343 don't understand halo at all

Games Halo Infinite
22

Combat Evolved was specifically created to be a controller-friendly, slowed-down shooter that would bring this (then rather hostile) genre to the consoles. It’s fundamentally a non-competitive game.

I’m not saying Halo should never get new mechanics or never change from its original form. But this particular game franchise was never meant to be competitive and the fans like it for being a casualfest. Unfortunately, all online games are chasing this horrible trend and have to have a competitive scene. Halo becoming competitive is the biggest sign of casual online games getting destroyed by that 1% of people who take these games too seriously.

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23

it doesn’t seem to me that choices reward only competitive play, quite the contrary. there are a lot of social playlists, maybe too many. While Ranked Slayer is missing, inexplicably.

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Totally agree with your statement i have been playing halo since halo CE came out on original xbox

Im 32 years old and i can honestly and sadly say i no longer have that same love or interest in the halo games

since 343 took over the halo games they seem to be distancing halo from its original formula more and more with each game 343 have tried to make it there own thing when they didnt have too!

Bungie left them with all they needed but instead of great stories, great gameplay, fun co op/splitscreen experiences we get games that have terrible writing, destroyed one of the best and oldest halo characters (Cortana) and all the issues you have listed in your post above!

Halo 4 was a big change i didnt mind it though i give it a go as any halo fan would and i was excited to see a new halo game and even though i hated that they killed Cortana off i thought the ending was pretty good and the story to try save cortana and also the introduction of the forrunners and didact was cool and enouvh to keep me gripped

Then halo 5 came along and i never felt so dinstant from the franchise the story was a mess the mutilation of cortanas character was shocking

bringing her back and as the main villain was the worst idea possible and made halo 4 seem irrelevant!

They introduced a load of new characters who lacked personality osirus and blue team also no explanation in game of who blue team is and where they have been the whole time throughout halo reach, halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3 and halo 4 unless you read the books but people who play the games should not be deprived of story in game and expected to find the material to answer questions regarding the games story in other forms of content!!

Then halo infinite came along we were promised all sorts

They knew the fans were angry and disappointed after halo 5 some hoped infinite would be that big jump back to classic halo we all know and love but no!

yet again 343 disappointed they killed cortana yet again and off screen they could have done so much more with her story they could have put plot twists in there could have said when she enetered the forunner system in halo 4 and was trapped in there at the end it corrupted her or the didact corrupted her or that the reason she started going nuts was actually the logic plague not the rampancy and the gravemind could have came back into it

She could have been controlled by logic plague and released the flood on zeta halo then we would have the flood back aswell

Or instead of killing her off yet again and replacing her with another character they should have used the weapon to merge with cortana and cure her and give her another 8 years of life till they find halsey and come up with a new plan to keep her alive longer etc so much potential but we got the most basic mediocre story ever!

The game was so built up on this big scary bad -Yoink!- brute Atriox and he only shows up in first and final cutscene! hes not present in the whole game other than a few seconds at start and end

Instead we get a brute who just constantly video calls you and talks rubbish

The gameplay was repetative and boring same thing every level your inside a forunner structure oh a locked door the nweapon cant open it you need to find a power cell… again and again and again

Huge open world yet it couldnt be less full of life wheres all the banished army the banshees? The ships? The scarabs? The massive platoons? All the brute army that took down all these ships got past the gaurdians and took out all the UNSC and spartans?!

Another stupid part of the story aswell the entire UNSC and spartans are all now just gone?! So the human race that defends earth has been completely wiped out after all these years and theres no more UNSC to protect earth amd other planets in the galaxy?!

No word of what really happened to all those other characters we had in halo 4 and 5 343 just got lazy and wrote them off without even going into it cause they knew they werent loved by fans in halo 4 and 5 apart from lasky he was the only character 343 have created that isnt cringey and unlikable!

My point is 343 have tried and failed with 3 halo games now and the halo fan base is so devided since they took over the halo franchise how many more disappointed games and fans does there have to be before microsoft realise 343 should not be doimg halo!

They need to take it off them and give it to another developer one that apreciated the old bumgie games and realises what the fans want and not spend more time trying to appeal to a new player base instead of the existing one!

Most of my issues are focused on the campaign but as stated by many others the issues in multiplayer are just as bad!

Free to play but then having to purchase all the in game cosmetics and a battle pass system

Xp progression not based on performance only ridiculous challenges that turn the game into more of a constand grind instead of fun competition

No option to turn crossplay off between xbox and PC players

No game lobbies to chat pre match

Lack of content

Lack of bug fixes

Sync issues

And much more

3 Likes
25

Listen, Halo HAS always had a competitive, tightly balanced core. That’s what they mean. Y’all are taking this way too Halo-fan-literally, “What about the social players!” my goodness the social players cannot HAVE fun if the balance is WACK.

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26

Some of my best times playing were with randos from around the globe. Id server hop on my xbox and play in England in their late night time. Met some really cool people. Loved their trash talk, play style and overall gave me insight to their way of life. Id ask questions in the lobby about what its like there. And they would ask the same. PLaying with people in Cali while I grew up NY. I miss those days. Having good times, laughting my -Yoink!- off till my gut hurt. The pre and post game lobbies with the bomb. It was that social aspect I absolutely loved.

Now in Infinite, I have none of that. My friends here have all abandoned Halo all together. I still play HI a few rounds a day, just because it brings back those old memories. But as of now, Infinte is just a bland shooter. Bungie always wanted Halo to be a fun, social game. The old LAN networks brought people together. What really bugs me, and i mean really bothers me is, Halo Infinite was developed during the pandemic. You would think that being on lockdown and not being able to be with or see friends, they would have made the game with social in mind. But it didnt happen. Gaming sky rocketed durning the plague, yet one of the biggest social games in the world was released with zero social aspects? Like why?! Makes zero sense to me… I dont know man, I think 343i just doesnt understand people anymore. Flippin sad man…

4 Likes
27

bro you do not understand halo at all it seems

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unfortunately for you I do.

I know, it takes more than 5 brain cells to understand Halo. If dropping 4v4 maps, not caring about balance, no ranks, etc. were conclusive to a successful Halo they wouldn’t be funneling millions of dollars into the Esports scene. Its incredibly important, you need a large group of people that love your game. You can’t just rely on seasonal people that leave a few days after the beginning of each season. You might as well say that Valorant or CSGO or Starcraft and so on are not competitive games, it defies everything we know about the franchise.

Certain games, like say Fortnite, can say they were clearly never designed with Esports in mind, but Halo? Please, they’ve been making competitive titles since Halo 2. CE is more arguable.

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29

the halo titles after halo ce only started to become competitive because the esports scene started to edit game variants and host tournaments to make it competitive, the game was never competitive from the start so I don’t know what you’re on about

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30

No they formed organically and over time settings were modified to cater to them. Back in CE-Reach the events were entirely formed off of other peoples paychecks, they were hosted just because people loved Halo. Nowadays they are funded out of MS own pocket but the interest has obviously not diminished too much since 2001.

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Remember when lobbies wouldn’t disband after every match so you could rematch the enemy team while trash talking in postgame lobby? Hell, remember postgame lobbies in general? Remember map voting? Why did all those things have to go, they were perfect in games as they were.

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34

I think Halo would do fine without esports.

Ironically, I think the problem is that Halo is really really good at lore heavy campaigns, and competitive multiplayer is just the opposite of that.

In the future I could see someone continuing to develop and sell an MP only Halo (like the MP of infiinte,) with a seperate dev continuing the story/campaigns without being held back by sandbox purists.

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35

We’ve never had a Halo game that succeeded without it. I suppose alternatively you could say that if the game is successful its likely to have a strong competitive scene. Its a key element to the franchise, in terms of MP anyway.

36

And, of course, MP is only half of the franchise.

I don’t remember esports being key to the success of Halo 3? By what metrics would you gauge Esports involvement in the success of a game?

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37

:thinking:

That sounds like an almost impossible metric to gauge. Things like viewership, competitors (pro players/amateurs), and prize pools are all good metrics nowadays I’d say.

Well its a which came first type of argument.

One could argue naturally a competitive scene is formed, one could argue a game has to have certain elements of its design in order for competitions to thrive.

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I mean but Halo 3 contained all kinds of things that have since been removed in favor of competition? Dual Wielding is a great example. I could be wrong, but I thought it was removed because of the effect it had on the competitive sandbox.

As you said, it’s a chicken and the egg type thing. You are saying we couldn’t have a successful Halo game without Esports, but as you mentioned, competitive scenes naturally form around good games. That’s why my thinking is that Esports are not necessary to a successful Halo game, but are simply a by-product of one.

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39

Halo is a competitive shooter, it is also a social game, both of these things can be true.

That being said if you think the problems with Infinite and 343 in general are that they focus too much on the competitive aspect of Halo let alone competitive Halo players you have completely lost the plot.

This has been a weird talking point that started gaining ground in Halo 5 for reasons I can’t fathom. Aside from a few token concessions 343 has never catered to competitive players. The HCS exists as an extension of the marketing team to get people to log in to grab their req packs and twitch drops to keep players going in their MTX ecosystems.

Because that is who they are really targeting. Yes 343 chases trends from loadout shooters, to Advanced mobility, to bloated open worlds, the main audience they are targeting are the ones who will drop huge amounts of money for little in return.

This is an industry wide problem where the absolute minimum viable product gets thrown out because they can recoup the losses by exploiting basic human responses rather than taking time with more complex experiences and content.

Halo as it currently stands is a storefront with a game attached like most battlepass faire.

What you are actually doing is providing 343 cover by scapegoating the competitive aspect of Halo and turning the discussion into Competitive vs social rather than 343’s bad choices vs the community as a whole.

40

Dual Wielding meant very little to Halo 2/3 competitively speaking, 343i simply didn’t like the concept. Why dual wield two weak weapons when you can just have one more powerful? Its just not something 343i cares about, just like with the no playable elites thing.

There are absolutely certain games nowadays that I question the popularity of without a competitive scene… Valorant, CSGO, LoL, basically all fighting games lol.

Depending on who you think are a part of the competitive community, its a massive and passionate community. I would see them as the backbone to Halo MP, without them the game essentially doesn’t have a strong foundation of players. One could argue that modes like BTB or social features are more important, but we saw how fast Halo 4 died out, so there is evidence to support my claim.

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I mean I think Halo 4 died out fast for a variety of reasons and we can’t use it as a metric to judge social features.

How are you defining the competitive community, in your mind? If the definition is “people who play in tournaments or professionally,” I would imagine that is maybe 1 percent of the playerbase? Maybe I’m totally off.

42

That’s true. However, it was by far the most casual game on release, only thing that came close was Reach in my mind. Horrible 4v4 maps, horrible balancing (when pros gotta cut out like 80% of the sandbox to make it playable that’s a sign its a little unfair), bad mechanics, etc.

Edit: People tend to forget that things like balancing and lack of a ranking system were huge issues with Halo 4, these were talked about almost daily on here and on Neogaf or whatever, so its not fair to say the lack of competitive integrity or design philosophy didn’t hurt the game, it absolutely did. CoD mechanics and them changing the general art design and some other stupid decisions did not help lol, but it absolutely suffered due to having nothing but BTB maps and a broken MP design wise for a long time.

well to only list pros/amateurs as a part of the competitive community is probably unfair. I would argue that anybody that supports competitive play should be considered a part of the ecosystem. Anybody that watches events (even if you do not actually pay attention, you are supporting it via ads and so forth) anybody that buys the HCS skins, anybody that plays Ranked (not all Ranked modes obviously, but the MLG/HCS playlist or in other words just the regular 4v4 Ranked playlist in Infinite) and then you got anybody that say makes content related to it. Its fair to think the number of people that contribute to the scene is massive.

This is a bit different from the 2000’s… Esports is much larger than it once was, likewise the popularity and general interest has gone way up since then. To put this into perspective, Infinite probably gets more viewers for its events (LAN’s is what I’m talking about) than it has actual players. Craploads of people that really enjoy watching competitions even for games they don’t necessarily play. The competitive scene in general makes up a much larger chunk than it likely once did.

43

You don’t need ranked slayer when the sbmm is so tight every slayer match is a sweat fest. It exists already, just without the ranks being shown.

1 Like