343, you just don't get it. Do you ?

Games Other Halo
1

Why, oh why are you removing King of the Hill? I honestly haven’t seen one reaction that says “YAY, KOTH is going!”.

While I understand the concept of having a rotational playlist, it makes absolutely no sense to leave the playlists with a constantly high population in the chance of being removed.

Now, before I get onto my next point, do not take what I am about to say as an anti- Halo 4 statement, because it isn’t; I am simply questioning why we cannot have a set of playlists that a permanent and a set of playlists that are rotated.

Team Slayer, BTB, SWAT are always going to have a high population, so why not put them in a playlist along with oddball and King of the Hill, which are quintessentially Halo. If you were not able to play CTF on Blood Gulch, I apologise as you will not be able to relate to this, but it was by far one of the best Multiplayer experiences of all time.

I think a rotational playlist is brilliant, honestly. It allows new fresh game types to get a shot at being permanent, but it ultimately will drop your population until peoples game types come back around.

There are game types that people are permanently going to play:

Team Slayer
A FFA
Oddball
King of the Hill
BTB
SWAT
Doubles
Snipers
MLG (not Team Slayer Pro)

They will always have a population. How do I know? Past games have always had large populations in these playlists.

Now Halo 3 separated more strict ruled game types into a Ranked playlist, with social being more fun and the objective not necessarily being to win. Why not have a rotational set of game types as a social style playlist? It would enable the testing of new, fun game types, whist retaining classic multiplayer modes.

Before someone states that KOTH and Oddball are “outdated” and “Old Halo” and that we should “adapt” to “new game types”. I am not stating that they should be in the game because they are “Classic”, I am purely saying this because they have a PROVEN track record. Testing of new game types should always be encouraged in it’s own playlist.

343, please realise that the one thing that all gamers want is choice. I will not start debating the perks of having a ranked and non ranked system, but for things like the actual game type I think is a pretty important part of why we play Halo, so please recognise that by removing our choice of what game types of what to play, we almost feel like we have bought something that we cannot use a few weeks of the year.

Choice = Gamers paradise.

Thank you.

2

yeah keep King of the Hill. IN reach we had like 20 playlists and man all of them were enjoyed and played. we should have the same here.

3

You and I dont always agree, but they should never take away, only continue to add. If you take away blocks of the pyramid, you never will reach the pinnacle. So are we stuck with just the set number of playlists, with no room for additional playlists?

4

This is a core fundamental issue that I reckon most of the community will agree on.A very good analogy I might add.

5

They are worried about keeping their playlists consolidated to up player mass by type, but…

I think they would be pleasantly surprised about the # of people who play increasing if there were more playlist options, but that’s just me.

For now, it seems we are going the route of - here 8 playlists 5 of which use only 5-6 of the maps, play them, or don’t play.

Regardless, your list is much better than theirs.

IMO- FFA Regicide and Flood are absolute wastes of space - let alone when you compare them to KotH…

6

> They are worried about keeping their playlists consolidated to up player mass by type, but…
>
> I think they would be pleasantly surprised about the # of people who play increasing if there were more playlist options, but that’s just me.
>
>
> For now, it seems we are going the route of - here 8 playlists 5 of which use only 5-6 of the maps, play them, or don’t play.
>
>
>
> Regardless, your list is much better than theirs.
>
>
> IMO- FFA Regicide and Flood are absolute wastes of space - let alone when you compare them to KotH…

I don’t understand how they can honestly think that by reducing choice they are going to get more players. 5 weeks after release, Halo 3 had 290k players, Halo 4 has 100k.

I really am stumped by the reasoning behind these decisions, are they purposefully trying to destroy the community?

7

It almost appears that 343i is not in total control of the game. Its like some MS bigwig is pulling the puppet strings. You know, you can sit a giant table in a penthouse office and throw out random suggestions that have a ripple effect. When someone is making decisions that has no understanding of the game or the community. This is what we get.

One thing that stands out in my mind, was this:

From a bulletin
BS Angel and staff show a group MS corporate staff the game, they say, “it looks and plays just like a halo game.”

The MS corporates were implying that they wanted changes to be made to be reflective of other games, and this my friends, is exactly what made Bungie want to break away from MS. Meaning you want to have huge funding, listen to us or we will pull your funding. 343i had no choice but to comply. We, the community were the losers.

8

> It almost appears that 343i is not in total control of the game. Its like some MS bigwig is pulling the puppet strings. You know, you can sit a giant table in a penthouse office and throw out random suggestions that have a ripple effect. When someone is making decisions that has no understanding of the game or the community. This is what we get.
>
> One thing that stands out in my mind, was this:
>
> From a bulletin
> BS Angel and staff show a group MS corporate staff the game, they say, “it looks and plays just like a halo game.”
>
> The MS corporates were implying that they wanted changes to be made to be reflective of other games, and this my friends, is exactly what made Bungie want to break away from MS. Meaning you want to have huge funding, listen to us or we will pull your funding. 343i had no choice but to comply. We, the community were the losers.

To a degree, I agree with this, however we cannot blame everything on Microsoft.

They will have looked at the facts, seen that having split playlists yields more players (proven Halo 3 track record) and they will see that removing aspects is killing this game.

Now I am going to get flamed, but the point is factual. Halo 3 had a higher population than Halo 4 does now, even 6-7 months on.

Halo 3 must have done something correct, and blaming Microsoft on the bad parts of this game is a bit of a scapegoat if I’m honest, as if they are as profit incentivised as everyone says they are, they would be changing the game more like Halo 3.

9

I read somewhere that the rotational lists are a product of a limited number of servers…

All i know is the week they rotate Dominion is the week that I stop playing (unless it rotates with Extraction)…

10

Limited amount of servers?

I don’t even…

11

agree 100% with the OP.

You need to keep these High population Gametypes.

And getting rid of them this early in the game really sucks…

I could completely understand if people were having problems trying to get into a game like 2 years down the line when the population is alot lower. but we dont seem to be having that problem. why would we limit the gametypes we can play already?

If they really don’t like the way its set up atleast throw them into a “Team Objective” Based playlist.

Also adding team doubles, and MLG is a really good idea.

Snipers aswell, why was this removed?

12

For all those who constantly keep insisting they compare Halo 3 to Halo 4 population wise:

2007 is not the same as 2012, Halo 3 is not the same as Halo 4. The amount of time that has passed has changed the gaming landscape considerably and it’s no longer proper to compare them as black and white as we used to. Not only has there been a huge influx of casual games (The Wii, Kinect, Playstation Move)to grab gamer’s attention and money, there have also been a huge amount of games with online modes (or online stat tracking) that compete against each other (Assassin’s Creed, GTA IV, Skyrim, Minecraft, as well as online competition (PC, PS3, etc).

Back in 2007, Xbox LIVE pretty much dominated the online market (except for PC) compared to the other consoles. Halo 3 released in 2007. What games did it have to compete with online between Sept 2007 and Dec 31st, 2007?

Call of Duty 4 and that’s it. Grand Theft Auto IV didn’t come out until April 2008, Battlefield Bad Company June 2008, and Gears of War 2 didn’t come out Nov 2008. Major competitors didn’t come out until months later giving Halo 3 a lot of players from September to November and then some.

Now let’s look at what major multiplayer titles Halo 4 has to compete with for gamer’s time and attention now:

In no particular order

  • 4 different Call of Duty titles! (at the same time!)
  • Minecraft (which recently topped even CoD for all time players! So you know people are playing that a lot!)
  • GTA IV (Still going strong!)
  • Halo: Reach
  • Battlefield 3
  • Borderlands 2
  • Sports titles and racing games
  • Skyrim (a completely single player game).

That’s not even including all the other arcade games, indie games, Netflix, and Xbox 360 apps well as PS3’s online service, the Kinect, the Wii U, 3DS, and the ever growing market of mobile games.

So please, let’s take off our rose tinted glasses, remember yesteryear with happiness but let it stay in the past. It’s not fair to games today, and it’s not a relevant form of an argument anymore because it truly is a different time and what worked then may or may not work now.