning, not individual scoring (a decision I disagree with).
However I can say though, Halo 5 Guardians has a much better ranking system than any other Halo game has, no other game comes remotely close. So in conclusion to your claim, the 1-50 ranking system had absolutely nothing to do with Halo's success. The fresh game being out in the market with no competition on the Xbox console is what made the game a financial and population based success. As more and more games started coming to the console, more and more people left.

[Unease Peanut]

Azaxx beat me to it.

[BATMAN]

Much informed. Such yellow. Wow.

 

 

Honestly, I hated 1-50's. Win five matches, one rank up. Lose once, rank down. I don't see how any of that is skill.

[Guts]

Much informed. Such yellow. Wow.

 

 

Honestly, I hated 1-50's. Win five matches, one rank up. Lose once, rank down. I don't see how any of that is skill.

You're supposed to be so skilled that you never lose 

[ThatGuy2733]

I personally wasn't a fan of the 1-50 ranking system.

 

As Batman stated, win five matches, one rank up. Lose one match, one rank down. I feel (with the exception of FFA playlists, of course), that this was not a fair evaluation of "skill". Simply because you're on a team for the most part. Not on your own. Therefore a lost match often reflected the poor performance of a team as a whole; not a certain individual. 

[haloman 2]

i didnt like it too

especially the hit boxes because people could gloat for basic targeting no real skill

where as i liked reach's ranking system ecause it made it more fair but i didnt care who was which rank

[The Director]

I miss Halo 3's ranking system. I made like three years of gold and tons of Microsoft Points from selling 50's.

[BaconShelf]

To be honest, I'd say a compelling story and universe, a campaign that wasn't just tacked on, a multiplayer that was revolutionary (for consoles) and, later, the customisation offered through armour, forge and custom games made Halo. Not an arbritary number that only serves to show how much of a no-lifer you are.

 

You're supposed to be so skilled that you never lose

 

Being good means jack all of your team has the collective intelligence of a brick. Being good doesnt win the match if your team is more focused on kills than flags, or killing each other for the sniper rifle.

[Is not JL]

 

I miss Halo 3's ranking system. I made like three years of gold and tons of Microsoft Points from selling 50's.

 

I made 6 years of gold, Ha. And I didn't even have an Xbox. The power of that ranking system and it's black market economy was amazing.

 

But then inflation happened and all the Chinese importers started excess dumping into the economy and that was why Halo 4 didn't have a 1-50.

 

Dang Chinese

[SUB JANI]

What will happen to Halo 5's population after Black Ops III is released in November? 

[Caboose The Ace]

What will happen to Halo 5's population after Black Ops III is released in November? 

 

I think history is going to repeat itself and Halo 5 will lose a significant amount of population. Not as much a Halo 4 but still significant.

 

I hope I'm proven wrong but this is just how I see its going to go down.

 

Edited October 10, 2015 by Caboose The Ace

[SUB JANI]

I think history is going to repeat itself and Halo 5 will lose a significant amount of population. Not as much a Halo 4 but still significant.

 

I hope I'm proven wrong but this is just how I see its going to go down.

 

 

But will the game regain some population after the release of Forge in December?

[Twinreaper]

Doubtful.  Along with CoD releasing, the game will also have to contend with other FPS or FPS inspired titles as well, such as Star Wars Battlefront.

 

The bigger question everyone needs to ask is "Will Halo ever regain it's former glory that we all remember from CE to 3".  The answer is no.  Halo is no longer a viable or unique shooter that holds it's own.  Halo isn't the same game it used to be, nor does it have only a handful of other gaming population contenders.  CE was the first real multiplayer shooter for the Xbox and consoles in general since others like Goldeneye only allowed splitscreen and not LAN.  Halo 2 was the first console shooter to have online enabled multiplayer.  Halo 3 built upon what Halo 2 did, but suffered slightly due to the the then influx of shooters that began to emulate and build on what Halo accomplished.

 

Flash forward to now, and we see that the FPS market is not only 10x greater than what it was when Halo 3 entered, but we now have a general stale market as well where the titles and concurrent new IP's only seem to emulate and mash already used concepts and mechanics together rather than create purely new ones.

 

Suffice to say, how long can ANY fps title survive when it only grows in terms of using already laid out and functional concepts from other titles that it competes with?  The only thing that seems to draw players in now is the amount of customization a title can fit into it.  I hate to be the one to say it, but the quality of the overall game now takes a back seat to the player representation quality.  Games used to focus on story, and the replay value of that story or gamemodes.  Now we seem to only judge replay value based on what additional cosmetics we can dress our little virtual dolls up in.

 

Not only cosmetic flair, but the toughting of the utter failure of a real "editing" feature is also killing the IP as well.  Forge was a great creation for those who could not do what actual game developers do or what PC do.  But for all it's glory and workings, it is limited and quickly becoming stale as well.  How many iterations of the same old editing features can be stomached before it gets old?  For me, it got old after seeing the same handful of maps used and those Forge maps being worked into actual DLC.  The only thing Forge does now that it didn't before is allowing a few gimmicky scripting options which isn't really scripting anyway since there is no real "from boolean" compiling or usage at a basic user level.

 

This got a lot longer than I originally wanted it to be, but hey... I'm a regular TL;DR master around here.

 

Short version for those who decided to scroll to the end.....Halo will never regain it's original popularity back.  Times are changing and Halo is fading.  It's a fact and we all have to deal with it.

 

 

[Caboose The Ace]

But will the game regain some population after the release of Forge in December?

 

Yes, also due to the fact some people will probably be getting Halo 5 for Christmas.

 

[BlasterKeef]

All I want are split-screen and dual wielding weapons back. I'm pretty sure they never dropped BRs anyways, because I definitely used them all of the time on H4 online. It just looked somewhat different. I honestly enjoyed the jet packs in quite a few game types but I agree there should definitely be playlists without them and the lack of ranking is ridiculous.

 

I just want to be able to play couch co-op games again again. I swear, the gaming industry just wants to kill any possibility of their community having a social life just so they can sell more copies and force the fans to listen to a bunch of racist toddler rants instead of just hanging out with their actual friends in real life. The reason half the internet nowadays seems to think chicks can't play video games is because they have to lock themselves away in a dungeon and force everyone to talk to them over garbage online mics, everything is WoW now haha.

[Fishy]

 

I just want to be able to play couch co-op games again again. I swear, the gaming industry just wants to kill any possibility of their community having a social life just so they can sell more copies and force the fans to listen to a bunch of racist toddler rants instead of just hanging out with their actual friends in real life. The reason half the internet nowadays seems to think chicks can't play video games is because they have to lock themselves away in a dungeon and force everyone to talk to them over garbage online mics, everything is WoW now haha.

I don't care about the first part you said, but I wanna pitch in on your rant and support it.

 

I disagree they are destroying social life, but I agree they do want to sell more copies just so they can make money. That's a for sure thing.

 

Social life isn't going anywhere though, you're just gonna have to stick to the multiplayer games that aren't as fun and kinda suck. I mean, I made the mistake of buying Orbit. A multiplayer-only game, it has no campaign and it's only versus. It is terrible. (Which I now am forced to make careful decisions and research a lot more of what I'm going to buy.)

 

Thing is, the gaming industry is crap. 343 is doing a bunch of good stuff with the game, but now that I've looked into it. I kinda wish splitscreen was an option. It won't ever be, but that's a huge struggle we're going to have to deal with, or to just not get the game. This isn't just a problem for Halo, but other games are starting to do it as well. Call of Duty is now moving along the lines to whereas there is no longer splitscreen. Whereas it used to be 4-player splitscreen, then at CoD Ghosts it reduced to 2-player splitscreen. And now it's going to just Single-player online.

 

In the end, we're all going to have to resort to those crappy games like Orbit and be forced to find alternative ways to game with our friends. Even if that means going to the retro era.