3/10 Halo Players have finished a Halo Campaign

Community General Discussion
1

On average, at least. I averaged out the percentages of the Campaign completion achievements for Easy/Normal difficulty, and since the trends for all games’ Normal completion achievements are consistent (around 20-25%), so it can be reasonably assumed that the trends for Easy completions when it comes to games that don’t have Easy achievements are similar (around 30-35%). Specific percentages:

Halo 3: 22.49% (N)
Halo Wars: 27.36%
Halo 3: ODST: 27.71% (N)
Halo Reach: 22.76% (N)
Halo CEA: 23.33%
Halo 4: 36.22%
Halo 2A: somewhere around 12% (MCC won’t load the achievements right now)
Halo 5: 35.01%
Halo Wars 2: 21.61%

All stats are based on Easy Difficulty, with the exception of Reach, 3, and ODST, which are based on Normal. I’m not including Halo 2A’s percentages (or any of MCC’s for that matter) because they’re an outlier and MCC is very much unreliable when it comes to… many… things.

Honestly, I’m not surprised by the overall numbers. I thought they might be a little higher, somewhere in the 40% range, but all in all 3/10 isn’t surprising all things considered. What is surprising is that the stats for ODST and CEA are that low. Those games are effectively Campaign-only games that came with a $15 DLC pack for Halo 3 and Reach respectively. ODST may have had Firefight, but Campaign is the only way to unlock the Characters or some of the Maps for Firefight, but at least I can somewhat get behind people who only played Firefight.

But the the fact that 76.67% of the people who bought CEA bought it only for the $15 Anniversary DLC for Reach, even though the game itself is $60, really disturbs me. I refuse to believe that such a large amount of people are that financially inept that they spent $60 extra dollars for a DLC pack that could have been bought separately for $15. Is this the concept of brand-based-buying at work? The Campaign was literally the only part of Combat Evolved available in Combat Evolved Anniversary. Surely people who bought it realized this? It was a game based around the remastering of the first Halo game. And yet almost no one who bought it bothered to complete it. That’s probably gonna haunt me for the rest of my life.

So, you may be asking, why is this post relevant? Well, given 343i’s recent statements about “simple” Campaigns and the many discussions that resulted, I thought that knowing just how many people in the Halo Community are capable of making an informed opinion about a given campaign. I think that we can reasonably assume that the people in each group (those who have completed a campaign versus those who haven’t) has remained relatively consistent throught Halo’s history. The people who beat one campaign are likely the majority of the people who beat the next campaign, and so on. The same presumably goes for the other side of the equation.

So the statement that 7/10 Halo players have never completed a Halo Campaign and therefore cannot offer a valid or informed opinion on one or any of the Campaigns is rather unfortunately true. Halo is one of those FPS series that is known for its higher quality campaigns compared to its competitors (i.e. CoD, BF). And yet, the numbers show this doesn’t matter to the majority of Halo Players.

My personal take on this? The fact that enough people are complaining that 343i’s campaigns are “too complex” is, quite frankly, ridiculous. The likelihood that even half of the people complaining even started a Halo Campaign, let alone finished one, is small. Even if they just watched a playthrough online or looked up a plot summary, it’s not the same thing as actually experiencing the Campaigns yourself. Video Games are meant to be played, not watched, and the idea that you can make an informed opinion about something without having been able to personally experience it when you are fully capable of doing do is utterly insane.

Now, I’m going to assume that the majority of people on this forum are part of the 30%. A good portion of the other 70% likely have never visited a Halo Forum, either this one or another one like r/Halo. But by that same token, I also don’t see that many complaints regarding the supposedly over-complicated 343i campaigns (Halo 5’s story is bad for other reasons, which have been discussed at length since its release, so I’m referring to Halo 4 here). Who, if not the people who have played the Halo 4 Campaign fully, are making these statements? Halo 5’s Campaign is nowhere near good in terms of plot, but it being complex is not the reason. So who, besides the handful of people I see here now and again, are making statements about things they are in no position to make valid opinions about? Surely these people are loud enough and large enough in number to get 343i’s attention, the latter of which is something the 30% certainly don’t have.

What can we conclude from all of this? That the majority of people who are changing 343i’s method of storytelling are likely the same people who couldn’t tell you what the name of Halo Reach’s 4th mission is or Halo 4’s 7th mission is. I realize that there are people who have played the Campaigns and have made this same kind of feedback, but at the very least they can make legitimate arguments about something they actually know about and can support their points with actual experiences, and for the most part it’s pretty easy to tell who these people are.

TL;DR: 70% of Halo Players haven’t played a Halo Campaign and therefore have no place making feedback on them.

2

CEA was actually $40 on launch. Granted, they are still overpaying for $15 DLC.

Good research though, however unsurprising. I knew a lot of people even in the Halo 3 days that didn’t give a damn about the story, just about the multiplayer. It almost doesn’t surprise me that Halo 5’s campaign % is higher, simply because people aren’t coming to the series solely for multiplayer anymore. Halo 4’s campaign % makes sense, because it was the return of the Chief, and IMO the best Halo campaign yet.

3

I only finish the campaigns on heroic and legendary, since we don’t know the total numbers for each difficulty level it’s hard to reach conclusions. However, the numbers are interesting to look at.

4

> 2533274850493408;2:
> CEA was actually $40 on launch. Granted, they are still overpaying for $15 DLC.
>
> Good research though, however unsurprising. I knew a lot of people even in the Halo 3 days that didn’t give a damn about the story, just about the multiplayer. It almost doesn’t surprise me that Halo 5’s campaign % is higher, simply because people aren’t coming to the series solely for multiplayer anymore. Halo 4’s campaign % makes sense, because it was the return of the Chief, and IMO the best Halo campaign yet.

I do find it funny that as much as people love to bash on Halo 4’s Campaign for having to much from the EU, its Normal Completion is at 22.99% while Halo 3’s is at 22.49%. Proportionally, more people cared about Halo 4’s Story than Halo 3’s.

5

> 2533274875982754;3:
> I only finish the campaigns on heroic and legendary, since we don’t know the total numbers for each difficulty level it’s hard to reach conclusions. However, the numbers are interesting to look at.

The Heroic’s generally hover around 15% and Legendary’s rarely go higher than 5%. The trends have stayed consistent throughout every Halo release, and if Bungie had made Easy-difficulty Achievements as well as having some way of tracking Campaign Completions for the original CE and Halo 2, we could make a much more solidified conclusion. However, I’d imagine that Halo CE’s Campaign Completion is much higher than the others, since it lacked online MP.

6

Well, I’m that brand-loyal guy who bought CEA more or less as a way to support the studio. I think I may have played one or two missions, realized that it looked good but not that good, sounded okay but not as good as the original, and in the end had nothing to offer that I hadn’t already experienced dozens of times before. I bought MCC knowing that all this would be the case, but anxious to see and use H2A forge. Worth every penny of the $60 I paid for it.

On the subject of people freely expressing negativity about products they don’t ever use or have hardly ever used… this just seems to me like the new age we live in. Facts and opinions have gone their seperate ways. Objective reality and personal reality are not just having a trial seperation. They’re lawyering up and getting divorced. And why not? What consequences are there for living in a bubble and telling everyone else that they’re dumb losers, sad really, if they don’t get on board with you? Ill-informed snap judgments are the new black.

And I suspect you may be misinterpreting the differentiation between “simple” and “complex.” 343 isn’t saying that H5’s campaign was a failure because it was too complex for youngsters to comprehend (although such an argument would not be difficult to make). My theory is that they’re using “simple” and “complex” as euphimisms for “cheap” and “expensive.” For “short” and “long.” Possibly even for “contracted out” and “created in-house.” And the numbers you ran are exactly the reason why. The truth is that, opinions aside, campaign modes are a resource hog that have very little more reason to exist at this point than do some of the other amazing-but-dead features of Halo - features like Spartan Ops and solo firefight. A vocal minority misses them when they’re gone, but a minority of players, vocal or not, doesn’t justify the development budgets for these game modes. The writing about campaign has been on the wall for a while. Hearing them talk about simple campaigns is just one more signpost on the path to the end of Halo storytelling. In fact, we’re getting close to the point where it would be cheaper to make a big-budget, live-action feature film as the tool for driving sales of a multiplayer-only game. And the costs would be shouldered in part by a movie studio and not exclusively by 343. I’m not saying that’s what the future holds, but it’s one possible future that seems at this point to be as likely as any other.

In the end I’m really not surprised that the average short-attention-span thirteen year old gamer might look at a twenty hour campaign, or even a twelve hour campaign, and think, “who cares?”

7

I would also like to make a second point (not exclusive to Halo) that percentages steadily decrease the later you get in Campaign Missions. For example: the First mission percentage for any difficulty for Halo 5 is around 45%, and steadily decreases each mission until it hits 35%. Just find that interesting that people regularly don’t finish campaigns they’ve started.

8

> 2533274873843883;6:
> Well, I’m that brand-loyal guy who bought CEA more or less as a way to support the studio. I think I may have played one or two missions, realized that it looked good but not that good, sounded okay but not as good as the original, and in the end had nothing to offer that I hadn’t already experienced dozens of times before. I bought MCC knowing that all this would be the case, but anxious to see and use H2A forge. Worth every penny of the $60 I paid for it.
>
> On the subject of people freely expressing negativity about products they don’t ever use or have hardly ever used… this just seems to me like the new age we live in. Facts and opinions have gone their seperate ways. Objective reality and personal reality are not just having a trial seperation. They’re lawyering up and getting divorced. And why not? What consequences are there for living in a bubble and telling everyone else that they’re dumb losers, sad really, if they don’t get on board with you? Ill-informed snap judgments are the new black.
>
> And I suspect you may be misinterpreting the differentiation between “simple” and “complex.” 343 isn’t saying that H5’s campaign was a failure because it was too complex for youngsters to comprehend (although such an argument would not be difficult to make). My theory is that they’re using “simple” and “complex” as euphimisms for “cheap” and “expensive.” For “short” and “long.” Possibly even for “contracted out” and “created in-house.” And the numbers you ran are exactly the reason why. The truth is that, opinions aside, campaign modes are a resource hog that have very little more reason to exist at this point than do some of the other amazing-but-dead features of Halo - features like Spartan Ops and solo firefight. A vocal minority misses them when they’re gone, but a minority of players, vocal or not, doesn’t justify the development budgets for these game modes. The writing about campaign has been on the wall for a while. Hearing them talk about simple campaigns is just one more signpost on the path to the end of Halo storytelling. In fact, we’re getting close to the point where it would be cheaper to make a big-budget, live-action feature film as the tool for driving sales of a multiplayer-only game. And the costs would be shouldered in part by a movie studio and not exclusively by 343. I’m not saying that’s what the future holds, but it’s one possible future that seems at this point to be as likely as any other.
>
> In the end I’m really not surprised that the average short-attention-span thirteen year old gamer might look at a twenty hour campaign, or even a twelve hour campaign, and think, “who cares?”

I understand what they mean when “simple” and “complex” get thrown around in discussions (and why they refer more the Halo 4 than Halo 5), but at the same time I played through Halo 4 at launch and I fully understood its story and characters at the age of 13. While I had read the majority of the released Halo novels up to that point, I had taken one look at Cryptum, thought screw this, and I didn’t read the Forerunner Trilogy until a year after Halo 4 launched. And yet people like ActMan, who have been playing Halo for years (Halo 4 was my first Halo FPS), couldn’t seem to comprehend something that a 13 year old could. That’s something that perplexes me to this day.

9

I just found out in Halo MCC achievement i am part of the 0.03% player who got LASO Achievement done on all Halo game. Wow omg that crazy i hope the stat is creditable from Microsoft? Is Microsoft taking stat about all game sold percent %, taking stat about all Xbox One sold percent %, or taking stat about all Account that play Halo MCC percent % for them to get information on how much percent % for Achievements done? I final got 95% done for Halo MCC the only achievement i need done for campaign is the last two achievement which get under 3 hour par time for Halo 1 and Halo 2 and all the other achievement is online multiplayer which for some reason Halo MCC will not let me play online muiltplayer. I hope i can fine someone who can help me on co-op to finally get the last two achievement done.

10

> 2533274978372576;9:
> I just found out in Halo MCC achievement i am part of the 0.03% player who got LASO Achievement done on all Halo game. Wow omg that crazy i hope the stat is creditable from Microsoft? Is Microsoft taking stat about all game sold percent %, taking stat about all Xbox One sold percent %, or taking stat about all Account that play Halo MCC percent % for them to get information on how much percent % for Achievements done? I final got 95% done for Halo MCC the only achievement i need done for campaign is the last two achievement which get under 3 hour par time for Halo 1 and Halo 2 and all the other achievement is online multiplayer which for some reason Halo MCC will not let me play online muiltplayer. I hope i can fine someone who can help me on co-op to finally get the last two achievement done.

Percentage of people who have unlocked the achievement out of how many people purchased the game. MCC’s online functionality is the main source of its issues so yeah, if you’re having issues now you might continue to have them for awhile. Also, 95% IN MCC?!? Damn, dude. That’s an Achievement in and of itself. Congrats on that!

11

I feel like the important question to ask here is how many of those players actually kept on playing the game in any way. Although I barely have any data go with, I’m under the impression that player retention for triple-A games is generally not high to begin with (i.e., some significant percentage of players never put even 10 hours into the game). I could be totally wrong on this, but at any rate I feel like simply looking at achievement completition stats doesn’t tell the whole story here. Not that I necessarily expect the majority of players to complete the campaign, but I would expect the campaign completition percentage to be at least 5-10% higher if only players with, say, at least 30 hours in the game were taken into account.

12

> 2533274825830455;11:
> I feel like the important question to ask here is how many of those players actually kept on playing the game in any way. Although I barely have any data go with, I’m under the impression that player retention for triple-A games is generally not high to begin with (i.e., some significant percentage of players never put even 10 hours into the game). I could be totally wrong on this, but at any rate I feel like simply looking at achievement completition stats doesn’t tell the whole story here. Not that I necessarily expect the majority of players to complete the campaign, but I would expect the campaign completition percentage to be at least 5-10% higher if only players with, say, at least 30 hours in the game were taken into account.

True, but at the same time Halo Wars 2 officially released exactly a week ago, and it’s already showing the same trends as all previous Halos (including the original Halo Wars). However, while I agree that player retention certainly is a factor here, the fact that the percentages stay around the same points even across Halo games with vastly differing total populations and player retention rates (Halo 3 vs Halo 4, for example) certainly strikes me as being too consistent for player retention to have very much of an effect.

But then we have CEA’s stats for Campaign Completion. A game that was $40 (not $60, as I had initally recalled) for a remastered Campaign and a $15 DLC for Reach. And yet, less than a fourth of the people who bought what was essentially a Campaign-focused game even finished it. 75% of the people who bought CEA, surely knowing full well they were paying for a Campaign and a bonus (and separately available) DLC, spent $40 to play a $15 DLC. There’s no way that player retention could have been that poor for such a specific release of content. There was no reason to purchase CEA if you didn’t want to play the Campaign; and the fact the majority wasted an extra $25 on a DLC for Reach is utterly perplexing. What did such a large amount of people buy it for if not the remastered Campaign? It’s like purchasing Destiny only for SRL and ignoring the actual game itself.

13

> 2533274950478805;8:
> > 2533274873843883;6:
> >
>
> I understand what they mean when “simple” and “complex” get thrown around in discussions (and why they refer more the Halo 4 than Halo 5), but at the same time I played through Halo 4 at launch and I fully understood its story and characters at the age of 13. While I had read the majority of the released Halo novels up to that point, I had taken one look at Cryptum, thought screw this, and I didn’t read the Forerunner Trilogy until a year after Halo 4 launched. And yet people like ActMan, who have been playing Halo for years (Halo 4 was my first Halo FPS), couldn’t seem to comprehend something that a 13 year old could. That’s something that perplexes me to this day.

ActMan is a living example of the reality bubbles I’m talking about. There is nothing on earth to prevent insanity from ensuing when casual opinions combine with a global platform from which they can spew. There are many good reasons why traditional op-ed pages in newspapers existed under tight editorial scrutiny. But not anymore. We have the democratization of opinion in ways that reach so far beyond the ballot box that I’m pretty sure de Tocqueville would be spinning in his grave. And the people like you and I who find ourselves on the receiving end of all these distorted realities… we can hardly tell which end is up anymore. Apparently in the new reality a thing becomes true merely by its having been stated, whether in a vacuum of fact, or directly in the face of factual contradiction. It seems to make no difference.

Wow, did I get off on a tangent there. At any rate, as Tsassi pointed out, there are more than a few factors that could account for distorted data. I can tell you right now that the low numbers of the earlier campaigns have as much to do with people like me who don’t play on the same gamertag today that they did twelve years ago.

That said: Hear me now because you will never hear me say it again, but ActMan was not wrong when he suggested that Halo campaigns would be better off if they depended less on extended lore. At least I think it was ActMan who said that. Whoever it was, I agree with him.

14

Looking at these stats, I just realized I’ve never beaten a campaign on easy. Ever. I’ve only ever beaten campaigns on normal or heroic, and attempted to beat Halo 5’s on Legendary, but I don’t have the patience for it.

15

> 2533274860945165;14:
> Looking at these stats, I just realized I’ve never beaten a campaign on easy. Ever. I’ve only ever beaten campaigns on normal or heroic, and attempted to beat Halo 5’s on Legendary, but I don’t have the patience for it.

Well, all Campaign completion achievements for Easy and Normal are unlocked from playing Heroic or Legendary. You get all 4 if you play on Legendary. Which is why the Easy campaign achievements are what I used: regardless of difficulty, everyone who’s completed a Campaign will have those achievements.

16

> 2533274950478805;10:
> > 2533274978372576;9:
> > I just found out in Halo MCC achievement i am part of the 0.03% player who got LASO Achievement done on all Halo game. Wow omg that crazy i hope the stat is creditable from Microsoft? Is Microsoft taking stat about all game sold percent %, taking stat about all Xbox One sold percent %, or taking stat about all Account that play Halo MCC percent % for them to get information on how much percent % for Achievements done? I final got 95% done for Halo MCC the only achievement i need done for campaign is the last two achievement which get under 3 hour par time for Halo 1 and Halo 2 and all the other achievement is online multiplayer which for some reason Halo MCC will not let me play online muiltplayer. I hope i can fine someone who can help me on co-op to finally get the last two achievement done.
>
> Percentage of people who have unlocked the achievement out of how many people purchased the game. MCC’s online functionality is the main source of its issues so yeah, if you’re having issues now you might continue to have them for awhile. Also, 95% IN MCC?!? Damn, dude. That’s an Achievement in and of itself. Congrats on that!

Thank you for your kind words. I wanted to get 100% done for Halo MCC achievement, but i am happy with just 95% done, which i did 45% of the achievements in less then two month time.

17

> 2533274873843883;13:
> > 2533274950478805;8:
> > > 2533274873843883;6:
> > >
> >
> > I understand what they mean when “simple” and “complex” get thrown around in discussions (and why they refer more the Halo 4 than Halo 5), but at the same time I played through Halo 4 at launch and I fully understood its story and characters at the age of 13. While I had read the majority of the released Halo novels up to that point, I had taken one look at Cryptum, thought screw this, and I didn’t read the Forerunner Trilogy until a year after Halo 4 launched. And yet people like ActMan, who have been playing Halo for years (Halo 4 was my first Halo FPS), couldn’t seem to comprehend something that a 13 year old could. That’s something that perplexes me to this day.
>
> ActMan is a living example of the reality bubbles I’m talking about. There is nothing on earth to prevent insanity from ensuing when casual opinions combine with a global platform from which they can spew. There are many good reasons why traditional op-ed pages in newspapers existed under tight editorial scrutiny. But not anymore. We have the democratization of opinion in ways that reach so far beyond the ballot box that I’m pretty sure de Tocqueville would be spinning in his grave. And the people like you and I who find ourselves on the receiving end of all these distorted realities… we can hardly tell which end is up anymore. Apparently in the new reality a thing becomes true merely by its having been stated, whether in a vacuum of fact, or directly in the face of factual contradiction. It seems to make no difference.
>
> Wow, did I get off on a tangent there. At any rate, as Tsassi pointed out, there are more than a few factors that could account for distorted data. I can tell you right now that the low numbers of the earlier campaigns have as much to do with people like me who don’t play on the same gamertag today that they did twelve years ago.
>
> That said: Hear me now because you will never hear me say it again, but ActMan was not wrong when he suggested that Halo campaigns would be better off if they depended less on extended lore. At least I think it was ActMan who said that. Whoever it was, I agree with him.

I don’t think that the Mainline Halo games should rely on the EU to tell its story (whicg Halo 4 does not since all of the dialogue ingame and terminals give more insight into the Didact than any other game did for any other villain), but at the same time I don’t want the EU to be relegated to being mere enrichment just because Halo fans don’t like having to expose themselves to more Halo (it’s almost as crazy as the Campaign percentages). I think that the best solution is this: make a spinoff Halo game series revolving around EU-centric events that don’t feature a multiplayer component but instead focus on an indepth Story mode. Have the mainline games be somewhat standalone from the EU, so the less knowledgeable fans can play through them without having to worry that they’ll need to spend 5-10 minutes looking up and reading a plot summary of the latest Halo books to know who a certain character is. And then we’ll have the Halo “Stories” spinoff series that will be able to please the lore fans and those who maybe want a good starting point to experience the EU. Now that I think about it, that idea alone deserves its own topic…

18

So all the people (70% who haven’t completed the campaign) that says things like: “I played Halo since day one” and “I’m a veteran” have really no idea of what their talking about when they start to complain on the campaign. To be honest, I prefer the campaign over the multiplayer. I can tell that I actually liked Halo 4 story (specially for the ending), and I think that the Master Chief saga should have ended there.

19

> 2533274978372576;9:
> I just found out in Halo MCC achievement i am part of the 0.03% player who got LASO Achievement done on all Halo game. Wow omg that crazy i hope the stat is creditable from Microsoft? Is Microsoft taking stat about all game sold percent %, taking stat about all Xbox One sold percent %, or taking stat about all Account that play Halo MCC percent % for them to get information on how much percent % for Achievements done? I final got 95% done for Halo MCC the only achievement i need done for campaign is the last two achievement which get under 3 hour par time for Halo 1 and Halo 2 and all the other achievement is online multiplayer which for some reason Halo MCC will not let me play online muiltplayer. I hope i can fine someone who can help me on co-op to finally get the last two achievement done.

And I thought 0.37% of that Halo 4 achievement in mission 3 was rare.

Also that is a low number. I assumed 50% at the minimum.

20

> 2533274950478805;17:
> > 2533274873843883;13:
> > > 2533274950478805;8:
> > > > 2533274873843883;6:
> > > >
>
> I don’t think that the Mainline Halo games should rely on the EU to tell its story (whicg Halo 4 does not since all of the dialogue ingame and terminals give more insight into the Didact than any other game did for any other villain), but at the same time I don’t want the EU to be relegated to being mere enrichment just because Halo fans don’t like having to expose themselves to more Halo (it’s almost as crazy as the Campaign percentages). I think that the best solution is this: make a spinoff Halo game series revolving around EU-centric events that don’t feature a multiplayer component but instead focus on an indepth Story mode. Have the mainline games be somewhat standalone from the EU, so the less knowledgeable fans can play through them without having to worry that they’ll need to spend 5-10 minutes looking up and reading a plot summary of the latest Halo books to know who a certain character is. And then we’ll have the Halo “Stories” spinoff series that will be able to please the lore fans and those who maybe want a good starting point to experience the EU. Now that I think about it, that idea alone deserves its own topic…

I like that idea very much. But if the number of players who finish campaign are even a little accurate then that suggests to me that there are not enough players to support the expense of the project. In fact, a good argument could be made that what you’re describing already had a go in the form of Spartan Ops. That was a spin off rich with good storytelling and characterization (debatable, I know, but so says recon) and decent if not great campaign-style gameplay. I loved it. Most other players didn’t and Spops2 didn’t make the cut when it came time to build H5. My guess is that you would see the same process play out over and over again no matter how you tried to spoon-feed your story to a predominately multiplayer customer base.