What needs to be done to save H4?
What needs to be done to save H4?
So I realize this is probably a very potential shitstorm waiting to happen (Sorry Deep), but as you will see I have some real concerns about wtf is going on in this game.
Pictured below is the hourly population of H4 to the present. As I assume with any other game you have the release highs that can be tossed out with with the lowest numbers. I think it is also safe to assume that a "Holiday bump" can be tossed or at the very least averaged out. I have also supplied the link to go to HaloCharts for people to review the charts (multiple charts based on population) if you want to.
Halo Charts H4 population charts.
The argument has mostly been that the Non Competitive crowd has always been the majority of the population for MP. This game as it was/is currently released was set up for the "casual" crowd, yet we have seen a fall off of about 70-75% of the population. Is this due to a broken game, not enough maps, Halo burn out, FPS burnout or gaming burnout?
Now you might say to yourself, "ok doom and gloom/Mayan Apocalypse/Doomsday Prepper" I think you are being a little fucking insane...Well even I would have said the same thing if someone else would have posted the same thing I am without visual evidence to support it, but here I am posting data you can see for yourselves. Even if you take out the highs and lows the trend is going down...NOT leveling off. You get a bump for holidays and new maps only to start the downward trend again. So as much as I do not like to say it, the game is in trouble and just one thing is not going to fix it.
Now you might be saying "LB wtf do you know, have you really played the game enough to tell?" The answer is yeah, if you want to check my stats my gt is Lbsutke and I am will to bet my playtime in this game is probably within the top 10% of this site and probably pretty high on the overall playtime of H4 in general. (actually kind of bothers me that is true, but meh). I play comp stuff, Inf. Slayer stuff and BTB. I am not in the it is all Comp all the time Camp as I am also not in the I want to have 200% movement speed and 5% gravity and fly around the map camp. I am pretty much in the middle. (with the expeception of flood and GB, not my cup of tea). I follow comp people, 343 and other Halo community people on twitter. I read there forum posts, (try to filter out what is trolling and what is not) and I see a lot of repeated concerns that all groups are sharing. So I am pretty confident that I am in the wheelhouse of what 343 designed the game for, yet I am left scratching my head thinking, is this all I am going to get.
IMO this is what needs to happen to bring up the population:
Release more fucking maps, all your playlists are stale and we are just over 60 days out from release. That is pitifull. DLC does not count due to the fact your player population is not guarenteed to have the dlc. You have 2 maps that are on the disc that eveyrone has you have not put into circulation. Stop with the PR bullshit of "uh sorry but split screeners are having problems with map x" guess what split screeners are a very small populatoin of your player population, put that shit into mm ASAP. You argument that you do not design things for just the comp community is that it is a minor part of the player pop., well guess what, split screeners are even less then that. Revine and Impact can be used for slayer, flag, koth, extraction, without much tweeking at all if not no tweeking..
Fix and adjust the annoying issues still in the game. Bolt shot needs big time nerfing, pairing up and playing against other people in other countries is painfull at best (give me the option to play on my own god damn continent)(I play at all times during the day and run into these issues, so it is not just a specific thing). Accessibilty of communty made maps needs to be better then the giant shit sandwich we have now.
I think the net code is meh to ok in its current form, but the majority of us have all had more then just the odd game of being on the wrong side of host. It does not happen a small percentage of times and other Halo games have not had this amount of latency/connection to the host/wtf is going on moments. This is not your first rodeo into Match Making and what it takes to have a good outing, MS/343, figure it out.
I truly believe 343/MS has one final opportunity to get it right, they need a title update, put out more maps , game types and the rumored Ranked/Competitve update into mm buy the time the next dlc comes out (feb). If they are counting on the next map pack to really revive or even drive mm then the maps need to be no bigger then Haven and they better not be easily broken by running jet pack or invise bolt shot.
Yep, I agree this is a downer post and a huge rant. But I am the guy that is still playing and I am supposed to be the guy you designed this for and I am worried.
Now, lets all get along and talk about this like non Monster energy drink/aderal hyped up trollbags.. Am I just crazy or are other people worried as well?
I have oinly been playing H4 for a few weeks, and even I am starting to get burned out on the maps. New ones would be great.
Ihave also wondered about some of the hit detection lag compensation issues. Sometimes games go smoothly, and I feel like I've had a good game (for me). Other times, it's laggy, and I seem to get killed so frequently and with so few shots, that I wonder what's going on.
I have so little history wi HALO that I need to ask this question: Have special ability stuffs been the norm or is this a fairly recent soldier add-on? I was talking with a guy here at work who said he used to play H3 all the time and loved it, but the special abilty stuff kind of killed it for him.
Abilities came online with Halo REACH and are continued with Halo 4. You can bet your last dollar that wouldn't have happened if AA were unpopular. Satisfied customers are rarely seen in forums.
Lag/latency is a personal situation. You may not know it but whenever a Title Update gets applied to Halo the host selection records get wiped. That results in at least a week of poor host selection resulting in increased lag/latency. 343i has already applied two Title updates. More are coming so it is going to happen again.
the ability stuff is really only in Reach and H4. Before that H3, odst, h2 and Halo, you did not have special abilities.
The Bolt Shot, with its one shot kill, should never have been a secondary load out. Don't get me started on the maps.....
Half the weapons are one shot kills. Loadout or not, it's really easy to get a snipe or rockets as a drop, and then everyone has them. Ordinances broke H4.
The game sucks. I've been saying that since day 1. I'm hanging around hoping for v1 settings to show up but if they don't show up within a month I'm out. Is it fixable? Yes. However, I honestly don't see them fixing it since they've been heading in the wrong direction for years.
(1) The biggest problem is the maps. By far number one most favorite map is Haven but do they give us more maps like that? No. At this point it's too late to generate new maps so they NEED to go full on with forge maps RIGHT NOW. It may already be too late.
(2) The game play also sucks but it's less clear how to fix it. Nerfing the bolt shot or taking it out as starting weapon would help a ton.
(3) I also think they need to freshen the playlists. There should be a doubles list and some kind of ranked or hard core or MLG list. They also need a traditional FFA slayer list. It's like they've completely dropped FFA from Halo.
It's probably too late. IMO all this pandering to the n00bs has ruined the game even for the n00bs. The n00bs *said* they didn't like getting p0wned by the comp players but they secretly loved it!
The only way to get good is to get owned like crazy until you learn how to play well.
You don't have to go into the DLC playlist to play the DLC - it is in other ones too, as long as everyone has the maps. This is probably why.
I just got back into gaming after a 5 year limited time break so dont have the experience many of you have. And dont have a solution to get numbers up!
I would say 1 out of 5 MM games I play have lag issue! It makes me want to break shit and not play!! Also it seems like it takes forever to get set up sometimes as a single not even 2 or 3 people. Fix how the game is basically going to work first!
Have a selection box for game you are looking for like reach had may be helpful too. ie Casual, competitve, quiet, talkative, etc. Competitvie leagues maybe too.
More maps is a interesting aspect of what you feel discontent with and what would save it. I have noticed the new Crimson DLC maps seems to have the smallest amount of players in it regularly. (mean less interest or people not wanting to pay for maps?) I personally only like a few of the maps currently (Exile and Longbow), and the rotation seems not so random I had nights where the same 3 choices popped up 2/3rds of the games played.
LB thanks for the info and hope they do make it better!
I'm going to reply in bits and pieces as I am busy at the moment.
The Halocharts is a good representation of what is going on in the MM playlists but not a good measure of Halo 4's entire population. It leaves out Spartan Ops, Customs, Campaign, Theatre, Forging and Idling thus not showing the total online population. 343i is not yet publishing the total online population. 343i is not yet publishing the Unique Users per twenty four hours (UU/24hr). UU/24hrs is a better overall measure of a games performance.
Here are a couple of links to population reports I did for REACH.
January 2012 REACH Population Report
REACH MM Playlist Popularity Study
After you read the second one you will see that 40%-50% of the REACH population was not in MM. If this is also true for Halo 4, you can almost double the playlist populations you see on Halocharts. Without complete stats for both games it is nearly impossible to compare both games at this point. I do not have any links but I remember seeing graphs for both Halo 3 and REACH, in the first three months, and the population dropped like a stone. The long term population trend doesn't kick in for about three months.
I can see your point of view DEEP, but I'm not sure it speaks to well of Halo as a community. If MM is down, the community is down IMO. I LOVED Halo 4 at launch. I was extrememly into it for about a month after release, but got bored very quickly after that. I have no idea why or even how to fix that bored feeling..
For me it's probably burn out on FPS (yet im in love with Farcry 3). I wish I had a way to fix Halo, but the truth is I don't think it needs fixing. Its a good game, it's just not the game that people want anymore. This isn't a bad thing either. Halo nights live on,2old2playhalo still thrives, and so do the other clans and members here that love Halo. Maybe we need to have a different discussion. Does Halo need to have mass apeal to be good?
Doodi is so effing smart 1% of the time it makes me want to kick a puppy about the other 99% of the time.
Dont worry, most people just ignore me and go with the ever popular; "God this admin is such a fucking cunt know-it-all. We should start our own site and show this fuck how to really run things." Maybe I'll make a book of doodi gems and sell it to myself.
There are really only two maps in H4 I truly enjoy - Haven and Adrift. The others are ok, but nowhere near the distaste I had for the Reach maps, so overall I can deal with the maps I just don't have any I love like The Pit, Guardian or Standoff. Even Ragnarok is different with the addition of the Mantis and personal ordinance drops that mean everyone has a power weapon.
Also, don't forget the game launched with Slayer Pro and it was the least populated list. Thinking a TU or MLG settings will "save" H4 is somewhat unrealistic. We may see a small bump, but nothing of much note. I think this is what we've got and this is what 343 wants out of Halo, so either we deal with it or play a different game.
COD has steadily gained ground on Halo since Modern Warfare and has totally owned Halo since Reach. Halo just isn't as popular, but that's fine with me. I just want a good game.
Halo 4, while I enjoy the game, still doesn't get me fired up to play. Maybe skill-based ranks will help, as I did enjoy the nights in H3 trying to get my pitiful ranks up. Now I feel wiped after 2 hours of play - which is what I felt with Reach. With no real point to playing, it kind of feels useless, especially once I reach SR 130.
Overall, I think we will just have to accept the days of H2 and H3 are gone. This is Halo now - take it or leave it.
Bolded the truest points.
It's over. Dump Halo. Go COD. Don't look back.
Suffers the same issues as Halo on an accelerated time line.
You mean game mechanics issues or the 'number of people playing' issues?
game mechanics
So does Star Wars Kinect unfortunately. :( But I suppose that is different thread. Let me wield my light saber the way I want to damnit!
The problem with Halo 4 is the approach towards design of the game. To begin let us toss out the terms "Casual" and "Competitive" styles of play in which we have been using them to this point. The problem is NOT lack of embracing the competitive community (i.e. MLG) but rather fully embrace a market of gamers labeled as casual players, but really are just not very good at hardcore fps's, a market that Ifinity Ward and Treyarch have turned into a money river. Before i go any further I am not saying people who are not hardcore fps player have no place in video game design but rather they have no place in the design of certain shooters. Now it is absolutely no secret that production companies of well established AAA game titles borrow from each others models to help themselves achieve more success through a broader market of consumers. Someone making decisions for the final product of this game came to the conclusion to put elements form other popular titles into this game hoping to increase their fan base, but in a fashion that is (in my opinion) unrealistic to even entertain. Halo wanted to steal players away from CoD by being more like CoD.
CoD is the king right now because it takes gamers and allows them to choose the gear they want before the match begins, thus in turn allows the player to reenforce a strong trait in their game-play and avoid weaker traits all together. Let me make an example. Let's say I am a decent sniper so as long as I have the Sniper Rifle and a good position I can be a productive member of my team. But the down side is I am not a good enough mid to close rage combatant to get the sniper rifle on a regular basis or to defend myself once my position is compromised. So instead of honing my skills to allow me to attack and defend myself as the situation dictates it would just be so much easier to have those things come to me. Thus the birth of spawning with indivisibility and an ordnance re shuffler so that if the sniper position I am camping does not spawn a new rifle once I am out of ammo I have, not one, but two shots at getting one delivered to me by means of an ordnance drop. Does any of this sound familiar, if it does you probably recently played a BTB match on Valhalla.
What I am really at the end of all of this really saying is that the core mechanics that made CoD and Halo the successes that they are were embraced by CoD and traded away in Halo. Cod is a class based modern shooter that allows anybody regardless of skill set and overall skill to be a competitor in any match and Halo was a hardcore nuts and bolts fps that embrace marksmanship and map control though power weapons. CoD promotes position camping while Halo promotes position defense. To look at the same games now, CoD is the same (almost to a fault according to some) but Halo has morphed into a hybrid class arena fps that NOBODY wanted or enjoys really. I have no charts to back this up but I believe that Halo 3 was more popular than Reach and Halo 4 and I have to think the reason is because Halo3 still felt and played like the Halo that we all liked and the next two in the series completely shifted how the mechanics behave.
Halo by it's nature I geared towards a more competitive style of player even in the most casual play list. AA's, Ordance, Perks, ability carrot dangles, are all things that work in some games but not Halo.
I know what you are saying LB. At the end days of H3, social slayer had 40k people per night and ranked slayer had 25K people. That didn't include BTB and the other play lists. These numbers are down. I think it's a bunch of stuff, which is not related to gameplay (This game is about right, save the boltshot, which is a terrible idea. The promethian weapons can go too, but I'm ok if they stay).
But people are bored, and here's why:
1. Maps. Infinity slayer is Abandon, Haven, Adrfit, Complex. CTF is Abandon, Adrift, Complex, Solice. Oddball is the same issue. 4 maps, it feels like we get the same ones all the time, because we do. And if you don't like 1 or 2, then there's almost nothing to choose from. Problem is the game came with 10, they added 3 more, and still only 4-5 are playable in 4v4 and 4-5 are playable in BTB and there is almost no overlap. That wasn't the case in past Halos.
2. Most people are over level 50, so there is nothing more to be gained. The additional stuff with specializations is insignificant. There is nothing to "play" for. H2 and H3 had ranks, even Reach had new levels that you had to play 1000's of games to get (yeah, not as good as ranks, but at least I would still get something for playing. There is really nothing now).
3. Playlists need some variety. I wish objecive was merged into 1 list. Instead of CTF on the same 3 maps over and over, then there would be 3 gametypes to pick from as well, making 9-12 choices. Regicide is actually very fun, so merge it with slayer. Put snipes in with slayer on a small basis. Put Pro in with slayer as well on a small basis. Give us some damn choices. Don't make the choices by splitting up the community. I bet they don't do it because they have people that quit because they don't get a gametype they want. That was the whole purpose of JIP.
I don't think it's burnout. I don't think that Halo is past it's prime. I think people just want more variety without having to jump around for it.
While I think putting ranks in would help a lot, even without ranks in H2 and H3 there were also a lot of skills that took a long time to learn. In Reach and then even more so in H4 they removed those skills from the game. With nothing really worth working on we're bored after a month.
These are some good ideas. Where did you come up with them? Oh yeah right, it's what was done in every past Halo. A lot of unlearning going on this time around.
Completely disagree. You know, this is the same arguement that the Halo:CE guys used when H2 came out. It was noobified. It was made for casuals. Then H3 came out with the bubble shield and all that stuff and the H2 guys said it was made for casuals and noobieifed. Then H3.....
IMO, this is the most pure shooting skillful game since CE. A good player with good aim will beat an average player with average aim almost every time. When I'm playing, I know when someone is better than me and someone is not. While there are some games that I feel cheated, it's not that often, and when it is, it happens mostly in individual games with individual players.
Yeah, funny that way huh?
This is how I feel too
I totally disagree. Think about how often in past halos (<=H3) you got that perfect 4 shot. How often did you get a perfect 4 shot in H3 even on LAN? Sure it happened, but it happened about as often as you got an 8 shot kill. In H4 I get 5 shot kills all the time and it's even pretty common when playing good players to get a 5-shot kill trade, meaning we both 5-shot each other and we both die on the 5th shot, meaning both of us 5-shot each other. Never ever happened before this game. Unlike previous Halo's this game has massive auto aim and bullet magnetism and any n00b can 5-shot someone. Combine that with the fact that strafing isn't very effective and movement is pretty straightforward and all the other things that simplified play and this is the most n00b friendly Halo yet.
Agree with lanierb. The previous Halos didn't have nearly the bullet magnatesim as H4 does. Hell, even in Reach the sniper took some skill and couple in the fact that you are no longer de-scoped when shot, everyone is a great sniper now. Check out the vid below, especially around the 2:24 mark for the DMR. That's why everyone can 5-shot now. If you barely miss, you still hit. You either need to miss badly or have bad connection to not 5-shot someone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWaDwsGb1c0
We will have to wait until the second season of Spartan Ops + 6 DLC (Feb. and Apr.) + some community maps before we get a solid idea of what shape Halo 4 is in relative to past versions. We should know the whole story by the end of May 2013. FYI, then school will let out and the Halo numbers always rise then.
A lot of stuff is going to happen relatively soon and looking at current MM numbers is just going to give you heartburn.
One thing people have left out is how the lack of films and online fileshares has potentially affected populations. I used to spend hours capping Tbag videos just to show you guys. Only those few with cap cards can do it at the moment. My fingers are crossed and my bum is getting stinkier by the day waiting for the Theatre repairs.
I'm with you there DEEP. Check out this film at 5:28, the clip is Geronimo! by SiKSm0k3 on 9-23-2010
I loved putting these together for the friends I played with and wished H4 had it from the start. Why did it not ship with the game DEEP?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWdodTgOrq4&feature=share&list=UUJcJBielv...
I've seen a lot of frame rate problems in 343i pre-release videos.
Dynamic lighting doesn't work on Forged maps.
Some objects/vehicles/characters are missing pieces in the game films. Dare I mention the weird things we see in the Killcam might be an indication of theatre glitches.
I'm hoping it will get fixed soon but I think it would be optimistic to believe it will ever get fixed.
Yo, I am not as big a gamer as most here, but I got can opine a bit:)
I been having a lot of fun with halo 4. I may get wiped out after two hours of play, too. Sometimes less, but that is not a big deal. Two hours is quite a while to play a game, and if it entertains you for 2-hour sessions, that is pretty dang good. I mean, you are only awake for about 17 hours, so that is well more than 10% of your day.
The Boltshot - I don't think it is OP. While I do pretty good with it, I am almost never killed by one (and I am not that good at this game). I tend to strafe or backpedal during an engagement, though; I feel the boltshot is more a punishement for players that like to charge facefirst into gunfire.
The Maps- This is really my one criticiism, I think. I think they tried to elimate camping areas or something, I am not sure. But, the maps all seem kinda similar (in a way) now; I want more dynamic maps, like Halo 3's Construct (genius map) and Guardian, and my favorite, Last Resort. Those are dynamic, interesting maps. Really, I'd like to plug a few of the old great maps in with the new ones.
My current favorite map for Halo 4 is Abandon. I think, that is one that has that "classic" feel to it. (Granted, I haven't fully familiarized with all the new maps, yet, especially some of the huge ones.)
cool, well, taht's my two cents.