Site Poll 105: Will Halo: Infinite reignite the 343ICF?

[Ranger Intel]

 

 

Hi everyone, Spartan here with Site Poll 105...yes, I'm really back for it.

 

 

Please, contain your excitement. Hold your applause. Keep your underwear on. Unfortunately both Yoshi and Maestro failed to uphold my legacy with the Site Polls that I greatly invested in, thanks guys (love ya really ). Honestly wanna thank them both for producing five more polls after I stepped down, it was much appreciated. I can't say for sure whether I'll be doing these weekly like I used to, but you can expect one every now and then. This community had and will always have a special place in my heart, and it's all of you, the people, that make it. Speaking of this awesome community, let's dive into Poll 105.

 

 

 

 

Will Halo: Infinite reignite the 343ICF?

 

 

I joined in 2013, just over over 6 years ago now. When I joined, the place was starting to buzz with life. It was warming up again after a previous period of inactivity. I can't speak too much for the 2011 to early-2013 state of the site, but from what I made out, 2013/2014 was the peak of this community's activity. Members were like family with each other, I'd come back home everyday to join my new-found friends here. We all had something in common, various things in common in many cases. Remember the days of forum games? Now we can't even get a flowing convo in the shoutbox. I'm guilty of inactivity as well, the already-present growing lack of activity here didn't give me anymore reason to return and stay for long. I always end up coming back though, because there's truly no place like home.

 

Now Infinite is shaping up to be impressive, and we're getting a sick port of Reach to Xbox One and PC soon (hopefully). The Halo community is still very active, and will only get more hyped as time progresses. But what about our community? Waypoint's a nice house, but it's not home. Do any of you think the upcoming Halo content, namely Infinite, will bring the community back to life? Will it potentially bring new members that'll be here to stay, or have older members return for good? A familiar face is always nice, and a fresh one with passion is just as good. Or do you think the community has had it's time, and will begin fossilising soon enough? There's always potential for life to be breathed into this old dog. If Infinite won't do it, Reach and the MCC port to PC may.

 

 

 

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

As always, Spartan out.

[Akali]

Personally I'm not too sure you know, but I don't think it will...

 

Don't want to be too negative, but sometimes I remember this site exists, and it was kinda dying off once there was a platform divide back when MCC dropped on the new Xbox One (Project Scorpio still sounds better fight me). Some people couldn't join in on some of the community events because they didn't upgrade, and with the flop of Halo 5: Guardians, I think a lot of people just sorta drifted away into new games. Community events started to dry out and we'd be lucky to get six people for an event and at that point we might as well just play multiplayer.

 

Now that the page isn't listed on the first page of Google, unless we plugged the hell out of this forums or got the site's overall views up to at least first page worthy, I doubt things will improve

[Ranger Intel]

Personally I'm not too sure you know, but I don't think it will...

 

Don't want to be too negative, but sometimes I remember this site exists, and it was kinda dying off once there was a platform divide back when MCC dropped on the new Xbox One (Project Scorpio still sounds better fight me). Some people couldn't join in on some of the community events because they didn't upgrade, and with the flop of Halo 5: Guardians, I think a lot of people just sorta drifted away into new games. Community events started to dry out and we'd be lucky to get six people for an event and at that point we might as well just play multiplayer.

 

Now that the page isn't listed on the first page of Google, unless we plugged the hell out of this forums or got the site's overall views up to at least first page worthy, I doubt things will improve

 

Whilst it's true this community may not return to it's previous activity, or even near, the Halo community in general hasn't been this active for a long time. I wouldn't say many drifted away into other games for good, possibly just temporarily. Many are returning with the good news of Infinite, and especially with MCC + Reach coming to Steam (and simply Reach being added to Xbox One). I know many who are looking forward to that, some still playing Halo regularly and others not. Halo's saved, and more, the fate of this site remains undetermined though.

[I_Make_Big_Boom]

I think it would depend more on MCC on Steam if it releases before Halo: Infinite. We already know what the MCC games are all about, but they're gonna have to sell us hard with Halo: Infinite because it's an unknown quantity. I don't think anyone here is ready to fork over the cash for yet another false promise, or at least not in the beginning.

 

Anyway, regarding PC. I think the problem with ElDewrito was because of its hard to obtain status, despite being the best Halo game to have ever been on PC. Though if you give people an actual, legit Halo game on PC, then they will come in droves. I mean, they literally spammed the 343i office with pizza because of the Reach on PC announcement. People really care about this.

 

Will that affect 343iCF? Obviously yes, because we're in the top of the searches. If Halo gets another boom then there will be a load of people looking up 343i. People will come here thinking we're someone we're not, which I've always thought was wrong. If we were called anything else nobody would care as much.

 

Though regardless of a name change, I think the community would grow enough to actually be bolstered again. However, it'd have to depend on the series being strong on its own without this community. If it's not then I guess we're just gonna be like this for good.

 

[Ranger Intel]

I think it would depend more on MCC on Steam if it releases before Halo: Infinite. We already know what the MCC games are all about, but they're gonna have to sell us hard with Halo: Infinite because it's an unknown quantity. I don't think anyone here is ready to fork over the cash for yet another false promise, or at least not in the beginning.

 

Anyway, regarding PC. I think the problem with ElDewrito was because of its hard to obtain status, despite being the best Halo game to have ever been on PC. Though if you give people an actual, legit Halo game on PC, then they will come in droves. I mean, they literally spammed the 343i office with pizza because of the Reach on PC announcement. People really care about this.

 

Will that affect 343iCF? Obviously yes, because we're in the top of the searches. If Halo gets another boom then there will be a load of people looking up 343i. People will come here thinking we're someone we're not, which I've always thought was wrong. If we were called anything else nobody would care as much.

 

Though regardless of a name change, I think the community would grow enough to actually be bolstered again. However, it'd have to depend on the series being strong on its own without this community. If it's not then I guess we're just gonna be like this for good.

 

Great outlook SD, really hope this is the case.

[Tommy]

Seeing how many guests show up each day on this site(and yes I know that most are misclicks trying to get to waypoint) I believe that once mcc becomes full steam and infinite comes out, if this site has a few active members that keep it interesting during the release, we should gain more of an audience.

[Ranger Intel]

Seeing how many guests show up each day on this site(and yes I know that most are misclicks trying to get to waypoint) I believe that once mcc becomes full steam and infinite comes out, if this site has a few active members that keep it interesting during the release, we should gain more of an audience.

 

There's definitely potential.

[The Director]

Infinite will bring a slight boom back to the forum, but there likely won't be any long term traffic. There's a few reasons why the forum has slowly but surely trickled out to the point it is today.

 

First, normal entropy. The story of Halo has been significantly discussed already, and though the amount of games have nearly doubled since the site's glory days the amount of lore has not. This isn't because 343i has failed in any way, it's simply because that's how stories are. 

 

Second, the community part of the forum has become fragmented. This is partly natural, but has worsened because of things that have drawn people away. Namely, Skype and Discord. During my time as Site Mod, the subject of off site chat was brought up and I carefully constructed a couple of chats in Skype that could allow quick conversation between staff members and moderators. I declined to create an official non-staff chat in Skype because I knew it would draw people away from the shoutbox, which is more important to the site than I think anyone else realized. It's pretty simple, when people are in the shoutbox talking to each other, they are on the site. If they are on the site, they can see when someone replies to a topic they have an interest in and post a response. Posts are the lifeblood of any forum, community forums especially. Just before I retired a freshly promoted community moderate approached me with an idea that he had to create a Discord for the forum. I told him it was a bad idea but didn't clarify exactly why, so that's my bad.

 

The worst period of inactivity that had occurred before Discord was between Halo Reach and Halo 4. Even then, there was at least two or three posts per week and half a dozen members on at all hours of the day. The longest inactivity in the shoutbox was less than three hours. As I type this, I am literally the only person logged onto the site and one of only 14 that have been on today. The most recent topic posted on this forum was yesterday, but the one before that was over a month ago. The shoutbox contains shouts from January 16th, which are from 343iBot welcoming new members. The Discord currently has 30 people online, none of which are on the site.

 

New members gravitate toward the topics they are interested in first, then the shoutbox once they've posted. There they make new friends and decide to stick around. However, with a discord they have to go through extra steps to talk to anyone and then they have to keep it open. If it's their first time using discord, the whole ordeal becomes a confusing mess and they quickly give up.

 

So, will Halo: Infinite reignite 343iCF? No. Not as long as the 343iCF discord exists. Not as long as the more active members are drawn away from the site where they will have difficulty meeting new members and welcoming them to the community. Get rid of the "official" Discord and maybe.

 

tl;dr this is my biggest "I told you so" ever and the Discord created discord with our amount of people online.

Edited January 23, 2020 by The Director

[MCPO Mayh3m]

The Director is spot on.

 

I think in the off chance that Halo Infinite becomes a revolutionary hit, the forum could see a change of pace. However I think that the entire forum (from top to bottom) would require a facelift. Remove forum sections that are unneeded, make it less crowded, and simplify the forum to direct traffic to a central location.

 

tl;dr: If you simplify this place and give it a facelift, you could see a spark.... potentially.

 

But my current opinion is the same as TD.

 

Also: hi.