I want Halo 5's campaign to be as good, if not better than, Halo 4's. I truly feel Halo 4's campaign was the best in the series and that is why I feel so glad I bought the Limited Edition. All multiplayer controversies aside, the campaign made me a happy customer.
I don't think 4v4 team only playlists will be popular. Skilled teams of 4 will likely see greater opportunity to win games against lesser players. So their time will be split between ranking up and going social. Social teams will avoid the high skilled playlists. Also, we don't know how many people will be in matches. Will the max party size be 16, 24 or 32? If it goes bigger than 16 then we will see even bigger maps. Smaller maps may become even more rare.
I think Ghandi is over estimating the popularity of learderboards. He has no proof and I have no proof. Using Pros as an example of his point is unreasonable. That's the sort of behavior one would expect of elite competitors.
Got about 35 seconds into it before I had to stop. Every time that kid opens his mouth I'm convinced he has brain damage.
For Dixon's peace of mind, I gave Gandi's video a shot of credibility. It's not all wrong, if the Halo scene was just about serious competition. I don't believe it is.
Dixon, I'm not going to entertain Gandi's Part 2 or 3 etc. Too much rambling. He only wants to address serious competition for Halo 5 and it already has to fit so many mandates that I have trouble taking him seriously. IMO, Halo 5 will likely be campaign first, Spartan Ops-like stuff second, general multiplayer third and then serious competition. Knowing where the priority of your favorite genre is, should act as the moderator for future requests.
So they don't give a shit if people like me, or dixon, or any of the other competitive people will abandon this series? That's ok. Destiny is going to replace a lot of this BS. And then we have the new CoD franchise starting up.
So they don't give a shit if people like me, or dixon, or any of the other competitive people will abandon this series? That's ok. Destiny is going to replace a lot of this BS. And then we have the new CoD franchise starting up.
I'm sure they (343i) give a shit. Though late, they are definetely pandering to the competitive crowd these days. The competitive crowd has to see what percentage of the population they really are and have reasonable expectations.
I think it unwise to see Destiny as a solution. COD, maybe. TITANFALL looks to be a more likely destination/escape. Just guessing.
So they don't give a shit if people like me, or dixon, or any of the other competitive people will abandon this series? That's ok. Destiny is going to replace a lot of this BS. And then we have the new CoD franchise starting up.
I'm sure they (343i) give a shit. Though late, they are definetely pandering to the competitive crowd these days. The competitive crowd has to see what percentage of the population they really are and have reasonable expectations.
I think it unwise to see Destiny as a solution. COD, maybe. TITANFALL looks to be a more likely destination/escape. Just guessing.
I dunno. I don't see Titanfall as a competitive destination. We also know nothing about Destiny's competitive online offerings, so I see no reason to put any eggs into that nonexistent basket yet. I think the new Call Of Duty is going to have a little more vehicle-oriented play in it as well. I'm not even really sure where I base that guess from either.
I'm sure they (343i) give a shit. Though late, they are definetely pandering to the competitive crowd these days. The competitive crowd has to see what percentage of the population they really are and have reasonable expectations.
I come here like once a month these days so I've probably missed a bunch, but I wanted to interject that you've been saying stuff like this quite a while and guess what? All the data is in now and you and people like you were wrong. Sure, most of the Halo players were not "competitive", in the sense of being good. But they still liked the fact that Halo was a competitive game. Even you, in your heart, think H3>H4. Halo got less competitive and everyone left. So you're theory has been tested and it failed. And yeah I'm bitter about it.
I'm sure they (343i) give a shit. Though late, they are definetely pandering to the competitive crowd these days. The competitive crowd has to see what percentage of the population they really are and have reasonable expectations.
I come here like once a month these days so I've probably missed a bunch, but I wanted to interject that you've been saying stuff like this quite a while and guess what? All the data is in now and you and people like you were wrong. Sure, most of the Halo players were not "competitive", in the sense of being good. But they still liked the fact that Halo was a competitive game. Even you, in your heart, think H3>H4. Halo got less competitive and everyone left. So you're theory has been tested and it failed. And yeah I'm bitter about it.
Come on lanierb. I can accept that you feel 343i has failed to deliver the competitive style game you wanted but hyperbole like "everyone left" is just wasted anger. The population is lower than previous titles but not gone.
I can defend the points you quoted. After Halo 4 released 343i hired Andy Dudynsky and Quinn Delhoyo and actively worked with the competitive community to get custom maps and gametypes into competitive playlists. I recognize some of the GTs in the Community Cartographers group and they are known to be of a mind similar to yours. They pretty much only fowarded competitive style maps. 343i sent its employees to many Pro competitions at no charge AFAIK, they casted the events, delivered free DLC maps and promoted the events through Twitter, Waypoint and their Twitch channel. 343i didn't just slap the competitive community in the face and say deal with it.
Whether titles since Halo 3 are less competitive is more of a point of view. The same people still win so the apple cart didn't get overturned. I liked many elements of each game but you shouldn't be surprised the things I liked or didn't like are not the same as yours. The recent competitive changes to the sandbox are not something I wanted. What was sought were shorter kill times. It's another bow to the competitive community and it doesn't make the game more fun for me. Still, that kind of Halo is better than no Halo for me and since the change was implemented in a more standard fashion, I'm dealing with it.
I think you need to push yourself past your bitterness and accept that your preferences may not be in the majority. No game is going to exactly fit what you want.
...Sure, most of the Halo players were not "competitive", in the sense of being good. But they still liked the fact that Halo was a competitive game...
You know, I've never thought about it, but this really kind of hits home for me. Perhaps I enjoyed H3 more because it felt more competitive and team oriented, even though my individual Halo skills were (and still are) lacking. My stats may be better for H4, but I still have fond memories of my H3 days.
I can't say I've had as much fun since H3. Things have gone downhill since Reach. As the game has introduced more randomness, people have turned away in favor of series like COD. Yeah, COD has changed as well, but their basic formula has remained constant.
Imagine if you had been away from Halo since H2 and you popped in H4. Yeah, it would be quite a "WTF?" moment.
Also, the competitive structure Ghandi is recommending is what we had in Reach. Remember The Arena? Yeah, it was Bungie/343's half-assed attempt at Starcraft-like divisions and it fell flat. People want to see those playlist ranks by their names - plain and simple, immediate gratification. None of this having to go online and slog through Waypoint to try and find your "CSR".
Gandhi's foul-mouthed ramblings really do nothing to help the Halo community. I can't say I got much from his video.
Also, while I'm excited for Destiny and we are all hoping this may be the new Halo. Remember, Bungie started this whole mess with Armor Abilities and doing away with visible playlist rankings in Reach. Now, hopefully they have learned after seeing the continued success of COD and the decline in Halo (in terms of matchmaking), so they may have something good for Destiny.
I dunno. I guess I'll just be playing whatever, whenever...
I'm sure they (343i) give a shit. Though late, they are definetely pandering to the competitive crowd these days. The competitive crowd has to see what percentage of the population they really are and have reasonable expectations.
I come here like once a month these days so I've probably missed a bunch, but I wanted to interject that you've been saying stuff like this quite a while and guess what? All the data is in now and you and people like you were wrong. Sure, most of the Halo players were not "competitive", in the sense of being good. But they still liked the fact that Halo was a competitive game. Even you, in your heart, think H3>H4. Halo got less competitive and everyone left. So you're theory has been tested and it failed. And yeah I'm bitter about it.
I think Deep has to grit his teeth every time he even reads the word "competitive". But no, I'm with you. We noobed the game down, we flattened the skill gap, we've had developers that were absent and unresponsive and we're left with a paltry matchmaking scene as a result. The other side of the coin is that Treyarch started picking up slack and filling in a lot of the gaps where Bungie/343 didn't flow in. Compare 343's involvement to that of Treyarch or Riot for League Of Legends and it isn't even a contest.
Its like you follow the Halo god of the gaps, where you cling to the numbers and talking points that can't be disproven (yet) with the information we currently have. Oh, well, the playerbase is great. There are new folks in all the time. Look at the low Spartan Ratings. that doesn't take into account folks that might have picked it up at launch, disliked it, and came back/figured they'd give it a spin or folks that play in a seldom manner or folks that live in custom games, like you. I'm not sure there even was a sub-population of the game that wasn't even a little bit disappointed with Halo 4. Everyone from Grifball to competitive folks and everyone in between was at least left a little non-plussed. Of course, the true believers were going to be/are happy no matter what.
You don't have to be a good player to appreciate TrueSkill, ranks, a competitive scene, or anything else in the game.
Its like you follow the Halo god of the gaps, where you cling to the numbers and talking points that can't be disproven (yet) with the information we currently have. Oh, well, the playerbase is great. There are new folks in all the time. Look at the low Spartan Ratings. that doesn't take into account folks that might have picked it up at launch, disliked it, and came back/figured they'd give it a spin or folks that play in a seldom manner or folks that live in custom games, like you. I'm not sure there even was a sub-population of the game that wasn't even a little bit disappointed with Halo 4. Everyone from Grifball to competitive folks and everyone in between was at least left a little non-plussed. Of course, the true believers were going to be/are happy no matter what.
You don't have to be a good player to appreciate TrueSkill, ranks, a competitive scene, or anything else in the game.
I like to a least try to stick to things which can be measured. Also, I absolutely hate unsupported hyperbolic statements. Without benchmarks were stuck blabbing opinions to each other like they were truths until we'd be ready to squeeze through the Ethernet cable and strangle each other.
You posted Scandi Ben Gandi's video of horrendously stupid ramblings and I stupidly watched, analyzed and commented on it. Now show up for Thursday night Halo on time. I know we have some measure of fun there. ;)
Its like you follow the Halo god of the gaps, where you cling to the numbers and talking points that can't be disproven (yet) with the information we currently have. Oh, well, the playerbase is great. There are new folks in all the time. Look at the low Spartan Ratings. that doesn't take into account folks that might have picked it up at launch, disliked it, and came back/figured they'd give it a spin or folks that play in a seldom manner or folks that live in custom games, like you. I'm not sure there even was a sub-population of the game that wasn't even a little bit disappointed with Halo 4. Everyone from Grifball to competitive folks and everyone in between was at least left a little non-plussed. Of course, the true believers were going to be/are happy no matter what.
You don't have to be a good player to appreciate TrueSkill, ranks, a competitive scene, or anything else in the game.
I like to a least try to stick to things which can be measured. Also, I absolutely hate unsupported hyperbolic statements. Without benchmarks were stuck blabbing opinions to each other like they were truths until we'd be ready to squeeze through the Ethernet cable and strangle each other.
You posted Scandi Ben Gandi's video of horrendously stupid ramblings and I stupidly watched, analyzed and commented on it. Now show up for Thursday night Halo on time. I know we have some measure of fun there. ;)
There's pretty much nobody else playing. Thursday night is the only time I even fire up the disc any more. I do have more fun playing Halo than Call Of Duty, but the distance between the two isn't as big as it used to be.
Also, I'm out of town this Thursday. It'll have to be next week.
BTW, I listened to the video and stopped at several points to comment on what was said. I only commented on what I didn't really like. He said one or two things I didn't really care about. I know I am controversially opinionated. I hope people don't just respond to what I say without watching the video. Do some work first, please.
I won't link yet but I've taken a quick gander at the competitive playlist populations on Halocharts and they perform as I expected. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low. People know how to find these playlists and try them out. A big percentage of them go back to what they like better (what ever that is). There is a population for the strict competitive genre, it's simply smaller.
I won't link yet but I've taken a quick gander at the competitive playlist populations on Halocharts and they perform as I expected. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low.
It's no different than the overall daily peak population for the first 8.5 months of the game. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low.
I won't link yet but I've taken a quick gander at the competitive playlist populations on Halocharts and they perform as I expected. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low.
It's no different than the overall daily peak population for the first 8.5 months of the game. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low.
Yes, it looks the same but are you drawing a correlation? The time frames are independant. The total MM population has been rising to static, since June. Most/all competitive playlists did not start when the pop was higher. My reference was comparing the more standard fare of playlists to competitive. They have been individually quite static whereas competitive playlists undergo huge population reduction then become static. I'm not sure if we are connecting on your point.
In what possible way would 343 be motivated to give a shit about the competitve community? They have proven incapable of organizing and self-promoting a sustainable product. They continually self-sabotage any glimmer of possible success with internecine quarreling and stupidity. They ran away from Halo as fast as they could when 343 took the reins and have done literally nothing but shit on the game since it came out.
Add to this the grating sense of entitlement they bring to every discussion of the game and complete lack of perspective regarding their market potential and it's not difficult for me to foresee a future where 343 eventually does throw up their hands and tells the whole lot of them to go fuck themselves.
Maybe there is a company out there that cares, but I can't see them banking a lot of money relying upon competitive players as the first target of appeasement. Why would anyone spend more than 1% of their development assets trying to keep 1% of their audience happy? So they'll keep playing? That would work as an argument if MLG had kept the game in rotation or if AGL was anything more than a fringe niche event- but these things are not true.
Under the guise of "caring about the game" the competitive community has lost sight of the fact that nobody gives a shit about them. Just because they have some quasi-legitimate argument about game balance or team play doesn't excuse them for the responsibility of making a coherent appeal to enough people to make themselves relevant.
There's a lot of reasons why the population is low. We keep hearing how they failed the competitive community which I do somewhat agree with, but they also failed the casual players as well.
Forge, file shares, lobby system, connection issues,ect. These things effected everyone. Also simple playlists like Flood, Action Sack aren't as good as Reach's versions and in Reach they kept big populations and I think Zombie is still more populated than Flood. Also vehicles get destroyed to fast and most casual players avoid warthogs because of this.
As far as population goes it has been up a little and I don't think the numbers take into consideration customs, campaign and Spartan Ops. The game has gotten much better, and I do see more people enjoying it.
The playlist should be cleaned up. This isn't just a 343 problem, but Bungie had issues with this aswell. Slayer Pro should be in the Throwdown playlist and Legendary Slayer should be in Infinity Slayer playlist, but listed as Slayer. Extraction should be in with Dominion. FFA and Regicide should be in same playlist. Multi-Team would be better as 4 teams of 3.
Points as I hear them. Playlist order has no effect on population. People scroll down to find what they want. It's proven every single day.
He is wrong about new people coming to the game. Low SR numbers are still common to see.
I don't think 4v4 team only playlists will be popular. Skilled teams of 4 will likely see greater opportunity to win games against lesser players. So their time will be split between ranking up and going social. Social teams will avoid the high skilled playlists. Also, we don't know how many people will be in matches. Will the max party size be 16, 24 or 32? If it goes bigger than 16 then we will see even bigger maps. Smaller maps may become even more rare.
I think Ghandi is over estimating the popularity of learderboards. He has no proof and I have no proof. Using Pros as an example of his point is unreasonable. That's the sort of behavior one would expect of elite competitors.
On not setting goals. Gandi called people like me an asshole, I'll asshole him back. This is unimportant stuff.
Gandi really shouldn't do playlist ranking systems math on the fly. So much rambling.
Dixon, I'm not going to entertain Gandi's Part 2 or 3 etc. Too much rambling. He only wants to address serious competition for Halo 5 and it already has to fit so many mandates that I have trouble taking him seriously. IMO, Halo 5 will likely be campaign first, Spartan Ops-like stuff second, general multiplayer third and then serious competition. Knowing where the priority of your favorite genre is, should act as the moderator for future requests.
A bit of developer Twitter banter. Drinking invloved, I think.
So they don't give a shit if people like me, or dixon, or any of the other competitive people will abandon this series? That's ok. Destiny is going to replace a lot of this BS. And then we have the new CoD franchise starting up.
I think it unwise to see Destiny as a solution. COD, maybe. TITANFALL looks to be a more likely destination/escape. Just guessing.
I dunno. I don't see Titanfall as a competitive destination. We also know nothing about Destiny's competitive online offerings, so I see no reason to put any eggs into that nonexistent basket yet. I think the new Call Of Duty is going to have a little more vehicle-oriented play in it as well. I'm not even really sure where I base that guess from either.
I come here like once a month these days so I've probably missed a bunch, but I wanted to interject that you've been saying stuff like this quite a while and guess what? All the data is in now and you and people like you were wrong. Sure, most of the Halo players were not "competitive", in the sense of being good. But they still liked the fact that Halo was a competitive game. Even you, in your heart, think H3>H4. Halo got less competitive and everyone left. So you're theory has been tested and it failed. And yeah I'm bitter about it.
I can defend the points you quoted. After Halo 4 released 343i hired Andy Dudynsky and Quinn Delhoyo and actively worked with the competitive community to get custom maps and gametypes into competitive playlists. I recognize some of the GTs in the Community Cartographers group and they are known to be of a mind similar to yours. They pretty much only fowarded competitive style maps. 343i sent its employees to many Pro competitions at no charge AFAIK, they casted the events, delivered free DLC maps and promoted the events through Twitter, Waypoint and their Twitch channel. 343i didn't just slap the competitive community in the face and say deal with it.
Whether titles since Halo 3 are less competitive is more of a point of view. The same people still win so the apple cart didn't get overturned. I liked many elements of each game but you shouldn't be surprised the things I liked or didn't like are not the same as yours. The recent competitive changes to the sandbox are not something I wanted. What was sought were shorter kill times. It's another bow to the competitive community and it doesn't make the game more fun for me. Still, that kind of Halo is better than no Halo for me and since the change was implemented in a more standard fashion, I'm dealing with it.
I think you need to push yourself past your bitterness and accept that your preferences may not be in the majority. No game is going to exactly fit what you want.
You know, I've never thought about it, but this really kind of hits home for me. Perhaps I enjoyed H3 more because it felt more competitive and team oriented, even though my individual Halo skills were (and still are) lacking. My stats may be better for H4, but I still have fond memories of my H3 days.
I can't say I've had as much fun since H3. Things have gone downhill since Reach. As the game has introduced more randomness, people have turned away in favor of series like COD. Yeah, COD has changed as well, but their basic formula has remained constant.
Imagine if you had been away from Halo since H2 and you popped in H4. Yeah, it would be quite a "WTF?" moment.
Also, the competitive structure Ghandi is recommending is what we had in Reach. Remember The Arena? Yeah, it was Bungie/343's half-assed attempt at Starcraft-like divisions and it fell flat. People want to see those playlist ranks by their names - plain and simple, immediate gratification. None of this having to go online and slog through Waypoint to try and find your "CSR".
Gandhi's foul-mouthed ramblings really do nothing to help the Halo community. I can't say I got much from his video.
Also, while I'm excited for Destiny and we are all hoping this may be the new Halo. Remember, Bungie started this whole mess with Armor Abilities and doing away with visible playlist rankings in Reach. Now, hopefully they have learned after seeing the continued success of COD and the decline in Halo (in terms of matchmaking), so they may have something good for Destiny.
I dunno. I guess I'll just be playing whatever, whenever...
I think Deep has to grit his teeth every time he even reads the word "competitive". But no, I'm with you. We noobed the game down, we flattened the skill gap, we've had developers that were absent and unresponsive and we're left with a paltry matchmaking scene as a result. The other side of the coin is that Treyarch started picking up slack and filling in a lot of the gaps where Bungie/343 didn't flow in. Compare 343's involvement to that of Treyarch or Riot for League Of Legends and it isn't even a contest.
Its like you follow the Halo god of the gaps, where you cling to the numbers and talking points that can't be disproven (yet) with the information we currently have. Oh, well, the playerbase is great. There are new folks in all the time. Look at the low Spartan Ratings. that doesn't take into account folks that might have picked it up at launch, disliked it, and came back/figured they'd give it a spin or folks that play in a seldom manner or folks that live in custom games, like you. I'm not sure there even was a sub-population of the game that wasn't even a little bit disappointed with Halo 4. Everyone from Grifball to competitive folks and everyone in between was at least left a little non-plussed. Of course, the true believers were going to be/are happy no matter what.
You don't have to be a good player to appreciate TrueSkill, ranks, a competitive scene, or anything else in the game.
I presume this was meant for me.
I like to a least try to stick to things which can be measured. Also, I absolutely hate unsupported hyperbolic statements. Without benchmarks were stuck blabbing opinions to each other like they were truths until we'd be ready to squeeze through the Ethernet cable and strangle each other.You posted Scandi Ben Gandi's video of horrendously stupid ramblings and I stupidly watched, analyzed and commented on it. Now show up for Thursday night Halo on time. I know we have some measure of fun there. ;)
There's pretty much nobody else playing. Thursday night is the only time I even fire up the disc any more. I do have more fun playing Halo than Call Of Duty, but the distance between the two isn't as big as it used to be.
Also, I'm out of town this Thursday. It'll have to be next week.
BTW, I listened to the video and stopped at several points to comment on what was said. I only commented on what I didn't really like. He said one or two things I didn't really care about. I know I am controversially opinionated. I hope people don't just respond to what I say without watching the video. Do some work first, please.
I won't link yet but I've taken a quick gander at the competitive playlist populations on Halocharts and they perform as I expected. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low. People know how to find these playlists and try them out. A big percentage of them go back to what they like better (what ever that is). There is a population for the strict competitive genre, it's simply smaller.
It's no different than the overall daily peak population for the first 8.5 months of the game. Start high, drop real quick and level off very low.
I didn't put much thought into my post. Was just having a little fun being a graph of each looks similar.
In what possible way would 343 be motivated to give a shit about the competitve community? They have proven incapable of organizing and self-promoting a sustainable product. They continually self-sabotage any glimmer of possible success with internecine quarreling and stupidity. They ran away from Halo as fast as they could when 343 took the reins and have done literally nothing but shit on the game since it came out.
Add to this the grating sense of entitlement they bring to every discussion of the game and complete lack of perspective regarding their market potential and it's not difficult for me to foresee a future where 343 eventually does throw up their hands and tells the whole lot of them to go fuck themselves.
Maybe there is a company out there that cares, but I can't see them banking a lot of money relying upon competitive players as the first target of appeasement. Why would anyone spend more than 1% of their development assets trying to keep 1% of their audience happy? So they'll keep playing? That would work as an argument if MLG had kept the game in rotation or if AGL was anything more than a fringe niche event- but these things are not true.
Under the guise of "caring about the game" the competitive community has lost sight of the fact that nobody gives a shit about them. Just because they have some quasi-legitimate argument about game balance or team play doesn't excuse them for the responsibility of making a coherent appeal to enough people to make themselves relevant.
Bubba is either my apostle or I am his. In any case, his readings should be a mandatory Halo discussion pre-requisite. :) LOL
More MM maps!
There's a lot of reasons why the population is low. We keep hearing how they failed the competitive community which I do somewhat agree with, but they also failed the casual players as well.
Forge, file shares, lobby system, connection issues,ect. These things effected everyone. Also simple playlists like Flood, Action Sack aren't as good as Reach's versions and in Reach they kept big populations and I think Zombie is still more populated than Flood. Also vehicles get destroyed to fast and most casual players avoid warthogs because of this.
As far as population goes it has been up a little and I don't think the numbers take into consideration customs, campaign and Spartan Ops. The game has gotten much better, and I do see more people enjoying it.
The playlist should be cleaned up. This isn't just a 343 problem, but Bungie had issues with this aswell. Slayer Pro should be in the Throwdown playlist and Legendary Slayer should be in Infinity Slayer playlist, but listed as Slayer. Extraction should be in with Dominion. FFA and Regicide should be in same playlist. Multi-Team would be better as 4 teams of 3.